*Darkness' thoughts on league topics - open dialogue

[Air Crou]

That is definitely the question, is the effort worth it? Alot of people aren't affected or care because they watch everything live, its only a small amount of users that would appreciate their team playing earlier. Though making wk 16 games ordered by importance could create extra tension as the games go. But certainly need simmers/streamers opinions. So uhh, sorry for the tags but @"AirCrou" @JPach @timeconsumer @r0tzbua i would love if you could give your input and perspective on this

So it was very common until maybe Sweetwater's time for simmers to kinda hand pick the game schedule for a week. Granted at the time we had only like 4 games per week. Anyways, this is where the old phrase "the upset slot" came about when referring to the last game of the evening. It was a common practice for the last game to be a big upset, or just a super close and exciting game with maybe a game winning drive or a goal line stop for a win etc.

My own personal strategy I usually liked to try and layer in games to keep them exciting. I didn't like putting two blowouts in a row if I could avoid it, I'd prefer to stagger them in between closer games. Sometimes for fun I'd screw with people and put a really weak team against a really strong team in "the upset slot" making them think something insane was about to happen, then it was a blowout anyway.

As far as extra effort it took me absolutely zero to pick and choose which games I played and when on the streams. However it would likely be some additional work now with the graphic between games. Even then, just put the scores in a different order or something, idk.

So to give some perspective:

In the ISFL at least (and DSFL as well most of the time) we have 3 people involved in creating one stream. We have the simmer (Manic, me, Tonzy as a backup), we have the GFX making (me in the ISFL) and we have the streamer himself (being AC for ISFL). When I make graphics for AC I generally make them in the order of how the sim shows the games. Because in the end it's the easiest and less prone to errors from all sides. Because then I can run through the games and grab the list, and then AC can go from left to right and everything is in the right order without too much thinking or room for errors which is generally preferable on a schedule like this. I understand that it's not the greatest of all viewing experiences sometimes because it depends on who the home team is, but for our normal week sims at least from my standpoint reducing the chance of errors somewhere in the stream beats out the viewing experience of where your team plays because errors could influence the viewing experience more than when which game is played.

I certainly wanna switch things up for the last week(s?) when there is actual stuff about playoff implications going on and maybe flex some games around, but generally from a production standpoint I'd usually prefer to minimize errors. Because a weekly flex schedule would mean that the GFX artist sets up the schedule after he sees the results and the streamer has to follow. Throw on that timezones and the need to have a video done in advance and me making the graphics after the simming is done at night and AC recording the stream the next day while I may still be in bed or just get set up in the office there's simply a lot that can go wrong without having THAT big of an impact on the experience itself because when it's sorted by home teams it evens it MOSTLY out which road and home games.

Generally what that means is kinda: It's not perfect, but it's not unwatchable in my opinion. And for the most meaningful games AC and me already talked about flexing some stuff around.

@DarknessRising To give you my take on this as well. R0tz touched on it as well. Apart from the simming team, the GFX and the recording and/or editing of the video is done by two different people. If we are to flex games, I'd have to DM R0tz the list before the sims happen, due to timezone differences. And it may be a downer, since a seemingly important game, which is put last, ends up being a blowout. But I guess there is nothing I can do about it. Doing the games in alphabetical order is easier, quicker, and less prone on errors. The other option is to do every stream live. But I'd have to stay up until 3 in the morning on a weekday for the Monday and Wednesday streams. Which makes it unreliable. But we have already discussed flexing with R0tz. I promise there will be some. But we'd rather have something less error prone. And to give you some insight on each game, the first slide is the game schedule up to the previous game, the second slide is the matchup animation, and the third slide is the actual game. There are THREE different places where it can go horribly wrong, meaning I'd have to remake the video, and considering I am using a video editor instead of straight recording on OBS, it takes around an hour to render the video. Could I downsize from 1080p to 720p give me a window of error? Maybe. But why not provide you the best content I can provide? I know there was an error in the Week 1 video, with the @ , for which I apologize, but this is what I want to avoid. It is easier to reorder games in the video editor, but it isn't as time efficient. TC touches an interesting topic, but with 4 games, and doing the streams live, it was easier to choose the games. And add the non-existing graphics, and it is easy to flex games. And it is my first season doing this, so I want to get my feet wet before doing fancy stuff. I really hope the answer covered it. Any other questions, you can DM me.