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It's time once again to reflect on the end of a SHOUTcraft tournament. It's been a while since we've had to, with SHOUTcraft 4 a distant memory. Its successor was a tournament with a different goal and a different scope, a larger, longer and more difficult to execute event. It was fairly ambitious and most of all, idealistic. Unlike previous events it was not designed around mass-appeal. We've always picked our invited players based on what we think will make an entertaining tournament, mixing in popular players with a couple of darkhorses that we know are capable of creating storylines. Aside from SHOUTcraft 3 where we overpicked popular personas and streamers vs top-tier competitors, we've succeeded in generating good hype and storylines in all tournaments. SHOUTcraft 4 stands to this day as a viewer record for an independent online event, crushing even WCS Europes concurrent viewers. But what of SHOUTcraft America?
A catalyst for growth
Creating invitational tournaments is easy. Small events can succeed with a relatively small prizepool and have strong viewer draw with 8 handpicked players. They are easier to organize, shorter and designed with one goal, maximum possible viewership with least possible investment. The community often speaks out against invitational formats and with good reason. They do not promote growth. Invitationals generally reward players who are already popular to begin with. If it's your goal to attain maximum possible viewership then of course you will use these players existing fanbases to gain that. Lets think of what SHOUTcraft America could have looked like.
IdrA
Demuslim
HuK
Scarlett
Major
Minigun
Polt
Violet
You want 50k? That'll probably do the trick. A perfect mix of strong US competition with existing strong fanbases for each player, a couple of Koreans with American ties to spice up the competion and provide that all important foreiger vs Korean storyline, some drama from IdrAs invite to drum up publicity, a Mexican player to hit the Spanish speaking demographic, Hey, that has it all. But what would have been the point? It's just another online invitational at that point, doing the same thing we've been doing for years, over and done with in 2 days and then forgotten. With SHOUTcraft America we wanted to shoot for something bigger, riskier and most importantly, something that actually made a difference. The scene that really needed it? The NA server.
SHOUTcraft America was designed as an experiment with a few goals. Firstly, would a significant number of people actually watch NA-only Starcraft with a roster of players that may not contain the usual faces? Secondly, is it possible to succeed where Blizzard has failed in raising the level of the NA ladder by turning it into a more competitive environment, handing out qualification spots based on ladder ranking? Thirdly and most importantly, can we bring out the fighting spirit of American players and give the scene a much needed shot in the arm after WCS NA stacked the deck against them? All good questions, let's discuss how close we got to those goals.
50k viewers?
An ambitious goal that we would almost surely have hit with that 8-man lineup I just listed. EZPZ. SHOUTcraft 4 hit close to 50k concurrents with a lineup of EU pros. The 50k number originated on DJWheats show as he threw out an ambitious prediction. I went along with it because I think it's important to have a lofty goal to aim for, it means you push yourselves harder to reach it and never sit in your laurel. Did we hit it? No. Did we come close? Yes. Day 1 concurrent stats show 40,000 viewers across all SHOUTcraft streams. Could we have reached 50k? Yeah I really do believe so, but it was not to be.
CURSED
SHOUTcraft America is without question the most technically disastrous event we've ever done. Naturally a 7-show run is going to have more problems than a 2-show weekend warrior invitational, but the sheer scale of problems surprised even me. What went wrong? Oh let me count the ways
Xsplit crashes requiring stream and sometimes computer restarts
Xsplit delinking itself from Starcraft resulting in Gamesource software capture refusing to work, forcing a switch to screen-region during a cast
Severe lag problems resulting in frequent frame-drops and outright disconnects from the stream
Routing problems to the Twitch ingest servers resulting in yet more stream hiccups
Player and game lag, including disconnections resulting in resuming from replay
Foreign language caster disconnections due to lobby bugs
Severe weather causing internet outages in the area lasting upwards of an hour during at least 2 days of play
Co-caster disconnections and Skype problems
Modem hardware failure requiring a complete replacement and setup procedure with the ISP
Occasional mic crackle caused by intermettent Xsplit audio bug
Other minor cosmetic production problems including some incorrect race icons on virtual jersey, misaligned cameras during faceoff interviews.
What did all of this cause? 2 fairly key factors in maintaining consistent viewership
Excessive downtime
Uncomfortable viewer experience.
Oh man did we fail to meet the downtime expectations in this tournament. I knew it would require more downtime than our usual events simply because it was a tournament that required the use of more complex, variable assets which required more production time inbetween games. The setting up of the webcams with different overlays for each matchup, setting up the vs screens for each match, altering virtual jersey for each match, all of this stuff takes time to do correctly. This is especially true when you use the dual-tournament format because you can't be sure exactly who will play after the first 2 games, you need assets designed in a modular fashion, which is exactly what we created, however they take time to swap around inbetween games. All of this is by the by though, the real cause of the downtime was the internet issues. This was the first big event we did using Timewarner Cable in the US and boy did they fail hard. This ISP is grossly incapable of handling even reasonable uptime requirements and despite having 5mb up, the stream struggled to maintain the steady 3mb required for high fidelity 720p60 streaming. I went into this event concerned that this would happen and boy did it live up to that expectation. A disastrous inability to handle reliable streaming resulted in massive delays, severe problems in the first match which resulted in it being unwatchable and an overall poor viewing experience. As the days dragged on, viewers were turned off and Europeans could not stay up as long as we needed them to in order to maintain strong viewership figures. Days that should have been 4-5 hours of play ended up being 6-7 with the RO8 dragging on for over 8 hours.
You know what the sad thing is? If Day 1 had not suffered internet problems I believe we could have hit that 50k. Topping out at 40k despite severe problems is actually really impressive. It showed a passion from the audience for this tournaments goal and they would support this event through thick and thin. I genuinely appreciate the fervour of these fans and because of them I have hope for the future. At the same time though I feel like a complete failure for letting them down. I pride myself on quality within the best of my ability. What I can't do either due to budget or expertise, I'll try and innovate around in some way. I also felt I had enough experience to handle casting, production and observing all at once but I was mistaken. The complexities of this events production combined with the stress of trying to handle the unexpected issues resulted in failures on my part. I am truly sorry for this, you deserve better than amateurish mistakes. While we clearly blew previous SHOUTcraft events out of the water in terms of production value and anyone who claims otherwise is out of their mind, what good is production value if you can't stay on stop of the production to begin with? What good are flashy graphics if your observing is poor?
Stats don't lie
32152 SCI4 Day 1 Maximum concurrent viewers
49337 SCI4 Day 2 Maximum concurrent viewers
449405 SCI4 Day 1 Total views
445978 SCI4 Day 2 Total views
198120 SCI4 Day 1 Unique viewers
184462 SCI4 Day 2 Unique viewers
36315 SCA Day 1 Max Concurrents
22231 SCA Day 2 Max Concurrents
21604 SCA Day 3 Max Concurrents
13426 SCA Day 4 Max Concurrents
34058 SCA Day 5 Max Concurrents
27550 SCA Day 6 Max Concurrents
18322 SCA Day 7 Max Concurrents
334620 SCA Day 1 Total Views
155060 SCA Day 2 Total Views
147480 SCA Day 3 Total Views
85220 SCA Day 4 Total Views
255960 SCA Day 5 Total Views
161440 SCA Day 6 Total Views
59780 SCA Day 7 Total Views
181360 SCA Day 1 Unique Viewers
86640 SCA Day 2 Unique Viewers
81540 SCA Day 3 Unique Viewers
55420 SCA Day 4 Unique Viewers
145880 SCA Day 5 Unique Viewers
98140 SCA Day 6 Unique Viewers
41460 SCA Day 7 Unique Viewers
Stream ad revenue: $2,957
Tournament cost: $12,000
Cost breakdown:
$10,000 - Prizepool
$500 - Payment for tournament assets
$1,500 - Ancillary costs such as travel, cab fares, accomodation for NY final
Undetermined cost to MLG, quoted as being "several thousand".
VoD stats to be determined.
Ok, so what can we derive from these. Does the failure to reach view/concurrent records set by SCI4 indicate failure? The answer to that is no for several reasons. SCI ran longer tournament days which naturally results in more actual views. The longer you run, the more people tune in to check it out. Day 1 of SCA was actually half the length of SCI4s day 1, which was 2 large groups showing 10 BO3s rather than 5. SCA Day 1 beat SCI4 soundly in terms of both max concurrents (which is even high when taking into account the foreign language streams and in terms of hours played/total views ratio. However, as we can see there is a falloff that rallies somewhat around the RO8 onwards with a disappointing slip in the finals. The view count is not so important for the finals because it is 1 BO7, the shortest show of the lot. Total views can be a very misleading stat and one must be careful not to take it out of context. Day 4 was also disappointing. I attribute its performance to being the group with 3 team-less, low-profile players and the fact that it was on a Friday, meaning US viewers may have been at work or school.
Why weekdays?
Long story short, we had a very limited time frame to execute this tournament while dodging WCS before the summer tournament madness began. The execution of this event now was vital to pushing the event into a successful second season later in the year. We based the original dates on WCS dates given by Blizzard and promises of no “weekend WCS broadcasts”. These dates were then changed and the promise of no weekend broadcasts did not come to pass. WCS broadcast both an important qualifier during one of our scheduled shows and scheduled the EU regional finals on a date that would have been ideal for our finals. While we could have pushed the broadcast much later in the evening it was impossible to know how long WCS EUS cast would have gone on for and we would have suffered viewer fatigue and the EU audience leaving due to the late time schedule. Originally our projected finals date would have clashed with WCS NA, which we did not want to do due to futility of splitting the US audience and hurting both tournaments. We also had to push our starting date one day to dodge WCS NA Challenger qualifiers, which were being played in by most of the players in our tournament. Due to all of these changes our schedule was pushed into days we did not want to use, including 1 Friday show and 1 Tuesday show, both of which suffered heavy hits in viewership. The MLG collaboration came about in support of the American scene and due to a lack of desire to clash with WCS NA (which we would have on our original schedule). We also desired the prestige for our players, giving them a chance to travel in a real offline final with good production and reliable, safe conditions. In hindsight, it hurt the tournament due to low viewership resulting from a Tuesday schedule. However, this tournament was about the players not the overall viewing figures and if asked to do it again I would. Giving our eventual champion Kane a chance to travel to New York for the first time and win his first big event was worth the hit we took.
Is it all bad?
