Random idea, ggpo stream

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
1

@ any time of the day, you have someone playing on ggpo. kof 98\02 and ST always have someone playing. All though I don’t surf the a3 room or the 3s room, I believe these 2 places also have players in them active all times of the day.

Most people don’t know this about GGPO but pros from around the world use this to play and practice. From the japanese vampire savior legends like ddsasquatch, obee. Aniken\jodim from japan has been on for ST, kuroda for 3s. Top mexican\south american\china KOF players for their games and i’m leaving other players out, this is just a small portion.

You could potentially get more hits on SRK due to people wanting to see the ggpo stream, perhaps that would boost advertising costs? you can ask for donations for ggpo while streaming which I’m sure is needed. I see stream after stream asking for donations and GETTING them, perhaps this is a way to tap into another form of donations. You can advertise for mad catz or other sponsors. Advertise for future tournaments like EVO and regionals. Advertise links to SF accessories like sticks, buttons, shells etc… I just don’t see how this is a bad idea unless there are some types of legalities involved. Basically use GGPO as the 24\7 fighting game web channel of sorts.

The one problem I can foresee is, how would you determine which matches are good matches? there is no ranking system for ggpo. Most people who play regularly just know the totem pole. Since the players know the totem pole, I think it would be smarter to identify good matches by determining how many spectators are currently viewing 1 game. You need something to identify the best matches if this way isn’t applicable.

does anyone think this is a bad idea?

2

I do agree that GGPO is under used and under appreciated but, streaming would require a server that all of the GGPO games run off of when… I’m pretty sure the players directly connect to each other. The extra step would introduce unwanted lag.

3

I don’t think that needs to be the case. I can broadcast a ggpo stream myself I think. All you would need to do is find the best match playing then stream what is on your desktop? I think doing it this way would only lag the computer that was watching rather than the players themselves.

not 100% sure, perhaps a streaming specialist can give their 2 cecnts?

4

Have someone spectate, then broadcast that on Ustream or Justin.tv. You can even have some commentary or whatnot and it shouldn’t lag anyone’s game.

5

It would just be broadcasting random casuals though and it would be a very active thing for the streamer to be doing.

I mean, go right ahead I log on to GGPO and watch random people all the time.

Just don’t use Ustream cause that shit sucks.

6

I think it’s an awesome idea.

Regarding donations, though: taking them “for GGPO” probably brings it dangerously close to bringing in revenue. We know Ponder’s not turning a profit but that’s not necessarily what matters. GGPO, as it is right now, is available to us based on the grace (ie. we’re-not-lookiiing) of the respective companies that own the rights to the games on it. Other streams (using consoles or arcade boards or even PC copies of games) may actually be able to get away with this, but GGPO is already a quasi-legal thing because it’s common knowledge that not everyone who uses it may own the arcade versions of the games they play on it.

The alternate option–asking people to donate “to the stream”–may leave a lot of people feeling less generous.

7

yea while doing it manually isn’t a problem, it would just be a lot of upkeep. It definitely needs to be an automated process.

8

Donations are a slippery slope but, it would be nice if he intended to prove that the donatons were going directly into GGPO development and not for outright profit

9

I don’t see this as necessary really. When [media=youtube]9N3BCqhZ1G0"]Kuroda and Nogyo, and so on, play on GGPO, there are often dozens of spectators. Kuroda regularly gets over 100 spectators. GGPO has a solid built in spectator system already. Not only that but someone is always recording elite players playing anyways. The second that Kuroda starts a match pretty much half of the 3S lobby [URL=“http://www.youtube.com/user/Lawlz0rz”[/media] either in the EMU or with a capture device or software. If someone wants to stream GGPO matches that is fine, but why not get more people to sign up for GGPO, experience the lobby, spectate a few matches, and then start playing the games instead?

