EPTLet us recap a little of what has happened since I began running SEAcraft Weekly. We have over the course of the tournament’s lifespan given away over $1,700. From our humble beginnings with a $50 prize pool, we are now giving away $100 in prize money. Recently with the 20th edition we escalated the prize pool to $200 for a once off. This funding has basically been entirely funded by two people. Myself @PhilosopherSC2 and @MaynardeSC2, of ACL and IEM caster fame. This will continue for some time to come.
Over the twenty weeklies we have had winners from a variety of countries: Korea, Australia, India and China, as well as Sinagpore and the Phillipines. We have had eleven different champions, the winningest player being EnDerr from Imperium Pro Team who has earned $300 participating in the Weekly tournament. Zerg is by far the most dominant race, with them winning 15 of the 20 tournaments and average participation has been around 35 players per weekly. (More Statistics can be found on our liquipedia page put together by the brilliant Namakaye.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/SEAcraft_Weekly_Tournaments/Statistics
In terms of viewership we have not improved radically upon the numbers that I mentioned in the July blog, but we have improved, which is awesome. We are currently achieving a concurrency rate between 150-200 viewers per weekly, with some weeklies peaking at over 300 and overs falling well short of 100. There are of course a number of reasons for this. Without Proleague being on Monday evenings in South-East Asia anymore, SEAcraft Weekly has been in a good place to fill the void, however there have been on occasions other tournaments that have been running at the same time, which has affected our viewership. These tournaments have not usually been big events, usually qualifiers for some other massive tournament, but because of the names and personalities involved we usually lose a good number of those who would be watching our tournament to those other tournaments. This is not a bad thing, this is a good thing, I believe competition is healthy and it only drives me to think about ideas on how to improve SEAcraft so that it becomes a much bigger entity.
As I mentioned in my last blog, my modus operandi has been to try and help build the SEA scene. I have attempted to do this in a number of ways. The first is to get our players more recognition and I have further plans to do this in the future with new content. The second way is to get our players playing against the best in the world, to test their skill. We can see this with the amount of Koreans who are currently coming over to play in our International Edition, but I always want to improve upon this. One of the ways I have attempted to do this is by taking an extremely liberal definition of the “SEA Only’ tournament and have begun to allow Chinese players to participate (We recently saw TooDming win SEAcraft Weekly #20). There has of course been a lot of debate on whether this should be allowed or not, but I see it as a way to grow both communities. More crossovers between “Western” and “Chinese” Starcraft will produce 1. More exciting games and different styles, but more importantly will raise the recognition factor of many those may not be recognized out of their own base of operations. Team Zenith of Origins has been now a regular participant for the past few weeklies and a lot of players have enjoyed playing against the unique styles that they bring to the table. It has also been noted, with myi’Blysk almost taking the series from TooDming in the Grand Finals that the skill difference between SEA and Chinese players is not as great as that between the SEA and Korean players and has allowed for much more exciting series and tournaments.
The question that tends to riddle my mind at the moment is how can I improve on player participation and viewership without going against my own modus operandi. I want to build SEAcraftTV and SEAcraft Weekly without having to rely on the gimmicky appeal of tweeting to big names or inviting big names to cast or participate in my tournament. Of course I have let teams know that the tournament occurs, but that is mainly, at least in my conscious mind, a way of letting people know that “Hey, there is this weekly tournament giving away $100, you should put your chips in and see where they land”. I think this problem that I’m trying to deal with affects all new startups, but I’m going to stick solidly to my guns and try to grow SEAcraft without the reliance on big names and personalities. I want to grow our own personalities, I want my caster, @MetalcoreSC2 , to become as well known in casting circles as other community casters, and as I watch them a lot, I want SEAcraftTV to be on par with BasetradeTV a group of people who I have much respect for, and who I hope will continue to do well.
So what are the future plans for SEAcraftTV and the Weekly. Well, we will continue to put out the weekly tournament with the $100 prize pool, every Monday 7pm AEST/6pm KST until the day that the bank takes away everything I own. There are about 18 weeks left in this year, so that means we’ll reach SEAcraft Weekly #38 and give away in total over $3,500 in prize money. In January the plan is to reevaluate our stand, do some analysis on the numbers and maybe change a few things. I also have long term goals to export SEAcraft into EU and NA and making EU-only and NA-only tournaments, but this depends on how the SEAcraft Weekly goes. There are no plans to start those tournaments this year.
SEAcraft has had some amazing games, and we want to continue that tradition of bringing audiences the best from SEA and outside of SEA. Check out Metalcore's youtube channel where he will upload games that he believes are outstanding and exciting. https://www.youtube.com/user/MetalCoreSC2
I also have some other projects that I want to integrate into SEAcraft Weekly to help with downtime, but those are still in the pipeworks of development.
So once again. SEAcraft has reached 20 awesome Tournaments. We will keep going until we die. I want to thank everyone who has volunteered their time to help out or in some way contribute to SEAcraft’s success including Metalcore, Maynarde, Namakaye, ChadMann, Elusory. These guys have helped me out when I’m in a bit of a tough spot, and in the case of Metalcore, we really wouldn’t have a voice without him.
For more information or enquiries into SEACraft, please don’t hesitiate to email us at SEAcraftTV@gmail.com. You can also follow us on twitter @SEAcraftTV.
