dasturbo Profile Joined July 2015 United States 2 Posts Last Edited: 2015-08-19 21:58:05 #1



tl;dr: TI5 was fucking amazing, being there was like realizing all of my life dreams/goals at once. Valve needs to change a few things about how the teams/players interact with media in order for sites to provide better coverage. Majors will be interesting. There will be a shitload of roster changes, I don’t know if team stability will actually be improved by the changes Valve are making. Hope that I can work more events in the future. In the future once I get set up in my new apartment I am looking into doing a new Dota 2 show. I felt really self-conscious in front of the camera unfortunately but I'm hoping that changes over time. I might be at future esports events to do the same thing.



All interviews from TI5 are uploaded on the



My patreon:



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Personal Shit



When TI5 ended, I cried like a fucking baby. I was sitting in the Empire suite, with my cameraman Alex, LD, Kpoptosis, GoDz, Blitz, as well as most of the Team Empire management and players. This was my first International, after probably 2 or 3 years of working in esports as an unknown caster and occasional journalist. I got to meet all the people I had idolized for years, and I was working at the fucking International. As far as I was concerned, I had “made it” – even though I obviously have a lot more work to do.



Before I go any further, thank you so much to Kirill and everyone else from Team Empire who put their faith in me – a totally unproven scrublord – to do video coverage of the entire International. Seriously, their support was above and beyond anything I have ever experienced. While I was in Seattle I conducted 27 interviews with cosplayers, Dota 2 fans, and various personalities and players. I think that was the hardest I have ever worked in my life, and I’m still exhausted. I’m hoping that my future involves more of this hard work.



So anyway, I’ve been involved in esports for maybe 2+ years. I started by doing amateur casts for the EatSleepPlay inhouse league, which I’m not even sure exists anymore. I’ve played Dota casually for maybe 6 or 7 years now, and while I hated it at first it is now easily my most played game of all time. I started off in that league trying to become a player in a team, which I now realize was pretty stupid. I’m definitely not skilled enough to become a pro player (what a surprise) and the amount of work that pro players put in to become the best in the world is honestly staggering. It’s very fucking difficult. For the 1 team that ends up winning TI each year, there are hundreds of other teams that either lose at the tournament or don’t even make it there in the first place.



Probably my biggest “break” came from working with Highschool Star League and DotaTalk, which were the first organizations that paid me for my casting work. It was pretty dope. I also worked with DotaFM and the Amateur Dota 2 League. Toffees and Jordan (@aarmora) were super helpful in my quest to become the best at digital sports casting. From working with them and 2P.com somehow Empire noticed me, and the rest is history. I have no idea where my journey will take me next, but I’m excited to find out.







Working/Interviews



Working at TI5 was honestly not what I expected. Everyone is so busy all the time that it’s very hard for them to make time for a “proper” interview. I did a whole notebook’s worth of research and prep about the TI5 meta, popular heroes and strats, teams, players, and personalities. I watched literally every single game of the qualifiers, wild card and group stages as they happened and took notes so I wouldn’t forget anything if I needed it. In the end it turned out that I didn’t need it that much, because players don’t really want to talk much to the press. This is by far the biggest gripe of anyone who attended TI5 with the goal of doing any kind of interview with players.



I understand that players are upset if they have been recently eliminated from the tournament, or they’re preparing for a big upcoming game and don’t want to be disturbed, but it’s kind of frustrating to be running around all day trying to get important interviews and failing. What’s even worse is that often players will only stay on the VIP level of KeyArena, to which members of the press do not have access. This is just unreasonable because we can’t even get in contact with players in the first place to ask them for interviews. I got incredibly lucky with my Empire assignment because I was able to get a VIP pass for myself and my cameraman, so we could pass by players in the hallways and ask them for interviews (like 5 minutes of short questions) but even then many of them refused.



This means that the only way that the press have to get in contact with teams for interview requests is via emails to their management, but honestly a lot of the time people didn’t respond to emails. Conrad is a total bro though, even though we didn’t manage to get an interview with one of the C9 guys like we initially planned, speaking to him was a pleasure and he was very accommodating. Greg was also relatively easy to get in contact with and responded promptly. Finally, Beef from compLexity was awesome about setting up an interview with Swindlemelonzz even if it turned out later that the footage we took was unusable.



Some other random thoughts that were brought up to me in no particular order:



• Group stages. Until like 3 weeks before the group stages for TI5 began, the statement from Valve was apparently that press would not be allowed to attend the group stage for interviews and other content. Suddenly Valve says that, yes, press will be allowed to cover the groups. For those of us who planned our trips a while ago, we couldn’t make changes to our schedule to arrive in Seattle earlier either due to the increased cost or lack of time on our part.



This double-sucked because it turned out that the time between group stages and the main event was basically the only time that players were available for interviews, and Valve tried their best to make people available to speak, but there were very few people there to actually conduct interviews due to the short notice Valve gave.



• The press-only interview rooms at KeyArena were so poorly lit that they were basically unusable for those of us without high-end camera and lighting equipment.



• Press seating at KeyArena was pretty great, good desk space with power cords, plenty of seats, but the Wi-Fi was spotty at times. I don’t really have any complaints about this, besides the viewing angles being a little weird.



• No schedule or diagrams from Valve regarding certain “special events” in the arena, which would have made it a lot easier for people to be set up ahead of time to take photos of the stuff going on.



• Generally just not knowing anything about the event’s format in advance made it really difficult for outside broadcasters to plan shows for TI5 coverage.



