it wasn't even done processing and i liked it.

That's the spirit. Sorry it's not processed yet, but I really gotta hit the hay. Just wanna get the message out ASAP. Added an ETA, 11pm pst. Fuckin Comcast.

mge circle jerk back at it again

Yaooooooo! Sup eXtine. I definitely empathize with your feelings, its definitely a let-down in some ways. I would like to hear what the thoughts are from the people involved, just so that we can see both sides of the story before I give a final thought. Hopefully this can all be ironed out and clarified because I love eXtv and dont ever want to see the community go under, but I dont want to be too hasty in making a witchhunt out of something that may be explained more clearly by the other parties' opinions

I don't know the whole story behind this but I don't think posting this kinda thing public is going to help anything but create more drama. I can see where eXtine is coming from with his frustration but it isn't any better the next guy. Dunno mangg this is going to leave a bad impression on a lot of people and this new drama.

#findleogeo

this isn't helping at all. Don't get me wrong i hate esea as much as the next guy but posting a video like this won't help the community's image to the random viewer. Besides "boycotting" ESEA will never work when the invite circle jerk never see's anything wrong with the league.

Lange left eXtv (invite) 20 mins ago joined ESEA Orange (invite)
Seanbud lef eXtv (invite) 20m mins ago joined ESEA Orange(invite)
djc left eXtv (invite) 20 mins ago rejoined ESEA Orange (invite)
cbear left eXtv (invite) 20 mins ago joined MGE Orange (invite)

ftfy

there is a horrendous amount of misinformation and hyperbole being spread in this video

a text response to all of this would require more than any individual should write in his/her lifetime

please reserve judgement until someone talks about this on a stream

Thanks eXtine for your efforts, hope this all gets sorted out.

5 minutes ago: OP at +8 frags
now: OP at -1 frags

the video itself is so polarizing (not to mention unprofessional and childish) that you should 100% remove it immediately if you indeed are all about the community

We've put up with esea's shit before and casted offsite on Orange before. I don't think it was necessary to have it on eXtv's channel this season, but I can understand that volunteering for free all weekend for their broadcast is bullshit.

What isn't cool is the players mentioned saying they would be around to help eXtv for the weekend and then flip that off for esea orange. That's not fucking cool. No fucking respect. I don't know what y'all get from this deal if anything, but it wasn't worth hurting such a important supporter of our community.

Thanks for the info, eXtine.

I believe this is a result of you using amateur casters and looking at them as professional ones. These guys cast for their love of the game and their knowledge. Basically for fun. It's a hobby to them. I see now you guys are legitimately trying to make money off of it but it's not going to happen with tf2. These guys would rather just show up and have a good time casting instead of getting into the midst of a financial battle with esea then that's their decision. What extv was going to provide and what orange is going to be provide are the exact same things. Only difference is one was getting paid while the other wasn't.

For the record I hate esea and think it's bullshit as well that they can't re-invest some of the profits they've made off the community back into the events. I think if they paid for your airfare/hotels to come cast that should be incentive enough to go do LAN for free. This isn't starcraft where you're going to make back the caster salaries in a half hour through advertising. I feel for you but I think the video was moot and makes you look more money hungry than anything. I do understand where you're coming from though. I just don't think this video was the answer. Good luck and keep it up!

"It creates divisions within the community"
In that case how is this video not like doing that? It's basically providing a pretty biased point of view, and it's obviously going to set off rifts between the people who support ESEA and the people who don't.
I think.
I mean in the end I don't really know much about ESEA just since I mostly observe and am not part of the whole ESEA thing, so this is just some quick judgment.

Here is what it boils down to: on the ESEA Orange stream, we will get more viewers and those viewers will be the players that we need to show this game to if we want it to grow. That opportunity simply does not exist if we do it on the EXTV stream. We would have front page status thanks to Synwyn, we would get a decent amount of viewers, but the general pool of viewers we got would be EXTV's subscribers and the people who already pay attention to and follow competitive TF2.

There are problems with ESEA's set-up and the TF2 community's desires and that is a big problem, but the fact remains that ESEA is the only thing that the North American scene has that exposes it to the rest of the e-sports world. It makes no sense to me (and presumably, makes no sense to cbear/Enigma/Lange/Seanbud, since they were willing to come along) to isolate ourselves and just do things for the community if we have any intention of growing it. Look at what happened to European TF2 -- here is a post that adequately and succinctly sums up what happens when a gaming community intending to be an e-sport tries to do so on community effort alone:
http://www.vanillatf2.org/2012/11/where-are-we/#comment-50752

ESEA provides us the opportunity to have coverage on a multi-gaming news site, because it is one. It provides the opportunity for us to have casting by people who are not explicitly the TF2 casting groups, or at least their plan is to incorporate TF2 into ESEA TV. ESEA provides the only regular prize money competitions, and it provides a regular LAN that has prize money, which accompanies the community run LANs we have.

The opportunity to cast on ESEA Orange was always there, it was just dismissed due to reasons that are not entirely clear to me and were not really made any clearer by my brief discussion with Extine. If the entire reason is "we need to push back against ESEA," then that goes entirely against the idea of growing the game.

