Hello to the community of Starcraft 2. This is my first post on teamliquid (so please be merciful =]) and in this post/article I will like to talk about obviously about Dreamhack Open: Stockholm.
In this post/article I will not be discussing about: • the games that were played. • about the split second in-game discussion that were made in the game by all the amazing players. • a Foreign player won a major tournament by beating a top tiered Korean . • FOR GOD SAKES I will definitely not talk about the racial balance. My main focus in this post/article is to discuss about how beautifully and Innovatively this event was executed by the Dreamhack Production team.
Multiple Stream
DH by hiring Caster like dApollo (an excellent caster with very in-depth analysis of the Game) and Wolf (another excellent Caster from GOMTV casting game of Code-A from one of the most competitive leagues in the world GSL). But they didn't stop their they also hired guys from ESV TV, PlayhemTV(EU) , IMBAtv, JoRoSaR, GLHF.tv and STIM.tv to not only cast the games that usually goes unnoticed but cast them on their own personal stream. This results in: • Exposure to the under-rated but PASSIONATE casters • Exposure to local Gamers • MORE GAMES MORE EXCITEMENT Best part about this that all the streams that were casting the game were not bounded by DH in terms of their presentation. So it provides the viewer with much more natural and personal taste of what that Caster/Stream is usually like, they have their own layouts, music , though on the game and even their own staff to keep the stream running and keep the action going. When there are more games played there are obviously more players. Thanks to this the local players with their teams were seen as the upcoming competitive gamers. Which I think makes it worth their time as they get the international competitive experience and recognition as an upcoming treat.
Promoting Stockholm
To fill in the most awkward and unproductive time that is the in-game down period DH decided to show picture and Video of from what I understand of beautiful host city of Stockholm. Not only did it a great filler but also intentional promoting Stockholm as a tourist spot. It was previously surveyed that the majority of the SC2 community consist of players between the age of 19 to 25, and they will ( I know I will remember) all the scenes that were showed and someday they want to visit them. This might be a long shot planning goal, but it was again a great idea.
Couch Area
DH it before and they did it again THE COUCH, but this time they made it more of in the crowd experience which resembles the set of TOP GEAR. And this looked like was great experience for both the Player and the Live audience. Incontrol was a great interview as a Pro-gamer himself he knew what is going through Player’s mind and how they feel. Interviews were professional; to the point and funny hopefully we see more of Incontrol as a Host.
Schedule
All the match-ups were played at the time as they were scheduled to be and this need to point out this is a BIG DEAL. Some of the viewers are biased towards the race they play and might not be interested to watch other match-ups so they tend to skip some of the upcoming match ups. If the match is delayed or started before it was intend to makes it a disappointing experience for the viewer. And I find it very frustrating when it happens, so I found it very reassuring when the bracket timing was provided during the down-period. I can’t say it for the Players but I always get nervous before sitting in an exam. And if the exam is delayed by 15 to 30 mins, during this time I just get more nervous and that will alternate the result of my examination performance. Maybe the same can be said for the Players before their game. So hats-offs to Production crew on keeping up with the Schedule they planned.
Music
Music was a key ingredient in making this event more alive and memorable. No time in the down-period that music stopped (apart from the commercial break), Party songs were the Genre of the Music selection which helped me awake though the night. Individual songs were played for each Player which was a nice touch and kept things away from the generic Victory song.
Ending Ceremony
From the moment when Throzaine won to him drinking the Champagne were the most memorable moments of both the days. Camera crew did an excellent job giving me the nerd chillz by constantly switching between views from which we can see the event that has been concluded with an exciting finale. Incontrol asked a basic but a strong question of how is feeling, not about how he played what he was thinking during the series but about how does it feel to win in this home country. And clearly Thorzaine being humble that he is said “I don’t know”. Also that he was annoyed the new “THE KING IN THE NORTH”.
After Party
After any event doesn’t matter that it’s an e-sport event or a music festival or after a birthday party you don’t want the ‘good times’ to end and want to enjoy as long as you physically can. And DH booking a whole Club just for the audience that makes me really jealous that I couldn’t attend. Again event like this just not only promotes esport but also promotes social interaction between gamers that didn’t know the other existed. Home Turf Advantage Thorzaine is a great SC2 player, no doubt about that. But the atmosphere that was created by Swedish Fans was a great contributing factor to Thorzaine success.
