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And so another SHOUTcraft event comes to an end and it's time to reflect on what went right and what went wrong. Perhaps for the first time, the smallest section will be on what went wrong.
Nothing went wrong. At least not from a technical standpoint. Over 4 days we had no technical problems at all beyond a handful of good old “Xsplit mic crackle” incidents, a bug in the app that has yet to be resolved, most likely caused by ASIO audio interfaces. It clears up after about a minute, there's no apparent cause other than “sometimes when you unmute the mic it does this, most of the time it doesn't”. I've yet to be able to diagnose the full problem and neither have the Xsplit devs. It's not a huge deal but I'd certainly prefer it get fixed. Any technical improvements from a visual standpoint cannot be done until better internet options arrive in my city. Pushing a 3.5mbps stream at 30 looks pretty good, pushing it at 60 not so much. Only way I can go any better is to get better internet and that's impossible right now. MURICA
Timeslots and rebroadcasts
It is easy to decry someones chosen timeslot from the sidelines. Some of the most common and banal criticism of tournaments by armchair analysts in this scene consists of little but that. They're not wrong, if you don't put your tournament on at an EU friendly timeslot you will have reduced audiences, guaranteed, but they also don't understand that if every tournament could have the primetime 2pm CEST onwards slot on a weekend, they would. But they cant. Clashing with HSC was an option we chose not to pursue. The sponsor required us to execute the event during a specific time window, ie. The launch window of their new product, the Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD. They were made aware that this could result in lower viewership than doing it on another weekend, but they accepted that because the timing was more important to them. If we had clashed with HSC, we would have been rolling the dice against an established event with strong European loyalty as well as splitting the audience, hurting both tournaments. It made no sense to do this. I could have run the rebroadcasts during that time, which may have gained higher viewership from Europe, since the rebroadcasts ran early in the EU (8am CEST onwards every day), but I chose not to do that because frankly cannibalising the Starcraft audience is dumb. HSCs success is everyones success and with Starcraft now in something of a holding pattern, not exhibiting any growth in its audience, it makes no sense to be taking potshots at each other. However, the timeslot gave us one key advantage.
I build for China
Well, looking at the numbers I can safely say if you don't cater to the rapidly growing Chinese audience, you are shooting yourselves in the foot. We got NeoTV onboard early for a few reasons. One, the timeslot was ideal for Asian audiences. Two, one of the three key markets the sponsor was looking to advertise to was in fact China, so it made sense to have a Chinese cast. Including China paid off in a big way, the viewership was surprisingly high for the event in China and we benefited greatly from NeoTVs coverage. We also managed to get some of the elusive Korean audience. Let's be frank, Korean audience on Twitch for SC2 is tiny. Next time we might wanna try simulcasting to Afreeca, but whatever the case we did manage to secure a small, healthy audience of Korean fans but perhaps more importantly, key coverage on influential Korean webzines like inver.kr and dailygame.co.kr. Even the sports section of naver.com covered the event. Naver is like the Korean Yahoo, they are a search portal and they control the lions share of South Koreas search queries. With this tournament we were able to make inroads with new audiences and connect with fans in Asian territories in a way we haven't been able to do before and well as expand our brand and name into non-English speaking demographics. Speaking of connections.
KeSPA players cometh
It was great to be able to field such a powerful roster, in particular 4 players from KT Rolster and CJ Entus, who showed incredible games. If anyone thought these players wouldn't take things seriously because they were playing an online event, they were in for a surprise. All the KT and CJ players played out of their minds, so much so that they were the only ones left standing after the group stage. We got what we thought were some of the strongest Korean players from foreign and ex-eSF teams to oppose them but only DRG was really able to put up much of a fight. Innovation and Life took maps but fell regardless and Liquid`HerO was quickly ejected from the event 0-4. Considering the quality of play on display, it seems like continuing to pursue involvement from KeSPA teams in future would be the best course of action. The quality of games they showed was so far beyond what we usually get to see in a foreign event that we must make sure it's not the last time play of that caliber is seen in an online tournament. We would have liked to get a greater variety of players from the KeSPA teams but completely understandably, the other teams declined due to their focus on Proleague. We were very pleased that CJ and KT agreed to play and hopefully they had a great experience doing so. Perhaps when Proleague ends for the year and players schedules become a little easier, we will be able to bring more fantastic players to the event.
Does that mean we've given up on the other Korean players or even foreigners for these invitationals? Foreigners maybe, I don't think any foreign player would have stood a chance in those groups, but there are maybe a couple that are getting to that level. Snute and Scarlett are looking strong right now, as are Dayshi and Vortix. They are perhaps getting good enough to play at this level, so maybe we'll see next time. HerO was the biggest disappointment of the event, he played very sloppy games and bombed out of the tournament very quickly as a result. In hindsight, he would have been better replaced with someone else. Looking at his form over the past couple of months, it shouldn't have been entirely surprising that he was not up to the standard of everyone else. DRG on the other hand played out of his mind, it just wasn't quite enough to beat some of the absolute best. Consider the players we got to oppose him. Bbyong is a monster, Zest is the reigning champion and yet DRG came close to beating both. I'd happily have him back, he's clearly still got it and that's great to see. Life and Innovation acquitted themselves well. Lifes games against Flash were closer than the scoreline leads you to believe and Innovation was splitting his attention between this tournament and GSL so was understandably not playing at his best. I'm sure on a different day he would have been a real contender for first place in Group A, but it wasn't to be this time around.
Whatever the case, the point is very simple. If you invite the best players, you get the best games. The best players are on KeSPA teams, so it behooves you to entreat those players. If you do, you will get some of the greatest Starcraft you have ever seen.
Match quality
I'm not gonna pull punches here, the matchs were incredible. They were in another galaxy from what we've shown previously on SHOUTcraft, nothing compares. They were in many cases beyond GSL level of quality. Bbyong vs Flash and Zest vs herO in particular were contenders for series of the year in and of themselves. They were also very rare matchs, players of that caliber only play BO7 once in a blue moon. None of the players in the finals had played a TvP best of 7 before, Day3 showed us a BO7 TvT which was also a first for both players. If you want the best Starcraft, accept no substitutes. Get the best players, not the most popular ones. Popularity comes with skill, as it should. After watching HSCs miserable finals and feeling terrible for TaKe that the end of that tournament ended up being such a letdown after a great event, I think it's safe to say that aiming for the highest caliber player is the way to go.
Frankly, I've kinda given up on creating events for other scenes at this point. I've said it before, Korea has a gigantic cadre of talented players and not enough tournaments for them to play in. Online cups don't exist in Korea, they died with ESV Weekly. They need to come back, as do big ticket high profile invitationals for these guys to compete in. I would like to be the driving force behind both. My experiences with SHOUTcraft America Winter put me off catering to the American scene, with lackluster games and a bunch of forfeits, plus despite trying to get another sponsor for a future American event, nobody is biting. With this event we proved that quality results in great numbers and that quality comes from the Korean scene. Hey consider it a blessing in disguise, maybe if we give Koreans more tournaments to play in they won't need to come over and steal all your Dreamhack prizemoney.
Oh and BO7 is the way to go. Take a long look tournament organizers and if you can fit it into your schedule, use the BO7 format. It results in incredible games. BO5 is not suitable for a SC2 finals, BO5 would have denied us the result of herO vs Zest and cut a great grand finals, RO4 TvT and bronze match short. I'm even considering ditching the dual-tournament group format and going back to the old BO5 single elimination, though the disadvantage of that is that there's a smaller variety of matchups to watch and you don't necessarily get the best 4 players by the RO4, since bracket-screwing even with careful seeding is possible. I'll keep thinking about it. BO3 just doesn't cut it, but using BO5 has it's disadvantages too. Whatever the case, BO7 RO4 onwards is obviously the way to go, we'll keep using it.
The numbers
The Sandisk SHOUTcraft Invitational broke our records, simple as that.
198120 SCI4 Day 1 Uniques 184462 SCI4 Day 2 Uniques 181360 SHOUTcraft America Day 1 Uniques (highest figure attained of the 7 days broadcast) 67640 SHOUTcraft America Winter Day 1 Uniques 99660 SHOUTcraft America Winter Day 2 Uniques
And now...
