Oh sweet summer child, rewatch the VODs for i46, i49 and i52 for some perspective.

Having been a full-time part of the production team at i49, i52, i55 and i58, I've seen first hand how hard it is to take a group of amateur volunteers and turn it into a successful esports production. Understaffed, under-equipped and overworked, with rising expectations each iSeries, especially since esports production in general has gotten so much better (and much more expensive!) over the years.

The "unsustainable" bit that uberchain touched upon is getting more apparent this year. Back at i55 and i58 we already knew we were setting the bar quite high. All thanks to the specific people available to work for the production, Multiplay tournament admins, equipment available/rented/borrowed, equipment generously provided by Multiplay and the amount of time put in by certain people way ahead of the event.

Unless we magically get all that back, I think it's time to aim for a way smaller production done really well, instead of a big production not meeting expectations.

On a positive note: I've quite enjoyed the i63 show, didn't watch all of it, but I've seen hours of great TF2 (WARHURYEAH casting was mvp again).

The thing that triggered me the most is that they didnt show the players shaking hands at the end of the games. Like what the fucKK

I totally agree, it was a bit disappointing that Seven left the scene without shaking hands of Froyo and without being interviewed :/

Strongly disagree that this stuff felt pointless. I wasn't able to tune in for most of day 2 and 3, but at least on day 1 all of those little segments were fantastic. Just think about previous years, and how much more time we would have had to spend staring at some stupid logo with music if it hadn't been for those segments. I remember i58 opening up with like 3 hours of that shit. Every hour on day 1 that they wound up being able to fill with prerecorded stuff was absolutely worth it. It made the whole experience watchable instead of mind numbing, checking in and out every 10 minutes. Switching it up from just straight up interviews was great too tbh. I don't have anything against interview specifically, but after 2 or 3 it's important to switch up the content if the game still hasn't started, and the marriage game was a good way to do that. Legitimately hope we get more of this next year; at least for day 1 the stream was much closer to being continuously entertaining than it ever has been.

nothing else compares to the fact u dragged 7 up in front of everyone and made them pose with the second place cheque after a super close game. T_T. it was literal torture. rest of the grand finals was pretty good tho.

There were Punjabi people speaking in chat?

That was literally so hard to watch. Se7en looked fucking soul destroyed.

As the one who spent the most time on the desk (joined by ArchRhythm the rest of the time), I feel like I can provide answers for at least a few of the issues raised.

(this got really long so it's gonna be across a few messages)

We had 0 contact with players directly, outside of rcon say, so predicting when the game was going live was near impossible. This combined with imo too long map intros lead to often cutting to gameplay as demos reached mid.

This is one side of the story, we had people in chat and crowd often complaining it was too loud. Any time it was off completely though, that was obviously production’s fault.

The observers had so much to think about this lan. To do pip they had to have the game running twice, and manage when those were shown on screen with their own OBS setup. Observing TF2 is incredibly intense at the best of times, especially without a cheat feed or at least the minimap we had last year. Big credit to gemm and Sim who both did great.

Sometimes we just need something to allow casters to move from couch to desk where we’re not showing the cams. The alternative would have been cutting to (an empty) crowd cam with music for 2 minutes, and yet I don’t think you would have whinged about that?

TurboTabs had a no breaks policy, which was fine. The trouble was no one was monitoring desk during this time, checking on Grumpy, as we were so stretched planning the grand final logistics. I put this down to lack of staff and shit out of our control.

It's not "should we keep producing", it's "does anyone else wanna do it".

Very true, although that was because the pro stage guys did all the audio mixing and cam work for us. The least stressful part for me was once the grand final had started, as we shared the workload with them.

Yep. Servers caused huge problems on Friday too. Twiikuu the server master saved the day.

All production machines were provided by essentials.

Lack of people power.

Again, really poor communication with players hindered this. There was also no one free to organise this stuff, so what stuff we did have was either organised by production or turbo/grumpy. We need someone else there.[/quote]

Yep. Lack of staff and severe lack of prep.

This is above me, but a valid problem.

We had the equipment, but a severe lack of production planning outside of what Jon did setup wise would be the cause here. I asked several times for at the very least a rundown of the production setup but got nothing. I found out what I was working with on Thursday.

100%

Jon, our most experienced producer, setup on Thursday, but had to leave then for something else we had known about beforehand, so this couldn’t be helped. Definitely would’ve been better with him there. Makes it doubly disappointing that I had little info pre-setup though.

I think Wolf worked on communicating with them in advance, but clearly there was not enough, idk from which end.

We rented cameras, and wolf brought all the other production stuff needed other than monitors, speakers and headsets.

