I've been dead set on this idea for a while. Valve has taken steps to support sponsors directly in the game, realizing that team-jerseys only get seen at live events and eSports for the most part still lives on-line. This is what they did
Real sponsor ROI in an online setting. So important. It stimulates sponsor interest in teams rather than just tournaments. Sponsors get real brand recognition and value for money, it's genius quite frankly. But Starcraft 2 doesn't have it.
Until now.
This is going to be debuting on a cast between these two players on Friday on my SC2 Youtube channel. It's purpose is to unintrusively, but clearly show a "virtual team jersey" permanently on the screen without obscuring or interfering with tournament sponsor logos or other parts of the UI. It's designed to function with the menu bar on, which I personally don't view as a big deal at all and overlay directly over the in-game scoreboard. It looks something like this.
Obviously that's just a concept image, so ignore that it's over the wrong races etc.
"But it's not the tournaments responsibility!" you may cry. I disagree heartily. It is the tournament's best interests. The more money goes into the scene the better it is for the tournament, the better it is for us all. Any reasonable step that can be taken to ensure good sponsorship ROI should be taken, regardless of whether it's "your" sponsor. I also firmly believe that while live events are rightfully popular, a healthy and active online tournament scene is REQUIRED for the sustainability of eSports. Money must be available to be won without significant investment or risk. Travelling to an event is a financial burden on a team. The more legitimate online events there are, the more money a team can generate without the large travel and accommodation outlay of travelling to say an MLG, Dreamhack or IPL. By raising the value of online tournaments to team sponsors, you can generate additional interest in the scene, attract new sponsors and encourage existing ones to maintain or upgrade their sponsorships.
And if nobody else decides to do it, well fuck it, SHOUTcraft branded events and casts will.
At the moment, do you have to edit the scoreboard for each player manually in Photoshop? Any future plans for something like Starboard with sponsor templates?
Great work though, I definitely agree its in everyones interest to make more things like this happen for both teams and sponsors. Obviously there can be conflicts with the tournament sponsors, but I hope in the long run its something that becomes standard.
Exciting developments! I remember seeing a few sponsors in tournament maps in SC2. It was highly unobtrusive, but still delivered the message.
I also wouldn't mind the ads being slightly larger, or possibly an animated billboard style with the player's name. Think like once every 3 minutes, it cycles through each sponsor at a rate of 6 sponsors per 30 second slot. Its an unobtrusive commercial slot that doesn't deplete the action or distract the viewer.
On September 14 2012 03:46 shindigs wrote: At the moment, do you have to edit the scoreboard for each player manually in Photoshop? Any future plans for something like Starboard with sponsor templates?
Great work though, I definitely agree its in everyones interest to make more things like this happen for both teams and sponsors. Obviously there can be conflicts with the tournament sponsors, but I hope in the long run its something that becomes standard.
We'll be building a library of templates. We're going to redesign the middle bit so that the cut is vertical, that would allow us to create the scoreboard out of "blocks" that could just slot together in Xsplit. It's not really that difficult. There are only so many teams to create templates for, then you just swap the names and races which takes very little time at all.
In theory, a significant addition to Starboard could be done to make this possible, I may have words with the guy who made it see if we can enter into some kind of agreement to create a more advanced version of the program which would include sponsors.
This could be considered stupid, but if you look at all teams. They may have sponsors, but some sponsors will not be offering enough to be considered on the players name in the game. Of course, this is encouraging because teams will get more money, but i can see this getting fiddly when teams are changing what sponsors they want to use and how much space they are getting on the screen. For example for The Team Evil Geniuses, wouldn't raidcall want bigger space than steelseries,for being a title sponsor, i can see this getting very complex on how much space title sponsors and normal sponsors would get. I Could also see a clash of sponsors, MLG are sponsored by DrPepper, wouldnt EG having monster as a competitor clash with why they would offer support to mlg in the first place.
Enough with the serious business . TB i really like what your doing at the moment, dota 2 is definately a step ahead and im glad you're starting to progress forward even if blizzard seem unwilling (busy as always). Looks fairly neat.
Very good move, I can only hope that at some point the people at blizzard come to their senses and realize how good it would be for the scene as a whole to allow direct in-game logos.
On September 14 2012 03:56 Bourne wrote: This could be considered stupid, but if you look at all teams. They may have sponsors, but some sponsors will not be offering enough to be considered on the players name in the game. Of course, this is encouraging because teams will get more money, but i can see this getting fiddly when teams are changing what sponsors they want to use and how much space they are getting on the screen. For example for The Team Evil Geniuses, wouldn't raidcall want bigger space than steelseries,for being a title sponsor, i can see this getting very complex on how much space title sponsors and normal sponsors would get. I Could also see a clash of sponsors, MLG are sponsored by DrPepper, wouldnt EG having monster as a competitor clash with why they would offer support to mlg in the first place.
Enough with the serious business . TB i really like what your doing at the moment, dota 2 is definately a step ahead and im glad you're starting to progress forward even if blizzard seem unwilling (busy as always). Looks fairly neat.
