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Useful links -
* This post in audio form because that's lots of words! * Replay pack (spoiler-free) * Tournament info and donation page * SCI Master Playlist, relatively spoiler free * Twitch.tv Channel
It's that time again folks, another SHOUTcraft Invitational is over and it's time to analyse what went right and what went wrong to improve for next time around. As always, this will be long and often full of boring technical/financial stuff. This is for the sake of transparency and accountability, so please feel free to skip past it if you just wanna hear about the games. There will be some spoilers.
Firstly, how many people did we get watching in comparison to SCI2?
* 14617 SCI2 Day 1 average concurrents * 15386 SCI2 Day 2 average concurrents * 189730 SCI2 Day 1 Total views * 299415 SCI2 Day 2 Total views
* 14789 SCI3 Day 1 average concurrents * 14109 SCI3 Day 2 average concurrents * 156531 SCI3 Day 1 Total views * 255443 SCI 3 Day 2 Total views _________
While average concurrents were around the same at approximately 15,000, peaking at 23,000 (also very similar to SCI2), video views overall were lower, with almost 300,000 on the final day of SCI2 but only 255443 on the final day of SCI3. Honestly, I have no clue what "video views" actually is, it doesn't seem like that it's uniques, so I'm not really sure that number actually matters. I would like to see Justin.tv provide a more useful figure overall, for instance how many "unique viewers" we received over the course of the tournament.
I would put the slightly lower views down to the awkward time for Americans, plus the potential effect of the September 11th anniversary. We started the show 3 hours earlier than SCI2 due to how unpleasant SCI2s finals became for Socke. That said, I think we may have overreacted somewhat to how long SCI2 overran. In reality, SCI2's final day overran because we only got 3 Best of 5s done on the first day. There were delays and some clashes on Day 1 (part of the delay was the ridiculously long series between Morrow and SelecT) that caused the final match to be carried over to Day 2. That didn't happen here, in fact the first day was done in under 6 hours. We suffered a 1 hour delay due to WCG Ukraine on Day 1, when Strelok was delayed and unable to start his match on time. We then suffered a further hour delay on Day 2 when White-ra had to play his Loser Bracket finals match against Dimaga at WCG Ukraine. Regardless, the tournament ended before 7pm BST, less than 7 hours after it began. This indicates to me that we have a bit more legroom to push it forward a bit so it's at a little more America-friendly time, which will increase viewership. Ad revenue generated over the course of the tournament stands at $450.87 on the first day and $480.21 on the second. This is a pretty good figure and beat July significantly, where we raised $347.53 on Day 1 and $238.34 on Day 2. This is as a result of Justin.tv fixing the commercial system, which was prone to breaking down before they implemented the Twitch.tv console with push-button commercials rather than the unreliable chat command. Thanks for that guys, it's a life-saver. Overall ad-revenue is on course to be a record breaker this month. We're not even half way through the month yet and we've already raised $1,131.23. I will try to stream as much as possible this month to push that figure over $2k, I do have some events I need to attend including Dreamhack Valencia and Eurogamer Expo, but aside from that, all is clear for yet more gold-league flailing for eSports dollars.
Our donation count for this tournament stands at $2427.87. In addition last month, I raised $1403.73 in ad revenue, which is actually higher than the $1050-1250 I estimated in the post-mortem for the second event. To make matters even rosier for the tournament's finances, we now have our subscriber system, which allows a $5 a month subscription to the SHOUTcraft Twitch.tv channel, which gives a couple of nice benefits. While the donation amounts may have been lower this time around, many more chose to subscribe instead, providing a stable revenue flow for the forseeable future. This recurring revenue current stands at $1250 every month, assuming people stay subscribed. Obviously this will vary as the subscriber numbers change. The next tournament is guaranteed to be another $5000 event, there is no question about that. _____ Financing for next tournament breakdown
of $5000 prizepool
* Donations = $2427.87
* Ad revenue = $1403.73
* Subscriptions = $1250
= $5081.60 ($81.60 covers wire-fees and Paypal transaction fees for sending prizemoney and participation payments to the various players). Remainder for SCI5 = $1131.23 + whatever else is made this month + SCI4 donations, revenue, subscriptions and "This shirt is ruining eSports sales". Obviously that's difficult to put an exact amount on at present because I am not a Timelord. Whatever the case, SCI4 is fully funded.
