It's hard to complain about something being provided to you for free. Even harder to post criticisms of a major event when you didn't attend. I'll start this little diatribe with praise. I think Canada Cup pulled off, what could only be described as, the fighting game community equivalent of the Olympics. The tournament that took place this past weekend had talent from Singapore, Japan, Korea, Europe and North America. This doesn't include the talent required to organize and structure said event to begin with. Canada Cup Gaming, keep up the good work and please take my words as they are: from someone who witnessed your event from a computer screen -- from someone who just wants to help.
I don't think I've ever attended or watched a major event that got it one hundred percent correct. I want to emphasize that the fighting game community is going through an incredible revolution. Players from all over the world are being sponsored by companies. Subsequently, enthusiasts want to see them play. We as a community should be experimenting with ways of showing this ever-growing audience the talent and excitement found only in this community. We should also be experimenting with how to make this community self-reliant and financially lucrative.
When I heard that Canada Cup Gaming would be charging viewers of the live stream $8.95 [USD] for the 720p high definition content, an eyebrow raised. The stream would remain free for anyone who watched it a lower resolution, but if you wanted to watch the stream without advertisements and a higher quality, that choice was there. An experiment like this has been dabbled with outside of North America, and there have been plenty of people who've paid for fighting game and MMO tournaments via NicoNico. This is still a growing process.
However, when a tournament of this size is attempting to please thousands of viewers around the world, it's really easy for a misstep to occur. One of which, in my opinion mind you, was employing the talents of Vesper Arcade. A group that I'm sure [or at least I hope] has learned a valuable lesson at the end of this weekend. One of the representatives of VA went on stream Friday, and said that this was their second stream of a major event. This simultaneously gave me pause, but made me empathize. I have no idea why VA were hired to do this stream, nor am I absolutely against them streaming fighting game tournaments. It was clear from Friday that they were unseasoned at keeping a stream of this size and quality up and running.
However, as the stream progressed, by Sunday you can notice Vesper Arcade were learning. Content wasn't as laggy on the final day of Canada Cup as it was the first day. The admin/moderator Fishstix was communicating with users in the chat room and dealing with a deluge of feedback. What is most important is that when the stream had to be restarted throughout this weekend there was an open dialog from the start. "Hey guys we're hearing your complaints and we're gonna restart the stream to resolve some of the issues." That sort of thing is important.
The reason why I love this community is because everyone is trying to help everyone. With larger events like these it helps to have an ere of professionalism, while presenting yourself as accessible. If you watch a Level Up stream or a Team Spooky stream, whenever a problem occurs, commentators and administrators are giving viewers constant updates. There is a dialog. Something happened between last Friday and Sunday that only the organizers at Canada Cup could tell you.
Though the stream improved [in some aspects] the dialog between the content providers and the viewers fell apart. There were users who paid and were willing participants in this experiment, who were told to bump their settings down to 240p, quality of the free stream. Even then, the lag persisted and the ads [for the free stream viewers] increased.
Since we are all trying to figure out how the fighting game community can turn events like these into a viable avenue of business revenue, advertising and ads viewed on a stream are necessary. We [as a community] have to figure this out, because the MMO organizers aren't going to help us. The MLG folks have their own issues to worry about. I was hoping that Canada Cup would be a great example of how an event like this could provide free and premium paid content for future streamed tournaments.
What free stream viewers got were persistent ads shown while matches were still being played out. On the final day the ads on the free stream became almost intentionally obtrusive. When the users complained via Twitter, NeoGAF message boards, and in the stream chat itself, there was no dialog. If anything, the ads increased. There were amazing moments at Canada Cup, which I'd like to point out Vesper Arcade did do a solid job providing, but the advertising etiquette during these moments were something equivalent to what you see below.
Unfortunately, this isn't an exaggeration. The final moments of the USA vs Japan 2 teams involved an intense match up between WolfKrone and Kindevu. What free stream viewers witnessed were two players, well below 50% health, on the verge of deciding who would win the grand finals of what Canada Cup has been advertising for the past couple months. What we got was an ad for a bank company and when it was over, Kindevu and WolfKrone were shaking hands.
I'll spread this post around to see what enthusiasts and community leaders thoughts are on the subject. I'm sure I won't be the only person writing about this. My question is how damaging was this for those who want to stream content and be compensated for it?