BladeCast_TV | »Streaming« #TheNextStep

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Rayden_ said:
too long to read so i asked someone to give summary, i think you guys should keep streaming eu side as well and what you need to work on is hype imo. mb_tv was pretty good about that, lust made ppl watch even sh*tty matches cuz of hyped commentary so since bladecast is good about that all you need to do give ppl hype and make them feel it when you comment in matches
This
 
Duken said:
Well, I guess I have to clarify a few things and post some of my thoughts after all what has been said in the past few days.

From the start of ECS until the quarter-finals I took care of organizing the BladeCast streams in EU. Before the start of the tournament, our team was made mostly of NA players, and the only 2 people who could stream were from NA aswell. That was a problem considering both the time-zone difference and them being busy streaming the UNAC matches. 

We tried asking if anyone was willing to help us and all I got was 1 person … eehhr. We then approached different community members and managed to find one EU player who was happy to stream for us, Oliveran.  From there we also got more well-known EU people willing to co-cast on our channel.

Since then we did a total of 7 streams in 6 weeks, 4 of them done by Oliveran and 3 by Deafening. Now if you watch the VODs of those matches you can clearly see some differences between the ones done by the two player above. The main reason being that Deafening (to my knowledge) has been streaming since WPL and is a beast at managing everything (yes, you may still find some minor technical issues on his streams but that happens). Oliveran, instead, was doing this kind of streaming for the first time (I know he has also streamed in the past on different games, but I believe nothing like this), and so it took some time to smooth things out and to get everything running properly. The first stream we did with him was pretty terrible (quality speaking) and that was mostly my fault as I hadn’t got the time to test out stuff with him before the actual stream. The next ones were definitely better even though there were still technical issues each stream . I also know he has worked hard on improving the streams quality.

Now about the commentators, I agree on what many of you have said, and even I wouldn’t be much interested on watching a stream where there’s no hype\fun at all but there were quite a few reasons that influenced my choices on the casters. First, I wanted to get different commentators from one stream to another. In those 7  ECS streams  we had 9 different casters, 2 of them from North America and 7 from Europe. In that time I honestly couldn’t find anyone who had a great hype voice (Considering MaHuD was busy\unable to stream most of the time as he has said), but instead, most of the casters had awesome analytical skills. I really didn’t want to put the NA hype casters on EU streams as they have less knowledge of our scene (and again, time-zone difference!). At the end we’re going to ask Thunderbeu to step in and cast in Europe together with Oliveran, as we did in the Quarter-Final match we streamed.

Second, I had a really hard time finding EU commentators, considering almost EVERY single match of ECS has been played on Sunday 19.30 BST. That’s why we had a few streams casted my Americans.

Lastly, as Calamity has already said, our ethic is to not stream a match that another streamer has already picked (Nexoner escluded as he streams in Russian).

Watly said:
In the ECS3, the rules allowed for multiple streamers to stream the same match. This was to prevent admin bias for certain streams, and to allow the viewer to pick the stream they preferred. It is quite sad to hear that streamers decided to pull out of a match, because someone else would be streaming as well.

I totally understand the reasons behind this rule and if I were an admin I wouldn’t remove it. However, from a streamer point of view, having multiple streamers for a single match means splitting the audience and that is not good at all (well, I guess that might not be the same for everyone, but I believe each streamer would like to have as many viewers as possible, at least we do). Also as a player I’d prefer having as many matches streamed as possible rather than 4 different streams of the same match to look at. That’s why sometimes we chose not to stream a particular match or streamed one that people might not have been interested in. I believe we had 2 streams done in the middle of the week that ended up being one-sided. I honestly didn’t care about the results, I was aiming to get the highest amount of matches streamed. Those were two examples of that, as we were able to stream twice per week. (You have to consider that at the time Oliveran was also playing for IG which meant that he could not stream when his team had the official (Guess when? Sunday 20.30 BST!. What a surprise!) It isn’t related to us but I believe that in the future, if we want to have a better coverage over tournaments, matches should be played at different times, or at least avoid having all of them being played simultaneously.
 
Having such a small audience doesn’t help either. I believe our average has been around 40-60 viewers per stream (dropped to 20-30 in the past couple of weeks), which compared to some old streams from other channels is quite low. We know that. We also write pretty much everywhere when we plan a stream (on our steam group, on twitter, on TW both on our thread and the tournament thread, I bet only Facebook and Reddit are missing), so we do TRY to gather people on the channel, not like we do nothing to increase our audience.  That said, I can’t stand people saying “I prefer watching fun streams when there are only 20-30 viewers”. Honestly, what the hell does it mean? You are there to watch the stream not to check the amount of viewers. We should be the one saying that we don’t want to put so much effort into something that doesn’t get enough views.

And again, we never said Warband is going to become an E-Sport. Our goal has always been to establish a stable streaming channel and viewership to prepare for Bannerlord whenever it’s going to be released. We want to do so by increasing the quality of the streams as much as we can. We were going to gradually increase that instead of adding all of our features and ideas since the beginning. Yes, you may say you don’t see any differences of quality and content with Mb_tv but while Lust has been running his channel for 2-3 years (I believe), we are only 4 months old. There’s also quite a big differences between the two. While he was doing everything by himself, we are more like an organization, where everyone has his own duty. There are advantages and disadvantages in both types. Having more people working on a stream means you can get the best out of everything (more or less) by having people that are actually very good at their job. The downside is that it takes more time to plan and get in touch with everyone to gather the resources needed. I still believe this is the best way to achieve our goals in the future.

