You could too if you'd fucking email me and tell me when you were casting every night! GOSH.

Well, this is the first that I've heard of this. All I know is that I'm going to show up in some mumble and cast some games with some other dudes, and it's going to be chill.

There's certainly some argument against this (splitting viewer counts, or something like that), but the end goal is to get as many people watching TF2 as possible, so why not have one streamer on esea_orange and another on extv? I seem to recall in the past that we did lan streams on esea_orange and they requested that we don't stream/cast when they switched to onsite casters, but as long as you refer viewers from extv to esea_orange (check out the main stream here!) and vice versa (for more tf2 action, follow this one!), I can't see there being much of a problem. Plus it gives a backup stream in case the cameraman has issues (i46/seanbud stream, for example).

Hehe ok John will do.

I'm just trying to do what's best. You guys are the invite players and lead by example. If you look at the NA TF2 streams, everyone seems to be more concerned about casting matches on their own stream. I can name names. Tyrone, Platinum, Mesr, the list goes on. If none of the invite players want to back eXtv then be upfront about it. But we'll still never be as successful as VanillaTV alone, even if we have the better players.

VanillaTV uses Invite casters in their matches. It looks good. People want to support it. We can do the same thing. Yes, eXtv historically has not had the best casters (casters of the highest levels of TF2), but it's all we've got and I feel like Jeff has dedicated a lot of time to building it up. If he did ask for money for this weekend, then it's a different story but as far as I'm concerned he's done a good job of creating an organization that takes care of itself (we have schedulers and social media people and all sorts of stuff to get people involved). If you've got a better idea than supporting eXtv though I'm all ears.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking for a small paycheck for traveling halfway across the country to talk for 12 hours, go home with a sore throat and/or illness as well as being away from your wife/job. I support paying casters. The quality of caster will drop if you're not paying them. It's a talent. The casters are as important as the players when you're trying to create a specator experience. Luckily for TF2, a lot of the top players are fairly talented casters. In most scenarios this isn't the case.

I'm.... gonna sleep on this first.

All the posts seem to be either for seanbud/lange/DJC/Cbear, or not sure. The way it sounds to me is that eXtine asked that himself and Cbear be flown out to lan so they can cast in person, in exchange for casting on ESEA orange and I assume showing their sponsors some love. If ESEA denies eXtines request the logical thing to do is either 1. not cast it (which would not ever happen) or 2. Cast on their own away from ESEA.

From the 4's stand point it makes sense for them to go a different route for exposure +self-promotion, and from eXtines perspective it also makes sense to do what he did (minus the video rant). Of course we still might not have all the information anyway so what the fuck ever.

i blame djc

Definitely and I'm not trying to give these guys a hard time. Like I said before, if I were in their shoes I'd consider doing it myself because it's a win for ESEA, a win for TF2, and a win for themselves. But we do have to consider the implications for eXtv. After all, I don't think any organization supports NA TF2 like eXtv does. Both for the 6v6 scene and the HL scene, which ultimately draws players to ESEA.

The only other idea I have is expanding the VanillaTV brand to include North American coverage. That's possible too.

Although none of this is possible if we keep solo streaming. We need a unified caster experience.

This will be my last post on the topic since I laid out my opinion about as clearly as I could, but as far as I am aware and from what the ESEA guys said to us in our discussions tonight, it was always on the table for EXTV to cast the ESEA LAN off-site on the Orange stream. They were apparently willing to provide compensation similar to the compensation that EXTV got for casting last season's LAN as an online only thing, but that option was presumably declined by EXTV.

wow what a load of bullshit
this is what i've gathered
extv is a business
extine wants esea partnership for $$$
esea says lol no
mge guys decide to help esea with their tf2 cast because better exposure
extine mad because people aren't helping him grow his business(extv)
extine trying to guilt trip with his cute "im just trying to grow & unite the community together" when it's clear that he just wants to grow his business

http://i.imgur.com/3lFHq.gif

can you please stop fucking implying that we're doing this for self-promotion.

any self-promotion that would occur would be the same no matter what channel we ended up casting on. i stream tf2 because i like playing and watching tf2 and people talk to me in chat and keep me entertained. i streamed for months before i got partnered. the amount of money i (don't)make is insignificant considering how often i stream. i do all this shit for fun and not to screw over extine or to make fat internet money or something.

i casted i46 because i thought it was ridiculous that djc/cbear werent doing any of the casting for arguably the biggest tf2 event ever, and i wanted to watch my friends and former teammates stomp some euros. i didn't do it to fuck over anyone, and i didn't do it to divide the community, and i ended up being the only stream available when vanilla had issues. so you could argue multiple streams is a good thing in some cases. p.s. i didn't run a single fucking commercial the entire weekend.

i'm just here to chill and watch video games so please stop talking out of your asses about self-promotion. thanks.