Also this time around we had the rollout of our player tipjar system, where viewers could contribute directly to their favourite players. Since this was not part of the prizepool, it did not breach the terms of our tournament license. You are probably aware that the standard tournament license has a $5000 limit on it. Go any higher than that and you have to arrange things with Blizzard, which as I've explained before, usually involves them taking a share of your ad revenue, which for this tournament would hurt us more than it would help. As a result of our tip-jar system, a further $1211.38 was contributed directly to the players. The full breakdown of tips is already public so there's no harm posting it here along with prize winnings.
* Dimaga : $100 + $72 tips = $172.00 total * Destiny : $100 + $92.51 tips = $192.51 total * Strelok : $100 + $77 tips = $177.00 total * Tyler : $100 + $150 tips = $250.00 total * TLO : $300 + $455.37 tips = $755.37 total * White-Ra : $600 + $201.50 tips = $801.50 total * DDE : $1200 + $97 tips = $1297 total * Socke : $2500 + 170.37 tips = $2670.37 total
Everyone's a winner baby. TLO in particular received a large number of tips, which is testiment to his popularity and the community deciding to reward his good nature. While there will always be debate over "who deserves what", in reality tips are a completely personal decision and are beyond criticism. You can give money to someone freely for whatever reason you desire. Our system also ensured that most of the players received these tips instantly into their Paypal accounts, so they saw immediate benefit from playing in the tournament. We had to act as proxy for a couple of them who don't have Paypal accounts and will be wiring them the money along with their winnings very soon. Whatever the case, this model further reinforces our ability to support the players by putting money into their pockets so they can continue to be full-time professional players. We hope this enriches the foreigner scene.
We'd also like to give a special thank you to Colin Smith who gave an astonishing $1200 donation. As a result, we will be naming SCI4 after him. Though we did thank the SCI2 donors last time around, we'd just like to once again remind everyone that they made SCI3 possible and not to forget their contributions, or the contributions of those who donated during this tournament either, no matter how large or small their donations might be.
Ok, now that the money is out of the way, let's talk technical.
The Positives :
From a technical standpoint, this tournament ran smoother than any we've done before.
Total incorrect robot-voice button presses : 1 - and that was during a break. This is a 66% decrease from SCI2, a clear improvement!
Reliability was a key factor in this tournament, after we suffered technical problems on the final day of SCI2, causing around 45 minutes of downtime and glitchy audio. This time around the setup worked as intended and we suffered no technical problems of any description. Video quality was also improved, though it is still not at the level I would like, I cannot push it any further without either improvements to Xsplit or a better internet connection which is physically impossible to obtain in my area right now. Sound quality was also an improvement on SCI2. Compression on the audio, something lacking in many eSports events at the moment, ensured consistent commentary audio levels. I do hope to improve this further by replacing my BPHS-1 headsets with Sennheiser HMD-26s when finances permit. These are pretty much the best possible headsets you can obtain at present for this particular purpose.
There were no delays in this tournament at all due to technical issues, in fact the downtime was the lowest it's ever been. 2 issues outside of our control caused the 2 significant delays we had, one was Apollo's car breaking down and Strelok being an hour late to WCG Ukraine, which delayed the start of our tournament too and the other was once again, WCG Ukraine interfering with our schedule as White-ra had to play his matches against Dimaga before his RO4 matches in the SCI3. We are going to have to take a fairly harsh step in order to prevent this from happening again and as a result, SCI4 forward will not allow contestants who are also playing in another tournament that has the potential to interfere with the SCI3 schedule. Delays hurt the tournament and cause drops in viewer numbers which in turn hits the revenue. We cannot risk that continuing to happen. We feel SCI is a good deal for the players, it is one of very few tournaments and as far as we know, the only online tournament that pay the players regardless of whether or not they win a match. In return, we will have to ask that players ensure that no delays occur due to participation in other tournaments on the same day.
