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Rise and fall of the 'Dream Team' part 2 23rd March 2010 SuperDanielMan continues to talk about the "AMD Dream Team" . For those who missed the earlier parts, just click on "earlier posts" below! Things got off to a great start, just landed a great sponsorship deal with AMD and Giom was fairly doing well in the leagues so I couldn't have been more content. The name Dreamteam came about when I met 'Elky' at the WCG event in the 2002. Elky certainly caught my eyes and many others with his orange hair and a pair of sunglasses he constantly wore. What mostly impressed me was of course how good he was at the game. Foreigners were not taken seriously by the Korean ProGamers at the time, but Elky was better than most of the Koreans in his prime. At one time or another he was in the top 10 in the Korean rankings, which pretty much translates into top 10 in the world. His level of commitment, and his spirit of competition surpassed even most of the Korean ProGamers. He was a practice bug and that is what made him so good. His single-minded pursuit of glory is what got him stardom in the Korean e-sports industry. Oh you know what, I think the very first time I met him was in 2001 at the KBK event in Korea, and when he came back for WCG I was very serious about adding him onto our team. So you guys might wonder how we got the name DreamTeam, do you guys remember the time when the NBA players were allowed to participate in the Olympics? And we often referred to them as the Dreamteam? Well that's how I got the name. Up to this point all of my attention went to Giom, but now it had to be divided up between two players and things got quite busy for me. As soon as Elky became an addition to our team, the 'DreamTeam' was born. I quickly got him a sponsor with I-venture pc room franchise so things were rolling. Giom was with AMD and Elky was with I-venture, they were both under the name Dreamteam. People didn't understand this very well; it was a new concept at the time, because I was the only one who ran my team this way. Under the name 'dream team' my players had different sponsors, at one time I had three different sponsors for five of my players and those years were the golden years for me. For other managers and teams those periods were tough, but for me it was quite the contrary. This is when I received the nick name 'sponsor king' by the community. This is when I also came up with the nickname SuperDanielMan, because I was feeling super all the time haha. The team leagues started to happen in the year 2003 and the whole reason behind this is to give players more opportunities and for TV networks to fully take advantage of the great starcraft content. This was a whole new chapter in the Korean e-sports. Up until this point only a handful of players were able to seize the moment to showcase their skills in the individual leagues and if you drop out of the race you had to wait another 3 months or so until you get your chance again, basically what team league did for players is that it gave them more opportunities to play TV games and that is what they needed to attract sponsors, and also for TV networks as well so it was as win/win situation for all the parties involved in it. Another important factor is of course now fans had teams to root for as opposed to just rooting for gamers individually. It changed many other things such as before the team leagues we were called the managers but after the team leagues got started we were referred as the head coaches. The casters started to emphasize the head coaches’ role more and started to call us that " oh the head coaches strategy in placing that player in that lineup was brilliant!" along those lines, you get the hint we had to treat it like a sport. To be viewed as a sport you have to treat it like a sport, if we ourselves are not convinced that games can be a sport then people outside of the industry won't ever be convinced. In my humble opinion Starcraft is not in competition with other games such as fps games. Our true competition is with baseball, soccer and pretty much all the sports in the Olympics. Going back to my team right before the very first team league got started I convinced AMD to sponsor all of my 5 players and we participated under the name AMD Dream Team, I think that may have been the happiest moment as a manger when AMD signed with all of my players, they did this of course because of the team leagues, didn't want to miss out on the opportunity. In 2003 there were more club teams than corporate teams, and club teams were all going through financial difficulties, although my team was a club team I had a corporate sponsor, in fact my players made more money than corporate players at that time so we were doing pretty good. Having financial viability, as a ProGamer during those days were immensely difficult, only the players in the top 20% percentile made descent money and the rest had it very tough. Having a greater platform such as the team leagues helped the teams to make better sales pitches to corporations and eventually the teams did all become corporate and this was possible because of the team leagues. I do think that e-sports has somewhat lost it's purity and fun because of this inevitable transition onto becoming corporate. I mean think about it, if you were to watch let's say basketball and instead of watching La Lakers vs New York Nicks you are watching GM vs Honda? That has a weird ring to it doesn't it? Korea is a small country; even our professional sports are all corporate here. Team alone can't become a fully functioning entity without relying on the corporations when you only have 50 million people living in it. In the States teams alone can generate enough revenue to pay players great sums of money and to own a stadium, but here there is no way in hell you can do that when you only have 50 millions of people living in it. Another interesting thing about Korea is that nobody wears professional athletes uniforms, nobody wears their favorite baseball, basketball player's back numbers. It's not so cool to wear them here, it's not in fashion it never was and it never will be. The merchandising business is getting better I hear but we have a long way to go. Man think about it it's like you guys wearing a GM or a GE hat, that will never become a trend in fashion. We wear what you wear, Michael Jordan, Shaq, etc... Going back to e-sports, in retrospect best way to run a team is to have corporate sponsors as opposed to being owned by them like how it is now, because they don't know **** in regards to what it is like out there in the field. The rules we have for professional Starcraft, the policies and small things like referees, and having drafts, courage league(a league that turns you into semipro and allows you to join the draft to be picked from the teams) etc... it was all implemented by the team managers, Ongamenet, MBCGame and the original KESPA’s (the original members don't work at KESPA anymore) numerous brain storming sessions and meetings. To tell you the history of how the courage league, and the draft got started is a new blog on it's own, but let me elaborate on that a little. Once upon a time after every individual league was over except for the top 3 players, everybody had a fair chance at it again, you did not have to be a ProGamer to join the OSL, MSL leagues. Gamers were given the ProGamer license, when they proved themselves in the prestigious leagues. For example Elky wasn't given his license as soon as he got here, since he did take 2nd in the WCG league I thought he rightfully deserved it, I remember having an altercation with KESPA because they told me WCG is not a prestigious league enough haha, hence Elky can't be given his license so naturally I had to fight for my player, this may sound strange to you foreigners since it is the biggest event for you guys, but in Korea the WCG event was regarded as the smallest event. Well elky made it into the top 16 in the OSL so it worked out ok I guess. We didn't have a minor league or the preliminaries as you know now, there were no seeds except for the very top 3 players. In it's own right this league format was all right, for example it was a good thing that everybody had a new chance after every three months, but few problems surfaced such as star players getting owned by 5 drone or proxy barrack or cannon rush plays early on in the game, usually by players much worse than them and relatively unknown players. This was bad for the industry, it was bad for teams, bad for TV producers, and just plain bad overall, except for the bad player that won and he can boast about it to his friends back at home, usually players like that never made it in to the top 16 anyways. Well we couldn't have that now can we? Our star players getting a beat by newbie players! We had to protect them so that is why we came up with the courage and the draft. Now days you have to be a member of a pro team to participate and to be a member of a pro team you have to pass the courage league (amateur league). It was us, the original managers that first recognized these problems and brought these issues up to be improved and rectified, and it was us that made the courage league and the draft system not KESPA or the TV stations. Come to think of it, it was us managers that gave the TV networks the idea to start the team leagues as well, because we needed a greater platform than OSL, MSL, pretty much we needed more TV time to attain sponsors. To sum it up the year 2003 for many reasons was the happiest year I think. Best year for the DreamTeam too. Source : http://starfeeder.gameriot.com/blogs/Super-Daniel-Man/Part-2-The-AMD-DreamTeam
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