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This is roughly what me and comedian had worked out for i49 for anyone interested as to what "improved onsite coverage" means. https://www.dropbox.com/s/zwq73nd0pcb4meo/Budget%20-%20Copy.xlsx Below budget we would have either just worked out where to cut corners or dropped our own money on super essential stuff, beyond budget would have paid transport for a few people.

It's not so much an issue of talent (not now anyway, it was ~3 months ago), but because of sponsors and serious orgs. Take ETF2L. Ideally, ETF2L would have a much easier time attracting sponsors if they could guarantee a known quantity in terms of coverage by having an official coverage partner. This topic has come up behind closed doors at the planning stage of every ETF2L season since about s9. I'm not saying you pick one org and they're the only one allowed to cast (in practice, probably nothing would change for you: the viewers), but just declaring an official partner allows a potential sponsor to know exactly what they're getting and do a cost/benefit analysis on it. I've tried on many occasions to sort some arrangement out while part of both VTV and TFTV, but alas to no avail. From ETF2L's perspective, it has the potential to cause a lot of drama, and they just can't be fussed with it.

This post makes this entire thread worthwhile. I actually had to close the tab for a couple of minutes so i could breath.

Just to clarify this quickly, I had a productive chat with Beta on IRC. This should clear up some stuff.

We put aside our differences for about 18 months with VTV in the first place and it didn't work. I would genuinely rather just not be involved than work under byte (which is exactly what I did for about 3 months before TFTV EU was created).

So your response to "a couple of little kids with a personal vendetta decided to try and steal the show, instead of taking the mature, logical approach to this and attempting to unite the coverage scene for a united Team Fortress LAN event.", is to... further divide the scene over your own personal vendetta? k

I presume that's why I have logs from the vanillatv staff channel where you are proposing quite seriously that no one from TFTV be allowed to cast for VTV at i49?

SpikeHimself over on ETF2L is probably the man you need to talk to. I don't know if he still offers the service, but afaik he tracked down every version of TF2, so he has a big library of almost all versions.

You're right on that point. I apologise.

Sorry I was referring to i46 and i49. I did give you and cube all the credit for that in the proposal.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8aztviad1hptw8j/application.docx

Kharne told us straight up the reason they chose VTV is because of their previous track record for LAN coverage.

Thats the thing, we did. For a year and a half we put aside our differences and tried to be as constructive as possible. The bottom line is that when you're working for free, not being given the respect you'd expect, and the distribution of credit is very top heavy, there's only so long you can put up with it. TF2TV and Byte's up and coming casting org both folded to create VTV together. What has happened over the last 6 months is proof that being completely altruistic doesn't work in the long run.

Trell, we tried to speak to Byte about sorting out some issues. He told us, to paraphrase, "there is no point because people in this org won't want to with TFTV".

Your issue being that the speakers had to be turned down for the crowd sat irl at the event (which btw was only a problem because byte didn't organise speakers from multiplay despite us asking about it on numerous occasions several weeks in advance). On the other hand, we were too busy trying to make sure everything was perfect for the ~3k viewers on stream. Any reasonable person can agree which takes priority there.

Putting that aside from a moment, you - the deputy manager of VanillaTV and main writer at the time - sat and played Dota all weekend and did absolutely diddly shit. I'm not a big fan of the "i'm doing it you're not so stfu" line of reasoning, but it's best not to throw stones in glass houses.

Who? Is there some elite group of people I'm entirely unaware of that have just magically appeared in TF2 in the last week? The only person in VTV who knows anything about live production is atmo, but it's far too big of a job for one man.

No it just means they'd be much more inclined to go with TFTV at future events.

And by your LAN coverage, you mean our lan coverage.

For a quick sample of VanillaTV's LAN coverage, feel free to check out the i48 vods.

Edit: Trell I am annoyed. I am really, really annoyed. I'm pissed off that I've spent the last 6 weeks taking notes on how other tournaments do production, drafting up costings for equipment, planning fundraisers, content schedules, staff, all of that, has been totally railroaded because someone else put their name on my work. Fuck, I'm sitting in a hotel room in Stockholm right now about to head off to a LAN, partly so we would have had some backstory and interesting content from the minute we were live.

Multiplay chose VTV like 90% based on the quality of previous i-series events, and the people primarily responsible for that are no longer part of the organisation.

Ok, so when it comes to onsite casting of i-series, it bassically comes down to me and Comedian. We plan everything months in advance, we work the interviews that will happen, we organise the casters and the times they're available, all the professional audio gear, the custom graphics, etc. Everything.

Comedian did it by himself at i43, I helped out at i45, and i46 was a joint effort. There was pretty much no input from anyone else in VTV on the matter. We did it all and didn't have a problem with that.

So i46 was a bit of a mess with audio. Just us being a little inexperienced, but we had all the issues solved by Saturday evening and we could go build that same setup right now for i49 with everything working perfectly and tested in time for the first group games. We really had some major issues with the rulings byte made at i46 (namely, playing in the tournament when we needed a caster, apparently coming 6th place with a mix team was more important), along with Trell literally not doing a single thing (when we REALLY needed someone writing articles) except playing Dota 2 and moaning at us periodically about things that were like number #1248534 on the list of priorities a couple of times a day. Soon as the finals roll round, Byte is there being the face of VTV taking 110% of the credit.

So after the whole mess with the eXtv guys leaving and possibly setting up a VTV NA, I just couldn't be arsed working in such a toxic enviroment and left officially in January. A few weeks later I hear word of TFTV EU starting up, and agree to help out a bit.

After being repeatedly fucked around, Comedian had enough too and decided to leave and join TFTV officially so we could do i49 together. The important thing to note here, assuming a few of the casters we were still friendly with agreed to come cast for us at i49, it would have been literally the same people doing the same sort of production as all previous i-series events, except with tftv logos instead of vtv logos.

Instead what we now have is a group of people who don't know anything about audio (nor actually own any decent audio gear to use even if they did), know nothing about streaming beyond what your average person on the tf.tv stream list knows, and don't appreciate the logistical challenge of building storylines, getting interviews and keeping viewers up to date with what's going on.

I'm sure they'll pull together something alright, but I know that I and everyone else involved with this bid will be looking at the stream all weekend thinking "fuck, we could have done this sooo much better".

Anyway, incoherent rant over.

Ye it's a shitty situation.

The bit that bothers me most is that Multiplay's main reason for going with VTV is they have a history with them, when in reality it's actually just been me and comedian doing literally everything except casting. Arx and beta are the guys heading it up for VTV from what I can gather, best of luck to them, but even they themselves know they can't pull off anywhere near the quality we can. Unless someone in VTV has recently spent some real time learning about audio gear, video, and graphics, I would imagine it'll just be VTV's standard level of online coverage with a webcam on the screen (which isn't bad, it's just not what it could be). Assuming we got it, I was going to ask them if they wanted to cast and leave the offer open to them even if they said no.

The hardest part is actually using your twitter account. :P

https://twitter.com/adamskyride

I know the feel Sal. You're a large fish in a very, very small pond. You're an incredibly talented person. Whatever you turn your attention to in life, you're going to be incredibly good at it. gl!