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On April 04 2011 14:41 SweetenemY wrote:
Summary:
MajorLackGaming
Day1 we just pray,
wanted something to see,
Get a 9-hour-wait,
viewing ads for a fee.
Day2 were more fails
and reasonable hating.
We get 1.5 games
after eight hours waiting.
Day3 stream was up,
but strenghten your faith.
MLG showed the hall
while the top-games were played.
Day4 i`m still stunned
maybe it will get fine,
but i have my doubts,
it will be `till day[9].
This <3
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On April 04 2011 15:57 SpinmovE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2011 15:40 Rabiator wrote:On April 04 2011 15:28 FaZe wrote:
For a couple thousand bucks, You do realize that MLG is a business who has to make a profit to make it worthwile and to increase the quality next time around? "A couple thousand bucks" may be nothing to you, but companies like these (and their sponsors) are usually nitpicking about every cent ... a penny saved is a penny earned and a few more cameras might improve the quality for the viewer, but lack of these cameras will NOT make people stop watching the event. We are addicted after all and used to these things and the whining adds enough emotion to keep it "interesting" even though some games might not be worth watching. So people will watch, regardless of the quality. Ya, I totally agree, you can speak for every person that has ever tuned into a SC2 stream with one broad generalization. I know I turned the stream off multiple times because watching a crowd of people isn't my version of enjoyable. I did turn back in to see iNcontroL play but I'm absolutely POSITIVE that they had to of lost quite a large amount of spectators when they had absolutely no content playing for hours at a time. This event was honestly embarrassing as a fan of esports. I tried to watch it with my girlfriend on day 2 and I'm going to say I don't think she'll ever be done for trying to watch another sc2 game for the rest of her life. The entire I had the stream open there were no games casted despite the fact that games were being played. I legitimately get mad about how badly MLG is going about running a sc2 tourny. We all want this year to be the year for esports in NA. There is no way in hell that is going to happen when events go this insanely badly. Anyone that had a friend tune in is surely put off from the game, people that watch Halo or CoD that tuned in will most likely never do so again. It's a fucking travesty for the growth of esports and Sundance and crew should be absolutely, unequivocally ashamed of the complete shit show they put on. If the next MLG isn't all sorts of beyond fucking amazing there is noway in hell I will ever make time to watch it again. I am a huge fan of esports, I've competed in WCG Canada for cs 1.6, I've been playing star2 consistently since the beta, I've paid for lesson from iNcontroL and I've paid for multiple seasons of GSL. But what MLG tried to call entertainment was just plain brutal. I can't even imagine how this event could have been any worse. Dismissing all of the technical difficulties the event was still pure crap from a spectator perspective. I hope they are sick about how badly they preformed their jobs. At least 90% of my information about what was going on at the event came through twitter and I had no idea who is in or out of the tournament for the first 2 days. I really want MLG to do better but with their track record I'm about out of hope 
+1
I have high hopes that some other major player (NASL, IGN, or maybe a US shoot-off of GOM) will begin seriously competing with MLG and will eventually take over as the main American vehicle of SC2 as an esport.
Honestly, I think MLG is hurting the growth of SC2 as an esport, not helping it. As you said, anyone who told friends who are new to SC2 to tune into MLG is likely to have an extremely tough time ever convincing those friends to watch SC2 again.
There are a lot of examples of industries where having a big established player that is incompetent can really lower the quality of a product (eg microsoft) by discouraging competition because they are the "status quo" despite being completely incompetent as a company and I really hope MLG doesn't do that to SC2.
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I'm glad that the stream stability was addressed for today, otherwise the whole event would have been a wash for those of us at home.
With technical issues aside, the main thing that annoyed me was the downtime. I have to accept that we can't see every match because of the size of the tournament and the short weekend time frame, but we could have seen a lot more Starcraft than we did.
Also, it seemed like communication to Wheat and Day9 was mostly non existent, and they were reading tourney news from Twitter. I'd work on having them better informed and on getting them more replays with which to fill downtime.
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On April 04 2011 14:32 Sceptor87 wrote:
This isn't the Halo crowd. You know, the 14 year old kids that go on their toys and scream obscenities at people over the internet. Some of the guys that play this game are hitting 30. Some of the guys that watch this game are in their 30's. They will expect and demand more.
