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Over the past year or so, there has been a growing sentiment that the current system of bundling items with DOTA 2 tournaments is unfair to workshop artists. Many artists feel that Valve has subtly 'forced' them into working with tournaments by showing bundled items preferential treatment. In a lot of corners, tournament organizers are painted as the bad guys. The arrangement feels inherently exploitative.
I've had my own thoughts on this subject for a long time, but they were never fleshed out enough where I felt comfortable sharing them publicly. Finally today, I stumbled across a discussion on Reddit where a workshop artist was arguing that the current system needs to be changed or even abolished outright.
I don't disagree, but I feel it's long overdue for someone on the other side of the fence to share the perspective of broadcasters and tournament organizers. I love this game, and it pains me to see people pointing fingers at each other and missing the elephant in the room. To me, it seems obvious the core problem isn't greedy/selfish organizers (although there are certainly plenty who exist); the core problem is that the system we have now is inherently flawed.
Hats sell far more than tickets. That's no big secret; it's something that workshop creators, tournament organizers, Valve and the community have known for a pretty long time now.
From this fact, it's natural to assume that hats are just a flat-out better and more valuable product than tickets. That's true in a superficial sense, but you need to go deeper to truly understand the current landscape.
Tournament organizers and broadcasters bring huge value to DOTA 2 and have arguably done more than anyone besides Valve and profesional players to grow the game. Large, well-done tournaments (most notably but not limited to TI) bring the game to a new audience and actually help increase the player base. That's just a fact. Hell, the strongest evidence is that tournaments were around long before the system of bundling cosmetics with tickets ever arose, and they were doing tons to grow the game even back then.
There is huge demand for tournaments and commentators, and they have obvious value. You need look no further than ESL packing a football stadium in Frankfurt with over 10,000 people or a closed event run out of our house racking up well over 600,000 concurrent online viewers for evidence of such.
Over time, thanks in no small part to tournaments, DOTA 2 has grown to the point it's at now, where artists have a large enough audience to be able to make a decent living selling hats.
The problem isn't that tournaments aren't bringing massive value to DOTA 2; the problem is that Valve hasn't found a great *direct* way to monetize what we offer through the client.
You see, the sad truth is that both tickets and compendiums for non-majors have extremely limited value compared to hats. Perhaps the biggest issue is that there's pretty much always a free, high-definition stream with no ads (for the majority of users who use adblock) available.
Sure, some people like to pay for the opportunity to access replays, watch player perspective, or simply because their internet connection sucks, but however vocal such people may be, ultimately the numbers don't lie. People who are willing to pay for tickets are a drop in the bucket relative to the number of people who will tune in to the free livestreams.
You won't meet many people who say they started playing DOTA 2 because of the cool hats (although they are undoubtedly a massive factor in retaining players), but there are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who started playing because they had an awesome experience attending a live event or watching a tournament broadcast. Many of those same people that tournament organizers brought to DOTA 2 are undoubtedly spending money buying hats right now! In a way, tournaments are a driving force towards making workshop artist a legitimate career choice.
One of the biggest hurdles I see for Valve is that it's extremely difficult to measure how much a particular organizer has done to grow the player base. Valve likes data, and they like to be able to quantify everything. For workshop contributors, they have a system that allows them to do that objectively and with absolute knowledge. Tournaments exist outside of the Valve's system (the game client), and therefore their value will always be more difficult to measure precisely.
Still, here's my personal theory. Valve is well-aware that DotaTV tickets aren't a great product right now. They want to reward the broadcasters and tournament organizers who have done so much (and continue to do so much) to grow and sustain the game over the past 3-4 years. More importantly, they want to create incentives for organizers to continue doing so.
But see, there's a huge problem. Right now Valve really only have one main way to successfully generate revenue on a huge scale through in-game monetization, and that's via hats.
So the result is the extremely imperfect system we have now, where workshop creators are gently nudged in the direction of working with tournaments. Workshop creators are unhappy because they feel like tournaments are 'relying on them' to sell tickets, and tournaments are unhappy because Valve hasn't found a great way to monetize what is obviously an extremely in-demand and valuable product outside of the game client.
Don't get me wrong, the system can be frustrating as hell for workshop creators, and they have every right to be fed up. But try to understand that the current system isn't what tournament organizers want either. DotaTV was an absolutely amazing invention when it first came out, and it's still light years ahead of what other games offer. But as a product, it hasn't really seen substantial improvements in years now, while new categories of hats, types of effects, and ways for artists to make money from the workshop are introduced on what seems to be a near-daily basis.
In short, the simple truth is that nobody's happy with the current system. Workshop creators are unhappy because they'd rather not work with a middleman. Fans are unhappy because those who just want the hats are force-fed tickets they don't care about, and those who just want the ticket often have no option to buy a standalone ticket at a lower price. Meanwhile, organizers are unhappy because their hugely valuable and in-demand tournament products aren't being monetized well through the game client, so they're forced by market pressures into partnering with workshop creators to drive sales.
I don't claim to have all the answers, and I'm not saying making DotaTV a better product or finding other ways for tournaments to generate revenue through DOTA 2 is easy. But we've got a really smart community and one of the most forward-thinking game development teams in the world at our fingertips. There was a recent thread with a long list of improvements and suggestions for Valve on how to improve the DotaTV experience. I seem to recall another thread from a few months back with lots of really cool and more specific suggestions, although I'm struggling to find it right now. Hell, I personally have shared a list of suggested changes to DotaTV on Reddit in the past, but even that's just the tip of the iceberg of potential ways that DotaTV could be improved and rebuilt as a product.
In the end, I'm optimistic that we as a community can come up with some truly awesome improvements. Let's stop pointing fingers at each other, and let's put our heads together to help Valve build a better system.
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I think your analysis is spot on. The problem isn't the hats, the problem is that there is literally no reason to buy a ticket at all EXCEPT to get a hat or compendium.
Even for events that I have purchased tickets for, I usually watch on Twitch so that I can see the venue/hear the crowd etc and so that I have content in between matches.
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Katowice25012 Posts
Good to see some clarification here from the side of the organizer, I find it a little odd and sometimes frustrating the perception the community overall has on these.
For some additional reading you might want to check out Kennigit's post on why ESL decided to try out their item set differently last year for ESL One.
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ld posting on ld how poetic
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Dota is in a place where there is always at least one tournament stream on at any given time.
Because of this saturation of content, no amount of noise made about giving non in-game item incentives is going to amount to anything.
Things like typical twitch subscription benefits for dota might be interesting. Having tournament related emotes spammable in game would make a lot of people happy. I can imagine already the ridiculous tobiwan faces.
I'd hate to see dota go that direction though. I'm against the hat culture, and also don't like twitch hive memeing.
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On June 07 2015 08:26 Thaniri wrote: Dota is in a place where there is always at least one tournament stream on at any given time.
Because of this saturation of content, no amount of noise made about giving non in-game item incentives is going to amount to anything.
Things like typical twitch subscription benefits for dota might be interesting. Having tournament related emotes spammable in game would make a lot of people happy. I can imagine already the ridiculous tobiwan faces.
I'd hate to see dota go that direction though. I'm against the hat culture, and also don't like twitch hive memeing. dotapit tried that with little success
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On June 07 2015 08:26 Thaniri wrote: Dota is in a place where there is always at least one tournament stream on at any given time.
Because of this saturation of content, no amount of noise made about giving non in-game item incentives is going to amount to anything.
Things like typical twitch subscription benefits for dota might be interesting. Having tournament related emotes spammable in game would make a lot of people happy. I can imagine already the ridiculous tobiwan faces.
I'd hate to see dota go that direction though. I'm against the hat culture, and also don't like twitch hive memeing. The only way to combat hat culture is for DotaTV to be equal to or better than the Twitch stream, which is simply not possible without significant attention from Valve, especially when it comes to things as basic as the shit audio quality.
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Overall, my problem as an outsider with friends in the tournament scene as well as the cosmetic scene, is you have the main product, hats.
People are more than willing to buy the hats, they're not willing to pay for the tickets. But Valve wants to kickback to the pros, as well as the tournament organizer, to reward them for somethning thats not really quantifiable. I get that.
But I think the problem is that the prize pool cut, as well as the tournament organizer cut are affecting the workshop artists income, which doesnt seem fair to me because the hat is the pitch of the sale, not DotaTV or the organizer.
And thats ultimately my problem with the kickbacks, is that kickbacks arent coming from Valve's coffers, they're coming from the workshop artists fair cut of 25%. With a prizepool contribution ticket, that's like a percentage of the 12.5% that the organizer/workshop have to split. I think we need to divide the sales more fairly, although that may mean smaller prizepools and the like.
I know you have that nice list of DotaTV FIXES, but I don't think it's enough considering streams often are way better for the casual viewer( and thus the masses).
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Most of the problem you describe i have already thought of in mid-late 2012. From my point of view, improving the DotATV platform is the crucial solution to most of these. Not only the viewer end experience need to be simplify and improve significantly, there are also many untap monetization potential that Valve have yet to explore. What if instead charging for dotaTV ticket, we open it up like live streaming service and sell in-game promotions exposure via teams' banner/logo system? We could create custom HUD for Redbull tournaments(redbull pay for the ads ofc), make that everyone who view it for free via DotATV use the HUD and only paid user get drops?
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i've always thought of hats being tied to tournaments as valve's way of subsidizing the competitive scene
workshop artists really have no reason to complain considering the only reason hats sell is that dota2 is an extremely popular game
if the maker of that game wants to subsidize tournaments and not saturate the market with all the decent hats at once, that's their choice and a perfectly valid one
also no matter how much the dotatv experience is improved, i'm not going to pay for it over a free HD stream if i don't get something permanent to show for it as well
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On June 07 2015 08:48 Kraznaya wrote: i've always thought of hats being tied to tournaments as valve's way of subsidizing the competitive scene
workshop artists really have no reason to complain considering the only reason hats sell is that dota2 is an extremely popular game
also no matter how much the dotatv experience is improved, i'm not going to pay for it over a free HD stream if i don't get something permanent to show for it as well
That logic could justify why Valve takes a 75% cut, and hat maker's 25%. But that number has been shrinking because they're adding middlemen that has no business to be there. If Valve wants to subsidize the scene, that's 100% fine, but it should come out of their pockets, not Hat makers.
Not only that, but they're subsidizing the scene twice in one sale with the prizepool siphon, as well as the tournament organizer share, which ultimately makes no sense because the pro scene does a lot of things for the game, but it didnt really do much for my 9.99 purchase.
Hats should be hats with Valve and whoever is involved with the hatmaking process.
It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money.
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On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote: It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money.
Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock.
Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point.
There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion).
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On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote: There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion).
ESL is especially talented at running up unnecessary costs in grandiose venues though
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Take out cosmetics from the game
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I agree with your analysis, and also I don't understand how item creators are not happy. Basically, having your hats bundled with a big tournament is what, at least twice, if not a lot more in sales ? Even if the cut is lower (is it ?) I'm not even sure why they complain, I guess earning tens of thousands for a week of work isn't enough.
The real problem is valve's cut, I mean taking a cut of hats is fine, taking a cut on tournaments that make your game live and prosper is greedy and dumb. What about pennants ? The next big thing that should help teams survive. Ho yeah it doesn't exist anymore and now teams have to release hats too...
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I know when I had to walk to school in 7 feet of snow, 4 miles out and 9 miles back I didn't have 10.7 million people to play DotA with. Hell, when I started DotA didn't even dominate over the Helms Deep and Tower D maps in the WC3 RoC que. Just sayyn.
This guy above me makes an excellent point. Is our fight with Valve? 75% to this day, considering what's been made off which was intended as a free game... Obviously Valve intended to make money when making DotA 2, however the cuts from TI this year and last alone could pay for a lot of trips to Hawaii. They have less employees then your average local grocery store.
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Ironically, the better the production values for a tournament, the more reason there is for viewers to watch the stream (for interviews, intro videos, player cams, etc.) than to watch DotaTV.
Not to say the hardcore fan won't use both products to get the full package, but the current system is just conflicting.
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On June 07 2015 08:39 lestye wrote: Overall, my problem as an outsider with friends in the tournament scene as well as the cosmetic scene, is you have the main product, hats.
[...]
And thats ultimately my problem with the kickbacks, is that kickbacks arent coming from Valve's coffers, they're coming from the workshop artists fair cut of 25%. With a prizepool contribution ticket, that's like a percentage of the 12.5% that the organizer/workshop have to split. I think we need to divide the sales more fairly, although that may mean smaller prizepools and the like.
Hat artists are always free to refuse tournament offers, and put their items into normal Valve chests. No one is forcing them to put them into tournaments.
But, apparently their are disadvantages to that as well....
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the main thing is expectations of player and tournament income are not commensurate with value, due to distortions such as hats
hats is the real value that people want to pay for. without tournaments, there would still be hats. without hats, would there still be tournaments? certainly not of the scale dota 2 has grown accustomed to.
you argue that hats exist because of tournaments, and therefore it is right for tournaments to get a piece of the pie.
but you yourself already concede that this is not a great argument, and say that the hat situation is only because valve hasn't found a model to monetize the value tournaments provide.
but maybe the harsh reality is that the actual value is not that high. it was not long ago that tournaments operated on sponsor money. selling tickets to events is a relatively recent development. GSL in Starcraft 2 charged for streams, but when you are competing with free streams that won't work.
maybe the only sensible thing for tournaments is to ask valve to team up and have valve be your sponsor, or else question why tournaments are so adamant they have a right to exist in the first place.
or just accept that the real value of tournaments is as hat salesmen.
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I'm not convinced improving DotaTV is the way to go. Most people just want to watch the games and Twitch will always be the more convenient way to do that.
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On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote: It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money. Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock. Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point. There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion).
Certainly there must be a decent value to you and DC since you're not blowing it off and push for the sale of your cosmetics.
I get that they have higher costs, but there's revenue outside of that. I'm sure it means NOTHING to ESL, Dreamhack, and others, but there are organizers that probably rely on it more, I'm going to assume BTS, DC, and Starladder probably rely on it way more than big big orgs like ESL, MLG, etc. And my point is that you guys get money from a large variety of places, including tournament organizers that just pay you to cast, as well as Valve for TI. For most workshop artists, they're only revenue is the money.
I don't have a problem with you guys getting money, I think I'm opposed where it's coming from. Like, why is it coming from workshop artists when it could be coming from Valve? Valve's not giving a portion of the sets they release themselves to orgs (They do give to the top players through TI compendium money) They're kinda forcing the workshop artists to subsidize the pro scene. If it was like 5% of all purchases goes to Valve reinvesting into the scene, I think that'd be better than whatever they're doing now.
