I don't think anybody has mentioned these things yet so I will chip in with a view to continued improvement in the future

I think you could use the services of a design specialist to improve some of your layouts, specifically use of text and paying close attention to the various scenarios the stream's information graphics could deal with. I felt like the overlay only did a limited job of keeping people up to date, I dipped in and out a lot and frequently didn't get a clear impression of the stage of the competition or status of the production. This could extend to enhancing and producing materials outside the stream as well. No disrespect intended to anyone doing this already obviously

Probably related to the above, a production basic that seemed to be missing was name tagging people on stream, I didn't watch the whole thing but the only attribution I saw was in the in-game hud. For a live production that isn't really the appropriate place when people are frequently on camera

The hud technology looks interesting and clearly has promise, but as others have said a lot of what seems to be CS:GO inspired stuff isn't really appropriate to TF2, although the suggestion to highlight unusual unlocks only is a good one. One area to look for other inspiration might be plugins or hud developments from the past that have been dropped for one reason or another. For example the team health bars were quite popular, and drawing attention to a medigun change or a possible spy play (not just checking in spawn) would be informative for viewers. Also the short uber bar baffled me a bit.

The various hosts sometimes seemed to be left with little clue what was going on and left to fill indefinitely. Although it's amusing to hear them calling for production aid once or twice it gives a chaotic impression after a while that goes beyond charming amateurism. I think by the end of the event you could hear it in their voices they had been left to talk a bit too much.

Nuze's sections were excellent - for me they were without doubt the single biggest triumph of the production, you should probably open a sister channel just for him. Very good decision to keep War away from the cock drawing technology

Just so you're aware they have the option of using these if they like, they're not a tftv exclusive asset. My understanding is that they don't want to use assets other channels use.

I FUCKING LOVE THIS MAN

e: Multiplay had all their old vods hosted on a video hosting site that shut down a while ago so all the prehistoric stuff was lost.

Have you read it? It's truly a unique situation. At any given time they might have had multiple separate loose groups of people working on something Half Life related. Could be 3, could be 30. Might have got pretty far, might have gone nowhere. You could even have had groups working against each other.

Ultimately the momentum behind the series leaked away and they went in other directions, ironically some of that probably went on TF2 when it was higher profile.

Snivy linked this today and I found it a very interesting read about their internal structure which is very rarely talked about

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2017/01/11/searching-for-half-life-3.aspx

The tldr is that it doesn't matter how much money they make, it will never be relevant. The only thing that matters is that whatever social magic is necessary to get a big project supported by a lot of people internally takes place. That usually involves a big influencer like Gaben or other senior people pushing in that direction.

Making single player games or turning TF2 into an esport don't seem to be on many people's agendas.

The fate of Half Life is something to consider when you're tempted to think that something might be too valuable for Valve to drop, or that they act like a normal company and follow rational business logic.

Bren currently seems to be trying to get Sideshow killed at great expense in Colorado

Look at what giving your announcement article visibility for a day is doing as well. Fucking Aussies

The viewer's guide typically includes more than just the teams though, this is for i58

http://www.teamfortress.tv/35587/insomnia58-viewers-guide

Again there were no hype articles speculating or confirming attendance that I have seen before that, it seems like the approach overall is consistent. The time between this information being available, a few days ago, and now may be long enough that you think it should have been written and published. Only you can make that judgement but the suggestions of conspiracy, malice and even a little abuse in this thread seem misplaced to me.

To Tom's original question the answer is that there was an announcement here http://www.teamfortress.tv/41935/i61-announced. That obviously hasn't taken weeks to write because it was written weeks ago.

Afaik final information was only confirmed a couple of days ago (format, detailed schedule, etc), and that's because Multiplay only confirmed it very recently as well. Also afaik tftv has always waited for official confirmation to put articles together, and doesn't write them every time a team confirms attendance to a lan. I might be wrong, you can check back and look but I haven't seen any when I just did. It's mostly roster moves, event announcements, etc. There weren't any for i58 until the viewer's guide which tftv obviously covered.

The i58 viewer's guide included schedule and all that stuff, so presumably that's what's being produced now wouldn't you say? Given that articles announcing attendance aren't normally considered worth writing. If nothing appears at all then that's obviously a failure in coverage, but if you're disagreeing with the editorial approach that doesn't equal fucking lazy to me.

That's not a question

It's certainly inconsistent with the listing of an ESEA event, I wouldn't put it down to a deliberate conspiracy though. Presumably different people have different responsibilities.

Are you under the impression that I represent tftv in some way?

Why are you assuming malice?

Most of the people doing the production have in the past and will in the future continue to contribute to tftv, you're manufacturing drama where none exists. This time last year many things were confirmed weeks in advance so they were written about weeks in advance. That is not the case this year. There's not much else to say.