Topic : Marshaling, do's and don'ts
Scope : General
Target Audience : Marshals or To be Marshals

Topic 1
Understanding Marshaling

Marshaling is another word to describe an enforcer of rules and perhaps closely related to what you call in umpire or referee in sports.
Marshals are regulators of the Rules & Regulations set by an organizers, for an e-sport game or event as a whole. Marshals are also part of a security force to ensure non-active or unrelated personel are not within the restricted areas or gaming areas during an event. Marshals are NOT spectators, they are not watching to learn nor are they there to support and they especially do not CHEER.

Marshaling requires the utmost focus as identifying breeches within a ruleset may be extremely hard, especially in RTS and FPS games, since each marshal needs to watch more than 1 player. It is also important that marshals know the basics of every game in the event they participate in, especially major events such as WCG or WGT. This makes them highly versatile which also makes him more valueble as a whole rather than a marshal for a specific game.

Topic 2
Do's & Don'ts

DO know what you need to know.
As an enforcer of rules, you need to know them. It is highly likely in larger events more restrictions are placed or you are needed in more places than one. Knowing as much as possible for all games in that event will likely get you in favor of the organizers to be "recalled" into service in the future.

DO be strict.
If you find that a player is abusive or abusing a bug/restriction, be it intentional or no, take action based on your knowledge in the Rules and Regulations. Most players don't read it. If they don't know, it's their problem, not yours.

DO be firm.
If you've made a decision, do NOT pull it back unless your superior specifically says otherwise. Once you take action, wrong or right, consult your Head Marshal before proceeding IF the player wishes to dispute those claims.

DO be knowledgable.
Know as much as possible about the game you are marshaling. As most marshals tend to be former/current players, this isn't a real problem for you. But if you're new to both marshaling and the game, read up as much as possible or play the game a few times with the competition rules. Understanding them is important.

DO listen to your superiors.
So long as it is related to your job, listen to your superiors. Most superiors are there because they have the knowledge of being there. Don't hasitate to ask them questions that aren't written but try not to sound stupid.

DO be respectable.
Your goal is to earn the respect of gamers of being a good marshal. Good means you know what you're doing, not good means you don't know what you're doing or doing it badly.

DO be consistent.
If you're going to penalize a player/team for doing something wrong, make sure you keep doing it for other teams as well. Not being consistent means there is room for teams/players to come back to you with questions you most probably cant answer. The less questions you need to answer the better. Make everything self-explanatory if possible, explain every detail you need to keep them from asking too many questions.

DON'T be a distraction.
You are there to enforce rules, not to be a cheerleader or a loudspeaker. If a players mother/father/aunty/uncle/boyfriend/friend or whatever asked you to do something for them, either shrug it off or do it when they are not in a competive game. Do it before or after a match or dont do it at all.

DON'T be biased.
A very important aspect of marshaling is being unbiased, both in punishment and in enforcement. Although this is a highly debatable issue, if you feel that marshaling your own friends seems bias, then don't do it. Most likely you will be. Just swap places with the other marshal for this game just so you can keep your cool.

DON'T stagger.
Do not stagger with your decisions. Once a decision has been made, a marshals decisions should be final. Get your superior involved if there is a dispute. There are always records to back up your/their claims, which should be dealt with at the end of the match in order for the event to run smoothly.

DON'T be rude.
Despite being a superior force to gamers in competitive play, there is no reason to be rude regardless of how they treat you. If they are abusive in any way, they CAN be penalized.

DON'T run your own show.
The event organizers should have a set time frame for each game/team to be at the venue. If you are unsure of the changes in a schedule ask the head marshal/organizer or ask the teams to do it themselves. You are not a slave and you're certainly not the organizers. The worse thing you can do as a marshal is give the wrong information. If you do give wrong information, get ready for a firing squad which most likely will consist of the team, their supports, your head marshal and the event organizers with their sponsors, not yet including their husbands/wives/kids/relatives.

Topic 3
Marshaling as a Career

This probably will not happen, unless you know everything you need to know about running an event of your own. Marshaling is only a small part in competitive gaming, so small that its highly unlikely you can live off it. It is possible however, to make it part of your resume, so long as you understand what you will be doing.

Marshals rarely stay marshals. Gaming events are almost always related to events, marketing, software companies or their divisions, which happen only occasionally in a year. It is also very unlikely these gaming events have the same organizers. To get anywhere in that industry, you will need to know who you're dealing with and how the industry runs.

