International 2014 - Postmortem
polycounter lvl 6
Lke last year I'm curious to collect everyones opinion on how the international was handled in reguards to the event as a whole, as well as specifically the workshop section. This is also not only for the people at the event, but those where watching from home, but please state which of he two parties you belong to in order to avoid confusion. Feel free to be as open as possible.
I also plan on sending this thread to DerrickG, I'm sure he's looking for constructive feedback on how to improve on this next year.
Cheers!
I also plan on sending this thread to DerrickG, I'm sure he's looking for constructive feedback on how to improve on this next year.
Cheers!
Replies
I wish that there would have been a TI_Workshop stream set up to stream all the Workshop presentations. I saw other mentioning that WorkshopLive hosted these, but I did not even realize they were available. At least I read that the artists can share these out as they please, but it would have been nice to see a little more love into getting the Workshop presentations to more eager viewers! Also did anyone propose a Workshop match kind of like the all star match, but just workshop artists? How cool would that be!
Not really any other major stuff that I can remember. They only seemed to care about the 'popular' artists on streams, and I only remember seeing some stuff about the workshop area on one day, when we had various different artists each day of the main even, but that is all to be expected I guess.
This mainly.
Other than that, here are a few more:
- Valve general feedback on the state of the workshop and their opinion on content in terms of quality and amount; Is it high enough, should it be higher? Are they promoting more artists to hop on board? They don't have to direct the way the workshop going in the reply. I am looking more along the lines of: Yeah we can handle more content and we will start supporting this kind of content more.
- Timing! Watch workshop streams or watch match!? I think having one channel on Twitch/Youtube dedicated for the workshop where people can go back and watch saved videos can go a long way (no LiveWorkshop Twitch please).
- I heard that all workshop artists who got to TI had to pay for their tickets and hotels. They might not be as popular as Pro players but I believe they complement the event very nicely and could have offloaded that part off their backs. I don't need to state the contribution of workshop artists to the Dota 2 economy and business model.
- Those who attended got stronger following and presence vs those who didn't. Can something be done to balance that out? Or Valve has no intention to have some sort of retention plans for Dota 2 artists? An idea along that line is have artists who won't be attending TI to provide some of their material and showcase it somehow with help from Valve. The material can be WIPs, existing workshop content, guides, Q&A...etc.
- We who didn't get an invite, didn't get much items in game and still continue working on stuff have gotten no word from Valve and makes us feel that we do not exist and are not of their interest. Which really makes no sense to me. If Valve are promoting workshop artists in TI, then they want more people to hop in? Or did they have another intention? If it was the former, some feedback, direct or indirect, to tell us that Valve cares for us all and not TI attendees could go along way in terms of encouragement. In the end, it isn't a promise to get stuff in, but more along the lines "we are watching, we care, keep on improving!".
I tried to channel my honest thoughts positively and constructively. Hope it helps!
Lastly, yeah i was watching on Stream! Lots of great stuff I missed though due to amount of content, timing and that paywall...
I wasn't able to go, so these suggestions are coming purely from someone who watched from home.
Suggestions:
This is more or less what happened with the economy cards, those who did have one received quite a few. I believe between us Red Moon guys we got at least 150 over the course of the four days. During our Showcase booth we would actually do a rock/scissor/paper battle to decide if they win a card, or if we ran into someone that recognized our work, or cosplayed it we'd usually hand one out to them. Mostly everyone also wanted us to autograph said cards, overall it was pretty cool and works just how you described. Now, the problem was that not everyone who was signed up as a workshop artist and given a booth had this privliage, while others who did, weren't at the event.
While this may seem a bit harsh, I feel that this type of opportunity should be given to those who actually make the trek out to seattle to participate in the event. It's understandable that complications can arise and original plans of going can be cancelled, but it was a bit dissapointing to see several artist at the event not have an eco card. It harps back to previous internationals when there was a disparity between those artist that were invited and those who weren't, this is one thing I hope can be improved upon if/when Valve decides to revisit the workshop section at the international.
If I were to offer my own suggestion, I feel it could have been better to simply bundle the cards on the secret shop in the respective chest they were placed into later in the online store. Rather then buying a specific set or item, you receive a genuine version of that chest functioning the same way as the normal chest, possbily tying them to contributor created merchandise like wall scrolls, posters, mousepads, etc, similar to the sculptor's pillar chest. While simultaneously creating a number of cards for the sole purpose of giving away with the specific item the artist created. This could possibly create a fun scavenger hunt for those who want to track down the artist to get all the individual cards.
