EPTIt didn't break!
Perhaps the most surprising thing to a lot of people is that unlike the previous SHOUTcraft America which was plagued by technical problems we suffered a grand total of zero. Yup, none at all. The stream was rock solid the entire way through encoding hundreds of thousands of frames and dropping absolutely none at all. I played it safe this time around. My computer has the horsepower to encode at 60fps with Gamesource in Xsplit without dropping frames, unfortunately Starcraft 2 is a poorly optimised game during large battles on high and ultra detail levels and even on this monstrous rig will drop below 60fps during big fights. Certain maps also have framerate issues which have yet to be fully resolved. Even if Starcraft 2 did benefit heavily from SLI which it does not (it literally receives zero benefit from SLI), Xsplit doesn't play nice with SLI (neither does OBS so stop asking) and the game only uses 2 of the 6 physical 6 virtual cores that my cpu actually has, so it's nowhere near able to utilize my computers full potential. I have to wonder if a second machine with hardware capture to encode would allow the game to stay at 60fps on ultra during big fights but I doubt even that is possible, I'm going to have a word with the guys who do the production at Dreamhack and see if they have some kind of sorcery going on that lets them hold 60fps constantly regardless of fight size, but I have the feeling that they too are dropping below 60. This is something that needs to be sorted out come Legacy of the Void, the games optimisation has only gotten worse over the course of expansions and this causes problems for tournament organisers and players alike.
All of that said however, the choice to go with 30fps on our stream seemed to be the right call and ensured rock solid streaming and framerate experience with increased visual quality for everyone at 720p+. Our stream looked pretty damn good, though I imagine that had something to do with Stronger Colors in Gameheart.
If you're not using Gameheart, you're shooting yourself in the foot
A big round of applause for Gameheart and its developers. Those maps continue to go from strength to strength in terms of their functionality. The ingame scoreboard was a huge timesaver for us and allowed me to reduce the complexity of the production process resulting in less (afaik actually no) production errors. We'll continue to use Gameheart exclusively for any events we run in future and urge other tournaments to do the same. The functionality of these maps is peerless and strong colours imho should become standard for tournament play since it gives a superior viewing experience to spectators. This is particularly true in mirror matchups, specifically ZvZ where the coloured banelings make it much easier for spectators and casters to see exactly what's going on at any given moment in the early game. I've seen some of the upcoming functionality for this map and it's extremely exciting. The sponsor was particularly pleased to see their branding on the map and as a teamowner I've always been happy to see our teams logo there too. Brand awareness is a real thing even if you aren't making money out of it directly, people should see the Axiom logo and know exactly what it is at first glance. Gameheart maps have done a lot to make that happen and they continue to make online matches more viable as promotional tools for teams and sponsors. I honestly have nothing bad to say about Gameheart in its current form and it's only going to get stronger as the new patch brings extensions into play which will allow Gameheart to be used on every map without the team having to individually alter each of them.
Time to get transparent with the numbers
I like transparency, maybe a little too much for other peoples tastes. So instead of telling you what my stats are, I will show them to you.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Qir6abT.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kEaLtTl.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FW6AKge.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4U73cjq.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LR7NaDq.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3pjMaRA.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ehMfxIP.png)
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There ya go. Let's compare to how SHOUTcraft America Season 1 did.
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
Day 2 unique stats on SHOUTcraft America Winter were better than Day 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 stats during the original SHOUTcraft America tournament. Day 2 concurrent stats were better than Day 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 of the original SHOUTcraft America tournament. You can see 2 spikes during SCA that ended up being significantly higher than SCA:W, Day 1 and Day 5. The explanations are fairly simple I think. Day 1 benefited from significant hype but more importantly, curiosity from the community. This curiosity dropped off after the first day and numbers continued to fall throughout the group stage, rallying in the RO8 almost entirely because of IdrAs co-cast, which was shortly after his release from EG and announcement of his intention to cease competing as a professional player and move into casting. This was his first gig after that and the massive publicity surrounding IdrA at the time gave a big boost to the numbers on the day that he was casting. I'm personally quite proud of that move as it proved to be savvy. In this case while IdrA is extremely well-regarded as a cocaster, the hype surrounding him has waned as all things do. The memory of his dismissal is faded but he still commands a significant fanbase and SCA:W absolutely benefited from that, not to mention his stellar analytical ability and dry humour.
