On July 13 2010 01:34 Bill307 wrote: Lastly, games are supposed to be fun. Tournaments are supposed to be fun. For 99.9% of us, sponsorship is beneficial only as long as it makes things more fun. Would I give up the fun and exciting atmosphere of today's FG events in exchange for a 1 in 1000 chance of earning big money by playing practicing 80 hours a week? Definitely not. (Edit: my posts are about to go over 9000. )
sorry for snipping your post bill but this pretty much summed it up lol also rewatching some of the finals and wow i didnt realize how bad adam sessler is. guess since i don't have g4 i don't realize who adam was, but i guess ill cut the guy a break
btw with seth being there and g4 broadcasting this, it just means all the more exposure to the FG community
edit: also amazed at how well ricky played in the finals. such patient blocking. i lol'd a lil when ricky ran over to justin and tried to hug him after beating infiltration haha Hello Kitty Manbag FIGHTING
I watched probably 50% of the entire stream and had the stream on the entire time so that I could listen to the audio while doing other things around the house. I can say I only heard one profanity the entire time, and it was by UltraDavid who was a guest commentator. He corrected himself a few seconds later and seemed apologetic for making a mistake.
The commentary was very professional the entire tournament. It wasn't until the Top 8 SSFIV where you had a commentator with zero knowledge of the game that the commentary became unprofessional.
Well, to be fair, I think that a large part of why the SSF4 top-8 commentary was so bad was Sessler specifically and not G4/sponsorship/appealing to average people/whatever. It was truly offensive how little he prepared and how badly he interacted with s-kill. Any professional sportscaster who knows nothing about video games could skim through a page of notes and do much better. You can cut somebody some slack for not knowing any nuances of the game, but not having the respect or professionalism to prepare at all...
Sessler's awesome "omg did he get a perfect or not?" analysis and "now they're tied 2-to-2" play-by-play was legendary.
On July 13 2010 05:47 Myrmidon wrote: Well, to be fair, I think that a large part of why the SSF4 top-8 commentary was so bad was Sessler specifically and not G4/sponsorship/appealing to average people/whatever. It was truly offensive how little he prepared and how badly he interacted with s-kill. Any professional sportscaster who knows nothing about video games could skim through a page of notes and do much better. You can cut somebody some slack for not knowing any nuances of the game, but not having the respect or professionalism to prepare at all...
Sessler's awesome "omg did he get a perfect or not?" analysis and "now they're tied 2-to-2" play-by-play was legendary.
Honestly I would just be happy if the stream was just working fine. The commentators were doing fine in my opinion. Seth Killian was pretty funny at times in his commentary.
Honestly, I'm embarassed by the fact that the part of Evo being shown on G4 is the part with by far the worst commentary.
I have no doubt that the usual SSF4 commentary team would have been far more enjoyable for everyone.
I realize Sessler was there partly to represent the viewers who don't know anything about fighting games. But he doesn't need to be on the stream the entire time. They could explain basic concepts like lifebars or rounds before the top 8 started. And they could bring him on in-between sets and that'd give him a chance to ask the "newbie questions" that came to mind during the previous set. But during the games themselves, a commentator like Keits or James Chen (or Skisonic, if he still had his voice ) could have contributed a LOT more to the commentary than Sessler did.
On July 13 2010 05:55 lac29 wrote: Yeah, the commentary could have been much worse. As a newbie to fighting games I thought it was alright in general.
If you only saw the SSF4 top 8, and not the rest of the event, then you really missed out. The commentary for the rest of the event was a LOT better. Lots of people said they learned a lot about fighting games from those other commentators (i.e. excluding the SSF4 top 8 commentary, which was actually much less informative, let alone funny or exciting).
On July 13 2010 04:21 InToTheWannaB wrote:Ahhh see this makes me want to bang my head into a wall. You make it sound like a sponsor requesting no one curses, or that commentators act in a professional manner at all times on stream is a unreasonable request.
... Wow. Just wow.
First of all, I said the exact opposite of that in my post:
On July 13 2010 01:34 Bill307 wrote: Sponsors can make requests, like run this tournament on PS3 only or on Xbox only, or avoid cursing on the stream, and if they don't interfere then it's good to honour them.
Every time I referred to bad commentary, I explicity used the SSF4 top 8 as an example, while I used the rest of Evo as an example of great commentary that is both professional and cursing-free.
I asked at the start of my post if you had even listened to the Evo commentary besides the top-8. Now, I'm sure you didn't and that you have no idea what you are talking about. The entire Evo commentary had to adhere to certain standards because Evo is already sponsored by a number of companies. The SSF4 top-8 is a special case because it had extra requirements for G4 and because it was awful as a result.
Nothing personal, but I'm not going to respond to the rest of your post because I feel like it'd be a waste of my time.
I'm not talking about this evo cast. Do you see in any of my post me talking about this evo cast in particular? No, I'm talking about the fight game community attitude towards sponsorship and the way they present themself in general. Hell, you guys have community leaders go on LO3, and the way they talk makes it sound as if sponsors are the enemy.
On July 13 2010 05:55 lac29 wrote: Yeah, the commentary could have been much worse. As a newbie to fighting games I thought it was alright in general.
If you only saw the SSF4 top 8, and not the rest of the event, then you really missed out. The commentary for the rest of the event was a LOT better. Lots of people said they learned a lot about fighting games from those other commentators (i.e. excluding the SSF4 top 8 commentary, which was actually much less informative, let alone funny or exciting).