Regardless of the shady shit I think it's important for there to be a hub channel for casting matches (not necessarily lan). If people don't like eXtv maybe make a teamfortress.tv twitch channel of some sort that casters could use to promote the tf2 scene, this site, and community as a whole. It also would become a better promotion for the individual streamers who cast these matches as the following for something like this would grow pretty quick. This is kind of what Vanilla.tv does and it works.

As my Econ 101 teacher says. "it's all about the money".

It makes me think that you're trying to persuade us to go play CEVO to rebel, not gonna work IMO.

So much drama in the community right now ;-;

I think this quote sums it up pretty nicely. At 5:30.

To me it sounds like the problem is that eXtv is greedy for money.

#46: I don't see the problem. ESEA doesn't support the community as much as they should, why should the biggest NA casting organization do casting for ESEA for free? Doing casting through ESEA isn't inherently helping the community just because they're doing it through ESEA, that's apparent because ESEA doesn't promote TF2 or the NA TF2 orgs anywhere near as much as they deserve, not even for LAN casts. They're making business off of TF2 without putting much back into it, and then you expect NA orgs to bend over and help their business out for free?

Can you really blame him with the amount of time and effort he's put into extv? I'm pretty sure if you had done the same thing or something similar and didn't get a return for your endeavors you'd be frustrated too, don't kid yourself.

Have you been to the Commft youtube channel and seen the amount of work he's put into extv and tf2 in general over the past 2 years or so? I don't think he's being greedy at all with the amount of time he and extv staff in general have put into that channel even if you factor in the youtube partnership. you're scanning a thread for 15 mins and coming to a conclusion based off that. This isn't even close to greed. he just wants some return. He doesn't have to do any of what he's doing.

That being said, from what I can tell Extine could have locked them in better, but I think the only 100% way to do that effectively would've been paying with money; something he doesn't have a lot of at the moment. I think the prospects of getting 3000+ viewers on a stream would make anyone moist financially speaking when all you get usually is around 300 to 1000(on a really good night) depending on the match being played.

And to all the casters that will be casting this weekend I just want to say thank you for what you'll be doing this weekend. You'll be the main source of entertainment I'll be getting and I want thank you for that. Please put on as good of a show as the players and don't let this get in the way of it. All 6 of you make me laugh every time I watch you cast.

Finally I just want to say that Tf2 needs more money being poured into it. Period. That or we get insane expose in the coming year. (This game ain't getting any younger.) I realize this has been said before many times but I think its the main thing that should come out of this discussion and not the drama itself.

Maybe if ESEA had the impression that the community cared about their league and that there was any money in competitive TF2, they would have welcomed eXtv's offer immediately.

But there's really not any money in comp TF2 and ESEA undoubtedly believes that half of this community would chuck them off a cliff if they could. We'll have to work if we want ESEA to start caring a little more, and we'll probably have to do that work for free until something changes.

I would have loved to have eXtv on site but we can't blame ESEA for rejecting the idea and we can't blame casters for going with the stream that will actually get the numbers and exposure we desperately need.

eXtine, is there absolutely nothing else you can do at this point? What about having cbear and company cast regardless but promote the hell out of eXtv right on ESEA's stream? What if the free casting and exposure this weekend would help your business get what it wants for the next LAN? Or is pride preventing you from taking a chance to get the exposure you've worked so incredibly hard for? I believe the casters should get paid for a long weekend's work, but we're simply not there yet as a community. We're too small and cannot afford to do what you've just done.

If you're not willing to do it for free, don't shit on the ones who would like to.

#50: missing the point. there was stuff set up with extine but it was suddenly shat on with no involvement with him at all.

.