Regardless of my suggestions, (tl;dr) my biggest issue with the way these eco cards were handled was not everyone who was present at the event, who signed up for the workshop booth, and even did live demos, received the privilege of having one of these cards for their own work which put them at a severe disadvantage to those that did, and that doesn't even include the monetary gain that some of us did receive because of them. Maybe if Valve had more time it wouldn't have been so much of an issue, but nevertheless I'm making a note of this.
and if people want older sets they can come to the booth and do the scans like they did last year.
I wish for more "around the tournament" content. It felt more at TI3. I like to get a feel of the venue, whats going on aside of the mainstage, in the workshop area, interviews and such, it be awesome to be able to get more of that for the ones staying at home.
I think the webpresence needs rethinking. It was overall not bad, but I think there could be somethings added, like said schedule. It is quite possible to actually translate times for events already to local time, and if not a time table or a timezone calculator on the site. Put up a schedule for workshop artist presentation aswell, a dedicated stream would be nice. AND -> proper audio for the workshop presentation would be rad!
Apart from that, i really loved to watch, for the games I jumped ingame eventually since twitchstreams sometimes crashed but overall an awesome event
Sometimes it felt there were only 5 minutes between games. They should make definitely more space between games to squeeze there everything that is taking place around or show some highlights from workshop for example.
Sometimes panel started to talking about given topic and suddenly countdown was starting to tick. It was shame that when Anuxi and Tvidotto appeared on panel they weren't able to say much because game was about to start.
Also for people at TI4 it would be easier for sure to go to toilet between matches haha
I didn't attend, but I came to the Polycount meetup since I'm local. It was fun meeting new people. I think next year I'll make the full event so I can get more involved in the community as I plan to make a lot more dota items now.
Thanks to r13 for putting it together, and Bounch for being the official greeter
1) Planning before the event. This was handled pretty poorly, there was a tonne of misinformation spreading around before the event as to who had access to what, where people were going or what we were even doing. Eventually it ended up working out quite well but I think a more structured sign up and involvement process would go a long way to alleviate some of these issues. It was also pretty hard to know what we could do even at the event. I didn't know which suite was the contributor suite or when we could enter until I basically followed Ike and Zip around like a puppy for the afternoon.
I had also emailed Derrick about having my partner get access to the suites so that we could actually watch some games together. I was told it wasn't possible but at the event there were some other workshop artists who had their partners up there watching games. But Derrick was awesome and scored her a production pass so that was a total :thumbup: in that respect.
2) Emails. There needs to be some sort of spreadsheet or database for the process of emailing information to and from Workshop artists before the event. I personally missed out on 3 crucial emails from Valve staff that I had to chase down myself, I;
3) Economy Cards. I was not invited to create an economy card for my work. While I didn't have a large issue with this initially it meant that you didn't have anything to give away to people once you ran out of your personal prints. I had a large percentage of people ask me at my Showcase station if they could have a card and it was pretty disappointing to tell them I didn't have one. I would of been happy to work with Valve to create something specifically for the Card as some artists did if I had known about them ahead of time.
As an aside, not having a card to sign for people meant dropping a pretty decent amount of money on prints, pins and badges in order to have something to give to people and sign. I know lots of other artists had both but for me personally it was a pretty expensive trip by the time you factor in the costs of the printing, travel, accommodation, secret shop and so on without having the knowledge of offsetting the costs with some of the money from the Economy Card sales.
4) Tutorials. These seemed like a great idea and the people who presented did an amazing job but it also seemed quite difficult. The spread of knowledge amongst people watching them was pretty high and the time line was quite short. As someone who really enjoys competitive Dota it was also quite hard to find time to support new friends but also catch some of the best games of the week. I wouldn't be surprised if they discontinue elements of the tutorial area for next year, it was a great idea but I am not sure if it had the impact they really wanted.
As for the exposure, I can't speak for the streamers but at the event in between every game they advertised the timetable for the day and who was doing what. The Workshop area was really nicely placed in a main thoroughfare too which meant that between games the attendance at both the Showcase and Tutorial areas went up a lot.