No actually quite the opposite. As much as the 50k figure was touted by DJWheat, SHOUTcraft actually did phenomenally well considering the following factors
Lesser known players
Longer format
Technical problems
We beat WCS and not just by a small margin, we buried it. WCS NA could not compete with us in terms of concurrent and overall views. We were soundly exceeding their numbers by upwards of 10,000 concurrents on our good days. We were even competitive with WCS EU. I have it on good authority (and of course common sense) that SHOUTcraft generated significantly more ad revenue in its run than WCS NA has throughout the entire RO32. Add into the mix that our vods are significantly more popular than WCS, particularly when Husky posted some on his channel and you actually have a tournament that is punching way above its weight class and crushing in the numbers far more than it has any right to. What does it show? In my opinion a few things.
There IS a ground-swell of support for NA talent
No actually, not everyone just wants to watch clones of GSL with the same Koreans all the time
Regardless of the complaints about low quality games, a ton of people showed up and watched them anyway
Now, can some of it be attributed to the caster lineup? Most definitely. An all-star lineup of Husky, Day9, IdrA, Frodan, Rotterdam and Axslav was able to overcome the deficit caused by my terrible casting and no doubt contributed strong viewer numbers, although not necessarily what you might have expected. One might expect Day9s presence to be the overriding factor in viewership but that was not the case. Day 3s figures which featured Rotterdam were extremely similar to Seans appearance on Day 2. Casters contributed greatly to the success of the event but it was not as strong a draw as people claim. Weekend vs Weekday was by far a much stronger determining factor in the overall viewership, with weekend shows beyond Day 1 getting relatively similar numbers across the board regardless of caster.
So maybe we didn't hit the magic 50k, but look at the big picture. A tournament filled with players with lower profiles lacking several big name star “American” SC2 players, beat WCS NA over and over again who had the benefit of high profile Korean and foreign stars and the prestige of a huge prizepool and the endorsement and backing of Blizzard themselves.
Riding the hype wave
I've made no secret that I will use smart methods to promote my events and my brand. This tournament deliberately took advantage of the negative attention that WCS NA had been getting due to its lack of local players. We also took advantage of IdrAs recent dismissal and brand value to benefit the event. I make no apologies for that what-so-ever, I run a business and if you don't take advantage of that stuff to further promote your event then you are bad at your job. I'm also very much an ends justify the means kind of guy. If I have to ride a wave of anti-WCS sentiment to get more eyes on NA pros who are sorely under-represented and being thrown under the bus by the very company that is supposed to be helping them succeed, then I'll do it without a second thought every time. I'll never apologize for doing what I think is right, even if it steps on a few toes along the way.
Adding fuel to a dwindling fire
Most viewers have not touched upon this but many NA pros have managed it. One of the best things this tournament accomplished was turning the NA ladder into a competitive warzone as players vied for precious top 16 spots. Everyone we've spoken to reported an immediate increase in competitive play resulting partially from top pros returning to American ladder from Korean or European grandmaster as well as everyone simply taking their games more seriously and giving 100% to win. The ladder became a better place to train due to those factors and the very thing that Blizzard claimed it wanted to do, “elevate” the level of play on the weakest ladder, was accomplished here even if only for a short time. If you want to elevate the ladder, you have to give it meaning. WCS does not do a thing to encourage that. If you want to beat Koreans you have to prepare specifically for them, you cannot just play ladder and hope to carry the day. Koreans will not come and play on NA ladder just because they are in WCS NA, that is inferior practice. Most Koreans treat NA ladder as stream fodder where they can slap around some foreigners with inferior builds and not have to show their true strength. Don't get me wrong that's totally fine and it's cool for NA streamers to meet up with these guys and show exciting battles, but true competition is needed. I believe Gennas decision to base on the tournament on the ladder was the correct one and if a second season occursI want to emphasize that even further, giving seeding based on ladder rank and playing over a much longer period to really get the ladder fired up. One of the legitimate criticisms of this event is that we did not give players enough time to qualify and that some pros were locked out of GM even though they shouldn't really have been. We aim to address this in future events by ensuring a longer qualification period before the ladder locks.
Locked in
Region locking. I'm gonna be honest I still believe in it. I think we need it and the sports industry agrees with me. Every major sport on the planet has significant local competition that is the backbone of their respective scenes. Without strong local competition it is impossible for a sport to flourish in that particular area and it eventually results in the local audience in that region dying off. There is an idea floating around that he majority want “the best games”. I don't believe that's true. I feel that large events like the olympics, world cup and superbowl are as popular as they not due to hem having “the best games” but due to the prestige and importance of being an apex event, the pinnacle of what those sports can reach in terms of size and spectacle. In theory that should mean they show the best games but that's not necessarily true. The Superbowl is an event that people gather to watch regardless of who plays but the regular season is driven by the supporters of those local teams. British football is the same way, you support the team from your area and you watch not for “the best games” but to see them play. That emotional investment in local heroes is such a key factor of the success of broadcast sports and we must maintain that within SC2 if we want this scene to prosper. There must not be a time when the only competition available to watch consists exclusively of Koreans. NA players will not improve without competitions to play in. There are no Americans left in WCS Premier league, who knows how many will manage to claw their way back in after this season with increased Korean competition? Then where will these players compete, what will they have to aspire for? The paltry challenger prizepool against Koreans that don't feel like dealing with the flood of Kespa players overwhelming the GSL? Maybe IPL? Oh wait. What about NASL? Oh...MLG! Maybe, but who knows how many live events will happen this year and with still no news of Anaheim so close to the event, one has to be extremely concerned that we will not see a return to the open bracket play of old and a Korean focussed invitational/qualification format will be used. With ESL focussed on WCS rather than IEM events, Dreamhack stands as a bastion of independence yet one that favours Europeans over Americans with prohibitive cost factors in play.
Ultimately this is Gennas call. I personally believe that if we choose to continue and expand to a RO32 format, the relaxing of the region lock rule to allow players who have resided in the US for a set period of time and are in the US at the time of the tournament, may be a good idea. The exclusion of players like Demuslim made sense in the RO16, in a RO32 not so much, he is as much a part of the American scene now as anyone else and even players like Polt would be good targets to takedown in a tournament like this. The overall benefit of including these players may outweigh the loss of a few spots that could have gone to natural-born citizens, one can make a name for oneself by knocking out a big name favourite and the American brain-trust will no doubt conspire against players like Polt in order to bring him down in a format that encourages careful preparation and planning. That's the level of compromise that I personally would be willing to put into play.
Fixing problems
Is it feasible to resolve many of the issues this tournament suffered? Let me be frank, I'm fucking serious about this. If it is at all possible to acquired a real leased line, I'm talking T3 level here, I will do it. It is unconventional for residential home offices to use something that hardcore but it's not outside the realms of possibility. My business relies on the internet, I need it to work 100% of the time. A dedicated unshared line with a service level agreement and ridiculous upstream would do the trick, even if it costs thousands of dollars a month to maintain. Our area sucks and so does Time Warner Cable, but where there is a will there is a way.
What about the other issues like observation? This is a very tricky problem to solve in an online environment, you cannot use a dedicated obs in an online tournament unless they are physically on location. Can I make that happen? Maybe...? Again, not impossible. Alternatively I could just practice much harder in my observing, ladder more to improve my gamesense and minimap awareness and just suck less next time.
Player recognition. How do we solve this issue? How do we get people to care. We already did. One of the problems SCA Season 1 had, it also simultaneously solved for SCA Season 2. Now you DO know these guys. With the addition of the more traditionally strong and high profile NA players, I believe a second season would have an even bigger draw. I believe the “ONLY THE BEST GAMES” guys are a vocal minority. WCS EU numbers alone show this, consistently higher than WCS NA which has stronger Korean players. Actually yes people would rather watch Dayshi build hellbats (<3 you Dayshi) than watch 2 more Koreans fight in the MLG studio. Game quality takes second place to how relatable a player is, his personality and how entertaining the games end up being. Scrappy games are sometimes the most fun to watch and self-important viewers who boast of their superior taste and knowledge can't even name he players that rock the NA ladder, so how knowledgeable of the scene can they really be? We had a word for those guys when we were younger, the guys who supported the winning team not the local team, we called them glory supporters. SC2 might not be the same as traditional sports, but there's no question that a more positive attitude towards local talent will benefit the scene. SCA is a means to that end and the more success we have with it the more momentum it will gain. SCA will break the laws of thermodynamics and be a tournament of perpetual motion.
Is Blizzard the enemy?
No. As much as I'm happy to use emnity towards Blizzard to my advantage, Blizzard has cooperated with SCA and shows signs of continuing to do so. Blizzard has it's own ideas about how the scene should operate and grow and who is to say that they are wrong? Their plan may indeed show long-term benefits even with short-term damage. However, I would like to continue to produce content that both competes with and compliments WCS. I see no harm in putting on a strong show to keep Blizzard honest and make sure they're always questioning themselves. Being your own worst critic is so vital in this industry and often large companies get carried away with their internal echo-chambers of opinion. I'd like to particularly thank Kevin “Cloaken” Johnson who has been instrumental in providing support for this event as well as all Blizzard eSports staff who assisted us during the venture.
However. The elephant in the room is WCS schedule. With 16+ hours a day of Starcraft going on and an intense, rushed schedule within the first season, who is to say if it is even feasible to run anything other than weekend-warrior events in future? This is the immovable object we are fighting against and trying our best not to meet head on. Even if we can beat WCS NA in numbers, why would we want to fight them anyway? We certainly don't want to go against WCS EU and when we did run into them we suffered. I don't even know if there is a solution to this, I'm just hoping for a more manageable schedule that does not take over weekends as much as it does or shows that massively over-run that we have to try and dodge.
Onward?
Perhaps. We have not decided whether or not to do a second season yet. This tournament was a large financial and mental drain on myself and Genna, who was already dealing with a severe ankle injury that has left her fairly immobile for over a month. The stress has been almost crushing at times, it's always the projects and causes you're most passionate about that can give you the most grief. A re-evaluation of format, production and many other factors must be made. SCA was undoubtedly our shakiest event but it was also the most difficult to pull off. I let my main channel, the thing that pays for all this, suffer during the tournament, that's not something I can do again. I must improve in all aspects of my production and observing and push our promotion and hype for the next even higher with supporting content, interviews, highlights, trailers and more. There is always more to do and we suffered many problems, some of which were self-inflicted during this tournament.
But did we fail? Hell no. Will we give up on the NA scene? Not a chance. America fighting!
