Several months ago, and for another website, I wrote that I thought eSports needed to be better officiated in South Africa. I was not alone in this; Lazygamer has had their fair share of scraps with Mind Sports South Africa, including a court case, and editor Gavin Mannion specifically stated who he thought should take over from the much maligned organisation. Across the numerous eSports groups on Facebook and individual competitors timelines on Twitter, you can see the rumbles of discontent at the fact that this clearly deficient organisation is in charge of our national eSports representation.
“But what’s new?” you’re saying at this point. “Why are we moaning about the MSSA again?”
On Monday morning, we received a press release discussing how the teams and players sent to compete against Finland in a variety of games got, predictably, stomped. I want to talk about this, I want to dissect the things they’ve said and why this shows, once again, that the methods of the MSSA are not representative of South Africa’s best interests as an eSports nation.
The MSSA Press Release
I’m not going to talk about the players involved, because quite frankly, they’re just trying their best to advance themselves, and that’s okay. While supporting the MSSA may not be something I approve of, I can’t disagree with people working to gain progress for themselves as eSports competitors.
Without further ado…
One of the biggest problems that all South African sport has, is the lack of international competitive experience.
No, experience is not our biggest issue, but this is a quote I’ll get back to. There’s a lot of things we can blame, but inexperience is a fairly minor issue in a competitive industry which is still finding itself.
It is largely due to the lack of sufficient funds that many of South Africa’s teams are prohibited from participating in enough international competition.
Thus, through the IeSF’s international on-line test matches, South Africa is afforded the opportunity to play against the best teams in the world and to prepare for the annual world championships at a fraction of the cost.
Actually, South Africa’s teams have a fairly strong record of participating overseas. The MSSA will never acknowledge a team that goes overseas and participates in international competitions, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t.
The best example of this is Southern Barbarians – a Battlefield 4 team qualified for the Electronic Sports League (ESL) earlier this year. Mind Sports South Africa attempted to block Southern Barbarians once they discovered that the team was participating in the ESL, which is generally regarded as a national level competition and not one that’s playedbetween private teams. Southern Barbarians had gotten around this issue by not using the name “Team South Africa” or any permutation of it, despite all their players being from South Africa.
The team went on to win their bracket – the ESL 8v8 Conquest Nations Cup. Take that in – our strongest team in eSports was actively blocked from playing by the organisation who is supposed to represent competitive gamers in South Africa, simply because they weren’t properly registered with them. Meanwhile, we send the same team to play Finland, a notable eSports nation, that got hammered by Egypt.
Other than that, Energy eSports has externally funded two trips to the eSports World Cup (ESWC), last year for their DotA 2 team, this year for their Counter-Strike: Global Offensive side with support from SteelSeries and IS Gaming.
So there’s no doubt we have had teams that were able to go overseas and compete at the highest level, but whether or not the MSSA chooses to acknowledge that there are successful teams that exist outside their archaic membership restrictions is questionable.
The Finnish team boasts of many of the world’s top players, and, arguably, the Finnish team is one of the most dominant teams in world eSports.
Thus, South Africa knew what was at stake as well as the fact that the South African team were clearly the underdogs.
The test match was to be played in two titles, being StarCraft II and Dota 2.
Unfortunately the one game of StarCraft II had to be cancelled due to connectivity issues. The game involved Yolandi ‘Ananke’ Williams who was to play from Wits University. Even though Wits has an incredible internet connection, it proved not to be reliable enough for the test match and such game was cancelled. Of course Yolandi was saddened by the cancellation as she was looking forward to a rematch against Niina “Soyhi” Kahela (Finland) whom Yolandi had faced off against at the 2013 IeSF World Championships – Bucharest.
Ignoring the pre-emptive excuses for crushing defeat, there are several issues with these paragraphs.
Firstly, the organisation: Surely one of the benefits of linking up with a massive organisation is the benefit of prior planning and secure infrastructure for matches occurring over what is easily the most problematic barrier between us and places with higher concentrations of skilled eSports individuals. How does a match get cancelled because of poor network infrastructure when surely something like this must have been assessed beforehand?
My other, biggest issue is with the the actual length of this paragraph – as it’s by far the longest out of the ones included in the release. More words are spent telling us about a match that never happened than giving us the results of the matches that actually did – results which could be used as a far more effective barometer of our teams’ skill levels than an explanation of why a game could not be played.
In the StarCraft II match between Nathan ‘Static’ Anderson (SA) and Vesa “Welmu” Hovinen (Finland), Nathan lost both games. However, it must be noted that Vesa is arguably one of the top players outside Korea.
