Well well, another SCI ends and it's time to have a look at what happened and how to proceed in the future. No audio this time around I'm afraid, my voice is completely shot.
Let's get the numbers out of the way first before we talk about anything else.
Total donations towards the next tournament - $3904.66 Money left over from last time $1131.23 SCI5 = Fully Funded.
In fact, we're overfunded at this point. Due to the gap inbetween SCI3 and SCI4, there's been a few months of streaming and monthly subscriptions inbetween that. Basically SCI5, SCI6 and some of SCI7 are all fully funded now based on my estimations and projections. The only other costs we're incurring right now are Apollo's expenses (since we paid for his flight and such) and paypal/wire fees to pay players their prizemoney. Our graphic designer is paid a monthly salary anyway for the work he does on my main channel so that's not coming out of the cash we raise for SCI. So what does that mean?
Well it means we could easily do at least one tournament where we do not take any donations at all. That potentially means more cash for the players via the tip-jar and also ensures that the burden of paying for these events is taken away from donors. We're not yet at the point where we can guarantee a monthly tournament that is fully funded by the channel. The subscriptions count is healthy, but as you're well aware, CPM and ad revenue are all over the place on Twitch right now. In fact, January is the worst month for CPM across the board. Myself and other Youtube partners always dread January, because it flat-out sucks for CPM. Nobody wants to advertise because people don't have cash to spend after Christmas, so we all get hit pretty hard. While the donation count this tournament was incredible, the ad revenue was not. Factors that contributed to this are as follows.
1) January CPM 2) Twitch's continued issues with getting "fill", meaning the eCPM (effective CPM) is lower because less people see ads 3) System problems that caused ads to not actually play during parts of the tournament, regardless of whether the command was given.
Twitch is not to blame for most of this. They can't change the way CPM varies on a predictable yearly basis and they are trying to sell more advertising and get a better fillrate. It's in their best interests to do that so I have no doubt that they're not slacking on the matter. The system problems that occurred are of course something that need to be looked at. I have no idea what caused the issues, but it hurt us quite a bit. The full figures aren't in yet but ad revenue from this tournament is noticeably lower than previous events, even though this one blew the number of viewers we had completely out of the water. As far as I'm concerned, one of Twitch's priorities should be to ensure the ad system is rock solid and doesn't break down in the middle of a live event.
Anyway, it's not that big a deal, the money we lost from the ad issues was more than covered by the extra donations and additional paid subscriptions we gained so I'm not going to stress out over it. I'm still not 100% sure that I can fully fund every tournament in future myself based on Showcraft streams and subscriptions, but it's getting to that point and that's very good news. Severing our reliance on community funding permanently would be the ultimate goal of this thing.
Speaking of numbers, let's talk tips! Among the many records broken during SCI4 is the amount of money given as tips to players.
Well, that almost triples the amount that was given during SCI3 when the system debuted. It also breaks the record for most-tipped player. TLO gathered $455 in tips last time, this time Darkforce blew that out of the water with almost $800. What I really like about Darkforce getting that much is that out of our lineup, he was one of the least well-known. He has not had prominent results lately and even though he went out in the group stage he showed 2 of the most incredible games on Taldarim we've seen in a very long time. His astonishing comeback against Nightend and absolute refusal to give up was inspiring to watch. I want to talk more about the tipping system and the ethics of giving money to players that isn't proportional to their tournament results a little later on.
Now the big numbers.
* 14617 SCI2 Day 1 average concurrents * 15386 SCI2 Day 2 average concurrents * 189730 SCI2 Day 1 Total views * 299415 SCI2 Day 2 Total views
* 14789 SCI3 Day 1 average concurrents * 14109 SCI3 Day 2 average concurrents * 156531 SCI3 Day 1 Total views * 255443 SCI 3 Day 2 Total views
* 23376 SCI4 Day 1 average concurrents * 33601 SCI4 Day 2 average concurrents * 449405 SCI4 Day 1 Total views * 445978 SCI4 Day 2 Total views
Twitch has also significantly improved their analytics system so for the first time I can bring you some new statistics.
