I think the right justification of the game being dead without viewers would be true when people pay to watch games and that money is used to pay tournament cash prizes or the players salaries.
Most of the sponsorships today are based on branding and eye balls not on actual ROI in terms of cash. That's why players can get away by acting bad mannered and viewers can be retards too. If you paid money to go to a movie show you'd not act like a panzy at every opportunity because you invested in it. Sure you'll give it up, trash the movie or actors, but the actors (players) and directors (tournament orgas) need you to come in large numbers to get back their returns.
There's no binding here so everyone acts the way they want since theres no consequence. But to grow esports we have to grow beyond the retards first and help each other, pointing fingers by players (who think they are demigods) and viewers (who feel they have a right to be answered to) is not the right away ahead.
On January 09 2011 22:30 Kage wrote: I think the right justification of the game being dead without viewers would be true when people pay to watch games and that money is used to pay tournament cash prizes or the players salaries.
Most of the sponsorships today are based on branding and eye balls not on actual ROI in terms of cash. That's why players can get away by acting bad mannered and viewers can be retards too. If you paid money to go to a movie show you'd not act like a panzy at every opportunity because you invested in it. Sure you'll give it up, trash the movie or actors, but the actors (players) and directors (tournament orgas) need you to come in large numbers to get back their returns.
There's no binding here so everyone acts the way they want since theres no consequence. But to grow esports we have to grow beyond the retards first and help each other, pointing fingers by players (who think they are demigods) and viewers (who feel they have a right to be answered to) is not the right away ahead.
On January 09 2011 22:15 gamerbase smile wrote: Hello hello
I'm the tournament organiser from the event yesterday and I just thought i'd put a few points across and make apologies where necessary.
Firstly, we had a really fun day on site, the event ran really smooth once we got through the troubles caused from the website hosting crashing pretty severely - we didn't even know that would happen with that much traffic - so there was about an hour whilst we waited for late players and to generate the bracket, I apologise for this - we couldn't have anticipated it would have happened.
Apart from that, we didn't really experience any lag issues from the players except the usual spikes here and there, and I didn't receive any complaints at all from games being dropped due to lag in the building, which was a massive relief!
However... due to our caster not coming down to the event, I had a livestream account i'm not really familiar with, and between organising the tournament and trying to get that up and running - we tried our best to get our in house stream working, after the first match realising that the bandwidth on the line was being throttled pretty hard for no reason as I was on a dedicated 20/1 ADSL line, I still don't know why it was so bad, but it's central London and the BT offices experienced a fire in the building last week so that potentially had something to do with it - again, nothing much I could about this on the day, so continued to cast on our stream, and actually having a lot of fun casting myself which was totally new to me ^_^ - Many thanks to those who tuned in and listened
And of course many thanks to Drool and ragequit.tv who came in to cast most of the larger games throughout the day, it's awesome how the community came together for that and the stream was really high quality - you guys are awesome!
So to explain what happened towards the end of the event can only be described as perculiar. All of our streaming accounts started to lag out really bad. The in house stream kept disconnecting from battlenet for no reason so I pulled mine entirely to save lagging the game, some people think I was spectating the finals - I was not. Drools stream had a few disconnects towards the end, which could be expected considering he was in the US and we're in EU - but also when Total Biscuit tried to get in, he was lagging the game and disconnecting... so strange - no explanation and I'm not really sure what we could have done.. in my opinion, the players gameplay is the priority over streaming - but even more of a priority which not many people knew about was that we had to get the event wrapped up, as our venue was closing at midnight, Sjow admitted GG at 11:57! it was too close for comfort... With the initial delay due to the website, and for SarenS grabbing a burger without warning (McDonalds is to blame for all of the problems ^_^ ) - we were a couple of hours out of our schedule, which again we apologise for.
All in all - we learned more lessons for how to do this - we honestly didn't expect >this< amount of interest, over 5.5 thousand on the ragequit.tv stream, and I think my stream spiked at about 1700 at one point, with over 4000 users browsing our website and 47 pages on this thread! We couldn't have known... we will for next time and we really look forward to bolstering our servers, installing some really nice 100/10 lines and working our stream to be really special.
