I am interested in feedback on our commentary of the womens final. I was extremely happy to get to be in the booth for this. It was an exciting final, and I was glad that it got the exposure it did.
I am however concerned about how the commentary came across. I remember after the NW stream, one of the criticisms was questioning the player’s rules knowledge. We ended up doing this a lot on Pool Sharks and Junkyard. I am hopeful this came across as constructive conversation of game rules, instead of critical of the players. However, I fear it was not handled as well as it could be.
I thought it was great that the main event completely took a break to give focus and stream priority to the women’s final. Without being there, I wasn’t clear on what the women’s finalists’ competition schedule was like, but it seemed like they may have had to wait around for a long time for their featured time slot. If so, did they feel it was a positive trade off?
The commentators covered the action well and I didn’t notice any of the (unfortunately) common trappings that I’ve heard on past streams featuring female players. Sooo… solid work on just calling it like a normal match? It was awesome to watch Dani crush Ball 1 of Junkyard to set herself up for the win.
I was blown away by the cash prizes during the awards ceremony. 1st and 2nd place in Women’s were more than 3rd and 4th in Main! I guess having a separate bank must have allowed for a ton of entries to get played with shorter lines than Main. Obviously a great move by INDISC and hopefully it will only continue to grow!
Aside from anything else, I wanted to say that making the women’s division completely separate, rather than “top women in main”, seemed like a huge success to me. It allowed the women to play without waiting in the long lines for main, and as such allowed them to build a prize pool that was worth playing for. I also loved the break so we could watch women’s finals, highlighting their accomplishments on the stream. I would love to see more limited/unlimited qualifying tournaments go this route.
This is in part because the Main pool is split between A and B and in part because A pays way more places. I had us change the payout scheme a few years back to make Classics self-funded rather than fixed, and we decided that Women’s should be handled the same way. So what they got out of it was a direct result of what they put into it. We also felt is was appropriate to have the same trophies for Women’s as for B and Classics, so same expense there.
From my (male) view, you guys were fine. Not sure if it was the case in women’s finals, but because of the number of obscure titles, rules knowledge among the broadcasters was a little weak compared to other tourneys. Jim likes picking odd titles, so very few broadcasters are ever going to know all the titles well at INDISC. You guys get a pass for that.
There was something in the chat during women’s finals about somebody saying something wrong. I didn’t catch what they were talking about. Nothing in the broadcast caught my ear and reading back through the comments didn’t clear it up either. Not sure what that was about.
On Friday I believe, someone said something about ‘the beautiful Allison O’Neil’. I believe her husband was one of the broadcasters at that time and I don’t think he said it. Someone mentioned it here too. I wasn’t expecting to hear that, but I wasn’t watching closely at the time, so I didn’t catch the context. If Brian didn’t take a swing at the guy, I’m guessing it was good.
That makes sense. I saw a few posts get deleted during the weekend. Sorry you guys had to work.
Lord help us if pinball broadcasting every gets as popular as video game broadcasting. If you’ve never seen Twitch chat for a video game stream with more than 5k viewers, check it out. Moves lightning fast and way too many nonsense posts.
I watched the whole thing live and, just after tuning in, I remember thinking “I bet these guys will remember the NW debacle and be extra careful.” I listened carefully, and I think you did a great job. There was no condescension there that I noticed. Yes, you did question at some point whether one player was aware of a particular rule. But I think you did it respectfully, and no differently than you did when questioning some of the male players’ choices.
So, overall, I think it was great commentary!
My one point of feedback: if you listen to it all again and hear yourself talk, pay attention to how often one commentator talked over another, or interrupted in mid-sentence. That’s not great to listen to, mainly because, as the listener, I’m forced to switch my train of thought and thought process in mid-stream. A little bit more discipline in that regard would make it even better.
I thought y’all handled this really well! Pool Sharks isn’t a well known game, so as a viewer I welcomed the rules knowledge. Also, the women’s final moved from the women’s bank to the A bank; I’d say that’s a different situation than questioning whether a player understands the game that they’ve been playing in qualifying for two days prior.
I’ve seen a lot of questioning of tactics on mens play too. The commentary on Junkyard tended to lean more to the “shoot this so this other thing will light” rather than “they don’t know what they are doing”. I think the commentators did a good job.
I would just like to clarify a few things about that comment. An extremely close friend of Allison and myself was the one who said it. He is so close, in fact, that he was the officiant at our wedding. Allison was not offended, nor was I. I feel if Allison and I aren’t offended then the matter is closed. Please DM me if you feel this should warrant further conversation.
Awesome. As I said, I didn’t catch the context, so it certainly didn’t offend me. I didn’t comment in the other thread because of that. I mentioned it in this thread because it’s about women and the broadcast. Thanks for the clarification.
Thanks also for helping with the broadcast. I watched way too much.
Danni and I watched the recorded stream the next day. I thought it was pretty cool.
A lot of people watched it in New Zealand, a lot had never watched a pinball stream before and the feedback was very positive. Of course, a lot of that was down to Karls sweet stream.
All the commentary I heard was good across the weekend. Thanks to all for stepping up.
PS one of the coolest things of the weekend was when the whole crowd migrated to the left side seating for Pool Sharks … then 10 minutes later they all migrated en mass back to the right for Junkyard
