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Purpose:
The goal of this thread is to offer constructive criticism for Starcraft production. Things are really starting to pick up in e-sports lately due to the HOTS release, WCS, and a number of other factors. The GSL is now broadcast from a beautiful million dollar studio. So much is going on and things are very exciting right now. E-sports are on the brink of going mainstream, but the production level is severely lacking when you compare it to mainstream sports, games, and competitions. In this thread I will offer criticism, meant to be constructive, of things that are broadcast now as well as suggestions for things that can be added to the broadcast to make it more professional and even better than it is today. This may come off as overly critical of GSL. I don't want it to be, I love GSL and what they do is above everyone else except for recent MLG.
The biggest problem: The lull
+ Show Spoiler +It happens in almost every game; big gaps of time where the two players are just focusing on building and not fighting. It's the part of the game where the casters talk about their favorite flavor of pop tart or which Pokemon they would be if they could choose one or what superpower they would want. I paid $20 for this season of GSL/WCS, some people paid $40. These discussions have no place in a Starcraft broadcast. Downtime is not unique to Starcraft, Baseball, Football (American), Soccer, Poker, and every other live broadcast competition and sport have downtime at some point or another. Unlike Starcraft, they fill the time with stats, highlights, and informational pieces. GSL does an exceptional job of providing the viewer with stats. They give match-up win-rates broken down by map and game length. Awesome stuff, but it's just flashed on the bottom of the screen. Sometimes the casters point it out and say things like “Wow, according to those stats MC is really good in games that are shorter than 17 minutes”. It really seems like the casters don't know what stats will be displayed on the screen until they actually see them on screen. The games for GSL are known well in advance, the casters should have all of the stats well ahead of time so that they can talk intelligently about the stats. Then they can say things like “DRG wins 72% of his ZvT games that last between 15 and 22 minutes because he really excels with Mutalisk harassment and Zergling/Baneling control.” Mixed Martial Arts has stats like significant strikes landed, # of take downs landed, # of take downs attempted. These stats tell the story of both a fight and of a fighter. Did you know that Georges St-Pierre has a career take down accuracy of 75%, best of all time, and the 5th place guy is 10% worse than him? That's a stat that tells me he is really good at taking people down. Starcraft can and should have the same kind of stats tracked and displayed during broadcasts. Imagine if instead of talking about what their favorite RPG is, they showed and discussed a graphic like the one below. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4YRgcjI.png) Next up is highlights. Most of these guys aren't unknowns, especially in the later stages of a tournament or in the Premier bracket for WCS. Show me a short clip of a cast where someone does sick micro. Show me the final seconds of Symbol qualifying for the GSL finals. Show me MVP winning his first GSL and then the camera shots of him in the booth afterward. Show me a 100 supply killing Archon toilet. The clips should obviously be from the players in the game and utilize picture in picture so I don't miss any action from the current game. Finally, show me things that are informational and educational. Does Parting have an opening he usually does in PvT? Show me the build order on screen, tell me why he likes it, and what is different about it from other PvT builds. Show me how I should pre-split my bio-force when I try to hold a location in TvZ vs a Baneling/Infestor player. These are just a few suggestions on how to fill the downtime in SC2 and make broadcasts appear more professional
The next problem: Action
+ Show Spoiler +Show it to me, all of it. If someone is dropping in two places at once, show me both locations using split screen or picture in picture. Multipronged attacks are a common occurrence, show me all the pieces. Our Terran player is dropping the Zerg 3rd while the Zerg's Mutalisks are killing SCVs in the Terran's main? Show me both at the same time. It's not new technology, show it all to me. MLG uses this a little bit, but not nearly enough. Everybody should be doing it, all the time.
Between Games
+ Show Spoiler +After a game show me why someone won or lost. Below is a screen shot of a clumped Terran army standing under a storm. Show me the moment and a drawing of how the Terran should have split his army. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/GOtUiWx.jpg)
This is meant to start a discussion on how to improve e-sports broadcasts, not be a “do this” article. These are just a few thoughts I had, while listening to the pop-tart discussion the other day. I think SC2 is in a good place, but we can do better. I'd love to get input from the community as well as the content producers to make this a constructive conversation.
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As for the drawing on screen and picture in picture, it is difficult to coordinate that sort of thing in SC2 as opposed to professional sports where there are many different cameras, as well as a full-fledged production crew. As SC2 has real-time action unlike some sports where there is a lot of downtime between plays, as well as the amount of clutter on screen there might be with textures of units, environments, etc, its not that great to look at. Yes, this sort of thing will probably be implemented in the future, but it takes figuring out.
