You bring up a good point Klassy.
Therefore I've made the decision to create a new casting org that should be the new primary source for coverage of lan and online matches.

it's just like leagues, all about ego and the fact that every one want to own their one stuff

.

Arguments, different views on things, and as 3006 said, ego. I would love to see TFTV be revived as a proper central platform for TF2 casts and events, but at the moment I feel like it's become a bit like HLTV.org where they just make news and post match pages.

At the same time, I like that it's creating healthy competition for casting organisations (RGL vs. TFTV, TFLIVE vs. cpTV, ETF vs. KK)

Also, why are there only 3 6s games from CPH 2019 (and none from 2018 ?) uploaded to the channel when I'm pretty sure much more were streamed (like the Grand Final for instance).

Because a rapist might just reset your stream key during a LAN if you don't fully control the channel.

Edit: My lawyers inform me I should stick to "alleged rapist and known stream saboteur"

there is like a 95% overlap on people working on each of these channels. its all the same people but a different name. there is basically no competition at all

to be overly brief, the euro production silos were kinda formed due to personal friction between organisers (x won't work with y etc), and partly due to different aims (essentials wanted to do more out-of-the-box stuff and actively try to attract sponsors, Kritzkast wanted CPG to fill in a void left by Deutschlan and be a HL hub). Phoenix red (cpg production)/essentials seem largely compatible at the moment but neither understandably wants to relinquish control over each of their respective events.

it's easy to say that everyone should work together and combine the reach of TFTV with the tech of phoenix red with the prestige of insomnia but I don't see that working out any time soon.

RGL is kinda different because they're a league - owning both a league and coverage of the league gives them much more weight with sponsors and is more typical in esports.

there's still some 'competition', because multiple orgs have different tech despite the same people helping develop each one, and a bunch of work is duplicated several times each year which stifles each event. it's not real competition because each event struggles to focus on its own shit without trying to overtake other events.

you should go looking for i65 vods :)

i said this shit a while ago but the ppl behind it seem to think it has no effect on viewership but it clearly does. i saw some prem game struggle to even reach 100 viewers i think it was more like 70-80 which is worse than what quake live 125fps cup was getting.

no ones watching this game anymore online or on LAN and while i dont think this is at all a primary reason for this kinda thing but all it does is add confusion, inhibits funding through twitch emotes and shit like that, makes it harder for those ppl who only tune in because theyre following that specific channel (in iseries LAN we would get a lot of viewership from twitch staff and pros from other games who were interested) etc

makes no fucking sense whatsoever that al these channels exist

This has been a problem since like vtv/tftv drama in i46 or something so a sudden solution seems unlikely.

That being said, it did feel like the source of a lot of the 'we're not gonna work with __' came from dashner (at least from the tftv side of things) so now that he's been purged perhaps it's a good time to revisit this topic?

@production

Who doesnt even want to work with who?? Why?

So gemm has the origins as to why the european production separated towards different orgs, mainly due to people having friction and differing ideals leading to circlejerks of "our way is the best way". Early on, I was very committed to bringing the orgs closer together to potentially globalise down the line, looking back however I don't think that this would be a good idea.

Multiple orgs encourage competition, Essentials pretty much got iSeries since there weren't other orgs that could pick up after TFTV and remained as the defacto EU LAN until CPG came around. Regarding personnel, I am completely comfortable bringing people who work in or with other orgs on board to Essentials to do other events and vice versa I would be happy to work with other orgs on events like CPG. But trying to unite all orgs under one banner at this point isn't going to happen, previous attempts have shown this. From a personal standpoint, each org working on their own event(s) allows them to focus on their own priorities, if for instance we would like to bring back the Monthlies and prioritise online tournament coverage or looking at other LAN events we could cover on the calendar we can explore those options without trying to please a sizable group of people, all with different views on what TF2's competitive and production should look like. Anyone that knows me should be vaguely aware that I don't care for HL or Prolander, so under my supervision such tournaments could potentially see very little coverage from Essentials, but KritzKast is more than comfortable with doing so and is much more oriented towards what they aspire for the game.

I think that there are still teething problems from the initial splintering as orgs are to this day trying to find their niche but it is my own personal opinion that the way we have it now works; drastic reforms this late into the scene's existence would do more harm than good.

Interesting how the idea of "exclusive" broadcasting rights were so heavily pushed back on when botmode released his essay. But yeah, its a good idea, it would also help attract more sponsors if we have 1 stream with a lot of viewers rather than 10 streams with like....20 viewers each.

This is true but does it really matter when there isn't any real monetary gain to compete over? I don't think the quality of production would stagnate because of fewer streaming platforms.

think you misunderstood the problem here

I remember competing mumble casts between Arx and Beta and then like Byte/Whoever before everyone watched streams, so probably even longer.

Except financial incentives aren't necessarily needed for one organisation to have leverage. Everytime iSeries comes around again, both organisers internal to the event and ourselves have to justify TF2 to be at the event or else its just ignored. Other orgs, in theory, can ask to be the contractor for TF2 at iSeries and the organisers just want a good show so long as there are people who can work it.

The more events that you work, the longer your 'resume' as a organisation becomes, potentially resulting in bigger or more chances to grow. At the end of the day, Essentials and Phoenix Red are businesses and as such self-interested. Exclusive broadcasting rights over all events is a serious amount of power to hold and I cannot see any org willing to be consolidated into another for the 'benefit of the community' with no real incentive in doing so.

I don't think that quality would stagnate under a exclusive production or even that multiple orgs would necessarily warrant innovation as you say, especially since most production stuff is open source and freely available. But the risk of losing what events we currently run and/or people preferring one event over another forces us to actively improve our approach year-by-year.

