EPTI think the community would have a much bigger appreciation and understanding of the issues if MLG just comes out and says "we expected 600k visitors, but over a million swarmed our site". As it stands, the site could've buckled under the load of 20k people. Unlikely, but the point is that we don't know.
From the desk of MLG CEO Sundance DiGiovanni - Page 6
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Bobster
Germany3075 Posts
I think the community would have a much bigger appreciation and understanding of the issues if MLG just comes out and says "we expected 600k visitors, but over a million swarmed our site". As it stands, the site could've buckled under the load of 20k people. Unlikely, but the point is that we don't know. | ||
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zaii
Guam2611 Posts
On April 05 2011 09:06 Skillz_Man wrote: If only you understood he's a CEO and it's his job. I don't think you exactly understand how big of a role money plays in society, regardless of whether it's good or bad, it's just a reality. Again you don't much about Sundance and how how he made MLG. If Sundance was all about the money he would have sold the Company when it was still on TV(USA network and G4 TV, but he didn't. In fact MLG has been losing money for the past 5-6 years. They only manage to make profit this year. | ||
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Grantler
United States228 Posts
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zaii
Guam2611 Posts
On April 05 2011 09:20 Grantler wrote: holy shit 1200 players 1200 players and 1500 chairs for spectators, still needs more chairs, If you saw the stream. | ||
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Tullidd
Canada68 Posts
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zaii
Guam2611 Posts
On April 05 2011 09:14 Bobster wrote: ALso, re: not releasing the actual numbers. I can understand them not wanting their competitors to know the actual numbers for easy comparison, but I really feel their PR in this case could absolutely benefit from some data, especially if it's as big/"epic" as they're implying. I think the community would have a much bigger appreciation and understanding of the issues if MLG just comes out and says "we expected 600k visitors, but over a million swarmed our site". As it stands, the site could've buckled under the load of 20k people. Unlikely, but the point is that we don't know. Sundance just twitted that he will release the numbers after the team gives it to him. | ||
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Souljah
United States423 Posts
Your IT team gets a big fat EFF. | ||
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Turgid
United States1623 Posts
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Talin
Montenegro10532 Posts
On April 05 2011 08:57 Skillz_Man wrote: "You deserve better than this"... How more cheesy can you get, it really bothers me because it seems to shut people up. It's like having an arguement with someone and they say "Yeah, you're right"... They are just trying to get off the hook and that's what I feel Sundance is trying to do. Actually, people who have an argument and than have the guts to admit that the other person is right at the end of it normally get my respect in general. | ||
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Tiegrr
United States607 Posts
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Baarn
United States2702 Posts
On April 05 2011 06:40 Ringil wrote: Maybe you're trolling, I can't tell (if you are disregard what follows!) but WRTG home router isn't exactly what Sundance means when he says router. He means: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/index.html. I think they are a Cisco shop because you can see 3750 and 2960 model switches in the last screenshot here: http://forums.majorleaguegaming.com/topic/221214-get-pumped-for-dallas/ . The whole technical solution for their events is a huge project. One that almost needs to be completely redone every time they do an event: 1. Functional requirements of the network (How many connections do we need to support?) 2. Traffic analysis (Traffic type/load, and how much bandwidth do those connections need?) 3. Architecture and design[WAN links are here] (Drawings, excel spreadsheets etc) 4. Equipment procurement (presumably they own firewalls/routers/switches, but by the sounds of it they might need beefier equipment or they had failed components [Replaced a router and brought in new fiber]) 5. Implement (put the pieces together and make it work) 6. Sign off on functional requirements (does it do what we said in 1? If not revisit 2 through 5) These super high level points are pretty basic steps in any network infrastructure project (really any project at all, just replace key terms with whatever you are working with!). I would guess that the Sundance's comment about misjudging the number of people tuning into the stream is a mistake at Step 1. Therefore everything after that is under designed: hence connectivity problems. It is hard to predict numbers like that and the only way to overcome that uncertainty is to over design the crap out of the network, which of course costs much more money. Good luck to the additional technical people coming onto the team. Hopefully next MLG they get it sorted out. Prolly making fun of the tech staff for the event. I have several pair of those switches sitting unused at work. They are nothing fancy. | ||