English stream
155360 Sandisk Day 1 Uniques 125200 Sandisk Day 2 Uniques 155440 Sandisk Day 3 Uniques 197600 Sandisk Day 4 Uniques
Korean stream
3760 Day 1 Uniques 4180 Day 2 Uniques 4040 Day 3 Uniques 4200 Day 4 Uniques
Chinese stream
59101 Day 1 Uniques 71106 Day 2 Uniques 97265 Day 3 Uniques 93307 Day 4 Uniques
Leaving us with a grand total across all 3 streams of
218221 Total Day 1 Uniques 200486 Total Day 2 Uniques 226745 Total Day 3 Uniques 295107 Total Day 4 Uniques
For some reason some people add up all their uniques to give a “total uniques” number. This is completely pointless as far as I am aware, since I don't believe Twitch properly “de-dupes” this figure, meaning that if you ask it how many uniques you got over a period of time that is longer than a day (Twitch only offers Hour Resolution and Daily Resolution as time periods for stats), then it will count each viewer on each day as a unique, regardless of if the same guy turned up 4 days in a row. Since the vast majority of viewers use Dynamic Ips that change every 24 hours, it can be argued that this number is worthless. But I like big numbers, so I'm including it anyway just for you. THIS NUMBER MEANS NOTHING
Total “uniques” : 940559.
For the sponsor, uniques are definitely what matter the most. Did people stick around long enough to be impressed by the branding and sponsor? In the case of Twitch I think that's very likely. We went as far as to replace our icons on the frontpage with Sandisk branding, basically you immediately knew who was involved in the tournament from the very start and we gave frequent commentator shoutouts to the sponsor along with a regular Sandisk ad being played every series. Some of these uniques didn't stick around long, we were featured on the frontpage sometimes, similar to all the other big Starcraft tournaments (SHOUTcraft America and SCI4 were featured too), but what matters is whether or not a lot of unique people saw the branding and whether or not it left an impression on them. Hopefully the answer to that is yes. We also received positive feedback from doing an “old school” presenter voice-over style of commercial that was no nonsense and got right to the point. If chat feedback was anything to go by, viewers vastly preferred the more personal and less condescending approach to advertising. There was no bullshit in that ad and it came from a voice they trusted. I only agreed to do the ad because I've had good experiences with Sandisk products in the past, so it acted like an endorsement. Where possible, whenever I engage a sponsor in the future, I will attempt to do so based on products I've used in the past and can honestly recommend.
What did we learn?
Include China Include China Include China Include China Include China
Seriously though include China, it's a massive untapped audience and a lot of sponsors are going to be selling in the Chinese territories, so include China. NeoTV did a great job, they're the big guys over there and they also do the official Chinese casts of things like GSL, so if you can include China, include China.
* Korea is a difficult market to penetrate
The Korean numbers were really low, as you noticed earlier. It was a little strange, we noticed that there were thousands of unique viewers from Korea coming in on the English stream. Some of those were obviously English speaking people living in Korea but Day 1 had an abnormally high number of 15,000 viewers from Korea. I personally think that stat was a glitch because the numbers after that are much lower, but there were a few thousand uniques from Korea tuned into the English stream every day after that as well. It may be those are all foreigners living in Korea, such as those stationed over there in the armed forces, it's also possible some of them speak English and prefer listening to the “original” broadcast, or simply did not know there was a Korean cast to begin with. Twitch is not a place where many Korean viewers hang out. We may wish to consider simulcasting to Afreeca next time in Korean, though that has it's own set of interesting and unique problems to overcome. Regardless we did receive a lot of Korean webzine coverage both before and after the event, including
http://esports.dailygame.co.kr/view.php?ud=2014060912374934707 http://www.fomos.kr/board/board.php?mode=read&keyno=141553&db=issue http://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news/?news=110738&iskin=esports http://sports.news.naver.com/sports/index.nhn?category=e_sports&ctg=news&mod=read&office_id=236&article_id=0000103297
The overall response from Korean netizens was positive. Those that watched the Axiom cast praised the level of analysis and humour and said that they would like to see Axiom continue to cast. As a result I'll be offering Axiom chances to cast SHOUTcraft Clan Wars and any future invitational events I do. While the Korean audience at the moment is small, I think it's worth trying to connect to it and help it grow, in particular since KeSPA sponsors want that audience most of all. The viewing culture over there is simply different to the west and even China. Esports has been televised for the longest time and Twitch has had a huge competitor over there for ages. That said, Starcraft 2 is not that popular on Afreeca, not at all, it's arguable that broadcasting on Afreeca would not help much. We may need to attempt to forge closer ties with Proleague and GSL to provide crosspromotion for the event, in order to get it out to a wider Korean audience, though this would be a very difficult task. Regardless, we are glad the event had coverage and even if the numbers over there were low, we feel it's important to connect to the Korean fanbase and not leave them out in the cold, so we will provide Korean casts in future when it is feasible to do so (ie. When Axiom isn't playing in the event)
* Go full top-tier.
This might sound unfair, but I think Liquid`HerO was a mistake. While he might have an excellent history, his current form has been lackluster and I think that showed in his play. He was the only player to go out without taking a map and he also looked significantly weaker than everyone else, while players like Life and Innovation put up very solid fights and looked like they were capable of taking their groups, even though they failed. This is my fault as a tournament organizer for not being more attentive to current form and instead looking at a players long-term history as well as their relative popularity within the scene. A few months is a long time in SC2 and just because you won a big tournament a few months ago doesn't mean you are currently in your best shape. Players slump and rise all the time and with invitationals in particular it is your job to prepare the most competitive and compatible lineup. I did not fully succeed in that and I will be more careful in future to ensure the tournament is balanced and competitive, paying close attention to the current form of the invited players.
Game quality was at an all-time high. I watched HSC to enjoy the player banter, I did not enjoy the games as much as I usually do and that was a result of SHOUTcraft because the disparity between the level of the games was so vast. On any regular day I'd probably have enjoyed them more but it's hard to watch Taeja vs MC and then Flash vs herO and/or Zest vs Bbyong without seeing the large difference in game quality. It's actually quite heartening that there can be such a disparity and the highest levels that even among the very best we can still have stratification. That's good news, particularly since players tend to rise and fall between the different tiers so regularly, keeping things interesting.
* There is no such thing as “KeSPA players are only good at Proleague”
This has been an excuse used by forum posters for a long time. Why? Not sure, maybe it's denial of KeSPA dominance, maybe they're just fans of some of the old-guard and want to make out like they are just as good as the top KeSPA pros. Sorry, but I think this tournament proved otherwise. Flash is not just a BO1 player, this tournament made that clear. Zest and herO are both gods in their field, there are very few people outside of KeSPA teams that could even come close right now. Face it, they're the best and the only reason that's not more clear to people is that they don't go to foreign tournaments that often. Expect that to change when Proleague season ends.
* Rebroadcast.
If you've read any of my previous posts then you know that the European audience is the largest out of any region for Starcraft 2 at the moment. As a result it is paramount they are catered to in some way. When you are forced into a timeslot that doesn't cater to them, your event suffers greatly. Unfortunately everyone else also knows this so those timeslots are hotly contested. Could we have done the tournament a different weekend? Not really, at least not this month, everything is locked down and more to the point we have a duty to the sponsor to promote their product during its launch window. That was of paramount importance to the sponsor, so we executed the event on the best set of days we could find for it. Thankfully the numbers were very strong regardless of the fact that we left Europe out in the cold, but they also received a significant boost thanks to a rebroadcast at the event run prior to each day of HSC. It was early in the day and that was a problem particularly for Europeans going to work/school in the morning, but it helped out quite a lot. We were also able to hit the Australian demographic with the rebroadcast since most were getting home from school/work around that time. We will be using rebroadcasts in future, they are clearly the way to go. They resonate better with viewers than VoDs since they are the “live experience” and the feeling of being able to interact with an audience, even if it's smaller, is important for some spectators. I'd appeal to Twitch to provide official tools for rebroadcasting. As it stood we had to cobble something together with a 1 hour countdown just to try and get it to a reasonable time in Europe and even then I was staying up til 2am to make sure it got started and ran. I had to stream the rebroadcasts directly from my computer because Twitch has no rebroadcast capability and is as a result lightyears behind MLG.tv in that regard. MLG.tv even remembers when you ran commercials and injects them into the rebroadcast at that point. Twitch has no such facility, I had to have a staff member stay up during the rebroadcast in order to run the ad breaks. This is silly, Twitch VoDs are not up to snuff, they don't run well and Twitch still does not allow us to pick which VoDs we want behind our subscriber paywall, it's all or nothing. I'd like to see add the ability to properly rebroadcast footage and automate the breaks based on what happened in the live show. Up until that point we'll be stuck doing things manually, but we will do them regardless because they clearly have a lot of value.
In Conclusion
The most successful SHOUTcraft event of all time and contender for most successful online tournament that isn't TSL3 of all time. Initial indications from the sponsor are that they are very happy with the results of the event and I hope their first foray into eSports has convinced them that this is a good place to spend their ad money. You'd be hard pressed to find a better way to spend a budget like that.
