Hello, PEEF here. I've got something that I hope will be interesting to some of you. There are tons of guides on how to set up your livestream/recording setup, get the right hardware, and so on. These are all very helpful of course. However, I got the idea to write a different kind of livestream guide. I want to write publicly about an issue that I write about privately nearly every day in response to inquisitive livestreamers looking to stream their first big tournament (or improve on their old tourney streams.) This "guide" is my attempt to explain my failures so you can dodge them, while at the same time discussing some successes that I want more smash streamers to benefit from. I hope that this thing manages to get across the best of what little I have to share about streaming tournaments.
Let me start by saying that I am not writing this as some self-tribute or pointless thread to entertain myself. I'm just a smasher that managed to catch some breaks and catch some heat in my modest experience livestreaming, and on the one year anniversary of regular PEEFsmash streams, I wanted to give back to you all some of what I have picked up this year. If it wasn't for your continuing support of my stream I wouldn't have been able to f*** up enough times to have anything to say about improving a livestream.
Part 1: Some of it is just having the right crap. [But the right crap ain't nothin' too special.]
I said I didn't want to make this about hardware and stuff, but I have to touch on this a bit. If you want a super smooth 480p 800kbps stream with webcam/playercam and quality audio, you have to have either a pretty high end gaming laptop, or be willing to carry a gaming desktop around. HOWEVER, this does not mean give up. SPOILER ALERT: I streamed The Big House (most watched Smash Bros tournament livestream of all time until APEX) from a 2 year old MacBook Pro. I got partnered on twitch.tv with nothing other than a dam MacBook Pro. It wasn't until late October that I got the fancy rig that I stream with now. The Mac was pushed to its limits and it took countless hours to dial it in, but it is possible. I do not know a ton about computers, and this isn't what this guide is about. However, here is my rule of thumb: If your computer has processor speed equivalent or greater than that of a freaking MacBook Pro, you can livestream (console games!) smoothly and successfully. Hooray. The other important part is the internet connection. 1mpbs upload means you are golden. However, upload speeds of under .4mbps can work. Not too bad. Commentator cams and especially player cams are a must! Be sure to purchase or communitysource an external webcam that works with your system! Oh yeah and use Xsplit.
Part 2: Regarding quality, what should be my stream's priorities?
The most important part of your livestream is FRAMERATE FRAMERATE FRAMERATE. That means 25-30. People would rather watch semi-recognizable color blobs float around the screen in smooth-as-butter glorious 240p than chop tomatoes with your "high quality" 480p+ laggy slideshow of a stream. If we wanted minute-to-minute updates we would watch twitter. On a more serious note, even slight lag is INFURIATING to most viewers. The PAINSTAKING ANTICIPATION of waiting for that next miserable half-second of lag that happens every 10 seconds is enough to drive even the coolest cucumbers mad. We don't want to miss ANYTHING, even if that means that it isn't obvious that Marth is a girl. We have played the game enough to be able to tell what's happening, I promise. It's part of human nature to be able to see a tiger crouching through the fog. Teleporting tigers though....
The second most important part of your livestream is decent sound quality. We aren't talking recording studio here, but we also don't want the hallowed Melee theme to sound like it's being dubbed by a cover band that uses only tin cans, kitchen appliances and wads of construction paper. Audio quality eats up only a small amount of bandwidth (maybe one 12th) and does not take much power to encode. CD quality (128kbps) is good. 96kbps is acceptable as well.
The THIRD (aka last) most important thing is the actual picture quality. Trust me, we will know what is happening. Make it smooth (30fps), make it sound acceptable, and make the picture quality as good as you can with the previous two as your essential limiting factors.