Since we're doing all VoDs from Justin.tv now and cutting them as we go. We now have all the tournament VoDs available on Youtube cut on a match by match basis, less than 24 hours after the tournament ended. That's pretty good.
Also hey, the scoreboard worked this time! People have been asking for a proper scoreboard for a while and we are now using Starboard for that purpose.
The Negatives :
While the audio was more reliable, the setup we used introduced a feedback noise into the background of the audio. It was not noticeable while game audio was running and while we were talking but in between game music tracks and in the seconds while we unmuted mics/switched between game, break music and commercials etc, it was very noticeable. This is I believe called a "ground-loop" and is as a result of taking audio out of the computer and then putting it back in via a different interface. Our setup was as follows.
2 Audio-technica BPHS-1 headsets into a TC-Electronic Impact Twin Firewire interface. Stereo 6.3mm line output into a Mackie 402-VLZ3 analogue mixer. Game audio out from the onboard sound via a 3.5mm to double-phono stereo connection into the tapemix channel of the mixer. Stereo 6.3mm line output from the mixer into an Alesis Linelink analogue to digital USB converter.
The groundloop occurs with the game audio, regardless of what interface I plug it into. Any suggestions for removing this groundloop would be appreciated because I am fresh out of ideas. This issue has been occuring for years with various pieces of equipment, including different computers, it's just what happens when you set things up this way. Once again, Xsplit can eliminate this problem entirely by providing full ASIO support, which would mean I could just use the Impact Twin for everything and it'd sound great. At this point, I think this should be a priority for Splitmedia Labs. Xsplit is being used increasingly by large, professional events and if you can't use some of the more modern, fire-wire/USB-based professional audio equipment with it properly, there are going to be problems in future.
Away from the production side for a second, the tip-jars also did not correctly update their amounts. This appears to be as a result of the Chipin system we used and we'll be looking for an alternative in the future. It is possible that, regardless of his popularity, TLO actually received "sympathy tips" because it looked like he hadn't gotten any tips at all. In reality, that was just Chip-in not updating properly and TLO having to accept every tip individually into his Paypal account due to some odd German thingy. We also wanted the ability to leave messages to the players along with the tips but Paypal for some reason didn't enable it's messaging feature on these donations. The servers were under heavy load and struggled to stay up during the tournament so adding it to the site might have crashed the whole thing entirely. We'll look into ways and means to deal with that before the next event.
There's also the issue of "virtual stadium", which we really need to find a better, less-ghetto way to present. Showing pictures direct from Facebook by putting the browser window over my gamescreen doesn't look professional at all.
While uploading the vods from Justin.tv is a massive timesaver and allows us to get them up for you guys to watch rapidly, it also means that creating anti-spoilers is much more difficult. I have an idea of how to solve this, by creating a big "anti-spoiler" video on Justin.tv that we can take slices of and upload to Youtube. Problem is I only came up with that idea this morning so it'll have to wait until the next event. We do have a big "master playlist" that can be watched if you don't want to see the number of matches easily, that's available in the links at the top of this post. You are also able to watch the raw vods on Justin.tv which include all the breaks, music and pre-postshow chatter. Several people on Reddit have suggested we include parts of these in our Youtube vods to better mask the length of games plus add some flavour to the experience for those who did not get to watch live. We'll try to do that for SCI4.
Onto the games themselves.