As you go farther into gaming events, it will mostly be appropriate for you to run your own in the future. Thats probably the turning point in your career, no longer marshaling, but more to managing the event itself. At that point, you probably marshaled enough to know what and how to deal with gamers for you to run your own show and also gotten yourself the contacts you need to make a successful event.

Topic 4
The Gaming Industry

The gaming industry is a very diverse industry that cannot run on its own. The gaming industry is tied to so many other industries that if either one fails, gaming itself will be at a standstill.

To further understand how it works, i will identify who are the key players in the industry. (examples)

The first part of the industry are the software companies, such as Infinity Ward or Bethesda Softworks for example.

These companies earn their pay by producing a finished product for their Publisher for example Electronic Arts or Activision.
Upon completing a product/contract, they will earn a percentage of what their publisher earns or unless the contract states otherwise, they will earn a fixed sum of money. Think of it as payment for their services/idea.

Publishers earn from distribution/sales where they handle the prices/security/distribution methods of these software which also include packaging, reproduction and retailing. They are responsible for what you get as the end-user product, together with the software. (box, freebies, book, etc etc) Some publishers work with local companies to further promote their goods.

In order to promote their product, publishers turn to advertising companies to do their advertisements, marketing companies to run promotional events, event companies to run competitive events or a specilized company formed to do these things as a whole, which can easily just be called a gaming company. (in2 Marketing will fall somewhere in between this)

Larger publishers most likely have their own divisions for their local distributions, but in order for them to reach an international level, they either hire or partner with local companies in those countries to enhance distribution. (New Era for example) At times, in order to reach a larger market, games have their languages changed for example. This is called Localization. This also needs proper translations by professionals which mostly isnt directly related to the industry. Translators can vary from just plain linguists to professionals.

Before its final release, games need to run through a panel, the ESRB - Electronic Software Rating Board, which tentatively assigns ratings for games and provides guidelines on how to promote those rated games.

Once the game is released, they are released in various mediums, the mediums being DVDs/CDs(retailers/distributers), Direct Downloads and Online Purchases.

Upon distribution or purchase, shipping and logistics companies come into play, where usually the end user absorbs the cost (shipping & handling costs)

Distributors such as New Era then "distribute" the product to individual shops or software boutiques or release them themselves directly to the end-users, who are us.

Distributors are also responsible for local promotion, firstly to promote their company and also their investment (the game itself). The promotion will require local companies to be involved, such as event companies (unless they do it themselves), venues to do those promotions and eventually run tournaments as a form of retaining interest in such products.

Cybercafe's come into play as an active promotional value to distributors as they provide a service to a large number of non-home users. They also act as a promotional ground for softwares and while providing a means to constantly advertise themselves and their services.

As to regulate the uses amongst cybercafe users and reduce the cost of having original copies for each computer in a Lan Cafe, licenses are usually sold to these companies for them to legally run these businesses. As cybercafes are still considered end-users, this problem was addressed by publishers and on certain occasions, publishers opt to sell their licences exclusively to certain companies to regulate it on their own such as Sendi Mutiara Malaysia. Upon having exclusive rights to the licence locally, these companies have the right to take action against those who breach the license agreement.

Now, as the amount of gamers grow in a particular game, it is highly likely communities will be formed upon its release which most Publishers view as a good investment since most communities are self sustaining so long as they have their presence within them. In order to maintain presence in gaming communities some companies contain Community Development teams, which are specifically built to sustain/maintain and promote gaming communities (Blizzard Entertainment's Community Development Team). This however will only happen if the community actually increases their sales/revenue. (Since it costs money to have a team dedicated to developing patches for example for a post-released product)

Not forgetting review/preview writers, journalists and magazines which is also in an industry of its own, who critique, promote and eventually publish their magazines, write-ups and articles to further promote/not a particular product. Such as PC Gamer, independent media agents such as sam(lunaG), chapree and not forgetting Malaysia's super FIFA player, si_jali who now is now part of the behind the scenes crew for e-sports growth and promotion.

From here you would most likely get the picture on how much it costs to put games on the shelves for you, assuming you buy it that is. This also explains why there is a need to buy original games to support good ones and also to support games that are actually worth your time.

This post has been edited by crashtec: Dec 6 2008, 01:05 PM

no, coz u still has my harddisk.

How did the game go?