Friday, October 12, 2012

Spreading The Love Around

You know, before I went to work for S2 as the Director of eSports I was the second part of the Honcast casting team. During my time working with Breaky as the official co-caster for Honcast we spent a lot of time trying to deliberate on which matches to cast and whether it was important to cast the matchups everyone wanted to see, or give some limelight to the little guys out there. No... this post is not about Honcast casting that waste of a match today between Team Kierk and Gary Johnson 2012 over Tt eSports vs Q sQuad (which, as I predicted was two extremely quick games which could have and should have ended even earlier than they did.) I'm talking about spreading the casting responsibilities out amongst would be casters and competitive players with down time.

You're probably not wondering why I'm covering this topic since a lot of dramalama occurred on the forums after AngryTestie squashed MoonMeander's hopes and dreams of shoutcasting a Returners match (see post below if you need a reference.) But it's one that has come up many many times in the past, especially in regards to the so-called "Honcast Monopoly" and why S2 Games won't endorse streams via ingame messaging or other marketing venues (and let's face it, the only marketing S2 Games uses for HoN is social networking.) Contrary to popular belief, S2 Games does not wish to have a "monopoly" on the product. Honcast doesn't run ads aside from when you have to watch one upon starting the stream. The YouTube channel was set up to be ad free, and the website was set up to be ad free. It's pretty much the worst financial monopoly of all time. So it's not like S2 is trying to drive all the users to Honcast for ad revenue to make major bucks. Honcast is provided as a free community and marketing service.

So since there is no monopoly; why doesn't S2 promote other casts? Basically it comes down to one factor: the ability to control the stream and streamers. S2 Games isn't going to take a chance promoting Bob's Sweet HoN Stream or Mike's Cool Dude Casting Crew when the most they can do is ban your IP after you've already dicked up. One would think that the threat of not being able to play the game you love is enough, but alas, it is not. All it takes is for S2 to do an ingame message promoting some persons stream and have thousands of gamers tune in to a horse cock going into some poor girls nethers and well, there you have it. An experience S2 can't undo and something they are directly responsible for. It's much safer for them to have people like Breaky and Tralf be the only team covering matches because if one of them steps outta line its back to making sure video tapes get rewound at Blockbuster.

Now what about people who are community figureheads or what I would called "trusted" streamers. This includes people like MoonMeander, Testie, Swindlemelonzz, Zetpro, Megabever, so and and so forth. Why won't S2 allow them the ability to have their stream promoted? It's actually the same exact reason. Swindlemelonzz is a perfect example and I'm going to pick on him because I know he can handle it without writing his local congressman to have my blog taken offline. Swindle is one of the most hardcore HoN players there is, and he really supports the game by partaking in not only the competitive scene, but behind the scenes as well. I would say he is one of HoN's greatest supporters. However, Kyle is also one of HoN's biggest critics and the way he phrases things would not look good for S2's marketing. Look, everyone knows Monkey King was an overpowered hero since his inception (Nome hero, nuff said) and it took months upon months for him to be addressed. But instead of doing what Breaky  or myself would do and say something like "Monkey King doing Monkey King things" aka OP as shit things; Kyle takes it to the next level "Here comes S2's most broken hero which they haven't fixed because they are lazy and Dogkaiser is useless and Buro is creatively bankrupt." S2 isn't gonna promote something like that. Regardless of the fact that Swindle may be correct in his analysis of Monkey King, he also takes it a step further and demeans S2 Games employees by name and the company by extension. This is actually a quite common occurrence among professional level players, maybe not to that extent (I made a lot of that Swindle part up by the way, just as an example) but professional players often think they know better than the people at S2 Games about balancing or whatever, and aren't afraid to tell their stream. Do you really think S2 wants to send viewers to a stream that is going to have negative criticism? The answer is no, in case you were wondering.

One of the biggest things S2 was focusing on while I was at the company was changing the community's perception about S2 Games and Heroes of Newerth. Saying things like "He got S2'd" or talking about "S2 Heroes" are negative stigmas that S2 Games combats every day in an effort to restore and earn favor with the community. And until S2 finds a casting team of people they feel are either as trustworthy as Breaky and Tralf or one which they can control as well; don't expect any changes in the future of shoutcasting official Heroes of Newerth matches from big named S2 tournaments like DreamHoN and HoN Tour.

19 comments:

  1. S2-ED FAGGOT. "s2-ed" will never change. it has been an icon of the game

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  2. i personally can't stand swindle's stream - either scrims/casts, as he keeps constantly refering to dota. "oh you can scout with courier easily cuz ITS HON", "you can backdoor with your trees cuz ITS HON AND NOT DOTA". seriously, he keeps whining about worst things to whine ever. since when scouting with courier (W spell) is so bad when two teams can do it and it kinda adds depth to the game in the sense of not showing the lanes/microing the courier and trying to check it out yourself.

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  3. @waxx - opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and most of them stink.

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  4. So during your time at S2 you didn't allow other people to cast S2 sponsored events because you were afraid that "x caster" was just going to fuck around and do/show lewd things in order to make S2/HoN look bad? That argument seems kinda flimsy to be honest and is really one of the main reasons that HoN wasn't able to grow as much as it could have (in my opinion you need active streamers and casters to keep players who follow the comp scene interested while also attracting new players).