I got the impression from being on the ground at MLG that their target audience is a much lower age range as well. Even the booth babes were under age, not anywhere near the age of the gogo dancing razer girls from IEM. I can see how that works when most of the attendies are 12-15, but doesn't exactly work with the older crowd unless it's full of Chesters. In fact, it's borderline gross having 15 year olds in tight skirts running around trying to get 30 year olds to play at their booth. There were no sponsors targeting the older demographics, so MLG really must not understand the demographics of the SC2 crowd. I'm not sure the Halo and SC2 crowds mix all that well. Let's hope something like NASL takes off and gives us a decent tournament to attend.
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On April 04 2011 14:41 SweetenemY wrote:
Summary:
MajorLackGaming
Day1 we just pray,
wanted something to see,
Get a 9-hour-wait,
viewing ads for a fee.
Day2 were more fails
and reasonable hating.
We get 1.5 games
after eight hours waiting.
Day3 stream was up,
but strenghten your faith.
MLG showed the hall
while the top-games were played.
Day4 i`m still stunned
maybe it will get fine,
but i have my doubts,
it will be `till day[9].
lol, nice one 
i wasn't home until yesterday, but i'm almost glad, hearing all the problems there was the first 2 days and the long delays day 3, hopefully MLG fixes all of this next time
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On April 04 2011 15:57 SpinmovE wrote:Ya, I totally agree, you can speak for every person that has ever tuned into a SC2 stream with one broad generalization. I know I turned the stream off multiple times because watching a crowd of people isn't my version of enjoyable. I did turn back in to see iNcontroL play but I'm absolutely POSITIVE that they had to of lost quite a large amount of spectators when they had absolutely no content playing for hours at a time. This event was honestly embarrassing as a fan of esports. I tried to watch it with my girlfriend on day 2 and I'm going to say I don't think she'll ever be done for trying to watch another sc2 game for the rest of her life. The entire I had the stream open there were no games casted despite the fact that games were being played. I legitimately get mad about how badly MLG is going about running a sc2 tourny. We all want this year to be the year for esports in NA. There is no way in hell that is going to happen when events go this insanely badly. Anyone that had a friend tune in is surely put off from the game, people that watch Halo or CoD that tuned in will most likely never do so again. It's a fucking travesty for the growth of esports and Sundance and crew should be absolutely, unequivocally ashamed of the complete shit show they put on. If the next MLG isn't all sorts of beyond fucking amazing there is noway in hell I will ever make time to watch it again. I am a huge fan of esports, I've competed in WCG Canada for cs 1.6, I've been playing star2 consistently since the beta, I've paid for lesson from iNcontroL and I've paid for multiple seasons of GSL. But what MLG tried to call entertainment was just plain brutal. I can't even imagine how this event could have been any worse. Dismissing all of the technical difficulties the event was still pure crap from a spectator perspective. I hope they are sick about how badly they preformed their jobs. At least 90% of my information about what was going on at the event came through twitter and I had no idea who is in or out of the tournament for the first 2 days. I really want MLG to do better but with their track record I'm about out of hope
Wow. Good post that REALLY puts the tournament in perspective.
I hope MLG reads this. As SC2 fans, we can sugarcoat MLG Dallas and it's broadcast all we want, but at the end of the day, the overall product is horrible and intolerable to anyone but hardcore fans.
You know a product SUCKS when you're embarassed to share it with your friends, or can't even defend your own interest to other people.
I've seen professional Darts on TV handled with more sophistication.
I also hope the NASL learns from MLG and their mistakes.
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Number 1 is exactly what i was thinking. How hard would it have been to have 4 stations on the stage. Some players took 20+ minutes to set up and were having issues and we just had to sit and wait.
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On April 04 2011 13:25 Drock wrote:
I agree with a lot of this, however, if it is not put in a more constructive way then I believe it will just be viewed as trolling/hate and not be taken seriously.
If it's not taken seriously then I believe MLG officials and producers are just plain ignorant/incompetent and no one will pay ten bucks for an HQ stream.
For me the tip of the iceberg yesterday was when Wheat/Day9 had to "cast" (lol) incontrol - TLO from a twitter feed. Now THAT'S where it's ME who feels he's getting trolled (and if MLG has the stones to feel trolled by me and others who hate on the piss poor massive fail abortion of an Event that they tried to SELL us the past three days, well then fuck them).
If it weren't so sad one could almost think it's funny. Imagine an NFL postseason game being cast by the commentators from a twitter feed while they are sitting in the very fucking stadium that the game is played in. IF E-Sports wants to live up to this word (sports) then the major tournament organizers need to put some effort into trying to present it like any other sport on TV is presented.