We will have the demos from the finals to upload for those that want to see them, and a good selection of other matches from the event, i'll post the link on here for you, if anyone would like to recast them on youtube perhaps lemme know
Many congrats to the winners, you were all so excellent to hang around with all day - myself and ray (boo) had a blast Also thanks to Nigel from PokerIdol.com who stayed the entire day and was really enthusiastic about meeting the players and of course for the cash prize pool! He really enjoyed it, so theres no worries about the sponsors, we'll be back with bigger events hehe
I just got back from London myself, so I have only read a few of the pages on this thread, I wish I could explain how sorry we are to the eager community trying to spectate the games and sometimes it breaking, especially the final, we all saw what happened at MLG and sometimes theres just external factors out of our control, if you knew the staff here you would know we tried our absolute hardest to deliver the best event we could and keep you updated with photos/live updates etc. so any positive feedback would be so very much appreciated, it breaks our hearts to see so much rage.
I'll get busy trying to sort the replays and remaing photos out, and let you know asap
<3
Many thanks from the team for the Pokeridol.com tournament! Chris aka smile Ray aka BoO www.gamerbase.com
Great to hear that explanation! It explains most problems. I really enjoyed your tournament and I will definetly tune in the next time!
On January 09 2011 22:15 gamerbase smile wrote: Hello hello
I'm the tournament organiser from the event yesterday and I just thought i'd put a few points across and make apologies where necessary.
Firstly, we had a really fun day on site, the event ran really smooth once we got through the troubles caused from the website hosting crashing pretty severely - we didn't even know that would happen with that much traffic - so there was about an hour whilst we waited for late players and to generate the bracket, I apologise for this - we couldn't have anticipated it would have happened.
Apart from that, we didn't really experience any lag issues from the players except the usual spikes here and there, and I didn't receive any complaints at all from games being dropped due to lag in the building, which was a massive relief!
However... due to our caster not coming down to the event, I had a livestream account i'm not really familiar with, and between organising the tournament and trying to get that up and running - we tried our best to get our in house stream working, after the first match realising that the bandwidth on the line was being throttled pretty hard for no reason as I was on a dedicated 20/1 ADSL line, I still don't know why it was so bad, but it's central London and the BT offices experienced a fire in the building last week so that potentially had something to do with it - again, nothing much I could about this on the day, so continued to cast on our stream, and actually having a lot of fun casting myself which was totally new to me ^_^ - Many thanks to those who tuned in and listened
And of course many thanks to Drool and ragequit.tv who came in to cast most of the larger games throughout the day, it's awesome how the community came together for that and the stream was really high quality - you guys are awesome!
So to explain what happened towards the end of the event can only be described as perculiar. All of our streaming accounts started to lag out really bad. The in house stream kept disconnecting from battlenet for no reason so I pulled mine entirely to save lagging the game, some people think I was spectating the finals - I was not. Drools stream had a few disconnects towards the end, which could be expected considering he was in the US and we're in EU - but also when Total Biscuit tried to get in, he was lagging the game and disconnecting... so strange - no explanation and I'm not really sure what we could have done.. in my opinion, the players gameplay is the priority over streaming - but even more of a priority which not many people knew about was that we had to get the event wrapped up, as our venue was closing at midnight, Sjow admitted GG at 11:57! it was too close for comfort... With the initial delay due to the website, and for SarenS grabbing a burger without warning (McDonalds is to blame for all of the problems ^_^ ) - we were a couple of hours out of our schedule, which again we apologise for.
All in all - we learned more lessons for how to do this - we honestly didn't expect >this< amount of interest, over 5.5 thousand on the ragequit.tv stream, and I think my stream spiked at about 1700 at one point, with over 4000 users browsing our website and 47 pages on this thread! We couldn't have known... we will for next time and we really look forward to bolstering our servers, installing some really nice 100/10 lines and working our stream to be really special.
We will have the demos from the finals to upload for those that want to see them, and a good selection of other matches from the event, i'll post the link on here for you, if anyone would like to recast them on youtube perhaps lemme know
Many congrats to the winners, you were all so excellent to hang around with all day - myself and ray (boo) had a blast Also thanks to Nigel from PokerIdol.com who stayed the entire day and was really enthusiastic about meeting the players and of course for the cash prize pool! He really enjoyed it, so theres no worries about the sponsors, we'll be back with bigger events hehe
I just got back from London myself, so I have only read a few of the pages on this thread, I wish I could explain how sorry we are to the eager community trying to spectate the games and sometimes it breaking, especially the final, we all saw what happened at MLG and sometimes theres just external factors out of our control, if you knew the staff here you would know we tried our absolute hardest to deliver the best event we could and keep you updated with photos/live updates etc. so any positive feedback would be so very much appreciated, it breaks our hearts to see so much rage.