Sponsor clash is a non-issue. These events accept that teams wear jerseys and use equipment from sponsors that may clash with the events sponsors. This is common place in all sports and should not be considered a factor.
Are you consulting what to display with teams or just going by what their websites say? Optimally you'd want the teams to have the power to chose what's displayed, same as it is in dota2, thou it's understandable if that it isn't the case this early
It looks like a good place to put some advertisements, and obviously the benefit of having them is pretty big. It reminds me of advertisement 'flags' they put on the map in wc3 games, just like the pringles one in BW. Im not really too bothered by it, but I wonder if it might go too far some day. I dont watch any TV at all because of the ridiculous amount of adds. I guess its kind of a slippery slope argument though, just hope it doesnt ever go that far. Anyways all in all I support this!
I really like this idea, and a model with easy to swap out sponsors would be great. Just wish the menu bar took up less room, because it needs to be on to force the scoreboard down so this fits, but it also would be partially covered if the EG player was on the left. Not a big deal, by any means, but it just makes it look messier.
On September 14 2012 04:07 Qbek wrote: Are you consulting what to display with teams or just going by what their websites say? Optimally you'd want the teams to have the power to chose what's displayed, same as it is in dota2, thou it's understandable if that it isn't the case this early
I will be doing that yes. For this proof of concept we just picked the top 4 EG sponsors on their list.
On September 14 2012 04:42 Shadow_Dog wrote: Suggestion: Turn off player hotkeys and put sponsors there in a highlighted box corresponding to the player.
That makes viewers mad, some people want to see hotkey groups
You will never be able to fit all of EG's sponsors though x)
It's a good idea, but getting tourneys to actually use it seems pretty hard when you see how simple things like a proper Map Pool are rare among the big tourneys. That said you're probably one of the best persons to be able to talk and transmit them ideas directly. Contacting the teams so that they pressure the tourneys to use this would be good also, after all it's all in the team's interests.
That said, a Blizzard implemented solution to have the sponsors on the map like in dota2 would be by far a better solution, even if it seems unlikely that we will get a such feature in the next decade -_-
Wow, great job TB. This hits the perfect balance of noticeable but not intrusive, annoying, or distracting. My biggest fear was that this would be another thing cluttering up the bottom screen UI, but this is the perfect spot and size. It expresses the association between the player and the brands implicitly with no effort needed from the viewer to figure out whether a product being shown is related to the tournament or the player or the caster etc.
I hope you will be attending the Valencia "ESPORTS CONGRESS" thing, because I think you are really just picking at the tip of a larger iceberg of opportunities for tournament organizers to help increase the sustainability of teams, and in turn, their own sustainability. Would be a good subject for a panel or presentation or something at that event.
Keep at it, I really like where you are going with these ideas.
Have you ever considered making custom maps for your invitationals that have the UI tweaked for spectators a la peepmode maps? I know it may take a while to mod the perfect layout and functionality but someone needs to start kicking everyone up the arse to finally get doing this and you seem to be leading the charge with the sponsors as part of the tournament UI.
On September 14 2012 05:33 proofy wrote: Can clean up the screen a bit by disabling the top left menu items (Menu, Message Log and Help).
Actually that breaks the entire scoreboard, it requires space at the top that you do not get with that option turned off. Until Blizzard allows for more direct manipulation of the UI so you can move the position of the scoreboard inside the game (probably never going to happen), this is the only workaround.
I really like the idea but you once you get past making a mockup, you could release the template if you really wanted it to become standardized. I know I would start using it on my (small time) commentary if I could get my hands on the template since there's no good way to put them there without a nice looking image cut or it just looks really bad.
It's hard to express what this kind of level-headed and intelligent involvement in the community does for the future of this exciting sport. Thank you TotalBiscuit.
This is crazy. I can't believe it took us more than 2 years to come up with an overlay that showcases teams/sponsors but I'm glad TB is working on it. This is really, really good! Well done.
This would be huge. Also, blizzard needs to get there shit together and realize banners on each persons home base, or on the CC's, Nexus, Hatch, is what NEEDS to happen.
I still don't get why map makers don't input this kind of stuff on the maps. Maybe the tournaments won't accept those versions or whatever, but maps are a hugely underrated key in making Starcraft fun and successful. They also have immense commercial value. If a company sponsored ESV and had their logo in all ESV maps, that company would get a LOT of exposure.
Great idea! Remove the big square middle though -- that is really just adding unnecessary clutter imo... It may just be me, but I do feel like it adds significant clutter with no real gain -- I would rather them be where the races are listed, or not at all.
Displaying sponsors is a great idea for the scene as a whole though, good work on trailblazing towards that.
Take this one step further IMO. Create custom maps where you set a players... markings? I can't remember what they are called. The little icons that you can pick to put on your buildings and stuff, make custom ones with sponsors or team logos or just make it a mod or w/e that can be loaded into any map and then based on the player's name it pulls the correct team info for that player from an array in the map
I think I'll have a go at turning this into a proper scoreboard program. Already wrote my own custom version of Starboard from the ground up, this should be do-able.
The only problem I could see is that you'll lose the ability to have a drop shadow if I use a chroma key.