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  5. I get what S2 was doing. I remember back then S2 tried to promote both, Honcast and GameReplays.

    GR chocked so bad it wasn't funny, every second tournament had unwatchable stream, bad casters(some were good but they had lots of them and some were teribad) and drama due to tournament admins. As a result lots of people were MAD and posted shit on forum, S2 got hit as well by this angry mob for promoting "shit service".

    I also understand why S2 is reluctant to promote pro players. Most of them are crybabies with inflated egos that simply can't be trusted with anything. Why we have such immature comp scene is another topic entirely but point is that i get why S2 is reluctant to promote them. After all every single of them at some point have said that HoN is shit and S2 are morons.

    But problem is that S2 promotes Honcast. If you want to create living and breathing casting scene you shouldn't pick favorites. If Honcast is so much better than every other casting crew for HoN then it will surely rise above them on its own, no? But with help of S2's promotion Honcast is now at such height in popularity and relevance that other casters simply can't compete.

    So why someone should even try to start a casting crew for HoN these days? Unless you know few inside people and are willing to spend lots of money and time then you aren't going to achieve much if anything. And even if you do you are not guaranteed to have any noticeable results.

    Sure, now you might say how you and Breaky poured insane amount of time into Honcast to get where it is now. But it was back then and now situation is different.
    Back then you had GR who was at one point equal or maybe even slightly more relevant than Honcast. Each cast you did put you one step ahead of them. You saw progress and you were gaining ground. It was a race and you won it, gratz.
    But how it is now? There is no race or "if we do good we get on top" opportunity. You have Honcast way up there and you know that you'll never reach it. Thats not really encouraging. Its not a race anymore, you'll just drag out 15 minutes concede into 25min concede at best.

    tldr; S2 picking favorites created an unhealthy casting scene were other crews don't have equal chances in competing unless they bow down and sell their unborn kids to S2.

    And one last bit.

    "One of the biggest things S2 was focusing on while I was at the company was changing the community's perception about S2 Games and Heroes of Newerth."

    I think first step is accepting the fact that you made mistakes and fucked up. From my experience with S2(i started in closed beta and at various points had slightly more access than regular hon user) they don't think that they did much if anything wrong and that its basically community being retards.

    Your Monkey King example reminds me my "Community patch" contribution days were every abomination of design was defended with tooths and nails and every thread containing negative feedback was labeled as "hate thread".

    Has anyone from design/balance team every said that he thinks that some of their heroes are problematic and they are sorry for it? No? I don't remember anyone from S2 apologizing for Gemini and Tremble at one point making pubs unplayable. They didn't even acknowledged these problems asides of nerfing those heroes.

    At the moment it seams that S2 is trying to save their face not with trying to do better and fixing their mistakes but with harsh moderation and control.

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    1. I can't tell if your right or wrong, but I can give you my opinion on apologizing for new heroes being OP:

      S2 doesn't have to apologize for releasing OP heroes, they have to be faster at nerfing them. In my opinion, whenever they release a new hero, they should be constantly reviewing the public games to see whether or not this new hero is completely destroying games over and over. They should be taking feedback very serious, and at least try to nerf the hero within the first days of its release.

      This far, no game developers have succeeded in bringing new content to their game, without something being OP once in a while, so why should be expect S2 to be able to?

      Personally, I can survive a couple of days with a new OP hero, especially now that the EA thing is a part of the game. I just don't want to see that new hero be OP for weeks.

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    2. No they don't have to apologize for anything but thats why there is "S2 hero" meme in the first place. If you are not going to admit that you made mistakes and understand that now then those memes aren't going to go away just because you ban users from forum.

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  6. "And until S2 finds a casting team of people they feel are either as trustworthy as Breaky and Tralf or one which they can control as well; don't expect any changes in the future of shoutcasting official Heroes of Newerth matches from big named S2 tournaments like DreamHoN and HoN Tour."

    Did actively S2 block other people from casting or is it just the usual snobbery from comp players kicking people that they don't know from the game, minimal slots, no DotaTV-alike extension, etc.?

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  7. Read a few of the posts now, brutal and honest. Nice read Phil

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  8. Actually i'm quite satisfied about the current casting crew. Breaky is funny and amazing when casting action while Tralf is the best on giving his opinion on the game.

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  9. remember that time Tralf called Moonmeander a chink on stream? good times.

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  10. @phil the trill just come here to say i called you would get fired i called it. You botch everything you do. You got replaced by a arrogant 20 year old that rages at pubs and dresses up in blood seeker suits. That just tells you how competant you are that all your years experience means you were still unfit to complete the most basic of jobs in managing esports for a game that has 2 tournaments a year.

    ps i called it

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    1. well played sir. well played. dumpster game too focused on pumping out them alt avatars $2

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  11. So this guy above is really a nolife douchebag, anyways Phil loved the read keep up the posts =)

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  12. There is a difference between promoting the matches and allowing streamers who do not have official approval to stream.

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  13. Great read, lots of insights in these posts. Keep up the good work!

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  14. Great read, lots of insights in these posts. Keep up the good work!

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  15. Great read, lots of insights in these posts. Keep up the good work!

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