Sorry if I worded stuff poorly or got it wrong, I feel what I'm saying makes sense but I dont know much about the numbers and the scene to point out exactly what I dislike.
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On June 07 2015 11:02 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote:On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote: It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money. Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock. Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point. There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion). Certainly there must be a decent value to you and DC since you're not blowing it off and push for the sale of your cosmetics. I get that they have higher costs, but there's revenue outside of that. I'm sure it means NOTHING to ESL, Dreamhack, and others, but there are organizers that probably rely on it more, I'm going to assume BTS, DC, and Starladder probably rely on it way more than big big orgs like ESL, MLG, etc. And my point is that you guys get money from a large variety of places, including tournament organizers that just pay you to cast, as well as Valve for TI. For most workshop artists, they're only revenue is the money. I don't have a problem with you guys getting money, I think I'm opposed where it's coming from. Like, why is it coming from workshop artists when it could be coming from Valve? Valve's not giving a portion of the sets they release themselves to orgs (They do give to the top players through TI compendium money) They're kinda forcing the workshop artists to subsidize the pro scene. If it was like 5% of all purchases goes to Valve reinvesting into the scene, I think that'd be better than whatever they're doing now. Sorry if I worded stuff poorly or got it wrong, I feel what I'm saying makes sense but I dont know much about the numbers and the scene to point out exactly what I dislike. Because Valve doesn't want to subsidize 3rd party organizations, nor should they have an obligation to do so. They created an avenue for tournaments to be crowdfunded, and the organizations are making use of it.
BTS, joinDOTA, etc. have absolutely no negotiation power to go to Valve and say "hey, players don't like that hat sales are paying for tournaments, couldn't you just pay us instead?"
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Why are we focusing the discussion on Valve? The main product you are offering is the stream itself, and that is on twitch. I think you should be focusing on ways you can monetize the stream, such as offering 'ultra quality' streams for a fee, for example 60fps, or resolutions above 1080.
In addition there is the prospect of the Dota2 majors playing a big role in the scene. The DAC compendium was so successful because of the bonuses attached to it. I would expect that valve would allow the compendiums for the Dota2 majors to have some sort of attached bonus. Although each major tournament player would probably only be allowed to host one major a year, if you play your cards right you could make a good amount from compendiums.
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On June 07 2015 11:17 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 11:02 lestye wrote:On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote:On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote: It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money. Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock. Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point. There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion). Certainly there must be a decent value to you and DC since you're not blowing it off and push for the sale of your cosmetics. I get that they have higher costs, but there's revenue outside of that. I'm sure it means NOTHING to ESL, Dreamhack, and others, but there are organizers that probably rely on it more, I'm going to assume BTS, DC, and Starladder probably rely on it way more than big big orgs like ESL, MLG, etc. And my point is that you guys get money from a large variety of places, including tournament organizers that just pay you to cast, as well as Valve for TI. For most workshop artists, they're only revenue is the money. I don't have a problem with you guys getting money, I think I'm opposed where it's coming from. Like, why is it coming from workshop artists when it could be coming from Valve? Valve's not giving a portion of the sets they release themselves to orgs (They do give to the top players through TI compendium money) They're kinda forcing the workshop artists to subsidize the pro scene. If it was like 5% of all purchases goes to Valve reinvesting into the scene, I think that'd be better than whatever they're doing now. Sorry if I worded stuff poorly or got it wrong, I feel what I'm saying makes sense but I dont know much about the numbers and the scene to point out exactly what I dislike. Because Valve doesn't want to subsidize 3rd party organizations, nor should they have an obligation to do so. They created an avenue for tournaments to be crowdfunded, and the organizations are making use of it. BTS, joinDOTA, etc. have absolutely no negotiation power to go to Valve and say "hey, players don't like that hat sales are paying for tournaments, couldn't you just pay us instead?"
They dont have an obligation to do so, but they have a system where BTS, joindota are getting subsidizes through hat sales anyway. Why are the artists subsidizing the pro scene?
On June 07 2015 11:22 LSB wrote:
In addition there is the prospect of the Dota2 majors playing a big role in the scene. The DAC compendium was so successful because of the bonuses attached to it. I would expect that valve would allow the compendiums for the Dota2 majors to have some sort of attached bonus. Although each major tournament player would probably only be allowed to host one major a year, if you play your cards right you could make a good amount from compendiums.
Because not everyone is going to do a Major anyway. There's going to be 3 Majors outside of TI, 1 of them we could safely assume will be run by Perfect World, that leads 2 for the West. Someone is gonna be left out in the cold.
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On June 07 2015 11:25 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 11:17 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2015 11:02 lestye wrote:On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote:On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote: It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money. Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock. Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point. There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion). Certainly there must be a decent value to you and DC since you're not blowing it off and push for the sale of your cosmetics. I get that they have higher costs, but there's revenue outside of that. I'm sure it means NOTHING to ESL, Dreamhack, and others, but there are organizers that probably rely on it more, I'm going to assume BTS, DC, and Starladder probably rely on it way more than big big orgs like ESL, MLG, etc. And my point is that you guys get money from a large variety of places, including tournament organizers that just pay you to cast, as well as Valve for TI. For most workshop artists, they're only revenue is the money. I don't have a problem with you guys getting money, I think I'm opposed where it's coming from. Like, why is it coming from workshop artists when it could be coming from Valve? Valve's not giving a portion of the sets they release themselves to orgs (They do give to the top players through TI compendium money) They're kinda forcing the workshop artists to subsidize the pro scene. If it was like 5% of all purchases goes to Valve reinvesting into the scene, I think that'd be better than whatever they're doing now. Sorry if I worded stuff poorly or got it wrong, I feel what I'm saying makes sense but I dont know much about the numbers and the scene to point out exactly what I dislike. Because Valve doesn't want to subsidize 3rd party organizations, nor should they have an obligation to do so. They created an avenue for tournaments to be crowdfunded, and the organizations are making use of it. BTS, joinDOTA, etc. have absolutely no negotiation power to go to Valve and say "hey, players don't like that hat sales are paying for tournaments, couldn't you just pay us instead?" They dont have an obligation to do so, but they have a system where BTS, joindota are getting subsidizes through hat sales anyway. Why are the artists subsidizing the pro scene? I think you don't quite understand what subsidizing means.
Artists (plural) aren't subsidizing anything in the scene. Specific artists are entering contracted agreements with specific tournaments, and the organizations get the sales from the hats, and the artists get the extra official exposure and marketing. Now that might be a bum deal for the artists, or it might be entirely symbiotic where everyone gains. I don't think we have any stats or numbers for it.
But it's not a subsidy. At worst it's merchandising.
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On June 07 2015 11:33 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 11:25 lestye wrote:On June 07 2015 11:17 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2015 11:02 lestye wrote:On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote:On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote: It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money. Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock. Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point. There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion). Certainly there must be a decent value to you and DC since you're not blowing it off and push for the sale of your cosmetics. I get that they have higher costs, but there's revenue outside of that. I'm sure it means NOTHING to ESL, Dreamhack, and others, but there are organizers that probably rely on it more, I'm going to assume BTS, DC, and Starladder probably rely on it way more than big big orgs like ESL, MLG, etc. And my point is that you guys get money from a large variety of places, including tournament organizers that just pay you to cast, as well as Valve for TI. For most workshop artists, they're only revenue is the money. I don't have a problem with you guys getting money, I think I'm opposed where it's coming from. Like, why is it coming from workshop artists when it could be coming from Valve? Valve's not giving a portion of the sets they release themselves to orgs (They do give to the top players through TI compendium money) They're kinda forcing the workshop artists to subsidize the pro scene. If it was like 5% of all purchases goes to Valve reinvesting into the scene, I think that'd be better than whatever they're doing now. Sorry if I worded stuff poorly or got it wrong, I feel what I'm saying makes sense but I dont know much about the numbers and the scene to point out exactly what I dislike. Because Valve doesn't want to subsidize 3rd party organizations, nor should they have an obligation to do so. They created an avenue for tournaments to be crowdfunded, and the organizations are making use of it. BTS, joinDOTA, etc. have absolutely no negotiation power to go to Valve and say "hey, players don't like that hat sales are paying for tournaments, couldn't you just pay us instead?" They dont have an obligation to do so, but they have a system where BTS, joindota are getting subsidizes through hat sales anyway. Why are the artists subsidizing the pro scene? I think you don't quite understand what subsidizing means. Artists (plural) aren't subsidizing anything in the scene. Specific artists are entering contracted agreements with specific tournaments, and the organizations get the sales from the hats, and the artists get the extra official exposure and marketing. Now that might be a bum deal for the artists, or it might be entirely symbiotic where everyone gains. I don't think we have any stats or numbers for it. But it's not a subsidy. At worst it's merchandising.
The way the system is set up right now, you either agree to get a substantial pay decrease, or have your sets rot in the workshop. "exposure and marketing" is incredibly laughable because the cosmetics are making the majority of the sales, people aren't buying the product for the dotatv access, they're buying for the hats, as LD and many others have said in the past.
It's an indirect subsidiary because artists aren't afforded the same access and opportunity to the store as the tournament piggy-back is getting them right now. They're having to get a lower cut percentage just so Valve can pump money into prizepools and tournament organizers.
And that's how LD kinda described it, the subsidy is there because its hard to reward organizers for their efforts to grow the scene. but the challenge is that it's impossible to quantify that. The issue I have as well as artists I know, is the money they use to reward that comes from their cut. If you want to reward such people, doesnt it make sense to use that 12.5% cut on all products and not just ones from the workshop to reward people to grow the game but cant be quantified?
It's a really unfair system, imo.
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On June 07 2015 12:04 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 11:33 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2015 11:25 lestye wrote:On June 07 2015 11:17 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2015 11:02 lestye wrote:On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote:On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote: It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money. Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock. Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point. There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion). Certainly there must be a decent value to you and DC since you're not blowing it off and push for the sale of your cosmetics. I get that they have higher costs, but there's revenue outside of that. I'm sure it means NOTHING to ESL, Dreamhack, and others, but there are organizers that probably rely on it more, I'm going to assume BTS, DC, and Starladder probably rely on it way more than big big orgs like ESL, MLG, etc. And my point is that you guys get money from a large variety of places, including tournament organizers that just pay you to cast, as well as Valve for TI. For most workshop artists, they're only revenue is the money. I don't have a problem with you guys getting money, I think I'm opposed where it's coming from. Like, why is it coming from workshop artists when it could be coming from Valve? Valve's not giving a portion of the sets they release themselves to orgs (They do give to the top players through TI compendium money) They're kinda forcing the workshop artists to subsidize the pro scene. If it was like 5% of all purchases goes to Valve reinvesting into the scene, I think that'd be better than whatever they're doing now. Sorry if I worded stuff poorly or got it wrong, I feel what I'm saying makes sense but I dont know much about the numbers and the scene to point out exactly what I dislike. Because Valve doesn't want to subsidize 3rd party organizations, nor should they have an obligation to do so. They created an avenue for tournaments to be crowdfunded, and the organizations are making use of it. BTS, joinDOTA, etc. have absolutely no negotiation power to go to Valve and say "hey, players don't like that hat sales are paying for tournaments, couldn't you just pay us instead?" They dont have an obligation to do so, but they have a system where BTS, joindota are getting subsidizes through hat sales anyway. Why are the artists subsidizing the pro scene? I think you don't quite understand what subsidizing means. Artists (plural) aren't subsidizing anything in the scene. Specific artists are entering contracted agreements with specific tournaments, and the organizations get the sales from the hats, and the artists get the extra official exposure and marketing. Now that might be a bum deal for the artists, or it might be entirely symbiotic where everyone gains. I don't think we have any stats or numbers for it. But it's not a subsidy. At worst it's merchandising. The way the system is set up right now, you either agree to get a substantial pay decrease, or have your sets rot in the workshop. "exposure and marketing" is incredibly laughable because the cosmetics are making the majority of the sales, people aren't buying the product for the dotatv access, they're buying for the hats, as LD and many others have said in the past. It's an indirect subsidiary because artists aren't afforded the same access and opportunity to the store as the tournament piggy-back is getting them right now. They're having to get a lower cut percentage just so Valve can pump money into prizepools and tournament organizers. It's a really unfair system, imo. Depends entirely on which bundles you're talking about. The major/premier tournaments with stretch goals and all that, your set is getting bundled in with a lot of other stuff.
For the minor ones like DotaPit which really is just a ticket and a set, the artists definitely get a lesser deal...but then again, those tournaments also usually have the lesser artist work. So if your creation is more average, you either piggyback onto a lesser tournament and take a pay cut, or get ignored entirely.
Not to mention that every chest bundle has multiple sets, and for the most part customers are focused on only a couple of them. So if you agree to let, say, BTS use your set for their chest, you're also getting "subsidized" by at least half-a-dozen other artists. I mean, look at the Faceless Rex courier, how many thousands of dollars did the set artists make just because that courier was bundled with their work?
Also ignoring that Valve still releases sets and chests that are unconnected to anything, so if you think your product is good enough, you can compete to make it into those.
