Don’t worry I didn’t read it as a criticism; it is just something that would be very difficult to do and would require time and volunteers. We’re already pretty stretched!
I actually think the biggest problem is that while announcers can come and go at will, the person sitting there running the rig is generally the only one that knows how. So that person ends up sitting there for the entirety of the stream. I know at CAX there were many times when Karl had to get up and play, and the people at the rig didn’t know how to switch cameras to another game. The equipment is pretty specialized and everyone’s setup is different, so its not like learning to run one immediately translates to running another one.
Personally I very much appreciate a more “polished” presentation where there isn’t a ton of dead space and technical issues, and I appreciate how hard that is to pull off. I’d way rather have that for a shorter time than a clumsy feed that stretches out for 15 hours.
Buffalo Pinball did this pretty well broadcasting 8pm to midnight fri and sat. For Pinburgh id just broadcast Round 5 and 10
Sure, but an entry-based tournament is different, since any player can take a break to broadcast, or you can pick from among those players who aren’t in line to play. At Pinburgh, everyone is already busy, there is nobody left to run a broadcast.
I used to be in the “If there are cameras setup, why not stream?” camp and after BCO I’ve changed my mind completely. There really isn’t much if anything to be gained from an entertainment standpoint to have one camera broadcasting with no commentary. Anyone that happened to watch our stream during qualifying didn’t stick around long. Ghost ride the twitch!
Session 9 I nearly became ill due to the vertigo on the stage. Had I been stuck on stage for session 10 I would have had to forfeit. That movement really affects people with even slight vertigo. Really hope a rising bleachers are considered if possible and no stage next year.
Yea, those are fair points. It would be appreciated when planning Pinburgh next year if broadcasting Rounds 5 and 10 were considered.
Yup. IMPOSSIBLE to get people who are playing to commentate match play formats prior to finals, unless they want to forfeit. So it would have to be completely volunteer (non-player) basis.
Lefkoff would have been a good candidate to broadcast rounds 7-10 this year Ragecast!
Funny you should mention me … when I saw that post, I actually started weighing the pros and cons of doing so … biggest con is the expense and time of the trip if I’m not playing. Guess I could still do pre-pingolf and maybe Intergalactic …
For the record, I pleaded with Doug on Saturday to go live earlier and I volunteered to do all the commentary in the early rounds. As explained to me, they don’t like to have an unruly, 12+ hour, archive and so they weren’t interested in my offer. Personally, I would love to go back and be able to watch some of the earlier round match ups on video from the overheads, but I certainly appreciate the challenges involved in making this happen. If I’m on the wrong end of #PinburghADivisionBookends again next year, I would be happy to commentate the first couple of rounds, or at least start with the quarter finals.
it would be great for the Hobby as a whole if PAPA could do more broadcasting. Our friend at Buffalo had twice as much coverage as PAPA’s with 3 cameras.
I guess most players are at Pinburgh playing BUT Jim could have watched from his phone
This is a very interesting point, one which I have thought about quite a bit. I can imagine a platform that can make sense of it all where games/days be quickly cut down to only contain action, and even better if they could be split into individual games for upload on YouTube. That would allow them to be searchable by game/player/match as well.
That already exists. It’s called pinballvideos.com. You can search by player, by game, by event, etc. Truely awesome!
Partly I think people don’t bother to read the documentation. (Also, it was BDM, so it’s not out of character. )
As you might know, I’m “lawful neutral” and my first competition experience was in olympic-style fencing, where you actually need to know all the rules and follow them carefully to avoid having a suck-full experience. But I’m used to having things spelled out and easily accessible.
I can help with pre-tournament communication/documentation for next year, hit me up.
With the Twitch deal, i think it was part technical difficulties and part of what has been mentioned. I was supposed to go on during an earlier round, but things got fixed eventually!
If we do want to expand coverage next year, I would consider working the booth with commentary (and production, if @PAPA_Doug or @mhs have time during PAPA TV Live when we get back to it) all three days for the stage. A suggestion I had was to go to old-school commentary for rounds: record first, comment later.
@umbilico kinda fell off the radar and hasn’t been updating this site. I would gladly volunteer to help keep the archive current but I have no idea how to do that type of stuff.
I just wanted to first say that this is one of the best run tournaments I’ve ever been to. I will definitely be coming back next year.
I had one small piece of feedback. I noticed that the tournament area didn’t seem to be as blocked off from the rest of the show as much as last year. I think last year there were only two (or three?) ways in/out of the tournament area whereas this year had lots of ways in and out. This meant that I was seeing more random people walking up to a game not knowing a tournament was going on. Playoff day was actually the worst example of it since some games were open to play and some games were meant for the playoffs. I saw multiple people try to play on playoff machines in the C playoffs. More designation of machines that are off limits would be much appreciated.
Thank you again for this amazing tournament!
Pinburgh was 100% AWESOME! The only improvement suggestion I have (and maybe this was already mentioned) is to put lines on the floor that only players can be in front of while they are playing a game in a match. Everyone else needs to stay behind the line, period. This would probably require the score sheets to come with clip boards (with lanyard pens) for recording scores.
I witnessed multiple heated pissing matches because people participating in an adjacent match were distracted by players recording scores. My personal recommendation for people who get angry is “calm the Fxxk down it’s just pinball”. But, the issue can be easily avoided with a small amount of effort and clarification of the rules / etiquette.