* 198120 SCI4 Day 1 Unique viewers * 184462 SCI4 Day 2 Unique viewers
* SCI4 Day 1 hours cast - 13.5 * SCI4 Day 2 hours cast - 8 * SCI4 Day 1 Maximum concurrent viewers - 32152 * SCI4 Day 2 Maximum concurrent viewers - 49337 * SCI4 Day 1 total hours of SCI4 watched - 309734 * SCI4 Day 2 total hours of SCI4 watched - 254804
Stats are fun, we like stats. Well I think I can safely say SCI4 crushed every previous SCI tournament in terms of raw numbers. The tournament was a run away success. Views-wise it equalled HSC4 at times and came close to beating it's maximum concurrent views. From memory, the only online tournament to manage more live viewers than this was TSL3 and our event gained more viewers than many large off-line tournaments. Yeah, it's safe to say I'm happy with how things turned out in that respect and greatly humbled by the support the community has shown SCI4. You might think it's a little odd that Day 2 had fewer unique viewers than Day 1 when we had more concurrent viewers during Day 2. That's simply down to the fact that Day 1 was over 50% longer, allowing it to reach more timezones over the course of it's duration. We had more Australian viewers than usual for instance because we started earlier and gained the American viewers as the day went on. SCI's appeal is unquestionably global at this point. Perhaps next time we will get a Korean commentary team too.
Onward and Upward
It's safe to say that after SCI3 I was not happy. I felt I'd compromised the tournament by inviting too many "fan favourites" rather than focussed purely on recent results and performance. This resulted in a lot of 3-0 games and while every player had the potential to win, only a fraction of them realistically had a shot at it based on their current form and results. After SCI3, I was determined that the next tournament would be a massive step up in terms of game quality and skill on display. I immediately went into planning the SCKI, SHOUTCraft Korean Invitational. Going through a contact in Korea I started making contact with various teams and gathering a roster which included foreigners training in Korea (including HuK, as we teased at the end of SCI3) and competitive Korean Code-S level players. Unfortunately we ran into a lot of problems. Communication is obviously an issue and was even worse back then than it is now. Korean teams have a broader global outlook now than they did several months ago and it's easier to talk to them now. Some teams flat-out refused to take part, others offered their lowest profile and least skilled players. Some teams did play ball and we have a few extremely talented players ready and willing to play in a future SCI, but as we were continuing to try and setup an already delayed tournament, our point of contact left Korea and we lost our link to those teams. After that we entered the "month of hell" where myself and Apollo were constantly travelling and casting and there was absolutely no time to even consider an SCI tournament.
I abandoned the idea of the Korean tournament until 2012 and built a roster of strong foreigners. We ran into problems there too because a couple of those guys ended up going to Korea to train (IdrA being one of them as many of you suspected) and the IEM Kiev qualifiers pretty much killed any chance of us getting SCI4 done before the New Year.
Eventually after a lot of consideration we came up with our SCI4 lineup which ended up being all-European this time around. It consisted of high profile players, recent successes and competitive players who we knew could give a good fight against anyone in the line-up. I'm happy to say that I think our choices were correct. The group stages showed that we put together the most balanced line-up yet. Every single player won at least one series in the group stages, there was not a single white-wash where it was obvious that one player had a massive upper-hand against the other. Even Stephano, the eventual victor, dropped a map against EVERY player in his group. When we said "every group is a group of death", we meant it. Game quality was, in my opinion, the highest it's ever been. There are so many memorable series I don't know where to begin. Darkforce vs Thorzain was an unbelievable clash where Thorzain wore down and eventually broke the spirit of Darkforce over the course of 50 minutes, resulting in a second game in which Thorzain quickly destroyed his opponent with little effort. Darkforce vs Nightend played host to one of the greatest comebacks and underdog stories I've ever seen. On the verge of defeat, Darkforce executed a series of tactically brilliant defenses that resulted in the destruction of his opponent. Neural parasite, clutch transfuses, that series had it all. What about Thorzain throwing the TvP metagame rulebook out of the window and demonstrating the viability of late-game reaper compositions to break a zealot-heavy maxed deathball? How about Grubby's creative finesse on display time and again as he defeated Ret, who up until that point looked unstoppable, going 2-0 twice in his group. What about Thorzain vs Ret, a matchup Thorzain was expected to lose based on his past history with the King of Drones, which resulted in a dramatic tense final game? The list goes on and on, every player deserved to be there and every player proved that in their play.