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On June 07 2015 12:19 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 12:04 lestye wrote:On June 07 2015 11:33 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2015 11:25 lestye wrote:On June 07 2015 11:17 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2015 11:02 lestye wrote:On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote:On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote: It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money. Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock. Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point. There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion). Certainly there must be a decent value to you and DC since you're not blowing it off and push for the sale of your cosmetics. I get that they have higher costs, but there's revenue outside of that. I'm sure it means NOTHING to ESL, Dreamhack, and others, but there are organizers that probably rely on it more, I'm going to assume BTS, DC, and Starladder probably rely on it way more than big big orgs like ESL, MLG, etc. And my point is that you guys get money from a large variety of places, including tournament organizers that just pay you to cast, as well as Valve for TI. For most workshop artists, they're only revenue is the money. I don't have a problem with you guys getting money, I think I'm opposed where it's coming from. Like, why is it coming from workshop artists when it could be coming from Valve? Valve's not giving a portion of the sets they release themselves to orgs (They do give to the top players through TI compendium money) They're kinda forcing the workshop artists to subsidize the pro scene. If it was like 5% of all purchases goes to Valve reinvesting into the scene, I think that'd be better than whatever they're doing now. Sorry if I worded stuff poorly or got it wrong, I feel what I'm saying makes sense but I dont know much about the numbers and the scene to point out exactly what I dislike. Because Valve doesn't want to subsidize 3rd party organizations, nor should they have an obligation to do so. They created an avenue for tournaments to be crowdfunded, and the organizations are making use of it. BTS, joinDOTA, etc. have absolutely no negotiation power to go to Valve and say "hey, players don't like that hat sales are paying for tournaments, couldn't you just pay us instead?" They dont have an obligation to do so, but they have a system where BTS, joindota are getting subsidizes through hat sales anyway. Why are the artists subsidizing the pro scene? I think you don't quite understand what subsidizing means. Artists (plural) aren't subsidizing anything in the scene. Specific artists are entering contracted agreements with specific tournaments, and the organizations get the sales from the hats, and the artists get the extra official exposure and marketing. Now that might be a bum deal for the artists, or it might be entirely symbiotic where everyone gains. I don't think we have any stats or numbers for it. But it's not a subsidy. At worst it's merchandising. The way the system is set up right now, you either agree to get a substantial pay decrease, or have your sets rot in the workshop. "exposure and marketing" is incredibly laughable because the cosmetics are making the majority of the sales, people aren't buying the product for the dotatv access, they're buying for the hats, as LD and many others have said in the past. It's an indirect subsidiary because artists aren't afforded the same access and opportunity to the store as the tournament piggy-back is getting them right now. They're having to get a lower cut percentage just so Valve can pump money into prizepools and tournament organizers. It's a really unfair system, imo. Depends entirely on which bundles you're talking about. The major/premier tournaments with stretch goals and all that, your set is getting bundled in with a lot of other stuff. For the minor ones like DotaPit which really is just a ticket and a set, the artists definitely get a lesser deal...but then again, those tournaments also usually have the lesser artist work. So if your creation is more average, you either piggyback onto a lesser tournament and take a pay cut, or get ignored entirely. Not to mention that every chest bundle has multiple sets, and for the most part customers are focused on only a couple of them. So if you agree to let, say, BTS use your set for their chest, you're also getting "subsidized" by at least half-a-dozen other artists. I mean, look at the Faceless Rex courier, how many thousands of dollars did the set artists make just because that courier was bundled with their work? Also ignoring that Valve still releases sets and chests that are unconnected to anything, so if you think your product is good enough, you can compete to make it into those.
Yeah, and guess what? Have you EVER seen a stretch goal that was unbundled? Those bundles sell like hot cakes because they're incredibly cost effective. There's no bundling multiple sets outside of tournaments.
It's kinda nonsensical that grouping with a tournament gets you past the review process over people who've had great sets for months and months.
I'm not saying Valve never release sets that are unconnected to anything, but that path is not a fair one, and tournament sets are added far more frequently to co-incide with the tournament dates.
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On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote: It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money. Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock. Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point. There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion).
Hey LD, thanks for doing this.
You mentioned the low revenue for tournament organizers due to adblock and ticket sales being insignificant, can you comment on how that effects your reliance on sponsors? and potential impacts on sponsors expectations of air time in tournaments when they are putting in the money you need to run a tournament?
Can you comment on if its possible/ how you plan to balance the need for sponsor airtime in future tournaments?
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On June 07 2015 10:48 aboxcar wrote: the main thing is expectations of player and tournament income are not commensurate with value, due to distortions such as hats
hats is the real value that people want to pay for. without tournaments, there would still be hats. without hats, would there still be tournaments? certainly not of the scale dota 2 has grown accustomed to.
you argue that hats exist because of tournaments, and therefore it is right for tournaments to get a piece of the pie.
but you yourself already concede that this is not a great argument, and say that the hat situation is only because valve hasn't found a model to monetize the value tournaments provide.
but maybe the harsh reality is that the actual value is not that high. it was not long ago that tournaments operated on sponsor money. selling tickets to events is a relatively recent development. GSL in Starcraft 2 charged for streams, but when you are competing with free streams that won't work.
maybe the only sensible thing for tournaments is to ask valve to team up and have valve be your sponsor, or else question why tournaments are so adamant they have a right to exist in the first place.
or just accept that the real value of tournaments is as hat salesmen. There would be just as many quality dota tournaments without hats, I'm not even sure on what basis you would argue there wouldn't be. If organizers like BTS and ESL are saying dota revenue is so insignificant it's not even budgeted, I don't think hats are the reason tournaments are sustainable. I would wager the cut from dota revenue (hat bundles) isn't enough to fund or have enough weight to factor if an event is produced or not for any of the quality tournaments that get proper exposure (sltv,dac,ti,bts,d2cl,dl,gl,rbbg,d2l,esl etc).
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We should be able to smoke Weed in the game
User was warned for this post
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On June 07 2015 13:06 crms wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 10:48 aboxcar wrote: the main thing is expectations of player and tournament income are not commensurate with value, due to distortions such as hats
hats is the real value that people want to pay for. without tournaments, there would still be hats. without hats, would there still be tournaments? certainly not of the scale dota 2 has grown accustomed to.
you argue that hats exist because of tournaments, and therefore it is right for tournaments to get a piece of the pie.
but you yourself already concede that this is not a great argument, and say that the hat situation is only because valve hasn't found a model to monetize the value tournaments provide.
but maybe the harsh reality is that the actual value is not that high. it was not long ago that tournaments operated on sponsor money. selling tickets to events is a relatively recent development. GSL in Starcraft 2 charged for streams, but when you are competing with free streams that won't work.
maybe the only sensible thing for tournaments is to ask valve to team up and have valve be your sponsor, or else question why tournaments are so adamant they have a right to exist in the first place.
or just accept that the real value of tournaments is as hat salesmen. There would be just as many quality dota tournaments without hats, I'm not even sure on what basis you would argue there wouldn't be. If organizers like BTS and ESL are saying dota revenue is so insignificant it's not even budgeted, I don't think hats are the reason tournaments are sustainable. I would wager the cut from dota revenue (hat bundles) isn't enough to fund or have enough weight to factor if an event is produced or not for any of the quality tournaments that get proper exposure (sltv,dac,ti,bts,d2cl,dl,gl,rbbg,d2l,esl etc).
I of course don't have access to financial numbers, but maybe you will remember that teams pulled out of starladder (first in your list) because the prize pool was too low, and v1lat went on a rant, etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/2poo60/full_translation_of_v1lats_twitter_messages/ http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/309iki/interview_with_v1lat_starladder_the_extinction_of/
it's not just about hats, per se, but that expectations have become astronomical. in no small part, this is due to TI compendiums and hats. a million dollars investment put in by valve would even today still be considered a substantial amount of money. 15 million dollars from hats is absurd.
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Nice post, man.
I'd also add that the current system of using cosmetics to sell tickets just isn't sustainable. So far, hats have been selling because the designs have been increasingly more "liberal" as the lifecycle of hats has gone on. Basically sets keep selling because every set that comes out keeps on topping the ones prior.
old set 1 old set 2
new set 1 top workshop set
Sets are less likely to sell in numbers if they don't "top" the good sets that already exist for a hero. Things like particle effects and custom icons have become semi-standard at this point. What's going to happen in like a year when there's like 10 good sets for every hero? Especially with TI/DAC putting even more immortals into the hat ecosystem. I feel like sets are going to become much less of a deal than when Starladder was putting out like the first set for a hero 2 years ago
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On June 07 2015 13:36 shizaep wrote:Nice post, man. I'd also add that the current system of using cosmetics to sell tickets just isn't sustainable. So far, hats have been selling because the designs have been increasingly more "liberal" as the lifecycle of hats has gone on. Basically sets keep selling because every set that comes out keeps on topping the ones prior. old set 1 old set 2new set 1 top workshop setSets are less likely to sell in numbers if they don't "top" the good sets that already exist for a hero. Things like particle effects and custom icons have become semi-standard at this point. What's going to happen in like a year when there's like 10 good sets for every hero? Especially with TI/DAC putting even more immortals into the hat ecosystem. I feel like sets are going to become much less of a deal than when Starladder was putting out like the first set for a hero 2 years ago
thats when dota jumps the shark and i finally get my schoolgirl ta set
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ive yet to come across a dota TV ticket which had no problems, i've yet to buy a ticket and not regret buying it because the streams are infinitely better than ingame(audio is usually the main issue). hats are literally the only reason tickets are worthwhile, since the live dotaTV experience is so terrible.
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Aside from starting yet another tickets vs hats conversation, I don't see how LD's insight has actually revealed anything from behind the scenes as a tournament organizer that people don't know about. Yes tickets + hats = more sales than straight up tickets. We have 2+ years of data on that now and nothing has changed. The solution Valve is looking for is a solution from the tournaments themselves. Something that says "Look, we can solve our own problems". But obviously something is wrong because Valve might be taking over using the majors. Who knows. Tournaments failed to find a way to monetize and went for the low hanging fruit of hats. The risks they took were many, but attempting to find new ways to make money or reduce their dependency on hats has been either futile, or largely ignored because hats are "lucrative enough for these tournaments".
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On June 07 2015 11:25 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 11:17 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2015 11:02 lestye wrote:On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote:On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote: It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money. Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock. Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point. There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion). Certainly there must be a decent value to you and DC since you're not blowing it off and push for the sale of your cosmetics. I get that they have higher costs, but there's revenue outside of that. I'm sure it means NOTHING to ESL, Dreamhack, and others, but there are organizers that probably rely on it more, I'm going to assume BTS, DC, and Starladder probably rely on it way more than big big orgs like ESL, MLG, etc. And my point is that you guys get money from a large variety of places, including tournament organizers that just pay you to cast, as well as Valve for TI. For most workshop artists, they're only revenue is the money. I don't have a problem with you guys getting money, I think I'm opposed where it's coming from. Like, why is it coming from workshop artists when it could be coming from Valve? Valve's not giving a portion of the sets they release themselves to orgs (They do give to the top players through TI compendium money) They're kinda forcing the workshop artists to subsidize the pro scene. If it was like 5% of all purchases goes to Valve reinvesting into the scene, I think that'd be better than whatever they're doing now. Sorry if I worded stuff poorly or got it wrong, I feel what I'm saying makes sense but I dont know much about the numbers and the scene to point out exactly what I dislike. Because Valve doesn't want to subsidize 3rd party organizations, nor should they have an obligation to do so. They created an avenue for tournaments to be crowdfunded, and the organizations are making use of it. BTS, joinDOTA, etc. have absolutely no negotiation power to go to Valve and say "hey, players don't like that hat sales are paying for tournaments, couldn't you just pay us instead?" They dont have an obligation to do so, but they have a system where BTS, joindota are getting subsidizes through hat sales anyway. Why are the artists subsidizing the pro scene? Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 11:22 LSB wrote:
In addition there is the prospect of the Dota2 majors playing a big role in the scene. The DAC compendium was so successful because of the bonuses attached to it. I would expect that valve would allow the compendiums for the Dota2 majors to have some sort of attached bonus. Although each major tournament player would probably only be allowed to host one major a year, if you play your cards right you could make a good amount from compendiums. Because not everyone is going to do a Major anyway. There's going to be 3 Majors outside of TI, 1 of them we could safely assume will be run by Perfect World, that leads 2 for the West. Someone is gonna be left out in the cold.
Artists are not subsidizing the pro scene. I think you got your facts mixed up. The income from cosmetic creation for artist only exist because Valve created a platform and marketplace for it. If this market place did not exist, the value of those creations in their current form would be zero. This is a relationship between these two parties. The organizers have nothing to do with it and do not have any say in this relationship. Valve chooses to favour submissions that bundle with tournaments. This is their choice. Does it say anywhere in the agreements of the workshop that it was a open competition of some sort? I am pretty sure that every decision is up to Valve's discretion. Fairness has nothing to do with it.
I can understand how artist may feel that they are "forced" to work with tournaments but this has nothing to do with tournaments themselves. It has everything to do with their relationship with Valve. If they want to they could choose not to work with Valve.
It may simply be the fact that Valve chooses to set a extremely high standard for stand alone items that aren't bundled with tournaments. I don't see why they wouldn't with the abundance of items already in the system.
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I do have about 95% of the tickets which have big teams in it - ever since the release of tickets and I do watch a lot. The only thing i want since forever is a well implemented free camera. Thanks to the showcase view the free camera command which was bad implemented anyways was removed and did no longer work.
Imagine a completely free camera you can enable by clicking your unused right mouse button in dotatv allowing you to change the camera to any direction you want, adjusting height with your wheel and moving it with wasd or the arrow keys. even a free camera like counterstrike can work easily and would could change live replays with new camera perspectives.
I do not want hats I never wanted them. I always sell them. A big thanks to The Summit 3. The Invoker item was worth as much as the bundle and the Ogre set could be sold for 5$ on top of it making it a free ticket giving you money!
On the other hand I have a ticket for MLG. MLGs DotaTV audio feed is awful and there has been done nothing to fix it. This is unacceptable for a tournament outside of China where it is luck if everything works. I also don't think the custom death ward of the MLG set will ever be added which was promised.
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Team pennants are useless, DotA TV drops are average at best (unless you get some nice drop in a major game), in game audio by broadcasters is really poor. If I had a dollar for every time a BTS game had no audio for the first 10 minutes or lost audio half way through the game with it to never be re-established i'd be a very rich man. I buy almost all the major tournament tickets but if you think for a second i'll continue to buy them if cosmetics are removed, you got another thing coming.
What exactly am I paying the privilege for? to miss out on all the player interviews or between game discussion? to have Chinese tournaments lag or freeze for the entire game? Being a DotA TV participant, I feel like I'm being punished sometimes more then I'm being rewarded for spending my cash compared to people watching for free on stream. Some of the garbage sets added to the DotA TV bundles wouldn't even sell half as much if they weren't attached to the big name tournaments. Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.
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Osaka26964 Posts
From my personal point of view, I buy tickets for hats, but only watch through twitch because the quality in DotaTV is unwatchable. I never like buying tickets because of that, even though I would rather watch through DotaTV because I cannot often watch live.
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Artists subsidizing the pro scene is the biggest joke ever. There's no market for hats if the pro scene isn't big which gives the game prestige which draws the huge number of players that make hats financially viable in the first place. Artists are far more dependent on big tournaments than the other way around. If there were no more hats we'd still have tournaments, but not vice-versa.
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It will be interesting to see how the majors affect all of this.
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Imo the problem with Dota TV is that it offers little to no value for the casual gamer. The pros of having a ticket, besides getting hats, are almost non existent, the only thing i can think of is 1st person perspective, which appeals only to aspiring pros. One could argue that this is interesting for the casual gamer because its a way for them to improve, but most casuals want to improve by just playing the game, not wasting time to watch relays.