Thanks to those who made this event possible.
Sandisk Axiom eSports NeoTV Artosis Olivia Wong Genna Bain Cristian Baltoc Ben Goldhaber Kelby May Fred Gau Robin Nymann Do Kyung Kang Kang Min Ko Won Joong Wook Park "Coach Park" Yong Woon KT CJ Innovation Flash herO Life HerO Bbyong Zest DRG zircon Frank Klepacki
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very impressive chinese stream figures
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Nice writeup! I'm always happy to see post-event thoughts and analytics like this.
Regarding uniques and "Since the vast majority of viewers use Dynamic Ips that change every 24 hours":
For dialup and DSL this might be true, but the majority of people on modern broadband connections have IPs that remain static for weeks / months if not years. It's also rare to see companies rely on IP alone these days, preferring tracking cookies and other identifiers. For Twitch specifically, one could argue that de-duplicated IPs are a better metric than cookies since you could have one person using different PCs / devices to access the stream.
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I LOVE to read "summarys" like this Im so happy that the event was succesful but I am also very sad that I had to work and could not catch anything of the tournament itself T.T. Well deserved TB, Starcraft scene is happy to have you:´)
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On June 12 2014 01:12 R1CH wrote: Nice writeup! I'm always happy to see post-event thoughts and analytics like this.
Regarding uniques and "Since the vast majority of viewers use Dynamic Ips that change every 24 hours":
For dialup and DSL this might be true, but the majority of people on modern broadband connections have IPs that remain static for weeks / months if not years. It's also rare to see companies rely on IP alone these days, preferring tracking cookies and other identifiers. For Twitch specifically, one could argue that de-duplicated IPs are a better metric than cookies since you could have one person using different PCs / devices to access the stream.
Mhm, very true. I really don't know if the supposedly de-duped figures from Twitch are accurate so I would prefer to put out public figures that are conservative.
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France7248 Posts
you could use Bo5 even in the groups instead of bo3 maybe it would require a group to be played on 2 days tho, or it might be too long
anyway, good to hear the tournament was a success
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Nice to hear the tournament was a success.
Hope we see more of these in the future, it was awesome to see Kespa players in action outside the GSL.
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Thank you Total Biscuit! And Sandisk of course This event was truly the clash of the titans :D
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Thanks for the write up TB! I couldn really catch the event when it was live. Any central hub to watch the event? I guess Ill be checking out your Youtube channel? Cant wait to watch those Best of Sevens :D
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I couldn't catch the event live, but because of the alleged quality of the matches I decided to use the VODs, which might be a benefit to including superior players - I would never try to rewatch any game with MC in it for instance.
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Next time: All Starbow???
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I loved this tournament, and I love how much you do for Starcraft, TB. Thank you.
God, is it depressing though as a fan of NA, though. I want the NA scene to succeed so much, and it's disheartening that the players can't bring the entertainment and fail at even showing up to play. I'm glad this succeeded, though, even if it means that we're not going to get another ShoutCraft America.
The production was excellent, the casting was fun to listen to, and the games were out of this world. Hope to see more of these.
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I would like to at least say thank you for setting up the tournament. Being in the SEA region, its always hard to find tournaments that start at a reasonable time (except GSL). At least with this Shoutcraft, I can wake up early to watch it live.
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Love transparency, ty TB!
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Congrats, great success! I hope we get more of it in the future .
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Korea (South)11232 Posts
You should also consider streaming on Naver and Daum for Koreans.
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Great to hear that the tournament was a success! You mentioned other sponsors are interested in China, can you specify what kind of sponsors? Hardware manufacturers, game developers...?
RIP NA scene, though. But I think TotalBiscuit was the last one outside of the players still caring about them in 2014.
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While it was a good event I have an idea to improve the European situation:
The timing was pretty off; nobody actually watches stuff at 8 AM on FR or the weekend. The reason is pretty simple: * FR: Work or school. * SA: Hang over or just getting some deserved rest to refill batteries. * SO: Same as SA basically. Some party, others will not find the time slot very attractive. * MO: Hell, I wish SC would be an valid excuse to skip SCRUM meetings :-) Seriously, same as FR, even way, way worse.
Obviously the best time slot is 1800 CEST (work days) in all situations for a recast, maybe 1400+ on weekends. Competition doesn't really matter that much IMHO, because a bad time slot means waiting for VODs anyway (especially if you are a sub). There is no point to make room to watch something that already happened, when you can watch it anytime anyway, just a little bit later. Especially with an VOD option which makes it a different situation to say TV.
So yeah, thanks for the recast, but personally I found it a little bit pointless. BUT I agree, watching the event life was 100x better than watching VODs later. No doubt about that. Plus helps to have a chat.
//Edit: And thanks for the tournament at all. I tried watching Destiny for 1 hour. Not my thing. Happy to have something like shoutcraft - it just feels a little more in my age range.
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On June 12 2014 01:36 Rehio wrote: I loved this tournament, and I love how much you do for Starcraft, TB. Thank you.
God, is it depressing though as a fan of NA, though. I want the NA scene to succeed so much, and it's disheartening that the players can't bring the entertainment and fail at even showing up to play. I'm glad this succeeded, though, even if it means that we're not going to get another ShoutCraft America.
The production was excellent, the casting was fun to listen to, and the games were out of this world. Hope to see more of these.
The problems with the NA scene are numerous, but an often overlooked one is the immaturity of the players themselves. There are so few promising candidates that the community can really get behind, people who have both the skill and the attitude. It's always so disappointing to realize that a potential up and comer is a petulant child without any regard for professionalism or even just common decency. The top end of the NA ladder is such a disgusting environment, fulfilling every stereotype you would expect from obsessive gamers. And they are so quick to throw around blame for the state of the region at everyone but themselves, heaps of entitlement just being the cherry on top.
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I expected HerO and DRG to get slaughtered, 1/2 is a decent prediction I guess.
I enjoyed watching a few of the matches rebroadcasted when eating my breakfast
Hopefully that Google money will improve Twitch for broadcasters like yourself.
Thx for a nice event Totalbiscuit and GL with your treatment.
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good job, continue to include as many top tier kespa players in tournaments as possible, will always prefer watching skill over fame/personalities in everything other than HSC
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Very interesting writeup, thanks for an amazing event.
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clapping my hands off, it was a great event and everything said in the article is absolutely true no matter how harsh it sounds to some butthurt foreigners
btw my toughts about HerO's participation are exactly the same, the guy is playing na level of starcraft for the last year+ and I dont think he is anywhere near close (mostly due to his mental status) his form from the past
GREAT TOURNAMENT, please bring us more top level starcraft because thats exactly what everyone wants to see, I even think that proleague could go to much bigger numbers if it was being played in some eu-friendly time
and the last thing I want to say and I hear this a lot is --> people in 2014 demand quality and watching gsl or proleague in 480p is a disgrace that is actually killing the game because folks out there are just unwilling to watch such content, even tho the games might be awesome
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It took more efforts staying awake while reading this "summary" than staying awake to watch the games I'm glad the event was a success, I hope Flash will win the sandisk-shoutcraft-invitational 2 !
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Thank you TotalBiscuit for creating all this mega awesome content! TaKe, you and those French guys I always forget the names of are doing the bestest job for SC2 ♥♥♥
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The Chinese figures look pretty great. Nice event, just please less shouting and hyping up next time – let the games speak for themselves.
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On June 12 2014 02:43 Zax19 wrote: The Chinese figures look pretty great. Nice event, just please less shouting and hyping up next time – let the games speak for themselves.
Nope. I am confident in my casting ability and that my style is appealing to a wide audience and while Husky remains the most popular caster in Starcraft 2 I think it's safe to safe that the numbers are on my side. I am sorry that you cannot share my passion for the game, that is a bit sad.
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What a great recap! It put a big smile in my face :D Thanks for sharing all this info, I'm so glad to effectively know things went so well for all the parties involved! I hope we all -tournament organizers, sponsors, viewers- learn from what we had here.
You've put so much effort in running this, glad to know it paid off. TB, you are doing it right
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Thanks for the write up was a very intereting read! gl in the future!
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Will there be a breakdown of viewers by country again, like for Shoutcraft America, where 50% viewers were actually Europeans ? :-)
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United States97248 Posts
Glad it sounds like everything went great. Always love seeing more content coming out of Korea since the players don't get nearly as many chances to show off their stuff. Would love to see another all Korean SHOUTcraft tournament.
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Great article. Thanks to SanDisk.