I'll get busy trying to sort the replays and remaing photos out, and let you know asap
<3
Many thanks from the team for the Pokeridol.com tournament! Chris aka smile Ray aka BoO www.gamerbase.com
Thank you for that post. I surely clarifies some things, but without trying to be an ass just for the heck of it (since you already learned it the hard way yesterday), I want to note some things.
You use different versions of the phrase "we could not know" too often in your post. Because some things you should have known. During the last few months, every SC2 tournament that was decently advertised and had a pricepool above ~2k $/€ has attracted streams with at least 5000 people watching, normally it is more people actually. You simply were not on top of your research there. Furthermore, that your caster didn't show up is really unfortunate, but it really makes us wonder who the hell this guy was, kinda seems like you hired some random guy. Like TotalBiscuit mentioned in this thread, which other casters beside d.apollo and himself are there in the UK who is qualified to cast a tournament that big? Again, you really weren't on top of your research there. Plain and simple, your preparation was not as it should have been.
Still, it was an enjoyable tournament with good players, and that you got through a 32 double-elimination on one day deserves respect. Just fix the flaws for next time and it will be a great tournament with probably 5-digit viewers.
I didn't mean to say whoever thinks it's a spectator sport needs to stfu. I believe SC2 is a spectator sport. I meant to say whoever believes that the fact that it is a spectator sport means players should be forced to play in bad conditions needs to stfu. A spectator sport would be nowhere without its spectators, but where would it be without its players? It's give an take, as it is with everything. In this case spectators need to give a little and give up a live stream to ensure that players can function in a good environment. Players give up a lot for the spectators, in fact they dedicate their lives to entertaining you. All spectators need to do is enjoy the games and occasionally accept it when a player can't play due to bad conditions. It seems to me a lot of spectators in this thread prefer to take a lot and give very little.
Spectators don't just need to eat what they're fed but they should definitely develop a better understanding of all sides if they think players just need to do whatever to entertain them.
I have no problem giving up a live stream (it hurts a little every time it happens though ;D) but it's the way things happened yesterday which didn't seem fair to me. As you say it's give and take on both sides, fans give, fans take too, to find the balance ain't easy probably...
I have a problem with the "players give up a lot for the spectators" bit though because as a spec a) I do not force anyone to play starcraft, I give and take like any fan like you said but that's about it, people still do what they want and if players give a lot, i hope they get a lot too, if they ain't happy about their life, they're probably in the wrong business - and you could say that about any working person...give and take. b) I'd take a pro player place anytime if they wanna switch (maybe I'd hate it but that's sthg else) - it's not that bad of a situation, is it !? c)if it's their job, then I got reminded of this convo @ 1:50 (don't ask me why) :
On January 09 2011 22:30 Kage wrote: I think the right justification of the game being dead without viewers would be true when people pay to watch games and that money is used to pay tournament cash prizes or the players salaries.
Most of the sponsorships today are based on branding and eye balls not on actual ROI in terms of cash. That's why players can get away by acting bad mannered and viewers can be retards too. If you paid money to go to a movie show you'd not act like a panzy at every opportunity because you invested in it. Sure you'll give it up, trash the movie or actors, but the actors (players) and directors (tournament orgas) need you to come in large numbers to get back their returns.
There's no binding here so everyone acts the way they want since theres no consequence. But to grow esports we have to grow beyond the retards first and help each other, pointing fingers by players (who think they are demigods) and viewers (who feel they have a right to be answered to) is not the right away ahead.
Well, you gotta start somewhere, I guess this retard vs demigods interaction is all part of the growing process to avoid future mistakes. I'm such an optimistic figure.
Not sure I agree with the paying ticket would solve it all though. I understand the movie analogy but it's only worth what it's worth. A free concert can be as good as a paying one. A soccer match on tv is "free", the same match at a stadion would cost you and if you ever go to a stadion, feels like people paid for their right to complain and behave like idiots in there. You can only compare things that can be compared. It's all in the way all the things are put together...cash helps, but not always. I pay for GSL stream. It doesn't mean some "free" (MLG) tourneys weren't as good as GSL (don't mean to start an endless discussion about Korea vs rest of the world but I guess you get my point). And from what I hear from our archon starcasters, all the money I pay go not to the stream itself but only to try and improve it (probably peanuts in their whole budget), so even the biggest tourney worldwide does not really need my (direct) cash to work perfectly fine.
