It Doesn't Take A Genius
Evil Geniuses cut their fading NA star Greg “IdrA” Fields after he made tame comments about esports fans and how he views them.
I usually hate the reality television mindset of the e-sports community. Anonymous people applying standards to others while refusing to adhere to any themselves, attempting to dictate who can and can’t make a living from something they most definitely can’t and constantly attempting to “vote off” anyone they disagree with… It’s no wonder so many of our e-sports personalities have become bland mouthpieces for mediocrity, safe in the knowledge that as long as they never stray too close to a bold opinion they will always enjoy the reverence of the vast majority.
Greg “IdrA” Fields has always bucked that trend and, seemingly, has been rewarded almost exclusively for doing so. Yet, this isn’t a piece in defence of the player after he was cut from Evil Geniuses even if I have defended him in the past. Rather, it was clear that this was the right decision to take at this point. The only things that stink in the aftermath are the facts that elements of the same community that played their part in creating the situation are now championing him like some wronged hero and the fact the organisation have made it so abundantly clear if there was any way out of it, they’d take it.
For those that missed the final straw, here’s what happened. A player who has a history of disrespecting opponents, disrespecting tournaments, disrespecting the creators of the game and has been in a prolonged spell of underachievement – so long it’s now no longer accurate to call it underachievement at all, rather he has sank to the level he belongs at – made a point of very publicly disrespecting all SC2 fans in a thread speculating about the persona he cultivates. The comment said “nope you’re all a bunch of fucks it just so happens I get paid to treat you like that. It’s fucking awesome”.
You never know which way Evil Geniuses will go when it comes to disciplinary matters. Since picking up Ilyes "Stephano" Satouri the player received only a fine and suspension for stating he had sex with an underage girl on a stream. When the Frenchman photographed himself with a knife he had accidentally smuggled through airport security it barely seemed to register at all. When their in-house caster Jake "Orb" Sklarew had a screenshot circulated that showed him using the racist epithet “n****r”, even though it was from before he was employed by Evil Geniuses, the organisation wasted no time in terminating his contract, Alex Garfield giving an impassioned comment about the dehumanising aspect of the word that he understood due to his degree in Black Studies.
By contrast Fields seems to have lived something of a charmed life. His rage during his streamed ladder play is the stuff of legend. He has quit matches at tournaments that were won – most notably against MMA at MLG Columbus - and made himself, and his organisation, look foolish in the process. He has been disrespectful to fellow competitors on multiple occasions, most recently saying he hoped one – Patricio "Capoch" Del Olmo – would die of cancer. He has said he hopes that the Blizzard employee and person in charge of game balance David Kim should be “raped with a tyre iron”. Far from being punished for these constant outbursts Evil Geniuses decided to spend the money on sending him to a sports psychologist. It doesn’t take a lot of research to realise that some of these events occurred after those appointments began. Most people believed, not without reason, that IdrA was untouchable.
However, as it was explained by his stablemate Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson, the pressure had been building. Following the “cancer incident” sponsors had been in touch with the management and stated that something had to change. Privately, we are told, IdrA was fined and they took him out to dinner for a frank talk about his behaviour. Promises were made that things would change and management took the player at his word. This was less than a week before he did the one thing you can never afford to do in this industry if you want to make money – turn on the fans.
Placing the outburst within some sort of context may or may not be important. They came ahead of his crunch games in WCS, in which we saw more of the classic IdrA come to the fore. Quitting his first game against Polt from a position where he was almost guaranteed a win if he just played it out simply because his opponent had clawed a way back into the game, he lost both his matches and seemed to be as much the reason as anything or anyone else. Clearly he was under pressure but when these things happen often they become less excusable with each incident.
Whether it was solely down to sponsor pressure, or whether it was combined with EG finally achieving the realisation that the player simply would not ever be able to attain the right mindset to maximise his existing talent, no-one but them could say for sure. Greg “IdrA” Fields should have been the posterboy for North American Starcraft, his early Brood War career a testament to what can be achieved through hard work and dedication. Instead he had become a sneering caricature of everything that is wrong about the e-sports professional, a parody of himself that was never talked about for the right reasons. Whatever the facts one thing is absolutely certain – he has been a walking PR disaster for Evil Geniuses and has been one of the key factors in that organisation receiving so much contempt from the wider Starcraft community. Whatever the vague rewards for bearing that burden, it was clear there was diminishing returns on doing so.
