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 Lord Damocles wrote:
So not quitting out when you're punished (in a jerk move or otherwise) makes you 'the very best of sports', but no mention is even made of the blatant slow playing and being a jerk which resulted in the entire scenario arising?

Huh.

Gw very wisely decided to focus on the positives and ignore the negatives in the article. They want to celebrate and encorage good sportsmanship rather than punish bad.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
So not quitting out when you're punished (in a jerk move or otherwise) makes you 'the very best of sports', but no mention is even made of the blatant slow playing and being a jerk which resulted in the entire scenario arising?

Huh.

1. He was gifted $5000 (for reasons I agree are spurious) and immediately donated to charity. That's great stuff.

2. It would be completely wrong of GW to publicly shame an individual. Absolutely wrong. There already is a public stream of his behaviour.

There's no need for GW to publicly shame anyone - it's a bit late on that front now anyway... - but rewarding good behaviour while borderline pretending bad behaviour isn't happening isn't at all helpful.

If there hadn't been underlying unsporting behaviour, then Alex wouldn't have been put in an 'impossible position' in the first place.

Sorry, I should have elaborated for those unaware of the details.

Marc is Marc Merill, co-founder of Riot games, makers of League of Legends. Alex is the player that got the $5,000 and turned around and donated it to a charity, which has now been matched twice, once by Alex's company and again by GW.

They are who will be on the Twitch Interview.

And yeah, the point of all of this is to focus on the positive, not to cast stones at anyone.

I hate these 'gotcha' types. I know you're expected to have your rules top notch for a tourney, but if you're deliberately working against the other guy in a no-sport way (like slow playing and pushing the opponent to go faster), it is quite wrong.

I applaud Alex, Marc, GW and the third guy (Alex's boss?) for the donation and how things went down.
Although I'd keep some change with me (say 50 dollars?) for a shiny new mini

The whole idea of treating Warhammer like a competitive sport is so bizarre to me.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
The whole idea of treating Warhammer like a competitive sport is so bizarre to me.

Seriously. Grown men moving around little toy soldiers... people get weird sometimes when competing. And for what? 4 grand?

For everyone watching the final day both games were decided by rules lawyers rather than exciting fun games to watch. It was a huge disappointment for a lot of people.

 ncshooter426 wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
The whole idea of treating Warhammer like a competitive sport is so bizarre to me.

Seriously. Grown men moving around little toy soldiers... people get weird sometimes when competing. And for what? 4 grand?

E-sports are huge. This is the logical next step and where GW needs to go for a bigger revenue stream.

 Primark G wrote:
For everyone watching the final day both games were decided by rules lawyers rather than exciting fun games to watch. It was a huge disappointment for a lot of people.

Which is why the positive note is important.

It helps hiding the fact "lawyering the game" isn't fun in itself, yet a lot of competitive hardcore players hold it in high esteem. It's just a way to say "you know, winning the price isn't what matters".

Giving away that 5k money.... Smart of him.... Not for his altruism (altruism is evil) but his smart decision in doing so for his own reputation and fame.

I approve!

sportsmanship is an odd beast, and whilst the donation to charity is undeniably a good thing its a bit spinny of GW to try and claim this as a win.

I'd be hella wary of introducing any reward system for 'sportsmanship' due to the potential for shenanigans, honesty and integrity should be the baseline behaviour for gaming but as we all know once a prize, however insignificant is on the table it brings out the cockwomble in a select few

How do you get WAAC over a sportsmanship award?
It literally forces you to not act like an asshat if you want a shot at winning it.

Audustum wrote:

 ncshooter426 wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
The whole idea of treating Warhammer like a competitive sport is so bizarre to me.

Seriously. Grown men moving around little toy soldiers... people get weird sometimes when competing. And for what? 4 grand?

E-sports are huge. This is the logical next step and where GW needs to go for a bigger revenue stream.

Won't happen. Esports are E for a reason. A table top game with random mechanics of dice will never be interesting or skll-oriented enough to be actual competitive.

 Sim-Life wrote:
How do you get WAAC over a sportsmanship award?
It literally forces you to not act like an asshat if you want a shot at winning it.

Sportsmanship is essentially doing "the right thing." You only have to read any thread in Dakka discussing the concept to see wildly divergent opinions on what "the right thing" looks like.

If you're going to seriously reward people for it, you either subject them to the whims of opponents who will have different ideas of what sportsmanship is, plus any amount of agenda pursuit based on who won, no doubt, or you quantify it. Once you've drawn up a system where you've specified the criteria, you'll inevitably end up with people petty enough to find a way of gaming that system.

But it won't be a set list of criteria because it's not an easily defined thing, it'll just be a consensus by a group about who was the best sport. You're trying to make it sound like a far more rigid thing than it is.

No, that's precisely what I wasn't doing. I noted two ways that it could be approached, and the associated drawback with both, and you've simply restated the part of my post you've apparently missed.

 ncshooter426 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 ncshooter426 wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
The whole idea of treating Warhammer like a competitive sport is so bizarre to me.