• Besides Josh (who is amazing) there aren’t many reliable translators available for English-speaking journalists who want to speak to teams from China, or elsewhere.



How Fix???



So the problems that I think are biggest right now when it comes to the press and players are:



• Players don’t want to be obligated to speak to every press member who asks for an interview at the main event when they’ve just lost a series, been eliminated from a tournament, or have important upcoming games.



• Members of the press want to be able to speak with players in some capacity during tournaments, while also not resorting to invasive stuff like stalking players at autograph sessions or waiting outside their team room for a chance to speak to them.



• The general public wants to know what’s going through the minds of players at crucial moments, before and after games, what’s next for teams/players, etc. Speculation wouldn’t be as big an issue if players would just answer questions as they arise.



So I think the reasonable compromise between all the issues of parties involved is, in the case of The International and possibly the upcoming Majors, to hold press conferences after games. Teams should choose a player to represent the team to answer questions from the press for a pre-determined amount of time, and after that all questions will be held until a future press conference. This means that players won’t have to be worried about being stopped by a member of the press asking for an interview while they’re walking to get dinner or signing autographs for fans. Press people would get what they wanted because there would be an official time for everyone to ask their questions in a controlled environment at a predetermined time. It’s really hard trying to run a production schedule when you don’t even know if the player interview you set up two weeks ago is going to happen, because the team was eliminated from the tournament the other day and all the players are feeling too emo to do interviews.



So overall, this would be better for players’ privacy, the press, and managers wouldn’t be swamped with a million email requests to have interviews done. Finally, this would be much better for the fans because they’d get a consistent source of information during tournaments.



Probably the biggest obstacle to this would be the players, even though this system would benefit them hugely. A lot of them just don’t want to talk to the press about how they’re feeling before or after games. This seems to be a mostly western issue, because I saw multiple Chinese camera crews interviewing Xiao8 and rOtk – among others – after important games were over, at the very end of the day when everyone was exhausted. I walked through the press interview room while a manager from one of the Chinese teams was doing an interview after his team was eliminated. He was in tears, but he was still doing interviews. March also did multiple interviews with pretty much anyone who asked (myself included); he’s a seriously cool guy.



These changes seriously need to be made. I think Valve made a good change this year by doing a Press Day in between the group stage and the main event, but this isn’t exactly enough because not everyone can afford to fly out to Seattle for the extra time. A lot of people could only make it out for the main event, only to find that the interviews they had prepared for weren’t going to happen anyway. That’s why a lot of people end up falling back on fluff pieces to fill their production schedule.



TI5 Aftermath – SHFFL / DRAMA



Everyone’s talking about the majors and roster change deadlines, but honestly everyone I’ve talked to either doesn’t want to say (possible) or they just don’t know what’s going to happen. Obviously I can’t say anything about Team Empire’s future even if I knew anything. The speculative deadline for roster changes is September 1 which I honestly think is a good change, but I don’t know if teams will be able to shuffle around in a way that they find satisfactory in such a short time. I also don’t know if the teams will make proper use of the official standins that Valve has allegedly said they will be allowed to use.



I had a big segment here written about my predicted changes, but everything has happened so fast due to the deadline that the stuff I had written is either outdated (in the works now) or proved false by something crazy happening. I don’t think anyone saw the EG roster change coming, especially not kicking Aui_2000. I speculated that Fear may take a break from Dota to rest his arm and coach the team, leaving room for Arteezy or another western carry to take his place, but this has all been crazy. I honestly don’t care much for the Arteezy vs. KuroKy discussion though, it’s kind of stupid and we should just let players’ problems with each other stay private.



I will say though that there needs to be some kind of player representation or just a public relations organization that tells players what they can and cannot say, because a lot of the stuff they say on streams ends up damaging their reputation and hurting the scene. Sure, they’re adults and can say what they want, but in the end they’re only hurting themselves by creating more drama and I don’t know if they fully understand that. That might make esports a little staler and less “real” but some of this stuff is just stupid and easily avoidable.



Also, Greg’s point about EG/GGA being unprepared to issue a statement about Aui_2000 leaving the team really bit them in the ass. They should have been on that and announced it in a way that was less inflammatory than Kurtis posting an angry tweet, and then the subsequent social media blowup. By which I mean that they should speak to Aui_2000 and the rest of the team as an organization and come up with a date to announce the departure together, etc. I think EG may have lost quite a few fans over this whole thing, but it’s hard to say if things would be different based on how the roster changes were announced.



PPD is right though that it’s better for them to inform Aui_2000 about the roster changes ASAP so he has adequate time to find a team before the deadline.



Meeting Personalities



Definitely the craziest part of TI5 was meeting the people I had idolized for years in person and introducing myself. Some people’s faces lit up when I said who I was, which was insane. Feeling recognized for the shit I do online was the craziest thing I have ever experienced in my life. Huge shoutouts to everyone I met for putting up with my shenanigans in real life for once. I couldn’t even begin to make a short list of my favorite people to meet, because holy shit everyone is so nice, attractive, and TALL (seriously everyone is a fucking giant in esports what the hell). I’m sure I came off as incredibly annoying and creepy to pretty much everyone I met, which sucks. I’ll try better next time! I’m seriously awkward and I tried my best to mitigate it but it didn’t work out in a lot of cases. I’m sorry ;-;



Closing Thoughts



TI5 was amazing, and I hope that I can be in Seattle again next year to provide even better coverage. There were moments where I felt extremely uncomfortable appearing on camera, but I think as time goes on I will be more comfortable with it. People have been super supportive of my work for a long time and I appreciate it.