Credits
Manager and Director : Genna Bain
Production and Casting : John Bain
Guest Co-caster : Husky
Guest Co-caster : Day[9]
Guest Co-caster : Frodan
Guest Co-caster : Rotterdam
Guest Co-caster : IdrA
Guest Co-caster : Axslav
Finals production : Major League Gaming
Finals director : Adam Contini
Finals interviewer : Axeltoss
Finals observer : AGIANTSMURF
Graphic designer : Cristian Baltoc
Intro designed by : Brum
Tournament admin : Vequeth
Stream support : Thegunrun
Player announcer: Clutch
Champion : Kane
Runner-up : State
RO4 finish : Minigun
RO4 finish : Goswer
RO8 finish : QXC
RO8 finish : Hellokitty
RO8 finish : puCK
RO8 finish : Drunkenboi
RO16 finish : rsvp
RO16 finish : Xenocider
RO16 finish : Suppy
RO16 finish : MaSa
RO16 finish : Vibe
RO16 finish : Maker
RO16 finish : Neeb
RO16 finish : Hendralisk
 
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Good stuff TB. Great to see the things you're doing with SC. Keep up the good work!
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With better luck (odds must be good given how lousy your luck with techs were on top of Genna's injury), experience and planning, I imagine 2nd season (if it were to happen) would be more awesome. I'm just glad to hear that there is a possibility of more ShoutCraft America.
Big thanks to everyone (maybe not your ISP TB  ) involved in this tournament for making something awesome happen even through numerous technical issues. Special shout out to Genna who still sometimes go unmentioned. GLHF!
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As transparent as it gets TB! Thanks a lot for this, I am glad it turned out more positive than the recent tweets sounded.
Hope you both take some time off to recover from that ride 
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Will there be an audio version like before?
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you know TB, i like you. keep on keepin' on.
was a fun tournament and most of the games i saw were really good, hoping it makes a return sometime.
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I consider the tournament a huge success, that a tournament full of lesser-known players beat WCS NA and competed with WCS EU viewership numbers is insane. I had no idea who Kane was before, now I do. The goals of the tournament were achieved.
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SCA was a great tournament nonetheless. I also enjoyed the TB - Idra casting combo
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iNcontroL
USA29055 Posts
Glad to read this and see how reasonable you are about it all I do hope for more installments but would fully understand/support not doing them as well.
Again, ty to you both for putting this on <3
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On May 24 2013 00:59 Shirin wrote:
Will there be an audio version like before?
Maybe tomorrow. I'm on the train right now
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I hope this event goes on.
While segregating players LCS style does more damage long term ( NA LoL teams are falling more and more behind due to the lower skill level of their regular opponents ) every region need a good region-level leagues as a stepping stone.
edit: apologies for my previous wording
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I have to say the games were interesting even if the technical problems caused issues. Anyway i liked the format of a region locked ladder qualification tournament because it brought players who we didn't know too much. Like Kane who a lot of people would have wondered why he got onto ROOT in the first place but was always strong on ladder without having a lot of opportunities given to him before now.
Oh and why are you using Xsplit when most of the scene has switched to Obs and are finding it to be a lot more stable? Is a feature keeping you using it or are you sticking with it because you have your settings there or what ever?
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all you really need is to get idra to cast the games. instant viewership boost power pill
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I tried watching as much off this as I could, and I think I made it to 4/7 days. I missed one first round and one ro8 and the finals. The finals were on at a poor time for me living in the central time zone, so that just sucks. Hopefully good 'ol USA pride can pull through and fight the damn commies in the future.
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Thank you for a lengthy, detailed, 100% honest and no-nonsense debriefing, as usual.
Also as usual, you're too hard on yourself. I appreciate and admire your sense of self-criticism, but you did a much better job than you seem to think, in terms of casting and observing at any rate. I guess it's better to be too hard on yourself than too soft.
As you say, this tournament was a proof of concept, and it clearly succeeded. People want to watch American Starcraft with lesser-known players and not-perfect play, and I'll be one of them if SCA season 2 happens.
Edit : and of course, big thanks to you, Genna, and everyone else involved for pulling out such a huge investment of time, energy and money. I think it was worth it.
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A fucking 5 star post as usual TB
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United Kingdom3482 Posts
It was a cool tournament and even though I didn't manage to catch all of it due to it running late from the technical issues some days what I did watch was really fun. I'm glad it got such high viewer numbers because it does prove that we need some tournaments that aren't gsl clones because while they are fun to watch it gets dull if everything is the same and even though it wasn't the most high level games ever the players managed to pull out some very good play.
Just out of curiosity, because I know you aren't even sure you are going to do another american version, but would you ever consider doing it for a different region? Possibly an SEA version because their scene seems to be in a similar place than the NA scene, although for completely different reasons, in that there are a ton of unknown players with a lot of skill.
I do hope that we get another ShoutCraft America though.
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Amazing post. It's really cool what you guys are doing for the NA scene . It seems like you guys and Catz are the only ones with enough power to help, and who are actually willing to do so. I really hope you do another SCA, with region lock too. This tournament can only get better I think. With a 32 man bracket and all the other big NA names seeing how much of a success it can be, more of them will make an effort to qualify next time for sure.
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France9034 Posts
Amazing post ! Reading through it, it shows many things can be learned from this tournament to improve local competition and esports growth for everyone and not only Korea
I disagree a bit though on the part about "People want to see their local heroes play" : true, but sometimes, good/amazing play is also something the viewers want. If their local heroes somewhat play poorly... these fans won't be truly satisfied. Local players should be able to at least compete, even if they aren't the "top-tier kind of" player.
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5/5 would read again, would suggest to friends, would shout it from the mountains.
Thank you, TB, for the clarifications, and thanks to Genna for the work she put forth as well. I'm sorry it was stressful for you both and hope that future events aren't as much so.
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Just thank you anyway I guess, I always enjoyed the tournaments you put together and this one was no exception. Getting to know the players via pre game interviews (+ the occasional hilarious trash talk) was really a cool thing, the games were good overall, and you shouldn't blame yourself for the technical problems, ISPs being crooks is no news and I guess controlling the weather is still out of your reach :>
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My only issue was with the timing of the games, which meant my viewership didn't match my excitement for the tournament. I definitely enjoyed it as a whole, though, and really appreciated being able to watch guys that are lesser known and rarely featured in the "big" tournaments. I absolutely hope you guys do a second season, and while the small tournaments took a hit from the centralization by Blizzard, I think the good small tournaments will regain their footing and continue to grow for quite a while.
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Nice summary, i really liked it and didnt really mind the downtime all that much. My biggest problem was the observing, but i still enjoyed it a lot. Thanks. I really like the idea of ladder meaning something as well. qxc and drunkenboi hwaiting^^
Hopefully you can find someone to take some of the burden off of you guys and run another one. I heard production is hard and that sirscoots is unemployed^^
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Thanks for the honesty TB! Really appreciate it.
I enjoyed SCA a lot (watched every broadcast). If you do another I'd watch again. (The broadcast times were optimal for Europeans, lol)
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Great stuff mate!! Really solid work that you put into SC2 and eSports. Hats off, sir.
Now for SHOUTcraft Vegemite Edition? for the lads down under?!
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I was one of those who only watched some of day 1. The stream issues turned me off and I got my SC2 fix from WCS EU, so when Shoutcraft was actually the only tourny going on I simply didnt feel like watching anymore.
Prior to the tournament I thought I would watch more but guess I am one of those who actually do get fed up with SC at a certain point.
I hope, despite all the hickups, there wil be a Shoutcraft in the future as well.
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It was an amazing event and don't sell yourself short TB, you may not be the most analytical caster out there but I fucking love your casting and it improves the experience for me alot.
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I salute your efforts, Bains.
I can't really ask you to do this again, considering the immense strain, both mental and financial, it's had on you both, but I can thank you for having done this.
Cheers.
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Great event, I hope the next one is more successful.
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I'm just curious how you define competitive with WCS EU? I mean they usually have around 40-60k viewers every day across all streams. You really only came close to that the first day.
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On May 24 2013 01:40 Eury wrote:
I'm just curious how you define competitive with WCS EU? I mean they usually have around 40-60k viewers every day across all streams. You really only came close to that the first day.
That in and of itself can be considered competitive. Close numbers for 1 day is competitive, idk the rest of the numbers but yea..
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Shoutout to Clutch for awesome player intros!
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Thanks guys, hope y'all do this again.
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Great post and your honesty is rly appreciated.
I would love if other organisers would do that once in a while.
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On May 24 2013 01:40 Eury wrote:
I'm just curious how you define competitive with WCS EU? I mean they usually have around 40-60k viewers every day across all streams. You really only came close to that the first day.
I don't think you understand what competitive means.
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Thanks for doing this tournament. SCA is a wonderful concept, and fills a sorely needed gap in the NA scene. I hope you are able to iron out all of your ongoing internet issues, as I think that was probably the worst hiccup for this event, and the one major tech issue you can't personally do much about.
Also, I read the entire post in your delicious voice, obviously.
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Stream issues probably tuned off a lot of viewers, can't help but feel viewership wouldve been much better with that + actual names in the NA scene. Announcement date of the tournament was really late which screwed over some players but it was out of your control from what I heard. Hope there is a second tour though, no rush.
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Such bad luck that shoutcraft was plagued with various issue, but i really liked it and yeah some people want to watched their OWN scene even if its not Innovation vs hisNextVictim. I am canadian, i watch hockey, but when my team is out, im out. I *might* watch the final.. but i might not.
I hope to see an other one eventually but i would understand if there isnt one. You guys took quite a hit moneywise. But with those kind of numbers maybe its possible to attract some sponsorship.
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Canada1637 Posts
Great initiative, good read and I think SCA definitely proved that if WCS had been region locked in a different way it wouldn't have had a negative impact on viewership.
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Great read. I really enjoyed the show despite the problems and love how open Genna and you are about how the tournament was run, why certain decisions were made, etc.
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Man, I wish remote Observing was something viable, I would've loved to help out with that 
Anyways, I really do hope there is a 2nd season of this, it was great to see NA talent on display!
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i don't know why people are complaining about the players list. Those are all legit contenders. Those that complain about the quality of games are all low level players that wouldn't know a good game of Starcraft if they saw it. Many of those players compete on ladder against the top names in NA on their stream, and beating them. The argument of them not "trying" because it's ladder is a joke. You see those players do the same build over as they would in a tournament. How it's that not trying?
TY TB and Genna for SCA. I really hope a second season comes back. Blizzard, if you're following this thread, please sponsor SCA. They made your ladder meaningful for once since SC2 came out.
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With all you wrote I don't think there's any criticism to make that you didn't already hit yourself with, but you left something out which I think is incredibly important, so I'll say this:
The night the ladder locked, you had a stream going on covering the approaching final GM ranks. You had Catz in a skype call with you. It was a live report of the finish line - you had your fingers on the pulse of every NA GM player desperately grinding that one last game, trying for those last few points, hungry, hungry, oh so fucking hungry to qualify. The buzz was palpable. The gossip was intense - Everyone was watching everyone, checking profiles, chatting, watching streams intently, keeping careful track of every ladder point exchanged. Puck losing a game to competition, giving them points and nearly forcing Vibe out - And Vibe's narrow victory for a paltry 3 ladder points which got him the final slot.