I have no issue with the result here – Hovinen is one of the world’s finest StarCraft II players and most players would struggle to beat him at any level.
However, the following sentence is where I’ll start to explain my issue with this press release and Mind Sports South Africa’s eSports approach:
On examining the replays, it is absolutely clear that Nathan is much improved since he represented South Africa in Bucharest in 2013. The replays too show where work has to be done.
Well, yes. We’d generally expect a player’s skill to rise the longer he plays a game. But how is this being encouraged? Are there coaches or analysts working with Nathan Anderson to assist him in correcting the flaws in his playstyle or is he being made to watch the replays, identify his mistakes and develop his strategy alone? And how is this benefiting other players in the country, so that they don’t make the same mistakes?
In Dota 2, the Finnish team, ably lead by the world-renown Kalle “Trixi” Saarinen delivered two resounding defeats on the South African team. No quarter was given by the Finnish team who demonstrated why they are the main contenders for the World Championship title.
As with my previous issue with the MSSA, I don’t see the point in sending a team of players who are clearly not our strongest to face a team which, as the release says, is considered one of the world’s strongest – to the point of being favourites to win the IeSF’s World Championships. Sending this team clearly isn’t helping our eSports credentials, and getting repeatedly mauled by international teams is not going to help them progress or grow as players. MSSA, however, does not see it that way:
However, the South African team showed remarkable improvement since their game against Egypt in August. Lessons have been learnt and the team has improved.
There is still a long road to travel, and much improvement stillneeds to be done.
Nevertheless, the optimism, willingness to learn, and commitment shown by the South African team bodes well for the remaining test matches as well as for the actual World Championships.
The on-line test matches thus provide a valuable platform for the South African eSports players to test themselves against the international opposition, have a critical look at their tactics and prepare for the upcoming 2014 World Championships to be held in Baku.
As we pointed out in the earlier article (which I have now linked several times), the South African team sent to face Egypt showed a fundamental lack of understanding of DotA’s competitive roles. It may have been the pressure, or it may have been a lack of experience, but the team never looked anything more than mildly incompetent against a fairly ruthless Egyptian team.
To improve on that is not difficult. It still didn’t change the result.
What the MSSA fail to realise is the nature of competitive gaming – you don’t generally learn from your opposition in the same way you do in sports. You may see their character’s actions and statistics, but you don’t see their actual input (although more experience players will be able to presume it) and communication with their team. This limits the amount of value you can gain from uncommentated replays and live matches.
In many ways, attempting to learn from your competition in eSports is the same as watching someone write code – you may see their output and, with enough experience, figure out what’s happening, but without their internalised knowledge and structure, you’ll struggle to replicate or gain any meaningful understanding of it.
For this reason, I disagree with MSSA’s perception of these online (who the hell says “on-line”?) test matches. I believe that while they do indeed provide a valuable platform for South African players to test themselves against international level competition, without dedicated and effective coaching, the benefit these players gain from these matches will be minimal.
Back to the original quote I wanted to come back to:
One of the biggest problems that all South African sport has, is the lack of international competitive experience.
My response to this is yes, but just as much no. South African sport as a whole is generally quite strong, regardless of international experience, which I think is best shown in our country’s rugby, even if the parallels aren’t entirely accurate.
Rugby is a controversially historied sport in South Africa, but is undoubtedly one of the best supported – both at national and grassroots levels. While I don’t expect gaming to gain as much widespread support as what is widely considered to be our nation’s strongest sport, it can certainly take some lessons from how it improves its teams.
Many rugby players don’t reach the level of international rugby until they have been playing for quite a long time, through school and into their professional careers. Yet we still have an incredibly strong pool of rugby players whose inexperience is ultimately irrelevant because of the level of coaching, analysis and infrastructure available to them.
Coaching
Coaching or management is something that many would never associate with eSports, but I would argue that it’s integral to the long-term success of a team and something that the players in the South African eSports team require. Coaching allows an initially more experienced player to impart knowledge, observation and tactics on their team, which would certainly benefit players who are new to competitive play or struggle to co-ordinate during big matches.
F34R Adept after winning the MWEB Master Series Ghosts LAN, sans Glenn Alexander.
Specifically with Nathan Anderson, South Africa already has a now-retired StarCraft II player in the form of Robert “PandaTank” Botha who has competed at the top level internationally and who could help with his growth given the opportunity. Whether Botha would be willing to assist is entirely up to him, but preparing for games with a coach who has experience with high level competition would allow for far better tactical preparation and a far quicker advancement of skills for a budding professional.