Seriously. Grown men moving around little toy soldiers... people get weird sometimes when competing. And for what? 4 grand?

E-sports are huge. This is the logical next step and where GW needs to go for a bigger revenue stream.

Won't happen. Esports are E for a reason. A table top game with random mechanics of dice will never be interesting or skll-oriented enough to be actual competitive.

It isn't just that. The filming of table top games for videos is almost universally terrible. Sometimes it gets elevated to 'not bad.' It just doesn't work for the medium.

Chikout wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
So not quitting out when you're punished (in a jerk move or otherwise) makes you 'the very best of sports', but no mention is even made of the blatant slow playing and being a jerk which resulted in the entire scenario arising?

Huh.

Gw very wisely decided to focus on the positives and ignore the negatives in the article. They want to celebrate and encorage good sportsmanship rather than punish bad.

I'm honestly glad GW is. Frontline and other parties are unfortunately not.

I hate to say it, but it seems to me like Tony deliberately dragged through deployment. How does deployment take an hour? I've seen Apoc games where deployment doesn't take that long.

I'm a pretty big critic of GW for a lot of reasons, but this is something else. Give them credit where credit is due, what they've done here is nothing short of exemplary, as I'm sure the children's hospital would agree. Alex is definitely acting as the bigger man in this situation, and to me it's not the calls in game that were truly sportsmanlike (although I'm not going to debate the validity of the original $5k, that's their money to spend), it's his actions after the game was over that show a true sportsman. Kudos to everyone who was involved, it's a great end to something that we all know could've been very messy

Alex is a cool guy, I met him when I was 16 at a GT once. I painted an army for his friend Brad if I recall lol

 Ketara wrote:
Actually, I just noticed that the prize for $5,000 went to him, and he donated it to charity. Whilst nothing to do with sportsmanship (seriously, I'm still baffled by the motivation behind that first donation), giving away $5,000 to charity you just got awarded is always respectable. So kudos on that score.

Not making fuss when originally subjected to deliberate slow playing intended to ensure opponent does mistakes like this due to to time pressure and even helping to put in deep strikers(rather like much more reasonable reminded that this ends turn) paid large part for donation likely.

Tony angle shooted hoping Alex makes mistake due to time critical. He could have EASILY got it under hour(he got it done way less than hour when enforced to!) but nope. He deliberately did it that slow.

Alex could for example have countered slow playing by slowplaying himself and ensure his 1st turn eats all the remaining time resulting in 1 turn game. But instead he tried to play up. At that time limit it's bound to be mistakes. Exactly as planned.

The filming of table top games for videos is almost universally terrible. Sometimes it gets elevated to 'not bad.' It just doesn't work for the medium.

Yeah, you can't just grab the stream, but I think with growing professionalism you could do it. That does mean that you need a director, an overview cam and a dude who highlights what's happening, basically like covering Snooker or something like that. It can be done, it's just in its infancy yet.

We've seen flashes of that on some of GW's streams - using pens and that to doodle on the feed.

 Sim-Life wrote:
How do you get WAAC over a sportsmanship award?
It literally forces you to not act like an asshat if you want a shot at winning it.

I think you've confused WAAC with shenanigans, certainly in any player determined system, even a non defined 1-5 scale is open to 'abuse' ie 'I hate your FoTM list so nil poi for you' to 'I'm relying on you for a lift home so full 5 points for you', I'm fine with the general concept but I'd feel uneasy with anything that had an impact on standings

WAAC is also quite subjective.

I'm sure we've all had our rear ends handed to us on occasion. And I'm likewise sure that not all such experiences are the same.

For every defeat I've suffered at the 6-8th Ed Dwarven Gunline of Numbing Inevitability (where my entire range of tactical options are reduced to crossing the board as quick as I can, hoping I'll have enough left to put up a fight on arrival), there's one where my opponent was just plain better than me. And those two aren't mutually exclusive either. Just because someone has a really good list, doesn't make them a bad opponent.

For me, it's all about my opponent's attitude to the game being played. If I'm the one wearing the Kickin' Boots of Abject Humilation, I try not to gloat, or offer platitudes. And I'll always offer to shake hands after any game, as I consider that gentlemanly behaviour. YMMV of course, but as I said, it's all subjective.

And when I do pull off miracle wins, where everything goes my way, I'll offer a run down for my opponent of where I felt things went right for me, and wrong for him. But only offer, because that can become gloating pontification all too easily where one's opponent would rather just move on. And totally fair enough.

Poor sportsmanship in my eyes? When it's clear my opponent's list did all the heavy lifting - where it made up for sloppy play and positioning, knocking the sharp edge off any tactical mis-steps they made, then my opponent crowing like they're some kind of tactical genius for castling on a hill

Then there's attitudes to rules questions. I'm likely to get on better with someone who raises the question, and agrees a way forward (whether with me directly, or a TO.) and just gets on with the game. I don't want an opponent who'll mither over every single rule, especially as in my experience, their sharpness on the rules tends to be a one way street.