I would switch the positions of the race/team logos. You said the next "version" would have the split in the middle be vertical, too, which facilitates this a bit more. Some team logos operate better in the confines of a perfect square. You could also move the race icon to the inside (towards the middle) of the supply counts and use the middle as the tournament logo. I just think it would flow better and fits everything best.
It's unfortunate that this has to be done by the community via the use of workarounds and out of game resources instead of Blizzard directly implementing the functionality for this by updating their UI. Though I heard they are finally working on clan support for HotS, so maybe that will be a step in the right direction.
Lets face it battle.net 2.0 is a huge letdown. What we were hoping for is what valve made possible with dota 2. Its such an awesome client and it has really EVERYTHING esports needs. And its still only beta.
If I have the time this semester I'll add this to starboard. If someone else feels inclined then feel free to do it yourself, ascend has made starboard an open source project, you can view and download the C# .NET project on github here: https://github.com/ascendedguard/starboard-sc2 Like the initiative from mr. biscuit, would like to be able to bring this to not only "proffessionally" run tournaments like the SCI, but make a system so that teams can put together their own banner and upload it to a hosting site and then have the scoreboard autmatically populate the sponsor images from a list of teams, of course leaving the option for custom images to be used. This would require standardizing the resolution of the images, which will require some testing to determine the optimum solution.
This is brilliant that Totalbiscuit is really following up on his initial post. Can't wait to see it in action and we really need to see swarms of large scale tournaments following on. I mean MLG need to pick this up asap.
It's too bad Blizzard doesn't allow any ingame banners. It can be done, it's just a custom object/texture added into the map. I've seen some in chinese/taiwan? matches a long time ago. But I think Blizzard might have to relax their policy if e-sports sponsors see more money in DOTA2.
I think Blizzard fears there could be backlash because it's "ingame advertising" which gamers hates! I'm sure if it's limited to tournament maps it would be ok. Its should be fine and shouldn't break immersion for the immersion peeps because they're not good enough anyway to play in a tournament.
I like this idea. At least how the second screenshot implements it; I think the in game banners are too OTT.
It looks much cleaner and pleasing with the sponsors logo's next to each players name, and definitely beats having EGIdrARC etc in the players name which just makes things look cluttered as fuck.
Great idea. Anything we can do to help encourage sponsors to invest in esports and give them a more direct and consistent ROI is a good thing.
Keep in mind (you probably know this already but you'd be surprised the people I've had to tell this to) you can turn the visbility of the menus off that are taking up part of the top-left of your screen. This can help clear up the clutter and give more space for these types of scoreboards.
I always had this problem with online tournament, most of the time players can't promote their sponsors at all, and if you can make it a "standard" way to implement players sponsors in online tournament it would help the scene so much. Please please make it work!
More than anything I feel extremely stupid for not thinking of this on my own, this is a great idea and makes tons of sense. It's really non-intrusive and a nice way to associate the sponsors with what they support.
This is a really neat idea. Hopefully, Blizzard allows manipulating the score UI, the menu seems kinda intrusive. Blizzard should actively work on great ideas like this. Valve and Riot are so far ahead in interacting with the community and developing the pro gamer scene.
On September 14 2012 20:11 heyoka wrote: More than anything I feel extremely stupid for not thinking of this on my own, this is a great idea and makes tons of sense. It's really non-intrusive and a nice way to associate the sponsors with what they support.
I too get this feeling of "how come nobody thought about this before"
On September 14 2012 20:11 heyoka wrote: More than anything I feel extremely stupid for not thinking of this on my own, this is a great idea and makes tons of sense. It's really non-intrusive and a nice way to associate the sponsors with what they support.
I too get this feeling of "how come nobody thought about this before"
Well done TB!
I can tell you why, because everyone who has thought of it before then had a second thought "If this was such a great idea, someone else would have already tried it. I'll just go eat some pancakes now* ". TB on the other hand has the balls to just try it and who cares if it doesn't work of if it was already tried, TB will make it work because he is awesome.
*eating pancakes instead of bringing your idea to fruition is never a good idea
I love this idea. However, I'm not sure how other tournaments organizers will like that there are conflicting sponsors (when there are). Look at football (soccer), however.
Conflicting sponsors between the two teams don't really matter, but the adverts in TV may have conflicting sponsors with the ones in the matches (not that it happens too often). Nobody really cares. You watch both, both are engrained in your memory.
I love the scoreboard, I hope these are implemented, sponsors need to be able to be viewed during the games!
This is such a great idea TB, I hope this becomes the standard because it looks SO much better and more professional than just having the player's name up there.
Thanks for trying this out, I really think it'll help the scene overall.
On September 14 2012 03:43 TotalBiscuit wrote: I've been dead set on this idea for a while. Valve has taken steps to support sponsors directly in the game, realizing that team-jerseys only get seen at live events and eSports for the most part still lives on-line. This is what they did
Real sponsor ROI in an online setting. So important. It stimulates sponsor interest in teams rather than just tournaments. Sponsors get real brand recognition and value for money, it's genius quite frankly. But Starcraft 2 doesn't have it.
Until now.
