It builds up tension for starters, if one team is 2-0, the third game is very important for the team without a win, and puts some pressure on the player, as well as makes it more exciting. If you do 3 games at once, you'll finish watching the first game, and the commentator will announce 'Oh yea, and X and Y won so team Z has already won' after only seeing a few maps.
Second, split viewership, lets say you have 500 concurrent viewers watching (Random number), if you stream 3 games at once, you're going to have something like 200/200/100 (Random numbers) and each stream is worse off because of it. Also, theres quite a large turnover on viewers, a few people will tune in late or tune out early for a variety of reasons. Lets say you get 1500 stream views in an hour, splitting the event up and doing 3 streams means you'll be casting for about an hour to an hour and a half, giving you about 2k views total, but if you have 1 guy run it, it'll last 3-4 hours and you'll have 4500-6000 views total, which is more impressive to sponsors obviously.
Finally, running the event for 3-4 hours makes it more of an event, if it only lasts an hour its more of an afterthought and people are more prone to missing it.
It builds up tension for starters, if one team is 2-0, the third game is very important for the team without a win, and puts some pressure on the player, as well as makes it more exciting. If you do 3 games at once, you'll finish watching the first game, and the commentator will announce 'Oh yea, and X and Y won so team Z has already won' after only seeing a few maps.
Second, split viewership, lets say you have 500 concurrent viewers watching (Random number), if you stream 3 games at once, you're going to have something like 200/200/100 (Random numbers) and each stream is worse off because of it. Also, theres quite a large turnover on viewers, a few people will tune in late or tune out early for a variety of reasons. Lets say you get 1500 stream views in an hour, splitting the event up and doing 3 streams means you'll be casting for about an hour to an hour and a half, giving you about 2k views total, but if you have 1 guy run it, it'll last 3-4 hours and you'll have 4500-6000 views total, which is more impressive to sponsors obviously.
Finally, running the event for 3-4 hours makes it more of an event, if it only lasts an hour its more of an afterthought and people are more prone to missing it.
While I totally agree with your first point.
your second point isn't quite on the money, while I agree, multi streams = split viewership.. but in a Team league, most of the viewers are there to watch a particular team that they support. so if there is only 1 stream that isn't playing the game I want to watch, I simply won't tune in at all. However if the team playing is one that I like or support, then I'm more personally invested in the match, more likely to watch and more likely to keep tuned in until the match is finished. Then if you select only 1 streamer, Why does that one individual get a monopoly on showcasing this event? - if there are 5 simultaneous matches on, then there should be 5 streams.
Also, hypothetically, Say your the only one allowed to stream Benji, if there are 5 simultaneous matches on - are you always going to show xGKing? or would you be willing to allow a poll to be taken each week to select the match show?... (this is not a cop out, I'm not saying your biased (well, of course you are to some degree, xGKing is your team) but how does the match to be shown get selected? Of course the temptation to only show xGKing is there for you, how do you overcome that transparently and fairly for the other teams?
IMO have two days streaming, one focused on a match between two teams, and the second focused on highlights of the previous week.
I.e. Have one night a stream of TA vs SQLT, and watch it all the way through giving the teams a good run through and exposure and 'drama' of a series where you can hope that team X or Y wins.
Later in the week after all the matches have been completed and replays submitted pick out some of the top games in a highlight cast, showcasing the best of what other teams had to offer.
In this format there are going to be a lot of games, so finding the balance between suspense of watching a whole match will be one side of it, while trying to focus on the best games / players is the other consideration. I think having the two casts on different nights finds a decent balance between it.
P.s. Rotate around which teams are focused on each week for the 'series' cast, so every team gets a chance in the limelight.
Can we have some clarification on who is / isn't able to play for clans? teamed players? etc etc, just haven't seen any official guidelines so far. Sorry I think this topic started a bit of a flame war earlier in other threads.
I say stream every game as a set as well. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense just to show the "ace match", especially since it could finish faster than the other games and then you have the weird situation of the "main event", as it were, ending without a known result for the overall match.
I also don't understand why it all has to happen on a single day. If it were spread out a bit more you would also mitigate to some extent the issue of having to pick a particular match to showcase, and you would have a couple hours of games on a few different days, and it would also give some teams more flexibility in scheduling.
We do have enough casters / streamers, but I don't think we can find a time where we can get all the players we need + all the casters / streamers we need to commit to at the same time? I'm not very sure..
Then again, are we able to get people to commit for 3-4 hours for this like benji suggested?
We do have enough casters / streamers, but I don't think we can find a time where we can get all the players we need + all the casters / streamers we need to commit to at the same time? I'm not very sure..
Then again, are we able to get people to commit for 3-4 hours for this like benji suggested?
Yes there's a lot of commited casters that usually cast events that take around 3 to 4 hours: Benji, Zeph, mr zain, flamga, maynarde, eddie, meatex,...
The standard time to start such events are 8PM AEDT on thursdays.
Casting only ace matches: Pro:
+You get to watch ALL the most important games of every matchups of the week. Cons:
-You cannot watch all the games of a particular matchup.
Casting only one matchup: Pro:
+You will have the intensity of watching a game from the begining to the end Cons:
-You will miss the other matchups or will have to switch channels, or get 2 streamers for one division.
Both methods are valid, i suppose it can be discussed in this thread. Once again, we will do what the community, and the casters, prefer.