I wouldn't even call the grand final disappointing. Despite a 4-0 sweep for Stephano, the games were not one-sided. Game 1 demonstrated some of the things we love most about long macro games as well as some of the things we hate. One way or the other, it was memorable. At the end of the day though, Stephano showed masterful ZvT once again, even getting the opportunity to go back to his original style which the Koreans have been trying to pick apart (and succeeded at times). Stephano shows us what you can do with lings, don't be surprised to see a lot more of that on the ladder over the next few weeks.
Overall I feel my choices were correct in terms of the roster.There are always people we want to invite but can't because we only have 7 spots (plus winner). I do feel somewhat guilty for not bringing DDE back, however we had a lot of feedback that indicated bringing back 1st and 2nd place from the previous tournament was not welcome and resulted in more stagnant and less interesting rosters. Hopefully we'll see DDE again in future tournaments, he's been a bit off his game lately due to various RL issues.
Korea?
When are the Koreans coming? The most frequently asked question. SCI5, is the answer. We are dedicated to making it happen this time around. We have impressive stats to show the Korean teams which will draw interest. We have a good format and a solid pedigree. The plan for SCI5 right now (subject to change just like every other time) is to have a "Welcome to Korea" tournament where 4 foreigners and 4 Koreans battle for supremacy. We want to take the level of skill up a notch once again by including the best we can get. No doubt some you will be shouting "MVP! NESTEA! MMA!" right now and while we'd love to do that, you've gotta bear in mind a few things. Those guys are important, really important, the most important as far as their teams are concerned. They are EXTREMELY selective about the tournaments they play in and as regards to money, they aren't short of it. You can't tempt players that have earned between $135k-255k with a $5000 prizepool and being an online tournament based outside of Korea puts us in a position where we don't have a lot of bargaining power. That doesn't mean we can't get great players and we've got a few in store already. It should be easy to guess some of the players we're inviting for SCI5, though as to how many are able to accept is a different matter. It's an open secret that Naniwa wants in, because he posted in the thread about it and we're certainly not going to refuse his request. Expect Naniwa in SCI5 even if we don't end up getting the Korean-server tournament together, assuming he doesn't have a sudden change of heart.
Format
While the first day was very tiring since we cast for 13 hours with no scheduled breaks, myself and Apollo are happier with the group-based format than the single elimination BO5 bracket. As far as I'm concerned it shows people more of the matches they want to see, generates a more accurate result and is more player friendly. There is one thing I need to address and that is how we determined who went through in a tie-break situation. Based on the rules we gave out to players, we used the following priority order to determine the 1st and 2nd seeds from the group stages.
Series won (obviously) Performance ratio (percentage of maps won vs maps lost) Head-to-Head score
Head to Head is the lowest priority, it's a last resort in-case we have absolutely identical scores otherwise. I really dislike head-to-head as a determining factor, which is why it's lowest down the priority list. This is common in large tournaments, they tend to consider map-score more important than head-to-head. The difference in our tournament from some of the majors is how we approach map-score. There are a few ways to look at it. One of the most common is simply "maps won", which takes priority over "maps lost". If we used this system, we could have ended up with the following result in Group B.
If Grubby had beaten Ret 2-0, he would have ended up with a score of 5-3, having conceeded a map to Socke and lost 2-1 to ClouD. This would have left Ret with a score of 4-2, beating Socke and ClouD 2-0 but losing to Grubby 2-0. In a "maps won" priority system, Grubby would have advanced as 1st seed to play Thorzain and Ret would have advanced as Seed 2 and played Stephano. However, that is not the system we used. In our hypothetical example, Ret earns a 66% performance ratio based on his 4:2 record in the group. Grubby earns a 62.5% win ratio with his 5:3 record. In this scenario, Ret goes through 1st seed regardless of his result against Grubby. Grubby ended up winning but dropped a map against Ret, resulting in a 5-2 record for Ret and a 5-4 record for Grubby, a clear 1st seed group victory for Ret.
Why am I even going through those hypotheticals? Because there was some controversy regarding our statements on the stream about who would go through as what seed in what scenario. Based on the system we used, we were correct. As to whether or not our system is better or worse than the "maps won" priority system, I honestly don't know. I feel that performance ratio rewards the more solid, consistent player. 2 2-0 victories are significant, they show a clear dominance of one player over another. I think that a player who can achieve that should have an edge when the scores are tallied, as opposed to a player who wins his games, but drops maps every time. We are open to feedback on this issue though, as I feel it is contentious and worthy of discussion.