Twitch is way better because we get to watch the production from the organizers, the venue, the teams etc which is a way more exciting experience than just watching through Dota TV.
Nobody is happy with the system because everyone involved in this want a bigger slice from those 10$. Until you guys figure out a way to create more value for us without having to bundle tickets with hats, you're gonna have to live in a symbiotic relationship. Maybe its not perfect but it works for now and it generates enough funds for everyone.
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I figured I was part of the minority when I bought tickets solely to download replays and I always put all the cosmetics back up on sale to get compensated. The most ridiculous deal has to be G League 2013 which has the Roshan Hunter set. It costs 9.99 USD, but you could trade the entire set for 4 keys meaning that the ticket essentially came free.
I guess I must be the minority who still enjoys watching replays and this habit goes all the way back to DOTA 1 where that's the only way to watch games. I'm fine without the casting audio, and I love to replay different perspectives from players to see how they react to certain situations - you can actually pick up a lot of useful tips ingame to improve your own gameplay, and many of these moments can't be captured on twitch, either with bad observers or because there's too many things going on at once. I never liked watching games from twitch or even from DOTA TV live, but the only way to keep DOTA going forward without relying that much on hats lies in those alternative streaming platforms. Or tournament organizers could figure out a way to fix the audio on replays by submitting them to Valve to be added for post-processing.
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As far as I can see organizers find it near impossible to monetize without recieving criticism. "Sellout" for sponsorship, "greed" for taking artist cuts. If they were to charge for streams people would be outraged or just straight wouldn't watch. These organizations are trying to provide entertainment for fans of a game and it feels like there is no way they can be rewarded without people complaining.
As a viewer, tournament organizers make or break the tournament. MDL that just finished up won Secret $100,000 and had much stiffer competition than Red Bull Battlgrounds in which they won only $40,000 (and the most ridiculoustrophy). However I will remember tournament (and the trophy) that RB put together because it was a well organised event with great production. As for the MDL i don't even know if there is a trophy. For me, tournament organizers are the key to making a tournament good, not hats, and as much as it bothers me to admit it, not nessecarily the best players.
However there seems to be no way to support organizers other than through tickets on dotatv. Even then the majority of the ticket price goes to valve and then the tournament prize pool. I feel like organizers are in a no-win situation with regards to earning money.
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My major reason for not buying tickets is the cuts. I am not interesting in giving a lot of money to valve for a tournament they aren't running. A 0 % valve cut would see me buying a lot more tickets.
I am happy to give valve money for an even they actually run. Be it a tournament, a fun mode or a cosmetic I really like. Even then their cuts are strange. Take the TI events. 25% goes to prize pool. Assume another 20% are costs. The rest 55% are profit. I don't really see the point financing that above the minimum.
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I certainly agree that the valve cut always bothers me with regard to tickets. I have no issue when it comes to taking cuts in cosmetics (they are modifactions of valve's IP, distributed and sold by valve). But the tickets always felt like Valve shooting themselves in the foot by making tournament organisers less capable of funding themselves, when tournament play is clearly a large focus of the dota2 community.
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On June 07 2015 12:34 gaijindash wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote:On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote: It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money. Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock. Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point. There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion). You mentioned the low revenue for tournament organizers due to adblock and ticket sales being insignificant No. He claimed Twitch revenue was extremely insignificant. I assume he meant the money generated from Twitch ads sent to the streaming account. Twitch itself (Amazon) is probably doing quite well (Amazon paid 970M for it after all).
Second, he said PROFIT was low for tournament organizers. Profit is what you have left after you paid for all expenses (including your own salary). Making little profit is very different from having low revenue.
In fact, it is often beneficial to lower the profit margin... many companies routinely do this to evade taxes. If you had to pay 1bn in taxes or acquire an interesting company for that money... what would you do?
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Yeah he said Twitch revenue was insignificant, but he also said PROFIT from TICKETS was low, there aren't really a lot of expenses going into BTS putting up a ticket for a tournament.
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On June 07 2015 20:04 a-game wrote: It will be interesting to see how the majors affect all of this.
Compendiums bundled with immortals trying to raise Valve money, same as it was at TI and DAC?
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Thanks for posting this LD. I have read quite a lot at Polycount from Anuxi and others about the other side of this issue and I care a lot about the workshop artists both from the perspective of someone who respects artists and the struggles they often face, and more specifically as a cosmetic collector to whom workshop artists have brought much joy.
I also have a great appreciation for BTS and other third-party organizations who do an honest job of trying to produce some quality competitive Dota. Right now this system is causing difficulties for both artists and TOs. So let's grind on it a bit more.
Defining the problem set
- Artists feel beholden to third-party organizations to get their work published and get paid
- Tournament organizers have limited options for revenue streams
- Tournament tickets themselves, independent of bundled items, add only marginal value
- Bundled cosmetics dominate the drive for ticket sales
- As a consequence of these things, and the current revenue split model, TOs and artists depend on each-other and must divide a meager percentage of ticket revenue between them
OK so if you literally just tuned into the thread I think you've got the basics.
What's our desired end-state?
It's not enough just to know what the problems are. What you need to define is a desired end-state. Doing this will help you separate desired results and possible means.
The problems of the workshop economy are manifold so I think what we want to do is define this from the perspective of TOs with the objective of at least not making the problems artists face worse.
I propose that our desired end-state is one in which tournament organizers can generate significantly greater internalized revenue in total AND in proportion to the work put in by workshop artists.
If this is accomplished:
- TOs will be less reliant on artists
- As a consequence, Valve can - not necessarily will, but can - comfortably release more cosmetics independent of tournament bundles
- TOs will generate more revenue for the same product
So how do we accomplish this? Let's break it apart.
What's a tournament ticket without a bundle?
It's just DotaTV access, right? One avenue of increasing the value of the ticket itself is in simply improving DotaTV. I personally love DotaTV. I use it all the time. And that's why, from a viewer perspective, I can talk about all the shit that's wrong with it. And it's a lot.
While the challenges DTV gives producers are important, this is about increasing the value of a DTV ticket, not making things easier for PimpmuckL et al. Unfortunately we have no idea what's happening to DTV with Source2, so let's assume none of this is being fixed.
Since we want to add value to tickets and DTV is the core product of a ticket, let's talk about that value.
- Unfuck audio. Give us a bit better of a codec, and fix whatever it is that's making us lose casters on a regular basis.
- Give us the option of following a broadcast, taking us from game-to-game.
- Provide, at the least, uninterrupted audio between games.
- To go with this, give some kind of visual bridge broadcasters can use to communicate what is going on if there is no video.
- Fix all the damn player perspective bugs.
- Fix DTV lag that doesn't show up in streams.
- Completely rework the replay interface. A tournament isn't just a list of games.
- Create significantly more robust replay download options. Give us a download manager and the ability to subscribe. Let us download a whole series - and give us a series interface in-replay so we can skip ahead to the next game at will - or go on auto-play.
- Move that goddamned bar at the bottom so it's easier to inspect sets.
Many things could be done that would improve broadcasting also but our focus is on increasing the value of a ticket, and most of these fixes are just about bringing the DTV experience in some aspects closer to par with watching a game on a streaming service. And this is a very quick pass if I'm honest.
Ticket purchases currently provide you with three things: the ability to watch the game live, the ability to watch replays on demand, and an interactivity with the observation experience. The above only addresses the first two aspects, which are currently not very competitive.
Before continuing it's important to take a second to acknowledge something about Dota2 in general: this entire economy is based on a price-discrimination model. While we want to see more revenue in Dota, if we ever see an economy where a lot more people aren't watching a tournament on a free streaming service we know something has gone very, very wrong with the ecosystem. What you want to do in a price-discrimination model is not to force people to spend money but make them want to. On one end of the spectrum, you give people a free product. On the other, you give people who have a LOT of money ways and motivation to spend a LOT of money.
Valve has gotten very, very good at this, as demonstrated between TI4 and now. If the average person should learn anything from this it's that there's always a new idea, a new way to get people to open their wallets. Unfortunately for third parties, Valve has and will always have more options in this regard than most TOs. Even more unfortunate is when Valve is putting 25% into a pot, they get to take 75% to pay everyone involved - including their artists. The TO running a tournament with 25% pot contribution gets to work with 12.5%.
It shouldn't require pointing out that price discrimination completely fails if you can make the argument that what you're paying for is worse than the free product, especially when it comes with essentially zero prestige. Thankfully, Valve is capable of implementing many fixes to DTV, TOs are capable of ideas, and the revenue split model is not written in stone.
Your love give me such a thrill...
Another way to achieve the desired end-state is to just change the goddamned equation. Let's agree on three premises:
- Tournaments bring significant positive externalities to Dota2 in growing, exciting, and informing the playerbase
- Valve is making a lot more money from this monster than they were when they originally set up the current revenue system
- Regardless, there are still costs associated with ticket sales and there are no Dota2 tournaments without Dota2
The fixed costs associated with DTV are not insignificant: there is an engineering investment for its development and maintenance, and for any major improvements like the short list above. It's probably reasonable to assume that the investment into server infrastructure is defined far more by Valve's own events than any other tournaments, with the exception of something like DAC where they realized they needed to serve DTV from outside of China.
The majority of costs associated with ticket sales, then, are the variable costs of serving DTV content. I think it's safe to assume that this consumes a very small portion of the ticket price for a premium tournament. When you add cosmetics to the mix there is the manhours cost of the personnel dedicated to the oversight and implementation of workshop cosmetics.
I think it's safe to assume that Valve does not need 62.5% to cover these expenses. The remaining argument then is that this is one of the ways Valve pays for the development and improvement of the game. Well, we have a wee problem right now:
TI5 is making a ton of money. Many tournaments have raised very impressive pots. But the playerbase is not growing with TI this time. Certainly there are factors outside of Dota contributing to this but that doesn't change it as a source of concern. When people talk about the sustainability of third-party tournaments or the sustainability of the workshop economy, one factor rules all others: how many potential customers are playing the game?
Valve needs to take seriously TO's role in the growth of the playerbase and invest. There are multiple vectors for this, such as increasing the staff dedicated to third-party tournaments, and providing local servers for major LANs (seriously: do it).
But the other way is to just give up more of their pie. I've heard many arguments from artists about the way their split comes but Valve's philosophy seems to be simple: we want you to pay players, so we'll help, we'll take our cut, and involved parties can take the rest. What do I propose?
Simple: move from single-match to 1.5-match. Keep the starting split the same 75/25. But, if a TO wants to get to the traditional 25-point pot share, now they only give up 10 points, and valve gives up 15. Valve still gets 57.5 points, but a TO has 2.5 more points to work with. This will allow them to either have more points to offer an artist (ask DC how much of a difference working with a top-tier artist like Kunkka made for them) or keep more. For Valve, five points in a tournament means almost nothing on the scale of things. For studios and artists, 2.5 points means a lot.
There are a lot of investments Valve needs to be making so let's not pretend that any one problem has a ton of money that can be thrown at it without opportunity costs. But investments sustaining third-party tournaments is very much in Valve's interest and will pay for itself if done intelligently.
You wanna take this outside?
Not everything is about Valve. Don't get it twisted - we have plenty more "what Valve should be doing" to talk about, but they aren't the only way to increase revenue.
First, let's talk about sponsorships.
Or rather, let's talk about "who is willing to throw money at a tournament" because the average TO is fucking awful at sponsorships.
Actually, let's talk about how to stop sucking at sponsorships.
I keep hearing that esports sponsorships are hard. The money is tight. The returns for sponsors are uncertain. But what I also see is organizations - teams and sites and organizers, all - failing to take an intelligent approach to getting that money. Certainly it's easier from my perspective to criticize because I'm not the one in the hot seat, scrambling to try and make sure my people get paid. But that doesn't change the fact that bad strategy is bad strategy.
The current strategy seems to be: we are hosting a Dota2 professional tournament, who has money to throw at this and how can we entice them to throw more.
This gives you sponsors like G2A, Vulcun, Twitch, whatever.
Here's what you need to think about in the future:
- What is our product, SPECIFICALLY?
- Who are the personalities coming to the event and what special marketability do they have?
- What opportunities are there for sponsor engagement?
- What are our expenses and what potential exists to reduce them through minor sponsorships?
- Who. Is. Our. Audience.
A good sponsorship is more like a partnership. When it has this feel it is more successful for the sponsor as they generate good will in the audience, it feels better for the organizers, and it provides not just money but enhancements to the event.
Let me give you an example. I live in the Bay Area. Let's say I wanted to host an invitational in San Francisco. Invitationals provide little DTV value because they have no qualifiers. I want to add some value to the ticket so I decide I'm going to have a collegiate tournament. I talk to Chegg about sponsoring such an event with scholarship money. For a few dollars more they can get some additional push in the main tournament which will have many college students watching. Even if they decide to leave it at scholarship money I now have a sponsor who is paying for the entire incentive to have local college students compete. I can talk to local universities - there are a couple of note here - about providing facilities for whatever segment of this competition, in exchange for something like a video tour of the campus and maybe airing some plugs about the university during that portion of the competition.
I now have more content for my competition even if I don't have more money from the extra parties involved (and I certainly might). And it all should feel quite organic.
Moving forward to the LAN, we're flying players from all over the world to San Francisco. What opportunities does this create? Well, depending on the format, quite a lot. We can first look at simple expenses: the players need to be flown and housed and fed. Are you talking to travel websites? Are you talking to hospitality organizations? In the words of Scrooge McDuck, money saved is money earned. I have not one time, ever, seen a sponsorship from, say, Travelocity associated with a tournament that is flying players from 5-10 countries, for fuck's sake. I find it impossible to believe there is no opportunity there. I find it impossible to believe that no major hotel in the history of Dota2 has been willing to at least provide a discount.
Now we've got players in San Francisco, an international tourist destination, for several days. Remember that sponsorships aren't just about your revenue and/or reducing your costs but also about creating a better product. How about I talk to the SF tourism board. Maybe I should talk to CityPass and see what kind of deal they're interested in. Maybe comp CityPass tickets to all the teams in exchange for a place on the sponsor banner? Maybe do more than that in exchange for some money? I bet I could get SFDOT to comp some Clipper Cards so the players can get around. Maybe we run around with a camera. Or maybe we talk to GoPro.
Twitch is here. Twitch sponsors everything but how would they like to take it to the next level for this? Let's have some pro players visit the office. Crunchyroll is here. Can you say target audience? Can you partner with them and whatever select players are interested to create some sponsored content?
I mean it goes on and on. And none of this precludes the kind of sponsor involvement that already exists. If you sit down and think about what you're doing, where you're doing it, who is doing it with you, and who will be watching, lots of ideas should come up.