10

first of all to know that kuroda is playing, you have to have someone tell you OR be on ggpo as it happens. Also, you need ggpo itself, adobe air, microsoft.net, some framework shit, the rom itself, its a lot of stuff to get going and most people usually say fuck it. Not everyone here is computer literate. On top of that, thousands of people are on this website while there are only 100-150 people in the 3s room I assume on a good day. I don’t play 3s on ggpo so I don’t know how steady the #'s are. ** Instead of hardcore 3s players watching, you would have the general masses watching as well.**

** Also, you can’t have ggpo with you EVERYWHERE. **Being @ a friends house, a relatives, perhaps school\library, there are alternate places players can witness play.

if it were streamed, players could see what was going on while not having to dl-ed all of that stuff. It’ll be more accessible to other players by a factor x40, if not more. HUGE IMO. Furthermore, this stream process could generate ads so ponder could get paid a little. In fact, ggpo might even pay for itself.

being able to watch ggpo by clicking a link is much simpler and makes it extremely accessible.

yea, you can watch it on youtube later but man, watching it in LIVE has a much different effect.

this process of having new players witness interesting levels of play draws them into ggpo. Its a lure basically and I don’t see how this would not generate more people to join ggpo and start playing.

11

But in order to watch a live stream of Kuroda…you’d have to know when he’s playing as well wouldn’t you? And you’d have to be insanely computer illiterate to not be able to hook up GGPO properly. There are directions all over SRK instructing even the most novice PC users how to use GGPO.

Who needs a stream when you have YouTube though? Is it really that exciting to see GGPO casual matches happen live rather than later on YT? If someone said that Kuroda was playing on GGPO, but I wanted to sleep, I’d go to sleep and watch the matches on YouTube the next morning.

It’s the same thing with Tekken Crash. 99% of Tekken players I know watch them on YouTube rather than trying to find a streaming source. I just see streaming as unnecessary and not worth the effort.

12

not really. I’m sure ponder could rig something up to let him know when kuroda was playing 3s on ggpo by IP # or something. So kuroda starts playing 3s, SRK has a little ticker for the ggpo stream saying kuroda is playing. Its rather simple and you could do this with all top players for all games. If you happened to be surfing SRK, SRK will tell you a top player is currently playing. You don’t need word of mouth.

it is 1000x easier to click a link of a ggpo stream than it is to dl-ed all the programs to make ggpo work. Most people just want to watch and downloading all that is troublesome. You can’t really ignore this fact. The average player here will not go out of their way to watch kuroda for 10-30mins. However if it were a stream, who knows how many more people would watch. Perhaps a thousand instead of 100.

a link to a live stream solves all problems and it makes it exponentially accessible. I used to play 3s so I semi understand what kuroda is doing and I won’t go out of my way to dl-ed the 3s rom to watch him. If it were a stream and I had a few mins to kill, I would watch that.

why did 10,000+ people watch the live stream of EVO last year? people enjoy live events. I understand ggpo is not EVO but these matches do get rather intense. When 1 top player is up against another, they’re not trying to be friends 99% of the time. The vampire savior room gets out of control sometimes when its a head to head grudge match. The whole room starts gettn hype.

**I’ve seen A2 matches have 20-30 people watching. Same for ST. I believe I saw a youtube clip of a KOF team battle with 40 viewers. So yea, I think people are interested in watching these matches take place live. Throw up a chat box on the side, Instant hit. Lots of viewers and viewers are able to chat and get hype.

and god forbid someone talks shit in the ST room. An ST grudge match between 2 players talking shit is fucking ridiculously hype. Shit is bonkers and now there are 15-20 viewers just to see someone else talk shit. Not even high level play, we are there to witness the shit talk.**

these may be small #'s compared to the amount of people that surf SRK but within the ggpo room, these #'s are sometimes 30-50%+ of the rooms total players.

i’m not saying ggpo will generate those #'s, but it will certainly generate some and that is better than none. Thousands of people surf this site, if you get 10% to surf the stream daily, thats probably like 3,000+ views on advertising and I’m being generous.

you can speak for yourself in saying that you will go to sleep but you’re not everyone. All of us have different schedules.

