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The only problem I find with this thread is that you are trying to find an extreme to conform to (ie. we need to sell out, we need casters who just talk about the superficial side of things and have no analysis), but I feel like we can find a balance between the two. We don't have to say: "Hey day9, we love your analysis and stuff, but save that for the daily, if you're gonna broadcast with us, you have to be really boring and just talk about what's only going on in-game." How can we even attract an audience like that if we don't allow personalities like day9, artosis, and tasteless be themselves, and being "themselves" does mean that they are analyzing the game.
And about commercials, I think a commercial in between every set would be fine, it just would be a bitch to schedule on something like TV Guide.
Last point I want to make. Esports is growing rapidly, and it seems every MLG we are starting to get more people following it. I feel like if esports is to stay on the internet, we can still become "mainstream". Internet media or internet TV is about to get a lot bigger in the next few years, and we might have primetime TV and sports events every weekend, but if esports is to stay on the internet (but still remain big), we can still compete with TV. (not to mention is esports stays on the internet, vods are so much easier to grab ahold of) In other words, we don't have to force SC2 to become mainstream, we just let it happen bitbybit.
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I wanted to make a big post but I am pretty lazy.
I've thought a lot about this lately, and there are a few things that you have to do to get SC2 on TV:
Concessions-
- You probably (almost definitely) won't be able to broadcast live games The Korean model worked for this because they have eSports channels. We don't and probably won't for a long while.
- Games will be cut up In that you will have to fit into a time slot, with commercials and credits, games will not be start to finish.
Having said that, I think a slight... gimmick? might be needed. Here's what I came up with-
Ever watch Iron Chef? If not, check out this spoiler: + Show Spoiler +It's a cooking show. Challengers come to 'Kitchen Stadium' and pick from a panel of 4 (or so) expert chefs. A secret ingredient is chosen by The Chairmen, and they have 1 hour to prepare 5 dishes to a set of judges. They eat, pass judgement, and a winner is chosen.
- a 1 hour battle 1 hour show, 1 hour battle, pretty easy right? Well, here's how it plays out:
- 7-9 minute intro (average) The show is introduced by the host, who then brings in the challenger with a brief history. The Chairmen welcomes the Challenger, who then chooses which Iron Chef they would like to battle. Next, the Chairmen unveils the secret ingredient, and starts the fight.
Over the next 5-6 minutes, the Chefs get their plan going, and a 'floor person' who monitors the battle from the kitchens gets an inside scoop with the chefs and what they're going for.
15 minutes: COMMERCIAL
The next 30 minutes or so is filled with the cooking part of the show, usually cut up with another commercial. Towards the end, they present their dishes to the judges. Another commercial comes, and then a winner is chosen.
Great show right, but what are you getting at?
Well, if SC2 wants to succeed on TV, I think it needs to follow a similar format... IRON CRAFT! Challengers approach some pros and take them on in a heated battle.
Secret ingredient? The map. You could have a new map chosen by a 'Chairman' each week.
How would you deal with commercials? How about the guy on the floor? Well the nice thing is we can use these 2 problems to form a single solution!
To anybody who knows the game, there are lulls, tense moments, and high points during a game. They can be pretty easily identified, and we can budget our commercials around these. Let's use some vague examples:
- A lull in the game because both players are going for expansions and turtling. We take off for some commercials. When we come back, the host throws it to the 'floor person', who catches up on <elapsed game time> that we missed during the commercial. Maybe points to some upgrades, army movement, a failed harass? Back to the 'host' (commentators).
- Tension! Protoss went for a FFE and his Zerg opponent has faked his hatchery and is doing a Roach all-in! Cut to commercial with a trailer: "Can he hold this? Find out when we come back!"
Here we can see viable spots that commercials can be placed into the game without really disrupting the flow.
A valid point of contention: Sometimes games are cheesy and .. short. We can solve this by either broadcasting 2 'faster' games or 1 'longer' game.