What if you're just hosting a LAN inside a house? Hm, who sells stuff to PC gamer nerds for their house. Who indeed...
The other obvious thing to talk about is Twitch. I'm working on a post about Twitch that doesn't talk about monetization much but suffice it to say they have lots of work to do all around. I don't believe the site as-it-is offers a lot of opportunities for extra monetization. They have a lot of work to do.
The merchman cometh
I honestly don't have much to say about the current state of merchandising but it seems to be that it kinda sucks for TOs. And I don't know how much better it can get when the overwhelming bulk of licenses are owned by teams, players, and Valve. But, there are ways to improve it even I can see.
First, if Valve is taking an active interest in the health of the organizers they can help by leveraging their own resources to make TO merchandise cheaper to produce - even if they themselves see no profit from it. They can also make it easier to merch an event by working with TO submissions in the meatspace shop the same way they work with them for cosmetics. I don't know where exactly the boundaries are for making Dota merch with regards to heroes, the Dota logo, etc., but certainly there must be more flexibility if it's being sold through Valve's own store.
Secondly, even without third-party merchandise, TOs can contribute to the sale of existing merchandise in Valve store, and Valve can give them a cut. I don't believe the mechanism for this exists yet, but it should, and it should be part of the following approach.
I've got a golden ticket...
The great beauty of in-game tickets is the tournament is the product. With sponsors, cosmetics, merchandise...something else is the product. And that is never going to stop being the primary profit driver. But the tickets themselves need to be improved. We talked briefly earlier about bringing DTV up to par as a means to watch games. But there's much further to go than that.
Ideally, systems are created that drive revenue for each individual tournament without creating work for each individual tournament. This is what improvements to DTV broadcasting and download bring. This is the opposite of what cosmetics bring.
Outside of the broadcast itself, what have we got now?
Heroics: Drops are fucking abysmal right now. ABYSMAL. Heroics aren't even worth mentioning as a value bonus for ticket owners right now. Valve needs to really think about this.
OK! That was a short list. And the only item on it can be basically ignored.
Here's what we should have:
Fantasy: Create a fantasy league exclusively for ticket owners to premium tournaments. Have something like effigy drops for winners and high placement. Maybe you get a custom gold effigy block for #1. Do something with the trophy shelf, like highest fantasy placement and/or number of fantasy leagues placed/won. Let people buy extra entries to the fantasy league the way people buy compendium points. Have brackets, too. Give a drop of some kind as a reward for bracket correctness.
Twitch interactivity: In five years if we don't look back on Twitch today and think of it as extremely primitive they have missed massive opportunities. It's been almost two years since linking your Twitch and Steam accounts was introduced. Nothing's been done with it since. The original feature, heroic drops, has been nerfed to hell. Ticket owners could have an icon. Emotes. Their own chat channel. Much more if someone really wanted to work on it.
Golden tickets: Remember the price discrimination model. Convincing people to buy tickets is good. Giving people means/motive to spend more on a tournament improves on that. Past a point this is really all about prestige. That's the only reason we have compendium levels going up to 10,000. And that's not realistic for every tournament, but put in place systems by which EVERY tournament can give people with more money ways to spend it on pure prestige stuff. Got a ticket? Great. You get your DTV and your other stuff and a little ticket icon added to the top of your profile. Would you like to upgrade to a golden ticket? It'll cost the same as the ticket did in the first place. Now your ticket icon is gold. Now you get +1 on a trophy somewhere. Now you get an extra fantasy entry and automatically receive an effigy block stamped with the tournament's name. You look even cooler and sexier in Twitch chat and DTV chat. Maybe there's some shit we can't even think about because Valve is going to build a new site dedicated to out-of-client shit related to the competitive scene.
InterAPPtivity: (get it? I am clever). You know what sucks? Watching DTV on my TV and having to go over to my PC to unfuck it every game. You know what's amazing? Every Steam account can only be logged-in on one PC. You know what would be reasonably simple from an engineering perspective? Linking up a mobile/tablet app to your DTV experience. Give me a nice tablet interface to change perspectives. To view graphs. To switch games. To rewind. To view player profiles. Oh cool I can shop from here. Give TOs a cut of the revenue when people shop from the app while watching their tournament. There are huge possibilities here. The undeniably greatest thing about DTV is that, unless you have a shitty PC, the picture quality is fucking unimpeachible. It's an overwhelmingly better picture for your big living room TV. But your living room TV probably doesn't have your PC's mouse and keyboard attached to it. So work that angle. With a second screen, there's a lot there.
That's it.
That's all you have to do. All of the above. Twitch, Valve, TOs. A mere pittance of work. You also need to come up with some goddamned ideas. But here's what we've got:
- Valve, make DTV better to watch
- Valve, give up a little more of your ticket revenue
- Valve, make merchandising easier for TOs
- Valve, create serious added value to owning a ticket AROUND the competition
- Valve, make some damned apps and let me control DTV from the kitchen or what the fuck ever
- Valve, start incentivizing people driving traffic to your store and market (RIP Hattery)
- Twitch, keep the pressure on. Your viewer experience is competing with Valve's solely by the grace of your broadcasters. Provide them better technology and more routes for monetization
- Twitch, give ticket owners more of a boost when watching games on your site. This is beneficial for everyone.
- Twitch, the organization of your website is fucking terrible and this includes how competitive is handled. More about this in a coming post.
- Tournament organizers, suck less at sponsorships, and do better with the DTV tools you have now. I'm looking at you, Godz.
- Everyone: ideate. Identify problems, think about where you want to be, and build a bridge.
Simple.
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On June 08 2015 07:03 FHDH wrote: Thanks for posting this LD. I have read quite a lot at Polycount from Anuxi and others about the other side of this issue and I care a lot about the workshop artists both from the perspective of someone who respects artists and the struggles they often face, and more specifically as a cosmetic collector to whom workshop artists have brought much joy.
I also have a great appreciation for BTS and other third-party organizations who do an honest job of trying to produce some quality competitive Dota. Right now this system is causing difficulties for both artists and TOs. So let's grind on it a bit more.
...
Simple.
I'm speachless dude, Its like you broke out of your cocoon of troll posts into a beautiful discussion contributing butterfly.
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On June 07 2015 23:35 StarVe wrote: Yeah he said Twitch revenue was insignificant, but he also said PROFIT from TICKETS was low, there aren't really a lot of expenses going into BTS putting up a ticket for a tournament. Yea, how about it. Just plane tickets within 30 days for about 60 people(off the head count), building 40 brand new computers with HD's for each individual player. Last minute hotel costs, and who needs equipment to produce DotA on a couch right?
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On June 08 2015 08:34 gaijindash wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2015 07:03 FHDH wrote: Thanks for posting this LD. I have read quite a lot at Polycount from Anuxi and others about the other side of this issue and I care a lot about the workshop artists both from the perspective of someone who respects artists and the struggles they often face, and more specifically as a cosmetic collector to whom workshop artists have brought much joy.
I also have a great appreciation for BTS and other third-party organizations who do an honest job of trying to produce some quality competitive Dota. Right now this system is causing difficulties for both artists and TOs. So let's grind on it a bit more.
...
Simple. I'm speachless dude, Its like you broke out of your cocoon of troll posts into a beautiful discussion contributing butterfly. All of my posts are extremely serious
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On June 08 2015 09:20 FHDH wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2015 08:34 gaijindash wrote:On June 08 2015 07:03 FHDH wrote: Thanks for posting this LD. I have read quite a lot at Polycount from Anuxi and others about the other side of this issue and I care a lot about the workshop artists both from the perspective of someone who respects artists and the struggles they often face, and more specifically as a cosmetic collector to whom workshop artists have brought much joy.
I also have a great appreciation for BTS and other third-party organizations who do an honest job of trying to produce some quality competitive Dota. Right now this system is causing difficulties for both artists and TOs. So let's grind on it a bit more.
...
Simple. I'm speachless dude, Its like you broke out of your cocoon of troll posts into a beautiful discussion contributing butterfly. All of my posts are extremely serious
I always knew you were a smart guy ^_^
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On June 08 2015 09:20 FHDH wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2015 08:34 gaijindash wrote:On June 08 2015 07:03 FHDH wrote: Thanks for posting this LD. I have read quite a lot at Polycount from Anuxi and others about the other side of this issue and I care a lot about the workshop artists both from the perspective of someone who respects artists and the struggles they often face, and more specifically as a cosmetic collector to whom workshop artists have brought much joy.
I also have a great appreciation for BTS and other third-party organizations who do an honest job of trying to produce some quality competitive Dota. Right now this system is causing difficulties for both artists and TOs. So let's grind on it a bit more.
...
Simple. I'm speachless dude, Its like you broke out of your cocoon of troll posts into a beautiful discussion contributing butterfly. All of my posts are extremely serious
On May 19 2015 14:02 FHDH wrote: Jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler TECHIES, TECHIES Jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler TECHIES TECHIES Jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler jungler TECHIES TECHIES SHAAAAAADOW BLAAAAADE IS GOOD ON EVERY CAAARRYYY Hue
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+ Show Spoiler +On June 08 2015 07:03 FHDH wrote:Thanks for posting this LD. I have read quite a lot at Polycount from Anuxi and others about the other side of this issue and I care a lot about the workshop artists both from the perspective of someone who respects artists and the struggles they often face, and more specifically as a cosmetic collector to whom workshop artists have brought much joy. I also have a great appreciation for BTS and other third-party organizations who do an honest job of trying to produce some quality competitive Dota. Right now this system is causing difficulties for both artists and TOs. So let's grind on it a bit more. Defining the problem set- Artists feel beholden to third-party organizations to get their work published and get paid
- Tournament organizers have limited options for revenue streams
- Tournament tickets themselves, independent of bundled items, add only marginal value
- Bundled cosmetics dominate the drive for ticket sales
- As a consequence of these things, and the current revenue split model, TOs and artists depend on each-other and must divide a meager percentage of ticket revenue between them
OK so if you literally just tuned into the thread I think you've got the basics. What's our desired end-state?It's not enough just to know what the problems are. What you need to define is a desired end-state. Doing this will help you separate desired results and possible means. The problems of the workshop economy are manifold so I think what we want to do is define this from the perspective of TOs with the objective of at least not making the problems artists face worse. I propose that our desired end-state is one in which tournament organizers can generate significantly greater internalized revenue in total AND in proportion to the work put in by workshop artists.If this is accomplished: - TOs will be less reliant on artists
- As a consequence, Valve can - not necessarily will, but can - comfortably release more cosmetics independent of tournament bundles
- TOs will generate more revenue for the same product
So how do we accomplish this? Let's break it apart. What's a tournament ticket without a bundle?It's just DotaTV access, right? One avenue of increasing the value of the ticket itself is in simply improving DotaTV. I personally love DotaTV. I use it all the time. And that's why, from a viewer perspective, I can talk about all the shit that's wrong with it. And it's a lot. While the challenges DTV gives producers are important, this is about increasing the value of a DTV ticket, not making things easier for PimpmuckL et al. Unfortunately we have no idea what's happening to DTV with Source2, so let's assume none of this is being fixed. Since we want to add value to tickets and DTV is the core product of a ticket, let's talk about that value. - Unfuck audio. Give us a bit better of a codec, and fix whatever it is that's making us lose casters on a regular basis.
- Give us the option of following a broadcast, taking us from game-to-game.
- Provide, at the least, uninterrupted audio between games.
- To go with this, give some kind of visual bridge broadcasters can use to communicate what is going on if there is no video.
- Fix all the damn player perspective bugs.
- Fix DTV lag that doesn't show up in streams.
- Completely rework the replay interface. A tournament isn't just a list of games.
- Create significantly more robust replay download options. Give us a download manager and the ability to subscribe. Let us download a whole series - and give us a series interface in-replay so we can skip ahead to the next game at will - or go on auto-play.
- Move that goddamned bar at the bottom so it's easier to inspect sets.
Many things could be done that would improve broadcasting also but our focus is on increasing the value of a ticket, and most of these fixes are just about bringing the DTV experience in some aspects closer to par with watching a game on a streaming service. And this is a very quick pass if I'm honest. Ticket purchases currently provide you with three things: the ability to watch the game live, the ability to watch replays on demand, and an interactivity with the observation experience. The above only addresses the first two aspects, which are currently not very competitive. Before continuing it's important to take a second to acknowledge something about Dota2 in general: this entire economy is based on a price-discrimination model. While we want to see more revenue in Dota, if we ever see an economy where a lot more people aren't watching a tournament on a free streaming service we know something has gone very, very wrong with the ecosystem. What you want to do in a price-discrimination model is not to force people to spend money but make them want to. On one end of the spectrum, you give people a free product. On the other, you give people who have a LOT of money ways and motivation to spend a LOT of money. Valve has gotten very, very good at this, as demonstrated between TI4 and now. If the average person should learn anything from this it's that there's always a new idea, a new way to get people to open their wallets. Unfortunately for third parties, Valve has and will always have more options in this regard than most TOs. Even more unfortunate is when Valve is putting 25% into a pot, they get to take 75% to pay everyone involved - including their artists. The TO running a tournament with 25% pot contribution gets to work with 12.5%. It shouldn't require pointing out that price discrimination completely fails if you can make the argument that what you're paying for is worse than the free product, especially when it comes with essentially zero prestige. Thankfully, Valve is capable of implementing many fixes to DTV, TOs are capable of ideas, and the revenue split model is not written in stone. Your love give me such a thrill...Another way to achieve the desired end-state is to just change the goddamned equation. Let's agree on three premises: - Tournaments bring significant positive externalities to Dota2 in growing, exciting, and informing the playerbase
- Valve is making a lot more money from this monster than they were when they originally set up the current revenue system
- Regardless, there are still costs associated with ticket sales and there are no Dota2 tournaments without Dota2
The fixed costs associated with DTV are not insignificant: there is an engineering investment for its development and maintenance, and for any major improvements like the short list above. It's probably reasonable to assume that the investment into server infrastructure is defined far more by Valve's own events than any other tournaments, with the exception of something like DAC where they realized they needed to serve DTV from outside of China. The majority of costs associated with ticket sales, then, are the variable costs of serving DTV content. I think it's safe to assume that this consumes a very small portion of the ticket price for a premium tournament. When you add cosmetics to the mix there is the manhours cost of the personnel dedicated to the oversight and implementation of workshop cosmetics. I think it's safe to assume that Valve does not need 62.5% to cover these expenses. The remaining argument then is that this is one of the ways Valve pays for the development and improvement of the game. Well, we have a wee problem right now: TI5 is making a ton of money. Many tournaments have raised very impressive pots. But the playerbase is not growing with TI this time. Certainly there are factors outside of Dota contributing to this but that doesn't change it as a source of concern. When people talk about the sustainability of third-party tournaments or the sustainability of the workshop economy, one factor rules all others: how many potential customers are playing the game? Valve needs to take seriously TO's role in the growth of the playerbase and invest. There are multiple vectors for this, such as increasing the staff dedicated to third-party tournaments, and providing local servers for major LANs (seriously: do it). But the other way is to just give up more of their pie. I've heard many arguments from artists about the way their split comes but Valve's philosophy seems to be simple: we want you to pay players, so we'll help, we'll take our cut, and involved parties can take the rest. What do I propose? Simple: move from single-match to 1.5-match. Keep the starting split the same 75/25. But, if a TO wants to get to the traditional 25-point pot share, now they only give up 10 points, and valve gives up 15. Valve still gets 57.5 points, but a TO has 2.5 more points to work with. This will allow them to either have more points to offer an artist (ask DC how much of a difference working with a top-tier artist like Kunkka made for them) or keep more. For Valve, five points in a tournament means almost nothing on the scale of things. For studios and artists, 2.5 points means a lot. There are a lot of investments Valve needs to be making so let's not pretend that any one problem has a ton of money that can be thrown at it without opportunity costs. But investments sustaining third-party tournaments is very much in Valve's interest and will pay for itself if done intelligently. You wanna take this outside?Not everything is about Valve. Don't get it twisted - we have plenty more "what Valve should be doing" to talk about, but they aren't the only way to increase revenue. First, let's talk about sponsorships. Or rather, let's talk about "who is willing to throw money at a tournament" because the average TO is fucking awful at sponsorships. Actually, let's talk about how to stop sucking at sponsorships. I keep hearing that esports sponsorships are hard. The money is tight. The returns for sponsors are uncertain. But what I also see is organizations - teams and sites and organizers, all - failing to take an intelligent approach to getting that money. Certainly it's easier from my perspective to criticize because I'm not the one in the hot seat, scrambling to try and make sure my people get paid. But that doesn't change the fact that bad strategy is bad strategy. The current strategy seems to be: we are hosting a Dota2 professional tournament, who has money to throw at this and how can we entice them to throw more. This gives you sponsors like G2A, Vulcun, Twitch, whatever. Here's what you need to think about in the future: - What is our product, SPECIFICALLY?