This is where I feel responsible for a serious lapse in judgment. The tournament was littered with 3-0 wins. There were a couple of completely unexpected results, but some I kinda feared would happen but hoped wouldn't. I personally feel that in an effort to create a "fan favourites" tournament, I made the tournament less enjoyable to watch overall. There's the issue of the brackets, where 4 of the strongest players faced each other in the RO8. Why did this happen? Because I wanted to put Destiny vs TLO on in the RO8. If the tournament had been based on strict seeding, TLO and Destiny would have both faced statistically strong competition in the RO8. I say statistically because that's really all it comes down to, players who have showed recent strong results get stronger seedings and often face those who have not shown such results in the first round, ensuring they do not meet other strong contestants until later rounds. In this case, I put TLO vs Destiny because it was a match a lot of people including myself expressed interest in seeing and would most likely not occur if it didn't happen in the RO8. This one change ensured that at least 2 out of the "big 4", Strelok, White-ra, Dimaga and Socke would be knocked out in the first round. Of course, people keep counting out DDE which as we saw, was a foolish thing to do. DDE is capable of taking on anyone in the tournament and winning, people need to quit underestimating him. Should I have thrown Destiny and TLO "to the wolves" as it were? I don't think anyone is going to argue with the DDE vs Tyler matchup, that clearly was no easy ride for Tyler but all credit to him, he fought extremely hard and was on the verge of winning on a couple of occassions if not for DDE's incredible holds. I hate even discussing it honestly, belittling TLO or Destiny is a horrible thing to do and they both provided an extremely entertaining first match that will be remembered alongside several others as stand-out, entertaining experiences for the spectators.
I'll be honest, the bracket kept me up at night this last week, I was extremely worried about how the community would receive it and yes, some did react in the way I feared. I don't necessarily regret the chance to allow the three statistically weaker players a chance to shine, but it was a different kind of "dark horse" from the previous SCI tournaments, where it was some lesser known contestants given a chance on a big stage, rather than well-known but recently untested players.
I feel like I've damaged the reputation of the tournament, simply due to the number of 3-0s. I feel guilty for it and regardless of how many people have told me it was not my fault, I can't shake the feeling that I made decisions based on personal whimsy rather than a more rational and logical approach which would have been better for the tournament as a whole. I'll be honest, I felt rather miserable after the tournament ended, I wasn't feeling great the entire time. Some of you noticed that I even expressed frustration with TLO on Day 2 over a couple of decisions. I feel terrible for doing that, I hate criticising players decisions and the chat definitely took issue with me doing that. It's not my place, I'm not the analyst. I am usually just the "happy to be there" guy but it was hard to maintain my enthusiasm in the face of so many 3-0s, with some of them not being close either. I felt that SCI2 just provided better matches overall due to a more balanced bracket and I need to carefully consider that going forward to future events.
However, after that moment of moping, allow me to congratulate both DDE and Socke once again. Their rematch was a story in and of itself, with DDE breaking out a build that surprised everyone, as well as Socke going for some risky and out of the ordinary strategies of his own. DDE's epic comeback from 2-0 down against White-ra was exceptional and let's not forgot Socke's dominance, not losing a single match until the finals. DDE and Socke are extremely evenly matched and I hope they both enjoy success going forward. The tournament had drama, it had entertaining games and while it did not go quite the way I'd hoped, many people still enjoyed it and I suppose that's the most important thing of all. The virtual stadium really helped things out in my opinion. It was great to see people enjoying themselves. Almost 200 photos were submitted to the Facebook wall and the number of hats was higher than initial projections indicated. We'll definitely be doing that again and it was something for people to do and discuss during the breaks.
As always, thank you Reddit and Teamliquid for your support and feel free to leave feedback, not that you need my permission or encouragement to do that.
Oh and before I go, let me drop a little hint about SCI4.
"48534"
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I watched as much as I had time for and enjoyed it. 48534 is code for EGHuK (hopefully!). Thanks for setting up this tournament series TB, it is definitely one of the better ones.