Tipping the Balance
The tipping system of SCI is unique. No other tournament does this. We devised it because SCI originally came about to help the pros while also providing a great tournament for the fans. The tipping system allowed fans to directly say to a player "I enjoyed what you just did, let me show you my appreciation". It is a morale boost to players to see fans directly willing to give them a contribution. SCI3 saw TLO win big in terms of tips, but this time around we saw one of the least known players in the line-up, Darkforce, walk away with an astonishing amount of tip money. A thread began on Teamliquid about the tipping system and whether other tournaments should look into implementing it. Opinions are strong and tempers have run high, with some outright condemning the system as anti-competitive, open to abuse and match-fixing and downright stupid. I believe the words "hurting/killing esports" may have been used at some point. While I do not think that this system is suitable for every tournament, it is certainly something that smaller invitationals should be considering doing. Being a pro-player is not an easy life as some people would have you believe. Depending on where you live, holding a sustainable income to the point where you can pay your bills and focus on practice is very difficult. The UK's pro-scene is effectively dead as a result, whereas countries where living costs are lower such as Poland and the Ukraine have a strong roster of pro-players. One way or the other, the only way the foreign scene is going to be able to compete with the Korean way of doing things is to ensure pros can dedicate 100% to their practice and treat it as a career. The tipping system assists in this. It also, along with our bounty system, largely removes the "meaningless game" from the equation (though we still arguably had one in the groupstage battle between Stephano and Thorzain, since Thorzain could not advance as first seed, but needed to win one map to go through to the RO4 instead of Nightend). I guess you can't get rid of meaningless games entirely in that format, but for the most part, as Darkforce displays beyond a shadow of a doubt, you can encourage players to pull off outstanding performances even when they have no chance of going forward in the tournament, rather than simply throwing their games resulting in a sub-par experience for the audience.
Regardless of what anyone may think about whether or not a last-place player should earn more than the 3rd place finisher, the fact remains that the tip system is personal choice. People can give to whomever they want for whatever reason they wish. We are merely enabling them to do so easily. Results are not, in fact, the only thing that matters in competitive Starcraft 2, they never have been and they never will be, regardless of whether or not we continue using the tip-jar system.
The Technical Side of things
Oh thank god, a tournament without major technical problems. We had no sound issues, no dropped stream, no overlays left on obscuring the game. Every mistake we made was minor (though still not excusable and will hopefully not happen again), in the form of things like getting the player race wrong on the scoreboard, once leaving a player nameplate on the bottom bar for most of the game and having the "next game" text header be out of date on multiple occassions in-between matches. The text issue is easily solved with the use of Xsplit's remote title system (basically means someone who isn't the guy on the computer that's doing the streaming can update the text. This is important because Xsplit has no preview feature to allow you to make changes to a scene without putting it live on air, a glaring issue in the software that needs resolving). Everything else is simply a case of keeping an eye on everything and not fucking up. This'll be easier once I get a second monitor and a bigger desk. We were also able to use Twitch's beta broadcast delay system which is much more reliable than Xsplit's, so we had a smoother stream throughout and eliminated the ever-present threat of stream-cheating once again (as we have every SCI tournament). As far as we're concerned, replay based tournaments are for the most part irrelevant now. The biggest argument for replays being used in tournaments was to prevent stream-cheating that could occur during a live, online event. Broadcast delay prevents that from happening and as viewers crave the live experience more and more, I believe replays should only be a last resort in future tournaments.
Aside from that we were able to use Dropbox to live-update our bracket and group image directly into Xsplit, a big improvement over previous tournaments where we've had to try and overlay a webpage into the screen-capture area which often ended up being the wrong size. The site also kept going down so we couldn't always put up the up-to-date brackets. We also implemented a snazzier overlay which answers the feedback given in previous tournaments that a simple video loop was not sufficient. We added a caster camera for the first time which we incorporated into the scene. We don't feel that a caster camera is appropriate during matches, but in pre and post game it does add just a little bit more engagement for the viewers since they have something visual to focus on. Overall we pushed the production value higher this time around.