13

Have you actually used GGPO in say, the last month or something? It’s terrible. It’s shit. Not only is it troublesome to actually log into GGPO, you sometimes have to challenge your opponent 4 times just to get it to work and those matches aren’t viewable. GGPO isn’t what it used to be and the quality of online players has also dwindled as well. But whatever, I respect Ponder wanting to make money off of it and GGPO is an amazing proof of concept.

But yeah, this streaming nonsense is getting out of hand. Not only do you have chatroulette where you have dudes streaming live and literally getting out of hand but now every Johnny Doughnuts wants to run a stream of themselves playing fighting games. Save streaming for high level play.

14

It’s a good idea, you’ll simply reach more random heads. Putting a schedule to the matches on a weekly or bi-weekly is a good way to promote more play for the old games and ggpo. Different sources are a good thing, watching videos on youtube isnt the most interactive experience.

15

Yeah I’ve noticed this. For about a month now I’ve had trouble logging in and sometimes then client just freezes when you try to enter another room. And then of course there’s issues with trying to start/view a match.

In any case, I’m surprised GGPO doesn’t have a buddy system that you can use to check if your friends are online and what they are playing. It should be pretty simple to implement if it uses an IRC backend so you can just setup auto-notifications.

As for the streaming, I’d prefer if they did something like automatically record and store the inputs of matches with over 10 spectators or something like that. Then anyone can just download hype matches from the server. I guess money and resources are a problem though…

16

used it every morning this week, worked perfect everytime <3 .

at the end of it all, ggpo is still the best damn thing there is for this kinda entertainment.

17

I don’t think many people are reading my posts. GGPO does have high level play on, in fact, pretty much all times of the day has high level for play FOR SOME game. You have so many OG’s from around the world that play, its impossible to not have high level play. Some of these guys that play kof have an incredible footsie game. I mentioned earlier in my first post that GGPO would need a way to identify the best players. Whether its by username\IP number or by some type of ladder system\ranking system.

I’m not talking about streaming joe fucksack from down the block who started playing last week. I’m talking about streaming players whom are EXTREMELY good for the most part and those players are on ggpo frequently.

I’d hate to tell you this but that has been a problem since 2006. That is not new.

18

To watch a ggpo saved match, you have to go dl-ed FBA emulator, then the correct rom to play it back. I’m trying to get rid of the fact that a new sf4 player or other players will NOT dl-ed FBA or the rom to watch a few mins of play about a game they don’t care about. 99% of them will say fuck it, I will not dl-ed that just to watch a playback. I have GGPO and I could careless if kuroda was on because I don’t have the 3s rom. How much more for the next person who doesn’t EVEN have ggpo?

do you see where I’m going with this?

However, if it were a stream, there is none of that dl-ing process and watching kuroda is only a click away from your computer.

19

I like the general idea of publishing matches. But I agree with VF4, in that having youtube type recordings is superior to a stream. I think it’s better for a couple of reasons:

  1. The video quality will be higher
  2. Having some big name Japanese player playing at 5am doesn’t help me if I’m asleep or not watching the stream
  3. Watching randoms play isn’t that much fun

So, I think being more selective about the matches and archiving them would be better. With that in mind, I’d propose that maybe the best solution would be if there was some way for people in the GGPO room to flag a match as being “cool”, kind of like you can click to save a match you’re spectating in SSF4. But, instead of saving it to your own HD, it’d record it and upload it to a big youtube repository. That way you could go to the GGPO 3S, GGPO ST, etc channel and see all the really cool matches. Of course, that’d take a bunch of programming. And maybe streaming is easier to setup. Still, all things being equal, I think that’d be nicer.

20

youtube is inferior because it has 0 community interaction comparatively.
Fun to watch a kuroda match? Go play him instead, ggpo and chat function = why not?
Two completely different levels of publicity and matchmaking.Old Games will not survive on youtube clips and old revival offline tourneys.

The youtube slant is fine if you’d rather watch and try to apply it later.

Two different purposes, one obviously better for generating more players.