There are still a few things I want to point out, starting with that hype video I made. The logic behind that video was to hype people and make them know us. To be fair, I don’t see how people can get offended by the words we wrote. Every TV advert I see has the same logic behind it. We never insulted other streamers nor made comparison with them. All we said was our way of making things and what we wanted to achieve. You got offended by it? Honestly, then grow up.

We also wrote “New way of streaming” and “Professional” [etc..], I’m aware of it and that’s another goal we do have. We don’t want to make humour-streams only, we want to bring great coverage by having excellent pair of casters together with good-looking graphic and effects. That hasn’t always been possible, at least in EU, and I do take the responsibility for it. Saying in NA Calamity has done a great job is not enough if you consider he has been online for basically every single stream to check for issues and make sure everything was alright. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to do the same as at the time the streaming happened I was usually away and had to rely on other people (Got to say Ncro has done an awesome job with that!).

During the last month all of us had been working really hard on a new format for the ECS and UNAC finals. We were going to bring you a panel of expert that would entertain you before and after the match with great insights, while having the best commentators for the actual in-game fragment. Together with that we had Wolflo working almost full time on a new logo, in the meanwhile I was focusing on a new intro video and more transition effects we wanted to add to the stream. That has never been done before in Warband and it would add that “Professional” look we wanted to give to our channel and to the game. Sadly, things haven’t really been working out as we had planned lately, I lost my PC and so I’ve been unable to complete my work and to organize the last ECS streams. We’ve also had a few internal issues which didn’t really help either and that led to us not being able to stream the final of ECS and dropping the coverage in Europe for now.

Lastly, for the whole duration of ECS, we barely received any feedback from EU after our streams, and that really didn’t help at all (I don’t consider OMG AUDIO NOT WORKING, or OVERLAY IS F***** UP proper feedback). We always watch the VODs and try to fix what went wrong but we always miss something, and by just having a small comment on what someone liked or disliked really helps, sure that has to be done in a constructive way (Osiris’s last post on this thread is a good example and I consider it very helpful). To me it seemed, people just didn’t care if we were streaming or not. Compare this to NA where after almost each stream there were people writing on our thread or directly to us about the stream. It may not mean anything to you but just a small “Hey, great job you did there!” or “Thanks for the stream, I liked it” does really help us and increases our motivation.

I think I’ve said everything I wanted to say, might have missed a few points but whatever. I’m not sure what is going to come next as we’ll be discussing our plans for the future in the following months but we will always work hard to increase our production value. That is what BladeCast is meant to be. It may be a slow process, after-all we do it for free and in our spare time (as every other streamer does). All I can do right now is remind you to watch the UNAC final stream as it should be great!

PS: I didn’t want to give a bad image of Oliveran, he’s a great friend of mine and I’m the first to say he has really worked hard.

drowning_in_paperwork.jpg
 
We've gotten feedback and posted the info we felt necessary.

With that.. we'll be taking a break from streaming in July. We will return with a Round Table in August to discuss BC's future and any other pressing topics.
 
July is the best month for breaks in NA. The 4th for 'Mericans, Canada day for the maplebros, and it's too ****in' hot the rest of the time. 90s-100s with high humidity, kill me now.
 
We return for a NA scramble league match. RIP vs Chosen. Commentated by Mad Dawg and PPK157.

It's our first stream back, so don't expect amazing stuff from the start  :wink: We'll get that rust off and see what happens.

Tune in live.. 1 hour! (730PM EST)
 
Calamity said:
We return for a NA scramble league match. RIP vs Chosen. Commentated by Mad Dawg and PPK157.

It's our first stream back, so don't expect amazing stuff from the start  :wink: We'll get that rust off and see what happens.

Tune in live.. 1 hour! (730PM EST)
um yes hello we have had to cancel thank you

Turns out it's hard to stream a match that isn't going to be played. We should be returning sometime though. Probably. (Tell them when, Cal.) Oh just kidding.


Also I never commented on it, but super RIP to the finals stream we had planned. The Kitten hype was real : (
 
Deafening said:
Calamity said:
We return for a NA scramble league match. RIP vs Chosen. Commentated by Mad Dawg and PPK157.

It's our first stream back, so don't expect amazing stuff from the start  :wink: We'll get that rust off and see what happens.

Tune in live.. 1 hour! (730PM EST)
um yes hello we have had to cancel thank you

Turns out it's hard to stream a match that isn't going to be played. We should be returning sometime though. Probably. (Tell them when, Cal.)


Also I never commented on it, but super RIP to the finals stream we had planned. The Kitten hype was real : (

You realize the match is still happening, just late? right now
 
Mad Dawg said:
Sjaeles said:
Bubs said:
You realize the match is still happening, just late? right now

still super disrespectful to the ppl streaming
+1
+1
time gets put in, they do all preparations... just for you to not play at the time that was said, or message them? the last like 3 times I tried to stream, it got cancelled, and it's super annoying to get in the mindset, go over things, just for the players to let the stream down again

good thing i didnt cancel my plans to stream this one though
 
Shame to because it was a great map that swing both ways. Unfortunate that the other caller beansacks had work and couldnt get his guys on.
 
Streaming Heroes vs Heat <3's Yami match tonight (Saturday) @ 7PM EST for the NASL. AE_Blivandefar will be commentating. Holy cow  :mrgreen:

Also, master video editor Duken is back and my god did we miss him.  :party:
 
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