There have been countless discussion on how to improve production and showcasing of events, but it takes time. IMO WCS Europe and most Dreamhacks were/are amazing in prod. value and itll only get better in the future.
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On April 13 2013 11:48 IAmSlide wrote:
Imagine if instead of talking about what their favorite RPG is, they showed and discussed a graphic like the one below.
At some point, it would get much more boring.
There is a limit on how much stats most people can care about, and some people dont want statistics at all.
Also when i followed x-country skiing there was plenty of yapping about weather, scenery and what happened to this athlete at his hotel room, and so on so starcraft is not alone in filling downtime with chitchat.
... that said, it would be nice if casters could pull up stats on demand every now and then to talk about those - some of that downtime could indeed use more stats.
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On April 13 2013 12:34 rename wrote:
At some point, it would get much more boring.
There is a limit on how much stats most people can care about, and some people dont want statistics at all.
Also when i followed x-country skiing there was plenty of yapping about weather, scenery and what happened to this athlete at his hotel room, and so on so starcraft is not alone in filling downtime with chitchat.
... that said, it would be nice if casters could pull up stats on demand every now and then to talk about those - some of that downtime could indeed use more stats.
That's true, but weather is still relevant to x-country skiing and talking about what happened to an athlete in the hotel is relevant to what is happening. Pop tarts and RPGs have nothing to do with Starcraft or the people playing.
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I would be very surprised if even the leagues themselves are not already thinking about what you are talking about.
The issue in esports is that the production crews are by no means on the same level as NBA, NFL, MLB, etc. etc. etc.
Lets just take the idea of not missing any action and what that would take to accomplish.
1) You need to have probably a minimum of 3 obs.
2) You need a guy to direct all 3 of those obs so they are not looking at the same thing.
3) You need to make sure you are recording all 3 views.
4) You have to have the tech in place to instantly recall any of the feeds without disrupting the main broadcast.
5) To make those feeds relevant you need screens showing the live feed to the commentators so they see what the audience sees.
6) etc. etc.
The point is it's easy to say, have picture and picture don't miss anything, I want lines drawn all over the place. It's much harder for an esports production to afford the massive amount of resources it takes to bring all of that to the production, and not cut somewhere else.
So for instance, you can have massive production or tastosis? you can have massive production, but half the prize pool.
I don't think there is a league in their right mind who would not do all of these things if they thought esports and their budget was at a place they could be capable of it.
TLDR: They already know all of this and it's more a matter of the financials being their to make it viable then the will to do so.
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I think esport broadcasts are fine in sc2, atleast in the GSL. The audience is different on the net, sure there are people who would like it differently, but the majority likes random discussions.
And after some started to fill their down time with post game analyses, there was a big argument about it and many disliked it. Probably more negative comments at that time, then when they did show nothing at all. Reason should be because if they show nothing people do something else.
But it is all personal taste, I don't think GSL could change alot to make it more entertaining for me.
Also the OP wants way to much analysis, they could hardly fit this into the downtimes with unknown length. And the amount of work you would have to analyze 4 players that deeply would exceed a week of full work (and if it would be so easy to get informations like this of a player, they would be in serious trouble facing their opponents). And hype Videos everywhere would really mess up the quality of those :o .
Also nothing is worse then having to stop in the middle of explaining something about the game and you will never get the chance to pick it up again.
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The biggest problem: The lull
It happens in almost every game; big gaps of time where the two players are just focusing on building and not fighting. It's the part of the game where the casters talk about their favorite flavor of pop tart or which Pokemon they would be if they could choose one or what superpower they would want. I paid $20 for this season of GSL/WCS, some people paid $40. These discussions have no place in a Starcraft broadcast. Downtime is not unique to Starcraft, Baseball, Football (American), Soccer, Poker, and every other live broadcast competition and sport have downtime at some point or another. Unlike Starcraft, they fill the time with stats, highlights, and informational pieces.
You do realize that Pop Tart chat is what makes Tasteless and Artosis so popular, right
GOM has been interacting with and receiving feedback from its foreign audience for years, so it's not as if they're oblivious to everything you're talking about. They're not going to fix what isn't broken
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I wouldn't say I agree with any of these criticisms.
For one thing, the "making buildings" aspect of the game is a huge aspect.. It's called macro and it can decided how a game will pan out.
A criticism of professional sports are the overabundance of useless stats that they use to fill time. It's unnecessary filler, and light banter between the casters doesn't hurt the enjoyment of the game.