Reddit/VOD
Generally when there are two or more major events happening at the same time r/starcraft always if informative of both the events. But if anyone went to r/starcraft it was spammed with DH posts. Even the VODs were uploading within a few mins after the event was over.
That’s about all that I thought about DH Open: Stockholm, I really hope that you enjoyed reading this and feedback is greatly appreciated.
My Background
Also I will write something about my background just to ensure the readers that I'm a hardcore nerd/gamer and carry the same level of enthusiasm and joy towards Starcraft and e-sports. I have been playing game PC /console games as back as my memory serves. Throughout my life I have made my basis of Social interactions revolved around Video games and Sports and all the good childhood memories are associated with them (also with DBZ). Now coming back to the present, I'm a final year Engineering Student in Australia and I have been playing Starcraft 2 for over 6 months now. First few months were just messing around with friends and having fun as I was unaware of the Pro/e-sport part of the Game. Since I start watching day9 to get better and get out of bronze league ( LOL), I started to follow the World of SC2 which involves MLG, Dreamhack, IPL, foreign players, the Korean players, teamliquid.net and last but not the least reddit.com/r/starcraft. Since then I have followed them all, enjoyed all the games, adored all the Personalities involved and now I want to get involved with SC2 community. So I guess this is my first step and hopefully the Community finds my contribution meaningful.
Also a lot of love to http://sc2daily.com/all/ they make keeping up with everything much more ease.
DH by hiring Caster like dApollo (an excellent caster with very in-depth analysis of the Game) and Wolf (another excellent Caster from GOMTV casting game of Code-A from one of the most competitive leagues in the world GSL). But they didn't stop their they also hired guys from ESV TV, PlayhemTV(EU) , IMBAtv, JoRoSaR, GLHF.tv and STIM.tv to not only cast the games that usually goes unnoticed but cast them on their own personal stream.
This in itself was utterly awesome and DH deserves immense respect for this.
I was disappointed not to see a 'pitch invasion' of the couch in the centre of the crowd though - I thought having it there as playing with fire.
Also, gratz on the quality first post Puppent_Master and welcome to TL.
I think having Incontrol was definitely a a great host and I hope more tournaments decided to do this. It adds more depth to an interview and it helps a viewer understand the mindset of a player after a series.
I like incontrol and think he is awesome and I think he is decent as a comentator. And maybe he is cool as a host but the interviews he did after each of final games during DH was not good, expecially with the Koreans but also with others ie Thorzain. I just dont think he has any talent in that.
Few people manages to deal well with Koreans in tournaments and its not only because of that koreans dont understand and/or are dull. Having long experience in Korea/Japan/China I know that you really need experience to reach and understand them. Better to ask people who have lived in Korea or have experience to deal with them. You need tons of respect/humbleness to begin with, thats not westerners best talent to be honest, ie you need experience/training.
Music was a key ingredient in making this event more alive and memorable. No time in the down-period that music stopped (apart from the commercial break), Party songs were the Genre of the Music selection which helped me awake though the night. Individual songs were played for each Player which was a nice touch and kept things away from the generic Victory song.
I agree with basically everything you said except this, the music played at the end of games was really the only bad part about an amazing final day. It's not even the choice of music (although alot of people, including me, really don't like dubstep) but the volume it was played at. A game would end, and the casters would be halfway through a sentence or yell or some other expression of excitement, and suddenly this REALLY LOUD dubstep or w/e would come on and drown everything out. The moments before and after a GG are the most exciting moments in a game, and the casters yelling or w/e they are doing really helps bring the hype to a maximum. And if apollo is sayign something like "Oh my god those storms were some of the best i have ever seen" i would like to hear him say that. Not "oh my god those storms we-*WUB WUB WUB WUB*"
While the concept was great, mabye choose some safer music like gsl does and not dubstep or other music which tends to divide people, and secondly (and FAR MORE IMPORTANTLY) TURN IT DOWN. The music is meant to aid the excitement, not drown out any noise the crowd could be making or anything the casters are saying. The result was after quite a few games, my train of thought in the seconds after a game finnished was not, "thorzain, you are amazing" but "fucking dubstep" Which i highly doubt is the atmosphere dreamhack was going for.