This is going to be debuting on a cast between these two players on Friday on my SC2 Youtube channel. It's purpose is to unintrusively, but clearly show a "virtual team jersey" permanently on the screen without obscuring or interfering with tournament sponsor logos or other parts of the UI. It's designed to function with the menu bar on, which I personally don't view as a big deal at all and overlay directly over the in-game scoreboard. It looks something like this.
Obviously that's just a concept image, so ignore that it's over the wrong races etc.
"But it's not the tournaments responsibility!" you may cry. I disagree heartily. It is the tournament's best interests. The more money goes into the scene the better it is for the tournament, the better it is for us all. Any reasonable step that can be taken to ensure good sponsorship ROI should be taken, regardless of whether it's "your" sponsor. I also firmly believe that while live events are rightfully popular, a healthy and active online tournament scene is REQUIRED for the sustainability of eSports. Money must be available to be won without significant investment or risk. Travelling to an event is a financial burden on a team. The more legitimate online events there are, the more money a team can generate without the large travel and accommodation outlay of travelling to say an MLG, Dreamhack or IPL. By raising the value of online tournaments to team sponsors, you can generate additional interest in the scene, attract new sponsors and encourage existing ones to maintain or upgrade their sponsorships.
And if nobody else decides to do it, well fuck it, SHOUTcraft branded events and casts will.
Do it TB; I'm all for it.
Unfortunately it isn't the organizers duty to do that because in many cases it would go against their sponsors wishes as a lot of those companies would be viewed as competitors and they would fight against.
They would want their brand covered throughout the layout and doodads if there were any as well.
Another thing I'd like to see is more graphic art in productions that way the commentators don't always have to repeat the same plugs over and over again.
And if nobody else decides to do it, well fuck it, SHOUTcraft branded events and casts will
10/10
In regards to event sponsors. My suggestion would be to have their name included in the maps played, such as with the old pringles logo. This way for instance red bull would still get more exposure for a online tournament they are hosting than say monster, except perhaps if stephano wins the whole thing, but that would just make it good ROI for monster, it is after all alot cheaper to host a tournament than a pro team.
You're basically right, but what I don't understand is why this hasn't been done from the beginning. It's not as if there wasn't 12 years of a predecessor that had mastered this. There is no reason to be so reliant on Blizzard's UI. You need to keep things fresh, and sometimes a part of that is making your own graphics and keeping things new each season. The added benefit is that it stops looking like you're filming a game and more like a TV production ;p The sad thing is that you're only doing this after OGN has transitioned to SC2 and brought forth their BW casting techniques. Stops looking like your idea, and more like 'oh no now we have to compete with a real broadcaster.'
One thought is that maybe you don't even want to use the players IDs. Maybe you would far prefer to have real people names ;p Another thing Koreans have been doing a long time even if foreigners mostly only knew their IDs.
One thing I'll grant is that because there's so much screen realestate in SC2 at full resolution, it would not be the biggest injustice to have more advertisments than its 640x480 predecessor. Something like a box hanging beneath the player names with a dynamically changing advertisment of various sponsors displayed.
On September 14 2012 22:44 Chef wrote: One thought is that maybe you don't even want to use the players IDs. Maybe you would far prefer to have real people names ;p Another thing Koreans have been doing a long time even if foreigners mostly only knew their IDs.
One thing I'll grant is that because there's so much screen realestate in SC2 at full resolution, it would not be the biggest injustice to have more advertisments than its 640x480 predecessor. Something like a box hanging beneath the player names with a dynamically changing advertisment of various sponsors displayed.
Thats exactly my thoughts! Representing people with their real names would make e-sports less awkward for the general populace.
On September 14 2012 03:56 Bourne wrote: This could be considered stupid, but if you look at all teams. They may have sponsors, but some sponsors will not be offering enough to be considered on the players name in the game. Of course, this is encouraging because teams will get more money, but i can see this getting fiddly when teams are changing what sponsors they want to use and how much space they are getting on the screen. For example for The Team Evil Geniuses, wouldn't raidcall want bigger space than steelseries,for being a title sponsor, i can see this getting very complex on how much space title sponsors and normal sponsors would get. I Could also see a clash of sponsors, MLG are sponsored by DrPepper, wouldnt EG having monster as a competitor clash with why they would offer support to mlg in the first place.
Enough with the serious business . TB i really like what your doing at the moment, dota 2 is definately a step ahead and im glad you're starting to progress forward even if blizzard seem unwilling (busy as always). Looks fairly neat.
I'd think only showing the main sponsor on the UI would lead to the least clutter and problems down the line with this, and it may encourage companies to want to invest enough to be that main sponsor for one of the teams. Less popular teams might become more appealing as a result because they will be cheaper to get that on screen exposure. Plus it would look better with only the main sponsor by the name, not everyone wants to see the entire sponsor collection every game, especially if the count becomes something crazy down the road.
On September 14 2012 03:56 Bourne wrote: This could be considered stupid, but if you look at all teams. They may have sponsors, but some sponsors will not be offering enough to be considered on the players name in the game. Of course, this is encouraging because teams will get more money, but i can see this getting fiddly when teams are changing what sponsors they want to use and how much space they are getting on the screen. For example for The Team Evil Geniuses, wouldn't raidcall want bigger space than steelseries,for being a title sponsor, i can see this getting very complex on how much space title sponsors and normal sponsors would get. I Could also see a clash of sponsors, MLG are sponsored by DrPepper, wouldnt EG having monster as a competitor clash with why they would offer support to mlg in the first place.