TI5 was fucking amazing, being there was like realizing all of my life dreams/goals at once. Valve needs to change a few things about how the teams/players interact with media in order for sites to provide better coverage. Majors will be interesting. There will be a shitload of roster changes, I don’t know if team stability will actually be improved by the changes Valve are making. Hope that I can work more events in the future. In the future once I get set up in my new apartment I am looking into doing a new Dota 2 show. I felt really self-conscious in front of the camera unfortunately but I'm hoping that changes over time. I might be at future esports events to do the same thing.All interviews from TI5 are uploaded on the Empire TV YouTube channel . More are coming soon!My patreon: DONATE! My twitter: FOLLOW! When TI5 ended, I cried like a fucking baby. I was sitting in the Empire suite, with my cameraman Alex, LD, Kpoptosis, GoDz, Blitz, as well as most of the Team Empire management and players. This was my first International, after probably 2 or 3 years of working in esports as an unknown caster and occasional journalist. I got to meet all the people I had idolized for years, and I was working at the fucking International. As far as I was concerned, I had “made it” – even though I obviously have a lot more work to do.Before I go any further, thank you so much to Kirill and everyone else from Team Empire who put their faith in me – a totally unproven scrublord – to do video coverage of the entire International. Seriously, their support was above and beyond anything I have ever experienced. While I was in Seattle I conducted 27 interviews with cosplayers, Dota 2 fans, and various personalities and players. I think that was the hardest I have ever worked in my life, and I’m still exhausted. I’m hoping that my future involves more of this hard work.So anyway, I’ve been involved in esports for maybe 2+ years. I started by doing amateur casts for the EatSleepPlay inhouse league, which I’m not even sure exists anymore. I’ve played Dota casually for maybe 6 or 7 years now, and while I hated it at first it is now easily my most played game of all time. I started off in that league trying to become a player in a team, which I now realize was pretty stupid. I’m definitely not skilled enough to become a pro player (what a surprise) and the amount of work that pro players put in to become the best in the world is honestly staggering. It’s very fucking difficult. For the 1 team that ends up winning TI each year, there are hundreds of other teams that either lose at the tournament or don’t even make it there in the first place.Probably my biggest “break” came from working with Highschool Star League and DotaTalk, which were the first organizations that paid me for my casting work. It was pretty dope. I also worked with DotaFM and the Amateur Dota 2 League. Toffees and Jordan (@aarmora) were super helpful in my quest to become the best at digital sports casting. From working with them and 2P.com somehow Empire noticed me, and the rest is history. I have no idea where my journey will take me next, but I’m excited to find out.Working at TI5 was honestly not what I expected. Everyone is so busy all the time that it’s very hard for them to make time for a “proper” interview. I did a whole notebook’s worth of research and prep about the TI5 meta, popular heroes and strats, teams, players, and personalities. I watched literally every single game of the qualifiers, wild card and group stages as they happened and took notes so I wouldn’t forget anything if I needed it. In the end it turned out that I didn’t need it that much, because players don’t really want to talk much to the press. This is by far the biggest gripe of anyone who attended TI5 with the goal of doing any kind of interview with players.I understand that players are upset if they have been recently eliminated from the tournament, or they’re preparing for a big upcoming game and don’t want to be disturbed, but it’s kind of frustrating to be running around all day trying to get important interviews and failing. What’s even worse is that often players will only stay on the VIP level of KeyArena,This is just unreasonable because we can’t even get in contact with players in the first place to ask them for interviews. I got incredibly lucky with my Empire assignment because I was able to get a VIP pass for myself and my cameraman, so we could pass by players in the hallways and ask them for interviews (like 5 minutes of short questions) but even then many of them refused.This means that the only way that the press have to get in contact with teams for interview requests is via emails to their management, but honestly a lot of the time people didn’t respond to emails. Conrad is a total bro though, even though we didn’t manage to get an interview with one of the C9 guys like we initially planned, speaking to him was a pleasure and he was very accommodating. Greg was also relatively easy to get in contact with and responded promptly. Finally, Beef from compLexity was awesome about setting up an interview with Swindlemelonzz even if it turned out later that the footage we took was unusable.Some other random thoughts that were brought up to me in no particular order:• Group stages. Until like 3 weeks before the group stages for TI5 began, the statement from Valve was apparently that press would not be allowed to attend the group stage for interviews and other content. Suddenly Valve says that, yes, press will be allowed to cover the groups. For those of us who planned our trips a while ago, we couldn’t make changes to our schedule to arrive in Seattle earlier either due to the increased cost or lack of time on our part.This double-sucked because it turned out that the time between group stages and the main event was basically the only time that players were available for interviews, and Valve tried their best to make people available to speak, but there were very few people there to actually conduct interviews due to the short notice Valve gave.• The press-only interview rooms at KeyArena were so poorly lit that they were basically unusable for those of us without high-end camera and lighting equipment.• Press seating at KeyArena was pretty great, good desk space with power cords, plenty of seats, but the Wi-Fi was spotty at times. I don’t really have any complaints about this, besides the viewing angles being a little weird.• No schedule or diagrams from Valve regarding certain “special events” in the arena, which would have made it a lot easier for people to be set up ahead of time to take photos of the stuff going on.• Generally just not knowing anything about the event’s format in advance made it really difficult for outside broadcasters to plan shows for TI5 coverage.• Besides Josh (who is amazing) there aren’t many reliable translators available for English-speaking journalists who want to speak to teams from China, or elsewhere.So the problems that I think are biggest right now when it comes to the press and players are:• Players don’t want to be obligated to speak to every press member who asks for an interview at the main event when they’ve just lost a series, been eliminated from a tournament, or have important upcoming games.