the tournament was REALLY poorly organised, power kept going out, it was about 4 hours until they played something on screen, players could very easily stream cheat, games kept on disconnecting, I was very dissapoint.
I just have to laugh at comments like this.
you have no idea what it actually takes to run a tournament / event of this size...
to be honest, I really don't have to sit here and type this out, but I will because I want everyone to know exactly what happened and how the team and I solved these issues.
first off, I was pulled in as the entire E-Sports director at the last minute, and I mean 2 days before the event went live. saying that, I did the best I could with the resources that were available to get everything going.
addressing the major issues.
Internet: internet was one of the biggest issues, during bump in on Thursday I was on the phone for a good 3+ hours trying to get net sorted out for the venue, to no avail. (ball was dropped prior to my activation on this project and nobody had organized a net connection).
Friday rolled along and myself and the ACL (Damien and crew) were at the venue at 730am setting up and trying to get things rolling. After 1.5 hours on the phone and running between the event hall and the main offices at Olympic Park I was able to get a net connection set up for the venue. Unfortunately it was only a 5mbit connection as the main 2 100/100's were being used.
We immediately noticed the issue and moved to create a solution. I approached my boss at TLS, yes, the company that you all seem to hate so much, and he immediately and unhesitatingly dropped $1,000 in cash to get a internet solution in place. We were able to send a runner out to purchase additional 4G dongles in order to provide you all with the tournament that you wanted. Eventually we had the internet up and running and everyone was able to play the game.
Power: Again another issue here that needed to be addressed before hand, but again slipped through the net. Power was not set up correctly by the contractors of the venue as they were not made aware during bump-in about the number of devices that we were going to have on the circuit. 20+ Asus computers, 10+ for shootmania and over 40 consoles total. The first power outage was caused by a untagged and untested distribution box for the 3 phase power. Power was restored when someone replaced the faulty distribution box with a 3 phase connector to a 3 port daisy chain thing of utter idiocy.
I was not made aware of this change, if I was, I would of literally taken the person responsible and cut their balls off...
Luckily one of my helpers during the weekend inquired to me about the power scheme we had in place and I told him to check it out. When he showed me the set up we could literally feel the heat radiating off the cables, they were getting that hot! If we had not immediately shut down the power there would of been either; a. a fire from the cables melting / igniting or b. someone / everyone around the 3 phase would of been electrocuted.
It was a OH&S issue that we were not going to ignore and that is why the power was off for so long. We needed to find a solution to the problem in order to make sure that everyone in the venue was safe.
Of course we were able to solve this issue with help from the Olympic Park sparky team and SGL's Casualty who graciously ran back to Epping in order to bring in his own 3 phase distributors so that we could continue the event.
Streaming and 'games' on the main projectors:
All of the streaming was being done through 4G dongles and the reason that we did not have a stream up was because we were using the only 4G stick that we had at the time to provide everyone there with stable internet. Would you all have rather to play with the game stuttering every 5 seconds with a stream going? Or sacrifice the stream for half the day, so that you weren't all sitting there playing an unplayable game because of the lag?
Regarding stream cheating, you're just a moron for even suggesting that. I'm tired and stressed and a lot of what I'm saying here in this post will come across as being quite forward. But I want to make it clear that you suggesting that people would stream cheat implies that you think their all cheaters / exploiters which is just pure disrespectful.
In the end, we were able to get everything running to the best of our abilities. I acknowledge that we could of done things a lot better, but at the same time for the time frame, staff numbers and such that we had, I'm just happy that the tournament went ahead and finished.
My thoughts:
Overall I had a fantastic weekend, it was stressful, full on and tiring, but in the end I feel that the overall Esports Tournaments (not just SC2) went fantastically smooth and everyone enjoyed themselves. Unfortunately the SC2 boys (and girl, looking at you livi) were the guinea pigs. You guys were the first to test the power, the internet and more and of course there are going to be problems. There always are, you are delusional if you think that we can set events like this up and everything will be perfect from the get-go.
Saying that, I was really glad to see everyone enjoying themselves in the later parts of Day 1 and through out Day 2.
Also again a massive shout out is in order for Norksman, he did one hell of a job adming / running the SC2 comp. But an equal one is also due to ACL, with out whom this tournament would not have gone ahead.
If you guys do have any constructive feedback, please feel free to post it here, or if you feel more comfortable emailing it to me, you can reach me at Zee.Kotwal@Gmail.com.
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