What has to be seen as distasteful is the organisation making it absolutely clear that they are doing this not to appease fans but to appease sponsors. Evil Geniuses, like most teams, need a fanbase to thrive. Greg’s statement portrayed his role as being paid to actively push away fans, suggesting Evil Geniuses management were complicit in his attitude and actions. Yet despite this, we are told of their heartbreak and sorrow, how conflicted they were, about removing him from a very privileged position within e-sports. This is someone who was salaried, had their accommodation provided for them, was given a platform to supplement his income through streaming revenue and was supported by almost anyone who mattered in the NA e-sports industry thanks to his affiliations. Despite this constant support he always looked to push it as far as he could and in doing so he treated all the people that allowed him to adhere to a different standard to everyone else with utter disdain.
And even now that same organisation, who talk about how important the fans are to them and their business, are content to express publicly what a wrench it is to have to take action against their friend and colleague because they were told to by the money men. The subtext to that is EG fans had contacted the organisation directly and not made the sponsors aware, they wouldn’t have taken the same course of action. As it is they will still continue to pay his rent for one year while he looks for another team and opportunity. He will still have his streaming revenue as a source of income. He hasn’t lost anywhere near as much as he probably ought to have and people might want to reflect on this before commending EG for taking action. It’s clear they’d rather not and in their priority list you can see the hierarchy – sponsors, players we have close relationships with and then somewhere much further down the people who enable them to exist by supporting them in one form or another – you.
The aftermath has been predictably divided into two camps. Those who are jubilant in his punishment, likely comprised of more than a handful that contacted the sponsors that forced EG’s hand. In the other camp are those who believe the player has been punished harshly for a simple adherence to the persona he adopted to keep attention focused on him and by proxy his organisation. I’m certainly not jubilant, that’s for sure. As we march ever onward to the professional era we are sure to lose something that defined what e-sports was, as necessary as that progress is for a secure future. There is also some truth that IdrA was a player who had taken on an abrasive personality typically at moments when it was necessary to distract from his own shortcomings. That, or it was designed to entertain, a top rated player expressing the frustrations everyone has uttered during ladder play. There are some who don’t believe that it is a persona at all and that he is simply a disagreeable person, or to use internet parlance “a douche”.
I think it’s safe to say that no-one outside of a handful of people know the real Greg Fields. His personality always seemed to shift depending on what was happening around him, one minute a vocal champion of something people could get behind, the next lashing out needlessly at people that had done little to warrant it. It always felt calculated though, that as long as people were criticising a persona he adopted as opposed to the player he had genuinely become it was some kind of victory. His career had become a string of disappointments but he remained one of the most talked about players in the game.
My own experiences with him varied wildly. The first time we interviewed him in 2011 I had no idea what to expect. The Greg who turned up that day at ESWC was one of the most polite, decent and professional e-sports “stars” I had encountered. He knew we weren’t a big deal in Starcraft 2 coverage but despite being surrounded by the press every time he moved away from his computer he made the time for us. However, the next time was to be completely different, a very abrupt snub. By the time we had encountered each other again at the IEM World Championships I got to see both versions simultaneously.
He had been extremely vocal about how bad the tournament had been in terms of treating players, the accommodation especially coming under criticism for providing rooms that look like the cheapest halls available at university. We expected him to want to elaborate on that and he said he would be happy to do so. Then the wait began. We waited two days before deciding to remind him but foolishly took a photograph of him without express permission for our coverage. This was deemed enough for a stern lecture about how rude and unprofessional we were before telling us there would, of course, be no interview. By that stage he was long out of the tournament and had clearly had a thoroughly miserable time.
Do I believe this gives me any insight into the “real” Greg Fields? Of course not. It only serves to prove that he was a more complex character than your average e-sports “star”, seemingly emotional but almost certainly calculating in executing every interaction. However, whether the player really feels such contempt for fans that allow him to have a career, or whether it was part of some contrived pantomime villain shtick , it was poorly timed, horrifically misplaced and genuinely unprofessional. There was simply no getting out of this one and it shows just how comfortable the player had become in his position not even realising he was conspiring to make it untenable.
The same management that lamented at cutting him loose also failed him by not taking a firmer hand sooner, contributing to the situation by allowing him to feel secure, even after a final warning, making his final outburst in EG colours. They definitely have to shoulder some of the blame and in feeling sorry for themselves for having to do what any other company in any other business would do in an instant, they should probably be earn a fair share of criticism.