- Pre-game shows with replays of the two competitors prepared and readys to showcase their playing style.
- Pre and postgame interviews and analysis.
- A tournament structure and brackets that I can understand without being fucking Jean-François Champollion. Also ever heard of this crazy concept of having a brackets graphic showing once in a while? Apparently they never hesitated a second to show us the infamous "momentarily" graphic, but brackets? Who needs those? Let's just "hide them in a super tiny link somewhere on the right side of the page.
- etc etc. I could go on and on and make more suggestions, but they all would be so incredibly standard that a monkey with half a brain could come up with them if he elected to use a quarter of it (yes, that's a monkey using 1/8 of his brain ffs!, yet none of those have crossed MLG's minds.
They are invited to feel trolled by this post and then go fuck themselves.
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United States7483 Posts
I think the production values felt worse than they actually were as a result of a lot of the internet connectivity issues that were going on. It's fairly difficult to separate how much of it was due to them having problems in general and how much of it was due to poor preparation and planning with regards to just production value.
I do however think that MLG definitely needs to step up and figure out what they need to do to make these events SMOOTH. And by that, I mean get more accurate information on venues and make sure they can handle it well before the event is ready to go. You shouldn't be showing up at the venue only to find out that the internet connection can't handle the event, if that's a local problem: don't hold MLG events there. Yeah, it's nice that they go all over the country, but if you can't get good enough of a connection in Dallas, don't hold the event there until LAN support is put in, at least.
As a rule of thumb, if you expect X amount of people to stream your event, make sure you have the stream set up to handle 2*X people, with the ability to easily increase it if necessary. If you don't, you might have lower costs, and if you only get X people, you're fine. If you get more than X, you're boned, your event is badly hurt, your reputation goes down the shitter, and everyone hates you. If you go for 2*X, your costs are a bit higher, and if you get X, you wasted some funds, but if you get more than X, you don't have to deal with losing tons of potential high quality stream customers in the future, and you get a sterling reputation.
GO FOR THE BIGGER STREAM DAMMIT
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I shouldn't have to wake up and not know I play in an hour
or go to the last day of the event with nothing and be told I have consolation matches
les go MLG !
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All MLG has to do is figure out a way to broadcast as many of the games of possible in a timely, organized fashion.
As much as I like DJ Wheat and Day 9, people aren't planning their entire weekend around watching them kill time and talk about Starcraft 2.
Even if they played replays without commentary in their downtime, people would be less frustrated.
There's something fundamentally wrong with MLG's priorities, if they think a blank screen, commentators, or ridiculously complex brackets is more important than broadcasting actual games. This is one of the few instances in my life where a product I was interested in actually made me feel stupid for caring. It's like waiting for your favorite band to get on stage at a concert, and not do they start the show four hours late, they only play a 15 minute set.
It's why I have high hopes for the NASL. If they just broadcast a high quality games, on schedule, in a timely and efficient manner, they will be a step ahead of MLG.
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On April 04 2011 16:46 KawaiiRice wrote:
I shouldn't have to wake up and not know I play in an hour
or go to the last day of the event with nothing and be told I have consolation matches
les go MLG !
Wow. Seriously?
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Of which production value are people actually speaking here (for the viewers)?
They had 2/3 Commentators which weared Jackets and sat behind a Table. Was there anything else that looked like they put some effort into it?
The interviews after the games? A joke.
Interviews before the games or just anything else? Non existant.
Coverage of the games? Non existant.
Shown the important games? R O F L
Day9/Wheat could have castet this from their homes and the only diffrence would have been, that they don't sit next to each other (and probably wouldn't just vanish for nearly an hour for reasons no one knows)... Oh, and they could cast Replay... Actually it would have been way better...
Damn this was SO bad... Artosis just walking around with his Hand-Camera and showing games from behind the player brings better coverage than this full event...
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Yet another MLG that Day9 has saved, because he can commentate his ass out of any hole.
He really should be getting paid big bucks for this shit.
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Just cancel all the SC2 events that they planned for this year.
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Someone mentioned something I'd like to see is a "current bracket" chart, showing everyone exactly where everyone stands. I was lucky enough to be reading a forum where someone posted a version of the bracket and was updating it themself, but I would imagine most people in their heads had no clue what was going on as far as tournament structure and who was playing when.
