Looking at SEAcraft as a brand, i feel it is lacking some fundamental things. You need to advertise more effectively to a broader audience, the occasional Reddit post just isn't bringing in sufficient viewership. I feel another noteworthy contributor to the lack of viewership is related to lack of production quality. For this brand to move forward you need rethink how the games are being represented and optimize certain features to cater towards the target audience. Perhaps one of the thing you could do to adjust how this tournament is represented could be things like: pre game trash talk or even something as experimental as implementing diagetic sounds.
Honestly what i'm trying to say is that I feel there as so many different representations that Starcraft tournaments can have and if you are able to uncover a representation that the audience would go to greater extents to support, then you will get a far greater viewership.
message hidden in rant: Be experimental
Source of knowledge: Media student
Besides Team-liquid threads, which don't really get read and Reddit there isn't much advertising left available. Unless you get big name people to retweet your tweet about the tournament, and even then with SEAcraft being on at the same time as Proleague and NSSL the viewership is always going to be low. I expect this. However there are 3 places to advertise for Starcraft events TL, Reddit and Twitter and in most of those cases you do require some knowledge about the event for you to be interested in watching it.
I think the Production quality is quite good, Metalcore does a great job in setting up the stream in such a manner that provides good quality for NA/EU (if there are any) without ditching SEA viewers. His microphone is crystal clear, and yes sometimes there are a few hiccups, but when you're working at 1am on casting that is gonna happen. One thing we could fix is downtime..and that is something I need to work on.
In reference to Trash talk and diagetic sounds. I feel like that stuff is just gimmicky. I want to showcase talent and games, not bring people over to the stream using a technological equivalent to a girl in a bikini. And no one wants to hear no name players trash talk each other, it may be entertaining when the big guns do it over twitter or battle.net, but its kind of sad when it feels forced....and in my opinion diagetic sounds are just annoying and not worth it.
Thanks for the opinions. I think the suggestion of thinking outside the box is a good one and I will work on that.
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twitter PhilosopherSC2
Every zerg who goes SH must die ~ Nemesis
Besides Team-liquid threads, which don't really get read and Reddit there isn't much advertising left available. Unless you get big name people to retweet your tweet about the tournament, and even then with SEAcraft being on at the same time as Proleague and NSSL the viewership is always going to be low. I expect this. However there are 3 places to advertise for Starcraft events TL, Reddit and Twitter and in most of those cases you do require some knowledge about the event for you to be interested in watching it.
I think the Production quality is quite good, Metalcore does a great job in setting up the stream in such a manner that provides good quality for NA/EU (if there are any) without ditching SEA viewers. His microphone is crystal clear, and yes sometimes there are a few hiccups, but when you're working at 1am on casting that is gonna happen. One thing we could fix is downtime..and that is something I need to work on.
In reference to Trash talk and diagetic sounds. I feel like that stuff is just gimmicky. I want to showcase talent and games, not bring people over to the stream using a technological equivalent to a girl in a bikini. And no one wants to hear no name players trash talk each other, it may be entertaining when the big guns do it over twitter or battle.net, but its kind of sad when it feels forced....and in my opinion diagetic sounds are just annoying and not worth it.
Thanks for the opinions. I think the suggestion of thinking outside the box is a good one and I will work on that.
I think I may have came off wrong. I'm aware that things like "pre game trashtalk" probably wouldn't work out but its just an idea. If you truly want to cater towards providing quality content to any audience you need to give them what they want, not what they ask for.
To give a viablel idea you could use, you would need to consider the target audience. Primarily the target audience for Starcraft 2 is quite niche (ranging from 15 year olds to 28 year olds who are gamers).
What do 15-28 year old gamers want to see? "entertaining" games? what makes an entertaining game? the answer is fast paced action, innovation and good commentating. Maybe a small prize could be given out to whoever portrayed the most "entertaining" games throughout the tournament?
Such a thing would heavily encourage the players to succumb to the demands of the audience.
Well that's just an idea I came up with on the spot but there are soooo many things you can do.
Just remember, at the end of the day your product is designed to entertain the target audience, This isn't just a tournament, this is a source of entertainment.
Last edited by Fullmetal; Wed, 11th-Feb-2015 at 1:32 PM.
I think I may have came off wrong. I'm aware that things like "pre game trashtalk" probably wouldn't work out but its just an idea. If you truly want to cater towards providing quality content to any audience you need to give them what they want, not what they ask for.
To give a viablel idea you could use, you would need to consider the target audience. Primarily the target audience for Starcraft 2 is quite niche (ranging from 15 year olds to 28 year olds who are gamers).
What do 15-28 year old gamers want to see? "entertaining" games? what makes an entertaining game? the answer is fast paced action, innovation and good commentating. Maybe a small prize could be given out to whoever portrayed the most "entertaining" games throughout the tournament?