I hadn’t heard anything about this, I’ll speak to wolf.

The guy who dev’d (not designed) the overlays last year fell out with wolf or something, so requested we stopped using any of his work. Jon had to rewrite the whole overlay system, which is why it was very similar looking.

Producers (not camera techs) had to reframe cameras in very short transitions wherever possible, so the ended up getting untouched most of the time. I had to do it many times and know nothing about cameras.

I don’t think two orgs competing is a good idea if wolf is willing to open up the upper echelons of essentials staff to people like yourself and the community in general. The closed framework he’s going for is stifling.

I think there's pros and cons of it. One thing it does bring with direct competition is the fact it forces everyone to up their game. If you take a look at the WWE for example, WWE's best viewed eras were when WCW was in direct competition with it, as WCW was winning the Monday Night War, so WWE had to step up their game and ultimately won. A second org directly competing with Essentials would force both orgs to up their game, as people will prefer and support the superior product.

The only real negative argument I could see is that TF2 is a smaller community and I'm not sure there are the dedicated people to run two full orgs. However, from a personnel standpoint, there's benefits to a second org as well in the sense that if there's personal issues, it would give talent an alternative. IE. If someone at one org pissed me off or treated me poorly, my options would currently be suck it up, or dont work, whereas with competition I could go to the competitor who might treat me better. Usually this forces orgs to treat personnel better, because if they treat them like shit they'll go elsewhere.

I think a second org would split the talent too much, and whichever one gets the big events would be the prime option for talent, regardless of personal afflictions. We need more community teamwork in my opinion is all.

Yeah that would be my initial fear, however there's always a chance that having twice as many opportunities could also lead to the discovery and development of new talent.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Upon retrospect, I realize a lot of what I said is deconstructive and did come off presumptuous & entitled. It stems from an older era that people praise as higher quality and will continue to do so, but it's insensitive and unfair to those who are working in different circumstances with less than what I had, and comes off as a form of grumpy retired grandpa mentality that I told myself I can't be a part of if I want to keep doing TF2. I overworked in the name of passion and quality to make things the best they could possibly be, beyond limitations, in subpar conditions - because that was what was expected from me back then. That doesn't mean this era has to go through the same thing, because it's still possible to make something the best it could possibly be with less.

Volunteers who did i63 are upset and demoralized about how harsh the feedback has been, and I'm truly sorry for tearing you down rather than building you up constructively. It was a good LAN with great gameplay and fantastic people, and my approach to criticism was not what TF2 needs after a LAN like that. This LAN in this era was the best in terms of people making the most of what they could with what they have, proving that regardless of their limitations or what was missing that they could still create something incredible out of something so small and keep it going - which always has been the point of TF2 and was expressed so well in the outro. That outro hit me emotionally in a way that no outro has hit me like before and I don't know if I could ever really explain why publicly.

While I and others do think there was a lot that can be improved, hearing what limitations arose means I shouldn't continue to downplay what efforts were put in if they were really out of people's control. Am I upset about the production mistakes or organizational issues? Yes, but I shouldn't have been as cold and breathe down your neck, nitpicking every little tiny detail that I scrutinized, because it's not fair. Again, I have no real idea of what went down and what they were dealing with. I have no idea what's going on or what did go on, and if I think it's really bad, I don't know how much that matters to the people who were actually involved. I might think I know what's best for them but I don't; I don't know shit in comparison to the people who volunteered their time and efforts willingly.

I should have seen it from how hard the hosts tried to keep engaging in conversation during ridiculous downtimes and delays and how much work people were trying to commit to doing certain roles they weren't used to. And the casters and talent who basically blew out their vocal chords close to the end of the event, and the admins and the media people trying to make the most out of the limited time, equipment, and manpower they had. And how hard a main stage was fought for to make sure the finalized teams could play at their comfort and best, and give TF2 what is arguably the best NA vs EU iSeries finals to date. I should have been more considerate of that, and I'm sorry.

Other people will have more issues to raise with Essentials' treatment of this LAN. But in terms of suggestions I could give that are not as harsh and actually constructive - a lot of it just goes back to, other than Multiplay, higher-up organizational things that should have been planned earlier, communicated better, micro'd more than spread out, or put together more cohesively. All of which are criticisms that have been brought in the past since i61 by others and are redundant at this point, and I hope they're listened to. But with that as your biggest limitation - with that considered, the i63 volunteers all did very well. Thank you for this LAN, and thank you for TF2.

What?
I think I saw Seven shaking Froyos hand at the end. The cameras may not have shown it but I'm pretty certain of it.

