Pandemics, Esports, and Tech Issues

This is an open letter to every major tournament organizer in the world of StarCraft esports. The world today is wildly different from the world we lived in January 1st 2020, to thrive in the reality of COVID19 your approach must change. In this letter I will argue that to preserve the prestige and legitimacy of tier one esports leagues organizers must adopt a completely different approach to technology.

At a typical LAN event the tournament organizer owns between 50–90% of the tech environment. At minimum an organizer typically owns:the workstations, the network equipment beyond the venue’s wiring, the majority of production gear,backed up by carrier grade internet service coupled with an enterprise service agreement from the ISP. At studio events an organizer can own the whole environment: all networking equipment past the demarc, all workstations, the servers the games are played on, all production equipment, backed up by carrier grade internet with a long term enterprise service agreement from ISPs (ISPs REALLY like selling long term enterprise agreements and will bend over backwards for clients with that level of service).

COVID19 has completely upended the model I described above. Tournament organizers have pivoted to online events delivering solid production values and exciting events, but a threat to these events looms overhead, technical problems.

On June 13th during the championship bracket of Stay At Home Story Cup Zest began experiencing massive unplayable lag in his series versus INnoVation. The organizers wisely chose to play an alternate series (Clem vs Stats) with the hope the issue would self resolve during the time it took to play. Alas Zest’s issues continued, and the organizers were forced to advance INnoVation with a score of 1–0 (it’s worth noting the official score does not accurately reflect the situation, Zest’s sole loss was clearly due to technical issues). INnoVation went on to achieve top four after receiving a walk over in the round of six.

In my view it’s self evident that events described above are a poor outcome. There is an alternative, and it requires some hiring and some changes. First tournament administrators must be able to provide expert remote support for both desktop and networking issues, or organizers must have a team of tech support experts on standby that can assist tournament participants. Having players wait on hold for forty minutes to be told to turn their router off and turn it back on again is a nightmare situation. Players should be able to instantly reach someone that can remotely log into their computer, perform desktop troubleshooting, analyze network issues, and either resolve the issue or provide a workaround. Adopting this model will allow tournament organizers to regain some control of everything beyond the demarc. Even in a situation where the issue isn’t resolvable a competent tech could provide a variety of workarounds, let us examine Zest’s issues from SAHSC, and look at a list of potential root causes and solutions

Zest’s PC has a non-resolvable hardware or software issue

• If the failing component can be diagnosed a tech could provide guidance on a replacement part (reimbursed by the organizer)
• If the failing component or software was not resolvable in a reasonable amount of time a tech could provide guidance on renting or purchasing a computer through local retail channels like Rent-A-Center, BestBuy, or even used product sites like Craiglist\OfferUp\LetGo (again reimbursed)

Zest is experiencing a networking issue past the point of demarcation

• If a tech determines it’s a routing issue tournament organizers can provide or reimburse for a VPN service that bypasses the bad server
• If a tech determines the issue is a poor internet signal they can walk the player through 4GLTE tethering (4GLTE can deliver sub 70ms internet and games use extremely small amounts of data)
• If a tech determines the internet signal is poor and the player lacks access to 4GLTE they may be able to assist the player in securing an alternate internet signal. DSL is typically delivered alongside plain old telephone lines, and provides plenty of bandwidth alongside low latency (again reimbursed by the event organizer).

These are all outlier situations, but they WILL happen, and a technical walkover in the grand finals could tank the reputation of an otherwise prestigious event. No player wants to have an asterisk next to their championship title. No organizer wants to be responsible for an event like the 2012 GSTL where the results may hinged on a power outage, especially if the situation was preventable. So I implore organizers with the resources: contract technical folks, make them available to players, and use their expertise to build contingency plans. Own the environment. The question is not if things will go wrong, but rather when things go wrong what will you do?