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I really like this format for the tournament prize pool, makes it feel more community driven. The tip jar is very nice for the players who are popular and gives them a little bit extra as well. I tuned in on day 1, but day 2 I had other places to be so I could not watch. I am looking forward to the next Shoutcraft tourney!
Going off of a telephone number 48534 could spell HuKEG.
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United States22883 Posts
This is possibly my absolutely favorite tournament and I love the way you set it up. I'm glad everything's running well.
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"Not everything is auto-tune, folks"
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South Africa4316 Posts
Hopefully SC4 can get a bit more hype next time. As someone that doesn't follow all the tournaments, I had no idea what the prize pool was like. I realise this info was available in the thread, but there are so many tournaments that I rarely click on tournament threads unless there's a reason to. I'll definitely watch the next one though
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Braavos36362 Posts
Love these blogs, very informative and interesting.
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On September 13 2011 02:43 Kralic wrote: Going off of a telephone number 48534 could spell HuKEG.
That would actually sound reasonable...
EGHuK and EGDeMusliM in SCi4? Or considering that HuK is in Korea, an all korean tournament? :p
On Topic: You did a great job, TotalBiscuit. It was a very enjoyable tournament and everything bad that happened, like the 3:0s or the WCG scheduling conflict was out of your control and it was obvious that you tried to avoid all possible problems that could occur this time, but it wouldn't be an ESports event without problems and delays, no matter what the organiser attempts
I don't think the reputation of the tournament really suffered, it was still very enjoyable, even with the one-sided series, and i'm excited to see who you'll invite for SCi4 (the above maybe?).
A big "Thank You" to you, dApollo, Intricacy, Zook and everyone else (meaning: The TL community) who contributed to this tournament.
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TotalBiscuit is sick-awesome O_O!
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On September 13 2011 03:19 Morfildur wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2011 02:43 Kralic wrote: Going off of a telephone number 48534 could spell HuKEG. That would actually sound reasonable... EGHuK and EGDeMusliM in SCi4? Or considering that HuK is in Korea, an all korean tournament? :p On Topic: You did a great job, TotalBiscuit. It was a very enjoyable tournament and everything bad that happened, like the 3:0s or the WCG scheduling conflict was out of your control and it was obvious that you tried to avoid all possible problems that could occur this time, but it wouldn't be an ESports event without problems and delays, no matter what the organiser attempts I don't think the reputation of the tournament really suffered, it was still very enjoyable, even with the one-sided series, and i'm excited to see who you'll invite for SCi4 (the above maybe?). A big "Thank You" to you, dApollo, Intricacy, Zook and everyone else (meaning: The TL community) who contributed to this tournament.
The all Korean tournament would make sense because TB did say he didn't want to involve EU+NA+KR all at once due to the massive timezone differences. If this is the case, I could see players from FXO as well as ToD being invited. I am excited already!
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Straight outta Johto18973 Posts
Thanks for your hard work bringing us great shows!
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Thanks for the open communication. This is great and very informative!
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Great blog, it shows how much work there is "behind" the screen to make such a tournament. I think a lot of people underestimate how hard it is to organize such a professionnal looking tournament. It's also impressive how you're able to analyse it and your will to make it perfect is really inspiring . Eventhough I didn't have time to watch all the games, i enjoyed what I watched. I think you should continue to invite underdogs and fan favorites, but maybe have less of them. Once again, I'll watch SCI 4!!!
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Looking at the bracket I really don't think you did anything wrong.
Auctally it looks pretty even across the board in terms of skill level. tbh Destiny is rather lower skill level than the players in the rest of the tournament. So regardless he would have been decimated in the first round.
I think in all reality that the skill levels are even but various factors things can go the way they went. Auctally I'm suprised it was so one sided. All matches except the destiny/tlo match should have went to a game 5, but sometimes players can have a bad day and not play that well and get 3-0'd.
