Firstly, let me say that I am thankful for all the loyal supporters of sc2 and FXO from Malaysia.

But now I am going to rant on the mentality of Malaysian e-Sports (not just sc2).

One of the big reasons I live in Malaysia is because of the people. I love Malaysian people, the culture, the lifestyle and the fact they feed you no matter if there is a reason to celebrate or not. But its these things that I love that bring a reason why e-Sports in Malaysia on a professional level will most probably fail unless change occurs.

When we first suggested we would do events in Malaysia, there was a common word in every sentence by the people I spoke to to get a jist of what I should do here. That word was FREE.

Its my belief that players should always have free entry to events, and I can make that happen everytime no matter what. But that seems to not be enough. If you base an events success on the amount of free things you give to the community the minute you stop giving away free things, the event dies. Its a bad habit to get into. And is a reason no one will be successful.

Take for instance FXO 1.. 10-20 of the people who joined the tournament only showed up for lucky draw.. That includes some close friends of mine.

How is e-sports going to survive if people only show up for free stuff?

Then there is spotgamers sc tournament. Struggling to get anyone to show up, they announced free AMD mobo or something along those lines, for anyone who enters. Immediately the tournament got a good number of participants. But if they dont give that free thing again, they wont get the same numbers. So it will essentially die if they dont give free things.

Infact when they announced the AMD mobo thing my skype chat was filled with how people are gonna get it and sell it for money. By any standards, this is disgusting. Rich or poor, it could almost be considered theft.

So, HOW is malaysian e-sports going to survive?

There are dedicated people such as pRoGeney, a bunch of nDL guys (not all) and a few of the top players (who have other issues to deal with such as their attitude towards the community), who will always be there. But will it grow accordingly?

Starcraft 2 is now 29.99 USD. According to statistics, its price is now in the comfort mark for Malaysian people to spend on luxury items. (about 98 RM approximately). But because the price is affordable isn't enough because there is no exposure. No investment and worst of all, little TRUE community support.

I am sure no matter what I do I can get a good showing of players to an event, mostly because of free things. But where does it go from there? To get external people to enter the community you need firstly to have approachable stars (The stars of malaysian SC2 ARE NOT approachable..... They can b**** me as much as they like about saying this). You need to have a community that will support sc2 no matter what (this doesnt mean spending money). And you need to show that no matter what other people think, you are here (where ever you may be) to support the event because you enjoy it, and nothing but that.

Being too lazy to support something you have passion about, means you are not passionate about it. Spending a saturday or sunday with people who are your friend should have no excuse like "10 min drive too far lah". To be honest, if 10 min drive is too far, then you are a bad friend to begin with.


So now Malaysian e-sports is in this bad habit of mooching which is damaging its growth. How do we fix it?

I am not sure really..... I don't know if it can be fixed. I had made big plans for a Malaysian sc2 league to move forward. But because of the support (or lack there of) within the community, it is no longer a viable investment. Albiet the LAN's are no problem. Its alot of fun and the cost is minimal, but anything bigger is a waste of investment these days.

I have been planning to do barcraft but have been postponing it until I finished my research. I have contacts are 4 bars in Pavillion, 3 of them have shown interest. But should I do an event with the risk of everyone saying that pavillion is too far to attend? Or that there is no free gift for attending?

I know of about 10 people from the sc2 community who would 100% attend no matter what. Some would even bring a bunch of friends (ninjabear you stud!!). But it shouldnt be up to them to support the thing you love. IT should be up to EVERYONE to do it...

So, how far are you willing to go to support malaysian e-sports?

it's like questioning which comes first. Chicken or egg?

For me, there aren't enough many 'serious' people out there in Malaysia who is into this game.
Why?

Most of them think
"I'm wasting my time playing this thing 6-8 hours a day coz i won't get money out of it"
"Izzit worth it for me to spend my time for this game?"


For instance golf and bowling u can get many participants if organize a tourney coz they have this 'handicap' system which gives advantage to the noobs..

But still I respect the organizers of e-sports in Malaysia to give more coverage and motivation for all the so called playing as a hobby players to indulge in a more serious manner..

Most Foreign pro gamers practice no where near 8 hours per day.

I think the e-sports scene in Malaysia are still in it's infancy stage.
But a few years later with the help and initiative of the organizers, I think it will grow..
Another thing that can trigger this, is if one or two of our players win an international or regional competition. With the media coverage it can give motivation to all the e-sports fans to indulge into this scene!

Nice article. So when are there going to be an event in Sarawak and Sabah? There's plenty of SC2 players here as well.

Another important factor for success is that organizer should abolish the barriers between pro players and wanna be pros. Biggest issue I think are that pro players here are too arrogant and seldom want to mix with those up and comers. Usually people wants to go for fun lively community events and not going to some event to see some pro's showing off and bash other players. Pros should act like spokesman and promote interest for the games, not showing off and demoralize losing teams. Just my 2 cents. All the BEST with your events. Will surely attend it if held in East Malaysia.

I agree and have touched on the pro's issues in the article.

Malaysian e-sports is not in infancy. Its been around for a long time since brood war and the original free server of dota.

I have money to pump into it. But the investment is BAD because of the community.

It is no longer up to the organiser, its up to the community to show the organisers the investment is worth while.

Malaysian sponsors are even very very very negative when I have approached them about e-sports. Having done their research they are aware of the same habits in Malaysia and the return on investment would be almost zero.

The one thing that Malaysia can rely on though, is its patriotism and community mentality. If people can start to create new habits within the community, the money will come.

talk about dedication.

mad props to nDLbioballer *gan!!* nDLecho nDLrayzer and their guardian who did came all the way from PENANG and stayed in a freaking RM100 a night hotel just to attend FXO 1st OPEN.

and gan said that they gonna come for the 2nd one as well..

