Even though i have a headache from barely sleeping last night and missing a few hours of work, i give IPL3 9/10. This was the best run and produced foreigner SC2 event up to this point IMO. I was looking forward to it and wasn't disappointed. All casting duo's passed the test. Seltzer & Anna did a great job. The translators did a great job (and Smix is cute). The production team did a great job. And all the other people backstage did a great job. The games were awesome. Etc.
That said, i have a few recommendations on LoL & the sunday schedule: - I didn't really understand the point of putting the LoL final on stream 1. I would understand it if the match was played in the theater, but from what i saw it was casted and played at the other location/building. If you have a dedicated stream for LoL all day, why switch? I hope the drop in viewers count will be a clear message to IPL, not to make that mistake again. - Secondly, i hope the sunday shedule will be a bit more nice to the European viewers next time. If it's a west coast event, i know it's impossible. But i really really hope it can end at 9:30PM EST if it's on the east coast (3:30PM is still late, but i can manage that amount of sleep loss once in a while). If it ends at 9:30PM, i'd imagine it also allows some americans to drive back home after the event and go to work the next day (Although, I can imagine this would have a negative impact on beer sales and the amount of people staying around in the casino). Just hoping.
I'm less positive about the IGN Prime content. It wasn't worth it for me, even though is was dirty cheap: - The LiveU VIP steam was funny/entertaining during down time, but i never watched it for a long stretch of time (except when internet was down and the stream was free), because basicly the event was run too smoothly and there wasn't a lot of down time. (Also this stream was extremely laggy most of the time when the teams were indoor.) - The player view was a nice gimmick, but in the end the casted stream is a lot more entertaining. It would have been cool to be able to go watch a VOD of the first person view of my favorite matches the next day... - The biggest problem IMHO was the lack of a shedule. I was really looking forward to see the industry insiders panels... but when it's 6AM and you don't even know IF there will be a panel that day... in the end i have to sleep at some point. At least make it clear when the panels will start. Also there was a lot of down time on the Prime stream. With IPL being the re-broadcast kings of e-sports, why not re-broadcast a panel or nice interview during that down time? Or at least make the recordings available (on Justin.tv), the way it was possible for steam 1 & 2.
Both publishing a better shedule and making the content available as VODs (on Justin) have low workflow, but would make the service 10x more attractive/valuable to me. I won't be subscribing to IGN Prime in the future, without shedule, rebroadcasts or VODs.
EDIt> Owww, the sound levels... The difference between a mumbling djWheat and excited djWheat is quite though to handle at 4AM at night when you have neighbours. And for some caster duo's the sound level was too different. And please, please, please, no more explosions... or at least not 10x as loud as the rest of the broadcast. It was really annoying and i think the people in chat were just trolling about it. It was not at the same level as the rest of the production (esp. compared to day1).
9/10 - Great event. Idont even care about the the accident with the whole stream was down, it was really good dealt with. But to shove LoL finals into my face after the first semi was really irritating... Being in EU made it to damn late for me just something to think about next time. The little i saw about the prime content was good, might buy it next time.
I like the idea of female moderators but it is somewhat jarring.
You want to have this idea of pro-gamers being "nerd bosses" but when you see their awkwardness with a woman around it reveals them for just the nerds that they are.
That's fine, I guess but it deflates the "e-sports" mystique a bit.
I attended as a spectator from Friday through the championships. Speaking as an attendee:
I had a great time man. Overall a very professional production, the Circus Maximus was a totally awesome theatre (with the bar outside no less! Kickass!), and whatever staff I interacted with were very cool and helpful.
I actually walked up during the 'net outage (just after the Truck that Killed the Internet Incident) -- and they had the whole thing up and running after a very short time, it was handled very well I thought.
Only complaint (and this is a fairly large one, would / will make a huge difference):
The resolution on the screens - both at Bally's and Ceasar's -- was pretty low guys. The action was fuzzy, the menus for score / resources / etc were unreadable.