I'd like to say I agree with the level of players which directly trigger the level of excitement. When I watched the semi-finals, I had the same feeling as when I was watching OSL semi-finals back in the BW time. And it's a very good sign
The re-broadcast think is always a problem. personnaly I felt it was too early for Europe but...you gave your arguments.
Also, the casters. You chose Artosis. While it's not my favorite caster, he is a good choice for such event : good balance between serious and knowledgeable adn good pair with you.
About the advertisement also, congratulation for you teasing job, it was perfect.
Last but not the least. I think you could try local re-broadcast. For example in France (or Germany), there is a developed infrastructure/caster/channel for wathcing starcraft in French (OGaming, Millenium, ...). I presume they'll be pleased to perform "live commentary from replays" at prime time the day after your "night" European tournament. I think they only need you to drop them the replays..
Good job anyway.
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On June 12 2014 02:45 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2014 02:43 Zax19 wrote: The Chinese figures look pretty great. Nice event, just please less shouting and hyping up next time – let the games speak for themselves. Nope. I am confident in my casting ability and that my style is appealing to a wide audience and while Husky remains the most popular caster in Starcraft 2 I think it's safe to safe that the numbers are on my side. I am sorry that you cannot share my passion for the game, that is a bit sad. Haha, I do actually kind of like that from TB. Most other casters hype it differently, you actually tell the audience how magnificent and brilliant that move just was, the awesomeness of a certain attack etc. If I'm watching casually, makes for a great show. Keep it up, TB. I only caught the finals live but it was awesome!
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Loved watching this during my sleepness nights, just very back and forth high level play and good casting in my opinion. Hope to see similar events in the future.
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ESL was my favorite tournament to watch, and these days I pretty much follow Proleague only. It was amazing to see tournament like this with my favorite PL players, thanks Totalbiscuit.
I needed an SSD anyway to make my GIS research more manageable, so I'll probably pick up something from the SanDisk folks, X210 most likely. Beyond telling the Sandisk folks on twitter, anything in particular that'll help Totalbiscuit out with them?
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Great matches, great tournament. Thanks alot!
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Excellent tournament, TB. I haven't watched SC2 in a while, only keeping tabs on liquipedia, but being able to watch Flash play some of the best SC2 that he's ever played was a real treat. Thanks!
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This has been the best starcraft I've seen all year (on the same level of Code S). I commend you for that. I subscribed to your twich and would honestly pay a one time $20 fee to watch your next tournament. Glad the tournament worked out and hope to continue on in the future.
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Interesting read and I'm glad to see the tournament was a massive success TB, I need to catch up on the VODs just because of the timings of the live show weren't good for me given that it was a Korean event and such I fully expected that however.
Seeing that you want to do more of these specifically after ProLeague made me fangirl a little just because of the vast pool of players you'd have at that stage. Maru, sOs, Soulkey, Rain, soO, Classic, Stork, the list is endless.
Keep up the amazing work TB, can't wait for your next event, whenever that may be.
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Thank you for awsome quality tournament, have not yet watched every single game bu I'm on it. Definietly hoping for more! Sad to hear that you're kinda giving up on the western scene tournament creation, but I understand your point, you're completely in the right on this one. I'm kinda meh on the idea of increasing the amount of Bo7 matches but it's your tournament and you knw your stuff, I'll watch it regardless A format that I am curious about, probably because it happened before my time, is the super old-school MSL bracket, it's probably suboptimal to today's standards, I just especially liked the idea of double elimination with a bit smaller amount of games played (by that I mean the Bo1 rounds). A link for reference: 2003 TriGem MSL
Again thanks, and gl in future endeavors.
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Thanks a lot for putting up that awesome tourney, can't wait for the next!
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Big shout-out to Sandisk for making that tournament possible, and of course to our cynical brit too <3
Just to back up what TB said: I watched the Flash vs. Bbyong series late at night, even though I was knackered and sleep deprived, but couldn't get up from the chair once the games had begun. I was blown away how insanely good the games were.
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those writeups are just plain awesome
so informative and they have soo much insight
i m glad that you re happy with your results and congratulations!
will tune in next time too if possible, this time it wasn t possible as a young european student
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
I know you said you want to just go straight for the top tier play, but I think there might be room to include some of the Chinese players in the future if you're planning on building towards China. Though logistically I'm not sure thats possible.
Anyways, this was the best Online tournament all year and one of highest value tournaments (In terms of 5 star games) we've seen all year. Congratulations, I enjoyed the whole thing.
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On June 12 2014 02:45 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2014 02:43 Zax19 wrote: The Chinese figures look pretty great. Nice event, just please less shouting and hyping up next time – let the games speak for themselves. Nope. I am confident in my casting ability and that my style is appealing to a wide audience and while Husky remains the most popular caster in Starcraft 2 I think it's safe to safe that the numbers are on my side. I am sorry that you cannot share my passion for the game, that is a bit sad.
Maybe I shouldn't feed your ego, but I totally agree with you on that . Your play-by-play casting is great. And Artosis is the best analytical caster out there; you complimented each other perfectly.
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I think including an official Chinese cast is probably the smartest thing you did this tournament, and not many people would make this decision. I'm a little surprised why people have ignored China for so long. Yeah, SC2 isn't the most popular thing there, but considering the fact that they have like a couple of hundred million netizens and gamers, even 1% of those people tuning in to watch is a big deal.
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TB, loved the cast and the tourny.. seriously, best I've seen in ages. Felt like a gaping hole was finally being filled in the sc verse for some serious fine wine craftage -- Cheers, can't wait to see more!
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Thank you for the games (best sc2 tournament quality wise, not a lot of average games and a tons of good/exceptionnal ones) and for the feedback. Doing 2 all nighters for FlaSh was pretty cool
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Couldn't see a single game but I'm planning to watch at least the bracket matches. I enjoyed a lot this recap as usual, congrats and keep making this things happen !
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I think its important not to forget how important artosis was to this cast, you and he seemed to compliment each other really well. Make sure he is on board with the next event
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This writeup, I enjoyed a lot. Thank you for the transparency. TB for Prime Minister!
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Oi, what is this I never even knew this event was taking place! TL coverage hath failed me?? :o
So a few questions. Where are the VODs? What are the best games to watch? Was this during EU time zone?
I 1000% agree with this:
Frankly, I've kinda given up on creating events for other scenes at this point. I've said it before, Korea has a gigantic cadre of talented players and not enough tournaments for them to play in.
Can we get artosis and tasteless to cast this next time? :B or even some NA caster, they're pretty good
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Thank you for putting on such an amazing tournament! I really enjoyed the games I caught, which would have been a lot more if the rebroadcast had been later. There are still the youtube vods so it's not that bad.
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ARTOSIS WAS CASTING THIS AND I DIDN'T WATCH
seriously
where are the vods. i don't even know who won yet
where are the vods
E: OK FOund them
sigh
Group A - Ro8: + Show Spoiler +Match 1: Match 2: Match 3: Match 4: Match 5:
Group B - Ro8: + Show Spoiler +Match 1: Match 2: Match 3: Match 4: Match 5:
Semi-Finals: + Show Spoiler +
Finals + Show Spoiler +
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Thanks so much for this tournament. I didn't manage to watch all the matches because of time issues but the ones I managed to view were really awesome .
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Congratulations on a great event, TB.
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TB <3. Please do more stuff like this!
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I was worried before that TB will stop creating SC2 events because of what happened to Shoutcraft America but I'm glad that is not the case. One thing that seems to be missing is a referral link to the Sandisk ssds. I need some and figured I'd buy from Sandisk but I could not see any referral links on the promotion posts or stream (if it was mentioned, then sorry my bad).
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I'm super happy to hear someone else encouraging the BO5 and BO7 formats. A favorite tournament of mine (that you - TB - has been a caster of) uses BO5 but doesn't increase the finals to BO7. (I'd like to see RO4 onward be BO7.)
Would definitely be cool to see more Korean (player) / Kespa focused tournaments!
GL!
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My hats off to you TB, you are the man.
By the way TB, is there any chance to get responses from KT and CJ about what they think? Managers/coaches and the players themselves or no way?
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Loved it! More shouting, more hype, even if it means jumbling words or having to be corrected by your co-caster. Beats the ever living piss out of "pro" casters who will say, "welp, looks like he lost 10 workers there, not much can be done, let's talk about something else entirely."
I frankly find it amazing that you have such passion for Starcraft. Please don't stop with the events!
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[B]After watching HSCs miserable finals and feeling terrible for TaKe that the end of that tournament ended up being such a letdown after a great event, I think it's safe to say that aiming for the highest caliber player is the way to go. We've had bad Code S finals even when they were the pinnacle of SC2. Right now in the NHL the LA Kings are stomping the Rangers about as bad as TaeJa stomped MC. Bad series can happen regardless of the talent level. I suggest you give TaeJa and MC a chance to prove themselves in the next SHOUTcraft.