• Members of the press want to be able to speak with players in some capacity during tournaments, while also not resorting to invasive stuff like stalking players at autograph sessions or waiting outside their team room for a chance to speak to them.• The general public wants to know what’s going through the minds of players at crucial moments, before and after games, what’s next for teams/players, etc. Speculation wouldn’t be as big an issue if players would just answer questions as they arise.So I think the reasonable compromise between all the issues of parties involved is, in the case of The International and possibly the upcoming Majors, to hold press conferences after games. Teams should choose a player to represent the team to answer questions from the press for a pre-determined amount of time, and after that all questions will be held until a future press conference. This means that players won’t have to be worried about being stopped by a member of the press asking for an interview while they’re walking to get dinner or signing autographs for fans. Press people would get what they wanted because there would be an official time for everyone to ask their questions in a controlled environment at a predetermined time. It’s really hard trying to run a production schedule when you don’t even know if the player interview you set up two weeks ago is going to happen, because the team was eliminated from the tournament the other day and all the players are feeling too emo to do interviews.So overall, this would be better for players’ privacy, the press, and managers wouldn’t be swamped with a million email requests to have interviews done. Finally, this would be much better for the fans because they’d get a consistent source of information during tournaments.Probably the biggest obstacle to this would be the players, even though this system would benefit them hugely. A lot of them just don’t want to talk to the press about how they’re feeling before or after games. This seems to be a mostly western issue, because I saw multiple Chinese camera crews interviewing Xiao8 and rOtk – among others – after important games were over, at the very end of the day when everyone was exhausted. I walked through the press interview room while a manager from one of the Chinese teams was doing an interview after his team was eliminated. He was in tears, but he was still doing interviews. March also did multiple interviews with pretty much anyone who asked (myself included); he’s a seriously cool guy.These changes seriously need to be made. I think Valve made a good change this year by doing a Press Day in between the group stage and the main event, but this isn’t exactly enough because not everyone can afford to fly out to Seattle for the extra time. A lot of people could only make it out for the main event, only to find that the interviews they had prepared for weren’t going to happen anyway. That’s why a lot of people end up falling back on fluff pieces to fill their production schedule.Everyone’s talking about the majors and roster change deadlines, but honestly everyone I’ve talked to either doesn’t want to say (possible) or they just don’t know what’s going to happen. Obviously I can’t say anything about Team Empire’s future even if I knew anything. The speculative deadline for roster changes is September 1 which I honestly think is a good change, but I don’t know if teams will be able to shuffle around in a way that they find satisfactory in such a short time. I also don’t know if the teams will make proper use of the official standins that Valve has allegedly said they will be allowed to use.I had a big segment here written about my predicted changes, but everything has happened so fast due to the deadline that the stuff I had written is either outdated (in the works now) or proved false by something crazy happening. I don’t think anyone saw the EG roster change coming, especially not kicking Aui_2000. I speculated that Fear may take a break from Dota to rest his arm and coach the team, leaving room for Arteezy or another western carry to take his place, but this has all been crazy. I honestly don’t care much for the Arteezy vs. KuroKy discussion though, it’s kind of stupid and we should just let players’ problems with each other stay private.I will say though that there needs to be some kind of player representation or just a public relations organization that tells players what they can and cannot say, because a lot of the stuff they say on streams ends up damaging their reputation and hurting the scene. Sure, they’re adults and can say what they want, but in the end they’re only hurting themselves by creating more drama and I don’t know if they fully understand that. That might make esports a little staler and less “real” but some of this stuff is just stupid and easily avoidable.Also, Greg’s point about EG/GGA being unprepared to issue a statement about Aui_2000 leaving the team really bit them in the ass. They should have been on that and announced it in a way that was less inflammatory than Kurtis posting an angry tweet, and then the subsequent social media blowup. By which I mean that they should speak to Aui_2000 and the rest of the team as an organization and come up with a date to announce the departure together, etc. I think EG may have lost quite a few fans over this whole thing, but it’s hard to say if things would be different based on how the roster changes were announced.PPD is right though that it’s better for them to inform Aui_2000 about the roster changes ASAP so he has adequate time to find a team before the deadline.Definitely the craziest part of TI5 was meeting the people I had idolized for years in person and introducing myself. Some people’s faces lit up when I said who I was, which was insane. Feeling recognized for the shit I do online was the craziest thing I have ever experienced in my life. Huge shoutouts to everyone I met for putting up with my shenanigans in real life for once. I couldn’t even begin to make a short list of my favorite people to meet, because holy shit everyone is so nice, attractive, and TALL (seriously everyone is a fucking giant in esports what the hell). I’m sure I came off as incredibly annoying and creepy to pretty much everyone I met, which sucks. I’ll try better next time! I’m seriously awkward and I tried my best to mitigate it but it didn’t work out in a lot of cases. I’m sorry ;-;TI5 was amazing, and I hope that I can be in Seattle again next year to provide even better coverage. There were moments where I felt extremely uncomfortable appearing on camera, but I think as time goes on I will be more comfortable with it. People have been super supportive of my work for a long time and I appreciate it. I look at the moon and I tell myself, I fucked up. I fucked up!

