Beitrag von: Aura am September 10, 2013, 04:06:21 Vormittag
While doing my research on Alliance Tournament 2 [AT2] I realized that a huge portion of that article was going to be devoted to EVE TV. AT2 was the very first appearance of EVE TV, of live streaming the tournament, of the tournament broadcast format we've all come to know and love.
The idea for EVE TV was first broached by Urban Mongral to Xyliana, both of EVE Radio, at a London EVE Gathering during April 2006. Xyliana was a documentary filmmaker at the time (she may still be now), so she was the perfect person to talk to about the feasibility of such a project. Whereas EVE Radio was an ambitious project at the time, EVE TV would be an order of magnitude moreso.
Xyliana knew that if she were to take on such a project that it had to be more than just some webcast, it could not be "something that looked like four geeks in a basement." Xyliana wanted it to look crisp "as if viewers were tuning in to a World Cup event," replacing the soccer/football with internet spaceships. She wanted a professional product for the viewers. She would not want anything less as a viewer herself. Urban agreed, this had to be something great, it could not be half-assed.
So, organization and preparations for EVE TV began. Urban would produce. Xyliana would direct. CCP was contacted. They expressed interest. By June 2006, both of them were flying off to Reykjavik to meet with CCP, to lay down their plans, and to find out what CCP wanted from the project. Both sides found they were on the same page and commitments were made. A joint EVE Radio/CCP Games production. EVE TV would live stream six days of matches to viewers. Thirty-six hours of broadcast.
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| Left to right: GM Xhagen, Ifni, Stavros, JusJack. |
Hinik and Xyliana spent three days recording 26 interviews with CCP employees. Then spent the next four days editing those interviews into pre-records that could be used throughout the broadcast. SpiralJunkie built the entire set in one of CCP Games conference rooms. Very long days for the three of them, and they thank yoghurt for giving them the energy to carry through 18 hour days for a week straight; especially SpiralJunkie, who had eaten 43 three of them before the rest of the EVE TV team arrived.
A day before the matches were to begin, the rest of the crew arrived. JusJack, who would share MC duties with SpiralJunkie. Infi and Stavros would act as pundits between matches. Xod and Xman would be the match commentators.
Xyliana described the technical, "it's a professional setup with three studio cameras, some huge cold bulb soft lamps, [a] few inky lights for backlighting and lots and lots of sound drapes. We [were] setup in the conference room at CCP with a galley desk covered with a massive mixing deck, gallery editing suite, and four PCs."
As for the streaming. They initially set-up the load balancing to handle 1400 people. They hit that quota before the first match even began. So they expanded by another 1400 people. And then another 1400 people. That first day of matches they were averaging about 3500 viewers. To handle the load further, Chribba offered EVE Live, which allowed EVE players to stream the proceedings themselves. So if the main stream was too stuttery, it wasn't difficult to find a player stream to tune in to. Crowd-sourcing the bandwidth, so to speak.
All told, six days of broadcast over two weekends. Thirty-six hours of video. Many hundreds of people-hours from everyone involved.
How well did this first EVE TV venture perform? Well, there was a brand-new player at the time, barely over a month old when AT2 started, and he says of the tournament and EVE TV's effort, "If I hadn't enjoyed AT2 so much I probably wouldn't have made it through the newbie hump." That player? Raivi. Who later became CCP Fozzie.
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I'd like to continue with the history of EVE TV. Apparently there was a short-lived EVE talkshow run by MMM Publishing (the EON magazine people.) I'd love to get my hands on some video from this venture.
By the time Alliance Tournament 3 came around, EVE TV stopped being a purely EVE Radio/CCP Games production, as player commentators were vetted from across the playerbase.
Any stories you'd like to share. Any video or article links you like to pass on, please send them to poeticstanziel ATSIGN gmail PERIOD com.
Source: The History of EVE TV - Genesis (http://)
Beitrag von: Tahnil am September 10, 2013, 04:02:11 Nachmittag