Such a thing would heavily encourage the players to succumb to the demands of the audience.
Well that's just an idea I came up with on the spot but there are soooo many things you can do.
Just remember, at the end of the day your product is designed to entertain the target audience, This isn't just a tournament, this is a source of entertainment.
Yeah thanks. Will have to think on this..
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twitter PhilosopherSC2
Every zerg who goes SH must die ~ Nemesis
To give a viablel idea you could use, you would need to consider the target audience. Primarily the target audience for Starcraft 2 is quite niche (ranging from 15 year olds to 28 year olds who are gamers).
What do 15-28 year old gamers want to see? "entertaining" games? what makes an entertaining game? the answer is fast paced action, innovation and good commentating. Maybe a small prize could be given out to whoever portrayed the most "entertaining" games throughout the tournament?
Such a thing would heavily encourage the players to succumb to the demands of the audience.
.
I personally add in a bonus prize out of my own pocket for such games, it is rather meager (10$ for the winner, $5 for the loser). I do have high standards (game has to be good enough that i want to upload it to my youtube channel) thus i don't give it out very often but i have given out bonus prizes to players who played on stream and played fantastic matches. The main goal of me doing it though was to encourage players to want to play on stream and thus reduce downtime when casting seacraft events. So far i have awarded the bonus prize it 4 times. We could do it for the most exciting match every week, but tbh, most of the time we get pretty "standard" play which albeit is good, is also unexceptional. i do plan on continuing to offer my bonus prize for SEACraft events but it will continue to be meager in size as i can't afford to put in any extra.
I personally add in a bonus prize out of my own pocket for such games, it is rather meager (10$ for the winner, $5 for the loser). I do have high standards (game has to be good enough that i want to upload it to my youtube channel) thus i don't give it out very often but i have given out bonus prizes to players who played on stream and played fantastic matches. The main goal of me doing it though was to encourage players to want to play on stream and thus reduce downtime when casting seacraft events. So far i have awarded the bonus prize it 4 times. We could do it for the most exciting match every week, but tbh, most of the time we get pretty "standard" play which albeit is good, is also unexceptional. i do plan on continuing to offer my bonus prize for SEACraft events but it will continue to be meager in size as i can't afford to put in any extra.
I think the idea of doing it every now and then is better then EVERY WEEK...as you said most game-play is standard. not that we don't like standard, but standard doesn't necessarily mean the most entertaining. Of course there have been games that you've casted which have been long drawn out Macro standard games that have won the prize...so its not inconceivable.
I did like, despite initial complaints from myself of not being informed, Tony's co-casting. If you feel comfortable with that maybe we can implement that more. especially since it gets super late for you and doing the co-casting and observing can be hella tiring. Just an idea, maybe we could test it out for SEAcraft Melee.
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twitter PhilosopherSC2
Every zerg who goes SH must die ~ Nemesis
I think the idea of doing it every now and then is better then EVERY WEEK...as you said most game-play is standard. not that we don't like standard, but standard doesn't necessarily mean the most entertaining. Of course there have been games that you've casted which have been long drawn out Macro standard games that have won the prize...so its not inconceivable.
I did like, despite initial complaints from myself of not being informed, Tony's co-casting. If you feel comfortable with that maybe we can implement that more. especially since it gets super late for you and doing the co-casting and observing can be hella tiring. Just an idea, maybe we could test it out for SEAcraft Melee.
Yea, the macro games which i have awarded it to, Eg spear vs pig for example, always had something that made the game exceptional and stand out (3/3 bio transitioning into mech... thats something you never see lol :P)
Yea, With co casting, i tend to organise that on the fly and often forget to inform you about it lol. It keeps the SEACraft casting fresh and i often will cast (if i do decide to co cast) with people on the spot, eg like how chadman would jump in a bit last year for the semi's / finals which worked out quite nicely having a fresh zerg perspective casting zvx match ups. Def something we can try out and experiment with though
I personally add in a bonus prize out of my own pocket for such games, it is rather meager (10$ for the winner, $5 for the loser). I do have high standards (game has to be good enough that i want to upload it to my youtube channel) thus i don't give it out very often but i have given out bonus prizes to players who played on stream and played fantastic matches. The main goal of me doing it though was to encourage players to want to play on stream and thus reduce downtime when casting seacraft events. So far i have awarded the bonus prize it 4 times. We could do it for the most exciting match every week, but tbh, most of the time we get pretty "standard" play which albeit is good, is also unexceptional. i do plan on continuing to offer my bonus prize for SEACraft events but it will continue to be meager in size as i can't afford to put in any extra.
Do the Game 2 between me and Law in the previous SEAcraft 34? Watched the vod of the stream and it was pretty entertaining to watch myself coz such a weird game ahhaha
I like the idea of these bonus prizes
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