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Even with there funny conversations, there is a clear difference in knowledge in the game of starcraft from them over every other caster out there, Mainly I mean artosis...There Artosis and tasteless chemistry is great and there conversations are funny. My only complaint is when tasteless says something completely wrong and Artosis goes into a dead silence like, um thats wrong but ill just agree.
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idle chit-chat is a time honored tradition in sports broadcasting. the real issue is the downtime between games.
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Good points. On the first one i kinda don't mind the random talk between casters during the buildup early game period. More stats and stuff would be good but sometimes casters talk about interesting things/stories/etc. that make me lols  . Proleague does well with putting in old BW background on stuff I think and they give some stats in this time period usually but more would be good I suppose.
But mainly the picture in picture is good and MLG does decently well with it but haven't seen it anywhere else.
The lull between games is kinda a necessary evil. Like in GSTL it gives teams time to decide who to play, what map, discuss strats, similar with FPL but limited to discussing strats and stuff. Between matches of a set need a small break for players to think things over, drink their monster or wtvr. Downtime is also where they put the ads in which pay for our SC broadcasts in addition to subs so while as a spectator, minimizing downtime would be good I'm not sure there's a lot moer they can do about it and i feel it is soemwhat necessary.
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MLG does the analysis part pretty well. The lull is needed but sometimes it is definetly too long. An insta replay like some tournies have done would be cool too. The multi screens some tournies have been trying to do at the same time haven't been effective imo.
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I do think there is some merit to the downtime and lull, but like many have said, I have a feeling much of this isn't a mystery to production teams. GSL continues to step up production every season, and its like vultdylan said, this kind of stuff takes a lot of time. I do LOVE the idea of highlights early game, I think that would be a great idea, or even for downtime.
Downtime is the worst issue for me, just sitting staring at the same interview or a screen with music is a terrible way to kill upwards of 30 minutes. Some kind of live content, maybe just like audience interviews or something? Anything to keep things interesting.
Honestly, when we talk about the "Professionalism" of e-sports, I actually really like how sometimes SC2 can just be silly. Its a completely different demographic than traditional sports, with younger crowds to appeal to, and a lot more "relaxed" roots. So in that regard, I like the idle banter of casters between games and everything.
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but....... if they optimize it.. how will the casters be able to get their 100k followers ? :S u arent saying that they should promote the players are you?! THATS STUPID. CASTERS NEED FOLLOWERS
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United States33388 Posts
looks like it's time for a comic sans invasion
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Nice ideas and all, I am sure leagues are working on it. MLG actually had a good management of down time. I actually don't mind downtime as long as its like not random 30 minutes. but like 10-15 minutes is ok So i can walk around do stuff. Your feedback is really nothing new we all have said that.
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Nice talk.
FYI, the Korean broadcast doesn't talk about Pokemon or some other sort in the very early stages of the game.
The Korean casters for GSL are actually much more "professional" (if professional means not talking about Pokemon or some other stuff during the downtime of games) than the global-stream casters. Whenever I tune in for the global stream, I wish they can be as formal as the Korean stream. However, this doesn't mean I don't love Artosis+Tasteless or Wolf+Khaldor, I love all four of them! They are doing a pretty amazing job nevertheless.
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on point number 1 - I guess its hard for tournaments to find a balance. I love the tastosis banter, I also like how axeltoss talks about likely strategy a player will use or khaldor always brings up stats and i like that too. Its true it can be more professional or on topic.. just how much do you want to sacrifice. Or where to find the balance.
2) on point two.. would be awesome if the bigger tourneys could do this. Having several observers linked with their production crew and communicating under a director or head obs to carry this out. Definitely would be an awesome improvement.
on 3) I definitely agree. MLG's RoE (Rules of Engagement) does exactly that, where axeltoss goes over a game that was just played and analyzes it in super detail. he also does the drawing on screen etc. I feel that as more professional players retire or enter the casting scene (ie InControl etc.) casters will have the high level gameplay knowledge to analyze this on the spot or immediately after a game.
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I don't agree with you at all... There's a difference between taking yourself too seriously and being serious about being successful. I don't think any of your proposed changes would increase viewership in Starcraft. I love tastosis discussions.
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best way to let them know something isn't acceptable to you is either don't buy it or go to their website feedback. I completely disagree, as is. tasteless and artosis without meaningless poptart references wouldn't be the same. I don't think that they are perfect, I do think they can and will get better, but I like what they do. Try to leave feedback somewhere useful rather than stating here that something has no place in a starcraft broadcast. They have found a place and it is widely accepted. Speak for you not everyone.
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EPT