- Who are the personalities coming to the event and what special marketability do they have?
- What opportunities are there for sponsor engagement?
- What are our expenses and what potential exists to reduce them through minor sponsorships?
- Who. Is. Our. Audience.
A good sponsorship is more like a partnership. When it has this feel it is more successful for the sponsor as they generate good will in the audience, it feels better for the organizers, and it provides not just money but enhancements to the event. Let me give you an example. I live in the Bay Area. Let's say I wanted to host an invitational in San Francisco. Invitationals provide little DTV value because they have no qualifiers. I want to add some value to the ticket so I decide I'm going to have a collegiate tournament. I talk to Chegg about sponsoring such an event with scholarship money. For a few dollars more they can get some additional push in the main tournament which will have many college students watching. Even if they decide to leave it at scholarship money I now have a sponsor who is paying for the entire incentive to have local college students compete. I can talk to local universities - there are a couple of note here - about providing facilities for whatever segment of this competition, in exchange for something like a video tour of the campus and maybe airing some plugs about the university during that portion of the competition. I now have more content for my competition even if I don't have more money from the extra parties involved (and I certainly might). And it all should feel quite organic. Moving forward to the LAN, we're flying players from all over the world to San Francisco. What opportunities does this create? Well, depending on the format, quite a lot. We can first look at simple expenses: the players need to be flown and housed and fed. Are you talking to travel websites? Are you talking to hospitality organizations? In the words of Scrooge McDuck, money saved is money earned. I have not one time, ever, seen a sponsorship from, say, Travelocity associated with a tournament that is flying players from 5-10 countries, for fuck's sake. I find it impossible to believe there is no opportunity there. I find it impossible to believe that no major hotel in the history of Dota2 has been willing to at least provide a discount. Now we've got players in San Francisco, an international tourist destination, for several days. Remember that sponsorships aren't just about your revenue and/or reducing your costs but also about creating a better product. How about I talk to the SF tourism board. Maybe I should talk to CityPass and see what kind of deal they're interested in. Maybe comp CityPass tickets to all the teams in exchange for a place on the sponsor banner? Maybe do more than that in exchange for some money? I bet I could get SFDOT to comp some Clipper Cards so the players can get around. Maybe we run around with a camera. Or maybe we talk to GoPro. Twitch is here. Twitch sponsors everything but how would they like to take it to the next level for this? Let's have some pro players visit the office. Crunchyroll is here. Can you say target audience? Can you partner with them and whatever select players are interested to create some sponsored content? I mean it goes on and on. And none of this precludes the kind of sponsor involvement that already exists. If you sit down and think about what you're doing, where you're doing it, who is doing it with you, and who will be watching, lots of ideas should come up. What if you're just hosting a LAN inside a house? Hm, who sells stuff to PC gamer nerds for their house. Who indeed...The other obvious thing to talk about is Twitch. I'm working on a post about Twitch that doesn't talk about monetization much but suffice it to say they have lots of work to do all around. I don't believe the site as-it-is offers a lot of opportunities for extra monetization. They have a lot of work to do. The merchman comethI honestly don't have much to say about the current state of merchandising but it seems to be that it kinda sucks for TOs. And I don't know how much better it can get when the overwhelming bulk of licenses are owned by teams, players, and Valve. But, there are ways to improve it even I can see. First, if Valve is taking an active interest in the health of the organizers they can help by leveraging their own resources to make TO merchandise cheaper to produce - even if they themselves see no profit from it. They can also make it easier to merch an event by working with TO submissions in the meatspace shop the same way they work with them for cosmetics. I don't know where exactly the boundaries are for making Dota merch with regards to heroes, the Dota logo, etc., but certainly there must be more flexibility if it's being sold through Valve's own store. Secondly, even without third-party merchandise, TOs can contribute to the sale of existing merchandise in Valve store, and Valve can give them a cut. I don't believe the mechanism for this exists yet, but it should, and it should be part of the following approach. I've got a golden ticket...The great beauty of in-game tickets is the tournament is the product. With sponsors, cosmetics, merchandise...something else is the product. And that is never going to stop being the primary profit driver. But the tickets themselves need to be improved. We talked briefly earlier about bringing DTV up to par as a means to watch games. But there's much further to go than that. Ideally, systems are created that drive revenue for each individual tournament without creating work for each individual tournament. This is what improvements to DTV broadcasting and download bring. This is the opposite of what cosmetics bring. Outside of the broadcast itself, what have we got now? Heroics: Drops are fucking abysmal right now. ABYSMAL. Heroics aren't even worth mentioning as a value bonus for ticket owners right now. Valve needs to really think about this. OK! That was a short list. And the only item on it can be basically ignored. Here's what we should have: Fantasy: Create a fantasy league exclusively for ticket owners to premium tournaments. Have something like effigy drops for winners and high placement. Maybe you get a custom gold effigy block for #1. Do something with the trophy shelf, like highest fantasy placement and/or number of fantasy leagues placed/won. Let people buy extra entries to the fantasy league the way people buy compendium points. Have brackets, too. Give a drop of some kind as a reward for bracket correctness. Twitch interactivity: In five years if we don't look back on Twitch today and think of it as extremely primitive they have missed massive opportunities. It's been almost two years since linking your Twitch and Steam accounts was introduced. Nothing's been done with it since. The original feature, heroic drops, has been nerfed to hell. Ticket owners could have an icon. Emotes. Their own chat channel. Much more if someone really wanted to work on it. Golden tickets: Remember the price discrimination model. Convincing people to buy tickets is good. Giving people means/motive to spend more on a tournament improves on that. Past a point this is really all about prestige. That's the only reason we have compendium levels going up to 10,000. And that's not realistic for every tournament, but put in place systems by which EVERY tournament can give people with more money ways to spend it on pure prestige stuff. Got a ticket? Great. You get your DTV and your other stuff and a little ticket icon added to the top of your profile. Would you like to upgrade to a golden ticket? It'll cost the same as the ticket did in the first place. Now your ticket icon is gold. Now you get +1 on a trophy somewhere. Now you get an extra fantasy entry and automatically receive an effigy block stamped with the tournament's name. You look even cooler and sexier in Twitch chat and DTV chat. Maybe there's some shit we can't even think about because Valve is going to build a new site dedicated to out-of-client shit related to the competitive scene. InterAPPtivity: (get it? I am clever). You know what sucks? Watching DTV on my TV and having to go over to my PC to unfuck it every game. You know what's amazing? Every Steam account can only be logged-in on one PC. You know what would be reasonably simple from an engineering perspective? Linking up a mobile/tablet app to your DTV experience. Give me a nice tablet interface to change perspectives. To view graphs. To switch games. To rewind. To view player profiles. Oh cool I can shop from here. Give TOs a cut of the revenue when people shop from the app while watching their tournament. There are huge possibilities here. The undeniably greatest thing about DTV is that, unless you have a shitty PC, the picture quality is fucking unimpeachible. It's an overwhelmingly better picture for your big living room TV. But your living room TV probably doesn't have your PC's mouse and keyboard attached to it. So work that angle. With a second screen, there's a lot there. That's it.That's all you have to do. All of the above. Twitch, Valve, TOs. A mere pittance of work. You also need to come up with some goddamned ideas. But here's what we've got: - Valve, make DTV better to watch
- Valve, give up a little more of your ticket revenue
- Valve, make merchandising easier for TOs
- Valve, create serious added value to owning a ticket AROUND the competition
- Valve, make some damned apps and let me control DTV from the kitchen or what the fuck ever
- Valve, start incentivizing people driving traffic to your store and market (RIP Hattery)
- Twitch, keep the pressure on. Your viewer experience is competing with Valve's solely by the grace of your broadcasters. Provide them better technology and more routes for monetization
- Twitch, give ticket owners more of a boost when watching games on your site. This is beneficial for everyone.
- Twitch, the organization of your website is fucking terrible and this includes how competitive is handled. More about this in a coming post.
- Tournament organizers, suck less at sponsorships, and do better with the DTV tools you have now. I'm looking at you, Godz.
- Everyone: ideate. Identify problems, think about where you want to be, and build a bridge.
Simple.
This is the simple problem with everything you suggested. It's more work and investment for everybody else other than the party that is complaining, the artists. Look at your list of actions: 6 of them are for Valve including one that is telling them to straight up hand out money, 3 of them are for Twitch, 1 for 3rd Party TO, and Zero for artist. Even the community who have no financial interest in the system are asked to come up with ideas. It seems that it is up to everybody else to make the system better for the artists.
Ironically, some of your suggestions would be excellent in the absence of hats. If hats weren't selling tickets, I can assure you that Valve would invest more into DotaTV in the ways you suggested to make the ticket more valuable. As of right now, it is simply not worthwhile for them to do so.
We never know though, Valve may be preparing something big with Spectating with their upcoming VR stuff. Also, I think the Steam Link will probably fix your desire for Apps to improve your TV watching experience.
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I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from with this response.
First, what makes you think only the artists are complaining? The original post here is LD saying "we have it hard too." Literally my entire post is focused on the need for TOs to have more ways to make money than hats. Lati dati everybody agrees that the current reliance on hats to support third-party tournaments is problematic. I love hats. I love hats that come with tournaments. But it's not a good system long-term to have that be the only way of driving ticket sales. It is, frankly, lazy.
Secondly, of course most of the suggested work is for Valve. Valve are the developers. They have the bulk of responsibility for what tools exist, and they get the lion's share of the rewards when people spend money on Dota2 digital goods. It's not asking them to "give away money" to ask that they go from keeping 62.5% of ticket/cosmetic revenue when a TO is doing a standard 25% contribution to 57.5. It's asking them to keep marginally less revenue - revenue that is being driven by the third parties, who are often stretched.
I quite clearly stated that the problems of the workshop economy are myriad and I wasn't going to address it from the artist's standpoint, I was merely going to try to figure out how to address the concerns from the TO perspective without making the issues the artists are dealing with worse. I said this quite clearly. And frankly I don't know what you think the artists can do. Art harder? Art less? They are already working with the system as it exists the best they can - or quitting it altogether. They cannot change the system.
Twitch? They have positioned themselves as the overwhelmingly dominant figure in western esports broadcasting. We have a right to ask them to treat this as a great responsibility. Saying they can improve their product is not something revolutionary nor is it some handout for artists - something my post wasn't even about.
And by "everybody" I actually meant the vested parties. But the community does care. I'm not a vested party and I have a lot of concern with this. I can talk about esports shit all damn day.
As far as Steam Link goes, it's not at all a replacement for my suggestion. Valve may or may not think it is, but it's really really not. The possibilities that exist with being able to link your existing touch-screen devices to your spectating experience are massive compared to basically creating a wireless triangle with your controller, TV, and PC.
You're right though: if hats weren't so successful right now Valve would have motivation to invest more into DTV. But they are missing an opportunity if they are not investing in DTV. I believe they are; frankly we don't know what they're doing but I know they are slowly working the problem, even if their goals are not as ambitious as I'd like them to be. And again, unlike cosmetics made unique for each tournament, improving DTV and the value of a ticket is a boost to all ticket sales. Artists are expensive. Engineers are also expensive. Unlike artists, though, engineers make systems. Systems can sell tickets too.
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On June 08 2015 13:42 FHDH wrote: I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from with this response.
First, what makes you think only the artists are complaining? The original post here is LD saying "we have it hard too." Literally my entire post is focused on the need for TOs to have more ways to make money than hats. Lati dati everybody agrees that the current reliance on hats to support third-party tournaments is problematic. I love hats. I love hats that come with tournaments. But it's not a good system long-term to have that be the only way of driving ticket sales. It is, frankly, lazy.
Secondly, of course most of the suggested work is for Valve. Valve are the developers. They have the bulk of responsibility for what tools exist, and they get the lion's share of the rewards when people spend money on Dota2 digital goods. It's not asking them to "give away money" to ask that they go from keeping 62.5% of ticket/cosmetic revenue when a TO is doing a standard 25% contribution to 57.5. It's asking them to keep marginally less revenue - revenue that is being driven by the third parties, who are often stretched.