To me, this was the most exciting part of the whole thing. I watched as much as I could with the production issues following the players I liked, because I was hooked from the very start. The ladder-centric format of the tournament was something I could identify with, not just because of the NA pro players whose names I knew and whose streams I watched, but because unlike nearly every other marathon-style qualifier, the format was so familiar because I live it myself. I turned on your stream in the final minutes of the season because I myself was done trying to hit my own personal best on the ladder. I finished my grind, and tuned into the chaotic struggle of the players at the top.
I really hope can you try again, with the fervor you claim to have for solving the problems. It's not only the storylines, personalities and potential for hometown heroes and up-and-comers, The biggest hook for me was that at the core of the entire SCA, was the NA ladder, The same NA ladder I play, with the same maps, the same matchmaking querks, the same uncertainty of the value or penalty of each loss and win.
The same NA GM ladder I could open up and access in my own game client, with the blizzard music playing in the background, to view the rankings or scope out individual players to follow their final matches as the last grains of sand in the hourglass ran through.
To me, that was the most engaging part of the entire thing, and for that, I hope your event never dies.
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I loved IDRA involvement. The technical issues where too much for me to handle. It broke up any player story line that was going on. When I went to tune in, there seemed no stream up, a wait or breaks between games. It became difficult to follow. I believe it would have 100k views and a HUGE success if not for the Technical Issues ALONE.
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i think sca was an awsome tournament, for all the difficulties that occured, it still was entertaining and fun to watch. I would value its entertainment (thunderstorm breaking internet is kind of entertainment too) worth over the actual gameplay, and i think this is a very good approach to make sc2 more popular. A bunch of american Kids becoming sc2 gladiators on a great show, it was a nice sports story.
As a sometimes-viewer of sca i could really feel the pain of the organization team. You guys did put a LOT of effort in this Happening, and i think that is what puts your viewer counts / entertainment value over wcsAmerica, which i found "disgusting", to say with stephanos words.
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I enjoyed the tournament, but admittedly I was busy when the finals were going down and missed them. The production problems were pretty unfortunate too. So many different issues.
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Thanks for the tournament, thanks for the evaluation. Tuned in now and then, always enjoyed the shows.
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Nice write-up TB, glad to see you are gonna keep going !
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Excellent effort.
I hope more of these pop up.
I now know of Kane.
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IdrA
Demuslim
HuK
Scarlett
Major
Minigun
Polt
Violet
Why would any of these players waste their time practising / competing in this tournament when theres only a prize of 4k dollars and 0 WCS points?
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Really great event TB! I agree with you that despite all the issues, it was definitely a successful event. I hope that you have the endurance to be able to put a second season. Thanks to both you and your wife for all the things you're doing to our community!
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two concurrent mistakes
its not NA server its America Server, and its not WCS NA its WCS America.
on the other hand
You correctly wrote Shoutcraft America, but it only had NA competitors
:S
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Got to be honest the technical issues was the reason I stopped watching. I even stopped tuning in because I just assumed there would be an exceptional amount of downtime.
Also the lack of Terrans -- or at least competitive Terrans -- turned me off.
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I personally loved the tournament the only issue I had with it was the internet issues, which for the most part are out of your hands. I spent as much time as I could watching the streams. I like the transparency of this tournament, with Genna being out of commission I think you did an amazing job. I just hope that we get more of these fantastic tournaments, because the na scene could really use it. With as many problems as you had, you stuck with us doing your best with what little you had. Again thanks for the truly wonderful tournament keep working on it and the stars are the limit.
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Incredible well written TB. And yea you crushed WCS NA in viewer-ship so all that crap the NA fans only want to watch high level Korean starcraft is bullshit.
Hope to see more Shoutcraft NA then this farce called WCS NA
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Really glad to here that you and Genna aren't going to give up on trying to improve the scene
Best of luck to both of you with future projects
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I'm watching TB from very beginnings of his engagement in games and I must say, the things that he's done for gaming scene are amazing. Damn he even motivated me to start playing SC again, not to mention how many more. After reading this comprehensive post I can just say that, despite every obstacle, you are doing great work mr. John and every sane person will admit it. Just hoping that you get bigger credit for it in the future.
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On May 24 2013 02:20 Laszx wrote:Why would any of these players waste their time practising / competing in this tournament when theres only a prize of 4k dollars and 0 WCS points?
4k is a lot of money. None of those guys are doing anything else except WCS. Why wouldn't they play a couple series to win some guaranteed money, and get some exposure? Even ro16 gets $75 and ro8 got $350. None of them would turn down an invite probably, except Idra (due to retirement?). Idra actually was trying to qualify.
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On May 24 2013 02:20 Laszx wrote:Why would any of these players waste their time practising / competing in this tournament when theres only a prize of 4k dollars and 0 WCS points?
Every single last one of them wanted to play, so maybe you just don't know much about them
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This post deserves credit - very informative. Thank you TB
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Hey, I just want to thank you for running this tourney, as well as all the time and effort you put into the production (the starting smack talk was great). I thoroughly enjoyed it through to the finals.
As far as internet goes - just get somewhere that isn't Time Warner. They're utterly terrible.
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I wish there was any way to help to ensure a Season 2. It was a great event and I'd love to see a second. TB let me know if you need any help at all!
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On May 24 2013 01:51 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 01:40 Eury wrote:
I'm just curious how you define competitive with WCS EU? I mean they usually have around 40-60k viewers every day across all streams. You really only came close to that the first day. I don't think you understand what competitive means.
Wow, that's a bit harsh. Maybe you should explain it to him then? Or is there some bad history between the two of you?
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This is great TB. Question, how much work was there when giving the invites to the top 16 ladder that they were all legitimate players? I imagine not too much, but then again WCS NA dropped the ball when players like PhysicsLee took awhile to get kicked out, then players like Hyun who were in WCS Korea but were just knocking out players just to be removed later on. Just interested in hearing your perspective and if something like ladder ranking feeding into WCS is sustainable given Blizzard's (possible) lack of player knowledge.
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Despite all your troubles, it's been refreshing to watch a tournament in this format. The pregame banter made the games much more interesting. Also I can completely acknowledge the need for cheering for your local heroes, although this did not really apply to me in SCA, being a European in Europe. But I experience it in wcs eu. I would love to see more of this.
But I also think you need more help running it. It was really showing that you were stressed out, and despite being watchable, it seemed that it could have been a lot better if you had just a little bit of help with some ad hoc stuff. One can only stretch so far
Also bring IdrA back on in the future, as he was a very positive surprise not knowing him to be casting beforehand. Despite you say that you were exploiting the situation, he really delivered.
TY and I will be a viewer of future shows. (Maybe make a branch in EU  .
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On May 24 2013 02:37 HeavenResign wrote:
This is great TB. Question, how much work was there when giving the invites to the top 16 ladder that they were all legitimate players? I imagine not too much, but then again WCS NA dropped the ball when players like PhysicsLee took awhile to get kicked out, then players like Hyun who were in WCS Korea but were just knocking out players just to be removed later on. Just interested in hearing your perspective and if something like ladder ranking feeding into WCS is sustainable given Blizzard's (possible) lack of player knowledge.
512 man open qualifier vs verifying 16 people. Completely different issues.
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On May 24 2013 02:40 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 02:37 HeavenResign wrote:
This is great TB. Question, how much work was there when giving the invites to the top 16 ladder that they were all legitimate players? I imagine not too much, but then again WCS NA dropped the ball when players like PhysicsLee took awhile to get kicked out, then players like Hyun who were in WCS Korea but were just knocking out players just to be removed later on. Just interested in hearing your perspective and if something like ladder ranking feeding into WCS is sustainable given Blizzard's (possible) lack of player knowledge. 512 man open qualifier vs verifying 16 people. Completely different issues.
Yeah I agree, I guess I was asking if you thought ladder ranking (outside of requirements like being masters or having 1200 points in masters), was ever a viable way to seed into WCS based on how this tournament went.
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I really like the ambitions that Gienna and TB is having on this. Now that you guys have done it you have the experience to make next event way better. having local series is great and NA does indeed need it.
I also kinda like the idea of using the ladder for qualy, and the report in first post was fenomenal. after reading this i thought.. i wanna quit my job and work on this.
To me this shows great promise for the future. My only worry is that it might not be the best idea to do things out of idealism, at least when it comes to the business side.
And yes. Dreamhack is fenomenal. Best in the biz.. appart from certain pause songs.. "put your ass up in the air" ?? really..
And i really like the recent efforts from many to ensure that casual viewers (like me) gets to see the player in the red corner and with their race and all that.
One thing that would be great now is to position their cams to the side they spawned.
Red player, red on the mini map and has the person camera on the side he/she`s starting on in relation to the mini map.
Only issue then is maps with top or bottom spawn.. I can live with that challenge.
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On May 24 2013 02:42 HeavenResign wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 02:40 TotalBiscuit wrote:On May 24 2013 02:37 HeavenResign wrote:
This is great TB. Question, how much work was there when giving the invites to the top 16 ladder that they were all legitimate players? I imagine not too much, but then again WCS NA dropped the ball when players like PhysicsLee took awhile to get kicked out, then players like Hyun who were in WCS Korea but were just knocking out players just to be removed later on. Just interested in hearing your perspective and if something like ladder ranking feeding into WCS is sustainable given Blizzard's (possible) lack of player knowledge. 512 man open qualifier vs verifying 16 people. Completely different issues. Yeah I agree, I guess I was asking if you thought ladder ranking (outside of requirements like being masters or having 1200 points in masters), was ever a viable way to seed into WCS based on how this tournament went.
I think it should be a factor certainly
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Awesome. Too bad the money earned was barely 16% of the money spent. But I'm sure it can be improved! A somewhat lower prize, better schedule and with a tad of luck it might be a great success! Thanks you, TB.
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Germany25649 Posts
You guys are kind of amazing. Thanks TB and Genna. Would be cool if you did another one, understandable if you didn't. Can't even imagine the stress.
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Also I wanted to say, thanks Shoutcraft America for having a great map pool. I think the map pool is better than WCS NA's pool.
Blizzard is getting there in terms of properly managing the ladder pool, hopefully with more co-ordination from tournaments all WCS regions can have the same (great) map pool.
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Damn I feel like I missed a blast. Looking forward to sca2.
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Great job with this tournament TB & everyone else involved. Too bad about the technical difficulties. I also really appreciate the transparency you're showing in this thread. I hope there will be more tournaments like this one that foster local growth!