m0ck Profile Joined November 2010 154 Posts #2 Sorry for pinpointing one specific area, but the 'hurting the scene' bit is thrown about way too liberally. What is the logic behind claiming that drama hurts the scene?

Beirut Profile Joined January 2011 United States 549 Posts #3



Awesome blog, appreciate your perspective. On August 20 2015 03:36 dasturbo wrote:

So I think the reasonable compromise between all the issues of parties involved is, in the case of The International and possibly the upcoming Majors, to hold press conferences after games. Teams should choose a player to represent the team to answer questions from the press for a pre-determined amount of time, and after that all questions will be held until a future press conference. This means that players won’t have to be worried about being stopped by a member of the press asking for an interview while they’re walking to get dinner or signing autographs for fans. Press people would get what they wanted because there would be an official time for everyone to ask their questions in a controlled environment at a predetermined time. It’s really hard trying to run a production schedule when you don’t even know if the player interview you set up two weeks ago is going to happen, because the team was eliminated from the tournament the other day and all the players are feeling too emo to do interviews.



I wrote this somewhere else recently, I think it's super important. It makes sense to have players do a press conference briefly following their last series of the day - at least a couple representatives from each team. There are a ton of reasons why traditional sports favor this format over the free-for-all that we use currently at TI5.



I wouldn't want to bother players if they have another match coming up, but if a team is eliminated or done for the day I see no issue in asking them to send a representative or two to a media area, alerting press reps to that event 45min to an hour ahead of time, and then allowing people to ask questions at a table for 10-15 minutes. Seems like a better option for everyone involved, including players. I wrote this somewhere else recently, I think it's super important. It makes sense to have players do a press conference briefly following their last series of the day - at least a couple representatives from each team. There are a ton of reasons why traditional sports favor this format over the free-for-all that we use currently at TI5.I wouldn't want to bother players if they have another match coming up, but if a team is eliminated or done for the day I see no issue in asking them to send a representative or two to a media area, alerting press reps to that event 45min to an hour ahead of time, and then allowing people to ask questions at a table for 10-15 minutes. Seems like a better option for everyone involved, including players.

Elyvilon Profile Joined August 2008 United States 6428 Posts #4 Thanks for this! Always awesome to hear from people on the inside. Your idea about press conferences makes sense, I think. Liquipedia

Torte de Lini Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 7680 Posts Last Edited: 2015-08-19 19:51:23 #5



Glad you had fun, it looked like a sick event and a ton of fun, massively jealous. I understand that players are upset if they have been recently eliminated from the tournament, or they’re preparing for a big upcoming game and don’t want to be disturbed, but it’s kind of frustrating to be running around all day trying to get important interviews and failing. What’s even worse is that often players will only stay on the VIP level of KeyArena, to which members of the press do not have access. This is just unreasonable because we can’t even get in contact with players in the first place to ask them for interviews. I got incredibly lucky with my Empire assignment because I was able to get a VIP pass for myself and my cameraman, so we could pass by players in the hallways and ask them for interviews (like 5 minutes of short questions) but even then many of them refused.





For TI5, it's a little harder, but it's much easier to semi-confirm interviews before-hand and then follow-up at the event with either the player-managers (who try their best) or the players. For example, at ESL One Frankfurt; our team got about 12 to 14 interviews thanks to ESL as well as the sponsors and player-managers who we talked to two weeks before and then followed-up at the event every day. EG, C9, Secret, ViCi Gaming, Virtus.Pro, Alliance were all very accommodating once we spoke to the right people before-hand (whether that's the owners, agency, sponsors or player-managers - we avoided players because they would have a lot on their mind the day of the event).



It's a little bit harder because Valve is much less accommodating, but preparing before and being able to communicate to the key people to follow-up is important and often overlooked by organizations who try to 'wing' it the event of or who confirm interviews with the players before-hand who are not always available or simply not in the best mood as they were when they first agreed.



Preferably, I set for 5-minute interviews and then push for 7 (or if it's good, I let the interviewer and player talk - usually goes for 11 minutes maximum).



For TI5, it's a little harder, but it's much easier to semi-confirm interviews before-hand and then follow-up at the event with either the player-managers (who try their best) or the players. For example, at ESL One Frankfurt; our team got about 12 to 14 interviews thanks to ESL as well as the sponsors and player-managers who we talked to two weeks before and then followed-up at the event every day. EG, C9, Secret, ViCi Gaming, Virtus.Pro, Alliance were all very accommodating once we spoke to the right people before-hand (whether that's the owners, agency, sponsors or player-managers - we avoided players because they would have a lot on their mind the day of the event).It's a little bit harder because Valve is much less accommodating, but preparing before and being able to communicate to the key people to follow-up is important and often overlooked by organizations who try to 'wing' it the event of or who confirm interviews with the players before-hand who are not always available or simply not in the best mood as they were when they first agreed.Preferably, I set for 5-minute interviews and then push for 7 (or if it's good, I let the interviewer and player talk - usually goes for 11 minutes maximum). • The press-only interview rooms at KeyArena were so poorly lit that they were basically unusable for those of us without high-end camera and lighting equipment.



That sucks. Riot and ESL do a pretty good accommodating if somehow their press area is not ideal. It's unfortunate Valve wasn't as prepared.



That sucks. Riot and ESL do a pretty good accommodating if somehow their press area is not ideal. It's unfortunate Valve wasn't as prepared. So I think the reasonable compromise between all the issues of parties involved is, in the case of The International and possibly the upcoming Majors, to hold press conferences after games.



Press Conferences blow. If time is of the essence and you can't schedule interviews in time, then it's better than nothing. But press conferences get fed up with either bad questions or you blow all your good questions in public and everyone's published works comes out the same.