So, TL/DR? For me, sportsmanship is all about the player's individual attitude.

For those that've been around the intertubes as long as I have, you may remember a truly horrific article on Portent (possibly Warseer?) about the 'psychology' of gaming. Not Ld tests, Fear tests etc. But how to 'psyche-out' your opponent. Such treats included not saying anything to your opponent beyond 'your turn'. That is the sort of player I utterly dread facing. Win or lose, that sort of behaviour sucks all the joy out of the game for me.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

So, TL/DR? For me, sportsmanship is all about the player's individual attitude.
.

I'm not arguing otherwise, just expressing concern at the whole fuzzy area that is subjectivity and how that can be gamed, by all means TO's can stick a sportsmanship award in so long as it is a separate score and has no bearing on standings

tneva82 wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
Actually, I just noticed that the prize for $5,000 went to him, and he donated it to charity. Whilst nothing to do with sportsmanship (seriously, I'm still baffled by the motivation behind that first donation), giving away $5,000 to charity you just got awarded is always respectable. So kudos on that score.

Not making fuss when originally subjected to deliberate slow playing intended to ensure opponent does mistakes like this due to to time pressure and even helping to put in deep strikers(rather like much more reasonable reminded that this ends turn) paid large part for donation likely.

Tony angle shooted hoping Alex makes mistake due to time critical. He could have EASILY got it under hour(he got it done way less than hour when enforced to!) but nope. He deliberately did it that slow.

Alex could for example have countered slow playing by slowplaying himself and ensure his 1st turn eats all the remaining time resulting in 1 turn game. But instead he tried to play up. At that time limit it's bound to be mistakes. Exactly as planned.

With a televised game, the thing that is really on the line is your rep.

You owe it to the viewers to give an entertaining game, broadcasting just deployment and the turn 1s would be a massive failure in that regard.



As regard to gaming the sportsmanship system, it can happen. It happened in Fantasy.

If you have two great sports, one whom is likely to place high, the other who is a nice guy but not competativley succesful then you give the best sports award vote to the uncompetative guy, so the first guy's sport scores don't give him the leapfrog over your own overall score.

What happened at the LVO is not limited to the LVO nor is it that rare of a happening. (that being a WAAC player WAACing and displaying horrible sportsmanship)

The difference now is that everything is livestreamed on tv, so the guy Tony got to be the WAACiest WAAC in front of the world and it brought a huge discredit and stain to the tournament community overall and to the LVO event (unfairly as again this happens at pretty much every big tournament)

The player being rewarded chose not to have a mantrum and throw a fit and play out the game. That does speak to good sportsmanship and I'm very happy that that was illuminated and rewarded as opposed to WAAC business as usual.

One of the big things holding back tournaments from being as big as they want to be is the poor sportsmanship and people not wanting to spend a weekend of their life playing WAAC Tonies.

I'm quite pleased at GW for illuminating the good sportsmanship, even if some people feel that it wasn't any big deal to continue the game.

I'm also curious to see if more live streaming starts curbing WAAC Tonies behavior or if it continues as it always has.

Audustum wrote:

 ncshooter426 wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
The whole idea of treating Warhammer like a competitive sport is so bizarre to me.

Seriously. Grown men moving around little toy soldiers... people get weird sometimes when competing. And for what? 4 grand?

E-sports are huge. This is the logical next step and where GW needs to go for a bigger revenue stream.

That may or may not be the case (it seems as though GW might be at least looking into the possibility) but I really can't see how you turn 40k or AoS into an e-sport. First of all, the e-sports market is saturated right now and even game designed to be played as e-sports have struggled to gain a foothold.

More importantly, wargames in general are really, really bad as a televised show. The rules are too complex, the miniatures too small and the key action revolves around dice rolls that are hard to show to viewers without massively slowing the game down. E-sports work in part because the participants don't have to make concessions to the live-streaming nature of the event. They're also pretty easy to follow. You may not know the ins and outs of various tactics in Streetfighter or LoL but you can usually pick up what's happening quite easily. Even when you know what's happening, I find a 2-2.5-hour game of 40k is pretty mind-numbingly dull after the first turn or two.

Finally, this episode goes to show that the community as a whole needs to mature a lot more before things can get even close to the sort of standards a game like MtG has achieved for its Pro circuit. You need much clearer game rules to start with, but also much, much better floor rules for dealing with matters of etiquette and sportsmanship at the table in order to make sure the game is being presented in the best light. That also requires judges who feel empowered enough to clamp down on unwanted behaviour, such as taking almost an hour for your first turn. All of these factors, BTW, are the reason I think it's a colossal mistake to play 40k for money, beyond a small amount of store credit. Trying to play 40k with thousands of dollars on the line was always going to lead to this kind of incident because, quite frankly, the game simply isn't robust enough and tournament rules and regulations not tight enough to account of the sort of douchebaggery you get with large sums of money up for grabs.