There were also a lot of positives I will take away from the event. I got to meet a lot of great artists and people who share a common interest. A big thanks to the Red Moon guys for organising the Pub meet on Saturday too. My showcase station was next to Kunkka which was a pretty great feeling and even greater when you benefit from his signature lineup overflow. A big shout out to Derrick for the great work he did that week. It must of been a lot of stress to take on that amount of work but after the first day they got into a nice rhythm and things seemed a lot smoother. Big shout out to his mad beats he dropped at the afterparty too...
That's true, the panels were sometimes very short. I just remember them talking in circles about eg for 45 minutes the night they lost, and then again the day after... even talking about "whether they can prove themselves worhty of the aegis". It was kind of strange they were focusing so much on an eliminated team, and not so much on the teams lining up for the finals. I figured they ran out of stuff to talk about, especially with that awkward sheever bit ("newbee is going to win. (james: why?) they're better"). rofl.
Oh cool, didn't realize there were artist cards! Useful to get feedback from someone who was at the event. That sucks that some people didn't have their own cards... What would you think of giving cards to the artists who put together a presentation?
More suggestions/comments unrelated to workshop issues:
Meanwhile, the english cast was doing their weird eg circlejerk... it felt like they weren't prepared for eg to NOT go to the finals.
Hope to hear more from people who made it to the event.
It became necessary for everyone doing a booth to run to a print shop and print out hundreds of sheets of paper to sign, which actually ended up being kind of expensive. It also took quite a bit of time to put together the images and print. I missed Cloud9's last series while trying to get my printouts together.
I think that could easily be solved with something like the signature system from last year, which was really popular. Every booth would have a barcode scanner and the barcode scanner gives out one of our items (with signature) to people who come along and get scanned. Maybe even just a digital signature if we have econ cards in the store, so people could pair them up. Combining that with whatever pins and prints we have, I think everyone would get a lot of people showing up to see them and their work.
One other weird thing was a lot of inconsistency with names being printed on the badges. Some people had their online name and real name, some people just had real name. It made it slightly more difficult when introducing myself to only have my real name on there.
Getting to meet a bunch of fans and sign stuff and watch presentations, all of that was pretty amazing. The big wall printouts and the overall setup of the stage and showcase areas worked well. The access we had at the event was good. Made for a great year.
No, that only leads to bad things. We saw it last year and we saw it this year: If you artificially limit something such as this, the perceived value of it goes way up which leads to people buying and reselling the items at horrendous prices.
@Vayne
I don't think that's necessary for two reasons. 1) if next year, every attending contributor gets an economy card, it will offset the cost of the flight+stay anyways and 2) (and I realize this sounds snobbish) it acts as a gating mechanism in the sens that you have to have had some success in order to make it to TI.
To be honest, I haven't noticed any increase in following besides other workshop artists who I met in person as a result of this. I'm all for the idea of artists who can't or won't attend to be able to submit artwork though to be displayed around the halls, only polished/submitted/accepted stuff though.
That's pretty much what everybody, Valve or otherwise, that I met said.
@foxclover
They had the times for the talks running up on the big screen 100% between games (it wasnt accurate after the first day though
I actually talked to some people about that, and as much as I'd like to see that, the problem is that there's no incentive to do it since at this point it just isn't needed. The initial Polycount contest served to kickstart the workshop and at this point, all it would do is generate extra work for Valve around the time of the International.
Things that I'd like to see:
unless you're that one guy with the really really sweet card album
My only complaints would have to be how late the invites were sent out to us. Hawf and I never expected to be invited and it didn't give us a whole lot of time to get prepared. I don't know how many people heard our passport horror story, but Hawf only received his passport two days before we had to leave for TI. I don't know if other people got invited before us, but it would have much less stressful if we had had more time.
The workshop stream can definitely be improved. The audio and even the video was dropping periodically at the beginning at least. Obviously it can't be helped, technical troubles happen, but if the stream was indeed spur of the moment then I'm sure they do better next year. I had no idea that the stream recordings were behind a paywall, but I think that needs to change.
In terms of economy cards, I like Spudnik's idea of the three level of rarities. Maybe instead of having some kind of scanning mechanism, the contributors could just have the rare autographed versions of the economy cards to give away? I feel like it might be easier that way but I could be very wrong.