Thanks
The thanks list is always large and I hope once again that I don't forget anyone.
Genna, my loyal wife and manager, who did the legwork in organising this event, booking Apollo's travel arrangements, managing the finances (and paying out the prize-money to all the players within an hour of the tournament ending), coding and maintaining the website at shoutcraft.com as well as putting up with my nonsense.
Cristian, our full-time graphics designer who is responsible for the new overlay, all the tournament art assets, promotional materials and live-updating the bracket images which we used. The tournament was a hell of a lot slicker thanks to your talents. Apollo, for travelling back from Sweden to commentate this event and once again providing his peerless analysis and personality.
Twitch.tv and it's staff, who were kind enough to put us in their regular newsletter, frontpage the event on Twitch.tv and also keep an eye on the stream, resulting in a more stable and enjoyable tournament experience for the viewers.
Teamliquid, for their support and promotion as well as all the forum regulars who contributed to be a very active and lively thread.
Reddit, for it's support and promotion, which contributed a great deal to the tournament's momentum and build-up over the course of the week prior to the event.
The Teams, for sending us their players, in no particular order, Alternate Attax, Fnatic, Mousesports, Teamliquid, Millenium and of course, Team Grubby.
The Players, Socke, Grubby, Nightend, Thorzain, Cloud, Darkforce, Ret and Stephano for putting on a fantastic show.
The Viewers, for their support and time, as well as financial aid, resulting in a record breaking amount given to SCI and the players who participated within it.
Colin Smith, we named this tournament after him and once again he showed his generosity, donating $1337 to the next tournament.
We will see you in the next tournament, which we hope to hold in March.
Great sum up TB, the tournament was a huge success. The casting was brilliant, the games were brilliant too, which is the main thing. The idea for a Korean SCI is great, it just shows how well your channel is doing and how much you are putting back into eSports and the players. I loved the tipping system too, just another proof of how generous the StarCraft community actually is, so good to see!
Fantastic tournament to watch. Thank you TB and Apollo. The fact that the next two are already fully funded shows how passionate people are about this tournament.
TB your the fucking best!! you and appollo are probably the best casters together besides tastosis, that means something btw! love your work ethic for these events, and cant wait for more of these, will support you til the end TB!
amazing how this online tournament that actually does nothing special but most things right can rival hsc4 and lots offline events from mid to earlier last year. great event and good to read that tb works hard to even improve and expand upon it. He single handedly created THE online tournament to date...
really sad to hear about how the koreans reacted to you trying to give them money...
throws a whole other light on what was seen in the IPL team arena. players like golden making a name for themselves wasnt down to his team wanting to give him a chance, it was more the high profile players couldnt be bothered.
apart from that everything else is a huge positive, the tipping system is nice imo. its completely optional but maybe (i dont know how easy this would be to do) you could introduce some kind of costless way to 'thumbs up' a players play. it would be great if the casters could comment on the communities voice of how exciting a player was because 1 rich person supporting his favorite player doesnt tell you what the whole community thinks
huge props to tb again for working so hard in all of these things
This is my favorite online tourny as well. Everything is brilliant.
There is a small issue I have with something you said however,
On January 17 2012 04:27 TotalBiscuit wrote: Severing our reliance on community funding permanently would be the ultimate goal of this thing.
I know that you do not intend this, but this statement is scary. I like the fact that you feel you owe your viewers something as they have provided the resources to make this happen. I am not saying this will happen but without viewer funding executive decisions can be made without the support of the community and viewers may feel less connected to the tournament. I would say that instead of ever severing ties with community sponsorship, you just continue raising the prize pool as your own revenue keeps increasing. I doubt any player or team would oppose to the prize pool being raised from what it was originally announced as when they signed up.
Good read. I watched as the viewers went up and up. Seeing this tournament grow is a great thing. Would of been nice to see the finals have a gone on a big longer not look 4-0 even though each game was close and a great watch.
Tournament has also tempted me into using Reapers a bit more against Protoss. (Thanks ThorZaIN)
Look forward to seeing SCI5. Keep up the great work TB.
Amazing tournament once again! loved watching it and cant wait for the next.