I'm even considering ditching the dual-tournament group format and going back to the old BO5 single elimination If you use a single elimination bracket I recommend a spot or two determined by group play. For example, with 10 players you can have 6 in the bracket and 4 in a group to determine who plays the #1 and #2 seeds. You get storylines you can control and hype with the predetermined matchups plus the suspense from organic storylines of the group winners earning their way into the bracket but then going up against the top seeds.
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Wonderful event! Enjoyed it! Keep em coming!
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great job with Shoutcraft, as usual.
i do not think you are correct on all issues, however, i hope Blizzard listens carefully to what you have to say.
On June 12 2014 05:32 dvorakftw wrote: Right now in the NHL the LA Kings are stomping the Rangers about as bad as TaeJa stomped MC. Bad series can happen regardless of the talent level. I suggest you give TaeJa and MC a chance to prove themselves in the next SHOUTcraft.
put more concisely, "styles make fights"
this is a really bad example man, LA squeaked out 2 overtime wins....NHL has sudden death overtime, anything can happen. it is not a stomp by any stretch.
your over all point is correct; you picked a bad example
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I thought it was insane timing given it clashed pretty directly with The Summit, which was a huge event. Makes sense given the sponsor. Glad it went well, though, great games from the bits and pieces I caught.
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This advertizing malarkey works - I was just shrinking my laptop's Windows partition ready to move it to a ~240GB SSD when I return to the UK (in Ireland). Whilst running the backup I read this article. I was planning to get a Corsair or Crucial but I read the reviews on the Sandisk Extreme II and they look good, so I will get one of them. Shame the Pro isn't out for a month or two on Amazon - it has a ten year warranty!
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On June 12 2014 05:51 broodbucket wrote: I thought it was insane timing given it clashed pretty directly with The Summit, which was a huge event. Makes sense given the sponsor. Glad it went well, though, great games from the bits and pieces I caught.
Not as much overlap with something like The Summit I think. Maybe if it overlapped with The International which has wider appeal.
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On June 12 2014 05:35 JimmyJRaynor wrote: this is a really bad example man, LA squeaked out 2 overtime wins....NHL has sudden death overtime, anything can happen. it is not a stomp by any stretch.
your over all point is correct; you picked a bad example
The Kings outplayed the Rangers at least two out of three of the periods plus overtime in every game so far. I will only agree that I picked a bad example in that it is easy to equate an overtime game with a very long StarCraft match when actually dominance in hockey does not always translate into goals the way dominance in SC2 leads to quick victories. If they used boxing and UFC's system of judges instead of overtime the Kings would be getting unanimous decisions with double digit margins.
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Thanks for a great event, TB!
In defense of the NA scene, I'd like to point out one thing -- SCA Winter had two forfeits, Major and DeMuslim. Major is Major, and DeMuslim has since returned to the European scene. They're not representative of the rest of the NA scene. In fact, the Shoutcraft that you did last summer included only NA players and, IIRC, there were no forfeits, despite the tournament dragging on for hours because of DDOS.
If you don't want to do SCA anymore because there are no sponsors or there's not enough interest, or you simply tire of the NA scene, then that's fine. But I don't think there is enough evidence to show that a future SCA would be rife with forfeits.
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Nice, glad to hear everything went well. I didnt get to see much because I'm in EU and I didnt have much time. Really liked that there was a rebroadcast, although it was mostly too early for me Love the ambition around PL and Korean audience etc. Big task you're looking at there. Hope to see more. Good luck^^
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Canada16217 Posts
Awesome event TB and thanks for the recap, i hope to see more in the future!
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happy to hear that went as well as it did. i really enjoyed the awesome games, casting was great as well! one small point of criticism though: i had to adjust the volume all the time, since i found your normal casting volume too low yet your "hyping" volume was so loud it hurted. would be nice if that could be somewhat streamlined apart from that, great work and thanks for the fun time! best wishes,
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Well i am really busy and watched a lot of sc2 over the weekend with hcs, even though i had to work. But reading the writeup convinced me to go back and watch the sandisk-shoutcraft games. Reading something like this writeup is a very nice thing we in esports crave so much, transperency. Also just as a sidenote, i too have had good expiriences with sandisk products.
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Excellent write up, and great tournament. Congratz!
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interesting read as always, thanks TB
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On June 12 2014 00:57 TotalBiscuit wrote: Initial indications from the sponsor are that they are very happy with the results of the event and I hope their first foray into eSports has convinced them that this is a good place to spend their ad money.
That SanDisk are satisfied on their RoI makes me happy and I hope it encourages them to continue to invest in esports.
I loved this tournament, probably my favourite online invitational ever. My body clock is still completely fucked and running in American time though because I didn't miss a single minute. This is perhaps a good thing that I haven't recovered yet though as it means that it is easier for me to stay up for the E3 coverage.
I thought the quality of the casting by TotalBiscuit and Artosis was fantastic. I think TotalBiscuit and Artosis is great combination.
Yeah, I loved this tournament. I was so excited for it beforehand so it's great that it hasn't been a let-down one bit. The quality of the games helped massively - and as TB says this is because he invited the best of the best. Although I loved it all, I have to say day three was my favourite - Bbyong vs Flash and herO v Zest were two of the best series this year.
For the next tournament, I hope that Jin Air and SKT1 are able to take part if it happens after Proleague ends.
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First of all, thank you TB for the event, it was great, specially considering the timing in your life, so mad props for your commitment and effort.
Now, i want to ask, are qualifiers out of the question and are you positive that invitationals are the way to go in the future?, is there room to have a 50/50 split in this regard or the added "costs" to run a qualifier make it not an option?
Btw, are the replays gonna be released [if they haven´t yet]?
Anyway, was a great event.
Saludos y mis mejores deseos.
JRE.
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could be ogn the way to go in the Korean scene?
they make reruns of games pretty often, and maybe is not that hard that ogn restream some of those games, from replays.
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Enjoyed the tournament immensely and I'll be buying a Sandisk SSD when I'm looking to upgrade next, hope to see another one of these types of tournaments in the near future.
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First and foremost I want to congratulate you and Sandisk for a great event. The numbers speak for themselves, the western audience alone on day 4 nearly broke your records, which is a great success.
I just want to give one short piece of feedback: In the "kespa-comet"-part of you write-up you talked about considering to include foreigners in future events. While I am generally a very pro-foreigner-biased person, I don't think they would fit the format you are currently using. One of the weaknesses of foreigners (besides being worse at preparation) was always being highly dependent on their daily form. We've seen Scarlett lose to Hitman, when she was near her peak and we have seen Dimaga shredding Flash to pieces, while generally being considered in bad shape. While I can see for example Snute beating any terran on a good day (except maybe Maru), I can also see every foreigner lose really hard on a bad one. The only foreigners, who were really reliable of having good results, were Stephano (who has other priorities now) and Naniwa (based on our conversations elsewhere I don't think, that you are inviting him). Before we have a really solid foreigner again, I'd recommend going korean only, because the possibility of someone with an off-day is a much bigger threat for an 8-man invitational than it is for an MLG/DH.
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Just wondering TB, do you have any figures about how many Europeans tuned in to watch it live?
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Was a great tournament. Some of the best SC I have watched in months.
Thanks for that TB!
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It was a wonderful tournament, TB. I have to say that I was really tired the night that the finals were on and wanted to sleep so bad, but I ended up watching the whole thing.
You and Artosis worked extremely well as a casting duo, and I hope I don't sound forward and presumptuous when I say you seem like you both knew your places. You did well not to foray too far into analysis, and even deferred to Artosis the times that you did, and he let you do your thing when the action started to heat up. (Though I still have to say I think my favorite pairing with you is with InControl) I have to agree with your analysis of HerO, it seems the slump is real for now. But I was pleasantly surprised with DRG's performance even though he did not advance. FlaSh played like the God that he is right up until the end of the tournament, which made me happy and then very sad, but herO deserved the win.
I eagerly look forward to the next SCI, and I hope that SanDisk comes back for more!
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Katowice25012 Posts
I too enjoy these post mortems and I also enjoyed that super weird TvT game. Game quality was good for what I saw though I think I mostly only watched broadcasts that people recommended to me.
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Pretty sure Liquid Hero has nicer shoes than you TB.
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A great tournament with great games!
I just wonder why anyone still produces huge offline tournaments with dozens of foreigners if you can get almost the same numbers with a (relatively) cheap Korean online invitational?!