Other than that I agree what everyone else was saying.
In order of importance:
-multiple stations on the main stage to reduce downtime
-have MLG officials joining non-mainstage games so that if something happens, the casters can jump in to those games.
-PRESSURE BLIZZARD FOR LAN SUPPORT. I understand why you wouldn't publicly do so, but for christ's sake give them a call and complain about it. So many major tournaments have lag issues.
-sound proof booths so the spectators can listen to the commentators, and so the players can't hear fans cheering for hidden buildings and such
-better interviews during the tournament, and especially afterwards
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I agree with the awesome posts quoted multiple times above.
Downtime kills interest and viewers. I suggest they take a book out of IEM's way of casting ( or Khaldor's). Follow the example of German's efficiency.
Have a few computers join all the different games so you can follow one game after the other. Do not try to cast 2 games at the same time as they did though. But Khaldor / IEM had practically zero downtime and that was a single person casting. Stick to the schedule if you want. But let's say yesterday.
After Idra vs Huk was done. One computer could have joined TLO vs IdrA while the other on standby to join Naniwa Select as scheduled. You can cast the TLO vs IdrA and when the Naniwa Select is starting, join the game with the other computer. Then switch to Naniwa Select immediately after TLO IdrA is done.
That said, despite the mess up that MLG made, i think it is a good chance for us ( the fans) to show what we have always been known for, that Starcraft fans are fiercely loyal. If we can show that in the next MLG, we are willing to give MLG another chance ( and of course MLG also needs to buck up and reciprocate) , we can show the sponsors how safe their investments are and the potential of SC because of its loyal fans.
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On April 04 2011 14:21 teamrocket1 wrote:
Although I still think that LAN support is a must for these type of events, I'm pretty much in agreement that the entire production this weekend was way off par from what I expected. Maybe I expected too much, but I sort of had this idea that streams would be consistently going every few minutes and the downtime between games would be negligible.. Maybe just enough to get some interesting remarks/comments from DJwheat and Day9. Instead we sat waiting sometimes hours on end for something, anything. I know alot of that had to do with the connection BS, but still even today when games were being played and the connections seemed fine there was just way too much downtime between matches. Overall, I give MLG credit for trying to bring esports to the masses, but I'm not going to give them credit for much more than that.
They're trying alright, but that's pretty much it. I had some spare time last evening and said to myself "hey, let's have a look at the MLG". Saw some cool games initially, but after those: 45min down time. Well, that's annoying. Next I hear that some really good games are apparently not going to get casted, for reasons unbeknowst to everyone.. I basically followed Idra vs. TLO via twitter..
Thing is, MLG is mainly a Xbox360-event. MLG got big on HALO, a game where the top players have about as much skill as incredibly average PC FPS gamers, due to controler limitations. It's not a Starcraft-exclusive event like the GSL. The guys at mlg have to spread their focus to different things at the same time.
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I don't mind Day9 filling time. Hell it was better than some of the matches. What I do mind is the "Stream will be available momentarily" garbage or worse yet the crowd shot.
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On April 04 2011 18:56 maartendq wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2011 14:21 teamrocket1 wrote:
Although I still think that LAN support is a must for these type of events, I'm pretty much in agreement that the entire production this weekend was way off par from what I expected. Maybe I expected too much, but I sort of had this idea that streams would be consistently going every few minutes and the downtime between games would be negligible.. Maybe just enough to get some interesting remarks/comments from DJwheat and Day9. Instead we sat waiting sometimes hours on end for something, anything. I know alot of that had to do with the connection BS, but still even today when games were being played and the connections seemed fine there was just way too much downtime between matches. Overall, I give MLG credit for trying to bring esports to the masses, but I'm not going to give them credit for much more than that. They're trying alright, but that's pretty much it. I had some spare time last evening and said to myself "hey, let's have a look at the MLG". Saw some cool games initially, but after those: 45min down time. Well, that's annoying. Next I hear that some really good games are apparently not going to get casted, for reasons unbeknowst to everyone.. I basically followed Idra vs. TLO via twitter.. Thing is, MLG is mainly a Xbox360-event. MLG got big on HALO, a game where the top players have about as much skill as incredibly average PC FPS gamers, due to controler limitations. It's not a Starcraft-exclusive event like the GSL. The guys at mlg have to spread their focus to different things at the same time.
That's not an excuse when I guarantee you more than half their views AND spectators were for SC2.
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EPT