@ Mattchew if I recall correct the maximum prizepool allowed by blizzard is 5k USD without having to give them a cut of the pool. Thats why it isnt bigger.
next time try to sync up your matches better with my battlegrounds in SWTOR xD can't watch both cause my pc sucks too much by now
Amazing tournament though, the off-game time was imo perfectly used with displaying ads/grid/etc. The only thing i did not find as perfect was the seemingly tiny studio space. You should try to find a slightly bigger room next time so both of you fit into the image without having to sit on each others laps. you were always very close to the edges if not even partly cut off.
On January 17 2012 04:27 TotalBiscuit wrote: Severing our reliance on community funding permanently would be the ultimate goal of this thing.
I know that you do not intend this, but this statement is scary. I like the fact that you feel you owe your viewers something as they have provided the resources to make this happen. I am not saying this will happen but without viewer funding executive decisions can be made without the support of the community and viewers may feel less connected to the tournament. I would say that instead of ever severing ties with community sponsorship, you just continue raising the prize pool as your own revenue keeps increasing. I doubt any player or team would oppose to the prize pool being raised from what it was originally announced as when they signed up.
Just some food for thought.
Blizzard capped the maximum amount tournaments can give out without prior approval from them (usually involves that they take some portion of the ad revenue or such) at $5,000. Due to this it is impossible for them to increase the prize limit past this
Your such a baws TB! I'm not the greatest fan of your commentary style, but I LOVE the effort you put into the things you do. I think people like you really carry a community. thanks
Thanks for an awesome tournament TB! I can't imagine it's easy simultaneously organizing and casting a tournament for 12 hours a day.
I have one question though regarding DarKFoRcE's total winnings (for the sake of accuracy on the Liquipedia page: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/The_SHOUTcraft_Invitational/4) - how much did he win? Was it: $1021 = $100 (from being eliminated in group stages) + $821 (from tips) + $100 (for the comeback bounty, while I heard you increased from $50, for a truly amazing comeback) Or was the comeback bounty placed directly in his tip jar, making his total winnings $921?
I know this doesn't actually matter that much for most people besides DarKFoRcE, but it bugs me when something on Liquipedia is wrong...
Been following your work ever since you got into the sc2-scene, and all your tournaments and other content never fail to impress. Looking forward to your march-tourney, until then, prosper! :D
On January 17 2012 06:19 Hoonose wrote: Thanks for an awesome tournament TB! I can't imagine it's easy simultaneously organizing and casting a tournament for 12 hours a day.
I have one question though regarding DarKFoRcE's total winnings (for the sake of accuracy on the Liquipedia page: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/The_SHOUTcraft_Invitational/4) - how much did he win? Was it: $1021 = $100 (from being eliminated in group stages) + $821 (from tips) + $100 (for the comeback bounty, while I heard you increased from $50, for a truly amazing comeback) Or was the comeback bounty placed directly in his tip jar, making his total winnings $921?
I know this doesn't actually matter that much for most people besides DarKFoRcE, but it bugs me when something on Liquipedia is wrong...
But TB, did you try to tell the koreans, that the SCIs are a great way of promoting less known koreans to the foreign scene? Because i think that would be the case.
On January 12 2011 00:51 TotalBiscuit wrote: Won't be applying for this, as awesome as it would be. I'm already fighting a legal battle to get back into the States so I can be with my wife and kid again, after being apart for 2 years thanks to the irreversible decision of a single Homeland Security officer. I can't go running off to South Korea, not a bachelor anymore.
Thanks TB, I really enjoyed this tournament. More than the first 3 SCIs and they were awesome.
Do you think we could see a team tournament in the future? Like a mix of 2v2 and 1v1s, or even 3v3 and 1v1s. I've been watching the HP Trophy that Millenium are doing and I really like the sense of having to pull clutch wins, not just for yourself, but for your team.
This was the first Shoutcraft I exprienced and it was completely awesome. You guys did a great job with everything, very professional on your parts. Can't wait for the next one.
First of all, I think the way you handled ties is fine, however i'm not the biggest fan of this kind of format in general, because:
-Potential of matches from an already eliminated player(or even matches between two eliminated players) -Potential of "trying to lose" in group B, if both players already advanced and prefer to play against the winner of group A -Confusion about who is going to advance in which scenario for Viewers/Casters -Sometimes "akward" results (players getting eliminated with 2-1, players advancing with 1-2) -Slight risk of three-way-ties, which require additional matches and could break your timeshedule
My suggestion is the "GSL Format", basically a 4 player double-elimination tournament, which eliminates/reduces all of the problems above. It also reduces the matches played per group from 6 to 5 and makes Day 1 a bit shorter again.
