Hello! My name is feardragon. I recently ran a tournament called the Breakout Invitational that highlights up & coming NA players in the Starcraft 2 scene. The tournament saw it's fourth entry in the series and was preceded by a show called Breaking Out that went in depth with interviews/gameplay coverage/etc. on each of the 8 players playing in the tournament. Not too long ago, I asked for feedback on the show and got a lot of really great thoughts. Now I'm looking for feedback on the tournament.

What was this?

The tournament ran this past Friday through Sunday and had roughly at $1900 prize pool with the objective of bringing more attention to the up & coming talent and creating an incentive for players to continue practicing to make the jump between being "good for a semi-pro" to "highly competitive pro/semi-pro." The idea behind this is to raise the number of highly competitive players so that higher level players have more competition and are further incentived to improve quickly to keep up with the competition.

If you want to check out any of the vods because you can't remember/didn't see the event, check this link. I'm in the proccess of getting the vods up on youtube.
http://www.twitch.tv/feardragon64/profile/past_broadcasts

Some statistics for the event
Day 1 - 1329 max concurrent - 546 concurrent - 27k uniques - 16k frontpage
Day 2 - 3407 max concurrent - 1415 concurrent - 69k uniques - 46k frontpage
Day 3 - 1380 max concurrent - 1100 concurrent - 8k uniques - 1k frontpage

What Do I Want From You

I know not everyone was able to catch the tournament, but I wanted feedback to improve the event from anyone who happened to catch it. If you're not sure where to start, here's some topics:

How was the production? Did you like the map intros, in game player cameras, player card intros, etc.?
How was the hosting on my end? Did you enjoy the pre-game/post-game interviews or do you feel like they didn't add anything to the event? Do you feel there were questions during those interviews you wished were asked but weren't?
How was the casting on my end? Do you feel like I provided context for players you didn't know, or accurately represented players you did? Specific examples are vastly more helpful here if you can think of them.
If you tuned in, why did you decide to tune in? How long did you end up deciding to watch?
Do you feel like you got to know any of the players better? Have you become a fan or a supporter of any of the players you watched that you weren't previously interested in?
Anything else you had in mind!

I'm on a forum and I don't want to read text

My Thoughts & The Future

There's a lot of things I think went really well and a few things I went pretty poorly with the event. Overall, I'm happy with how things went but still feel like there's miles of room for improvement. I'll be making a more detailed post soon regarding them and, more importantly, the changes that are *planned* for next season. A preview of some of those changes are:

The Breakout Invitational will happen BEFORE the show.
The show will only highlight the players that make it to the semi-finals.
The tournament will no longer be region locked to NA and will instead be open to all english speakers(but still reject applications from players who have already "broken out").
Rather than 8 up & coming players, have 5 qualify and 3 more established pro's in the tournament.
The pro's that finish top 4 in the tournament will instead just have a long form interview done.
Various changes to the show format(removal of casting segment, analysis segment with player AND pro of the same race, etc.)

If you have any thoughts on these changes as well, please let me know! None of these changes are definite yet and it's just the new format I have being tossed around in my mind. And again, I'll be explaining my thoughts on each of these points and more in a post/video soon.

Thanks in advance to everyone and anyone who puts in the time to provide feedback! And thank you to everyone that tuned in for any part of the show or tournament! Also everyone that has helped me with any and all aspects of the show, I am in your debt.

SC2CTL

Canada104 Posts

May 05 2015 02:26 GMT

I'm not sure about the seeding of the pros into the tournament?

I mean, given that the only player to have won in the Breaking Out Pro showmatch portion was JonSnow once, do you not think that the pros will come in like a rek-ing ball and destroy the up-and-comers? I get that some of the feedback was that you needed more established names, but I don't know that this is the best way to go about it.

The change to Breakout Invitational being before the show is a *very* good change. Opening it up globally might end positively, might not. Organizing with European players has historically been incredibly difficult for me, especially if you plan to co-ordinate with NA players as well.