Another important thing to consider was the fact that Day 1 clashed with ASUS ROG Northcon. This was a stellar confluence of bad luck on our part. We had scheduled our event so that it would start after ASUS ROG Northcon was supposed to end, however that tournament was plagued with issues and huge delays which meant that the finals overlapped with us significantly. The stars aligned and left a killer round of 4 and an unbelievable story for their finals. Would Jaedong beat the kong curse or would Scarlett at 1 minute to midnight prevent the Korean all-kill? 2 of the most hyped players on the planet were on the stage and unfortunately SCA:W could not compete with that. We suffered on Day 1 from this clash but it didn't end there.
Forfeits
This was by far the most disappointing part of our event and left viewers feeling robbed of series they'd been looking forward. Frankly Day 1 was a disaster when it came to actually showing BO5s. What was supposed to be a full roster of 4 BO5s ended up being 1 actual BO5, 2 forfeits mid-series and a postponed Scarlett vs Hitman match. Demuslim vs HuK was supposed to be the title fight for the evening and many fans were looking forward to it, however instead we saw lackluster play and a mid-series forfeit. Players who are ill cannot play to their full potential, that much is obvious. Demuslim did not make it clear what the problem was prior to his match beginning. He asked for a postponement but at that point we had already postponed one BO5 which would have shortened the evening dramatically and left us with a massive workload on Day 2 (4 BO5s and a BO7, which was certainly not the plan). I feel that if a player cannot play to his full potential then that information should be given clearly prior to the event even beginning. The situation at the time was it was never made fully clear by the player why he wished to postpone his match and it was done just before the match was schedule to begin. Just so you understand my role, I am caster, observer, producer and tournament organiser. I have logistical support from Genna who does a lot of the organisation before the event and admin support from Vequeth but when it comes to the live show, the majority of the duties fall on me and they do so all at once in a live environment with no safety net. My mind is always in several places at once during these events and I was already frustrated due to the issues we'd had with Northcon and Majors previous forfeit. Having to make a snap judgment call during a live show without all the facts and no preparation for having that particular bombshell dropped is just not good, there's no other way to really describe it. Did I make the right call? Should I have postponed that match too? I don't know, but the end result is we had 2 forfeits and we had to take them both at face value.
So how do we fix this?
For any future events run under the SHOUTcraft brand I am instituting 3 new rules going forward.
1) Players wishing to compete in a SHOUTcraft tournament must not attend another tournament at the same time as SHOUTcraft
2) Players who forfeit their match during a SHOUTcraft event will be ineligible for any future SHOUTcraft events. If a player forfeits at least 24 hours in advance of the event, this penalty will not apply.
3) SHOUTcraft will take a snapshot of ladder ranks including “chase” players who did not quite make the qualification spots and put those players on standby to fill spots of players who forfeit. Those players will directly replace the forfeited player in the bracket and will play that players scheduled opponent as normal.
Neither of these rules are retroactive because well, that would be a dick move. This puts a greater impetus on us to minimise clashes with these tournaments and showmatches so we don't put players in awkward positions when it comes to deciding which tournament to compete in. It also gives greater room to both our tournament and other events to reach their full viewer potential. Due to Blizzards WCS changes in 2014, we feel confident that there is room now for everyone to put on their event without having to worry about losing viewers and star players to another concurrent event. Were these rules in effect, we would not have had to postpone Scarletts match (this is not her fault by the way, she was playing within the rules of our event and her tournament dragged on far longer than expected) and the issue with Major would not have occurred either (he was at a LAN tournament that evidently had a poor connection which caused his forfeit).
Spots in these tournaments are very limited, so it is vitally important that we get the most out of each of them. We could have had Suppy or CatZ playing in this tournament were we able to replace our forfeited players. Unfortunately those players forfeited mid series which would have made that absolutely impossible. These new rules should minimise the chance of that ever happening again.
A word from our sponsors
I asked our sponsor http://shoutcraft.ting.com to do a writeup on their opinions of how the event went. This writeup contains an unprecedented level of transparency which they have allowed us to share with the public. This is a unique opportunity for us to educate the eSports public on the fiscal realities of these events. This might be a shock for some of you.
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ShoutCraft America Sponsorship Summary
Statistics
Cost of event - $5,000
7400 Total Visitors
US Visitors -2,786
2.44 pages and 1:29m duration
366 visitors 3+ minutes ($13.66 per visitor)
14 signups ($357.14 per acquisition)
Keep in mind this is only traffic directed to http://shoutcraft.ting.com. Using comparisons from the ShoutCraft weekend versus past weekends, it’s likely we brought 3,000ish visitors to ting.com as well.