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Hondelul
1999 Posts
On April 05 2011 06:39 zaii wrote: think more. AT&T had an article last year on MLG having around 600k viewers for events, also it was Sundance and MLG Lee who twitted this article. I'll edit my post with the link once I find that article. Do you mean this ? To quote the article: "In all, we streamed 10,000 hours of content via multicast to more than 19,000 unique users from more than 100 countries." They talk about National Championship Dallas last year. 19000 don´t sound so impressive, but since I know TSL had more than 50000 viewers on HQ stream, perhaps that´s a reason they were so unprepared this year. Althougt I just watched sunday (almost without any problems) I was very disappointed because of most the points that were made in this thread on TL . I really watched several hours and more than half the time were breakes. Can´t complain much, because I watched for free, I guess I´m just spoiled with other free tournaments. | ||
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synapse
China13814 Posts
Let's hope the next one goes better. | ||
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SwiftOneSpeaks
5 Posts
My disgust this weekend was not merely at technical problems. Indeed, tech issues can happen and I believe they truly were trying to fix them. (Lack of LAN option hurt). Could they have tested better? Without knowing what testing they did, how wild the traffic was, and what truly went wrong, I can't say. But I can say.... 1) When the stream was up and stuff WASN'T lagging out...we still had ridiculous amounts of talk time vs game time. Epically ridiculous. Day[9] and djWheat and JP aren't terrible, but if I want to listen to them talk forever I can listen to the Day9 Dailies or SOTG. That's not what I signed up for. 2) When stuff WAS lagging out (but stream was up)...why did we not start seeing casters going over replays of some of the many awesome matches that weren't originally cast (sooner than we did)? People here figured out that that'd be a good fallback plan long, LONG before they did. (And we're not that smart!) 3) There was minimal value-add. When a game isn't going, why don't we see an updated bracket appearing on the screen? Live blogging a result or updating a separate web page (out-of-sync) doesn't really make it as clear. (And perhaps that'd encourage them to get a bracket that can be viewed on one non-scrolling screen) Note: They may have added this later, I stopped watching when I got bored a few hours in on Sat. Ultimately I stopped trying to understand the results and just figured a result (from the TL tweet, because I had stopped watching by Sunday) was "goodish" or "badish". 4) Communication was not the best. While tweets from @MLG_Sundance gave us some info, [And how would the average person know to even check there?] the general site tended to have updates only from the previous day, both vague and quickly out of date. Apologizing up front and giving some answers might have reduced some of the rage. Heck, at one point when someone kvetched about #2, djWheat called him/her "a vagina". Not really the sort of communication to soothe angry customers. 5) While I was glad to see more ads (as in, variety) than past MLGs ("Stick a fork in those buns!") they can still do a lot to improve that, not to mention they really should point out to companies who the audience is (hint: Get Real was about as well targeted as....no, nothing else has been that poorly targeted) Ultimately, the issue for me is not funds. I'd pay $20 without blinking if I get to see the great games that I read about on the TeamLiquid twitter feed. But LQ isn't worth watching while HQ wasn't available. ("And the Zerg blobs move towards the Terran blob! SO FEW PIXELLINGS!") And I don't get to see most of those games anyway. AND when I do get to see those games they lie in between long walls of boring (sorry casters) chatter. My core issue is that committing 15+ hours over my weekend represents a huge chunk of my free time and I didn't get value for that. This wasn't something that I'll tell my friends about (at least not in a positive way), and come Columbus or other events I may find that the rest of my life (or just catching up on GSL vods that I'm behind on) is just more valuable. I'm MLGs target audience: not really a gamer (though a total geek). Financially able to pay and willing. When I recommend, it will be to other people that'd be unlikely to look at it without a recommendation, and they too are ideal growth audience. (all of you watching the LQ stream may be fans and important for that, but you aren't making them much money so that doesn't encourage much change). If they aren't concerned about the above then technical issues really are the least of their concerns. | ||