I did not watch the video and have no particular intention to, so my points here may not address anything that was directly said in it. I just wanted to give you guys some indication of why we did what we did.

better to have an obvious division in the community than a passive aggressive one
because obvious divisions are easier to understand and solve
there are points in time when being confrontational is important and this might be one of them

EDIT: also this is the inevitable outcome of esea's passive treatment of tf2 which is the real problem that has to be looked at

So DJC + Lange + CBear + Seanbud are publicly refuting their ties/affiliation/camaraderie/vague sense of alliance with eXtv? Are they making some sort of tacit statement about eXtv as an organization?

That's sort of the impression I received when from this video. Hopefully someone can fill in the blanks. Maybe this is the result of a misunderstanding or miscommunication? That seems more likely.

Then again, the invite circlejerkers are all very self aware, capable, and ambitious about branding themselves and managing their image. Choosing to cooperate with ESEA rather than eXtv (if this video is to be believed) could be a calculated move on their part. I suppose time will tell. But now that this drama has been aired, I think that at least some sort of closure is deserved.

Maybe they think that if they do ESEA a favor we might get something back from it?

http://puu.sh/1q3pV

Not sure how I feel about this since I just announced earlier tonight that these guys are going to be on eXtv this weekend. Both sides have a point, but it's really crappy how this was handled.

ESEA-Orange is not only promoting TF2 but also these guys who have their own streams and want to promote themselves. I can't quite blame them for wanting to be on ESEA to get some traffic from the other games at the LAN. At the same time, I really feel like we'd be a lot more successful if we backed a larger organization such as eXtv. It works for VanillaTV, and we could do the same.

At the same time we're not getting the whole story here...did Jeff ask for money from ESEA? It sounds like it.

I do not think that any of us expect some kind of favor to come from ESEA out of this. We did not get into Mumble and go "if we slip ESEA a tenner, maybe they get rid of the roster hijack rules." The direct reward that comes from this is that our game is seen by people who would not otherwise see it, and maybe it helps legitimize it. Look at the IPL Shootmania tournament: 400 people watched that, and a ton of them were us, but think about how many were not from the TF2 community and saw the IPL guys taking the game seriously and heard Alex Mendez say that he was going to go check out the community and Teamfortress.tv and see what we were all about. That helps us, and I think that we get more of that when we expand ourselves outward instead of curling up and holding tight to what we already have.

I think slin hit the nail on the head. it comes down to self-promotion, which isn't quite as easy within the purview of a collective organization like eXtv.

Sal was able to promote himself just fine while being in the EXTV organization. We could all do so as well, if we wished. But nobody cares about that! I talked to cbear, Lange, and seanbud all separately. The amount of times that someone went "well, how does this benefit me?" was zero.

All depends on how you want to look at it. Alot of folks are saying that ESEA stream will get more viewers and bring more exposure to the scene. I going to play devil's advocate and ask this: how much has the scene grown because of ESEA, really? I understand that it's the only option, but what has been done on their end to make any effort to grow the TF2 scene? Honestly, regardless of "exposure" - I'm surprised more people aren't standing by the one dude that has done everything in his power to expose this scene to the masses. He's been doing it for a long fucking time too.

It's also nice that there ARE people willing to volunteer a fuckton of their time on a weekend to do this, but it can't be done for free forever :>

Slin... the amount of promotion I would or would not give my own channel during the weekend is unaffected by which channel we end up casting on. It's not like ESEA is going to sponsor me or something.

Please don't shit on me just because eXtine felt he had to. The extent of him "talking to me" was "hey want to cast the LAN? djc/cbear and hopefully Lange are casting" and I said "sure." That was about 2 weeks ago. I had very little knowledge of what went on behind the decision to cast the LAN on extv's channel rather than ESEA-Orange and I assumed it was because ESEA wasn't going to let them. When I found out that the opportunity to cast on the Orange stream was still there I was pretty pumped and I really didn't think it would cause any sort of drama or whatever. I'm kind of along for the ride so please stop the conspiracy theories about what I did to betray extine because this is the entirety of what went down:

djc: hey I think we're casting on the ESEA stream
seanbud: ok

So yeah. Lay off :>

See you this weekend.

It's possible that you did it for altruistic reasons, but it is also possible that you did it for yourselves. Maybe you're killing two birds with one stone. Who cares.

Point is, TF2 is still on ESEA-Orange, and I'm genuinely happy about that. As for the future of eXtv? Up to us. If we do want to make eXtv a success, we have to support it though by getting high-level casters on the stream channel. If we all continue to stream on our own streams, we can never hope to match VanillaTV.

Just so we're all on the same page, VTV gets 800-1000+ viewers on regular season matches.

I'm more concerned about eXtv than your stream. Although it is really fun to watch. I just want the scene to grow. And I'm not trying to shit on you I'm just reposting what you said on Youtube.

If we're not all going to get behind eXtv though, what do we do? Do we have a better idea?