This is the third and final part of what makes or breaks tournament enjoyment for me.
For the first part, Making or Breaking a Tourney: Casters, click here.
For the second part, Making Or Breaking A Tourney: Production Value, click here.
Event Time
Event
times are tied to the tournaments location, and thus there's not a lot
of options. Europeans trying to watch MLG or Americans trying to watch
Dreamhack....unless you take a day off of work, it's just not going to
do-able without depending on the video on demand (VOD) system so many
tourneys use. Because I cannot stream at work, or access any gaming
sites (including Team Liquid and any gaming subreddits), I often don't
know the results of matches taking place when I'm not home and
specifically watching an event. It's not like it was back when I was
playing Ultima Online or EverQuest, where I could stay up all night and
then work a 12 hour day. I am no longer 21. I need sleep!!
My
main issue is that I have a 10 hour a day job, a husband and a
house to take care of. I also enjoy playing video games, and we watch a
metric ton of game industry shows, you tube channels, read blogs, and
coverage, from Gamebreaker to Kripparrian, Gamasutra to Terra Nova,
not to mention all of the SC2, World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, Guild Wars
2, and random MMO and general gaming indsutry shows. All of that takes time. Time
I do not want to spend watching something that's already happened even
when I don't know what occurred. I am not sure why that makes a
difference to me, but it does. As stated in a previous post,
now that I have to choose between everything else we already do and
American football (both pro and college) and then college basketball and SC2 - I am betting it will be
hard to keep up with SC2 more and more. So stuff that isn't happening
live when I have a few free minutes probably won't be worth my time.
In
direct contrast to the above, there's something to be said for being
able to pause a video on demand (VOD) while I get chores done and then come back and pick
up where I left off, rather than just missing whole periods of
events.The problem is I get less done, and there's always so much to do!
I am not sure how this will end up working out. As we just subscribed to Season 4 of the Global Star League (GSL) it will be interesting to see how we work this stuff into our football-centric household.
The
other issue I have with event time is the fact that SC2 events seem to
announce their venue, caster and player lineups, and dates about two
weeks before the actual event. By this time I already have plans. Seriously people? Two weeks notice is not enough time for me to
change my schedule - even if you have Tasteosis casting and MC and
Stephano playing. No other competition I've ever followed does it like this. Why is it
acceptable for SC2 to do it this way?
Surely
other SC2 competitive scene fans don't have the time to just sit around
and wait for things to be announced at the last second. But maybe
there's so many of us that no matter when something is announced there
will be plenty of people available to watch.
Oh
well. If you have the desire and time to watch everything, good on ya, but I've got to manage my
time carefully and in advance. I am not giving up a weekend in Vegas to
watch a Major League Gaming tournament, and I can guarantee you I'm not
coming home to watch VODs when I can be catching Sports Center instead. I
guess to each their own! I wouldn't want ESPN re-scheduling games
around SC2 tourneys! It's good we all have a choice to watch what
interests us, and many different ways to access it all.
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