Search| Blogs \ eStars Fiasco |
  b-sheep
@ 3rd June 2008 19:15.
|
| (Updated: 3rd June 2008 19:23) |
|
Every once in a while a new event comes along. The event looks rather promising and players and fans alike become jubilated at the thought of being able to participate in the event. When an event comes along, with a rather large prize pot and a rather large political backing from a country, its hard to not to have the highest expectations one can get when an event of this magnitude is announced. However, since one particular events inception; e-Stars, it has been dropping the ball...repeatedly. It all started with a sloppy press release, the sloppiest this writer has ever seen. Seeing as how I find it my own personally given task to correct wrongs I see in e-sports, I corrected the press release (all 27 mistakes) and sent it back to them with a polite note attached questioning them on how the press release was released in this form. It has been 57 days since then, and still I have yet to receive a reply back. The sloppy handling of the press release does not end here, oh no. I finally finish editing the monstrosity and begin to search for any contact information. I am relieved to see not one, but two e-mail address’ at the bottom of the press release. I send the e-mail to both, moments later receiving a ‘failure to send’ notice from one of the address’. I find this rather odd seeing as how they should have ensured it was working to have put it at the bottom. Still, the other e-mail went through, and am happily waiting a response, of any kind. It has been 57 days and I am still waiting for a response. Then comes the website, I love it. I watch the intro and I am hooked. I then begin to navigate the site and that is where my love affair ends. There are spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, faulty links that send you to HTML error pages. They even went so far as to add an American section, and then not even put content into it. Why bother? I mean, there isn’t even going to be American participation at the event, why bother adding it at all? I continue on through the website to see that there are even more of the aforementioned examples of sloppy work. I then reach the media section, I am genuinely excited to see this but then am let down as I click the link and am directed to a page with zero content. I wonder what this is all about and press the “back” button on my Internet Explorer, I then click the next media link (there were two) and I find a page with a 16 photos. I find this to be a rather poor media section, they do not even have a video explaining the premiss of the event, no not even a paragraph or two explaining it or anything else for that matter. I guess pictures truly are worth a thousand words. I am rather let down and navigate away from the site. In later weeks I am drawn back to it to vote. Now I already expected this to happen, I do in every single voting system set up on a website. People using proxies to vote more than once and sway the votes. However what happened this time was a little bit different. The voting, is apparently missing votes. Yes that is correct, missing votes. How may you ask? Well that is a good question. I believe it is because of the poor coding and work being done on the site. Half of the site isn’t even finished and the voting system itself was rather odd to begin with, you get 3 votes. However you only get three votes for your region. So I suppose I could have clicked on Asia and that would have been my region. Considering I am from Canada and we do not have a region on their website, I just figured that I was able to vote for both Europe and Asia and clicked the first one (which happened to be Europe). I voted for the teams I felt would be the best suited for the job, and continued to the Warcraft 3 section. I was baffled by the player selection, however I continued to vote regardless of the selection. Now, a few days after I have voted my attention is drawn to the fact that 6000+ votes are now missing. And like before, I said I believe it is the coding on the site, and that your second or third vote does not even count in the actual voting process but is rather, logged and cited for future use. Now, seeing as how the event is run by “several of e-Sports top leaders” I am surprised that they failed to even think that a proper press release and website might matter. I am also curious as to whom these ‘leaders’ are. Seeing as how a lot of the leaders of the e-Sports industry are in America (not all, not even a majority, yet very important ones are) and there isn’t even an American section or participant in the entire event. You would think one would stay away from having self proclaimed titles in a press release, but I guess not. My attention is once again drawn back to the press release, certain things do not add up. How do such poorly managed pieces of work even make it to the final stage in this condition, who is in charge here? Well, I will draw your attention to the neat little table they set up in the press release. Photo As you can see, the Korean government is running this, or at least said to. I for one am skeptical of this, I mean come on people. Look at Korea, it is fantastic. The Korean e-Sports scene is like no other. The way things are done in Korea might as well be a hand book for the rest of the world. How would they, the pioneers of e-Sports make such trivial mistakes? And why not even bother fixing them after they have been pointed out? It seems like making detrimental mistakes is this events goal. Oh wait, hold the phone. At the end of the press release it lists a group of people (I am inclined to believe these are the ‘leaders’ they spoke of in the beginning) I direct your attention towards the press release one more time. Photo Why is it that such renowned business leaders would allow such mistakes? Again I am skeptical that these individuals even have anything to do with the event. Sure they may have given some insight on how to run certain aspects, but seriously why would some of these people even go that far. The voting is now complete, the faulty statistics still stand. Not surprising really, look at the rest of the event. It is however strange that they have not even made a press release about the voting, or even mention which of the players are attending the event. Other respectable news sites made the announcements of the attendees. Yet on the eStars site there isn’t a single update since the last time I was there (roughly 30 days). It seems to me that this event, with all of these problems just in the first few weeks will fail miserably. I am interested to see how they will handle all of these problems and if they will be able to reclaim any sort of image from the fans. I sincerely hope so, for their sake. Because if they don’t there will be a lot of angry fans out there, not to mention players. The following are both Press Release'. .02 is the edited version, the red text shows what I added to make it correct. Original .02 |