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It's worth noting that HerO played his match the day after his birthday. His play may have been off for other, somewhat understandable reasons.
Great tournament.
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Thanks for the great writeup TB! I can always trust you to write honestly and I'm glad you shared what was on your mind even if it wasn't something people might like (mostly the Liquid'HerO part).
If you read this, I'd also like to share my personal feedback on the tournament for future ShoutCrafts. First off, this tournament was freaking amazing. And it is because of that that I ask that you don't host another one in the near future. This stacked tournament was a treasure to watch and so I feel like if you were to have another one it may ruin the value I now place on Shoutcraft tournaments. I would say, give it at least a half year. I assure you, I will watch a second tournament like this.
Furthermore, you mention stuff about including China in your streams. I think we all agree that China's scene is rapidly growing. Because of this, I beg you to host a Shoutcraft China. As a Chinese American I dream that one day another country can compete on-par with Korea and I really believe that if given the proper environment China can reach that form. With so much unknown talent in China, I think a Shoutcraft would be a perfect opportunity for players to become known to the fans and develop popularity. This leads on to my last point.
Please please please have player interviews preferably before AND after games. To demonstrate my point, take Bbyong, a player who is well known in the Korean leagues but has never really competed much in foreign tournaments. While the hardcore fans who follow Proleague may know his personality, many people just see him as a faceless Korean. Foreign tournaments help Koreans get popular (like CJ herO) because they give them opportunities for them to laugh, smack-talk, and just be themselves. I would love to see player reactions and pre-game smack talk before the tournaments. This also applies if you were to host a Shoutcraft China. Pretty much all Chinese players aside from Macsed and Jim are all unknown to foreign fans. So interviews would be great for that.
Anyways, sorry for the wall of text. I really really really loved this tournament and hope you will definitely hold more in the future. Good luck with your health too!!
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Germany3128 Posts
Great write-up TB. I really enjoy this kind of post mortem threads for the insight they provide. So far my favorite sc2 event in 2014. The quality of the games + the casting of Artosis and yourself was just great.
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So when is the next one??? Also what do you think of crowd funding? I feel as though you could have raised 20k in 2 days if you announced that line up and charged $5 to watch.
edit: I am talking out of my ass as I actually have no clue what people would pay apart from myself.
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The only thing that I would consider changing about that tournament would be getting Flash to do less SCV pulls.
Also, with WCS AM, I don't think it is as necessary to do another AM only tournament, especially with how bad the players treated it last time. This formula worked and I really hope we get to watch another one. Congrats on the successful tournament! I watched so many SC2 games last weekend, and yet I still had to go back and watch some of the VODs because it really was that good.
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I've had some questions about costs. I don't really want to go into specifics, that would not be kosher with the sponsor, but the cost factors break down as follows.
$10,000 prizepool Production costs for ad (fairly minimal, since I did the VO work for free) Production costs for microsite Artosis casting fee
Everything else was either done by me (so opportunity cost) or provided free and breaks down to.
9 trailer videos Intro, pre-game, post-game, break video loops (I used stock footage for this that cost me about $40 in total for licenses, then manipulated it and added elements to make the loops) Art assets including player portraits, promotional poster images, bracket PSDs, logos (all of these were done by my graphic designer/editor who is salaried fulltime to Cynicalbrit.com) VoD editing (done by my graphic editor as part of his salaried work) My casting (done without fee in return for footage rights and 100% of ad revenue on stream and VoDs) Axioms casting (done without fee in return for footage rights and 100% of ad revenue on stream and VoDs) NeoTVs casting (done without fee in return for footage rights and 100% of ad revenue on stream and VoDs) Rebroadcast maintainence (basically monitoring the stream and playing the ads at the right time during the rebroadcast. Done by my assistant manager as part of her salaried work)
The event generated enough ad revenue to justify the time spent. If it hadn't it wouldn't have mattered, the event was immensely fun to organize and present, but it just so happens we monetized this one very well, hit key well-monetized demographics (primarily America) and got our VoDs out quickly with a reasonable number of mid-roll ads in place. The event also generated a number of paying subscribers. Overall I'd call it a financial success relative to my other events for me and the cost for Sandisk was kept at a minimum.
So when is the next one??? Also what do you think of crowd funding? I feel as though you could have raised 20k in 2 days if you announced that line up and charged $5 to watch.
I remember the last time someone tried to do payperview, they got hated horribly for it. I doubt I'd take that risk.
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When you get the best players, you get incredible games, i really enjoyed every match ... only way i would have enjoyed it more was if flash won
nothing against HSC, but 2nd tier Koreans are not that exciting. Kespa Koreans, amazing.
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it seems that the important question is whether or not the sponsorship of the tournament did enough to convince Sandisk that Esport's tournaments are a worthwhile form of advertising and whether they will continue to sponsor them.
in terms of the tournament itself the only thing that could have been better would have been the rebroadcasts put later in the day to aid the European viewers, but as people have already said HSC so out of your hands with that one.
but yeah, it'd be great if Sandisk would do what the SCA sponsors (Ting?) did with their post-mortem though i can understand if they choose not to. It does however sound like it was much more successful for Sandisk than Ting which is good.
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Thanks man.. I couldn't watch any match because of my bad internet, but like always good work!
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I enjoyed it quite a bit. A great event all round. I missed you casting with Apollo a little.
When is the next one!
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I heard you did a good job. I wasn't able to watch the actual broadcasts here in New York, and when I tried from your Twitch page, I was prompted to pay you a monthly subscription fee. I closed the window and did something else.
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Hi TB,
First of all, it was a great show put on. Kudos to you for organising this. It definitely showcased the best of the best and I look forward to the next tournaments if there are any.
I have a couple of ideas on how to increase the viewership. Your way of thinking about skill is good, and should almost always be the number one priority. However while these players definitely have the skill to produce really great games, I think you should also try to focus on things other than the games themselves for the next tournament. This tournament was kind of like "These guys are playing. Watch the games, and then the tournament is over. Thanks for watching, goodbye!"
If you were a viewer, what would entice you even more to watch a tournament? Well, you already have the best of the best players, so skill has been ticked off. What else is there?
Another way to bring in a whole new set of unique viewers is fun/personality. What about hyping the players up by doing some teasers/highlight videos of the best plays of each player with little hyping up of their achievements? Not only of their personal achievements, but some stats of the players (ie. Flash has never played a bo7 TvP, etc). Nestea still has a big fanbase not only because of his former domination, but because Tastosis has hyped him up so much that people absolutely love him, even though he hasn't been in his dominating form for the longest time now.
A lot of the Kespa koreans (except Flash) don't have a huge following because they only really attend Korean tournaments. We need a way for viewers be more excited about the actual players for the players, as well as their skill level, and also a way for viewers to relate to the fans. A way for them to connect a bit more than just watching the games for them.
What about doing some post and/or pre game interviews with the players? This could possibly help the viewers relate to the players even more, and give an insight into what these godlike players think during these types of matches, and maybe get some more down to earth questions like "what do you eat for breakfast" and stuff for a bit of fun and laughs. Questions could also be taken from the community in the interview. One problem I see with cross-language interviews is it takes a long time for translation, and the excitement gets lost during translation. A way to counter this would be to do the interviews off-air, and edit it to have the answers directly after the question, in Korean but with subtitles. During the off-air interview, you could have a short segment for highlights from the tournament.
What about some prizes for contributing to the tournament? Lets say you subscribe to your channel, where each subscription contributes to the final prize pool, and at the end of the tournament, two subscribers win the chance to play a 2v2 with Flash, DRG or whoever they choose as their teammate. This could be done via supporting the sponsor, ie not by subscriptions, but by buying a Sandisk SSD.
I know these are probably outrageous/impossible requests due to the tight schedule and competitiveness of Kespa and Kespa players, but nevertheless I'm just giving some suggestions that I think would bring a whole lot more unique viewers in to have some other attraction other than the high level of games. Hope to hear your feedback (whether good or bad), as you've proved your insight into viewership and games by this tournament.
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China6282 Posts
TB you made an absolutely great and right decision in having NeoTV on board, they nailed it. Frankly for most tournaments I choose English casting but for whatever tournaments they are covering, sorry even Tastosis can't get me tuned in.
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Great job man. Hope your plans come to fruition. Also fuck yeah Frank Klepacki!
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Keep making awesome Starcraft2 stuff Totalbiscuit!.
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TB, have you thought about adding subtitles to the Korean VoDs for foreign fans? lol according to Olivias interview Ryung was a natural, and it would be nice to "hear" their casting styles , viewpoints on matchups etc, similar to stardust's show "Startalk".
