Rainbow Six on Trial : The Players vs. LinkedIn
What the hell is even going on?
Before the internet, it was hard to put your finger on the pulse of the brands and VCs for an industry without having an inside informant, but now we are lucky enough to have LinkedIn and Twitter. Neither the pockets funding players nor the players themselves have any clue what the fuck the other is talking about. So here I’ll dip into what’s going on in the average Siege competitive player’s mind and what the LinkedIn-ers gurus are on about.
What in the hell is going on in the Siege comp scene
Every community has its issues, but of all the petty arguments and daily clout grabs I’ve seen, Siege comp seems to have more than any other community. Whether it relates to clutter in maps, the core mechanic of one headshot being lethal, operators’ abilities (god FORBID I bring up the certain operator who has a face-shield), or cosmetics, the drama always surrounds what I have found to be the sacred cow of the competitive Rainbow Six scene…
Competitive Integrity
I just felt a cold wind as a bunch of sweat-lords all began to take heaving breaths. Everyone from the Diamond 16 year olds to the Copper 36 year olds want every single amateur league to be the peek of competition and to have the best production value — they essentially want a Pro League experience. But they have a very warped view of what makes a league more or less competitive.
I can say this having talked to hundreds of orgs, teams, and players, recruiting for R6 Royale (one of Azara’s brands), as an org and team owner before that, and as a player even before that. The questions are always, “Who’s participating?” and, “How much is the prize pool?” These seem harmless enough, but god help you if the prize pool is under $400 and the teams aren’t well-known.
And let me be clear, these aren’t for professionals. Fuck, these weren’t even players in Challenger League (the top sub-pro teams who have a chance to play their way into Pro League). These were players who were going to be — excuse me — who SAID they were going to be in Challenger League next year but were always mysteriously absent from the list of qualified teams. These players are amateur at best, though in reality are as close to the pros as a rec basketball team is to the NBA.
Furthermore, any action taken to try and improve viewership is seen as an attack on the competitiveness of your league, because it is no longer focused on the players. The players, even when we would consult with them and explain how we needed good viewership for sustainability, would rage and tweet their disgust and how they were being “treated like a carnival exhibit” because we wanted to improve viewers’ experience.
So players won’t be interested in any amateur league without the owners spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on production and the prize pool, but that’s fine because at least they can recognize good partnerships and business moves when they see them. Right?
Of course they can’t
The community can’t even tell which partnerships are more significant to Siege, so their perception of success for the amateur and pro scene can’t be based in reality. While the tweet is flawed in a variety of ways, least of which not being that BW3s isn’t directly associated with the gaming world and that it is a smaller company than Alienware and Logitech, it reveals that they think getting brands linked with esports to sponsor or partner with you is not only easy, but trivial.
So what about the suits
The LinkedIn gurus are mainly confused as to why any company would be interested in leagues with CCV <1,000, and yet those same leagues are hosting multi-thousand dollar competitions. For amateur players. Don’t get me wrong, they are well aware there is money to be made in the amateur scenes. But Siege seems to be different. There’s a sense of entitlement within the community, and that ego linked with poor viewership and a basic lack of business knowledge cripples the leagues trying to grow, and therefore cripples the amateur scene as a whole.
So here’s what’s goin on
All the VCs can’t see any reason to get involved with leagues operating at a constant loss who get laughable views, and the players refuse to play for leagues who don’t spend hundreds. Any step by leagues to increase viewership to draw in sponsors and investors devalues the social status of the league. The community members are pretending to be pro, completely ignorant of how their actions negatively affect the scene.
All in all, it’s a shit show. But you need’n’t have read this to know that much.
~ John-Paul Richard, Managing Partner for Communications