Nice blog. I enjoyed the tournament a lot and as someone who prefers Korean players to foreigners I eagerly await SCI5.
One suggestion I would have is switch to the GSL group stage format. It will slightly shorten your day by removing 2 best of 3s and all you lose is a meaningless game.
I guess this have probably been said many times before but I feel that when you have a tournament where even a player who loses at the first stage can gain so much exposure and money from tips, it's kinda unfair that it has a player selection based on invites. I think only the previous shoutcraft winner should be invited and the rest of the player selection should be based on qualifiers so every good player out there could have a shot at this boost in their e-sports career. I know this would probably require a lot of extra work but i guess there are a lot of ppl out there willing to help with that. Overall i think you did a great job TB and the tournament was great.
Amazing write-up TB! The tournament was indeed great! Can't wait to see SCi5! Best online tournament hosted yet? ... oh.. TSL! hmm..idk. The games played in SCi4 was insane none the less! I had alot of fun watching it.. Keep doing your thing, and thank your sir!
Colin Smith is such a baller :D And this tournament was ballerific as well <3 Tuned in for most of day1 and a little bit of day2. During day1 I couldn't stop watching because everything was so awesome haha. So I spammed all my twitter followers with my impressions during the games. Very fun, fun indeed.
Much love to you, John and Shaun. You guys always deliver amazing entertainment
On January 17 2012 04:48 Denzil wrote: Good show indeed Totalbiscuit + Apollo
Totalbiscuit have you ever considered going to Korea to cast Code A?
(Obviously it's impractical for so many reasons but the have you considered it part is what I'm interested in)
I don't see him doing it. SC 2 is part time for him. Theoretically he could do it for a month and keep up with YT, but TB is way overworked already let's hope he gets a visa and casts MLG or IPL that looks a lot more manageable for him.
Why am I even going through those hypotheticals? Because there was some controversy regarding our statements on the stream about who would go through as what seed in what scenario. Based on the system we used, we were correct. As to whether or not our system is better or worse than the "maps won" priority system, I honestly don't know. I feel that performance ratio rewards the more solid, consistent player. 2 2-0 victories are significant, they show a clear dominance of one player over another. I think that a player who can achieve that should have an edge when the scores are tallied, as opposed to a player who wins his games, but drops maps every time. We are open to feedback on this issue though, as I feel it is contentious and worthy of discussion.
I don't think there was much controversy over the system, but rather that it just wasn't explained anywhere. Rulebooks should be public, IMO.
Really great tournament, looking forward to the next one! As someone mentioned earlier in the thread I would also like you to consider using the GSL style group stages with a double elim bracket which is really good imo.
Loved the write-up, as always (though i miss the audio form). Loved the tournament, as always. Thank you so much. I hope you find more joy than stress in these things.
On January 17 2012 04:27 TotalBiscuit wrote: Colin Smith, we named this tournament after him and once again he showed his generosity, donating $1337 to the next tournament.
On January 17 2012 04:27 TotalBiscuit wrote: Severing our reliance on community funding permanently would be the ultimate goal of this thing.
I know that you do not intend this, but this statement is scary. I like the fact that you feel you owe your viewers something as they have provided the resources to make this happen. I am not saying this will happen but without viewer funding executive decisions can be made without the support of the community and viewers may feel less connected to the tournament. I would say that instead of ever severing ties with community sponsorship, you just continue raising the prize pool as your own revenue keeps increasing. I doubt any player or team would oppose to the prize pool being raised from what it was originally announced as when they signed up.
Just some food for thought.
If the money gets to high, blizzard wants royalties.
It was great, run really well and went pretty smoothly. My suggestion would also be to consider the current double elimination format that the GSL is using for a pool of 4 people, every match counts. I also wouldn't mind seeing the occasional special event like Show Matches or similar.
Wow great job across the board! I know you are releasing the vods TB but I was also wondering if you would release the replays, one of thorzain's build looked so yummy :3.