This is getting really long so my last point will be this: For Starcraft to be on TV, a lot of value will be placed in the production. Seriously, if you've never watched Iron Chef, go check it out. When you watch, imagine a similar format that's accommodating for SC2, and maybe you'll see what I'm getting at.
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On October 18 2011 07:41 SKTerran.117 wrote: agree 100% with the OP and I think anyone that can step back enough and look at things would at least mostly agree with him as well
there is no poll but I doubt he would get 50% because the sc2 scene still has too many hipsterish nerds
also why is the station in question espn, wouldn't something like g4tv be a better starting point?
Well g4tv is a very primitive channel, not many are subscribed to it, so it would be easier to gain the attention of people who are ingrained into esports, but harder to go "mainstream" and hit the core audience.
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On October 18 2011 07:06 dubRa wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2011 06:58 bbm wrote: A lot of people here getting pretty defensive at your ideas that aren't even THAT radical. Dumbing down analysis to appeal to a wider audience? Good grief, husky and HD did that over a year ago and I don't think anyone here would suggest that's a bad thing.
If SC2 got a slot on ESPN team liquid would still exist, streaming would still exist, all of this community's hideous elitism would still exist.... but there'd be a lot more casual players.
...
I was at London barcraft this weekend and a guy came up to me and asked me what was going on and why there were 100 people staring at a screen and screaming and shouting. This man had never heard of starcraft. He had never heard of reddit. He recognised the name "world of warcraft" but didn't know a single thing about it. That might sound inconceivable to some of you guys, but he was just a perfectly normal guy who wasn't nerdy and didnt play video games, going to his local pub on a saturday night. And he was interested in what was going on.
We don't need to keep ESPN-SC2 nerdy because we'll watch it anyway because we like starcraft and we like e-sports. We need to keep ESPN-SC2 approachable so that that guy from the pub who didn't play video games will watch, find out about, and enjoy starcraft. Maybe even one day he'll come across a tiny website called team liquid and join up.
Let's get off our high horses.
For his sake. Your logic kills me. We shouldn't be afraid to change something because we don't need to keep something as it is because a complete stranger saw MLG and liked it.
His logic was by approaching a new audience- which you will do per definition of growing- keeping everything the same might not work. Starcraft 2 has long not reached a critical threshold of self-sustaining base audience. The salaries, travel expenses, tournament prizes we see are currently not being provided by sponsors in regards of existing reach and impact- but rather as a prospect of future growth. Note, this is absolutely my personal evaluation, as I worked for a couple of years in a small marketing firm. For a conclusive answer we might want to ask the heads of industry, Sundance, Scoots, Carmac etc. My point is, if you were to tell Samsung right now "Look, we freeze everything. You will get fixed X concurrent viewers per event and there is Y people playing and following that game. And that will not change." Chance is, these numbers right now might still not be enough to really return profit. So as in everything advertising, one part of costs is truly covered and another part is treated as investment. If you were to rule out the possibility of growth, many sponsors might cut back their involvement severely. It means to settle with a comparatively more stable, but far lower standard and go back into the niche.
As how to facilitate growth- that's a whole other story. The question of "dumbing down" is only but one out of many known techniques. It is not always best, since various highly complex sports like Cricket became popular regardless. It is also unknown how much further we can extend the actual player base, in which direction the creators of the game will steer etc etc. I personally think we shouldn't constrain ourselves to either/or.
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sure sc2 should try it out on tv, but the real deal is on the internet. tv is going to die eventually.
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On October 18 2011 06:23 DoomsVille wrote: Yea I had a feeling this what come with mixed reviews. You either hate the idea of "selling out" and putting it on TV. Or you realize what needs to be done to get it there.
Personally, I don't want to "sell out" so to speak. I love SC2 as it is. Hell I've probably watched more SC2 matches than everyone here (I've been following this game since release and have watched every major tournament since). So yea, I am passionate about what we have so far.
But online we are capped. The television market is just an easier way to reach a much wider audience.
Also remember that what we start with on TV, isn't necessarily what's going to exist a year later. We start being noob friendly, then we transition into what we have online right now. Just like how many people started SC2 with Husky/HD (very noob friendly) and have since transitioned into loving the analytical approach that artosis or day[9] brings.
