Stream monster here, have been for the past 4 years.
Pros:
$2 The little extra touches, in the production like the stats from OFL and so on. I can’t put this in a more specific way, unfortunately. Things like Maj’s combo video and game intro clips were great, especially if they can be used to alleviate some of the necessary downtime between games.
$1 Having internet access at the venue, meaning that other groups (read: non-main games) were able to stream their events from the venue (even if not at a magnificent bitrate).
Cons:
$2 Only having one stream going for SFIV/MvC. I realize that it takes quite a bit of work to run each stream, but I think this one area is a huge step down form last year. Even if this has to mean having an extra stream with no commentary, scores on overlays and so on, at least being able to see more of the games - especially between big names - cannot be a bad thing.
$1 Not being able to keep to the schedule. I see a number of people mentioning SSBM, but this wasn’t the only game to run over by quite a bit. This is not only less attractive for potential new viewers, but causes unnecessary friction between the games when fans of game X are made to wait for game Y that they have no interest in to finish. To a new observer this would not only be a bad look for the event (if they don’t know that it’s common for events to run over), but more importantly the in-fighting makes the whole community look bad.
Sidenote relating to the last point that nobody will probably agree with, but I figured it’d be worth putting the idea out there anyway in case it sparks a better one:
[details=Spoiler]It’s common to see schedules for events like this divided into 60-minute segments, which seems logical for a number of reasons, but the simple fact is that the divisions that work best (pools, top8/16, etc.) almost always run over the time allocated. The fact that this happens almost universally would seem to indicate that trying to fit these events into hour-sized blocks doesn’t work. So instead, why not at least consider running with 90-minute/3-hour blocks instead of 60-minute/2-hour blocks?
The main arguments against this set-up I can see would be:
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But that means everything will take longer! Not really, because so many games run over as-is. This should mean that the schedules times are realistic, or even if not it should ease the pressure. Even if this means finding a way of balancing some of the early-morning events over two streams or whatever (not necessarily a bad thing if ti means a more reasonable start-time),
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**What if a game finishes early? Dead-time on the stream is bad! ** Firstly, it should be pointed out that a game finishing ahead of schedule does not have to mean that you just show the EVO logo until the next schedules event starts - you could look at doing comparatively flexible items like interviews (with the winners if at the end of a game, giving them a chance for shoutouts and to thank their sponsors, but more importantly for the viewers also give their perspective on the matches, show more of the personalities in the event etc., or else with some other prominent person from that game’s community on the matches, the state of the game, etc.), general updates on the event, or even run ads.
But let’s assume that there’s absolutely no leftover manpower to do that. I’d still say that having actual dead-time with just ads, pre-recorded features and a sign saying “NEXT EVENT STARTS AT 2:00 PM PST” running would still be better than having a chaotic system with each event running over each other, because:
a) It gives people at the venue a chance to set up ahead of the next game, which is especially notable when a stream is running an hour+ behind and still needs go go offline for an undetermined amount of time while stuff is switched over.
b) It allows people at home a chance to take a walk, get a drink, etc., and those at the venue a chance to go browse the retailers set up in the lobby, etc. This is fine, because people know when to come back. This isn’t the case when a stream goes offline when there’s no solid schedule, because it could come back any second now…
c) It ensures that if someone (esp. a someone new to watching FGC streams) opens a stream at the time a game is supposed to start, they actually get to see that game
d) It prevents confusion and idle my-game-is-better-than-this-shit stream monstering.
e) It makes it seems like the people running the event have their shit together. I’m certainly not saying that I think they don’t, and I’m sure that running such a large event is many times more difficult than I realize, but it’s about how it looks to someone who doesn’t care about any of that, and is expecting to see game X because it was supposed to start half an hour ago.
f) Someone halfway around the globe who wakes up a 3am to watch their game doesn’t leave thinking “Man, I could have got a decent night’s sleep and still caught the action”.
This was supposed to be saying why 90-minute blocks could work, but the real tl;dr is Whatever you have to do, please find a way of coming up with a stream schedule that you can stick to.[/details]