I think a lot of people are over simplifying the issue at hand. The issue at hand is not simply that extine is greedy and other people are not. The issue is that by having casters cast for free, extine is obsolved of any bargaining chips he may have held to strong arm esea into agreeing to pay for expenses. I believe the other casters didn't decide to cast for free to intentionally spite/undermine extine but due to a communication error, where extine believed he had solidarity in his cause. Where as the other casters were unaware of extine's plan to lobby esea. So no one is at fault the only fault lay in a communications error where extine believed one thing and the casters believed another.
My only criticism of extine is that he could have expressed himself after his frustration died down. If anything he should have made the vlog but never uploaded it.

good points but the real question is: why does he need bargaining chips / why do people even need to be paid at all? it's going to be the same casters regardless of whether or not eXtv is involved. 6v6 is going to get exposure and the mge crew are nice enough to cast the event regardless of money

because it's the right thing to do. we don't have the entire story but right now it seems like it came down to:

a) hold out for money and cast on extv
b) cast on esea-orange in order to create exposure for 6v6 TF2 and help the community.

we're just lucky that these guys are willing to spend their weekened in order to do the cast for free and entertain us. it's just a shame that extv has to suffer as a result of all of this, and that a deal couldn't be worked out between esea and extv. at this point it seems that it is too late for extv to go back and work something out with esea to cast on orange offsite, so extine is saving face and continuing on as planned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoYWdHe4tQ4

very good slin, I was going to include an answer but my post was already pretty long. I cannot answer that question unfortunately. From what I can gather it looks like extine wants to professionalize tf2 and tf2 casting to the point where talented and committed people as yourself, lange, seanbud, sal, djc, cbear, and many others could break even or maybe even make a career out of what looks like a passion for something they truly enjoy. This specific issue with esea ornage is something of a baby step in the direction of compensation for casting. I can't answer your question in full because I honestly don't know what everyone has in mind for this "over-glorified hobby" and furthermore what we are witnessing (esports/livestreaming/shoutcasting) is unprecedented. Sorry for the long posts.

All casts are good casts! I loved the fact that seanbud and co provided an alternative commentary for i46. 99% of the time, it simply means that more people watched the event, which benefits the tf2 community. The only exception would be if the casters are terrible, in which case viewers might be taken away from better casters, and the viewer gets put off by the low quality of the cast, but that would be a rare exception, as it's hard to be a bad caster at TF2.

I don't make a single penny from casting, and while I wouldn't mind making a few quid for my time with adsense or something, it's not essential. However. the one thing I am cautious about, is people making money off of my back, when it doesn't help the community, however this very rarely happens.

If the LAN supports the teams, and supports the community, with prize funds, or even a tournament at all, then I see it as a good thing. I'll do what I can to promote the LAN's sponsors, and show them that covering TF2 will benefit their business, in hope of future, bigger, better events to come our way. However, I'm not a millionaire, there's only so much cost I can eat up, and so for some LAN events, I'd look for some funding to eat up the cost of the ticket, accommodation, or general expenses. If none can be provided, then I'd simply cast at home, with no beef towards the organisers... it's just simply my bank balance doesn't match my love for the community.

Now about EXTV, I completely understand where they are coming from. They are excited for this event, and want to put on the best show possible. There are mutual benefits for both the community, and the casting organisation. However, in order to put on the best show possible, time and commitment are needed, and there's only so much work one can put into something for free, especially, when it starts eating into your own pocket. The problem is, it's all in ESEA's court. They effectively have a budget, went into discussions, and things have obviously changed. Business sometimes works like that.

EXTV should still be committed to providing the community with the best show possible, and when they hit a point where time is too valuable, and no additional support can be given to them, then that is the final quality of the show, whether it means casting at home for free, casting live at the event for expenses, or casting live on national television for a salary, you can only work to the level of 1) your own will, 2) the budget you have.

Not to go offtopic but I would argue that this has been done before by a small organization called ESPN. This "over-glorified hobby" is no different than throwing a ball in a hoop or kicking a ball into a large net. With time you'll see casters being paid to fly out to events and cast them a la Day[9]. TF2 just isn't there yet as we've clearly seen.

i'll probably do some casual casting on the side so people can get their share of fair and balanced casting like fox news. <|8O)

This is what I took from it. eXtine feels robbed of an opportunity to coerce ESEA into contributing more to the coverage of TF2 LAN and subsequent growth of the community. Only miscommunication ruined the opportunity, and nobody is really at fault.

While I do think he could have waited until he was less frustrated, I don't think there's anything wrong with making the vlog. I think drama is a healthy way for a community to grow, and getting opinions out there allows the community to examine them for themselves, and determine a course of action as a whole.