This is certainly something our DotA 2 team requires, although MSSA would likely have to convince one of our country’s stronger eSports teams to assist the Knights Mind Sports club or bring in an international player (past or present) to help.
Call of Duty team F34R Adept (formerly Team Adept) has shown, locally, how having a manager present in the form of Glenn Alexander can benefit a team. At the Afrihost Call of Duty Ghosts Invitational tournament in February, he guided the team through their matches, pointing out his players faults so they could fix them and co-ordinating them as they played – something which he has repeatedly done as Adept have enjoyed success in local gaming. At the end of that day, his team won the tournament, beating out finalists Arte Conservatus Gaming quite comfortably on their undefeated streak through the winner’s bracket.
Analysis
One of the core things that MSSA emphasise in their press release is the watching of replays, and I can support that, but it has to be for the purpose of analysis rather than just pointing out mistakes. By that, I mean there has to be a process of questioning beyond “What mistakes did we make?”, which will both help the plays improve and spot where they can scale up their tactics.
This means more questions to the effect of “Why did this go wrong?”, “What did the enemy do to capitalise my mistake and how did their actions play into me making this mistake?” and “How can I either improve this or adjust my strategy to avoid this in future?”. The questions need to be focused on growing the players rather than pointing out what they did wrong.
The direct comparison would be a half-time or post game team talk in football or rugby (or most sports, really) where managers can directly interact with players – whether individually, in their respective roles or with the team as a whole – and attempt to tilt their actions and playstyle in a different direction. This further necessitates the need for a manager or coach in an eSports team – one who knows and can analyse the game being played, not one administrative role across several games.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is by far the largest scale of the three points I’ve discussed, and the most liable to fail if not maintained properly. Our nationally supported infrastructure for eSports locally is nearly non-existent; nationally-endorsed competitive tournaments are limited to either poorly hacked together MSSA events or slightly better run MWEB tournaments.
There is no national or southern African league system officially supported by MSSA and thus no constant practice and competitive exposure for clans looking to play MSSA-endorsed events. In fact, the Do Gaming League (DGL) is one of South Africa’s only large-scale eSports leagues and undoubtedly the strongest-run at present.
It’s an example of very good infrastructure, which could potentially benefit any players taking part in it and would ensure the players representing the country on a national level were both qualified and dedicated enough to do so. But it’s also a tournament which MSSA has exhibited disdain for, quite strikingly considering their events offer no similar experience or environment for players to learn and grow, either in teams or as individual players.
And, quite frankly, this is where I believe MSSA fails worst. The fact that you can participate in the DGL for free, get to the DGC and win quite staggering prizes while MSSA offers poorly organised events against countries so obviously superior to us in eSports paints a sad and telling picture about our eSports scene.
Other than that, infrastructure would also refer to how a sport is encouraged in a country – much like rugby and football are introduced early in school extracurricular activities. Grassroots development, as such, the very thing which allowed Germany to run rampant through the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the same reason South Africa has such a strong rugby side and the reason most sporting professionals are so advanced in their field.
Currently, Zombie Dredd is running a schools programme for eSports in Cape Town, which promotes the competitive playing of games at an extramural level in order to develop a strong eSports presence for the future in South Africa. Meanwhile the MSSA, who Zombiegamer will have to begrudgingly rely on, simply provides the means for registration for schools – no internalised leagues or recommended methods of operation for an extramural activity which very few schools will be familiar with.
So what?
I’m fairly certain the downfalls of South African gaming have comparatively little to do with experience, and more to do with the organisation supposedly running eSports in the country. Our experience may be limited in comparison to our opposition’s, but it’s our fundamental lack of organisation, infrastructure and development in the industry that’s costing us more than the fact that we haven’t been actively competing for as long.
While the DGC will be running this weekend at rAge 2014, promoting eSports in South Africa and offering massive prizes and exposure for the competitors in each game’s bracket, Mind Sports South Africa is silent – as if to refuse to acknowledge that anything, let alone the country’s biggest gaming an technology expo, is about to happen.
It doesn’t help anyone to pretend everything is okay in our local scene, and nor does it help ignoring the places that are doing things right. Until we start implementing more infrastructure and good management within our community and stop attempting to discredit the DGL, which operates by far the finest league in this country, all these hacked together press releases are filled with will be poorly constructed sentences and delusions of success. The lack of experience isn’t to blame for our teams getting hammered on the international eSports stage – Mind Sports South Africa is.
The post A Cataclysmic Dawn: No, MSSA, Inexperience Isn’t Why South Africa Is Bad At eSports appeared first on #egmr.