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The Problem
It has been a turbulent time in NASLand.
The jubilation of launching Foreigners' first professional SC2 league quickly gave way to frustration, with a one rookie misstep after another. After two weeks of broadcasting, however, production has finally got their gears together, and NASL start to fulfill its promise as the premier pro-gaming league that we can all be proud of.
But not everything are rainbows and sunshine ahead. There's one problem that nobody talked about.
For its first season, NASL ambitiously invited fifty of the world's best Starcraft 2 players, and as result produced amazing matchups on nearly daily basis. An inevitable consequence of this ambition is that the league covers over 10 different timezones from three corners of the world. Compounding with a demanding schedule to produce over three hours of content per day, this result in situations when players are sometimes forced into unreasonable times for their matches. This is bad for the players' health and bad for gameplay, a scenario detrimental to all parties involved. In a recent SC Center, the host JP McDaniel talked about how Artosis stayed up from 4 in the early morning till 8AM local time to play his match against SLush. Artosis personally felt fatigue had negatively effected his play.
Such situation is not entirely avoidable for NASL, under its current format. However, better scheduling and communication with players can cut down vastly into when bad playing conditions occur.
How to Fix It
NASL is located at sunny California and films every weekday from 9 to 6pm (PDT). Every production requires aligning the schedules of NASL with both players somewhere in this time period. Here's a table of what this translates into elsewhere in the world:
Pacific Eastern London Europe Ukraine Moscow Taiwan Korea
PDT(-7) EDT(-4) BST(+1) CEST(+2) EEST(+3) MSD(+4) CST(+8) KST(+9)
8:00 11:00 16:00 17:00 20:00 19:00 23:00 24:00
9:00 12:00 17:00 18:00 19:00 20:00 24:00 25:00
10:00 13:00 18:00 19:00 20:00 21:00 25:00 26:00
11:00 14:00 19:00 20:00 21:00 22:00 26:00 3:00
12:00 15:00 20:00 21:00 22:00 23:00 3:00 4:00
13:00 16:00 21:00 22:00 23:00 24:00 4:00 5:00
14:00 17:00 22:00 23:00 24:00 25:00 5:00 6:00
15:00 18:00 23:00 24:00 25:00 26:00 6:00 7:00
16:00 19:00 24:00 25:00 26:00 3:00 7:00 8:00
17:00 20:00 25:00 26:00 3:00 4:00 8:00 9:00
18:00 21:00 26:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 9:00 10:00
19:00 22:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 10:00 11:00
US premiere starting time
18:00 21:00 26:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 9:00 10:00
EU premiere starting time
10:00 13:00 18:00 19:00 20:00 21:00 25:00 26:00
What jumps out immediately is that while the filming schedule are still reasonable for Europeans, they're quite terrible in Korea and Taiwan. Imagine the scheduling nightmares for NASL in a match-up between an European and Korean with their crew in California! Unfortunately with the way the divisions are currently arranged, this happens quite often. This is the current physical location of players by division:
Division 1 - Americas: Fenix, Sheth, KiWiKaKi, ViBE
- Europe: Morrow, TLO, Grubby
- Asia: Moon, Rainbow, Artosis
Division 2- Americas: iNcontroL, CrunCher, TT1
- Europe: Moman, SjoW, Darkforce, White-Ra, qxc
- Asia: Ensnare, July
Division 3- Americas: SLush, dde, KawaiiRice, Axslav
- Europe: NaNiwa, Strelok
- Asia: NaDa, Squirtle, Moonglade, HayprO
Division 4- Americas: SeleCT (?), Machine, CatZ, Stalife
- Europe: Brat_ok, HasuObs, GoOdy, Ret
- Asia: Ace, MC
Division 5- Americas: IdrA, Painuser, Tyler, Drewbie
- Europe: Mana, Cloud, Socke
- Asia: Sen, Boxer, Zenio
A Proposal
A league's success ultimately hinges on the caliber of players it attracts. An ironclad schedule that consistently requires players to ruin their sleep schedule will create poor play in the short-term and will be shunned by players in the long-term. It is NASL's imperative to plan ahead and shuffle its production schedule as much as necessary to avoid players from playing when time is not optimal.