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Redox
Germany24794 Posts
But I seriously hope they understand that the stream was not the only problem they had at MLG and solve these problems as well. | ||
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CoFran
Canada342 Posts
On April 05 2011 09:08 BoneDancr wrote: There is a reason that the best companies, partner and OUT SOURCE with other best in class service providers to provide superior commercial products. Trying to do communications on this scale on your own, let alone some hotel/concert venue, is a disaster waiting to happen. Sure its ok when your events turn out hundreads to thousands of people, but once you start having viewers of the scale now showing up for esports events, you'd be a fool to use anyone other than tier 1 providers with BRAND NAME accountability behind the cast and the presentation. Those feeds should say '..brought to you by Google' or '..IBM' or '...Verzion'. For starters, some of those companies would reduce their fees, some might even cover most of them just to have brand positioning. Secondly, that same brand positioning puts them 'on the hook' to make or break a fantastic product. This. Google does it with IPL already. Tho I feel like a dedicated ISP for relaying broadcast to Justin (or any current big streaming service) would've sufficed. | ||
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zaii
Guam2611 Posts
On April 05 2011 09:43 Hondelul wrote: Do you mean this ? To quote the article: "In all, we streamed 10,000 hours of content via multicast to more than 19,000 unique users from more than 100 countries." They talk about National Championship Dallas last year. 19000 don´t sound so impressive, but since I know TSL had more than 50000 viewers on HQ stream, perhaps that´s a reason they were so unprepared this year. Althougt I just watched sunday (almost without any problems) I was very disappointed because of most the points that were made in this thread on TL . I really watched several hours and more than half the time were breakes. Can´t complain much, because I watched for free, I guess I´m just spoiled with other free tournaments. I'm really srry, I got the articles mixed up. Here it is: Source "In 2010, more than 600,000 unique viewers tuned in for the live broadcast of each weekend event and the complete tour delivered 11 million live streams." Now MLG Said it was doubled then the expected amount for the Dallas event, So yeaaa.... do the math. | ||
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crms
United States11933 Posts
however, as noted in the feedback thread. MLG has a lot of issues to iron out that aren't just internet connectivity problems. I hope these will be addressed with the same rigor. | ||
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crms
United States11933 Posts
On April 05 2011 09:18 zaii wrote: Again you don't much about Sundance and how how he made MLG. If Sundance was all about the money he would have sold the Company when it was still on TV(USA network and G4 TV, but he didn't. In fact MLG has been losing money for the past 5-6 years. They only manage to make profit this year. most business don't have a lot of earnings in their first 5 years. Are you saying Sundance is some sort of esports saint that doesn't believe he can make an amazing living (if hes not already) through MLG yet continues to grind because he wants to do it? Don't be so naive. It's his business venture and he believes in it because he think it will eventually breakthrough and he and the company will become extremely successful. If he didn't believe in this MLG would be gone by now or have a new owner. None of this is bad, it's business but don't act like hes not in it for himself just as much as any other ceo of a small business. | ||
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zaii
Guam2611 Posts
On April 05 2011 10:04 crms wrote: most business don't have a lot of earnings in their first 5 years. Are you saying Sundance is some sort of esports saint that doesn't believe he can make an amazing living (if hes not already) through MLG yet continues to grind because he wants to do it? Don't be so naive. It's his business venture and he believes in it because he think it will eventually breakthrough and he and the company will become extremely successful. If he didn't believe in this MLG would be gone by now or have a new owner. None of this is bad, it's business but don't act like hes not in it for himself just as much as any other ceo of a small business. Like I said earlier If only you knew more about Sundance, and followed MLG since the beginning. | ||
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