This is something that cannot be helped nor is anyone's fault. You cannot take players having a rough day into account.
The only unreasonable way to do this is to make sci4 into a lan event of sorts and even then it cannot be guarenteed.
sc2 is a votile game and one which the smallest mistake can make the entire match become quite one sided. You cannot do anything about this.
If anythign I would be more or less blaming the players then you. Because the skill levels of the matches (except the tlo/destiny one) were really even, and we have seen all these players take matches off each other and usually make some of the best matches we have seen out of these players.
This did not happen though if it were not for something like WCG ukraine. We would have seen those types of matches. Players won't play their best when they are sitting in a lan center during a bigger tournament which they might take more seriously than sci3. That is understandable since it is wcg and wcg is really important for the old bw pros who for many years practiced for a long time to make it into wcg finals.
This cannot be helped and cannot be changed. Making sci4 at a slightly better time would likely help. but since wcg for the most part is done until the global finals in Korea. You dno't really have to worry about wcg taking precident.
This would make prepping for the matches easier for the players and also allowing them to play without having to be time constrained. So matches will be better and the level of play will be that of what we expect to see from these matchups. As like I said eariler, all the matches (except tlo/destiny) should have gone to game 5 and would have if there were not other events taking place during that time.
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Gotta agree with Hot bid,nice informative post. Hopefully we see more awesome tournaments in the future
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Also I think that when it's possible it would be nice to have a little skype interview with the winner ( when he feels confortable enough about english and if it's not too late). It's maybe not a great idea because skype is not always reliable, but I think for some people it would be nice to put a "face" on the winner. (not really needed for socke but if a relatively unknown player wins that could be an issue)
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The transparency, and honest recollection of thought processes speaks of a tournament/admin/caster that is learning, and doing the right thing to improve. Even if the events are super-slick, they are getting there!
I think all we can ask for is maybe a featured write-up on TL. Its obviously not on the same level as the big LAN events, but it has fast become one of the premier online tournaments in the scene - and hopefully gets seen as such.
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From a spectator point of view I was really happy with the tournament overall* and even the delays I feel were properly handled with you solo casting one game to deal with the car issue, and casting the WCG game to fill in space. Was a really fun weekend tournament for me, looking forward to SCI4, thank you.
*+ Show Spoiler [results info] +Except both Zergs going out in the round of 8.
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On September 13 2011 03:43 Iyerbeth wrote:From a spectator point of view I was really happy with the tournament overall* and even the delays I feel were properly handled with you solo casting one game to deal with the car issue, and casting the WCG game to fill in space. Was a really fun weekend tournament for me, looking forward to SCI4, thank you. * + Show Spoiler [results info] +Except both Zergs going out in the round of 8.
Yeah, the Zerg going out was a little sad though didn't hurt the enjoyability (is there such a word?) of the tournament too much. I think it would help if the tournament would be structured with 2 players of each race + 2 underdogs. In this case there were 2 zerg total and one was an underdog, so while i wouldn't have expected Dimaga to drop so fast, the chances were still quite high for having no Zerg in the Ro4.
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TB for president! Lovely Tournament. And huge A+++ for amazing effort put down in the pre and post work done as well!
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I never thought all that much about Total Biscuit before. I liked him for his accent and his seemingly light-hearted take on the game, but never really respected him before because he's not and never was one of the best of the best.
This blog has made me a Total Biscuit fan. He brings insight and intrigue to (mostly) European StarCraft, and he devotes so much time, energy, and resources to eSports and the StarCraft community. You are a total boss, Total Biscuit!
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Don't fret TB. Invite purely off of skill next time and you're bound to see good games, that way you'll also help players who don't have an established fanbase yet gain more exposure.
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Thanks for the tournament TB, I didn't have time to watch the whole tournament but I think I watched atleast 75%.