This means no games between 2AM to 8AM locally. This means no games for players in Asia between 11 to 3pm (in California), and no games for Europeans after 5pm (in California). This also mean games will be recorded out of order, and NASL's administrators will have nightmares on weekly basis planning for schedules ahead. It may be hard work, but this is necessary to ensure the health of the league and its players, and ultimately, the quality of games that NASL produces.
Sample Schedule for Week 4
To prove it is doable, here's an sample filming schedule for Week 4:
+ & * are interchangable timeslot and NASL should request player preference.
Monday, May 2
8 - 10AM: Morrow vs Moon
10 - 12PM: Rainbow vs KiwiKaki +
12 - 2PM: Grubby vs ViBE *
2 - 4PM: Sheth vs TLO *
4 - 6PM: Fenix vs Artosis +
Tuesday, May 3
8 - 10AM: Ensnare vs SjoW
10 - 12PM: qxc vs White-Ra
12 - 2PM: TT1 vs MoMaN
2 - 4PM: Darkforce vs iNcontroL
4 - 6PM: July vs CrunCher
Wednesday, May 4
8 - 10AM: HayprO vs NaDa
10 - 12PM: dde vs Moonglade *
12 - 2PM: Axslav vs Strelok
2 - 4PM: SLush vs NaNiwa
4 - 6PM: Squritle vs KawaiiRice *
Thursday, May 5
8 - 10AM: Brat_ok vs Ace
10 - 12PM: Ret vs Stalife *
12 - 2PM: SeleCT vs GoOdy *
2 - 4PM: HasuObs vs CatZ *
4 - 6PM: Machine vs MC
Friay, May 6
8 - 10AM: Sen vs MaNa
10 - 12PM: Boxer vs Tyler *
12 - 2PM: Socke vs ClouD
2 - 4PM: IdrA vs PainUser
4 - 6PM: Drewbie vs Zenio *
Time-slot priorities
Here's my personal opinion on the time-slot priorities per match-up. Higher slot are better for both players than lower slots.
Matchup NA - NA NA - EU EU - EU NA - Asia NA - Asia Asia - Asia
Best 4 - 6p 2 - 4p 2 - 4p 8 - 10 8 - 10 8 - 10
Reasonable 2 - 4p 12 - 2p 12 - 2p 4 - 6p 4 - 6p 4 - 6p
Acceptable 12 - 2p 4 - 6p 10 - 12p 10 - 12p 10 - 12p 10 - 12p
Unreasable 10 - 12p 10 - 2p 8 - 10 12 - 2p 12 - 2p 12 - 2p
Bad 8 - 10 8 - 10 4 - 6 2 - 4 2 - 4 2 - 4
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Very well thought-out ^^
Also, nice modding in the chat today.
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I really like this post. I wonder what the NASL guys have to say about this. I assume this has been worked through by them already, but you never know. Good work.
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Very interesting point. Obviously you've put quite a bit of thought into this, and I think you have a point. It's certainly quite a task, but hopefully the guys over at the NASL see the wisdom in this, and can at least make some of the recommended changes.
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Wow, NASL should hire you. lol
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Yeah they should just cast from replays, would be better for the players which would create better games in general.
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Primadog, I'm a fan of yours. You've been doing quite a lot recently!
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On April 25 2011 15:31 Ulfsark wrote:
Yeah they should just cast from replays, would be better for the players which would create better games in general.
I totally support this. But it seems like a large portion of the audience doesn't like replay casting for some reason (though IPL and TSL were replay cast and I didn't hear any backlash about it). But I think it would make things much, much easier logistically for the league.
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I noticed a few times where the IPL casters were a few seconds ahead of the replay. It is very annoying when it happens. No system is perfect. what's the least bad way to do it?
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Calgary26003 Posts
Your schedule has them working 10 hours days + post production.  I don't know what they're currently working, but I think the plan would be better and more sustainable if it was a standard 40-hour work week.
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On April 25 2011 15:31 Ulfsark wrote:
Yeah they should just cast from replays, would be better for the players which would create better games in general.
Yeah I don't understand why they arent already casting from replays considering they dont cast live anyway.
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On April 26 2011 00:32 Chill wrote:Your schedule has them working 10 hours days + post production. I don't know what they're currently working, but I think the plan would be better and more sustainable if it was a standard 40-hour work week.