You have to capture the audience, then you can start incorporating them into the mold we currently have.
I'll take some time to respond to individual points later tonight. Some of you are bringing up awesome things that I definitely want to respond to. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=211654
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This post has to be a joke...Pretend we're not nerds? we ARE nerds, its what makes starcraft amazing and terrific. You need to be more proud of who you are man, thats how you get fans. Artosis would be a great caster on television, why? Because he shows confidence, and passion. People buy into that.
Why would dumbing down the game help at all? I get the idea of being noob friendly, but not explaining how the game works, and simply doing play by play...we won't get fans that way. People need to understand the game in order to enjoy it. Again, Artosis would be fine in this role.
I REALLY hope anyone who wants to put this on television doesn't read your model for doing it.
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easy way to fit in commercials is for a method to incorporate the idea of "time outs" via the pause function... the only issue with that would be it takes away from any climactic feel
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I'm all for it. Whatever promotes eSports more. I think branching out to bars and incorporating barcrafting was a great first step, but honestly I don't think that ESPN will buy in. Perhaps networks such as G4 and other gaming-focused stations will look more into it. I think taking that huge step might be a little too much.
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You people never seem to consider that, even if we sell out and dumb everything down as much as possible, it might still fail and end up being a gigantic waste of money.
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Anna Prosser borderline slutty? What in the fuck?
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On October 18 2011 07:51 emesen wrote: easy way to fit in commercials is for a method to incorporate the idea of "time outs" via the pause function... the only issue with that would be it takes away from any climactic feel You can't do this, players would rage. When you're in the zone you don't want repeated pauses taking you out of it.
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The CGS's failure didn't destroy anything? DIDN'T DESTROY ANYTHING? THE CGS KILLED NORTH AMERICAN CS, CS:S, DOA, AND QUAKE. I should have ignored everything you said after you mentioned this but I didn't and I agree with everything else you said.
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Forget about ESPN, they pander to the brain-dead Coors-drinkers of the world. I think SpikeTV would be the best fit for SC2.
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On October 18 2011 07:49 Geovu wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2011 06:23 DoomsVille wrote: Yea I had a feeling this what come with mixed reviews. You either hate the idea of "selling out" and putting it on TV. Or you realize what needs to be done to get it there.
Personally, I don't want to "sell out" so to speak. I love SC2 as it is. Hell I've probably watched more SC2 matches than everyone here (I've been following this game since release and have watched every major tournament since). So yea, I am passionate about what we have so far.
But online we are capped. The television market is just an easier way to reach a much wider audience.
Also remember that what we start with on TV, isn't necessarily what's going to exist a year later. We start being noob friendly, then we transition into what we have online right now. Just like how many people started SC2 with Husky/HD (very noob friendly) and have since transitioned into loving the analytical approach that artosis or day[9] brings.
You have to capture the audience, then you can start incorporating them into the mold we currently have.
I'll take some time to respond to individual points later tonight. Some of you are bringing up awesome things that I definitely want to respond to. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=211654 I have read this. And I do disagree with some of what he is saying. And I will respond to it in-depth tomorrow.
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On October 18 2011 08:02 MattO1337 wrote: The CGS's failure didn't destroy anything? DIDN'T DESTROY ANYTHING? THE CGS KILLED NORTH AMERICAN CS, CS:S, DOA, AND QUAKE. I should have ignored everything you said after you mentioned this but I didn't and I agree with everything else you said.
Fair point. It obviously did leech money and hurt some scenes. I should have worded that to say that the CGS debacle wouldn't repeat itself.
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On October 18 2011 08:02 GDbushido wrote: Forget about ESPN, they pander to the brain-dead Coors-drinkers of the world. I think SpikeTV would be the best fit for SC2. I mention ESPN because Sundance tweeted about talks he is having with ESPN.
I do think it is the best possible network for SC2 though (because of its reach). But that's only if they are willing to give it a decent time slot. If they aren't, yea its better on something else.
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