The ideal method is to just schedule and reserve press time with the players (something Valve can do and you double-down on your side of things). ESL does it and Riot Games does it as well and in my opinion; it's the best. You can't fit everyone and the organizers don't prevent you from talking to the teams before-hand, but at least there's a dedicated time slot that can be filled for one-on-one interviews. If you have a quota of interviews to fill, talent such as casters, personalities and journalists can actually fill up your runtime and they're much more free during this time.



So in total, we got interviews with: James Lampkin, Will Cho (scheduled, but not completed), Synderen, Capitalist and scheduled for Merlini and Nahaz (but not completed)



That's 6 confirmed on a two-day event. With the pros, it doubled and then we produced a talk show with journalists (Skim and Malstryx from JoinDota) adding up the runtime to be fairly high.



With this method, I've managed to squeeze 14+ interviews on two-day events and 22 total videos per event thanks to the scheduling. Since scheduling at events always goes off-course by the end of the day(s), it's better to prepare content that doesn't involve pros and then follow-up with them at the event after having pre-confirmed interviews two weeks before. Press Conferences blow. If time is of the essence and you can't schedule interviews in time, then it's better than nothing. But press conferences get fed up with either bad questions or you blow all your good questions in public and everyone's published works comes out the same.The ideal method is to just schedule and reserve press time with the players (something Valve can do and you double-down on your side of things). ESL does it and Riot Games does it as well and in my opinion; it's the best. You can't fit everyone and the organizers don't prevent you from talking to the teams before-hand, but at least there's a dedicated time slot that can be filled for one-on-one interviews. If you have a quota of interviews to fill, talent such as casters, personalities and journalists can actually fill up your runtime and they're much more free during this time.So in total, we got interviews with: James Lampkin, Will Cho (scheduled, but not completed), Synderen, Capitalist and scheduled for Merlini and Nahaz (but not completed)That's 6 confirmed on a two-day event. With the pros, it doubled and then we produced a talk show with journalists (Skim and Malstryx from JoinDota) adding up the runtime to be fairly high.With this method, I've managed to squeeze 14+ interviews on two-day events and 22 total videos per event thanks to the scheduling. Since scheduling at events always goes off-course by the end of the day(s), it's better to prepare content that doesn't involve pros and then follow-up with them at the event after having pre-confirmed interviews two weeks before. https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)

dasturbo Profile Joined July 2015 United States 2 Posts Last Edited: 2015-08-19 20:21:19 #6 Hey @TorteDeLini, I addressed this briefly, but basically Valve does nothing to help outside press sources acquire interviews. They give you a list of the managers for each team, and how to contact them, but most of these people won't respond to any emails. I had to physically track down Cyborgmatt and Charlie at the event and asked them in person if I could get interviews with some players and their response was both a flat "no". I asked if they had received my repeated emails and they dodged the question, asked me to send another one. I sent all my initial emails out at least two weeks in advance.



I sent another email to both of them, and was ignored. I look at the moon and I tell myself, I fucked up. I fucked up!

Torte de Lini Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 7680 Posts Last Edited: 2015-08-19 20:24:23 #7 On August 20 2015 05:20 dasturbo wrote:

Hey @TorteDeLini, I addressed this briefly, but basically Valve does nothing to help outside press sources acquire interviews. They give you a list of the managers for each team, and how to contact them, but most of these people won't respond to any emails. I had to physically track down Cyborgmatt and Charlie at the event and asked them in person if I could get interviews with some players and their response was both a flat "no". I asked if they had received my repeated emails and they dodged the question, asked me to send another one. I sent all my initial emails out at least two weeks in advance.



I sent another email to both of them, and was ignored.



sent you a pm sent you a pm https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)

Townkill Profile Joined April 2015 United States 7 Posts #8 On August 20 2015 03:53 m0ck wrote:

Sorry for pinpointing one specific area, but the 'hurting the scene' bit is thrown about way too liberally. What is the logic behind claiming that drama hurts the scene? If you get past teams not wanting to talk because of feelings, it's actually a pretty good reason to want to avoid more cam time. This cuts the press access and damages the relationship, when the players fail to realize a large portion of them have the same issue when putting their own bodies on camera. It's passing blame way to easily. Measuring your words has never been more important in life then right now, and that's not a DotA thing sadly.



Thanks for your story, and super glad you have fun. I do think in time it will get better, obviously any discussion along the way can and should only help. Many players who were not so receptive before have learned both the positives and negatives. If you get past teams not wanting to talk because of feelings, it's actually a pretty good reason to want to avoid more cam time. This cuts the press access and damages the relationship, when the players fail to realize a large portion of them have the same issue when putting their own bodies on camera. It's passing blame way to easily. Measuring your words has never been more important in life then right now, and that's not a DotA thing sadly.Thanks for your story, and super glad you have fun. I do think in time it will get better, obviously any discussion along the way can and should only help. Many players who were not so receptive before have learned both the positives and negatives. When you talk, you repeat what you already know, when you listen, you learn something.

ItsMeDomLee Profile Joined November 2010 Canada 384 Posts #9 On August 20 2015 04:00 Beirut wrote:

Awesome blog, appreciate your perspective.



Show nested quote +

On August 20 2015 03:36 dasturbo wrote:

So I think the reasonable compromise between all the issues of parties involved is, in the case of The International and possibly the upcoming Majors, to hold press conferences after games. Teams should choose a player to represent the team to answer questions from the press for a pre-determined amount of time, and after that all questions will be held until a future press conference. This means that players won’t have to be worried about being stopped by a member of the press asking for an interview while they’re walking to get dinner or signing autographs for fans. Press people would get what they wanted because there would be an official time for everyone to ask their questions in a controlled environment at a predetermined time. It’s really hard trying to run a production schedule when you don’t even know if the player interview you set up two weeks ago is going to happen, because the team was eliminated from the tournament the other day and all the players are feeling too emo to do interviews.