Watching the matches live in the venue was like watching the stream or a VOD on YouTube @ 360p. The projectors were low rez and this detracted from the overall experience alot.
Not being up on the cost of pro-theater hi-def screens -- I do think this is one of the factors that can help make or break live eSports.
Seeing a nice, huge image at at least 480 if not full 720p is going to be essential for the full enjoyment of the genre.
But it didnt destroy the experience -- merely saying that this is something that must be addressed as time goes by.
Day 3 streams had extremely low brightness and high contrast In other words I couldnt see shit. I think the quality and framerate also dropped but considering the technical issues you had with the internet connection I cant blame you.
Oh: and big props to all the casters -- Painuser, HD, DoA, Catspajamas, Wheat, Apollo, Incontrol ...
Great job all around guys. Very professional, tons of fun. and Rachel, Anna too! ... great job girls
The casters and personalities in this sport are turning out to be a goldmine -- having knowledgeable, on point, fun and familiar casters is part and parcel of the success of a sport ..
Starcraft's casters are definitely a huge part of the attraction of this scene man, you guys are awesome
IPL - Please learn what a compressor is used for, and use it!
I know audio production is a mysterious thing to many of us, as it should be, but for the love of god, I've seen so many "pro" events that have almost no compression on the mics. PLEASE USE IT!
For those who do not know what a compressor does for audio: It "compresses" the audio signal so that the low level sections and the high level sections are more equalized (volume). You could be whispering into the mic and it would have a similar volume as when you scream into the mic.
How many times, when watching an event on TV, like say, a Football game or a Tennis match, do you have to literally hold the remote and turn it up and down based on the excitement level of the caster? NEVER. It is completely unheard of to broadcast a live event without tweaking the dynamic compression.
That one, tiny, change could make a tremendous difference in the enjoyment level of their [IPLs] regular broadcasts and their high profile events.
I think the time between games with the interviews and such was a bit too much at times. When I tune into SC2, I really mainly want to just watch the games. Interviews are ok, but a bit too long in this case.
the ipl audio staff should not have taken notes from the nasl sound guy. random music blasting over everything, random volume on the mics, no mixing when switching from sound source A to sound source B, etc... that was not the way it should have been done.
also those random explosions (aaaah ear bleeds) or guitars flying through with a soundcue of like 5 seconds (wtf i'm watching guitar hero ?) did not add the desired effect either (unless annoy/scare the spectator was desired).
so, for the next time get a crew that -let's say it the amd way- can handle this much power !
exept that, it was a good watch. fantastic intro videos, fantastic games, hq free stream. great
Overall it was a great event imo. Good Lineup. Good Casters. Good Games. But several little mistakes. The lags made the finals unbearable to watch. Then why stream the LoL final? Sorry but there are so many people who are not interested in LoL at all. And you dont understand a thing if you dont play LoL yourself.
What was up with the music during the interviews so you cant understand a thing?
- David Ting - Loved his interview on LO3 and he has a passion and a vision for e-sports and I hope his plan succeeds.
- casters, I loved them all and despite the haters, I like the painuser/hd combo and had no problem with them doing the finals. Day9 better show up for IPL 4 though! Still can't believe he turned it down and missed out on such an amazing event.
- Not much downtime b/w games. Yes there was a lot on sunday, but that's only because some series finished so fast. Saturday, the games were all back to back to back.
- Good ideas for filler time like the lani/ting showmatch and sc2 panel
- Free HD streams
- megumixbear, she was doing boss interviews all week. She's a masters terran player so can ask players questions about the game and strategy, instead of just all fluff questions. She's very respectful of all the players and doesn't harass them for interviews if they're busy or just lost. She's a natural in front of the camera and can't wait to see her again at IPL 4. Plus, she's gorgeous. <3
Cons
- group play format needs to be changed so players care about it more. The added money did help though a bit.