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Can we close the other thread and just link responses here?
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it was a great concept for a tournament
hope you guys dont give up and continue on with this format
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5/5
Great to see your ideas about the tournament. I personlly tuned in for SHOUTcraft over WCS EU because of exactly the values you guys wanted to promote. Seeing players like HelloKitty, Drunkenboi, State and Kane to compete was really fun to watch, these less known players produced good games and by watching them I felt like I could actually support players who I cannot see anywhere else but who would be a great great addition to international pro-scene.
I can only wish that you and Genna end up continuing this series, or at least something similar. For this tournaments where there are no "guaranteed money finishing Koreans" are of huge importance for supporting these lesser known players both financially and also publicity-wise. Additionally your broadcasting hours were really nice. I understand the critique about broadcasting an American tournament during the working hours in NA, but still your choice allowed following the tournament from Finland (GMT +2), which is no small feat. Usually any NA events are practically dead for me, as the broadcasting hours would mean staying awake basically all night. And what's better than showing these great American platyers to European audience, when we usually would have really hard times getting to see even a glimpse of this boys playing.
Thanks for the tournament!
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On May 24 2013 02:55 Crownlol wrote:
Can we close the other thread and just link responses here?
That'd be cool, that thread is obsolete now because the information it was based on was incomplete and old
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On May 24 2013 00:43 TotalBiscuit wrote:
I genuinely appreciate the fervour of these fans and because of them I have hope for the future. At the same time though I feel like a complete failure for letting them down.
Now stop right there mister! I hope that you don't feel like SCA "let us down" for having some hiccups. I think everyone can see that you and Genna did the best damn job you could considering the circumstances and that is all you can do! SCA was great and I'm still shocked by dat pricepool.
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Germany25649 Posts
On May 24 2013 02:59 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 02:55 Crownlol wrote:
Can we close the other thread and just link responses here? That'd be cool, that thread is obsolete now because the information it was based on was incomplete and old
I have done this!
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I want to genuinely thank you and Genna for all the effort you put into this. I hope there will be another SCA!
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To TB: I really enjoyed watching SCA. Good job even if the show was hammered with technical issues 
From a casual's pov, I think there should be a tournament like this that helps introduce lesser known NA players, something that will push amateurs or high masters/grand masters to become pros. Something like an amateur league that displays NA player's capability and skill. Profit or going break-even is probably hard but I hope the scene will find a way.
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Just logged in to say thanks to you, John and Genna. The EU shoutcrafts will be sorely missed, but good luck to you in your future endeavors.
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so if this tournament would aim for break even then the prize pool would have to be reduced from 10.000 to 1.000.
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TB, please follow the directions included in this song.
+ Show Spoiler +
(We want more! SCNA was awesome.)
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I would actually watch games specifically casted by TB and Day9, but when I tuned in that evening, it turned out there were only PvP and ZvZ. And maybe there were some PvZs later, but it was too late for me anyway
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Awesome. Glad to support NA. Hope you both get feeling better.
Have to say, despite all the problems this was still one of my favorite tournaments to watch (granted I'm still really new to the sc2 scene), but it had a lot of character that most of them lack.
Here's hoping for a season 2 no matter the revisions.
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Great blog, very thankful for what you and Genna have done with this SCA, and I do really hope to see more in the future.
You hit the region locking, local heroes and proper regional development of eSports, the player support/sustenance, the reasons for viewership numbers... all right on the head.
Much more respect gained via this endeavor and this blog.
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Thanks a lot to you and your lady for putting this up. Watched it every time I had the opportunity to do it, I hope there is a next time and you'll manage to (at least) even the cost for it!
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Hopefully we'll get to see a second season in some form. Did you consider putting the production in the hands of someone else where you just did the casting and things behind the curtain?
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What an excellent post! This is quite reassuring after those distressing tweets that hinted at future SCAs being canceled due to comments on reddit.
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TB great write up. This likely won't get read or caught by you but you don't need to procure a T3 or pay those costs. I'm a network engineer and depending upon your area and a little research a simple dual residential ISP setup with say a pfSense firewall/router doing load balancing would do the trick. If you'd like to discuss it shoot me a PM.
Thanks so much for the tournament I loved watching it and have some of the VODs I missed queued up for this weekend.
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On May 24 2013 03:55 zachreborn wrote:
TB great write up. This likely won't get read or caught by you but you don't need to procure a T3 or pay those costs. I'm a network engineer and depending upon your area and a little research a simple dual residential ISP setup with say a pfSense firewall/router doing load balancing would do the trick. If you'd like to discuss it shoot me a PM.
Thanks so much for the tournament I loved watching it and have some of the VODs I missed queued up for this weekend.
Yeah I thought about bonding, I did that in the UK, but the only ISP That does 5 up in this area is TWC who suck so even if I bound 2 DSL lines together, teh speed would be too awful to be useful
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I certainly watched a couple days of it and thought it was a very beneficial thing for the scene. I wouldn't have watched an invitational. I think it's good when tournaments mean something. The GSL can legitimately call their champion the best player in the world, and certainly the WCS seasonal/year finals can do that. This tournament legitimately produced a "best on the American ladder". That's not as prestigious a title, but it's a real title. An invitational is just "best of these 8 random people who are popular" and that's really not very exciting.
Also, WCS America has horrible casting. This did not. I don't understand how NA has all these great casters, and none of them are casting the most prestigious tournament.
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On May 24 2013 03:00 tuoli9 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 00:43 TotalBiscuit wrote:
I genuinely appreciate the fervour of these fans and because of them I have hope for the future. At the same time though I feel like a complete failure for letting them down.
Now stop right there mister! I hope that you don't feel like SCA "let us down" for having some hiccups. I think everyone can see that you and Genna did the best damn job you could considering the circumstances and that is all you can do! SCA was great and I'm still shocked by dat pricepool.
I don't feel let down. It's not like there was some entry fee and I don't feel like I got my money's worth or something- I loved the concept, and thoroughly enjoyed the broadcast.
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Have you thought about moving to Kansas City and trying to utilize google fiber?
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I watched most of the shows. Very enjoyable, great work.
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On May 24 2013 02:36 Penev wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 01:51 TotalBiscuit wrote:On May 24 2013 01:40 Eury wrote:
I'm just curious how you define competitive with WCS EU? I mean they usually have around 40-60k viewers every day across all streams. You really only came close to that the first day. I don't think you understand what competitive means. Wow, that's a bit harsh. Maybe you should explain it to him then? Or is there some bad history between the two of you?
It's not TB's job to educate random internet posters on things that take a mighty couple of seconds to google and absorb the information.
Great event, all things considered. Far from perfect, certainly, but also nowhere near a failure. I enjoyed it quite a bit, technical difficulties notwithstanding. In fact for me personally they weren't *too* much of an issue since I'm used to having multiple streams open and tuning in and out selectively so there's always content for me to watch while I wait for a tournament to start/resume.
I think with a little more preparation, better conditions schedule-wise and technical-wise and a bit of luck, a future SHOUTCraft America could be a remarkable success. Hopefully those favourable circumstances will present themselves and allow a next event to be held.
Hwaiting~
I will say though, I did sorely miss the TotalHalibut content but if anything, its absence will only make me more excited to watch it.
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I also give a 5/5!
Even with the tech issues that ran through the tourny, it was some of the most fun I have had watching starcraft. I am fairly new to the game, and scene in general, and I was blown away!
One of the things that I love you about you TB and by extension Genna as well....is your honesty and front facing posture to the issues that were there. It is wonderful seeing someone acknowledge it and state what they can do better next time. How many people in your standing would say I need to learn to be a better OBS or get one on site to do it? Not many. It shows you care about your brand and your product.
I must tell you, while I have respected you for awhile, this has cemented that 100% It was a great show and wonderful thing you and the Mrs. are doing for the NA scene. Please keep it up. Lord knows we need the help lol.
To steal a line from your blog...America, Fighting!!!
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On May 24 2013 04:02 Lunares wrote:
Have you thought about moving to Kansas City and trying to utilize google fiber?
This is... not as crazy as it sounds. Were I making a living from streaming content, I'd probably consider the option.
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Been waiting for this write up! :-)
Like to hear that you dont consider it a failure. I myself didnt watch much, simply becouse I dont have 24 hours a day to watch SC2 and I am from EU, so ofcourse when I find time I an more inclined to watch EU competition. However, Id like to give Genna, TB and everyone else involved a cheers for doing this and encouraging local competition across the pond. However TB, if you do this again, please watch your health! we dont need you or Genna getting a heart attack from over-work and stress.
I have a question, however, I noticed that the revenue from the turnament was lower than I thought it would be. Was it lower than You expected?
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On May 24 2013 04:00 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 03:55 zachreborn wrote:
TB great write up. This likely won't get read or caught by you but you don't need to procure a T3 or pay those costs. I'm a network engineer and depending upon your area and a little research a simple dual residential ISP setup with say a pfSense firewall/router doing load balancing would do the trick. If you'd like to discuss it shoot me a PM.
Thanks so much for the tournament I loved watching it and have some of the VODs I missed queued up for this weekend. Yeah I thought about bonding, I did that in the UK, but the only ISP That does 5 up in this area is TWC who suck so even if I bound 2 DSL lines together, teh speed would be too awful to be useful
I'm unsure of where you are located but I think I recall NC somewhere. Must be out a bit from some suburbs to not even have comcast or verizon as a viable option? How about 4G coverage? Even a load balanced 4G plan with your TWC could be useful. Obviously the round trip delay would make playing games harder but casting shouldn't cause issue.
I'm unsure how far in you've looked but I have customers down in Raleigh which I could speak with to see what is available if I'm remember correct anyhow and you are in fact based out of NC.
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On May 24 2013 04:18 zachreborn wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 04:00 TotalBiscuit wrote:On May 24 2013 03:55 zachreborn wrote:
TB great write up. This likely won't get read or caught by you but you don't need to procure a T3 or pay those costs. I'm a network engineer and depending upon your area and a little research a simple dual residential ISP setup with say a pfSense firewall/router doing load balancing would do the trick. If you'd like to discuss it shoot me a PM.
Thanks so much for the tournament I loved watching it and have some of the VODs I missed queued up for this weekend. Yeah I thought about bonding, I did that in the UK, but the only ISP That does 5 up in this area is TWC who suck so even if I bound 2 DSL lines together, teh speed would be too awful to be useful I'm unsure of where you are located but I think I recall NC somewhere. Must be out a bit from some suburbs to not even have comcast or verizon as a viable option? How about 4G coverage? Even a load balanced 4G plan with your TWC could be useful. Obviously the round trip delay would make playing games harder but casting shouldn't cause issue. I'm unsure how far in you've looked but I have customers down in Raleigh which I could speak with to see what is available if I'm remember correct anyhow and you are in fact based out of NC.