As the promoting Stockholm thing. I heard a saying that since Stockholm wasnt bombed during the war they decided to bomb themselves. Most of the city is a eye sore so while I didnt see the promo you were talking about I have to assume they did a really great job. Really ugly city for most part, I have no idea why people like it at all. I think the "real" DH city of Jönköping/Huskvarna is much more appealing with a little drawback on city planning since the railroad cuts off the shoreline to lake Vättern from the central parts of town. Now I guess there is nothing to do in Jönköping but I'd still go there rather than Stockholm.
Music was a key ingredient in making this event more alive and memorable. No time in the down-period that music stopped (apart from the commercial break), Party songs were the Genre of the Music selection which helped me awake though the night. Individual songs were played for each Player which was a nice touch and kept things away from the generic Victory song.
I agree with basically everything you said except this, the music played at the end of games was really the only bad part about an amazing final day. It's not even the choice of music (although alot of people, including me, really don't like dubstep) but the volume it was played at. A game would end, and the casters would be halfway through a sentence or yell or some other expression of excitement, and suddenly this REALLY LOUD dubstep or w/e would come on and drown everything out. The moments before and after a GG are the most exciting moments in a game, and the casters yelling or w/e they are doing really helps bring the hype to a maximum. And if apollo is sayign something like "Oh my god those storms were some of the best i have ever seen" i would like to hear him say that. Not "oh my god those storms we-*WUB WUB WUB WUB*"
While the concept was great, mabye choose some safer music like gsl does and not dubstep or other music which tends to divide people, and secondly (and FAR MORE IMPORTANTLY) TURN IT DOWN. The music is meant to aid the excitement, not drown out any noise the crowd could be making or anything the casters are saying. The result was after quite a few games, my train of thought in the seconds after a game finnished was not, "thorzain, you are amazing" but "fucking dubstep" Which i highly doubt is the atmosphere dreamhack was going for.
Other then this, it was an amazing event.
As someone who was there live, I think the music was spot on perfect. Especially for the live audience. The speakers were insane and the volume of the music really made everyone more excited, it DEFINITELY didn't drown the excitement. At least not for the live audience.
That moment for example wouldn't have been the same without the loud music.
On April 24 2012 07:45 Eatme wrote: As the promoting Stockholm thing. I heard a saying that since Stockholm wasnt bombed during the war they decided to bomb themselves. Most of the city is a eye sore so while I didnt see the promo you were talking about I have to assume they did a really great job. Really ugly city for most part, I have no idea why people like it at all. I think the "real" DH city of Jönköping/Huskvarna is much more appealing with a little drawback on city planning since the railroad cuts off the shoreline to lake Vättern from the central parts of town. Now I guess there is nothing to do in Jönköping but I'd still go there rather than Stockholm.
I have no idea what you're talking about. A lot of people rank Stockholm as one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Music was a key ingredient in making this event more alive and memorable. No time in the down-period that music stopped (apart from the commercial break), Party songs were the Genre of the Music selection which helped me awake though the night. Individual songs were played for each Player which was a nice touch and kept things away from the generic Victory song.
Music Rabble
Other then this, it was an amazing event.
There where some dubstep under the day but the main theme was not dubstep, I would file it as hard-dance.(techno) If they would have chosen ANY other music i could guarantee it would have been less exciting. You simply can't play a old rock song to hype a victory, you need a party theme.
As for the sound I think it was a tad to loud for the streaming part because the microphones just scrambled the bass. So if they would just have placed the mics differently that wouldn't have happened, but nha I could hear Apollo fine talking about how the guy won etc. (Gotta love when his voice breaks when screaming out Thorzain at the end)
@OP I have nearly the same experience but have 2points that I didn't really enjoy or like.
The "community" streams didn't have have same style as Dreamhack. Dreamhack could have sent out some fonts and stuff for them to use with the games so you knew it was Dreamhack being played.
Also info for the Communty steams, what games where going to be played where. I had no idea most of the time so I had all of them open to be able to catch the matches I wanted.
As for Incontrol, I don't think he did as bad as many say, I really liked him and I can only think of two others that could have done better: HotBid and Slop3.
EPT