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Thank you so very much Totalbiscuit for not overlapping with the Homestory Cup. That was very considerate to not made us Europeans have to choose. In the end, I saw both tournaments, HSC live and Sandisk from Vod.
Getting well over 200k unique viewers per day is well deserved considering the quality which you and your team delivered.
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Great write-up. Your open honesty speaks to a lot of people. I did very much enjoy the event, I had to follow the rebroadcasts, but as long as it's not spoiled and has the live feeling, I love watching it! You are definitely right in that it is the way to go. Thanks for all this TB, really fantastic work, my compliments! <3
edit: how can I forget to mention that the games were AWESOME. That game between Bbyong and Flash on Waystation... my god.. LOVE IT
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I wasn't able to catch the event live, but when I saw that Flash had played a bo7 TvT I went and looked up a lot of the VODS, and wasn't disappointed.
I enjoyed the casting and obviously the games as well. It's awesome that you provide analysis like this, and I think most of the points you listed are spot on.
I look forward to the next event.
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I, as an armchair analyst, approve of this post.
But seriously, good to hear things are doing great. The chinese numbers somewhat surprise me, compared to other regions, but i guess that's just how much i underestimated china.
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Best online sc2 tournament in memory!
Anyone that suggests you hyped it too much or it didn't live up to the hype is both blind and an idiot.
Holy shit that was amazing, thank you so much!
Also, this post was excellent and incredibly informative and I really wish more organizations would discuss their events like this.
If everyone in esports followed your example, on basically anything you touch, we'd all be better off.
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"Get the best players, not the most popular ones." - Hell yeah. Thanks for making Shoutcraft watchable for skill elitists like me.
Well done TB.
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On June 12 2014 02:45 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2014 02:43 Zax19 wrote: The Chinese figures look pretty great. Nice event, just please less shouting and hyping up next time – let the games speak for themselves. Nope. I am confident in my casting ability and that my style is appealing to a wide audience and while Husky remains the most popular caster in Starcraft 2 I think it's safe to safe that the numbers are on my side. I am sorry that you cannot share my passion for the game, that is a bit sad.
Husky yells a lot more. He cannot speak without yelling and over time it's annoying (like you can't have 4Hours of Husky. But 2Hours 3hours is fine).
So your casting is fine as always. Also. Husky doesn't have british accent.
Also Thank you again for that. I just realized you have a twitch channel (i only watch vods). Going to subscribe to that too ! If i can pay for Proleague. I can pay for your stream.
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On June 12 2014 09:31 TotalBiscuit wrote:
I remember the last time someone tried to do payperview, they got hated horribly for it. I doubt I'd take that risk.
I think the suggestion is for an optional Crowdfunding like the Compendium in DOTA 2. Not sure what could be offered. People who donate have a chance to win a free TB casting of your replay? Sponsors do a giveaway of their product?
Keep everything the same but let fans raise the prizepool beforehand and during the tournament.
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This tournament was absolutely amazing. Thanks TB! As a European it ran at weird times and I still watched big parts of it, simply because the games and the casting were both so good.
I also want to say that the rebroadcast in the morning was an excellent surprise. More of that, please. :D
I'm glad it went well for you and I hope that you'll do another one soon.
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On June 12 2014 16:31 Light_VIP wrote: TB, have you thought about adding subtitles to the Korean VoDs for foreign fans? lol according to Olivias interview Ryung was a natural, and it would be nice to "hear" their casting styles , viewpoints on matchups etc, similar to stardust's show "Startalk".
Perhaps a highlight reel? Subtitled VoDs takes a VERY long time.
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Its a little funny and dissapointed that maybe the best tournament of the year and the best games so far come from an online tournament, and not from the mega over productions live tournaments XD (and im not saying that TB made an easy production), but anyway lets go TB, make more tournaments like this, was very refreshing.
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On June 13 2014 00:42 FaiFai wrote: Its a little funny and dissapointed that maybe the best tournament of the year and the best games so far come from an online tournament, and not from the mega over productions live tournaments XD (and im not saying that TB made an easy production), but anyway lets go TB, make more tournaments like this, was very refreshing.
Online tournaments are the way to go for sustainability I feel. DOTA does lots of them and does well for itself. If we found otherwise to subsidize them, like a sort of compendium system or in-game tickets that would be incredible, but right now we are very much hamstrung in that respect.
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This was easily the best Shoutcraft to date and arguably the highest quality online tournament ever in Sc2. If it's possible to get more Kespa players next edition, do it. There really is no substitute for having great games, and that comes with great players.
A little sad about how Shoutcraft America turned out, but I fully understand and support the position on it, it's just not a tenable avenue of investment.
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United States23454 Posts
It's cool to get all the numbers after a tournament like this. Helps everyone be a bit more educated on what's happening behind the scenes. As a HerO fan, I have to sadly agree with you analysis post mortem, as he's been out of shape for awhile although I assumed he would look better than he did. Still, the fact that you got some of the top Kespa players to play in this is exciting and I am looking forward to possibly seeing that again.
Anyways anything from Sandisk on what they thought of the tournament? Also to get Kespa players to participate do you go directly to them or do you generally go through their team?
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On June 12 2014 23:26 Sufinsil wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2014 09:31 TotalBiscuit wrote:
I remember the last time someone tried to do payperview, they got hated horribly for it. I doubt I'd take that risk.
I think the suggestion is for an optional Crowdfunding like the Compendium in DOTA 2. Not sure what could be offered. People who donate have a chance to win a free TB casting of your replay? Sponsors do a giveaway of their product? Keep everything the same but let fans raise the prizepool beforehand and during the tournament.
This. Again, I have no clue how well it would work as I'm no expert, haven't done "market research" etc.
One example would be to get big name players on board pending the size of the prize pool. So if 5k is raised, Life agrees to do the tournament, up to 20k where Flash signs on etc etc. Or have people "donate" to a list of players, and the top 8 most donated to players get in (the money "donated" goes to the prize pool) while the rest of the money adds to the prize pool. Obviously the players on the initial list would have to agree to do it beforehand.
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Good tournament. Thanks to TotalBiscuit. And a thank you to Sandisk.
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This was such a good event I would love to see more! :D Thanks TB, Artosis, Sandisk and everyone else!
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I'm reading this as "This event was successful and we are hoping to do more." Which I am very, very, very pleased about.
MKP Next time though. One can only hope.
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I loved the Flash games. He should be seeded into every tournament ever.
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Great tournament!
Would be extremely nice to do Starbow >< Give it some international exposure It would be as good, probably better.
<3
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Good stuff! This was definitely one of the better tournaments I've watched in a while.
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I barely watch SC2 anymore - just do my LBs and check on news, daily mind you but i don't really participate. But i tuned in to this and don't regret it. Casting was great, nice to hear Artosis again. Thought your combo was strong. I only started watching at Ro4 and had to catch rebroadcast of the TvT so can't comment on the other 4 players games. The games i saw were just really good overall.
Helps when one of my favourite players wins too ^_^
I certainly agree with one of the earlier posters that a little more player interaction would be welcome. Nothing major, but at best we had a little Game Lobby LR which was neat but even just a quick interview of some sort - any kind of comments even say a quick interview by a Korean / English speaking person then a ninja translation fed through to you which you could just read and comment on with Dan would would've added a fair amount to it i think.
Glad to see more. Was kinda bummed after the NoShowShoutcraft prior so hopefully this is more a sign of things to come.
Also good sponsor option. An SSD has been on my 'to buy' list for a while now, so once i figure out my needs and budget it will assuredly be a Sandisk. Thought the little add was good too. All in all a highly enjoyable presentation.
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On June 13 2014 00:34 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2014 16:31 Light_VIP wrote: TB, have you thought about adding subtitles to the Korean VoDs for foreign fans? lol according to Olivias interview Ryung was a natural, and it would be nice to "hear" their casting styles , viewpoints on matchups etc, similar to stardust's show "Startalk". Perhaps a highlight reel? Subtitled VoDs takes a VERY long time.
A Highlight reel would be awesome, have you also thought of perhaps creating an ad in Korean (maybe using highlights from the Korean cast) to help direct Koreans to cranks twitch channel. You mentioned a large amount of Koreans tuning into the English stream and id imagine it would be difficult to direct them to the Korean stream without actually speaking Korean. A promotional ad during breaks could help solve that for future Shoutcraft events.
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Very nice recap ! Appreciate that, very interesting to read this
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A little too stream-of-consciousness for my taste, but I appreciate the candor and I hope to see more events like this in the future!
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On June 13 2014 00:34 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2014 16:31 Light_VIP wrote: TB, have you thought about adding subtitles to the Korean VoDs for foreign fans? lol according to Olivias interview Ryung was a natural, and it would be nice to "hear" their casting styles , viewpoints on matchups etc, similar to stardust's show "Startalk". Perhaps a highlight reel? Subtitled VoDs takes a VERY long time.