Also I'll be saving that gif of Derrick, that's fantastic. I suggest that he DJ the afterparty next year and every year after that.
The problem with that is that you'll get people coming for just the items as an alternative to the secret shop except that there's no revenue for the artists. and you don't wanna sell em at the booth (as opposed to giving them out) because then you'll just be a glorified vendor.
That's a good point, though we were giving them away all weekend anyways. Maybe organize a swap? Trade an unused economy card for a autographed unused economy card?
The only other issue I would see would be a seriously limited supply of autographed cards, instead of a possible indefinite number of scanned-and-upgraded cards. Which could be a good or bad thing.
The supply isn't unlimited, it's how many cards are sold at the secret shop. And since we're all only human, by the end of TI, there would be something like 500ish autographed cards floating around which is a drop in the bucket compared to 9mil active players. Rarity would be guaranteed.
As for the trading, not sure about that, it's firstly giving something away, not receiving something. I think the scanning works pretty elegantly in 'upgrading' something, allowing people to make something they already have better through their own work. As far as I recall, the people who were at TI3 were quite positive about the whole scanning thing.
As great as the whole scanning process was, there is a reason we didn't see it return this year. Also, can you explain how that whole scanning thing would even work considering codes are preassigned to specific items and printed ahead of times. Digitally scanning an analog code to alter it's state doesn't even seem remotely possible.
To be honest, I didn't like the scanning at all. I mean, it was convenient, but it really felt like these pros and workshop artist were becoming store clerks scanning merchandise as it was coming down the conveyor belt. Doing codes allowed us to not be restricted to set times at booths chained to a scanner. It allowed us to freely walk around, engage in conversations spontaneously while handing out 'goodies' to the fans. It was a much more personal experience that way.
Invitations
I feel the weakest part of the whole Workshop/TI was the process behind making it originally open, then invite only, then back to open invite. The lack of communitcation from valve left many of us wondering what the hell was honestly going on. Needless to say, the whole invitation process was very messy this year. Hopefully next year things get sorted out and it becomes a bit more of a transparent process. But that also requires a bit more communication from valve. I'd also like to see it tied in better with the eco cards, but you can read all about those in that section.
Workshop Viewing Boxes
It was great that we had viewing boxes to watch the games, but at times it was a bit difficult to watch the games with everyone given the boxes that were 'assigned' to workshoppers were also shared by other VIPs. It's a small note, but having dicated viewing boxes for workshop artist would be great so we can enjoy the games with everyone. Again, it's a small note, but I felt that I should mention it reguardless.
Economy Cards
Now this is one that is important to me given the gravity of what these stand for. Since these were sold in the store it was easy to say that they recouped a lot of the cost of the stuff many of us were given away as well as providing something extra ingame that we were able to give away as well. But not everyone had this opportunity.
I'll just quote what I wrote earlier about the cards here;
And from Spudnik's post;
I think the idea of a Side Shop is fantastic; it would almost act as a physical offline dota 2 store. If something like this were to happen, let it be located somewhat near or within the workshop area of TI5, selling eco cards in the workshop area would only pull in more people to that area, as well as spur interest to meet the creators of these cards.
Showcase Booths
The showcase booths were fantastic, they were lots of fun and interacting with fans in person was great! One thing that I noticed however was on the third day the second group of artist at the showcase decided to continue on in their repective booth which made it impossible for any other artist to jump in on that third day. While these booths were 'open' and they did nothing wrong, I feel that a small improvement can be made to prevent artist from going back to back in order to get more artist to showcase in a given day providing a wider range of variety. The only other thing I can think of is more booths, there were lots of artist this year, lets get even more next year! Of course that comes down to the scale and size of the workshop area, but if that were possible, it would be great to see.
Workshop Demo Station
The demo station was great and seeing fellow workshoppers on stage was cool and inspiring to both myself and lot of fans watching. I talked with a few attendees that were inspired to jump into the workshop and start learning these tools themselves. I think the only real improvement to that station is better to coordinate the streaming aspect of it. This year it was done as an afterthought at the last second, but the response to streaming was great. I feel that next year if there was a dedicated channel for the station streaming live it would be great. Like others already mentioned, a Dota2ti_workshop channel.
If I think of anything else I'l; make sure to update this! Cheers!