NOTE: I did not talk about "what quality to put it at." Every computer and internet connection is so different that I couldn't possibly tell you what to set things to. I will tell you that you never need a resolution over 480p (the games native resolution cannot be increased) and the max bitrate (upload) you would EVER need for smash (including sound) is 1000kbps. Anything less than this can work, so to find out where you fall, try it out! There will always be some people lurking on the Team Smashbros page (www.twitch.tv/team/smashbros) and assuming you have told me to add you, your stream will show up there and people can help. Make sure you tell them that you are aiming for a smooth 30fps and good sound quality above all (aka you want to be better than the average smash stream!) If the stream sound lags, and/or your stream is lagging at a very regular duration and frequency (say once every 5 seconds for half a second) you are PROBABLY trying to broadcast at too high a bitrate. If the lag seems somewhat random both in duration and frequency, and happens especially when there are flashes or other graphical animations happening, then it is probably encoding lag (your computer's processing speed.) Wanna know why the latter part of the Canada Cup (8.95) stream was played mostly on the training stage? The streamer was using a pretty crappy computer that couldn't handle encoding bright images. I noticed it and skyped one of the Twitch.tv admins and told him to tell the streamer to play on training stage only (and fix his vbv buffer) and that fixed the lag issue almost entirely. (Stream was still kindof grainy because the comp couldn't laglessly stream any better quality.) You can also PM me on here and schedule a time for me to watch your stream and fix up your problems lickedy split. Its fun!
Part 3: The chat is your lifeblood and also your...deathblood.
A good, healthy chat in a tournament livestream is a great thing. Everyone discussing the match, getting hype, the experienced are teaching and the unexperienced are learning. "Wow Jigglypuff isn't the worst character in the game?" says mariochamp. "No Jiggs is one of the best because of [insert tons of reasons here.]" says KirbyKaze. Its lovely. However, the chat can get dirty rotten as soon as the trolls enter. You know how I handle it? BAN EVERYONE WHO SAYS ANYTHING YOU DON'T LIKE. I'm just kidding. There should be enough room for talking about stuff like balance and even some honest and informed discussions of stuff like Melee vs Brawl vs Project: M. However, LAY THY HAMMER SWIFTLY as soon as the troll comments, sensational comments and capslock comments come. Just ban them if its bad, and time them out if its pretty bad/annoying. Timeouts should be handed out liberally. It's just ten minutes of them not talking, but everyone else sees the <message deleted> and knows not to act up. Trust me, you CAN censor the trolls faster than they can remake accounts. THIS IS NOT FREE SPEECH HOUR THIS IS SPARTA OF ESPORTS. Support SOPA-style chat moderation. Not exactly, but do not tolerate trolls because you think you have to or that they deserve the right to say that smash brothers is a game for fat nerds and girlymen. In order to say that they have to have actually attended a tournament and seen it for themselves. Being right by accident is no good. Real talk: Trolls ruin your chat, swamp honest discussion, and make the whole stream-watching experience miserable. They will run away with your tournament stream. Get moderators for your chat. Unmoderated chat is what caused APEX to force apart the FGC and the Melee [stream watching] communities farther than they have ever been, instead of serve it's purpose of bringing them together. (If you disagree with me about that, then that's fine, but I cannot stream a tournament or watch another tournament stream without seeing tons of people attacking Smash like they never have before, believing [perhaps correctly] that most or all of the FGC is behind them.)
READ YOUR DAMN CHAT. This should go without saying. I'm not quite sure why so many people stream tournaments but have nobody reading the chat. The chat usually can point out lag, sound issues, and they can voice their opinions on what kind of matches they want to see. If you stream, have either yourself or someone else read the freakin stream. You need to moderate it and you need to listen to the powah of the people. They are who you are streaming to, after all! They are taking time out of their day to watch you watch other people play a video game, and they want to talk to you about it. They aren't all trolls I promise.
Part 3: Commentary: Don't be afraid to say no sometimes, but hopefully they will read my suggestions?/B]
"Oh my god can you believe that tournament didn't have commentary! It was horribly disgusting that I had to watch a match without having someone tell me what was going on! The whole stream sucked because all I got to watch were the matches!" Does this sound familiar? Well it shouldn't because this NEVER happens. What do people REALLY need regarding commentary? They need to know who is playing. This can be achieved with active updating of the text boxes. People also probably deserve crowd reactions. Crowd reactions are part of what made HMW's videos so awesome during his 6 month stint of posting s**tloads of videos. Crowds get hype, we get hype, newbs learn that our game is hype, etc.