And also, isn't part of what makes e-sport attractive is the fact that it's so often free (well, there's always indirect costs but whatever) for the viewer ? If cash was all over the place, would the audience be the same (in "quality" and quantity ?). Just asking questions here, I don't pretend to know the answers btw...
Anyway, how does this relate to the topic ? Well, I guess the admins did their best from what I just read so next tournament finals should be better!
TLO " Well Sjow, it's almost the same prize for 2nd place " Sjow " I know, but it's more about the honor... -_- " TLO " All I care about is the honor "
* not a word for word, but along those lines. hehe
There was some massive lols throughout the day from these two. <3
Furthermore, that your caster didn't show up is really unfortunate, but it really makes us wonder who the hell this guy was, kinda seems like you hired some random guy. Like TotalBiscuit mentioned in this thread, which other casters beside d.apollo and himself are there in the UK who is qualified to cast a tournament that big? Again, you really weren't on top of your research there. Plain and simple, your preparation was not as it should have been.
It was d.apollo, he cast our last SC2 WD £2k tournament a few months back and I was insanely impressed with how well he approached it, unfortunately we were notified on the morning of the event by his manager that he will be unable to make it for perfectly acceptable reasons. So no bad blood there, Shaun is awesome, it's just really unfortunate
I like how the situation has developed from "let's all bash Sjow" to some kind of peaceful agreement with statements from many sides. Only a handful of people discussing here actually saw / read what happened live, the rest shouldn't be so quick to judge since they're not in a position to anyways.
I'd also like to note that every single time I saw this topic in the side bar, I read "Pokerlol" instead of "PokerIdol". For whatever reason.
TLO " Well Sjow, it's almost the same prize for 2nd place " Sjow " I know, but it's more about the honor... -_- " TLO " All I care about is the honor "
* not a word for word, but along those lines. hehe
There was some massive lols throughout the day from these two. <3
Furthermore, that your caster didn't show up is really unfortunate, but it really makes us wonder who the hell this guy was, kinda seems like you hired some random guy. Like TotalBiscuit mentioned in this thread, which other casters beside d.apollo and himself are there in the UK who is qualified to cast a tournament that big? Again, you really weren't on top of your research there. Plain and simple, your preparation was not as it should have been.
It was d.apollo, he cast our last SC2 WD £2k tournament a few months back and I was insanely impressed with how well he approached it, unfortunately we were notified on the morning of the event by his manager that he will be unable to make it for perfectly acceptable reasons. So no bad blood there, Shaun is awesome, it's just really unfortunate
On January 09 2011 23:33 gamerbase smile wrote: It was d.apollo, he cast our last SC2 WD £2k tournament a few months back and I was insanely impressed with how well he approached it, unfortunately we were notified on the morning of the event by his manager that he will be unable to make it for perfectly acceptable reasons. So no bad blood there, Shaun is awesome, it's just really unfortunate
On January 08 2011 04:07 d.Apollo wrote: Iam not covering this event either..
Unfortunately some of the replays have been deleted by players shutting down their computers, however I have uploaded all the TLO, Sjow and Haypro matches to the tournament bracket, which can be downloaded by clicking the little film cell icon above the match... visit the bracket here:
Smile, you might want to collect all the final info for the tournament and your statements in a blog post or something... Quite a lot of people are likely to miss it completely. And definitely get in touch with some casters (could be the guys from RageQuit again) to cast the games we missed. There's no reason not to - they would be happy to get some high quality games to cast and the sponsors would be happy with the additional exposure.
P.S. In the future, if streaming is causing problems the best thing to do would be to cast from replays?
I don't mean this as part of the casting live VS casting from replays discussion because we are talking about an offline tournament. It's more like Plan A being to cast live, and, in case something goes wrong, Plan B: send the replays to the casters immediately.
Oh man i didnt realise that all the pro's were actually at gamerbase or i would have popped in! Gonna check out the finals vods now. Was a shame about the stream but i know everyone was trying their hardest so mad props for all the effort that went into this.
On January 09 2011 22:30 Kage wrote: I think the right justification of the game being dead without viewers would be true when people pay to watch games and that money is used to pay tournament cash prizes or the players salaries.
Most of the sponsorships today are based on branding and eye balls not on actual ROI in terms of cash. That's why players can get away by acting bad mannered and viewers can be retards too. If you paid money to go to a movie show you'd not act like a panzy at every opportunity because you invested in it. Sure you'll give it up, trash the movie or actors, but the actors (players) and directors (tournament orgas) need you to come in large numbers to get back their returns.