While this wouldn't be considered a "marketing success," we really feel good about supporting the eSports scene. The amount of appreciation we received from eSports fans was insane, and we’re thrilled that the community is so grateful to its sponsors. We were successful in terms of increasing awareness about our service, but we didn’t see a high number of conversions (which, unfortunately was the main goal of the marketing contest). This was somewhat expected, as we know it takes time before most people decide to switch their mobile providers (due to ETF’s, waiting till the new year, high cost of purchasing a device outright). The table below also confirms this fact, as the conversions have been fairly consistent over the past 8 days since the event. We’re hoping this trend will continue, and I’ll be sure to give you updates intermittently (if you’d like).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ktgZizL.png)
If you’re wondering how we have 14 conversions above (instead of 12, like here), it’s because I had two r/Starcraft users who I helped sign up but they forgot to use shoutcraft.ting.com (I manually added the $25 code)
Feedback and future events
First off, I want to let you know that the VP of marketing said he’s really interested in the gaming scene and that it definitely shows a lot of promise. He believes (and I do as well), that with some minor changes on both sides, a future ShoutCraft event could be a very successful marketing campaign for Ting. I’m not yet sure what our marketing budget is for 2014, but I’m hoping that we’ll be able to sponsor another ShoutCraft event in the next few months (if that’s something you guys would be interested in doing as well). I can’t make any promise of this, but I’ll be sure to let you know right away if I’m told anything else.
During the ShoutCraft event, I thought the quantity of Ting placements was great, however, I think that the quality of promotional content could be improved upon. At the beginning of Saturday’s broadcast, you provided great insight into our service and how we’re different from other carriers, but I don’t think you went into any similar detail over the rest of the weekend (I could be mistaken, though, I missed a few minutes here and there). While the prerecorded ads between games brought considerable traffic to our site, we received >200 concurrent visitors (almost double compared to any other point in the weekend) when you spoke live about our service. What’s also interesting, is that this live read was during the ASUS ROG North Con Scarlett/Jaedong final when we had around 14,000~ viewers. Would be interesting to see the amount of visitors on shoutcraft.ting.com if a detailed live read would have happened during Sunday’s viewership. The Twitch conversations seemed positive around Ting, as did reddit and Team Liquid conversations, so I don’t think slightly longer live reads would be a problem for the audience.
We have a variety of competitive advantages over other US mobile providers, therefore optimal promotion for us during the event would be to touch on one key benefit each time Ting is mentioned. So for example, here are some things you could mention during the broadcast.
* Ting will pay 25% of your Early Termination Fee, up to $75 per device, when you switch to Ting!
*Ting has a savings calculator. Input your usage and instantly see if switching to Ting will save you money. This is the best way for potential customers to realize their savings. It's worth noting that savings are likely for those who are not heavy data users.
* Ting now supports Sprint iPhone 4/4s'
* No hold customer support
* Online account dashboard that lets you control everything about your mobile plan. Turn off data/text message/voice, alerts for all 3, etc
* Referral program gives you $50 for your first referral, $25 for every referral after.
* Unique rates, if you use under 500MB a month of data you're almost guaranteed to save with Ting.
* Included voice/text roaming on Verizon
(Just fyi, we will likely have some new devices, promotions and updates if/when the next Shoutcraft)
Thanks for a successful first event, it was a pleasure working with you and I hope we can do so again soon!
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Reality sets in
So there you have it. As a pure business venture, SHOUTcraft America Winter can be considered a failure. It did not provide the requisite ROI for the company providing the sponsorship. That's actually a bit of a cold hard gutpunch of reality when you think about it, a $5000 tournament did not provide enough ROI for the sponsor and if they did not believe in the concept of eSports and wanted to support it regardless, it's not likely they would attempt it again because the numbers simply were not there. It begs the question, is a service like Ting.com an ideal sponsor for an event like this? Some might say anything is an ideal sponsor and to some degree I'd say that's true but if you want them to invest longterm they have to see Return on Investment. Ting is unfortunately a US only carrier. As you can see by the statistics they provided, only 37.6% of the visitors to the site during the event could actually use the service at all. These regional restrictions are actually a huge problem for sponsors and it's something we've run into as a unique problem with Axiom eSports as well. We are a Korean team with an international audience, which makes getting Korean sponsorship in the way that eSF and Kespa teams do nigh on impossible. It also makes marketing the team to a foreign sponsor difficult because they see Koreans and they think “well we're not interested in the Korean market”. We've had multiple sponsors turn us down on this basis. While the US was the largest single demographic in terms of viewership over the weekend as you can see by the stats I provided earlier, they are not in fact the majority of the viewers as a whole. I've said it time and again, you cannot ignore that European demographic and they proved that once more even with a tournament consisting entirely of players that were not from their region. Focusing on Europe as generally a good idea when it comes to bringing in the viewers and SCI4, an entirely European invitational lineup had the strongest numbers we've ever had for an online tournament and afaik, it holds the unbeaten record for concurrent and unique views for an online only event. This does not bode well for future SHOUTcraft America events. The focus in US players hurts our viewership, it's as simple as that. We had the heavy hitters from the US/Canada/Mexico regions, HuK, Major and Scarlett and that was not enough to bring in the big numbers. As nice as brand awareness is, for a US-only sponsor, any viewer outside of the US is effectively useless to them. As thrilled as Ting no doubt were to be receiving so much love and support from the community, unfortunately companies can't run on those alone. This was not the fault of the viewership or Ting.com, it's simply a reality that we have to face when creating events. We as tournament organisers have to provide the maximum possible ROI and it is far easier to do that when you are advertising a product that is accessible to your full international audience.