What we do not need: Most people's commentary. It doesn't matter how knowledgeable someone is, or whether they THINK they can commentate. It will probably end up bad. Do not entrust ANYONE blindly with the mic. They will ruin your VODs and make the chat get so mad and annoyed that they cannot focus on the game at all. More trolling will happen, more banning therefore will happen, and everything will spin out of control and soon enough the tournament will be labeled a failure before its even over. (I'm not kidding!) Tell people in your thread beforehand that YOU (and TOs) WILL KICK PEOPLE OFF THE MIC FOR NO REASON. This will ease the blow. People will get PJSalty but just say you need to report some stuff to the stream and do some technical stuff or whatever and don't let them back on if they were a bad commentator. Don't be afraid to JUST SAY NO to commentary in general if you think there aren't going to be any of the good commentators. Crowd reaction+informing people of upcoming matches is sometimes good enough! However, as JPOBS pointed out, it might be good to help develop new commentators. Make sure they have at least considered my suggestions below so that they can make the best of their commentating attempt.
There are good commentators out there like Dogy and HMW+Phil for example. I am obviously not talking about if they are around. If they are there get them to do commentary immediately haha. However just keep in mind this simple phrase:
Commentary rarely MAKES a tournament stream, but quite often ruins one.
I feel it is important to note that I do not think I am that good of a commentator, but I commentate tournaments sometimes. I have learned alot since my first attempt at commentary a couple years ago, and this most recent tournament in London (95 thousand total views) everyone told me my commentary was pretty good. I followed a few rules that I've put together for myself that I gathered from good commentators both in Melee and in other games such as Starcraft.
1: Don't say "thats bad" or "this guy is bad." You are probably treading on someones small-town hero, or an up-and-comer. Not to mention some of the highest level mindgames seem bad on face. The first guy that missed a double empty-hop to grab, or charged an usmash half the stage away waiting for a roll that never came was probably was laughed out of the venue. Now we know better. Don't say things or people are bad. Question the decision, ask (even out loud) why they would do that, and try to come up with a reasonable answer. Tech mistakes are always possible and consistently manage to make players look stupid even if they aren't. The chat and future viewers will get very annoyed, and it severely undermines your credibility if you ever say something is bad when you just didn't know about it. (And yes it will happen.)
2: Don't make jokes unless you are funny. That style of commentary is reserved for a select few like Sliq, Jiano and soft. (This rule is why I no longer ever make jokes doing commentary.)
3: In Melee, talking strategy and playstyle is FAR BETTER than play-by-play. We all know what the moves are. "Oh hes going for an up b, oh hes going for a dsmash, oh he hits him back off..." is tiring. We can see the screen. Point out strategical and playstyle related trends (like Dogy often does much better than I could hope to). Something like "Look at how Dr.PP isn't playing Melee as we normally see it. He is almost playing king of the hill with the center of the stage, giving himself an advantage for every moment that Hungrybox has to spend trying to get away from the edge and back to a place where he can hope to fight." This would be nice insightful commentary that is neither bland nor annoying.
4: Don't be afraid to just quit commentating. If the chat hates it, you should probably stop. You gave it a shot, do what is best for the viewer.
Again, I want everyone to know that I am by no means that good of a commentator, but I have noticed that the above rules apply if you want to keep your viewers and chat happy.
Part 4: Pre-gaming for tourney day
You MUST test out 100% of your equipment AT THE VENUE beforehand. Make sure everything works, all the way down to the sockets on the wall. This is why so many streams fail. They spend the whole day setting up the proper bitrate and quality and everything just goes to hell and it looks so bad. Do this stuff beforehand! Test out everything. Invite a friend to come to the venue with you and do an hour or so of test-friendlies from the venue! Advertise it in the Team Smashbros thread and in your tournament thread! Be sure to include the time and date of the real tourney stream in your test stream. This will get people hyped, alert all of your followers that there is a tournament that they need to make time to watch, and ABOVE ALL gives you that crucial opportunity to take as much time as you need to **** around with settings and get everything just right. If you are using an external webcam (which I highly recommend) make sure you have a place reserved for it, and make sure it is working and doing as it is told. Webcams that some random guy gives you to use sometimes just don't work properly, and now is when you find out. This might be the most important step!