I actually saw a lot ... lots of the 32 all the way up to the final. And yeah you're right ... the top 8 onwards wasn't as good as the rest. And I did think "doh" that guy who said it was tied 2-2 was pretty terribad (he sounded kinda drunk).
On July 13 2010 05:56 Bill307 wrote: Honestly, I'm embarassed by the fact that the part of Evo being shown on G4 is the part with by far the worst commentary.
I have no doubt that the usual SSF4 commentary team would have been far more enjoyable for everyone.
I realize Sessler was there partly to represent the viewers who don't know anything about fighting games. But he doesn't need to be on the stream the entire time. They could explain basic concepts like lifebars or rounds before the top 8 started. And they could bring him on in-between sets and that'd give him a chance to ask the "newbie questions" that came to mind during the previous set. But during the games themselves, a commentator like Keits or James Chen (or Skisonic, if he still had his voice ) could have contributed a LOT more to the commentary than Sessler did.
To be fair, Sessler only broadcasted the final match so it's not like he dragged down the entirety of the Top 8 (and I'd argue that some of those matches were quite entertaining, commentary included). In addition, he's the host of X-Play, so from the show's perspective, he needs to have some kind of persistent presence throughout the segment. The real shame is of course that his role as a co-commentator requires that he participate regularly, but he had nothing worthwhile to contribute. I agree that he could have done some independent research or simply bow out of co-commentating altogether and allow some of the other commentators to take over. If anything, his questions before and during the match should have been more broad and intelligent to better familiarize average viewers with the game. There were several different alternatives that G4 could have used that would have been preferred to what actually happened, but what's done is done =(
Adam Sessler is a cool guy, I met him at WCG 2004 and he really is into games, but I don't know if his ignorance in SF4 was feigned for the attempted benefit of the audience or genuine. The fact that he didn't know some arguably simple concepts that needed no explanation was insulting to me.
On July 13 2010 06:00 InToTheWannaB wrote:I'm not talking about this evo cast. Do you see in any of my post me talking about this evo cast in particular? No, I'm talking about the fight game community attitude towards sponsorship and the way they present themself in general. Hell, you guys have community leaders go on LO3, and the way they talk makes it sound as if sponsors are the enemy.
So you entered a topic about Evo, where we were just mentioning how bad the casting was for the SSF4 top 8 grand finals, and made a post about unprofessional commentary, referring to apparently other events besides the Evo in question.
Alright then. Moving on...
On July 13 2010 04:21 InToTheWannaB wrote: Also you make it sound like if you get sponsors it will somehow kill the fun of the game. You can still have your community run events. Where you can curse and act like a fool on the mic. Then you can have your sponsored tournys where you are there just to compete, win the cash, and go home. That's what every other community does and it seems to work out well for us. More tournaments can only help. No matter how "bad" the tourney is run, more is always better.
The fighting game community is not a bunch of loners.
We don't go to tournaments to win money: the hotel fees and the gas / flight cost will always far outweigh any gains, except for a small handful of people (like Justin Wong). We go for the atmosphere, for playing other people, and for meeting friends and others from across the continent. Obviously you don't understand this at all.
A poorly run tournament always hurts the community. This covers everything from scumbag sponsors who promise prizes and then never deliver them, to events that are just so badly organized that you don't enjoy them. These things discourage players from entering future tournaments and makes the community look bad.
Also having a "noob" commentator there to explain things for new viewers is a proven formula. Poker being the closest thing on TV to competitive gaming is the best example. While the commentator explaining the rules and basic strategies of poker every show pisses off the hardcore fan. It helps pull the causal fans into the game. The hardcore fans are going to bitch, but they are not going to stop watching. That's why they are the hardcore fans. If you want a game to grow, get used to that casting formula because its what works.
Who are you even arguing against, here?
As for the players getting that extra 1/1000 chance at winning some money for all the practicing they do. I don't know, how about we try instead to get enough sponsors that maybe one day you can have a league. Where players earn a salary regardless of what place they finish in any individual tournament. Sounds fun to me.
If there were sponsored leagues, the odds of making any money at all would be a LOT lower than 1 in 1000. Look at SC or any professional sport to see what I mean.
Besides, no one said sponsors couldn't do any good. The point is that we won't be desperate and do anything just to get them, because then we'd be enjoying our games less overall.
Daigo vs Sabin money match for those who missed it. Don't know how long it will be up, but watching them when I can. Team Spooky hasn't up'd em yet so this is just a stream capture.
Eita and Tokido on the mic! Commentary is pretty hilarious even though I don't understand it.
On July 13 2010 07:54 Pineapple wrote: Does anyone know what's happened to the frameadvantagedotcom YouTube channel?
Seb has all but retired from stream capturing. He moved onto a different site, not exactly sure what the aims of this one are: http://stillmashing.com/wp/
Hopefully this doesn't mean the end of Battlefield Arcadia videos. At least we still get Team Spooky stuff but I hate how crowded and busy their layout is.
On July 13 2010 02:33 Bill307 wrote: (Btw DBunny, you're not the same person as drunkenbunny, are you? I thought you were at first, but then I ran into him recently and was confused 'cause he didn't look anything like you. )
Incidently my SRK is DrunkBunny but I never post so I don't think anyone refers to me by that name. Its been awhile though, I think the last time we ran in to each other was two waterloo tournaments ago.
Evo was fun as hell this year, lookin forward to next years. I'm only active in the Blazblue and Guilty scene so I don't know the SF4 players well, but maybe that'll change. If any of you were at evo, I'm the asian guy with brown hair that wore a Hwaseung Jacket on Day 1, I met Infested in the bathroom lewl
EPT
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