I wrote this somewhere else recently, I think it's super important. It makes sense to have players do a press conference briefly following their last series of the day - at least a couple representatives from each team. There are a ton of reasons why traditional sports favor this format over the free-for-all that we use currently at TI5.



I wouldn't want to bother players if they have another match coming up, but if a team is eliminated or done for the day I see no issue in asking them to send a representative or two to a media area, alerting press reps to that event 45min to an hour ahead of time, and then allowing people to ask questions at a table for 10-15 minutes. Seems like a better option for everyone involved, including players. Awesome blog, appreciate your perspective.I wrote this somewhere else recently, I think it's super important. It makes sense to have players do a press conference briefly following their last series of the day - at least a couple representatives from each team. There are a ton of reasons why traditional sports favor this format over the free-for-all that we use currently at TI5.I wouldn't want to bother players if they have another match coming up, but if a team is eliminated or done for the day I see no issue in asking them to send a representative or two to a media area, alerting press reps to that event 45min to an hour ahead of time, and then allowing people to ask questions at a table for. Seems like a better option for everyone involved, including players.



I strongly disagree. Normally there aren't enough quality questions to fill five minutes, nevermind 10-15. Also, players need time to go over in their mind what went well and not so well in the game. If they just finished playing a best of 3, this could take several hours for them to finally calm down and actually process the game objectively. If this doesn't happen, players will give terribad answers that benefit nobody. Also, it is not in the interests of the winners to talk about why they won the game.



There is a reason why the post-game press conferences of sports are so terrible. They are 95% bad questions asked by unqualified "journalists". Out of the five percent of the good questions, a good portion of them cannot be answered without first going over replays. The vast majority of the remaining legit questions cannot be answered without divulging too much strategy for a later match (referring to a winner's interview or someone who just dropped from winners).



There is no easy or best fix for this. (E)sports journalism has for the most part always been shit and until the people doing the interviews and asking the questions step up their game I don't see a reason as to why players would ever feel the need to make time for them.

I strongly disagree. Normally there aren't enough quality questions to fill five minutes, nevermind 10-15. Also, players need time to go over in their mind what went well and not so well in the game. If they just finished playing a best of 3, this could take several hours for them to finally calm down and actually process the game objectively. If this doesn't happen, players will give terribad answers that benefit nobody. Also, it is not in the interests of the winners to talk about why they won the game.There is a reason why the post-game press conferences of sports are so terrible. They are 95% bad questions asked by unqualified "journalists". Out of the five percent of the good questions, a good portion of them cannot be answered without first going over replays. The vast majority of the remaining legit questions cannot be answered without divulging too much strategy for a later match (referring to a winner's interview or someone who just dropped from winners).There is no easy or best fix for this. (E)sports journalism has for the most part always been shit and until the people doing the interviews and asking the questions step up their game I don't see a reason as to why players would ever feel the need to make time for them.

ItsMeDomLee Profile Joined November 2010 Canada 384 Posts Last Edited: 2015-08-20 21:57:19 #10 On August 20 2015 05:20 dasturbo wrote:

Hey @TorteDeLini, I addressed this briefly, but basically Valve does nothing to help outside press sources acquire interviews. They give you a list of the managers for each team, and how to contact them, but most of these people won't respond to any emails. I had to physically track down Cyborgmatt and Charlie at the event and asked them in person if I could get interviews with some players and their response was both a flat "no". I asked if they had received my repeated emails and they dodged the question, asked me to send another one. I sent all my initial emails out at least two weeks in advance.



I sent another email to both of them, and was ignored.





Well you have to look at it from their point of view. You yourself said that you are basically a nobody in the scene. Why would they read and reply to your emails? If you were the manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers and someone you had never heard of wanted a 1 on 1 sitdown with LeBron James would you reply to them and say yes or ignore them?



Obviously I don't know how your emails were written and I am going to assume that you don't have a stupid email handle like 322dotarox@gmail or something. What you should remember though is that the esports community is extremely tight-knit. If you got a break through someone or an organization (which looks like Team Empire in this case) you should have tried to get someone from their organization to vouch for your or to let them know ahead of time that you were going to contact them; someone that they know and preferably have spoken or worked with before.



Now if you did indeed do these things and had written eloquent and professional emails to the managers and were still ignored then all I can say is tough luck and maybe they know who you are now and you'll have a better chance at it next time. Well you have to look at it from their point of view. You yourself said that you are basically a nobody in the scene. Why would they read and reply to your emails? If you were the manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers and someone you had never heard of wanted a 1 on 1 sitdown with LeBron James would you reply to them and say yes or ignore them?Obviously I don't know how your emails were written and I am going to assume that you don't have a stupid email handle like 322dotarox@gmail or something. What you should remember though is that the esports community is extremely tight-knit. If you got a break through someone or an organization (which looks like Team Empire in this case) you should have tried to get someone from their organization to vouch for your or to let them know ahead of time that you were going to contact them; someone that they know and preferably have spoken or worked with before.Now if you did indeed do these things and had written eloquent and professional emails to the managers and were still ignored then all I can say is tough luck and maybe they know who you are now and you'll have a better chance at it next time.

Beirut Profile Joined January 2011 United States 549 Posts Last Edited: 2015-08-21 17:07:36 #11 On August 21 2015 06:45 ItsMeDomLee wrote:

Show nested quote +

On August 20 2015 04:00 Beirut wrote:

Awesome blog, appreciate your perspective.