Enough with the serious business . TB i really like what your doing at the moment, dota 2 is definately a step ahead and im glad you're starting to progress forward even if blizzard seem unwilling (busy as always). Looks fairly neat.
Sponsor clash is a non-issue. These events accept that teams wear jerseys and use equipment from sponsors that may clash with the events sponsors. This is common place in all sports and should not be considered a factor.
Except in Olympia, where the athletes get mad that they aren't allowed to show their sponsors
I agree it's for the best that sponsors get a little more exposure in the game but i much prefer sponsors shown the way your doing it with an overlay instead of actual meaning doodads!
I've always found this intrusive and annoying, it really bothered me in Wc3.
I understand that people like TotalBiscuit, who get payed by sponsors and make a living through SC2 are fond of this, since it has the potential to put more money into the industry, but as someone who only plays on an amateur-level and other than that only watches, I can't comprehend the overwhelmingly positive feedback this gets.
On September 15 2012 02:45 kafkaesque wrote: [...] as someone who only plays on an amateur-level and other than that only watches, I can't comprehend the overwhelmingly positive feedback this gets.
Really? You can't see how it's good to get team and tournament sponsors to pump more money into SC2 due to getting more exposure on screen? In case you're not trolling, here's why: more money in the scene means more tournaments, higher prize pools, better production values and the list goes on. You as a viewer benefit greatly from all that. And how you can consider this particular overlay to be 'intrusive'? That's just ridiculous, sorry. The logos are tiny, well-positioned and blend in nicely with the rest of the interface.
On September 15 2012 02:45 kafkaesque wrote: [...] as someone who only plays on an amateur-level and other than that only watches, I can't comprehend the overwhelmingly positive feedback this gets.
Really? You can't see how it's good to get team and tournament sponsors to pump more money into SC2 due to getting more exposure on screen? In case you're not trolling, here's why: more money in the scene means more tournaments, higher prize pools, better production values and the list goes on. You as a viewer benefit greatly from all that. And how you can consider this particular overlay to be 'intrusive'? That's just ridiculous, sorry. The logos are tiny, well-positioned and blend in nicely with the rest of the interface.
Nope, I can't see how it's good.
We have GSL, MLG, Dreamhack and whatever else is on. Nobody can follow the tournament scene, unless they're doing nothing but SC2. Look at the sidebar right now. There's NASL going on, which I haven't seen anything but the offline-finals forever, there's EU playhem daily on, which I never had the time to watch, there's MCSL, which I don't even know and lots of other stuff going on or coming up.
So for the casual spectator, there's next to no benefit, since they basically have their pick of the litter anyways.
On September 15 2012 02:45 kafkaesque wrote: [...] as someone who only plays on an amateur-level and other than that only watches, I can't comprehend the overwhelmingly positive feedback this gets.
Really? You can't see how it's good to get team and tournament sponsors to pump more money into SC2 due to getting more exposure on screen? In case you're not trolling, here's why: more money in the scene means more tournaments, higher prize pools, better production values and the list goes on. You as a viewer benefit greatly from all that. And how you can consider this particular overlay to be 'intrusive'? That's just ridiculous, sorry. The logos are tiny, well-positioned and blend in nicely with the rest of the interface.
Nope, I can't see how it's good.
We have GSL, MLG, Dreamhack and whatever else is on. Nobody can follow the tournament scene, unless they're doing nothing but SC2. Look at the sidebar right now. [...] So for the casual spectator, there's next to no benefit, since they basically have their pick of the litter anyways.
Even existing tournaments can, with more sponsor money, improve their act. And that benefits you as the viewer. It's as simple as that.
This is a fantastic idea TB, I'm surprised something like this wasn't thought of before now it seems like such an easy idea. It's the little things that most often get over looked I suppose :D
On September 15 2012 02:45 kafkaesque wrote: [...] as someone who only plays on an amateur-level and other than that only watches, I can't comprehend the overwhelmingly positive feedback this gets.
Really? You can't see how it's good to get team and tournament sponsors to pump more money into SC2 due to getting more exposure on screen? In case you're not trolling, here's why: more money in the scene means more tournaments, higher prize pools, better production values and the list goes on. You as a viewer benefit greatly from all that. And how you can consider this particular overlay to be 'intrusive'? That's just ridiculous, sorry. The logos are tiny, well-positioned and blend in nicely with the rest of the interface.
Nope, I can't see how it's good.
We have GSL, MLG, Dreamhack and whatever else is on. Nobody can follow the tournament scene, unless they're doing nothing but SC2. Look at the sidebar right now. There's NASL going on, which I haven't seen anything but the offline-finals forever, there's EU playhem daily on, which I never had the time to watch, there's MCSL, which I don't even know and lots of other stuff going on or coming up.
So for the casual spectator, there's next to no benefit, since they basically have their pick of the litter anyways.