It would be an interesting conversation to have between org heads again, at least for TFTV, I feel most of the people opposed to it aren't involved anymore. That said I have no idea if that is the case.

when is eXtvEsports ft. eXtine coming back

CG18 6s coverage was done on the Essentials channel, Highlander on KritzKast, making the point of the splits between channels being useless for viewership, which is why CG19 was broadcast in full on KritzKast.

The VODs for CG19 will be uploaded on the KritzKast youtube, I'll try to figure out where the CG18 ones go, since it was a Phoenix Red production for both events, and will also be for CG2020.
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On a personal note, shoving everything under the TFTV banner is dumb, as pointed out, they are like hltv, doing news coverage, and happen to also still cover ETF2L and ESEA now RGL.

Also CSGO Majors aren't all broadcast on single channel either, look at ESL, StarLadder, FaceIT and previously DreamHack, Eleague, MLG. It is a Tournament Organizer thing who they decide to pair up with for a channel.

I can't speak for anyone or any other org here, though I have had the opportunity to work with many of the representatives in the orgs listed. KritzKast started out as a podcast, which in essence is the personal views of a few of people with various scopes of knowledge talking about things they love. For us it was the game itself, the community surrounding that game and beer. Although that last point was probably just me. As our understanding of what keeps this game alive and vital has expanded we too have worked with some very cool people, like Ruskeydoo and more recently Wiethoofd who've had a much more focused interest in competitive, so moving into HL coverage and some other more fringe formats (RSP, 7s, Ultiduo, etc) or events (newbies cups, show matches, various charity) has been possible.

So that's where we came from. The present isn't without problems. The podcast has fallen off the wayside and is in sore need of massive rethinking to create something relevant again. There's a bunch of content that needed to be re-edited before release and I just didn't have the mental fortitude to get through it while maintaining a high intensity job in the City. I'm hoping that now I have some time and a little less to worry about (in the short term) I can push content and get us back on track, then set up the tools to ensure we don't fall behind again in future.

In response to the "this" from OP. Yeah I fucked up and started a stream without changing the old title. Took me a few minutes to set it right. Sorry to anyone who came seeking that content. I've a mind to set up my own channel for content that's neither podcast nor comp stream though that wouldn't be fair on everyone who's subbed to the channel for the podcast and more esoteric content. Likely a better solution would be post a schedule, which may not be a bad idea on the whole, though exceedingly tough to get right with comp matches, even finals not being locked to a day or hour until right before (days, sometimes hours) they occur. But we'll try and get something down.

I don't want to directly address OP's comments on the need for multiple channels. If anyone wants my opinion then come find me at LAN, buy me a beer and be prepared for a long discussion. It's not something that we're going to solve here, nor do I believe that a thread on a discussion board is the right place for it, though always curious to read other people's opinions.

bastards

Both gemm and the doc have pretty much hit the nail on the head, but I would like to add that it's not as if this topic doesn't get revisited often, the heads of these orgs and even important people outside of them have reasonably regular meetings around what we can do together and for eachother. I think ultimately at the moment, at least for ETF and PR we have different philosophies on a few things from recruitment to technology etc. e.g. at iseries we're able to borrow a complete production suite with hardware vision switchers, a 32 (iirc) channel audio mixer and so on, while PR's focus is very much on automation and trying to do as much, to the highest quality that they can with fewer people. At i65 we had at minimum 6 people on production at any given time, with more being able to step in (for example, console helping Fill, one of our VMs [vision mixer] who has never played TF2) and that isn't including our content and social team or production assistants. At CPH we're expecting around 4 (could easily be 2/3) to be the minimum as the role of director, VM and audio eng are able to be rolled into one through automation.

Both philosophies have their advantages and disadvantages and if I'm totally honest I would like to move more towards PR's style of thinking for i67 but it's quite difficult when we also have to liaise with insomnia themselves to work out what we can have from them etc. the total set up wasn't 100% known to us until the actual start of the event since there were some issues with cameras so I'd be weary to introduce crazy new tech (or at least new to insomnia staff) if we're not certain how it'd fit in.

Lastly, after ETF moved to an organisation team structure after assuming control of the org from Wolf I've realised just how much work it is to organise even just the production for a LAN and honestly if it was the same team of people planning for both iSeries and CG people would be burned out very fast as they would essentially be working all year round, CG planning starts pretty soon after iseries and iseries planning starts basically as soon as CG is over since CG is on the same weekend as the earlier iseries event, so that's when we're able to get confirmation from their TOs that they want to run TF2 and how they want it to work.

As much as I would like tftv to be the main production stream for everything isn't it still the case that enigma just gets all of the twitch sub money and none of it goes to casters/production people? Seems like those who volunteer their time to this stuff would be better off getting at least some compensation from other streams like RGL or whatever other orgs

The money made off of twitch and YouTube revenue is actually so small. Combined with the basic necessity for a lot of people to use adblock on the forums to not get bad popups from the ad service we use; I wouldn't be surprised if despite having that as extra income keeping site servers up and keeping the 2 domains is still a loss for him. Internally monetization has been discussed briefly on certain stuff but at the end of the day people are doing tftv because they love the game. Rewarding people for their dedication would be epic but not something feasible at all.

Edit: afaik working with ETF and TFTV for 2 years, and next season RGL, compensation has not been a thing for a long time if ever for online stuff. I know with LANs the orgs look for what they can (for example staff camping at iseries/CPG and ETF helping with my train reschedules). It's not a problem limited to tftv.

We've also talked briefly about merch sales and such, but another issue was how to divide it amongst people, especially if you then make decisions of who to or not to pay, it would already be a small amount without dividing, but to spread it between the many staff working it would be next to nothing, even if you just look at production/broadcast.

https://xkcd.com/927/