Yeah true. But if one day you do it and want French Translation of them (For whatever reason). I will do it no problem.
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What I really appreciated, other than the amazing tournament, the great plays, the wonderful casters, the format, the players etc., was the EU rebroadcast.
I was able to catch all the games I wanted (well, most of them anyway), and it was the first tournament I was heavily invested in, this year.
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This was a great tournament, TB, with some wonderful high level Starcraft 2. Thanks for organising and look forward to more!
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Very pleased that you are also trying to get Korean audience to tune in also. Streaming on Afreeca is a great way to incorporate more Koreans imo, seeing as how much success ex-BW BJs have revived Korean BW with audience friendly content i know you can do it. Would love to see you get in contact with gisado or Cella to get them to broadcast in Korean. (gisado is excellent) Despite gisado casting only in Korean, his amateur/semi-professional Korean minor league broadcasts got over 100 viewers consistently. Hope to see more top level Korean play from Shoutcraft.
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Are you planning to release the replays or did the players forbid it? It would be the piece of chocolate on the cherry on the icing on the cake :D
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On June 13 2014 21:42 Nimix wrote: Are you planning to release the replays or did the players forbid it? It would be the piece of chocolate on the cherry on the icing on the cake :D
On June 10 2014 08:02 TotalBiscuit wrote:No plans to release replays. Last time we did it less than 100 people downloaded the pack and players would much prefer their replays not be released, so since there is so little benefit to it, we won't bother with it.
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100people ? Well their oppenents in other words :p
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TB, saving esports!
Such good terran games...
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Wow, what an amazingly informative and awesome OP. Great job with these tournaments TotalBiscuit.
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Thank you, TB, for putting on an amazing event and for reaching out to KeSPA, China, and Sandisk to extend the love of SC2. I did spend a few moments watching the Axiom guys, and I like that you are letting them branch out into casting. The production was good, and I did like the very professional advertisement for Sandisk that you included. (A little repetitive, but then listening to your smooth voice is not all that much of a burden.)
I've already made sure to let Sandisk know how I felt about them sponsoring this ShoutCraft and I think you're doing amazing things - so keep at it. Transparency, awesome games, great events... truly, you are an asset to the scene in general.
TL; dr - Thank you TB! And warm wishes for the future, you're in my thoughts as a compete badass doing stuff like this event AND battling illness.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22271 Posts
gratz yo. so lucky the games were almost all amazing
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On June 14 2014 07:17 felisconcolori wrote: Thank you, TB, for putting on an amazing event and for reaching out to KeSPA, China, and Sandisk to extend the love of SC2. I did spend a few moments watching the Axiom guys, and I like that you are letting them branch out into casting. The production was good, and I did like the very professional advertisement for Sandisk that you included. (A little repetitive, but then listening to your smooth voice is not all that much of a burden.)
I've already made sure to let Sandisk know how I felt about them sponsoring this ShoutCraft and I think you're doing amazing things - so keep at it. Transparency, awesome games, great events... truly, you are an asset to the scene in general.
TL; dr - Thank you TB! And warm wishes for the future, you're in my thoughts as a compete badass doing stuff like this event AND battling illness.
Next time I do something like this I'm gonna try to get them to give me several ads to voice over so can keep the variety up. It's more effective when you aren't boring people.
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I loved everything about this, your write up was great and honest, and the tournament was spectacular even if my boy Flash didn't win. Only thing I would add is try to get Flash and Jaedong next time, I imagine it would boost the viewership significantly if they played each other.
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Thanks for this great writeup TB. It's always nice getting to peek behind the curtain a bit, especially for an event that went well for fans, sponsors, and you.
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thx TB this was an amazing event and I really loved it.
I think you got something going on here. Pretty sure everyone will agree that a tourney with flash and life is much better than a tourney with a drunk Demuslim playing Huk...
thank you so much man, keep fighting the good fight!
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Thanks for making this awesome tournament happen TB!
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On June 12 2014 00:57 TotalBiscuit wrote: Thanks to those who made this event possible.
Sandisk Axiom eSports NeoTV Artosis Olivia Wong Genna Bain Cristian Baltoc Ben Goldhaber Kelby May Fred Gau Robin Nymann Do Kyung Kang Kang Min Ko Won Joong Wook Park "Coach Park" Yong Woon KT CJ Innovation Flash herO Life HerO Bbyong Zest DRG zircon Frank Klepacki
you left out John Bain. please fix.
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that said, thank you so, so, so much for putting this together. i missed much of day 2 (watched on re) and part of day 3. they were ALL amazing.
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Can anyone tell me what's up with Frank Klepacki (the guy that wrote C&C soundtracks?)?
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Keep up the good work and HSC will have to schedule around your tournament.
The games were absolutely unreal.
If you can get this going on a bi-monthly schedule or something similar, with these level of players entering, and yours will be the premiere tournament behind only the GSL and Proleague.
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Thanks so much for this tournament. So many fantastic games. The other day I watched the Bbyong vs. Flash series and I was mindblown Fastastic job.
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Finished watching it this week-end. It was really awesome. I almost miss KT match in PL because i was watching the final of the SSCI ^^
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This blog post is a perfect occasion for me to say thank you for everything you did to the community (axiom, shoutcraft, donations, growth, ..).
You're my personal hero, keep doing great things.
P.S : I wanted to gift you with tl+ seeing you don't have it but my c/c has expired Soon..
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HerO sucks so bad. I'm glad you realized the mistake you made by inviting this scrub.
Now, on to watch the DreamHack finals...
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On June 17 2014 05:46 DomiNater wrote: HerO sucks so bad. I'm glad you realized the mistake you made by inviting this scrub.
Now, on to watch the DreamHack finals...
really?
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On June 17 2014 05:48 Dodgin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2014 05:46 DomiNater wrote: HerO sucks so bad. I'm glad you realized the mistake you made by inviting this scrub.
Now, on to watch the DreamHack finals... really? Slightly spoilerific punchline in this joke, lol.
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With China showing a large viewer count, could you see a tournament featuring Chinese players only or in combination with Koreans/NA. I would imagine you could find sponsors that want to target the Chinese market.
Just wondering if it could have a chance.
Loved the Shoutcraft content.
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On June 18 2014 05:00 vedaria wrote: With China showing a large viewer count, could you see a tournament featuring Chinese players only or in combination with Koreans/NA. I would imagine you could find sponsors that want to target the Chinese market.
Just wondering if it could have a chance.
Loved the Shoutcraft content.
To combine the Chinese with the other regions would be very hard with The Great Wall of Lag, idk how TB would feel about Chinese-only idea, would have to hear from he man himself
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Israel2209 Posts
Good stuff. Love these posts.
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France9034 Posts
Props, TB!
Definitely a great success here! Hope there'll be more to come (but seeing how it went, this should/could be perfectly natural).
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Northern Ireland20726 Posts
Agree with pretty much all of it, even the stuff about HerO. I do think that him getting stomped was more a case of his slumping than him being tiers below though
I think you hit the nail on the head though, these guys deserve more chances to both show their skills and also earn some prize money. Flash is a case in point, a few bad games and he drops out of the reckoning entirely in Korea, but look at the magnificent Starcraft he is capable of!
Tbh I don't feel it should have come to the likes of yourself to bring more tournaments, even invitationals to Korea. It's been a joke that there is less and less prize money to go around as the level of player rises up seemingly inexorably
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gg wp total biscuit!
p.s. get well soon!
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this tournament was insanely enjoyable. just finished watching all the vods
seconds please
E: ps TB, nice casting.
where do we tell sandisk that the next ssd we'll buy will be from them? also, perhaps you should recommend an exact model?
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oh god I still have not watched all the vods of this insanely nice tournament :D Top class content. Thank you so much.
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late to post but thank you totalbiscuit for organizing this tournament. surprisingly one of the best i've spectated for sure. the level of play was crazy!
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congrats dude, sounds good
ta
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Stumbled into the VOD of the Bbyong v Flash series... The casting was good (I always enjoy Artosis and I also enjoyed my first time hearing TotalBiscuit), and the games were my most memorable SC2 watching experience of all time... seriously... this content is free? Amazing... a huge thanks to everyone who made this possible!
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I'm currently working in Shanghai, and Twitch channels from the US rarely load for me (Europe is 50/50), so thanks for having NeoTV cover it. You're not only getting the Chinese, but Chinese Americans here, and foreigners that understand Chinese or just want to watch games.
Glad the tournament did so well, hope to see many more.
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