By that, you mean you, personally. A short-sighted view.
But there's that guy watching NASL. Or the other guy watching MCSL. And without brand exposure, there won't be a NASL and MCSL. Cable TV, radio, print media, literature, music, movies, Youtube. Of course it is impossible to consume everything.
It seems you fail to grasp the very principle of advertising.
I'd like if unit decals could be customized for teams etc. and teams could use certain color-setups for their units, like blue yellow green for slayers and yellow red for IM and so on.
I don't generally agree with most of the things you do as of late or the ideas you have but this, this is actually pretty genius. The thing is, it can't hurt but only help so yeah great idea, hope people use it or something akin to it for any game with teams be it sc2,bw,dota,league whatever.
I much prefer this. TB's is pretty good too...so long as it doesn't go completely nuts like say, NASCAR or for the rest of the world, Football jerseys.
I much prefer this. TB's is pretty good too...so long as it doesn't go completely nuts like say, NASCAR or for the rest of the world, Football jerseys.
I don't know what football you are watching but in most of the world the only sponsors on a football shirt are:
1) The Football Association and league they play in, i.e UEFA, FIFA, FA on the right sleeve 2) The shirt maker logo 3) Their team logo 4) The main team sponsor across abdomin
all in all, you rarely even notice them. The ads you see on screen around the pitch aren't intrusive either. Its not like racing where their car, shirt, helmet, gloves, eye balls, nutsack, butt crack and every other nanometer of space are filled with sponsors.
I think that the idea is wonderful! Sponsors are the lifeblood of the events, and what they want and need is a (discreet) place to get recognition for what they are doing.
this has never been done because the majority of tournaments are not invites and so a designer simply cannot prepare for all the possible combinations of players, teams, sponsors.
if you plan on doing this all by yourself then i will admit that is a helluva undertaking.
Maybe a bit off topic, but what happens if the sponsors for the event conflict with the team sponsors? MLG is sponsored by NOS energy drinks and they are a direct competitor to EG's Monster Energy. This idea sounds amazing, but not without a few bumps.
On September 16 2012 03:56 leperphilliac wrote: Maybe a bit off topic, but what happens if the sponsors for the event conflict with the team sponsors? MLG is sponsored by NOS energy drinks and they are a direct competitor to EG's Monster Energy. This idea sounds amazing, but not without a few bumps.
What happens at their events?
Nothing.
this has never been done because the majority of tournaments are not invites and so a designer simply cannot prepare for all the possible combinations of players, teams, sponsors.
if you plan on doing this all by yourself then i will admit that is a helluva undertaking.
Nah this isn't true, it's actually really easy at a live event. You have an entire production crew dedicated to this stuff and there aren't all that many teams. All you need to do is setup the templates for each team then change the name around in the overlay.
I'm working with the Starboard folks to create a full-on program to do all of this and auto-populate all the sponsors into an overlay. That will make things even easier.
In my opinion the scoreboard would look over-complicated. Too many small details that you have to tell apart with your eyes. Usually score boards, like in real life sport events, should be large enough for the information to be discerned quickly and comfortably. I do have perfect vision, but for anyone less fortunate it might be difficult to acknowledge the sponsors or teams through the 'virtual jersey' scoreboard concept - the pictures are a little too small.
Still, the notion is still possible and might be well worth the compromise if we want to show more gratitude to our benefactors.
For the scoreboard, maybe to include sponsors let you upload an image for it? Like you already have the image of the sponsor's tag, and you just upload it to the scoreboard.
The idea really doesn't come across as particularly difficult to implement. It's a small, unobtrusive "virtual jersey", as you put it, that can just pop up somewhere on the overlay to show the sponsor.
In-theory I think this is a good idea when you think about sponsorship exposure to the companies... But I think the best route to go with the scoreboard is to make it look as "clean" and "symmetrical" as possible.
It just seems like theres too much distraction and stuff going on with the sponsor thing being on the scoreboard, I'm not really digging it. Stuff has to look simple, and clean for a crowd/audience to watch at events and streams.
From the videos you've posted it doesn't look too intrusive...but to be honest I don't think its necessary to show off the sponsors all the time, and it would clutter up the screen, even if just slightly. I'm sure you're aware that there is a balance to be made between in-game advertising and the viewers experience. You also have to please the audience and make the game look appealing to attract as many viewers as you can. Both are important for the growth of SC2.
I think it might be better to just temporarily flash the logo of "root" or "eg" as well as their associated sponsors as a simple animation when the players are being introduced. Having them constantly up on the screen in such a small format might not be meaningful...you should be able to clearly identify the sponsors without needing to focus on a 1 cm^2 thumbnail.
But anyway either way it probably wouldn't matter much to me. It'll work, as it is a pretty small change
I like this idea, step towards the right direction certainly.
What i would eventually like to see is some map elements that can be used to display sponsors, much like the dota2 flags. Im not quite sure if blizzard is on board with stuff like that tho.
Pretty sick overlay really. I like how unintrusive and natural feeling/looking it is. Only problem is the EG one will wrap around the page ... They steal all the sponsors.