I am based outside of Charlotte.
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As a foreign caster for this event it was an absolute pleasure to be a part of such a great event.
The Russian scene loved it and after talking to many viewers they would love a second season of SCA
Everyone can nitpick at little issues here and there but most of the issues were out of TB's/Genna's hands on top of having to work around WCS for the most part(which needs to be reformatted in many aspects).
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On May 24 2013 04:11 Crownlol wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 04:02 Lunares wrote:
Have you thought about moving to Kansas City and trying to utilize google fiber? This is... not as crazy as it sounds. Were I making a living from streaming content, I'd probably consider the option.
When you got a wife and kid it makes it harder to just pick up and move.
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Keep it up TB! It's all much appreciated what you do for the community!
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
Thanks for the clarification TB.
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5/5, it's nice to be treated as an adult and shown transparency. GL in your future endeavors
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TB, my deepest thanks for taking a risk w/ the NA scene and putting up a tournament as well as you could.
Wish you the best and hope to see it happen again!
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Very clearly and well written TB. Personally I love the tournament during the weekdays, I watched it each afternoon/evening it was on. Also, in reference to the section about how you 'rode the hype wave' personally I thought that Idra casting was incredible! I'd love to see him again, and day9 as always.
Obviously the technical issues will be straightened out, and I really hope there will be another one! what made it really interesting to watch was how players would talk about how they always met each other on the ladder etc and since they know each others play styles so well it adds an extra level of mind games.
5/5 article, 6/5 tournament, and I hope there's another one in the future!
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Thanks a lot for the post mortem. Quite interesting to see that only ~25% of the costs are covered through streaming income...
(BTW, because i don't like reading long posts in the forum, I put the post in a [PDF] and formatted it a little bit, maybe someone wants to read it again )
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I watch 4-5 hours of ladder streams a day, either directly or as background while doing other things. Shoutcraft NA really pumped up the quality of the ladder viewing experience. Nony made a solid run and had a shot at getting in last day. Vibe put on a move as well. Incontrol and Catz both talked about gunning for a slot, and their extra interest made me extra interested. All of these guys were hitting people above them in the leaderboard, and I was refreshing GM list every morning and evening to track who had moved up or down. The value added from the existence of SCA was amazing, and I hope to see it continue.
The tournament itself was solid. I enjoyed the pregame interviews, and it was awesome seeing the faces of players who were just names on GM list before. Thank you for bringing us this fabulous event Genna and TB!
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However. The elephant in the room is WCS schedule. With 16+ hours a day of Starcraft going on and an intense, rushed schedule within the first season, who is to say if it is even feasible to run anything other than weekend-warrior events in future? This is the immovable object we are fighting against and trying our best not to meet head on. Even if we can beat WCS NA in numbers, why would we want to fight them anyway? We certainly don't want to go against WCS EU and when we did run into them we suffered. I don't even know if there is a solution to this, I'm just hoping for a more manageable schedule that does not take over weekends as much as it does or shows that massively over-run that we have to try and dodge.
Why aren't more people hyperventilating about this? Where's Slasher/DJ Wheat or other alleged esports 'journalists' reporting on the potential short term and long term impact of WCS on the rest of the independent tournament scene?
Dang.
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I think a tournament with only people from North America, could be great. I'd like to see Shoutcraft America be all the top players from here like Scarlett/goswser/huk/suppy fan favourites like CatZ/minigun and with newer top players and see them battle it out. I don't see why one competition can't region-lock. That means no violet/polt/demuslim despite the fact that they may live in NA, we have MLGs and Dreamhacks to see everyone compete with each other, we should have one to determine who's the best in NA.
Also I think its clear to see that Idra commenting grabbed peoples interest.
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Always with great post tournament wrap ups, thanks for the great event TB.
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I (think I) agree with 100% of your sentiments, TB.
I do believe expanding the initial round to 32 players and allowing time for other high end (huk, idra, incontrol, catz, etc) NA/SA pros to hit the proper GM rankings will do wonders for the tournament.
The casting lineup for SCA1 was pretty damned good. I do believe this helps viewer numbers (if only slightly). On a related note, I think it's one of the factors that helped SCA1 beat out WCS AM -axeltoss is probably the sole reason I just cannot watch those games.
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On May 24 2013 04:02 Lunares wrote:
Have you thought about moving to Kansas City and trying to utilize google fiber? KC isn't exactly a hub for things. However, Google is bringing fiber to Austin, that might be a more suitable location.
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Damn, this is a great post. Really nails the core issues of eSports growth down, and from someone who's actually doing shit in the scene.
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Thanks for putting on this tournament and thanks for this clarification thread TB! I'm really glad to hear you are not giving up on the idea.
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Such a great post detailing everything that happened with the tournament! I was a huge supporter of the event as soon as I found out about it. I made sure to bring up details leading up to the event and coverage during the week on my show.
I've said this on the reddit threads and on twitter but I feel it needs to be said again.
These kinds of tournaments are vital for the growth of the North American scene! Up and coming players are able to show off their skills, get their name out there, and build a fan base for themselves and the scene is so necessary right now! I know i'm not alone in wanting to do anything in my power to help promote on going events like this!
Thanks for all your guys hard work in putting this on!
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Really amazing article/blog John. Great insight and transparency, thank you so much for posting this up!
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Adding fuel to a dwindling fire
Most viewers have not touched upon this but many NA pros have managed it. One of the best things this tournament accomplished was turning the NA ladder into a competitive warzone as players vied for precious top 16 spots. Everyone we've spoken to reported an immediate increase in competitive play resulting partially from top pros returning to American ladder from Korean or European grandmaster as well as everyone simply taking their games more seriously and giving 100% to win. The ladder became a better place to train due to those factors and the very thing that Blizzard claimed it wanted to do, “elevate” the level of play on the weakest ladder, was accomplished here even if only for a short time. If you want to elevate the ladder, you have to give it meaning. WCS does not do a thing to encourage that. If you want to beat Koreans you have to prepare specifically for them, you cannot just play ladder and hope to carry the day. Koreans will not come and play on NA ladder just because they are in WCS NA, that is inferior practice. Most Koreans treat NA ladder as stream fodder where they can slap around some foreigners with inferior builds and not have to show their true strength. Don't get me wrong that's totally fine and it's cool for NA streamers to meet up with these guys and show exciting battles, but true competition is needed. I believe Gennas decision to base on the tournament on the ladder was the correct one and if a second season occursI want to emphasize that even further, giving seeding based on ladder rank and playing over a much longer period to really get the ladder fired up. One of the legitimate criticisms of this event is that we did not give players enough time to qualify and that some pros were locked out of GM even though they shouldn't really have been. We aim to address this in future events by ensuring a longer qualification period before the ladder locks.
This.
Thank you TB for this very specific thing. Once again, you need to foster local competition to get to the grand stage. No one does it, except for Shoutcraft.
Thanks once again.
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Region lock is the way, now that no NA are left in WCS NA, I have 0 interest watching it. Why would I? If I want to see koreans, I'll watch GSL. I want to see the NA players get more spotlight, I'm actually interested in seeing who is the best NA player, who is the best EU player, not just which korean happened to bother to this tournament.
Really sucks about the ISP problems. ISP #1 killing esports huehue.
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reassuring to hear this, despite this being an emotional, draining and frustrating experience due to all the technical difficulties i still think this was a success and i watched it avidly. it seems you've learned a lot from this and hopefully if or when you do embark on the second season, it will be a majestic triumph
i like the idea of using common sense regarding letting demuslim, polt, violet etc into a 32 man tournament, aslong as they have a commitent to NA and actively add to the scene i don't see a big problem. you also cast better than you think, a fine play by play and with the right kind of co caster, day9, idra, rotterdam, axslav i really enjoyed your work. hopefully wcs finds a nice balance and leaves some room for other tourneys, but keep up the good work and keep the ladder relevant, tis exciting.
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I cant tell enough how awesome you are!
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"SHOUTcraft 4 stands to this day as a viewer record for an independent online event, crushing even WCS Europes concurrent viewers."
Is this in reference to StarCraft 2 or?
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On May 24 2013 05:16 daemir wrote:
Region lock is the way, now that no NA are left in WCS NA, I have 0 interest watching it. Why would I? If I want to see koreans, I'll watch GSL. I want to see the NA players get more spotlight, I'm actually interested in seeing who is the best NA player, who is the best EU player, not just which korean happened to bother to this tournament.
Really sucks about the ISP problems. ISP #1 killing esports huehue.
It's rare that I see a post where I agree with all of the points, but, high five friend.
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Curious, did you ever consider OBS over X-Split? It's a vastly superior program in my (and many others' opinion).
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On May 24 2013 05:45 Sunfish wrote:
Curious, did you ever consider OBS over X-Split? It's a vastly superior program in my (and many others' opinion).
His answer to that from the reddit thread
OBS is completely incapable of the level of production I need for this event, not to mention the last couple of times I used it it actually wrecked the shows and mangled the vods. It is good for amateur streamers/guys that just wanna show gameplay, not for pro tournaments or complex productions.
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TB for President.
You're vision is worth fighting for.
BillyEve
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Thanks for the tournament, Bains :-)
I'm new to the game and to watching competitions, but I really enjoyed it. The games might not reach KR Code S levels of perfection, but there's plenty there to keep my interest. I also really enjoyed the casting - Idra in particular provided a really good balance of analysis and humour.
The only things I would change are the interview formats. I like listening to the players before the match, but I'd rather you didn't try to get some BM out of them! Hearing that someone is pleased they won isn't that interesting either. Still, I understand why you do it, and won't turn off because of it.
As to ISP reliability, have you considered getting a few different residential connections, if possible, and using an off-the-shelf box to bond and share them? Might work out a lot cheaper than getting a dedicated line in.
Thanks again!
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I posted in the other thread (the locked one). I just wanted to clarify, I wasn't faulting the tournament for me not watching live, and I enjoyed watching the VODs. I was not trying to complain haha.
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Korean va Korean is getting old. Love WCS EU and enjoyed Shotcraft. I watched about 70% of it and hope to again
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Genna, you are a BOSS.
Lets see, Setup a premier SCII tournament (CHECK), Manage a SUCCESSFUL Korean eSports team (CHECK), Be a MOM (CHECK), Be married to TB and attempt to keep him in line (CHECK)
How the hell do you manage all that? Hats off to you!!
As mentioned elsewhere, I REALLY enjoyed the live ladder commentary as the Ladder Lock happened. That was spontaneous and just plain fun.
The tournament had issues, no doubt.
Very all-encompassing review TB.