1
| wOw. |
| Wow...that's way too much text to say how much you hate a press release. Chinese sites are notorious for having very poor (or zero) English content. You took this way too seriously. I guarantee you the event will be a success and neither the players nor sponsors will care that you corrected TWENTY SEVEN HOLY SHIT spelling mistakes. Nobody will care because the event will get a shit ton of media coverage, the best of the best players will be there, and there's a lot of money. Also, you spelled "premise" wrong. |
| Was nice to read. Sure it's a lot of talk about a press release, but I too find it pretty irritating when it doesn't look fully professional. ~.~ |
| #2 Its not Chinese, its South Korean. The reason it is mostly about the press release and not the Voting, or the poor Web-site is because the Voting was already covered by SK. As well the website was just poor, there wasn't much to say other than it is garbage. If they pay these people to do this sort of work, and it ends up like this. Then do nothing about it, I find it rather annoying that they are even involved in eSports. People say that eSports cannot go mainstream for a myriad of reasons, well this is one of them. And if people cannot comprehend the concept of 'good work' then I don't understand why they are involed in the first place (with any sort of work) |
| #2 it is a PRESS RELEASE. It is important and has to be in proper english and it isn't so hard to get a proofreader to correct it or even use b-sheep's version. They just don't care about it. |
| I'm not trying to argue it isn't important (but now that I read it I know it sounded that way). I also was wrong on it being Chinese :). I agree in saying that they should do a better job of setting up all the "pregame" stuff (press, website, voting), but the end result will be the same, with this event being a huge success. Like I said I think your fears are well founded but you're still blowing it way out of proportion, because since the majority of people who will be watching do not speak English, coming up with a flawless press release is probably not number one on their list. |
| #6 Just because something isn't at the top of their list doesn't mean it shouldn't be done correctly. As well, its things like this that hinder eSports break into the mainstream culture, if a MAJOR event organizer(s) cannot even put together a decent web-site, non-faulty voting system (6k votes were missing) and proper public relations projects. The mainstream will never take us seriously. I don't think it will be a success, I think it will end up being like CESO. |
| Lol, so much text about a press release.. The fact is that Estars hosted succesfull events in the past. Do you really think that the mainstream will not take eSports serious because a ASIAN website has some minor mistakes while the event itself is perfecty arranged ( like past times ). Its all a bit to much far-fetched. |
| When I walk around in South-Korea, and they have a shop which offers "Profassional Hairstyling" or "Human Self Carwash", I also don't take them seriously. It looks funny. But they might still be damn good at their craft - just not at English. Yet you can't blame them for trying - South-Koreans will always try to speak another language without much fear of embarassment. I like how they reach out to foreigners that way... I think that their press release is only a part of their whole "trade" and that attacking it so much should be called "eStars Press Release is under attack" rather than "eStars is under heavy critique" or calling it a fiasco already. |
| #8 and #9 Its not just about the press release, sure its focused. Mainly because I didn't want to repeat the same facts that the guys over at SK presented to the community. The fact is, if you are going to pay someone to do a job. They should do it right. It doesn't take that much to run something through spell check or get someone that speaks english to edit it before putting it out. May I remind you both that there were 6 thousand votes missing? 6 thousand votes that ended up allowing a team to go that maybe shouldn't have been allowed to go? They didn't even justify the votes being missing, make any announcement or do anything to correct the wrong. If they treat the community that poorly and think they can just pull the wool over everyones eyes then whats the point? I rather have one less event (no matter how good it is gameplay wise or how much money they throw at us) if they are just going to hinder eSports as a whole and make a mockery of it to the rest of the world. |
| I'm on the press list for this myself and it's been very, very quiet recently considering the event isn't that far off. I'll be reporting from the SC and Sudden Attack events so I'll be able to comment further after the event itself. |
Post comment
You are not a logged in, or you are not registered. Create an account or login to be able to post a comment.
Advertisement
Featured blogs
Most read blogs last month
| (02) Managing My Hamachi.. | akamu |
| (01) Now that's a game face | Raistlin |
| (01) Hwashion | Raistlin |
| (00) First thoughts of 6.60 | Mahlay |
| (01) First tournament Day | ereskigal |
| (07) Warriors weekly blog | warrior-350- |
Most discussed blogs last month
| (07) Warriors weekly blog | warrior-350- |
| (03) :o | eXhideouS |
| (03) Starcraft (SWE) | MiCHEL |
| (02) Doing a practical c.. | LML |
| (02) Dreamhack summer 09 | wildbill |
| (02) Life in Pictures | LeiZ |