I was not "invited" to TI4 - so I knew going in, well in advance that I would not be able to partake in the secret shop. I knew that I would have to provide my own things to give away, and to provide my own showcase booth material.
As it turns out - except for the Economy Cards - there was very little difference in workshop "privilege" (if you can call it that) compared to myself and those invited, at least to my knowledge.
We all had access to the Showcase booths. We had access to the VIP suites, VIP access to the arena itself and access to the Players Lounge. I had the opportunity to demonstrate on the main workshop stage - basically everything that I had asked for plus some.
All of the Valve staff (especially DerrickG) treated us equally as far as I could tell (Econ cards notwithstanding), and it was a fantastic experience. In all cases, they went out of their way to assist with any problems we may have had.
Economy Cards:
The other posters have covered these well, but here goes anyway.
Keeping in mind my points above, my own feelings were... a sense of separation.
I did get impression that only a few of us did not have a card - almost all of the showcase booth artists had one (shout-out to my non-econ card bearing brethren
And then there were some who weren't able to attend at all who also had cards sold in the secret shop... but I understand that timing, cost and visa issues prevented some from coming, with little notice to Valve (I am uncertain they would or could change anything anyway at that point).
Moreover - making people play rock-paper-scissors for econ cards seemed like too much fun (Vlad is a master of the game by the way - you would do well to avoid playing against him, he's damned near psychic).
Communication:
I guess if there were any other issue, it would be communication (again haha).
For example: Initially there was an invite to dinner for those who were actually "invited". Lennyagony, Ike and I decided to "crash" the dinner party (after finally being told by... Spudnik I think... to come anyway). As it turned out, I think they expected everyone to show up anyway, and I am glad we did... they had all of our contributor passes with them to hand out, and the experience of the evening was wonderful. However, until we showed up, there was still uncertainty whether or not we should actually be going. Some of us were not privy to the invite email regarding all of this.
So - in closing - I'd like to thank Valve for the VIP access, opportunity of the workshop area, and helping to get us in front of the fans.
To everyone I met, it was an awesome time.
Next year is likely to be even better (and fewer to a room I think)
Cheers.
Oh and P.S. (cause that was awesome):
I don't have a lot to write, I think a lot has been covered so far. There's a couple small points.
- Open to all workshoppers with submissions. Sign up sheets before the event with plenty of time for workshoppers to send in their info.
- If we do workshop 'stations' again next year (which we should - they turned out great), it would be fantastic if Valve could help with the printing so everyone there is prepared in the same format, we could all share a template then send it over to Valve to have available for us upon arrival or when we start our stations
- workshop-only viewing suites would be awesome. I think this was already covered, and we did have one, but a lot of the time it was filled with nonshoppers.
- would be cool if the econ cards were slightly different/open to everyone officially 'attending', etc. Lots of great notes about this above.
honestly, it was handled super well. Loved the entire set up. Can't wait till next year.
Please. This would be the icing on the cake, and a HUGE extra incentive for those to come out to Seattle.
Haha, I think this speaks to the communication failures when I only found out about this Dinner now.
I actually think a formalised meet and greet at the very least the morning of the first day next year would be great to meet other Workshop Artists ahead of time. Some people (DrySocket, Chemical Alia and more) were so busy with signings that I only managed to really meet them at the after party.
Exactly, a specific digital item is assigned to a specific card with a number on it. Print a barcode on that card and scanning it will allow you to uniquely identify it. Then you set up a system whereby if it's scanned by the items creator, it gets tagged in the system as the 'upgraded' version of the item that includes a signature, only for unredeemed cards of course. When it's redeemed, the person then gets the signed genuine version where by default all the other cards are standard genuine.
Yeah, that's a valid point. Could be solved by maybe having you pre-scan a bunch of cards to hand out. I just really like the idea of people having a chance to add value to their items by going the extra mile and finding their favorite artists to personalize their items.
@bounch
Eh, I think if we knew ahead of time, we could have easily set that one up ourselves. Just turned hectic because it was a spur-of-the-moment thing and we didn't know what we were doing ^^
We had access to all the Valve suites. This was FAR more than icing.
And we had access to the Player's Lounge which had free food and drinks that were often out of stock in the suites upstairs. Having our own contributor suite would be nice but definitely isn't necessary.
What a sweet treat!