Part 5: Tourney day!
This is where everything comes together, don't fk it up.
A very good idea that Juggleguy and I came up with at The Big House, (actually I think he came up with it on his own and I just fell in love with it) is to schedule matches for the livestream. There is NOTHING more boring than watching M2K beat up on 7 people for 5 hours as he 2-0s everyone in his pool. Just because M2K was playing doesn't make it fun to watch. What Juggleguy and I did at The Big House was choose what we thought would be the single BEST match from each pool, and have that livestreamed. This is, I truly believe, the best possible way to stream pools. It does not take much work. You announce all of the matches that WILL be streamed on the livestream in the tournament thread (if you set up loose pools beforehand) and/or again right before bracket. This way everyone will know, and there won't be confusion. The best match in every pool plays on the stream, the viewers get to see everything they wanted, cha ching. I do this at every tourney I stream now.
Make sure that you kick off anyone doing friendlies unless they are the best players there and you have nothing else to stream. Do NOT let even mediocre players hog the stream. It is good to announce this policy beforehand, and to tell the best players personally that you would like them to play friendlies on stream if they see it open. Same goes with money matches. Truly hype money matches, stream. But " because it is a money match" does not make it any more entertaining if the players aren't good, and streams are all about entertainment.
Once you get deeper into the tournament, make sure EVERY GOOD MATCH gets streamed. Run around like a madman grabbing people that are about to play and force them to get on the livestream. People are PAYING YOU to play this game, that means they go to the livestream. Someone made a rule about that awhile ago and I think it's good. If you are going to possibly take the communities money, you are going to at least be documented robbing us LIVE! Get a megaphone. Should have said that in the other part. Juggleguy showed me the power of a megaphone in the right hands. People are just putty to him as he pushes them gently -yet with a firm and guiding hand- over to the livestream setup with nothing but his voice. FUS GO PLAYonthelivestream. You can do it too.
Thats just about it. This took way longer than expected but I'm glad I finally wrote this all down. Thanks to everyone who has supported my stream, and I hope this helps many future tournament streamers!
BTW if you somehow haven't seen this, every smash bros streamer known is now on our official Team Smashbros twitch.tv page. Go there and support them! http://www.twitch.tv/team/smashbros
Let me start by saying that I am not writing this as some self-tribute or pointless thread to entertain myself. I'm just a smasher that managed to catch some breaks and catch some heat in my modest experience livestreaming, and on the one year anniversary of regular PEEFsmash streams, I wanted to give back to you all some of what I have picked up this year. If it wasn't for your continuing support of my stream I wouldn't have been able to f*** up enough times to have anything to say about improving a livestream.
Part 1: Some of it is just having the right crap. [But the right crap ain't nothin' too special.]
I said I didn't want to make this about hardware and stuff, but I have to touch on this a bit. If you want a super smooth 480p 800kbps stream with webcam/playercam and quality audio, you have to have either a pretty high end gaming laptop, or be willing to carry a gaming desktop around. HOWEVER, this does not mean give up. SPOILER ALERT: I streamed The Big House (most watched Smash Bros tournament livestream of all time until APEX) from a 2 year old MacBook Pro. I got partnered on twitch.tv with nothing other than a dam MacBook Pro. It wasn't until late October that I got the fancy rig that I stream with now. The Mac was pushed to its limits and it took countless hours to dial it in, but it is possible. I do not know a ton about computers, and this isn't what this guide is about. However, here is my rule of thumb: If your computer has processor speed equivalent or greater than that of a freaking MacBook Pro, you can livestream (console games!) smoothly and successfully. Hooray. The other important part is the internet connection. 1mpbs upload means you are golden. However, upload speeds of under .4mbps can work. Not too bad. Commentator cams and especially player cams are a must! Be sure to purchase or communitysource an external webcam that works with your system! Oh yeah and use Xsplit.
Part 2: Regarding quality, what should be my stream's priorities?