Bottom Line I have watched all of it, LIVE or VOD.
This was fun and engaging and I hope you can do it again.
Best wishes to all who assisted in this and keep up the good fight!
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I tried to watch it myself, but the lag issue made it impossible to follow and I turned the stream off. In hindsight I probably should have just let it idle while muted.
I fully support the region locking too and agree with most of your points. NA needs a tournament like SCA, perhaps with less prize pool in favor of more frequent tournaments to be more economical. I have no idea what kind of costs Homestory Cup runs, but they prove you can have a very entertaining tournament in your livingroom on a couch.
I applaud what you guys are trying to do and truly wish you the best of luck.
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Thanks for the effort. Though I don't follow SC 2 a lot these days, it's still nice to know there are NA players out there competing and events to support them. Given that Blizzard's priorities is in advancing global Starcraft, there has to be other organizations looking out for NA players.
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Yo TB, in order to reduce the financial strain, would it be feasible to reduce the prize-pool significantly and rely on the tip-jar system to kind of make up for it? Maybe giving and option to donate to the overall prize pool or something.
So I guess my question is whether the tip-jar cash is enough to make this not a big missing out of money for players.
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On May 24 2013 06:27 Epamynondas wrote:
Yo TB, in order to reduce the financial strain, would it be feasible to reduce the prize-pool significantly and rely on the tip-jar system to kind of make up for it? Maybe giving and option to donate to the overall prize pool or something.
So I guess my question is whether the tip-jar cash is enough to make this not a big missing out of money for players.
Speaking of which, it would be interesting to know how much the players have managed to earn this time in the form of tips.
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Thanks for the info and the tournament, I hope you can run more similar tournaments and make it work better for you and other people working on it. The Internet is definitely something very important for you so take your time and deal with that first (I think I noticed TGS Podcast stream dropping a lot too so it seems to be an universal problem).
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Love reading TB's debriefs. Sounds a bit more reasonable then Genna's 150 characters (naturally). Even if they don't do another season I am glad that they're respecting what they did achieve given everything else. Honestly 50k for the finals is just silly considering how few people from NA could watch.
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It's really great that you're not simply resting on the fact that you did what NCS NA should have done, and are holding yourself to a higher standard. Trust me, you did more than enough for the NA scene in the past few weeks than Blizzard/MLG/IPL/NASL has done in three years. You're the first group of people (well, husband and wife, if we can call that a group) that promised to help NA players and actually stuck with it. Everyone else ran to the nearest translator before the first six months, and it's refreshing to see someone actually stand by us in the NA scene.
You know all the problems and you know all the solutions, or I trust are smart enough to figure them out. So I'll just say "Thank you" for not giving up on the NA pro scene like so many others. If it's dead in a year (which it was headed for before SCA with the insanity that is/was the MLG WCS NA), at least you can say you tried. And I can say I watched.
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I really do want to see more. I really enjoyed watching the tournament. I only wish the scheduling could have been better, but I get that there's a limit to what you can do. Just...the grand finals went by without my even being aware until after the fact T_T
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great write up.
Blizzard may not be the 'enemy' however they sure as hell make it extremely difficult for other tournaments that they do not directly influence to occur successfully.....
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On May 24 2013 06:27 Epamynondas wrote:
Yo TB, in order to reduce the financial strain, would it be feasible to reduce the prize-pool significantly and rely on the tip-jar system to kind of make up for it? Maybe giving and option to donate to the overall prize pool or something.
So I guess my question is whether the tip-jar cash is enough to make this not a big missing out of money for players.
This. I believe that if a tip jar prize pool was enabled prior to the tournament, the pool would have been larger than $10,000. This would alleviate the financial burden significantly. Would be a cool concept to try out in the future. Thanks for supporting and trying to grow the NA scene.
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On May 24 2013 06:35 MasterOfPuppets wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 06:27 Epamynondas wrote:
Yo TB, in order to reduce the financial strain, would it be feasible to reduce the prize-pool significantly and rely on the tip-jar system to kind of make up for it? Maybe giving and option to donate to the overall prize pool or something.
So I guess my question is whether the tip-jar cash is enough to make this not a big missing out of money for players. Speaking of which, it would be interesting to know how much the players have managed to earn this time in the form of tips.
Yea, it would be, but It cannot be done because PayPal shat themselves and denied the possibility of this information.
Only way to get info is from the earners themselves.
At least two of them said they got $500+, but I don't remember which.
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It was painful to see the revenue from ads contrasting how much it was invested. Things don't always go as planned but hopefully the community can be more understanding now with this statement.
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Ya know, I only was able to tune in on and off due to my busy work schedule, but even with the technical difficulties this was an amazingly fun show to watch. I really hope something like ShoutCraft America gets put on again, watching NA players is quite refreshing from time to time. Keep it up TB!
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On May 24 2013 08:33 CygNus X-1 wrote:
This. I believe that if a tip jar prize pool was enabled prior to the tournament, the pool would have been larger than $10,000.
Which you can't do, breaks the license agreement.
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Good guy TB. Thanks for SCA and always love the transparency
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Thanks for posting this. Hopefully you can get another one of these going.
I feel like there simply just wasn't as much knowledge about these out either. I didn't realize that it was happening so quickly, and also missed some of the days because of work. Good luck in the future! I hope to see another one...
I also agree about the "best games" being a vocal minority. Nobody wants to watch the Yankess (/insert the best consistent football club in europe here) dominate every game; I would much rather watch my local team (the Astros ugh or the Rangers) than just see the same people dominating every time.
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TB please keep this going for a second season.
I didn't tune into much so I can't comment on the "quality of games" or whatever, but I completely agree with your hypothesis about the state of NA SC2 and how it needs to move forward to survive. Sure they may not be the best but they are still good, and if this was a bi-monthly event they could train for the game quality can only go up. Also with more of the BIG NA pros focusing on the up-hill battle qualifying for WCS NA this could be an additional incentive to hit the NA ladder hard.
Finally, instead of invites having ladder spots being the seeds is super awesome, so long as you take appropriate action to prevent hackers and other cheats. Make the ladder have meaning.
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Also, have you considered swapping to OBS from XSplit? In understand you've already spent the money on XSplit, but OBS seems to be shaping up to be a much more stable piece of software, with most of the same functionality AND it's free/open source.
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I totally support ShoutCraft and helping American talent. Good job, TB. I look forward to Season 2
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On May 24 2013 12:03 Reithan wrote:
Also, have you considered swapping to OBS from XSplit? In understand you've already spent the money on XSplit, but OBS seems to be shaping up to be a much more stable piece of software, with most of the same functionality AND it's free/open source.
OBS doesn't do even a fraction of what I need it to do. Great for amateurs and people that just stream gameplay, no good for professional events.
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I believe the “ONLY THE BEST GAMES” guys are a vocal minority
Doesn't surprise me too much. Purely anecdotally I know a lot of people who got utterly turned off Korean vs Korean all day every day. Always felt like an elitism remark; "I only watch the top tier of Starcraft as I love the game so much", but I'll always admit I was excited as hell when I saw TLO hit the Ro8 of WCS EU. The scene as a whole is more fun with diversity, and the home-team always gets love (Demuslim being the big one flying the flag for us).
As for the internet worries; don't suppose its possible to work out a deal with MLG/another large company and use their offices as a broadcasting station over the duration of the tournament? Imagine they have a more stable line than a home network. They'd charge or want some involvement however, so I'd get it if it was unpalatable.
Keep up the good work, TB; hopefully you had some way of making those costs back, however. Would hate it if this wasn't long term viable.
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This was great. I can't believe the (lack of) luck you guys had with technical issues.
I really appreciate the effort and the idea and I hope that NA-only or truly region-specific tournaments can find a niche market and be profitable/successful for everyone involved in the future.
Keep it up.
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On May 24 2013 00:59 Shirin wrote:
Will there be an audio version like before?
What? You mean don't automatically hear his voice in your head when you read this? XD
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I didn't watch this, how did Suppy get knocked out in the ro16?
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Poland3748 Posts
On May 24 2013 05:16 daemir wrote:
Region lock is the way, now that no NA are left in WCS NA, I have 0 interest watching it. Why would I? If I want to see koreans, I'll watch GSL. I want to see the NA players get more spotlight, I'm actually interested in seeing who is the best NA player, who is the best EU player, not just which korean happened to bother to this tournament.
Really sucks about the ISP problems. ISP #1 killing esports huehue.
Actually most of best europeans are still in WCS EU (except for Snute who is in NA). Surprisingly the biggest upsets - ThorZaIN and NaNiwa - happened in groups without any koreans. Also it's honest to treat ForGG as european considering how long he is staying in EU (though he could start learning some non-korean language). So I think EU is doing just fine. Just enough koreans to make things more interesting.
The NA problem is truly an issue. I guess one can argue that best NA players play mostly in Challenger league but that's something quite disappointing to NA fan (though theognis 2-0 Jaedong looks funny).
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On May 24 2013 13:03 Kisra wrote:Doesn't surprise me too much. Purely anecdotally I know a lot of people who got utterly turned off Korean vs Korean all day every day. Always felt like an elitism remark; "I only watch the top tier of Starcraft as I love the game so much", but I'll always admit I was excited as hell when I saw TLO hit the Ro8 of WCS EU. The scene as a whole is more fun with diversity, and the home-team always gets love (Demuslim being the big one flying the flag for us). As for the internet worries; don't suppose its possible to work out a deal with MLG/another large company and use their offices as a broadcasting station over the duration of the tournament? Imagine they have a more stable line than a home network. They'd charge or want some involvement however, so I'd get it if it was unpalatable. Keep up the good work, TB; hopefully you had some way of making those costs back, however. Would hate it if this wasn't long term viable.
While I agree that diversity among the players adds much more to the competition, I really want to see the possibly best games (especially when it comes to terran play) and most of the times only the koreans seem to deliver... Watched the finals on instarcraft's stream and must say it was the most boring match I've seen in a while, and that's no criticism to the format or production or anything, please don't get me wrong. I had the stream going for support, but it really wasn't entertaining :/
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totalbuscuit and genna did a great job for shoutcraft, all these haters hating on SCA and me should just stop hating and enjoy the game in general. hating is bad.
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Calgary25964 Posts
Very interesting to read about.
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Really well written blog, I there will be more Shoutcraft NA tournaments, I really supported this idea even though I'm not from NA
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The downtime between the matches was often unbearable for me as a European who could not watch all night. But I watched some of the NA GM action anyway because when TotalBiscuit is behind it, I know that I will get quality of production. So I was disappointed by the downtimes, but tuned in on other days regardless because it still was a tournament run and cast by TB.