This kind of thing is good, but it needs to be in an plugin for the different broadcaster software i.e. Xsplit / Wirecast / whatever, for this to be truly useful where it can easily load in players from either liquipedia or an xml file that is up to date, where you can just pick a player(preferably though filters) and automatically have to correct sponsors included, it should offc also have the custom player option where you can set the player name / race / sponsors yourself for those none top tournaments.
If this plugin existed I’m sure alot of tournaments would adapt and use it because it looks great and it helps the players /teams / sponsors without interfering with the game.
Great idea. Building on a suggestion other people have made, how about having space for a single sponsor logo, but using a video to loop through the title and other sponsors? In the EG case, for example, RaidCall could get two or three times as much exposure, simply by being up there for (say) 30 seconds before giving 10 seconds to each of the non-title sponsors. Would also mean you can use one overlay size for all teams.
I've been wondering if we should just say "screw Blizzard" and write something that can OCR the default food counts. If you know where the pixels are for each food count, you could OCR that to an integer, then provide it to an arbitrary overlay. As long as the overlay covered the original Blizzard food counts, you could composite anything you liked back on screen. You could even do something like putting sponsor or tournament logos in the middle of the screen (over the Blizzard food counts) and have your own food count elsewhere.
There are some free OCR libraries that are pretty decent. I tried this for building a Diablo 3 auction house bot, but didn't get much farther than the OCR piece. Once you've taught the library what the Blizzard font looks like you'd get pretty reliable results.
It gives sponsors more incentive to sponsor teams and players since their branding will be much more readily displayed than just some anagram in the player's ID.
Very good ideas TB, I don't always agree with you, but when I do, you are fucking right.
We've linked up with the Starboard developer to make the Virtual Jersey overlay a reality. We're looking to completely redo the application in the style shown in the concepts, put team and sponsor logos directly into the application itself and auto-populate all of them within the application. Once we're happy with it we plan to release it for any tournament to use. It will be just as easy to use as any normal overlay application, it'll do all the hard work for you.
Glad to see it and hopefully smaller events will be able to take advantage of it. Big groups like MLG likely are restricted as to what logos they can put on the stream, but everyone else could use a product like this.
On September 26 2012 10:07 TotalBiscuit wrote: Big news on this front.
We've linked up with the Starboard developer to make the Virtual Jersey overlay a reality. We're looking to completely redo the application in the style shown in the concepts, put team and sponsor logos directly into the application itself and auto-populate all of them within the application. Once we're happy with it we plan to release it for any tournament to use. It will be just as easy to use as any normal overlay application, it'll do all the hard work for you.
Awesome, thanks for putting so much effort into this
Will it be available for free for non-commercial tournaments/casters?
This is the work-in-progress version of our Virtual Jersey Starboard, which we hope will become a new standard for any willing tournament or caster. Most of you are probably familiar with Starboard, those who are not it is one of the most popular scoreboard overlay programs and is used in many forms by tournaments and casters. This is our version.
At present, the sponsors auto-populate onto the board based on the logo you choose from a specific folder. Ultimately, they will do so based on the team you pick from a dropdown menu, making it as simple as a single click to display a teams logo and up to 4 sponsors on the board, overlaying the Blizzard scoreboard and still showing the supplies. If you want to do that, you will need the top narrow menu bar on to properly align everything, otherwise you won't have the space. We're looking to hopefully do a configurable version later down the line which allows you to put sponsors below if you don't want to use the Blizzard scoreboard.
Yeah I know the sponsors aren't up to date for root, this is very much a work in progress. Point is it works and all that needs doing is the adding of additional art assets, updated sponsors and the implementation of the dropdown menu system. Once that's in place we will be prepared to release this version of Starboard for everyone who wants it.
The first outing of this version of Starboard will be with the SHOUTcraft HotS tournament on Sunday. The end-goal of increasing sponsorship ROI for Starcraft 2 across the board is coming a little closer.
To remind people what this is. Virtual Jersey is a scoreboard overlay designed to display team sponsors in-game in an unobtusive manner, just like a real team jersey at an offline event. The purpose is to improve sponsor ROI across the entire Starcraft 2 scene by closing the gap between offline and online events. Prior to this, the only way for a sponsor to be recognized at all in an online tournament was to be the title sponsor and be part of the players username itself and even then, some tournaments over-wrote this with their own custom scoreboards. It's pretty hard to show your teams sponsors if nobody can see your jersey, at least until now.
It's been a while, however we have made progress. We had a few objectives in mind.
1) Change the scoreboard design to move sponsors below it rather than above (due to changes in HotS AI) 2) Swap the position of team and race icons for better visibility. 3) Find a way to let Youtube casters use the scoreboard, which was previously extremely difficult/impossible due to the way the overlay program works. Youtube casters generally do not use software which would capture a screen overlay like that. 4) Find a way to allow streamers to avoid using screen-region capture since it is fiddly, resource heavy and ultimately of inferior quality to DXtory/Gamesource capture methods.