The most important part of your livestream is FRAMERATE FRAMERATE FRAMERATE. That means 25-30. People would rather watch semi-recognizable color blobs float around the screen in smooth-as-butter glorious 240p than chop tomatoes with your "high quality" 480p+ laggy slideshow of a stream. If we wanted minute-to-minute updates we would watch twitter. On a more serious note, even slight lag is INFURIATING to most viewers. The PAINSTAKING ANTICIPATION of waiting for that next miserable half-second of lag that happens every 10 seconds is enough to drive even the coolest cucumbers mad. We don't want to miss ANYTHING, even if that means that it isn't obvious that Marth is a girl. We have played the game enough to be able to tell what's happening, I promise. It's part of human nature to be able to see a tiger crouching through the fog. Teleporting tigers though....
The second most important part of your livestream is decent sound quality. We aren't talking recording studio here, but we also don't want the hallowed Melee theme to sound like it's being dubbed by a cover band that uses only tin cans, kitchen appliances and wads of construction paper. Audio quality eats up only a small amount of bandwidth (maybe one 12th) and does not take much power to encode. CD quality (128kbps) is good. 96kbps is acceptable as well.
The THIRD (aka last) most important thing is the actual picture quality. Trust me, we will know what is happening. Make it smooth (30fps), make it sound acceptable, and make the picture quality as good as you can with the previous two as your essential limiting factors.
NOTE: I did not talk about "what quality to put it at." Every computer and internet connection is so different that I couldn't possibly tell you what to set things to. I will tell you that you never need a resolution over 480p (the games native resolution cannot be increased) and the max bitrate (upload) you would EVER need for smash (including sound) is 1000kbps. Anything less than this can work, so to find out where you fall, try it out! There will always be some people lurking on the Team Smashbros page (www.twitch.tv/team/smashbros) and assuming you have told me to add you, your stream will show up there and people can help. Make sure you tell them that you are aiming for a smooth 30fps and good sound quality above all (aka you want to be better than the average smash stream!) If the stream sound lags, and/or your stream is lagging at a very regular duration and frequency (say once every 5 seconds for half a second) you are PROBABLY trying to broadcast at too high a bitrate. If the lag seems somewhat random both in duration and frequency, and happens especially when there are flashes or other graphical animations happening, then it is probably encoding lag (your computer's processing speed.) Wanna know why the latter part of the Canada Cup (8.95) stream was played mostly on the training stage? The streamer was using a pretty crappy computer that couldn't handle encoding bright images. I noticed it and skyped one of the Twitch.tv admins and told him to tell the streamer to play on training stage only (and fix his vbv buffer) and that fixed the lag issue almost entirely. (Stream was still kindof grainy because the comp couldn't laglessly stream any better quality.) You can also PM me on here and schedule a time for me to watch your stream and fix up your problems lickedy split. Its fun!
Part 3: The chat is your lifeblood and also your...deathblood.
A good, healthy chat in a tournament livestream is a great thing. Everyone discussing the match, getting hype, the experienced are teaching and the unexperienced are learning. "Wow Jigglypuff isn't the worst character in the game?" says mariochamp. "No Jiggs is one of the best because of [insert tons of reasons here.]" says KirbyKaze. Its lovely. However, the chat can get dirty rotten as soon as the trolls enter. You know how I handle it? BAN EVERYONE WHO SAYS ANYTHING YOU DON'T LIKE. I'm just kidding. There should be enough room for talking about stuff like balance and even some honest and informed discussions of stuff like Melee vs Brawl vs Project: M. However, LAY THY HAMMER SWIFTLY as soon as the troll comments, sensational comments and capslock comments come. Just ban them if its bad, and time them out if its pretty bad/annoying. Timeouts should be handed out liberally. It's just ten minutes of them not talking, but everyone else sees the <message deleted> and knows not to act up. Trust me, you CAN censor the trolls faster than they can remake accounts. THIS IS NOT FREE SPEECH HOUR THIS IS SPARTA OF ESPORTS. Support SOPA-style chat moderation. Not exactly, but do not tolerate trolls because you think you have to or that they deserve the right to say that smash brothers is a game for fat nerds and girlymen. In order to say that they have to have actually attended a tournament and seen it for themselves. Being right by accident is no good. Real talk: Trolls ruin your chat, swamp honest discussion, and make the whole stream-watching experience miserable. They will run away with your tournament stream. Get moderators for your chat. Unmoderated chat is what caused APEX to force apart the FGC and the Melee [stream watching] communities farther than they have ever been, instead of serve it's purpose of bringing them together. (If you disagree with me about that, then that's fine, but I cannot stream a tournament or watch another tournament stream without seeing tons of people attacking Smash like they never have before, believing [perhaps correctly] that most or all of the FGC is behind them.)