I tried my best it was my first time hosting an event and i hope at least one person enjoyed my contribution to the event. I agree there is things to work on and I'll take any constructive criticism thrown my way. I loved the comunity at lan and as long as they enjoyed the event and what we did im happy for being a part of it.

Much love grumpy

the cameras did show froyo and se7en shaking hands a bit maybe not the whole thing.

grumpykoi was good, good presence on camera. fucking difficult job.

i've watched pretty much every hour of every lan since i49 and this one fell right in the middle as far as production smoothness/quality. i think it's fitting that our 11 year old game with 11 year old graphics and optimization doesn't have a professional, polished cast. it would feel weird.

I think it boils down a sort of comfort we've developed. I remember Lange leaving and everyone being like "crap there goes production", and then dashner coming in and fuckin owning the game in addition to the incredible work he had already done up to that point. Then, when dashner left, the expectation stayed high because it sorta luckily worked out last time we lost that much talent.

Truth is, the production was VERY solid for the size of the event and of our community. We have been spoiled for the past half decade. Essentials can and should strive to do better, especially with things like interviews/hosting and analysis during downtime/that sorta stuff, but the truth is that the productions Dashner and company put on for next to nothing budget-wise would be worth 10s of thousands of dollars based on quality and time put into them. Until another person/ group with that skill set is willing to do that much work for free, don't count on what we're used to coming back.

ps

Yikes. That's.. rough. I hope the powers that be are hearing you.

I may be suggesting something that's already being done or is already done, but I'm hopeful you guys can do some sort of thorough debrief/retrospective etc to look at how everything went, what the issues were, and outline some specific strategies or ways you can prepare for this better next year. Best way to learn and improve imo. I'm sure tons of folks would be interested in suggesting ideas. Maybe like a feedback form or something? I know something similar is done after TOTH each year, and actually it may have happened after i61 but I don't recall.

Not sure if I posted it here yet or not but want to echo that the good parts were really cool and good, and there was plenty to be happy about. But yeah the bad parts tended to be rough or frustrating for the viewer (and probably moreso for those of us who were spoiled on the so-called "golden age".)

Even when the production was lacking the casting/commentating/hosting was still amazing.

The extra content was really varying in quality, the interviews I saw were consistently good content wise but they all seemed to have a very loud noise(wind or crowds) drowning out the people talking and it seemed random which teams had them and which ones did not. The trivia was pretty good too and got most of the twitch chat to try to play along although if this was the goal, you would never tell by the questions(How many new people are aware of who Pyyour is? Certainly none know about the cooking video). The marriage game was probably the worst executed since it had a lot of dead time and spent a lot of time talking about players not at the lan, not a great way to get new players interested.

I think it was really noticeable Heny wasn't around this lan. It's a shame he is no longer in essentials because he can do so much for tf2 in general. Especially organising and administrating events. I recall i61 it was much clearer what was going on, when next match was and what server you were getting on.
Bring heny back </3

first LAN casting and it could've went a lot better imo but that's what improving is for right. apart from that from the eyes of someone who was on """staff""" (never felt like it as everyone was working hard but me.) Blood, sweat and tears were poured into this to get it running as smoothly as it went. if it wasn't for twiikuu for example our server situation would've been the same as CS's no doubt with a five hour delay on open stages. Somethings could be improved overall nae cunt is disagreeing on that but somethings were completely out of our hands this LAN.

On behalf of production stop complaining about sound bleeding into mics etc that literally cannot be fixed we are not the only ones at insomnia.

when they had that "quiz game" segment where they asked the worlds top players how much health a soldier had

I don’t think your comments were deconstructive. They were pretty fair in my view.

If we can hold some kinda postmortem (maybe one for staff then a public one), we can effectively build off this LAN and make sure the same mistakes aren’t made again. This way time can be spent solely on improving the next event and not wasting it on building an event again from scratch. This can only happen if the core team stays together, as it changed too much this year for that to happen.

Initially I think it was supposed to just be the guide and news site it once was. Removing the guides section was my first task when I joined the web dev team, and it was never high enough on the priority list given by wolf to add back.

Eventually he/they/we branched into production with a dreamhack I believe? Then TFTV didn't want to do i61, so here we are.

Having been one of the tournament admins on both I61 and I63 I personally feel like the actual tournament organization was messier then last year. This mainly because this year it was more of our own fault. As reference: last year we where, until last minute, forced to use a tournament system that wasn't functional in any form. This caused us to switch to toornament last minute so we could properly host the tournament. Our bracket, teams and groups where already known well on time. We didn't have LAN servers because they where not prepared properly by insomnia and once we had the base setup sorted for them they kept on taking up more and more memory eventually crashing after 10-20 minutes. This finally caused us to only have a couple of LAN servers with a machine that we brought and had setup. The open tournament had no LAN servers whatsoever.