The tournament was well run and casting was great. Unfotunately there were a lot of 3-0's but that's something you can't predict before hand when you are making the brackets. Also the tip system is very inventive and I like it because it allows someone to support the player which they were unable before this system. I think it is something worth using in more tournaments.
Great tournament and i'm already looking forward to the next.
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I feel like it's very hard for you to plan for good games or close matches in the tournament. Sometimes magic will happen and sometimes it will not and the best thing you can really do is just keep inviting good, entertaining players and run an efficient and awesome tournament. Look at the GSL finals. So many of them are incredibly one sided and a lot of people feel let down but you can't go changing anything to "solve" it. Then look at GSTL which could be one-sided too but somehow it creates untold epicness. So many close finals in such a short span. Just trust in the format and the players in the long term and people will continue to enjoy it. As fans of esports we need some 3-0 results otherwise we'd never appreciate the close games and the 3-2 scores.
If you want to see specific matchups or reward certain players then there's nothing wrong with holding shoutcraft showmatches to specifically achieve that. You could almost certainly do a $500 or $1000 showmatch and cover yourself with the donations and ad revenue and perhaps a little on top (for the larger prize end). I guess the harder issue with those would be sorting out all the logistics and hassle (like getting dApollo to drive up) for a much shorter format. Still, I think you'd pull it off very well if you chose to.
I feel like I need to especially appreciate you guys as a fellow brit.. but you make it easy. I've even been away travelling (and write this from a hotel room in Italy) and yet I made time to see as much of SCI3 as I could because you all work hard and you put on a very good show that you should be very proud of. From your early WoW videos ending up on mmo-champion through to your continued SC2 work and just getting to lament about shitty journeys to Dreamhack Summer with you, you've done a lot for the gaming community that i've been able to appreciate and enjoy. Thanks for all the work, both you, dApollo and the people in the background. Oh, your gamescom coverage was awesome too.
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Some times you make good brackets and the games flop other times seemly bad brackets provide good games, all you can do is try to provide the good games, there is very little a tournament organiser can go to esure a good close tournament.
good job TB, keep it up. Hope the brackets work out better next time.
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I think you did a good job making this one about "fan favorites." I was very excited to see TLO, Tyler, and WhiteRa play, especially since I don't always get to watch them in larger tournaments.
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Very informative.
I understand that you can be very critical of yourself TB and I hope you are relaxing now that SCi3 is over.
I admit it was early for me - Central American (Chicago) time. But it's nothing that I don't normally do for work or the GSL.
Perhaps do an American Rerun, similar to what the IPL does for EU. I was definitely busy Sunday morning and would of loved to watch a rebroadcast, even though I know that the videos are on jtv and youtube. It's just nice to have the authenticity of a live stream running fluently, along with reading chat and such.
Great job!
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On September 13 2011 02:28 TotalBiscuit wrote:
...I would put the slightly lower views down to the awkward time for Americans, plus the potential effect of the September 11th anniversary...
I think though the above mentioned factors did contribute to the lower views in my mind the main issue is that the SCIs and in particular the SCI III are absurdly underhyped for what they are (outstanding in every possible way be it the huge prize pool, the fact that it's entirely funded by the community, the highly entertainig casters, the exceptional players or last but by no means least the absolute dedication of TB and his team which results in unparalleled professionalism.) I guess what I'm trying to say is you need better PR for your invitationals Sir Biscuit; I don't know,you could just use your contacts in the community, ask Day[9] and Husky if they would put out videos to promote the tourneys, maybe you could send Day[9] a shirt with all the necessary information printed on it, which then he could wear during his dailies or something like that Anyway, great tournament as always (thank you for that) and keep up the good work!