READ YOUR DAMN CHAT. This should go without saying. I'm not quite sure why so many people stream tournaments but have nobody reading the chat. The chat usually can point out lag, sound issues, and they can voice their opinions on what kind of matches they want to see. If you stream, have either yourself or someone else read the freakin stream. You need to moderate it and you need to listen to the powah of the people. They are who you are streaming to, after all! They are taking time out of their day to watch you watch other people play a video game, and they want to talk to you about it. They aren't all trolls I promise.
Part 3: Commentary: Don't be afraid to say no sometimes, but hopefully they will read my suggestions?/B]
"Oh my god can you believe that tournament didn't have commentary! It was horribly disgusting that I had to watch a match without having someone tell me what was going on! The whole stream sucked because all I got to watch were the matches!" Does this sound familiar? Well it shouldn't because this NEVER happens. What do people REALLY need regarding commentary? They need to know who is playing. This can be achieved with active updating of the text boxes. People also probably deserve crowd reactions. Crowd reactions are part of what made HMW's videos so awesome during his 6 month stint of posting s**tloads of videos. Crowds get hype, we get hype, newbs learn that our game is hype, etc.
What we do not need: Most people's commentary. It doesn't matter how knowledgeable someone is, or whether they THINK they can commentate. It will probably end up bad. Do not entrust ANYONE blindly with the mic. They will ruin your VODs and make the chat get so mad and annoyed that they cannot focus on the game at all. More trolling will happen, more banning therefore will happen, and everything will spin out of control and soon enough the tournament will be labeled a failure before its even over. (I'm not kidding!) Tell people in your thread beforehand that YOU (and TOs) WILL KICK PEOPLE OFF THE MIC FOR NO REASON. This will ease the blow. People will get PJSalty but just say you need to report some stuff to the stream and do some technical stuff or whatever and don't let them back on if they were a bad commentator. Don't be afraid to JUST SAY NO to commentary in general if you think there aren't going to be any of the good commentators. Crowd reaction+informing people of upcoming matches is sometimes good enough! However, as JPOBS pointed out, it might be good to help develop new commentators. Make sure they have at least considered my suggestions below so that they can make the best of their commentating attempt.
There are good commentators out there like Dogy and HMW+Phil for example. I am obviously not talking about if they are around. If they are there get them to do commentary immediately haha. However just keep in mind this simple phrase:
Commentary rarely MAKES a tournament stream, but quite often ruins one.
I feel it is important to note that I do not think I am that good of a commentator, but I commentate tournaments sometimes. I have learned alot since my first attempt at commentary a couple years ago, and this most recent tournament in London (95 thousand total views) everyone told me my commentary was pretty good. I followed a few rules that I've put together for myself that I gathered from good commentators both in Melee and in other games such as Starcraft.
1: Don't say "thats bad" or "this guy is bad." You are probably treading on someones small-town hero, or an up-and-comer. Not to mention some of the highest level mindgames seem bad on face. The first guy that missed a double empty-hop to grab, or charged an usmash half the stage away waiting for a roll that never came was probably was laughed out of the venue. Now we know better. Don't say things or people are bad. Question the decision, ask (even out loud) why they would do that, and try to come up with a reasonable answer. Tech mistakes are always possible and consistently manage to make players look stupid even if they aren't. The chat and future viewers will get very annoyed, and it severely undermines your credibility if you ever say something is bad when you just didn't know about it. (And yes it will happen.)
2: Don't make jokes unless you are funny. That style of commentary is reserved for a select few like Sliq, Jiano and soft. (This rule is why I no longer ever make jokes doing commentary.)