- poor player turnout for open bracket play. Not really sure for the reason for this as I guess most teams chose orlando over this even though IPL 3 had a way larger prize pool. It was hard to get 16 really strong players out of the open bracket.
- lag on the prime streams a lot of times, but this may just be a limitation of the live-u tech using 3g internet
- playing the credit music over the last interviews of the night made it hard to hear.
- holding it in a casino. While it is nice to put on a fancy event at such a big place, I really feel like the 21+ limitation was the main reason for the low turnout. IGN did a great job here and I want them to succeed, but the crowd turnout was really poor. I expected a larger crowd for the weekend, but while it did improve, it still was only like 50% full if that. Just hold it in a convention centre like MLG because they have the problem of not enough seats, while IGN had prob of too many seats. It just didn't look good visually and I'm sure IGN is disappointed at the turnout.
They didn't have the best graphics (the lil' planet screen before games looked a bit amateur) and they played silly sounds (EXPLOSION! SWOOSH!) and music over the interviews. The interview volume was a bit low compared to the rest of the broadcast, and the broadcast as a whole seemed kinda low volume.
All these issues are simple fixes, thus my 9/10. I'm confident they are listening to the community, and taking the feedback.
I was very impressed when they added the 1.5k to pool play. That to me shows how they run their event. They took the criticism and fixed it.
In-Game: - Game music: It needs to be on! I feel so weird when I don't hear Starcraft music. It's also nice because it fill in the silences when the casters aren't talking or when there isn't much going on in game.
- Health bars should NOT be always on. Having health bars always on leads to unnecessary clutter and adds confusion for the average/noobie viewers. Just set health bars to show when selected and have a competent observer who know what units to select and when to select them. Speaking of which...
- Dedicated observer: Oh my goodness the observing at IPL 3 was soooo bad. Yes, even NASL observing was better than IPL 3. You have 6 casters at the event with only 2 casting at a time. USE THEM AS DEDICATED OBSERVERS!
- Scoreboard: It was hard to read / distracting. The scoreboard shouldn't be that graphically intense. It should be readable visually un-offensive. That's about it. Remember, the game should be the focus.
Audio/Video/Graphics - Theme: There was none. You had IGN style graphics, you had Caesar's Palace style scoreboard, you had explosion transitions, and you had futuristic transitions. Not saying the graphics were low in quality... it just wasn't a coherent and cohesive experience for the viewer. Look at NASL/MLG/GSL/Dreamhack... all much better in this department.
- Transitions: Not smooth. Every transition seemed off. It felt like the casters didn't know what the viewer could see. The explosion effect didn't help either. Needs music.
- Music: It felt like there was a lot of silence.
Presentation - Interviews: IMO we don't need that many on-stage interviews. Kind of felt like time filler. A pre-finals interview/handshake is awesome. Post-game interview with every winner in a 32 man bracket? Meh. I just want to see awesome games! (If there was a way to pre-record interviews and play them before or after the match that would be really nice. Though it's probably hard to do at a live tournament.)
- Award presentation: Felt unprepared/uncoordinated.
Overall: Awesome event right up there with the last MLG. <3 IPL.
until LoL.. I thought I hated LoL before.. wow, nothing describes my feelings for it at this point. Going from Pro level sc2 to LoL is like taking speed and being forced to watch grass grow for 2 hours.. that hurt.
I thought the production was great. There was very little waiting in between matches and if there were a lot of time in between it was filled in with added content. The amount of people involved and used on stage was nice, it was refreshing to see people being substituted in and out. The panel and LO3 show on stage was really refreshing and awesome too. The multiple camera angles, quality of the streams, and small breaks in between was what made it really enjoyable to watch on stream.
Some minor stuff that was annoying at times were the random music being louder than the interviewers like stc interview one time and I think the interview with stephano after he won; the camera being switched to the players faces like in the Puma/Hero series during a intense moment and I think there was a time when HuK was playing and the camera was on his face for like a good 30 seconds or so.
EPT