Yes there's a lot of commited casters that usually cast events that take around 3 to 4 hours: Benji, Zeph, mr zain, flamga, maynarde, eddie, meatex,...
The standard time to start such events are 8PM AEDT on thursdays.
Casting only ace matches: Pro:
+You get to watch ALL the most important games of every matchups of the week. Cons:
-You cannot watch all the games of a particular matchup.
Casting only one matchup: Pro:
+You will have the intensity of watching a game from the begining to the end Cons:
-You will miss the other matchups or will have to switch channels, or get 2 streamers for one division.
Both methods are valid, i suppose it can be discussed in this thread. Once again, we will do what the community, and the casters, prefer.
Why not only have 1 match a night? So you've got Clan A vs B playing on Monday, Clan C vs D on Wednesday etc, do a group stage over a few weeks and do the same for the finals?
Why not only have 1 match a night? So you've got Clan A vs B playing on Monday, Clan C vs D on Wednesday etc, do a group stage over a few weeks and do the same for the finals?
This was what I had working in my head anyway.
Thats the way I had it in my head too the TCL format comes to mind there are 3 'play' nights over a week (lets say monday, tuesday, and thursday) each team will play 3 games over say a 4 week period
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[07-10, 22:00] PiG Unfortunately I'm incredibly lazy so most of my video footage is just me and iaguz in bed
Why not only have 1 match a night? So you've got Clan A vs B playing on Monday, Clan C vs D on Wednesday etc, do a group stage over a few weeks and do the same for the finals?
This was what I had working in my head anyway.
This is another valid solution.
We will have to take care that games don't happen on wednesday night (CO) and sunday (GPD, master cup).
However its gonna be done, it still sounds really exciting! Looking foward to it^_^ though I still have some months of training to go! Plus, scheduling is a big problem for me since I'm in NS xD
benji you first gotta consider the circumstances we face before coming up with suggestions. this is SEA. esports is undeveloped. the market is small. we are not NASL or MLG. no one is getting paid, this is all volunteer work for the community. taking small steps will lead to growth and sustainability. getting ahead of ourselves will lead to ruin and withdrawal of sponsors and overworked volunteer staff, putting us further behind.
people dont wanna watch matches every single day, look what happen to NASL. and even they failed hard and we have 1% of their viwer base. the SEA community want to watch GSL as well, and other exciting events. having it on one day is fine. it may sound good to have it on multiple days on paper but when it actually happens in reality it will be a nightmare logistically for the admins and casters to cast games 3 days a week. This means an admin has to be free 3 days a week as well as 3 sets of casters (for tier 1 ALONE), for 7 weeks straight which is not practical, or sustainable. in a perfect world where everyone is dedicated like frogmite yes it will work but in the world we live in today it wont. you have to consider the constraints we are working with, and more importantly sustainability.
all the tier1 matches will happen on the same day. whether its gonna be cast as a set or just the ace matches is still open for discussion. the reason why i said just cast the ace matches is so
1. people get to see just the "Best of the best" each week and it produces the highest calibre games. sponsored players get the limelight and its as close as a "pro league" format you can get in these circumstances. its kinda like how they just show the best matches at MLG each round while the others are available in replays later instead of showing every single match.
2. every team is covered. so there won't be the nightmare scenario every week of finding three casters to cast the games, inevitably ending up with some matches not being cast at all. look at the CO, its hard to get casters or admins regularly and its just one caster, once per week! its harder work then people think and you never ever wanna overwork the casters or admins who are volunteer staff after all. once they get burnt they don't come back. like torniquet who is already inactive after getting flamed. and look at all the hate erasmus has recently copped after being MIA for just a tiny while. it was his own initiative to single handedly run the PDCL and when he had to go inactive for abit because of 100 hour work weeks and having other commitments people quickly forgot the work he put in. admins are often under appreciated, its a thankless job and we want the "workload" for admins /casters spread out and manageable so they continue to enjoy it instead of it becoming "thankless work".
3. Do i think there will be less viewers with this format? NO. more people will wanna watch a single official main stream showing the best games rather than three separate streams or one stream on 3 separate days. the clan mates who want to cheer on their friends might not tune in but that is a very small % of the overall viewers we will be getting who came to see the best. you want people on TL to be seeing glade, tgun, pig, ender constantly and making their names familiar and getting SEA out there. why would sponsors be interested in unknowns? they want familiar faces and this will help with that.
(this is for tier1 only. for tier 2,3,4 there will be different arrangements)
for the SEA cup it of course will not be this way and be in the more traditional show all games between the clan.
In terms of stream views, I'd rather not have to make a choice between whether I want to watch this game or that. However, considering the logisitical nightmare that Nirv mentioned of having the games run over three days, we should avoid this.
That being said, if in one day we have all of teir 1's matches being played, what's stopping us from having the three matches being casted by three different casters. Aside from the fact that we would have to get 3 casters to commit 3-4 hours of their time in that day and not get paid for it.
As a side note; Other leagues can have one person stream their clan's matches if their clan members want to cheer them on.
As a sideline on the streaming issue, Having an ''official'' stream showing the best games sounds like a good idea. Maybe the fact that clans will want to watch each other and cheer each other on could be addressed by someone in the clan streaming their clans games, so long as the games arent simultaneous im sure someone in the clans could stream and cast them for the rest of the clans enjoyment. Big events often have mulitple streams/streamers with different content.
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