We as organisers also fucked up, or more specifically I did. We could have promoted them better. The information Ting has given me in this report will be invaluable in future to ensure that we're doing a better job of promoting our sponsor. I would hope that other tournament organisers, particularly of smaller online events also look at this as useful advice. We could have done a better job pushing the sponsor, we could have made those numbers better and we failed to do that and for that I sincerely apologise. That guilt will not go away anytime soon.
The silver lining
This sounds very doom and gloom but there are positives to be looked at here. For one thing, Ting may benefit from the long-tail. Their brand awareness has been raised significantly in the gaming market. The VoDs of the event will stick around indefinitely and will represent the Ting brand for years to come. They may generate further signups and as the report states, switching mobile provider is not a quick decision for many people. They may wait until their contract expires, they may run into problems months down the line with their provider and remember “oh yeah, I heard about Ting during that tournament”. In the long-run the event could work out well for them, but that's impossible to know. It did without question succeed in raising Tings profile among the Starcraft community and that could be considered a win, even if the stats do not support that yet. We should also celebrate the fact that an American only event actually pulled in significant numbers. SHOUTcraft has always been the top dog when it comes to online only events, I don't know of any event that beats it and even SHOUTcraft America maintains that position. That could honestly be to the waning popularity of online-only events however and it's hard to say if a new SHOUTcraft invitational would rival SHOUTcraft 4 for viewership, though I'm confident it could with the right players. To the best of my knowledge, SHOUTcraft this year, both SCA and SCA:W were the most successful online only events in terms of viewership. People want to watch American players, but it's going to be a long road before they want to watch them as much as Europeans or the more popular Koreans. America remains a relatively distant third in terms of the level of interest in competition from that region. That is something we must work to remedy in 2014 and everyone has to pitch in. The reputation of the scene was tarnished by the forfeits. It added fuel to the “Americans don't practice” fire and community support is vital to keeping the scene alive and vibrant. If you lose that support you might as well pack up and go home. High-tier foreigners fighting Koreans is still the top viewer draw, regional competition will come in second to that every time unless there is a huge switch in the way that we perceive the game. Foreigner success is important to pushing viewers towards the idea that foreigner vs foreigner competition is fun to watch. SCA:W in my opinion did not convince them of that, with forfeits aplenty and an unfortunately fairly one-sided final. Kane I feel was the standout player to generate the entertaining macro games with his trademark aggressive style and Hitman had his breakthrough performance in a surprising upset. That's what the tournament will be known for and I'd rather it have been known as a great event that showcased all the players well, but unfortunately it did not.
Can SHOUTcraft America continue? Potentially. It may require further cash injections from myself to do so, it may even have to switch to a crowd-funded or at least crowd-supported model to some degree. I'd like to thank Ting.com for their support and hope we can work together again in 2014 and give it another shot. I'd also like to work with other sponsors that have international appeal since even an American event still has majority viewership in the EU. I think with the right sponsor would could generate appropriate ROI for this event and not have to rely on the sponsors good will and long-term hopes. If this were a SHOUTcraft Invitational with the kind of lineup we had for SCI4 I have no doubt that with the right sponsor we could have given them enough eye-balls. With the advice that Ting has given me in regards to properly promoting the sponsor, with the fixes in the rules and the right lineup and quality of games, I think eventually SHOUTcraft America can be considered a commercial success rather than just a moral one.
Thanks for reading and thank you for watching SHOUTcraft. We will see you in 2014, in some form or another.