There's no binding here so everyone acts the way they want since theres no consequence. But to grow esports we have to grow beyond the retards first and help each other, pointing fingers by players (who think they are demigods) and viewers (who feel they have a right to be answered to) is not the right away ahead.
This is a fantastic point of view and I completely agree. Players and viewers need to take a moment and realise that pointing fingers wont get us anywhere. Spectators needs to realize that players are working their asses off to provide entertainment on such a high level. The occasional hiccup is only part of sports and particularily when money is involved emotion is going to run high. Demanding players play in bad conditions is not only hurting the player view of the public but also the legitimacy of the contest.
Players need to be treated with respect for what their doing, but also I think they need to have some accountability for their actions. Whether we like it or not, lag is part of the game and it wont be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. Acting like a mature reasonable adult I think will go a long way in promoting this sport. If future sponsers see bad behaivour from a popular player or from the crowd watching they are going to think "Why sponser this, its a bunch of kids demanding perfection". In the end, we all need to realize we are here for the same reason (starcraft!) and we have to dwell on the positive rather than the negative to move forward.
Its a shame that a tournament of this quality can be affected so negatively by what happened. I for one hope to see more Pokeridol tournies in the future!
On January 09 2011 12:24 qck wrote: Why attempt to put in your opinion then? Whether or not you're concerned with e-sports; if you're already aware that you are adding nothing to an already heated discussion - other than your big brain - then why would you bother posting?
Why do any of us post anything qck? The vast majority of forum posts, including my own, are nothing but hot air anyways. His limited knowledge is way way more than what most people in this thread are posting with so I dare say his post actually holds a little bit more...gravitas than all other posts in this thread except for haypro's and tlo's posts because they are actually there.
Besides, most of what he said isn't opinion. I find this part
The fact that this stuff was evening happening at midnight? Ridiculous. Way too late for this kind of thing. Organisational failure, should have been split over 2 days if time was going to be an issue. Lack of reliable on-site caster? Inexcusable failure. I dunno who this guy was, but I know for a fact it was neither myself nor Apollo. This might sound arrogant as shit, but... name one other UK Starcraft 2 caster... because I can't. Who on earth did they ask who then didn't bother to show up?
This concerns me because it's another setback for eSports in the UK and may damage the potential for big money sponsorship in this country for future events.
pretty unarguable.
They're assumptions on a tournament he has had no role in. "This might sound arrogant as shit, but...", does sound 'arrogant as shit'. He's typed airless accusations with no real point other than an advertisement for his own - here comes my opinion - lacklustre shoutcasting.
Though maybe I'm - heavily - biased, because I've read his diatribes on countless other subjects and all of them are heavily inclined towards his own persona without actually discussing the issue at hand. Again, I think anyone, including me, is incredibly stupid for even approaching the subject; as I'm sure the people who ran the tournament are very much aware of their shortfalls and I don't think 5 pages of non-constructive criticism will help them out in future events.
Can you prove that even one thing I said was not true? I have to ask because right now the one who seems to be 'full of hot air' is you. How was my criticism not constructive exactly? Which of my points were incorrect?
I ask because yes, it would appear you are heavily biased and don't seem to have anything to add other than insults. You have absolutely no idea who my sources are or where that information came from, but I can safely say now, having read your post, that I definitely know more about it than you do. You've not added a shred of value to this discussion and if you want to make yourself feel better by airing your dirty laundry in public, then you don't get to sit on a moral high-horse and claim that I'm not discussing the issue at hand.
But hey, what would I know, I'm just a lacklustre shoutcaster, my opinion isn't worth shit right?
Considering it's been revealed that Apollo was the designated on-site shoutcaster, I'll have to go by instinct and say that your sources seem pretty unreliable.
As someone who was actually at the event, I can report that the organizers were doing everything in their power to keep it running smoothly. There were unexpected hiccups and it's unfortunate the stream was down for the finals but we should appreciate the tournament as a whole. A great field of competitors showed up and played some entertaining games which for the most part were faultlessly streamed. The sponsors even had a representative there the whole day to talk to players and fans.
I was really psyched to attend such a big live event in my home city and really hope there will be more to come. As smile has said, there were lots of things to learn and improve on but we should all support their efforts and look forward to a bigger and better tournament next time.
EPT
- so there was about an hour whilst we waited for late players and to generate the bracket, I apologise for this - we couldn't have anticipated it would have happened. 