Good news? We've nailed all of that. I'll be showing the new version in the Teamstory cup tomorrow for Axiom vs Mousesports. The 3rd and 4th methods were challenging, however we came up with a fairly elegant solution and that is an inbuilt screen-shot feature within Virtual Jersey itself. Pressing this button will save an exact copy of the scoreboard in it's current form as a .png image with a transparent background. This allows Youtube casters to easily slot it in with their favorite editing software such as Premiere or Vegas. Overlay it on the video footage and bam, you have a slick looking scoreboard with sponsor logos built in. Simply save the state of the scoreboard for each map as a separate image and you're golden. It's simple and effective. For users of Xsplit, you can save the initial image and insert it as a layer in your Xsplit scene. Since Virtual Jersey saves new screenshots to the same folder, you can save over the image, reload the scene and bam, your scoreboard is updated with exactly the same positions and dimensions. This merely takes 2 clicks more than updating the scoreboard usually would anyway and takes barely a second.
Currently things look a little like this.
The holes in the center will show races. That's not working right now due to a bug that we should have fixed before tomorrows show (we hope). The program is pulling automatic sponsor information based on the teams in it's database. This sponsor information exists as a preset image for each team with the top 4 sponsors listed. The option for .gif rotations is available for teams with more than 4 sponsors. We will most likely redesign some of the logos and make them easier to see using vectors instead of tiny images in future. The program is not ready for public release, but we're getting there. We hope the functionality we are providing will allow many casters and streamers to use this program to provide sponsor ROI just like an offline tournament and a real team jersey. More sponsors helps the entire scene.
What it doesn't do
Properly overlay on the in-game scoreboard. Due to changes in the HotS UI this is currently impossible. The next stage after we have completely development would be to develop a custom UI that is integrated with this design to allow for better display of information.
Future potential functionality:
* Pull up-to-date sponsorship information from an online database. * Xsplit Plugin * Gamesource capture, overlay the scoreboard with Gamesource for extra convenience! * Hotkeys to allow quick updates and image saves on the fly. * Variable scoreboard designs.
I think what this "project" would need is a big update by starboard creators. It would need the so called "sponsor-panel" to be fixed with lets say 3-4 sponsorpositions above the name with a slider like rotation of all (like if you have mor than 4) for proper distribution. Also it would need an external database with fixed logos, accounts of sponsors and team accounts related to the sponsors accounts. Once this is established it will rock out every tournament I'm pretty sure. Contact the guys, give em some money, push you project and finally do what blizzard doesn't want to do Just sayin!
@Otolia, if that stuff isn't updated on LP we need too, but I'm sure they've got updated info since the teams are more than happy to send that out with a system like this in place.
On April 04 2013 18:19 pluu.mooh wrote: I think what this "project" would need is a big update by starboard creators. It would need the so called "sponsor-panel" to be fixed with lets say 3-4 sponsorpositions above the name with a slider like rotation of all (like if you have mor than 4) for proper distribution. Also it would need an external database with fixed logos, accounts of sponsors and team accounts related to the sponsors accounts. Once this is established it will rock out every tournament I'm pretty sure. Contact the guys, give em some money, push you project and finally do what blizzard doesn't want to do Just sayin!
I believe TB is actually working with the Starboard creators to make this a plugin for Starboard.
I have a small suggestion for the virtual jersey which is for the winner screen, you can make a bigger version of the player card with the sponsors and stuff?
Really happy to see this update. Especially glad you guys are working to make it easy for others to implement! Looking forward to seeing this change e-sports tournaments as we know it!
On April 04 2013 18:19 pluu.mooh wrote: I think what this "project" would need is a big update by starboard creators. It would need the so called "sponsor-panel" to be fixed with lets say 3-4 sponsorpositions above the name with a slider like rotation of all (like if you have mor than 4) for proper distribution. Also it would need an external database with fixed logos, accounts of sponsors and team accounts related to the sponsors accounts. Once this is established it will rock out every tournament I'm pretty sure. Contact the guys, give em some money, push you project and finally do what blizzard doesn't want to do Just sayin!
We are already working with Starboard, that's why it looks like Starboard, because it is.
I find the sponsor logos very hard to read and can't make out the graphics without squinting and moving closer to my monitor. While my eyesight may not be good, when my vision is corrected the first thing I notice are player names, logos, and sponsorships last since they are small and conflicting with the way information is presented.
Since player names are not usually long in length, have you thought about getting rid of the wasted space between the name and score and making better use of it? I feel like if you could increase the sponsor size by 20-30% the names and logos will be more visually apparent and more aligned with the virtual jersey. Right now they feel detracted from the screen.
Since the goal of the project is to increase visual awareness of sponsors it might be even more advantageous to place the sponsor logos/names between the player name and score. This way when your eyes are looking at either name or score, your peripheral vision will include immediate sight of the logos/names. Whereas right now the logos/names are underneath the player names. While this isn't counter intuitive, it is more taxing to process information that is going both horizontally and vertically. I doubt you have the resources to do this, but I am willing to bet that people will be able to retain more information if you were to set up in one direction (this case being horizontally).
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/VYgZs.jpg)
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. TB i really like what your doing at the moment, dota 2 is definately a step ahead and im glad you're starting to progress forward even if blizzard seem unwilling (busy as always). Looks fairly neat.
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