While that is true and I know iNcontroL has stated that they are currently a small crew. If they can get a little bit bigger staff then they would be able to accommodate these schedules while keeping the workload not as bad by spreading it out more across the larger staff. (not sure if it is possible at the moment but it is something to consider for future seasons possibly)
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Calgary26003 Posts
On April 27 2011 04:11 omgCRAZY wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2011 00:32 Chill wrote:Your schedule has them working 10 hours days + post production. I don't know what they're currently working, but I think the plan would be better and more sustainable if it was a standard 40-hour work week. While that is true and I know iNcontroL has stated that they are currently a small crew. If they can get a little bit bigger staff then they would be able to accommodate these schedules while keeping the workload not as bad by spreading it out more across the larger staff. (not sure if it is possible at the moment but it is something to consider for future seasons possibly)
It's typically just bad planning to preemptively plan for overtime. Then when shit goes wrong and you have to go into super overtime, you're fucked. I don't know what their crew currently looks like, but having 2 shifts (8 hour broadcast + recording shift --> 8 hour post production + encoding + uploading + updating shift) would make the schedule much more feasible than just starting out with 10 hours on paper.
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On April 27 2011 03:49 Helios.Star wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2011 15:31 Ulfsark wrote:
Yeah they should just cast from replays, would be better for the players which would create better games in general. Yeah I don't understand why they arent already casting from replays considering they dont cast live anyway.
They commentate the games live. It was a fairly major point they made when promoting the league.
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On April 27 2011 06:08 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2011 04:11 omgCRAZY wrote:On April 26 2011 00:32 Chill wrote:Your schedule has them working 10 hours days + post production. I don't know what they're currently working, but I think the plan would be better and more sustainable if it was a standard 40-hour work week. While that is true and I know iNcontroL has stated that they are currently a small crew. If they can get a little bit bigger staff then they would be able to accommodate these schedules while keeping the workload not as bad by spreading it out more across the larger staff. (not sure if it is possible at the moment but it is something to consider for future seasons possibly) It's typically just bad planning to preemptively plan for overtime. Then when shit goes wrong and you have to go into super overtime, you're fucked. I don't know what their crew currently looks like, but having 2 shifts (8 hour broadcast + recording shift --> 8 hour post production + encoding + uploading + updating shift) would make the schedule much more feasible than just starting out with 10 hours on paper.
I believe how a sample schedule ought to look like is independent of the issues I raised with NASL. While writing this topic, I had a simple message in mind:
NASL can do more to make the schedule more optimal its players without increasing man-hours.
In coming up with the sample schedule, I made plenty of assumptions on how NASL currently made its filming schedule. The sample was a demonstration of my assertion and not intended to be an actual work schedule. The sole fact I had to work with was a short message from Russ in the chat, explaining that they're currently filming 9 to 6 with post-production around the clock.
The most obvious change with Sample Schedule Week 4 is the 2-hour blocks set aside for each matchup. This obviously will lead to plenty of down-time between each cast, considering that a match-up in NASL ranges anywhere from 19:01 to 1:21:19 long. What if we set aside 1.5hour blocks instead? What if we set aside two-hour blocks interlaced 1 hour intervals, with players guaranteed to be available during those two hours but match won't necessarily begins on the dot?
There's plenty of options available that can ensure that NASL do not have to extend filming hours, yet make life easier for all involved. That's why I felt it's a problem that NASL ought to address.
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On April 27 2011 07:15 The Touch wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2011 03:49 Helios.Star wrote:On April 25 2011 15:31 Ulfsark wrote:
Yeah they should just cast from replays, would be better for the players which would create better games in general. Yeah I don't understand why they arent already casting from replays considering they dont cast live anyway. They commentate the games live. It was a fairly major point they made when promoting the league.
I guess they did that to appease the "No Replay casting!" crowd. But I think in the end, the NASL might be forced into replay casting.
1. If they want to bring back Koreans for future seasons, they'll probably have to accommodate them more with the schedule. Slayers_Alicia mentioned not wanting to enter tournaments that have a "crazy schedule" like NASL. And I'm guessing he isn't alone in that opinion.
2. The NASL production staff will just be worn out trying to coordinate live casting 5 days a week, for 3 straight months. GOM can do it because they have a lot more staff/resources, and all their players are in the same place. But I don't know how long a startup like the NASL can keep it up.
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EPT
