GoodGame owner Alex Garfield has gone public and conducted an AMA on Reddit, talking about his agency, his reasoning for sponsoring multiple teams, players and more. He also confirms that Team Tinker is one of his teams and that Team Secret was also a prospect but negotiations fell through.
Alex Garfield on...
... Teams Tinker and Secret:
Garfield confirms in two statements that Team Tinker is now under the umbrella of GoodGame. As for Team Secret, "a few months ago it seemed like we'd end up working together, but as of now it's looking like they'll end up going elsewhere."
... the accusations/speculations about a monopolization by GGA and his motivation to pick up teams regardless:
Before answering the question, Garfield explains that he sees it as partly his own fault for all these speculations and accusations, as he has never gone public about his motives. The reasoning behind it is "really simple" as he says. Garfield considers himself, or rather his company, to be good at what they do and he feels that "if the cool thing to do also seems like the right thing to do, then it's probably worth doing. That mentality, combined with the fact that we pride ourselves on treating players well, explains most of the things we do and have done in the past."
Garfield is of the opinion that there are "not enough team and talent organizations [that] treat players properly.“ While he would not consider ruining healthy relationships between teams and sponsors, he does say that "if a team or player comes to us and genuinely wants to work with us, I would undoubtedly make the decision to support that team.'
... possible collusion and the accusations of such:
Garfield does not see himself as a traditional team owner, as he has not been dealing with team issues for over a year now. Each of his Dota 2 teams has its own manager, thus not demanding him to interact at all.
"I encourage you guys to look at things from the player's perspective: the teams we support signed, and then re-upped with us, knowing that we'd be working with multiple teams. The players themselves know that we are supporting more than two teams, and they chose to work with us. I understand the collusion concern, in theory, but in practice I think there are many reasons to believe that we are one of the least likely candidates to be the source of this kind of problem."
... a player union:
In order to improve the standard the teams and players are treated by, Garfield encourages a player union and has been pro-active in that regard. "We have already begun speaking with some of our players about how they could go about doing it."
... GoodGame setting an example for others and possibly opening up their structure for others to adapt:
Garfield elaborates that while it would be beneficial to help out other organizations, studios and tournaments in stabilizing their structures, he says that considering "the business ramifications of doing something like that, it gets kind of scary. This is a very, very competitive industry. Behind the scenes, it's cutthroat and extremely political. So the prospect of helping potential competitors improve themselves without a clear sense of long-term boundaries and how to protect ourselves - that's pretty daunting."
He still thinks that his "role in eSports can and should be to help stabilize and improve a lot of things, but in terms of the mechanics of how we do that, for a lot of those use cases I haven't figured out the right balance between helping third-parties and ensuring our own security."
... matches between EG and Alliance:
"It's definitely a strange feeling. Losing has always had a bigger impact on me than winning, so yes - the prospect of both a guaranteed win and a guaranteed loss usually results in me not feeling great.
It was devastating when EG knocked Alliance out of TI4. Even though they'd just secured themselves top two in the Group Stage by doing so (which was an amazing accomplishment), I still felt the pain of the Alliance loss tenfold more than the pride of the EG win. It's really hard for me as a person to invest in someone or something halfway - I think this is part of what makes me good at supporting people, but one of its downsides is that losing is difficult, and also hard to let go of."
.. the recent maphacking incidents in CS:GO:
Garfield considers the incidents as "a big wakeup call to the entire industry." He says that with a lot of focus on MOBA and RTS games, the focus from shooters such as Counter Strike has shifted and thus the awareness of such possibilities like cheating, which he considers more likely to happen than in RTS or MOBA games. "I obviously would've rather seen it never happen, but if it was going to come up eventually, I'm glad it happened now rather than in a year or two. We needed this wake-up call."
This incident would not prevent from Garfield and GoodGame to pick up a CS:GO squad however, "this will just make us more careful in scouting the players we pick."
... on sponsors and the values they seek from sponsorships:
He elaborates that every sponsor has a unique approach and different ideas. Some look for the plain numbers on streams, both tournaments and individual players, some look to see strong performances from their teams. "Sponsorship is rarely uniform and almost always needs to be tailored to the sponsor's particular needs." Garfield also mentions that he built a web-based tool set that sponsors can log into to extract the data they need/look for.
When it comes to handling and acquiring sponsorships, Garfield is of the opinion that "it's by nature a much more personal kind of relationship. In that sense, it's more important to have a good understanding of all of the different ways you potentially could show value to a sponsor, and offer them what you think would work best for them, than it is to have a theoretically-perfect uniform offering that every sponsor will love. There is no such thing, in my experience."
Source : Reddit AMA
Article images by Alex Garfield, SLTV
Headline image by Alex Garfield