I quite clearly stated that the problems of the workshop economy are myriad and I wasn't going to address it from the artist's standpoint, I was merely going to try to figure out how to address the concerns from the TO perspective without making the issues the artists are dealing with worse. I said this quite clearly. And frankly I don't know what you think the artists can do. Art harder? Art less? They are already working with the system as it exists the best they can - or quitting it altogether. They cannot change the system.
Twitch? They have positioned themselves as the overwhelmingly dominant figure in western esports broadcasting. We have a right to ask them to treat this as a great responsibility. Saying they can improve their product is not something revolutionary nor is it some handout for artists - something my post wasn't even about.
And by "everybody" I actually meant the vested parties. But the community does care. I'm not a vested party and I have a lot of concern with this. I can talk about esports shit all damn day.
As far as Steam Link goes, it's not at all a replacement for my suggestion. Valve may or may not think it is, but it's really really not. The possibilities that exist with being able to link your existing touch-screen devices to your spectating experience are massive compared to basically creating a wireless triangle with your controller, TV, and PC.
You're right though: if hats weren't so successful right now Valve would have motivation to invest more into DTV. But they are missing an opportunity if they are not investing in DTV. I believe they are; frankly we don't know what they're doing but I know they are slowly working the problem, even if their goals are not as ambitious as I'd like them to be. And again, unlike cosmetics made unique for each tournament, improving DTV and the value of a ticket is a boost to all ticket sales. Artists are expensive. Engineers are also expensive. Unlike artists, though, engineers make systems. Systems can sell tickets too.
This is from LD's post: "I've had my own thoughts on this subject for a long time, but they were never fleshed out enough where I felt comfortable sharing them publicly. Finally today, I stumbled across a discussion on Reddit where a workshop artist was arguing that the current system needs to be changed or even abolished outright.
I don't disagree, but I feel it's long overdue for someone on the other side of the fence to share the perspective of broadcasters and tournament organizers. I love this game, and it pains me to see people pointing fingers at each other and missing the elephant in the room. To me, it seems obvious the core problem isn't greedy/selfish organizers (although there are certainly plenty who exist); the core problem is that the system we have now is inherently flawed."
The motivation to state the TO side of the issue publicly came at least partially from an artist complaining.
Valve: 5% is not marginally less revenue especially when the profit margin of this specific source of revenue is extremely high. Even if it was 1% or 0.1% what exactly are they trading this revenue in exchange for? Again, what is the incentive for Valve to do the things you suggested? It is obvious that DotaTV can be improved and in turn will provide an increase in the value of tickets, but is it worthwhile for Valve to do something right now? I doubt the marginal gain for them is worthwhile.
TO will make money through other methods. Sponsorships and Ads are mainstream ways. I never understood why people (viewers) won't spend a few minutes of their time to give back to the TO by not using Adblock. Those same people turn around and call the TO selfish. Of course the TO can come up innovative ways to monetize but that is up to them.
Twitch does not have some great responsibility.
I didn't mean that Steam Link was a replacement for an app. I just wanted to point out that it may improve your viewing experience since you mentioned somewhere in your first post that you had to go to your PC to fix DTV when watching it on your TV.
My point is that all this discussion is about a non issue. The negotiations are between Valve and TO and Valve and the artists directly. No amount of public discussion, people taking sides, or pointing fingers will change that fact. Valve can easily make a power move and may have already by announcing that they are doing the Majors inhouse.
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Don't know what to tell you. There's some pretty clear logic to what I'm saying but it requires not skipping around from A to F to C to L.
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why don't the artists form a guild or union or something then they can demand profit share.
feel likes they are getting shafted because they are scattered and without strong representation.
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On June 08 2015 14:57 Reson wrote: ... TO will make money through other methods. Sponsorships and Ads are mainstream ways. I never understood why people (viewers) won't spend a few minutes of their time to give back to the TO by not using Adblock. Those same people turn around and call the TO selfish. Of course the TO can come up innovative ways to monetize but that is up to them. ...
I use adblock always because my internet is slow and unreliable and adverts are always super high quality and lag loads, ive turned off adblock when watching things multiple times...but then there's always been something that has made me turn it back on.
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This blog post isn't really about artists or organizers or tournaments, it's Valve and the dota economy. I think it's much better than the setup Riot has but it's not perfect. I think organizers need to be more creative than just making compendiums if they want to capture money outside of valve dollars.
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Sanya12364 Posts
We need more #SELLOUT studio complaints. Seriously. What do these studios expect us to do?
Pay for anything, or sit through any ads, or see any form of product placement?
Ultimately, Valve dollars means going through valve and valve will be asserting intellectual property and the such. Maybe it's not such a great idea. A bit more in depths on the challenges would also be nice.
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On June 08 2015 17:22 haduken wrote: why don't the artists form a guild or union or something then they can demand profit share.
feel likes they are getting shafted because they are scattered and without strong representation. Unions are hard to form and they all would need to pay in. Its not a simple task and they all would need to be on the same page. Plus, not all the artists are in the same country.
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On June 07 2015 12:28 lestye wrote:It's kinda nonsensical that grouping with a tournament gets you past the review process over people who've had great sets for months and months.
Dear Workshop Artists,
Welcome to the real world.
It's simply a part of doing business that better marketing can overcome having a lesser product. This happens all the time and its exactly why companies spend so much money on marketing. You can't sell your product if no one knows it exists.
Tournament organizers have figured out that tournaments are a great way to advertise cosmetics. If the Workshop Artists don't want to give the tournaments a cut of their profits then they don't have to partner with them. If the supply of good Workshop Artists was lower than the demand then they would have more bargaining power. The fact that they don't seem to have that bargaining power suggests to me that there's always another artist you can get if the first person says no.
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On June 08 2015 14:57 Reson wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2015 13:42 FHDH wrote: I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from with this response.
First, what makes you think only the artists are complaining? The original post here is LD saying "we have it hard too." Literally my entire post is focused on the need for TOs to have more ways to make money than hats. Lati dati everybody agrees that the current reliance on hats to support third-party tournaments is problematic. I love hats. I love hats that come with tournaments. But it's not a good system long-term to have that be the only way of driving ticket sales. It is, frankly, lazy.
Secondly, of course most of the suggested work is for Valve. Valve are the developers. They have the bulk of responsibility for what tools exist, and they get the lion's share of the rewards when people spend money on Dota2 digital goods. It's not asking them to "give away money" to ask that they go from keeping 62.5% of ticket/cosmetic revenue when a TO is doing a standard 25% contribution to 57.5. It's asking them to keep marginally less revenue - revenue that is being driven by the third parties, who are often stretched.
I quite clearly stated that the problems of the workshop economy are myriad and I wasn't going to address it from the artist's standpoint, I was merely going to try to figure out how to address the concerns from the TO perspective without making the issues the artists are dealing with worse. I said this quite clearly. And frankly I don't know what you think the artists can do. Art harder? Art less? They are already working with the system as it exists the best they can - or quitting it altogether. They cannot change the system.
Twitch? They have positioned themselves as the overwhelmingly dominant figure in western esports broadcasting. We have a right to ask them to treat this as a great responsibility. Saying they can improve their product is not something revolutionary nor is it some handout for artists - something my post wasn't even about.
And by "everybody" I actually meant the vested parties. But the community does care. I'm not a vested party and I have a lot of concern with this. I can talk about esports shit all damn day.
As far as Steam Link goes, it's not at all a replacement for my suggestion. Valve may or may not think it is, but it's really really not. The possibilities that exist with being able to link your existing touch-screen devices to your spectating experience are massive compared to basically creating a wireless triangle with your controller, TV, and PC.
You're right though: if hats weren't so successful right now Valve would have motivation to invest more into DTV. But they are missing an opportunity if they are not investing in DTV. I believe they are; frankly we don't know what they're doing but I know they are slowly working the problem, even if their goals are not as ambitious as I'd like them to be. And again, unlike cosmetics made unique for each tournament, improving DTV and the value of a ticket is a boost to all ticket sales. Artists are expensive. Engineers are also expensive. Unlike artists, though, engineers make systems. Systems can sell tickets too. This is from LD's post: "I've had my own thoughts on this subject for a long time, but they were never fleshed out enough where I felt comfortable sharing them publicly. Finally today, I stumbled across a discussion on Reddit where a workshop artist was arguing that the current system needs to be changed or even abolished outright. I don't disagree, but I feel it's long overdue for someone on the other side of the fence to share the perspective of broadcasters and tournament organizers. I love this game, and it pains me to see people pointing fingers at each other and missing the elephant in the room. To me, it seems obvious the core problem isn't greedy/selfish organizers (although there are certainly plenty who exist); the core problem is that the system we have now is inherently flawed." The motivation to state the TO side of the issue publicly came at least partially from an artist complaining. Valve: 5% is not marginally less revenue especially when the profit margin of this specific source of revenue is extremely high. Even if it was 1% or 0.1% what exactly are they trading this revenue in exchange for? Again, what is the incentive for Valve to do the things you suggested? It is obvious that DotaTV can be improved and in turn will provide an increase in the value of tickets, but is it worthwhile for Valve to do something right now? I doubt the marginal gain for them is worthwhile. TO will make money through other methods. Sponsorships and Ads are mainstream ways. I never understood why people (viewers) won't spend a few minutes of their time to give back to the TO by not using Adblock. Those same people turn around and call the TO selfish. Of course the TO can come up innovative ways to monetize but that is up to them. Twitch does not have some great responsibility. I didn't mean that Steam Link was a replacement for an app. I just wanted to point out that it may improve your viewing experience since you mentioned somewhere in your first post that you had to go to your PC to fix DTV when watching it on your TV. My point is that all this discussion is about a non issue. The negotiations are between Valve and TO and Valve and the artists directly. No amount of public discussion, people taking sides, or pointing fingers will change that fact. Valve can easily make a power move and may have already by announcing that they are doing the Majors inhouse.
I don't think you understood the issue.
Currently TOs, Valve and artists are bridged through DTV/tickets. This bridge is shitty looking, uncomfortable to walk over and is likely to fail in the future.
Involved parties need to either: a) burn the shitty bridge down and find alternative ways; or b) make a fucking shiny, golden, laser-smoke-fireworks-effects-capable express way out of that shitty bridge.
Also: Twitch does have great responsibility. What exactly the responsibility is or how it's implemented it's probably their own/their partners business, but the responsibility exists.
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On June 08 2015 07:03 FHDH wrote:Thanks for posting this LD. I have read quite a lot at Polycount from Anuxi and others about the other side of this issue and I care a lot about the workshop artists both from the perspective of someone who respects artists and the struggles they often face, and more specifically as a cosmetic collector to whom workshop artists have brought much joy. I also have a great appreciation for BTS and other third-party organizations who do an honest job of trying to produce some quality competitive Dota. Right now this system is causing difficulties for both artists and TOs. So let's grind on it a bit more. Defining the problem set- Artists feel beholden to third-party organizations to get their work published and get paid
- Tournament organizers have limited options for revenue streams
- Tournament tickets themselves, independent of bundled items, add only marginal value
- Bundled cosmetics dominate the drive for ticket sales
- As a consequence of these things, and the current revenue split model, TOs and artists depend on each-other and must divide a meager percentage of ticket revenue between them
OK so if you literally just tuned into the thread I think you've got the basics. What's our desired end-state?It's not enough just to know what the problems are. What you need to define is a desired end-state. Doing this will help you separate desired results and possible means. The problems of the workshop economy are manifold so I think what we want to do is define this from the perspective of TOs with the objective of at least not making the problems artists face worse. I propose that our desired end-state is one in which tournament organizers can generate significantly greater internalized revenue in total AND in proportion to the work put in by workshop artists.If this is accomplished: - TOs will be less reliant on artists
- As a consequence, Valve can - not necessarily will, but can - comfortably release more cosmetics independent of tournament bundles
- TOs will generate more revenue for the same product
So how do we accomplish this? Let's break it apart. What's a tournament ticket without a bundle?It's just DotaTV access, right? One avenue of increasing the value of the ticket itself is in simply improving DotaTV. I personally love DotaTV. I use it all the time. And that's why, from a viewer perspective, I can talk about all the shit that's wrong with it. And it's a lot. While the challenges DTV gives producers are important, this is about increasing the value of a DTV ticket, not making things easier for PimpmuckL et al. Unfortunately we have no idea what's happening to DTV with Source2, so let's assume none of this is being fixed. Since we want to add value to tickets and DTV is the core product of a ticket, let's talk about that value. - Unfuck audio. Give us a bit better of a codec, and fix whatever it is that's making us lose casters on a regular basis.
- Give us the option of following a broadcast, taking us from game-to-game.
- Provide, at the least, uninterrupted audio between games.
- To go with this, give some kind of visual bridge broadcasters can use to communicate what is going on if there is no video.
- Fix all the damn player perspective bugs.
- Fix DTV lag that doesn't show up in streams.
- Completely rework the replay interface. A tournament isn't just a list of games.
- Create significantly more robust replay download options. Give us a download manager and the ability to subscribe. Let us download a whole series - and give us a series interface in-replay so we can skip ahead to the next game at will - or go on auto-play.
- Move that goddamned bar at the bottom so it's easier to inspect sets.