(I know I posted this twice but I don't know whether this is the correct place to put it or the "SHOUTcraft Invitational 3 - Catchy Title" thread)
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Canada1637 Posts
On September 13 2011 07:16 WolfgangKies wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2011 02:28 TotalBiscuit wrote:
...I would put the slightly lower views down to the awkward time for Americans, plus the potential effect of the September 11th anniversary... I think though the above mentioned factors did contribute to the lower views in my mind the main issue is that the SCIs and in particular the SCI III are absurdly underhyped for what they are (outstanding in every possible way be it the huge prize pool, the fact that it's entirely funded by the community, the highly entertainig casters, the exceptional players or last but by no means least the absolute dedication of TB and his team which results in unparalleled professionalism.) I guess what I'm trying to say is you need better PR for your invitationals Sir Biscuit; I don't know,you could just use your contacts in the community, ask Day[9] and Husky if they would put out videos to promote the tourneys, maybe you could send Day[9] a shirt with all the necessary information printed on it, which then he could wear during his dailies or something like that Anyway, great tournament as always (thank you for that) and keep up the good work! (I know I posted this twice but I don't know whether this is the correct place to put it or the "SHOUTcraft Invitational 3 - Catchy Title" thread) I think the PR is fine... I mean its announced way ahead of time with a lot of activity on the TL thread, he puts it on his youtube, and every time a new player is announced it makes it to the front page of r/starcraft, and during the event its at the top of r/starcraft.
Frankly the start time killed it for me so I'm just getting caught up on VODs of specific matches, stay up to watch GSL finals -> wake up at 2pm EST next day, SCI3 already over
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I'm a big fan of TB's work and SCi3 didn't disappoint in my opinion. The delays were out of your control, the sound issues were nonexistant for me, the stream was stable (on day one, day two was a little bit shaky), the quality was awesome and the casting was top notch. What can I say, keep on truckin'. One little issue I have though are the tip jars. I know you introduced those so players would get a little extra without breaking the 5k Blizzard limit and people could support their favorite player specifically. I would rather have people donating money to the "organisation" to keep the series going. Also, do you and Apollo get anything out of this or are you doing this just because you enjoy it so much? I mean, you put in a lot of hard work and you don't get compensation for that. I guess, youtube/twitch.tv views give a little something but many people watch the tournament live and won't watch the VODs and the ad-revenue only supports the next tournament. Anyways, congratulations on another successful SCi. (And please more Terraria with Jesse :D) Edit: On the TLO issue: I don't think TLO played abysmal or anything. In my humble opinion it was his weird build order which shot him in the foot. The reaper is a nice touch but concussive shells are godly. Also Bunkers! This could have ended in a very different fashion if he had used a little more standard builds. Say what you will, his micro was spot on in most of his games.
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The super early start time for west coast Americans probably contributed to some of us just watching VODs this time around (woke up at 9:00am to see day 1 just finish). At least the VODs came up nearly instantly and in a playlist. Grats to Socke (long time fan of this dude) and DDE for being unexpectedly awesome again lol.
Not too upset about the 3-0s. I don't expect every match/game to be close 50 minute game and going down to the "ace match" every time. I'm just as happy seeing a player winning quickly and decisively.
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Thanks for all your work TB. Love ya!
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Watching the vods now the time is rubbish for SEANZ but otherwise good format for a tourment
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In regards to American viewership you might also want to note that it is now football season here, which is certainly reducing the amount of Starcraft I'm watching and probably the same for many others. Something to keep in mind as I'm sure a lot of tournaments will be noticing a slight dip in numbers.
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On September 13 2011 07:25 surfinbird1 wrote: Also, do you and Apollo get anything out of this or are you doing this just because you enjoy it so much? I mean, you put in a lot of hard work and you don't get compensation for that. I guess, youtube/twitch.tv views give a little something but many people watch the tournament live and won't watch the VODs and the ad-revenue only supports the next tournament.
As far as i know the only thing earning TB money from this tournament are the youtube views of the VODs, other than that it seems that all the money flows back into the tournament.
Time for a "Please keep some of our ESports dollars" ("Force our ESports dollars down TBs and dApollos throat"? :p) Petition?
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