On August 20 2015 03:36 dasturbo wrote:

So I think the reasonable compromise between all the issues of parties involved is, in the case of The International and possibly the upcoming Majors, to hold press conferences after games. Teams should choose a player to represent the team to answer questions from the press for a pre-determined amount of time, and after that all questions will be held until a future press conference. This means that players won’t have to be worried about being stopped by a member of the press asking for an interview while they’re walking to get dinner or signing autographs for fans. Press people would get what they wanted because there would be an official time for everyone to ask their questions in a controlled environment at a predetermined time. It’s really hard trying to run a production schedule when you don’t even know if the player interview you set up two weeks ago is going to happen, because the team was eliminated from the tournament the other day and all the players are feeling too emo to do interviews.



I wrote this somewhere else recently, I think it's super important. It makes sense to have players do a press conference briefly following their last series of the day - at least a couple representatives from each team. There are a ton of reasons why traditional sports favor this format over the free-for-all that we use currently at TI5.



I wouldn't want to bother players if they have another match coming up, but if a team is eliminated or done for the day I see no issue in asking them to send a representative or two to a media area, alerting press reps to that event 45min to an hour ahead of time, and then allowing people to ask questions at a table for 10-15 minutes. Seems like a better option for everyone involved, including players. Awesome blog, appreciate your perspective.I wrote this somewhere else recently, I think it's super important. It makes sense to have players do a press conference briefly following their last series of the day - at least a couple representatives from each team. There are a ton of reasons why traditional sports favor this format over the free-for-all that we use currently at TI5.I wouldn't want to bother players if they have another match coming up, but if a team is eliminated or done for the day I see no issue in asking them to send a representative or two to a media area, alerting press reps to that event 45min to an hour ahead of time, and then allowing people to ask questions at a table for. Seems like a better option for everyone involved, including players.



I strongly disagree. Normally there aren't enough quality questions to fill five minutes, nevermind 10-15. Also, players need time to go over in their mind what went well and not so well in the game. If they just finished playing a best of 3, this could take several hours for them to finally calm down and actually process the game objectively. If this doesn't happen, players will give terribad answers that benefit nobody. Also, it is not in the interests of the winners to talk about why they won the game.



There is a reason why the post-game press conferences of sports are so terrible. They are 95% bad questions asked by unqualified "journalists". Out of the five percent of the good questions, a good portion of them cannot be answered without first going over replays. The vast majority of the remaining legit questions cannot be answered without divulging too much strategy for a later match (referring to a winner's interview or someone who just dropped from winners).



There is no easy or best fix for this. (E)sports journalism has for the most part always been shit and until the people doing the interviews and asking the questions step up their game I don't see a reason as to why players would ever feel the need to make time for them.

I strongly disagree. Normally there aren't enough quality questions to fill five minutes, nevermind 10-15. Also, players need time to go over in their mind what went well and not so well in the game. If they just finished playing a best of 3, this could take several hours for them to finally calm down and actually process the game objectively. If this doesn't happen, players will give terribad answers that benefit nobody. Also, it is not in the interests of the winners to talk about why they won the game.There is a reason why the post-game press conferences of sports are so terrible. They are 95% bad questions asked by unqualified "journalists". Out of the five percent of the good questions, a good portion of them cannot be answered without first going over replays. The vast majority of the remaining legit questions cannot be answered without divulging too much strategy for a later match (referring to a winner's interview or someone who just dropped from winners).There is no easy or best fix for this. (E)sports journalism has for the most part always been shit and until the people doing the interviews and asking the questions step up their game I don't see a reason as to why players would ever feel the need to make time for them.



So you're primarily concerned about this from a player's perspective. What's better for a player, being harassed for two weeks for interviews (along with your manager) and feeling the need to fulfill them while you focus on other games and responsibilities, or indulging a small press audience for 10-15 minutes shortly following a series each day?



They don't have to answer anything they don't want to (strategy) and they don't necessarily have to speak objectively about their last game - it's not like anyone in the press knows how to analyze a game on their level anyway. People would ask shitty questions, yes. That's going to happen every single time you put microphones in front of journalists, traditional sports has shown us this I agree with you haha.



It's less about getting quality answers and more about organizing a time and place for this type of activity, so it's not a complete clusterfuck every year for spectators, players, managers, press, and organizers. So you're primarily concerned about this from a player's perspective. What's better for a player, being harassed for two weeks for interviews (along with your manager) and feeling the need to fulfill them while you focus on other games and responsibilities, or indulging a small press audience for 10-15 minutes shortly following a series each day?They don't have to answer anything they don't want to (strategy) and they don't necessarily have to speak objectively about their last game - it's not like anyone in the press knows how to analyze a game on their level anyway. People would ask shitty questions, yes. That's going to happen every single time you put microphones in front of journalists, traditional sports has shown us this I agree with you haha.It's less about getting quality answers and more about organizing a time and place for this type of activity, so it's not a complete clusterfuck every year for spectators, players, managers, press, and organizers.

Vykromond Profile Joined September 2012 United States 79 Posts #12 I believe Valve's intent was to handle most press requests on the press day set aside during the preliminary rounds, but their notification to press about which day was press day (and the fact that press would have access to the preliminaries at all) was very tardy and thus not every organization was able to prepare or send people in time for the press day. With better notice, I think a press day and maybe one other small press block during the main event would be sufficient. I don't like the idea of giving press access to the VIP floor.