I'd just be wary of perhaps making too many critical changes at once.

-ReD-

Canada167 Posts

May 05 2015 03:22 GMT

Why don't you do the interviews in the middle? After the first round you do the interviews for top 4 and set up a finals weekend.
Also I dont think the amateurs could compete against any established pros, that's why they're established.

Ctone23

United States1841 Posts

May 05 2015 14:07 GMT

I think you've made a lot of improvement since your last request for feedback. You seem more confident in what you're doing and you're always positive, which is important in my opinion. Well done and good luck, I hope you continue to get viewers!

feardragon

United States973 Posts

May 05 2015 16:52 GMT

On May 05 2015 11:26 SC2CTL wrote:
I'm not sure about the seeding of the pros into the tournament?

I mean, given that the only player to have won in the Breaking Out Pro showmatch portion was JonSnow once, do you not think that the pros will come in like a rek-ing ball and destroy the up-and-comers? I get that some of the feedback was that you needed more established names, but I don't know that this is the best way to go about it.

The change to Breakout Invitational being before the show is a *very* good change. Opening it up globally might end positively, might not. Organizing with European players has historically been incredibly difficult for me, especially if you plan to co-ordinate with NA players as well.

I'd just be wary of perhaps making too many critical changes at once.

I think there's definitely something to be wary of with this. I have noticed that even though almost every showmatch has been lost by the up & coming player, two factors should make this different. Firstly, none of the players for the tournament ever prepared FOR the the showmatch, just the tournament. Second, I think the opening up of regions should create a much more competitive environment. The pro's I'm picking won't be like a Liquid Bunny level player. But with all that being said, it's why I'm considering only putting one or two in the tournament rather than three.

On May 05 2015 12:22 -ReD- wrote:
Why don't you do the interviews in the middle? After the first round you do the interviews for top 4 and set up a finals weekend.
Also I dont think the amateurs could compete against any established pros, that's why they're established.

This is a cool idea, though I'm not sure what the structure/purpose of having everyone on at once would be for.

On May 05 2015 23:07 Ctone23 wrote:
I think you've made a lot of improvement since your last request for feedback. You seem more confident in what you're doing and you're always positive, which is important in my opinion. Well done and good luck, I hope you continue to get viewers!

Thanks! I appreciate it!

Bacon_Infinity

Canada212 Posts

May 06 2015 07:35 GMT

We haven't been able to see much of Breaking Out but really like the concept and what you're doing with it. Improving the foreigner scene is something that needs to be prioritized and this type of thing can only be good. But one thing that you should remember is this point:

On May 05 2015 11:26 SC2CTL wrote:
I'd just be wary of perhaps making too many critical changes at once.

if you do too many changes it might be difficult to see what is having a positive or a negative change on the show. It is tempting to do a big overhaul but will probably prove to be better if you change things in smaller increments

Anyways, keep it up!

feardragon

United States973 Posts

May 06 2015 21:20 GMT

On May 06 2015 16:35 Bacon_Infinity wrote:
We haven't been able to see much of Breaking Out but really like the concept and what you're doing with it. Improving the foreigner scene is something that needs to be prioritized and this type of thing can only be good. But one thing that you should remember is this point:

Show nested quote +

I can definitely agree with the sentiment. It's why Breaking Out has always had very iterative improvement over the past 4 seasons. Unfortunately, each season of the show takes a while to get around to happening, and every season is a big money sink. While I'm not planning to stop the show anytime in the near future, there is some pretty big justification to make changes I believe would be positive sooner rather than later because waiting a season for an idea means waiting an entire year. A year in eSports can completely change the landscape and the idea may no longer be viable at that point.

But again, I agree with the sentiment. I'm leaning toward only having 2 "pros" that would be players that are established NA pros, but not of the Kane or Scarlett level. Players that would be respectable names but who are still beatable by players in the tournament.