I've been a fan of yours for quite some time and I enjoy these tournaments and these postmortems very much but this time I have to voice some criticism. Your chemistry with Apollo seemed to be a bit off. You were frequently interrupting him. The reason for that I think was that Apollo was hogging the microphone. He was doing a lot of the play-by-play which is your role and so I think there was some overlap in your commentary. Besides that, fantastic tournament all around, production value was awesome as well.
It's really really great to read this blog, and even though I couldn't catch the tournament (Twitchtv blocked in China rofl TT) I can just feel the enthusiasm and appreciation of the community through your post, the numbers, and the responses.
You may forever play Gold BC Rush Terran but you will always be a Casting and Tournament Hosting Grandmaster in our minds and hearts.
Really appreciate these postmortems. As a mere uninvolved viewer it's very cool to get some insight into the numbers and your subsequent plans. I'm glad that everything has been working out so well.
On January 17 2012 11:03 iNcontroL wrote: pretty awesome tourney and the tip jar is revolutionary.. never would have guessed that of those names darkforce is the one people would tip the most.
TotalBiscuit, your dedication to both providing good content, and most uniquely, being transparent about it, is really remarkable. Congratulations on an excellent tournament.
Tournament was awesome, loved it from start to finish. Love the tip jar idea.. no idea why people would be against that. Can't wait for Koreans! Thanks TB!
It's great seeing this thing develop into a big deal (40k viewers, DAMN). The big timers in the scene could learn a few things from how TB does his thing.
Great tournament, but maybe a gsl groupsystem next time avoids a meaningless series like darkforce vs. thorzain i think was in group A and that also shortens the groupday to about 8 hrs something. Thats my only criticpoint if u can call that one
Special Shout-Out to d'Apollo: Your casting with TB was awesome. The insights you provided on the games made me appreciate the games even more. Thanks!
I loved SCI4! Imho it's the best online tournament, and it's better than the majority of the offline tournaments. The stream quality was pefrect, the casting was always fun, entertaining and precise, and the "coming up" and brackets informations were almost always avalaible and update. It was really a great experience: always fun and entertaining!
I'm also a big fan of TB outside the SC scene, and we all know he always struggles to achieve the best possible. The only little advice I can give you is to try to avoid those:
You make them appear on screen just for a split second, usually on the beginning of the matches. I know it's really really REALLY minor, but I personally find the a bit annoying xD
Awesome tournament, awesome sum up, fantastic job in every aspect for such a small tournament. And then you have incontrol saying TB is doing everything for money-,- Gogogogo TB, can't wait for SCI5 and realy hope NaNiWa will be able to participate!!!!!
yeh fantastic tournament just wished it wa sbigger !!lol more games!!! love it. Thanks for entertaining us with a good cast. Cannot wait till next one!!!
SCI4 was very nice to watch, the stream was immaculate. TB really knows how to put on a show, he's not my favorite caster but his showmanship and tournament creation sense is quite good.
I think you should keep the same donation system as it is now and If you keep getting this kind of donation you could always hold a larger tournament at the end of the year even if blizzard wants a cut from the ads.
Great tournament - very fan and player friendly. Great to see the players getting their money straight away.
I also want to applaud your decision to chose skill over fan favourites - that will ultimately make the tournament more popular. Having Grubby, Ret, Stephano and Thorzain in the final four really made sure I would watch the whole of Day 2.
I'm quite angry that most of the Koreans TB tried to approach fail to recognise an opportunity to get free money and promotion. It used to be one Bo3, now it’s three Bo3s, either way it's time you'd spend playing the game playing the game for money. I guess FXOBoSs has a point in his blog post, aside from the communication issues they don't know how to put one and one together. How someone can’t see that TB is a reliable entity and that the money is a sure thing is beyond me.
I'm sorry for the OT and thanks for the tournament .
On October 14 2012 20:35 thezanursic wrote: Out of curiosity if TB reads this by any chance:
Why is The 5th one getting post ponned so much?
A variety of reasons, the biggest one being the over-saturation of tournaments lately, making it impossible to get the players we want at the time we want them. I've also ramped up the business over the past 6 months and since I don't live in the UK anymore, I can't get Apollo to co-commentate with me in the studio.
EPT
Socke - $187.50
Ret $252.50
ClouD $133.01
![[image loading]](http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/1539/sci4.png)