Many things could be done that would improve broadcasting also but our focus is on increasing the value of a ticket, and most of these fixes are just about bringing the DTV experience in some aspects closer to par with watching a game on a streaming service. And this is a very quick pass if I'm honest. Ticket purchases currently provide you with three things: the ability to watch the game live, the ability to watch replays on demand, and an interactivity with the observation experience. The above only addresses the first two aspects, which are currently not very competitive. Before continuing it's important to take a second to acknowledge something about Dota2 in general: this entire economy is based on a price-discrimination model. While we want to see more revenue in Dota, if we ever see an economy where a lot more people aren't watching a tournament on a free streaming service we know something has gone very, very wrong with the ecosystem. What you want to do in a price-discrimination model is not to force people to spend money but make them want to. On one end of the spectrum, you give people a free product. On the other, you give people who have a LOT of money ways and motivation to spend a LOT of money. Valve has gotten very, very good at this, as demonstrated between TI4 and now. If the average person should learn anything from this it's that there's always a new idea, a new way to get people to open their wallets. Unfortunately for third parties, Valve has and will always have more options in this regard than most TOs. Even more unfortunate is when Valve is putting 25% into a pot, they get to take 75% to pay everyone involved - including their artists. The TO running a tournament with 25% pot contribution gets to work with 12.5%. It shouldn't require pointing out that price discrimination completely fails if you can make the argument that what you're paying for is worse than the free product, especially when it comes with essentially zero prestige. Thankfully, Valve is capable of implementing many fixes to DTV, TOs are capable of ideas, and the revenue split model is not written in stone. Your love give me such a thrill...Another way to achieve the desired end-state is to just change the goddamned equation. Let's agree on three premises: - Tournaments bring significant positive externalities to Dota2 in growing, exciting, and informing the playerbase
- Valve is making a lot more money from this monster than they were when they originally set up the current revenue system
- Regardless, there are still costs associated with ticket sales and there are no Dota2 tournaments without Dota2
The fixed costs associated with DTV are not insignificant: there is an engineering investment for its development and maintenance, and for any major improvements like the short list above. It's probably reasonable to assume that the investment into server infrastructure is defined far more by Valve's own events than any other tournaments, with the exception of something like DAC where they realized they needed to serve DTV from outside of China. The majority of costs associated with ticket sales, then, are the variable costs of serving DTV content. I think it's safe to assume that this consumes a very small portion of the ticket price for a premium tournament. When you add cosmetics to the mix there is the manhours cost of the personnel dedicated to the oversight and implementation of workshop cosmetics. I think it's safe to assume that Valve does not need 62.5% to cover these expenses. The remaining argument then is that this is one of the ways Valve pays for the development and improvement of the game. Well, we have a wee problem right now: TI5 is making a ton of money. Many tournaments have raised very impressive pots. But the playerbase is not growing with TI this time. Certainly there are factors outside of Dota contributing to this but that doesn't change it as a source of concern. When people talk about the sustainability of third-party tournaments or the sustainability of the workshop economy, one factor rules all others: how many potential customers are playing the game? Valve needs to take seriously TO's role in the growth of the playerbase and invest. There are multiple vectors for this, such as increasing the staff dedicated to third-party tournaments, and providing local servers for major LANs (seriously: do it). But the other way is to just give up more of their pie. I've heard many arguments from artists about the way their split comes but Valve's philosophy seems to be simple: we want you to pay players, so we'll help, we'll take our cut, and involved parties can take the rest. What do I propose? Simple: move from single-match to 1.5-match. Keep the starting split the same 75/25. But, if a TO wants to get to the traditional 25-point pot share, now they only give up 10 points, and valve gives up 15. Valve still gets 57.5 points, but a TO has 2.5 more points to work with. This will allow them to either have more points to offer an artist (ask DC how much of a difference working with a top-tier artist like Kunkka made for them) or keep more. For Valve, five points in a tournament means almost nothing on the scale of things. For studios and artists, 2.5 points means a lot. There are a lot of investments Valve needs to be making so let's not pretend that any one problem has a ton of money that can be thrown at it without opportunity costs. But investments sustaining third-party tournaments is very much in Valve's interest and will pay for itself if done intelligently. You wanna take this outside?Not everything is about Valve. Don't get it twisted - we have plenty more "what Valve should be doing" to talk about, but they aren't the only way to increase revenue. First, let's talk about sponsorships. Or rather, let's talk about "who is willing to throw money at a tournament" because the average TO is fucking awful at sponsorships. Actually, let's talk about how to stop sucking at sponsorships. I keep hearing that esports sponsorships are hard. The money is tight. The returns for sponsors are uncertain. But what I also see is organizations - teams and sites and organizers, all - failing to take an intelligent approach to getting that money. Certainly it's easier from my perspective to criticize because I'm not the one in the hot seat, scrambling to try and make sure my people get paid. But that doesn't change the fact that bad strategy is bad strategy. The current strategy seems to be: we are hosting a Dota2 professional tournament, who has money to throw at this and how can we entice them to throw more. This gives you sponsors like G2A, Vulcun, Twitch, whatever. Here's what you need to think about in the future: - What is our product, SPECIFICALLY?
- Who are the personalities coming to the event and what special marketability do they have?
- What opportunities are there for sponsor engagement?
- What are our expenses and what potential exists to reduce them through minor sponsorships?
- Who. Is. Our. Audience.
A good sponsorship is more like a partnership. When it has this feel it is more successful for the sponsor as they generate good will in the audience, it feels better for the organizers, and it provides not just money but enhancements to the event. Let me give you an example. I live in the Bay Area. Let's say I wanted to host an invitational in San Francisco. Invitationals provide little DTV value because they have no qualifiers. I want to add some value to the ticket so I decide I'm going to have a collegiate tournament. I talk to Chegg about sponsoring such an event with scholarship money. For a few dollars more they can get some additional push in the main tournament which will have many college students watching. Even if they decide to leave it at scholarship money I now have a sponsor who is paying for the entire incentive to have local college students compete. I can talk to local universities - there are a couple of note here - about providing facilities for whatever segment of this competition, in exchange for something like a video tour of the campus and maybe airing some plugs about the university during that portion of the competition. I now have more content for my competition even if I don't have more money from the extra parties involved (and I certainly might). And it all should feel quite organic. Moving forward to the LAN, we're flying players from all over the world to San Francisco. What opportunities does this create? Well, depending on the format, quite a lot. We can first look at simple expenses: the players need to be flown and housed and fed. Are you talking to travel websites? Are you talking to hospitality organizations? In the words of Scrooge McDuck, money saved is money earned. I have not one time, ever, seen a sponsorship from, say, Travelocity associated with a tournament that is flying players from 5-10 countries, for fuck's sake. I find it impossible to believe there is no opportunity there. I find it impossible to believe that no major hotel in the history of Dota2 has been willing to at least provide a discount. Now we've got players in San Francisco, an international tourist destination, for several days. Remember that sponsorships aren't just about your revenue and/or reducing your costs but also about creating a better product. How about I talk to the SF tourism board. Maybe I should talk to CityPass and see what kind of deal they're interested in. Maybe comp CityPass tickets to all the teams in exchange for a place on the sponsor banner? Maybe do more than that in exchange for some money? I bet I could get SFDOT to comp some Clipper Cards so the players can get around. Maybe we run around with a camera. Or maybe we talk to GoPro. Twitch is here. Twitch sponsors everything but how would they like to take it to the next level for this? Let's have some pro players visit the office. Crunchyroll is here. Can you say target audience? Can you partner with them and whatever select players are interested to create some sponsored content? I mean it goes on and on. And none of this precludes the kind of sponsor involvement that already exists. If you sit down and think about what you're doing, where you're doing it, who is doing it with you, and who will be watching, lots of ideas should come up. What if you're just hosting a LAN inside a house? Hm, who sells stuff to PC gamer nerds for their house. Who indeed...The other obvious thing to talk about is Twitch. I'm working on a post about Twitch that doesn't talk about monetization much but suffice it to say they have lots of work to do all around. I don't believe the site as-it-is offers a lot of opportunities for extra monetization. They have a lot of work to do. The merchman comethI honestly don't have much to say about the current state of merchandising but it seems to be that it kinda sucks for TOs. And I don't know how much better it can get when the overwhelming bulk of licenses are owned by teams, players, and Valve. But, there are ways to improve it even I can see. First, if Valve is taking an active interest in the health of the organizers they can help by leveraging their own resources to make TO merchandise cheaper to produce - even if they themselves see no profit from it. They can also make it easier to merch an event by working with TO submissions in the meatspace shop the same way they work with them for cosmetics. I don't know where exactly the boundaries are for making Dota merch with regards to heroes, the Dota logo, etc., but certainly there must be more flexibility if it's being sold through Valve's own store. Secondly, even without third-party merchandise, TOs can contribute to the sale of existing merchandise in Valve store, and Valve can give them a cut. I don't believe the mechanism for this exists yet, but it should, and it should be part of the following approach. I've got a golden ticket...The great beauty of in-game tickets is the tournament is the product. With sponsors, cosmetics, merchandise...something else is the product. And that is never going to stop being the primary profit driver. But the tickets themselves need to be improved. We talked briefly earlier about bringing DTV up to par as a means to watch games. But there's much further to go than that. Ideally, systems are created that drive revenue for each individual tournament without creating work for each individual tournament. This is what improvements to DTV broadcasting and download bring. This is the opposite of what cosmetics bring. Outside of the broadcast itself, what have we got now? Heroics: Drops are fucking abysmal right now. ABYSMAL. Heroics aren't even worth mentioning as a value bonus for ticket owners right now. Valve needs to really think about this. OK! That was a short list. And the only item on it can be basically ignored. Here's what we should have: Fantasy: Create a fantasy league exclusively for ticket owners to premium tournaments. Have something like effigy drops for winners and high placement. Maybe you get a custom gold effigy block for #1. Do something with the trophy shelf, like highest fantasy placement and/or number of fantasy leagues placed/won. Let people buy extra entries to the fantasy league the way people buy compendium points. Have brackets, too. Give a drop of some kind as a reward for bracket correctness. Twitch interactivity: In five years if we don't look back on Twitch today and think of it as extremely primitive they have missed massive opportunities. It's been almost two years since linking your Twitch and Steam accounts was introduced. Nothing's been done with it since. The original feature, heroic drops, has been nerfed to hell. Ticket owners could have an icon. Emotes. Their own chat channel. Much more if someone really wanted to work on it. Golden tickets: Remember the price discrimination model. Convincing people to buy tickets is good. Giving people means/motive to spend more on a tournament improves on that. Past a point this is really all about prestige. That's the only reason we have compendium levels going up to 10,000. And that's not realistic for every tournament, but put in place systems by which EVERY tournament can give people with more money ways to spend it on pure prestige stuff. Got a ticket? Great. You get your DTV and your other stuff and a little ticket icon added to the top of your profile. Would you like to upgrade to a golden ticket? It'll cost the same as the ticket did in the first place. Now your ticket icon is gold. Now you get +1 on a trophy somewhere. Now you get an extra fantasy entry and automatically receive an effigy block stamped with the tournament's name. You look even cooler and sexier in Twitch chat and DTV chat. Maybe there's some shit we can't even think about because Valve is going to build a new site dedicated to out-of-client shit related to the competitive scene. InterAPPtivity: (get it? I am clever). You know what sucks? Watching DTV on my TV and having to go over to my PC to unfuck it every game. You know what's amazing? Every Steam account can only be logged-in on one PC. You know what would be reasonably simple from an engineering perspective? Linking up a mobile/tablet app to your DTV experience. Give me a nice tablet interface to change perspectives. To view graphs. To switch games. To rewind. To view player profiles. Oh cool I can shop from here. Give TOs a cut of the revenue when people shop from the app while watching their tournament. There are huge possibilities here. The undeniably greatest thing about DTV is that, unless you have a shitty PC, the picture quality is fucking unimpeachible. It's an overwhelmingly better picture for your big living room TV. But your living room TV probably doesn't have your PC's mouse and keyboard attached to it. So work that angle. With a second screen, there's a lot there. That's it.That's all you have to do. All of the above. Twitch, Valve, TOs. A mere pittance of work. You also need to come up with some goddamned ideas. But here's what we've got: - Valve, make DTV better to watch
- Valve, give up a little more of your ticket revenue
- Valve, make merchandising easier for TOs
- Valve, create serious added value to owning a ticket AROUND the competition
- Valve, make some damned apps and let me control DTV from the kitchen or what the fuck ever
- Valve, start incentivizing people driving traffic to your store and market (RIP Hattery)
- Twitch, keep the pressure on. Your viewer experience is competing with Valve's solely by the grace of your broadcasters. Provide them better technology and more routes for monetization
- Twitch, give ticket owners more of a boost when watching games on your site. This is beneficial for everyone.
- Twitch, the organization of your website is fucking terrible and this includes how competitive is handled. More about this in a coming post.
- Tournament organizers, suck less at sponsorships, and do better with the DTV tools you have now. I'm looking at you, Godz.
- Everyone: ideate. Identify problems, think about where you want to be, and build a bridge.
Simple.
Dayummmmm..................
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Russian Federation3329 Posts
I just want pudge hook hit/miss stats like in Dota1 Heck the DotA end game score screen was so comprehensive
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Ban games from being broadcast on twitch and only allow them to be broadcast on Hitbox. Then everyone will buy tickets to watch on DotaTV instead. (Due note this statement is with a huge Kappa)
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On June 10 2015 14:30 Bisu-Fan wrote: I just want pudge hook hit/miss stats like in Dota1 Heck the DotA end game score screen was so comprehensive
Seeing your K/D vs a specific enemy was always the biggest consolation for the losing team back then. You could lose the game but go away feeling like you're hot shit cause you beat up on that whiny trash talker on the enemy team, who is gloating in undeserved glory.
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Seriously, a set can be made in a week of work (cf EE Drow set by EE's own comments) and can sell for thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands for the best sellers. Some workshop artists make absurd amounts of money. I don't say it's not deserved, just that artists must be the job with the best hourly wage ratio of all dota 2 economy.
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On June 11 2015 22:02 MrCon wrote: Seriously, a set can be made in a week of work (cf EE Drow set by EE's own comments) and can sell for thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands for the best sellers. Some workshop artists make absurd amounts of money. I don't say it's not deserved, just that artists must be the job with the best hourly wage ratio of all dota 2 economy. EE has got to be the worst source on anything. Top-end sets are rarely created this quickly, for one. Secondly, the amount of time that goes into the ability to even make such a thing is immense, and the very few people who make a lot of money as workshop artists have absurd amounts of hours invested into their skills. Third, there's no guarantee their work gets released and therefore paid for. The need to partner with organizations - who take their cut - to get work published with any reliability is part of the opening narrative here.
Hell, LiveWorkshop is considering hosting their own fucking tournament just to get some of their backlog of art finally released. Think about that.
"Some team is going to spend a week in Seattle and walk away with seven or eight million dollars. Dat hourly wage tho"
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I guess Valve, as well as other developers, could charge twitch a fee for showing their product. That way they would have another source of revenue besides hats. A percentage of the ad-revenue twitch gets could be directed to an organizer while their tournament is being streamed or something, though it's probably something too hard to make happen. Weird though that in other media, the media outlet buys the rights for coverage from the organisation where as twitch gets the content pretty much free.
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On June 12 2015 02:48 FHDH wrote: Hell, LiveWorkshop is considering hosting their own fucking tournament just to get some of their backlog of art finally released. Think about that.
Now that you mention it, a tournament sponsored by Workshop artists sounds like a really good idea.
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On June 13 2015 04:19 Buckyman wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2015 02:48 FHDH wrote: Hell, LiveWorkshop is considering hosting their own fucking tournament just to get some of their backlog of art finally released. Think about that. Now that you mention it, a tournament sponsored by Workshop artists sounds like a really good idea. It's good for a group like LW but it does nothing at all about the larger issue except clearly illustrate its existence.
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Well, dotatv looks fucking amazing in the new engine...
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