fuck yes

=

When you can put any TF2 clip on a LAN tournament page, but you put the F2P clip...

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/249/585/f25.gif

edit: fixed thx based insomnia for caring

this sounds cool (in the past they did an open swiss during invite group stages where the top 2 teams went into the invite bracket on day 2. tbh it might put me off from playing though if there wasn't much time to watch some tf2 on day 2

With the recent match results I think we should #pushEVL

If there's a prizepool for the intermediate group that'd be cool too. It'd give lower level eu teams some incentive to tryhard a bit.

Fundraisers now please, I'm ready to throw my money into this

Fundraising gnomercy

,

It's happenningggggg

what was the prize pool at i58?

edit:thanks crayon

initially it was £5000 then it expanded to £8500

Are lowpanders going to attend i61?

Hold up- this makes it sound like we're a headline tournament this year...

http://insomniagamingfestival.com/insomnia/whats-on/tournament-changes-announce/

It's always been like this. The fear was we would be downgraded to a community tournament or less but it seems after all the waiting nothing has changed.

The bit I noticed was down at the bottom "Head over to our tournament page now to see what’s on offer at Insomnia61, including the return of Team Fortress 2."

TF2 must have been downgraded at some point, because TFTV have been producing the event offstage for some time now. That isn't the case this year:

Headline tournaments are our flagship BYOC competitions. These will have an official stream for the whole weekend, featuring the best upcoming UK casters, and a stage final on Insomnia’s BYOC Stage. With these tournaments, we aim to showcase and support the growing esports talent within the UK. We’ll be working with partners to improve the tournament experience for both players and our audience on Twitch. Headline tournaments will always host a minimum prize pool of £5,000, with the option for sponsors to increase it further.

The official stream isn't clear yet. It's not really better having an official Multiplay stream by the way, they usually get about 50-100 concurrent viewers, except the Hearthstone tournament which has had a much bigger prize pool recently so has been much higher profile.

The stage final is an upgrade from the perspective of the event (although we've usually had one and this was only dropped fairly recently), but it's a downgrade for online viewing as Multiplay tend to produce the stage finals themselves and they aren't as well set up for TF2 casting as tftv is.

I can't fathom seeing this as a bad thing- TFTV made it clear they wouldn't be producing this year, so I'm pretty relieved Multiplay picked it up. I also think it's a fairly big deal that they gave us back the stage as it represents that they recognized their mistake in relegating us in the past.

I look forward to sitting in a chair watching grand finals on a stage where they belong, in stead of sitting crowded on the floor in front of TV with no sound.

i hope this doesnt mean theyre gonna bring in non-tf2 people to cast tf2

Nobody is saying it's a bad thing, but a stage final comes with some interesting wrinkles. Being scheduled first thing in the morning so it's on at 3am in NA. Being part of their finals stream so it's not tftv people at the controls (although we managed to get that in one year iirc), those kind of things. Obviously they'll have to be tackled, but sometimes you just get shafted.

We wouldn't have tftv people at the controls anyway since they didn't want to be a part of the event, so that's kind of moot. A lot of our casting talent have left for Overwatch. I personally don't see it as a bad thing taking the burden off of the community to bankroll production.

edit: what gentleman jon said

Coverage is being planned by tftv as it always has been as far as I can tell, although obviously a few people have moved on. People are still stepping up.

News to me.

e: I apparently need to start reading more news.

i'd rahter watch sideshow cast from a broom closet with a ten inch monitor than watch randoms cast on stage

Watching randoms try and cast tf2 would be funny tho.

I remember a non-melee player (James Chen) being there to commentate Melee at EVO in 2013. While his knowledge of the game was not great he did provide a casual perspective and I suppose helped people from the FGC and casual part of the scene get introduced to the comp Melee scene.

I personally would prefer to have two experienced players casting at i61 but I think that having a known figure from a different community could be interesting to say the least.