Last year's preparation was largely thanks to heny. Miss you my man.

Now onto this year...
Out of our control:

• We where initially forced to use a dashboard to manage the servers which kept on bringing issues with it. We had planned into the schedule to test the servers well in advance but twiikuu's flight got delayed for 3 hours so he wasn't able to take care of it on the Thursday evening. Twiikuu then took most of the Friday to get the servers up and running and we finally had them operational for the last rounds of the group stages.
  
• toornament was having some issues throughout the day going as far as deleting one of the open group made fixtures. This was all fixable eventually but definitely caused some panic.
  
• The league of legends grand final went the full series and ended up delaying everything on the main stage after it due to poor planning. They went about 2 hours over their scheduled time. (don't blame the cs:go dudes or the players themselves)

Now onto the actual issues/mistakes:

• Me and dr.happiness where not sitting next to each other making communication extremely difficult. This because insomnia expected us to be seated with production and essentials expected us to get seated with the other tournament admins.
  
• Me and happiness had to scavenge for our pc parts on the Friday morning to get our setups going.
  
• On the Friday morning I got told: "Oh, we have a whole rule page on toornament. We copy-pasted the league of legends one and edited it". Giving me no time to properly read through it.
  
• We had to manually sign up some teams to the toornament page because it wasn't clearly communicated and they hadn't signed up themselves.
  
• The essentials discord is a mess and wasn't properly prepared for communication. From me not properly having access to ping all the team leaders to make them aware of situations to me not even being able to give the right roles to team leaders so they could get access to information. Certain teams or their team leaders where not in the discord shortly before everything was supposed to start. Players apart from their team leaders couldn't get into the channels that we where using for communication/announcements. This should have all been taken care of before the event.
  
• People still didn't know we had a public schedule on Friday afternoon after the games where already well on their way.
  
• In the middle of the grand final I had to go confirm on how the prize money organization was going to work. Nobody in essentials had any idea yet. We luckily managed to get this sorted properly.
  
• During the final the communication between production and staff on stage/the players was super limited and not well prepared. We where doing all that was possible with discord, me on just my mobile phone and dan in the back at production. One of the best examples is us missing the start of Granary. The internet of the production had dropped and, although they where 5 meters away, we had no clue on stage and ended up starting without them being close to ready.
  
• For the grand final we for whatever reason gave the time for when we can start with stage setup as starting time for the actual match. In a best case scenario the setup of the players easily takes 30 minutes(setting up peripherals, installing mumble, configs setup, ...). If any form of issues arise, which is almost always the case, it can easily take an hour.

There are a bunch of other things. Insomnia itself seems to have had some troubles with their organization after parting ways with multiplay. Talking to one of the head esports organizers after the finals made it seem like they are not too happy. Mainly because they had no clue on what the TF2 tournament was like in terms of general status but where getting some complaints.

This was one of the worst parts for sure. Although, saying that, at least we (production) had a say at when the games started during this time. The rest of the time we were guessing based on players in server, but it was a regular occurrence for a player to leave when there were 12 in server (kaidus pls).

I have nothing but respect for the people trying their best and putting the work in. The problem is a lack of planning and clear structured guidance from above as well as a failure to keep creative and capable people that want to contribute inside the org.

Competition has happened before and it wasn't the end of the world, and at that time was based more around personal animosity than quality concerns. Then again given how many people qualify for "Wolf has fallen out with..." in the last 12 months maybe this wouldn't be much different.

Edit: Also the fact someone else is being wheeled out to do damage control is entirely predictable.

I would like to clarify that even though the short term circumstances were unfortunate (my flight being delayed, CS:GO servers crashing causing a 2 hour delay on what should have been our server setup), I should have pushed my testing and not trusted what Insomnia and the server manager contractor told me. I should have asked for more information, actually replicated the setup in its entirety, and attempted to manage a large amount of servers during a short amount of time, which ended up being actually impossible with the contractor's software. I was tricked into comfort when I should not have been, the failure was caused by social interaction before the technical could even fail. I'm sure they did not mean any harm themselves, but it could have been prevented.

I take entire responsibility for the lack of LAN servers on the first rounds, and I would like to offer an apology to all players present, Open and Invite. I hope the Open players who did not manage to play beyond group stages managed to have fun in dmixes on LAN servers, if you did not, please contact me, I would love to make it up to you in any way I can.

I am insanely grateful to all the appreciation I have received over the last few days, it was very lifting, but I am not pleased with my performance and I strive to make it perfect at any possible occasion. All in all, if my task is done properly, you shouldn't need to ever hear or speak my name, that's when I'll be pleased.