3: In Melee, talking strategy and playstyle is FAR BETTER than play-by-play. We all know what the moves are. "Oh hes going for an up b, oh hes going for a dsmash, oh he hits him back off..." is tiring. We can see the screen. Point out strategical and playstyle related trends (like Dogy often does much better than I could hope to). Something like "Look at how Dr.PP isn't playing Melee as we normally see it. He is almost playing king of the hill with the center of the stage, giving himself an advantage for every moment that Hungrybox has to spend trying to get away from the edge and back to a place where he can hope to fight." This would be nice insightful commentary that is neither bland nor annoying.
4: Don't be afraid to just quit commentating. If the chat hates it, you should probably stop. You gave it a shot, do what is best for the viewer.
Again, I want everyone to know that I am by no means that good of a commentator, but I have noticed that the above rules apply if you want to keep your viewers and chat happy.
Part 4: Pre-gaming for tourney day
You MUST test out 100% of your equipment AT THE VENUE beforehand. Make sure everything works, all the way down to the sockets on the wall. This is why so many streams fail. They spend the whole day setting up the proper bitrate and quality and everything just goes to hell and it looks so bad. Do this stuff beforehand! Test out everything. Invite a friend to come to the venue with you and do an hour or so of test-friendlies from the venue! Advertise it in the Team Smashbros thread and in your tournament thread! Be sure to include the time and date of the real tourney stream in your test stream. This will get people hyped, alert all of your followers that there is a tournament that they need to make time to watch, and ABOVE ALL gives you that crucial opportunity to take as much time as you need to **** around with settings and get everything just right. If you are using an external webcam (which I highly recommend) make sure you have a place reserved for it, and make sure it is working and doing as it is told. Webcams that some random guy gives you to use sometimes just don't work properly, and now is when you find out. This might be the most important step!
Part 5: Tourney day!
This is where everything comes together, don't fk it up.
A very good idea that Juggleguy and I came up with at The Big House, (actually I think he came up with it on his own and I just fell in love with it) is to schedule matches for the livestream. There is NOTHING more boring than watching M2K beat up on 7 people for 5 hours as he 2-0s everyone in his pool. Just because M2K was playing doesn't make it fun to watch. What Juggleguy and I did at The Big House was choose what we thought would be the single BEST match from each pool, and have that livestreamed. This is, I truly believe, the best possible way to stream pools. It does not take much work. You announce all of the matches that WILL be streamed on the livestream in the tournament thread (if you set up loose pools beforehand) and/or again right before bracket. This way everyone will know, and there won't be confusion. The best match in every pool plays on the stream, the viewers get to see everything they wanted, cha ching. I do this at every tourney I stream now.
Make sure that you kick off anyone doing friendlies unless they are the best players there and you have nothing else to stream. Do NOT let even mediocre players hog the stream. It is good to announce this policy beforehand, and to tell the best players personally that you would like them to play friendlies on stream if they see it open. Same goes with money matches. Truly hype money matches, stream. But " because it is a money match" does not make it any more entertaining if the players aren't good, and streams are all about entertainment.
Once you get deeper into the tournament, make sure EVERY GOOD MATCH gets streamed. Run around like a madman grabbing people that are about to play and force them to get on the livestream. People are PAYING YOU to play this game, that means they go to the livestream. Someone made a rule about that awhile ago and I think it's good. If you are going to possibly take the communities money, you are going to at least be documented robbing us LIVE! Get a megaphone. Should have said that in the other part. Juggleguy showed me the power of a megaphone in the right hands. People are just putty to him as he pushes them gently -yet with a firm and guiding hand- over to the livestream setup with nothing but his voice. FUS GO PLAYonthelivestream. You can do it too.
Thats just about it. This took way longer than expected but I'm glad I finally wrote this all down. Thanks to everyone who has supported my stream, and I hope this helps many future tournament streamers!
BTW if you somehow haven't seen this, every smash bros streamer known is now on our official Team Smashbros twitch.tv page. Go there and support them! http://www.twitch.tv/team/smashbros