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On May 24 2013 13:03 Kisra wrote:Doesn't surprise me too much. Purely anecdotally I know a lot of people who got utterly turned off Korean vs Korean all day every day. Always felt like an elitism remark; "I only watch the top tier of Starcraft as I love the game so much", but I'll always admit I was excited as hell when I saw TLO hit the Ro8 of WCS EU. The scene as a whole is more fun with diversity, and the home-team always gets love (Demuslim being the big one flying the flag for us). As for the internet worries; don't suppose its possible to work out a deal with MLG/another large company and use their offices as a broadcasting station over the duration of the tournament? Imagine they have a more stable line than a home network. They'd charge or want some involvement however, so I'd get it if it was unpalatable. Keep up the good work, TB; hopefully you had some way of making those costs back, however. Would hate it if this wasn't long term viable.
I agree partially about wanting to see foreigners, but I do want to see the best games. I guess my view though is that I want to see foreigners involved in those "best games" as well, and I'm willing to support a tournament system that gives them the opportunity to get to that level.
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Everything that Genna and you does is a blessing for E-sports.
Always supported you and always will ! no matter what !
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Poland3748 Posts
On May 24 2013 19:40 GaNgStaRR.ElV wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 13:03 Kisra wrote:I believe the “ONLY THE BEST GAMES” guys are a vocal minority Doesn't surprise me too much. Purely anecdotally I know a lot of people who got utterly turned off Korean vs Korean all day every day. Always felt like an elitism remark; "I only watch the top tier of Starcraft as I love the game so much", but I'll always admit I was excited as hell when I saw TLO hit the Ro8 of WCS EU. The scene as a whole is more fun with diversity, and the home-team always gets love (Demuslim being the big one flying the flag for us). As for the internet worries; don't suppose its possible to work out a deal with MLG/another large company and use their offices as a broadcasting station over the duration of the tournament? Imagine they have a more stable line than a home network. They'd charge or want some involvement however, so I'd get it if it was unpalatable. Keep up the good work, TB; hopefully you had some way of making those costs back, however. Would hate it if this wasn't long term viable. I agree partially about wanting to see foreigners, but I do want to see the best games. I guess my view though is that I want to see foreigners involved in those "best games" as well, and I'm willing to support a tournament system that gives them the opportunity to get to that level.
If I want to watch best games, I watch WCS Korea and Porleague. If I watch WCS NA or WCS EU, I want to see best europeans and best americans. In this regard WCS partially succeeded (EU) and partially delivered complete disaster (NA).
As much as I am entertained by high quality play of Innovation and Soulkey, it's thrilling to see DIMAGA, Lucifron and Stephano to win and it's a bummer to see HerO and Revival elminating both Suppy and Scarlett.
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as I said in the previous thread:
a follow-up tournament (should there be one) would
- have better (known) players now that SCA1 got their attention
- have less downtime, better scheduling, fewer/no technical issues (this is because TB doesn't strike me as a guy who repeats mistakes even if they were not his in the first place (shoutout to Timewarner Cable)
- make the ladder streams of the players much more interesting
Conclusion:
Waiting for the announcement of SCA 2.0
p.s.:
You should name the trophy "The Bain Cup" or "Lady Bain's Cup", and it should be a challenge cup (if someone wins it 3 times he/she can keep it)
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SCA is a great idea and I loved pretty much everything about it except the technical issues.
The quality of the games and casting/observing was quite varied but very entertaining, and pretty much what I expected from this type of tournament.
Loved the pre game banter, sometimes just to get a face to the names but also fun to see some bm/politeness/mindgames (He always does X to me on ladder!)
LOVED the qualification frenzy.
I was actually surprised by just how hungry I was to get a peek into the top american ladder and I really really hope there will be future tournaments like this.
Hrm, need to win some lottery big so I can pelt the Bains with coins. =)
SHOUTcraft fighting!
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Maybe Blizzard should consider lifting the non-compete rule a bit. Making it on from Ro16 or Ro8. Having a job and other responsibilities I can't even watch all of GSL Ro32, let alone the rest of the cool stuff going on.
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Extensive. Hope you'll find ways to make another season possible.
So, what is the actual story with Kane's trophy?
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Very interesting and informative piece, I love to read about behind the scenes.
The tournament was exactly like you called it: "A catalyst for growth".
Hope that it will continue, but that's just a personal opinion.
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Being from Sweden it continually boggles my mind how bad internet is in certain countries, especially the US. For the past 10 years or so I'm pretty sure I have had the 3MB upload it took to host this stream, and always with good stability. I understand we're very lucky to have this good internet in Sweden, but it really does put it into another perspective when someone who's entire business is reliant on having a good, stable internet connection really can't get it. To put it frank that is pretty fucking terrible.
I hope the technical issues get worked out if you decide to do another one, and I hope you do!
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I just wanted to thank TB for posting this. I saw on reddit that someone posted about how MLG gets hated on for a small screwup but TB has all sorts of screwups and the community continues to love him. For me - this sort of post, ownership of content and production, and explanation to the community is why I will continue to support TB and Genna as well as Axiom!
As far as SCA goes - I tuned in day 1 & 2, and have to admit I felt like my day was wasted. I was super excited to watch and stayed tuned in the entire day, really hoping things would turn around. My husband and I talked a lot about how this would such to have happen to you at your job and 40k people are watching you!!! Since that first day, we watched VOD only, so we could skip the hours of non-happening, regames, and random issues while still maximizing our entertainment hours.
We both work full (to more than full) time jobs, raid in World of Warcraft 5-6 hours a week (which requires lots more hours of prep), and the weekends are spent taking care of the house, errands, and life in general while trying to fit in as much WoW, Diablo, Neverwinter, Path of Exile, and SC2, as we can, along with some of the other games we play. We watch SC2 in small spurts, so tourneys like this work out best. I have to give up a lot to spend 9 hours Saturday and 8 hours Sunday in front of the TV. I have stuff to get done - so the format was awesome!! Unfortunately, the finals were WAY outside our ability to watch, and if it's not live it takes us a few weeks to get around to watching events.
I don't want to watch "the best possible games". I want stories. I don't ladder in SC2, but I LOVE playing matchmaking, custom games and sometimes 2V2. I want the NA scene to grow. I want more events I can attend. I want TB and Genna to not be disheartened!
It's a little about the casters for me. I *really* enjoy TB's casting! I really like Idra's casting, but together they were overly analytical, which wasn't all that fun for me. I actually found myself saying "THIS is why Tasteless does well with Artosis!" Tasteless normally drives me nuts (in the screaming at the TV "I DON'T CARE WHAT YOUR FAVORITE COLOR IS!!" kinda way), but I see now how having that sort of personality can really help make the cast more interesting. I haven't watched the games with Day9 yet, but I'm going to watch the VODs this weekend.
I don't normally post anywhere, but I lurk a lot. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who tuned in despite the issues, to help show support for something we all love. For me, this was all about showing Blizzard what I wanted. I don't want GSL level everything all the time. I just want to watch interesting games, be entertained, and have fun. SCA did that, but had a lot of bumps along the way.
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Genna and John,
Thank you for the tournament and this incredibly honest and detailed post mortem. Thank you for putting your resources into this on such a large scale, I really hope for a continuation and given both of your dedication, how can it not get better from here?
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On May 24 2013 22:47 Badboyrune wrote:
Being from Sweden it continually boggles my mind how bad internet is in certain countries
currently paying about $70/month for 0.4mb upload
yay
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I really loved this tournament, especially your casting with day9, idra and husky.
It has so much more warmth and fun to it compared to the seemingly cold castings at MLG.
Please do not get on the all professional train because your casting will loose touch in my opinion.
I liked the atmosphere and considering the major technical difficulties that blizzard layed in your way it was really really good <3
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On May 25 2013 01:10 Masq wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2013 22:47 Badboyrune wrote:
Being from Sweden it continually boggles my mind how bad internet is in certain countries currently paying about $70/month for 0.4mb upload yay
That really does suck I pay about half that for 10mb upload and 100mb download. Data limits are also something that is just about non existent with broadband connections in Sweden, whereas I understand they're quite common in both US and Canada. If a Swedish ISP did that they'd lose customers faster than they could say 'money grubbing'.
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On May 25 2013 02:17 Badboyrune wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2013 01:10 Masq wrote:On May 24 2013 22:47 Badboyrune wrote:
Being from Sweden it continually boggles my mind how bad internet is in certain countries currently paying about $70/month for 0.4mb upload yay That really does suck I pay about half that for 10mb upload and 100mb download. Data limits are also something that is just about non existent with broadband connections in Sweden, whereas I understand they're quite common in both US and Canada. If a Swedish ISP did that they'd lose customers faster than they could say 'money grubbing'.
You don't really have many options, at least in places I've lived in the US. I'm in north carolina. Here, I have two choices, AT&T Uverse and Time Warner. At&t is more expensive and has a data cap. No matter how mad I am at Time Warner, switching makes me worse off.
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TB and Genna,
Thank you for doing this and thank you for your thoughts on the event. +1, would watch again. Good luck in future related endeavors!
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Great post TB. I 100% agree with everything you said. I think relaxing the natural-born citizens requirement is for the best, and the tournament should be restricted to people who have lived in the US for a certain duration. I think having been born in the US is less important than being a member of the NA scene.
I watched this tournament whenever I could, and I would definitely watch another, so I hope there's a sequel! I'm sure if the technical issues are resolved it will be a much greater success.
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I love these intelligent, no BS posts from TB. Really detailed and a joy to read. Thanks for taking the time to write this up. Really goes to show you how much of a keen sense TB has for esports.
Although TB, I think you let your channel suffer way too much for this tournament. Like you already pointed out, you can not afford this again.
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Thanks so much for putting this event on. I am genuinely interested in the NA scene and I was so interested in it that the technical problems wasn't enough to turn me off. I sincerely hope there will be more!~
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Make it a ladder qualifier, jeez. EZPZ as you say.
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SHOUTcraft is much better then WCS NA. It had a soul, it was really player oriented and very entertaining. WCS NA is produced like a classic american cast, which I hate. TB and his team have casted a video game, at WCS NA people cast a "regular sport". SC2 is not regular sport and I personally don't want it to be considered as one, never.
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Why didn't they schedule the Shoutcraft America grand finals for tonight? There's nothing going on right now.
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Thanx for the tournament, please don't let a few chuckle heads on reddit color your opinion on future events.
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On May 24 2013 21:41 Proseat wrote:
Extensive. Hope you'll find ways to make another season possible.
So, what is the actual story with Kane's trophy?
he didn't have a way to take it home - he had carryon only and no check-in - so sasquatch (i think?) took it and will send to him.
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EPT