THATS DEDICATION right there. ppl in kl-slangor-perak-ns who whined that the venue is 20mins away when it shud be next to their home.. shame on you.

Yeh echo etc, and their dad or whoever the guy was.. Showed trued dedication, and I hope they enjoyed their time also. Thats the kind of dedication that made Korean, and Us e-sports WORK.

Yah, glad that there's someone fighting and promoting e-sports in Malaysia. I also personally hope that our e-sport scene will bloom. I've organized a tournament last year, its really hard to find a sponsor, so I sponsor the prize. Reception was ok and there's lots of cool gamers here in Malaysia. Few players even helped me to coordinate, execute and supervise the tournament in my absence.

Look. Here's the fact.

Except for the few of the people here that are actively playing SCII competitively, SCII is not all that popular.

The most popular competitive game in Malaysia has, and will be DotA and its variants for the foreseeable future.

Unless you can make SCII as appealing to Malaysians when compared to DotA, this will happen all the time.

I assume a lot of Malaysian gamer like to play team play than solo game, and easy management like DOTA than multi-task game such as SC2.

We are not disputing the fact that majority of gamers play LoL/Dota. We are purely talking about the way malaysians view the events. I think you would agree swap sc2/Lol/dota around and the same issues would arise

Based on what I've seen. If you swapped out SCII and replace it with DotA, you will get a crowd regardless of whether or not there is free shit being given out.

Well to be honest, DotA has dominated the Malaysia gaming scene, for an example, you can just go to any CC, or even a sucky CC in the kampung (old town) area, you will see those kids or adult plays dota

And base of radkiller's comment, yes its true, no matter theres free gift or no, they don't give a damn, just join.

While I agree the crowd would be bigger due to the higher % of players. We were happy with the first crowd for our event. Any more than what we had last event can be too much for one weekend so its not so much the crowd that we are speaking of. Its the underlying attitude that has been seen. Which will haveto change if esports events will make money and not be kept afloat by sponsors then dissapear because they have no fallback

malaysian gamer mentality just weird

SCII RM200+ = exp
dota alot ppl play coz free
HoN/LoL = free but somehow those free skin,champ etc etc = exceed 200+ yet they feel it cheap
MMORPG = F2P but cash item = used more than RM500++(previous me) yet they feel it free coz hey it is F2P game

i got few dota fren i got ask them play sc2 b4 they all just say to me it is expensive n yet they all got ps3/xbox at home while i dun have any one of those

malaysia gamer just weird thats all i could say boss

^ this...

i dunno from the other side bt from nDL side u can see lots of ppl turned up for the event jz to support the event such as the Penang dudes (echo, baller) as well as the Klang side (like bulu, adam who dont even practice =.=)...
even i joined to support when i gotta go at 3.30 (then drove back to support the event after i settled my stuffs) >.<
one of the issue imho is it being a 2day event where i think unless there are really nt enuff time, a full 1 day event would be much better...

its better than most of the hypocrits in the forum who bash others for trying to make esport work/ 'pro theory crafters'/ 'elitist' whom end up not joining a single event at all till now (u all know the people i meant)...

thus there are both the good and the bad in the community...
potential is there, but to make it grow there is the need to educate the public...

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i think overall FXO #1 did showed a pretty good turnout and i dun think cause it is free...
what the free thing did was creating the 'i got nothing to lose' mindset for the non-pro players...
i do agree that after the initial stage, the whole free mindset shouldn't be there anymore as a entry barrier is needed besides the obvious cost covers...

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as for the whole free proc thingy, i knw who are u talking about in the skype lol...
but i think only 1 person from that channel actually went to the event after all...
then again, he do play the game and did go there to win rather than jz for the proc...
it maybe a marketing gimmick but it work...

i think those in the channel would know why i decided nt to join the sportgamers event regardless of the free proc or nt...

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the reason why dota/ lol is popular is cause it is free and tat's basically it...
dota is pretty much a dead game in the international scene and dota2 is crap (yes i have beta and it is total crap)...
lol is doing very well internationally especially in EU and i do agree it is way better than dota...
u can say msians are lagging behind in the esport scene...

still the msian sc2 community is huge (btw the SEA version was around rm150 when we all got it)...
when u get on bnet u can see the number of ppl...
only problem is most of them are casuals and does nt take it seriously...

Malaysians are cheapskates.

LoL/HoN , and F2PMMORPGs are popular because they don't have to pay a single cent upfront. If they want anything from the item shop, they will willingly spend the money to get it since they will think it is cheaper.

DotA isn't free per se, its just pirated from hell to back in Malaysia. And with those private servers, hamachi and flying spaghetti monster, they don't need to pay a single cent to play it.

SCII on the other hand is 200 ringgit upfront or no game.

Guess which will appeal more?

At the end of the day it still comes to the players' mentality and how they perceive the game. It's actually pretty simple imo, players that play the game casually and are not "dedicated" to the game will only attend events that will offer some sort of freebie (be it a lucky draw, or signup goodie bag) Whereas on the other hand, the ones that are dedicated to starcraft 2 ( they do not necessarily have to be good in the game ) will try their best to join ANY starcraft 2 event, as long as the event is accessible to them.

So now the big question is, how many people out there are TRULY into Starcraft 2? I guess heavy promotion and frequent SC2 related events will act as a catalyst to encourage more dedicated players.

Th whole point to the argument Boss is bringing up is exactly this attitude, if this is the case, where is the incentive for sponsor to support a community who is admittantly biased to free things. their advertising will go nowhere since their product isnt free?