Help LeFrenchMelee to improve

[Slhoka]

When I went to the US, and overall, when I travel to another country to attend a tournament, the same questions comes back : How's the scene in France ? Who are the top players ? Do you have big tournaments ? Etc. Such questions clearly show that people are interested in what happens in the other regions. It's the same in France : while the top US scene is quite often under the spolights, people would want to know more about the other regions.

But overall, it isn't that easy to get this information. Most regional scenes' communication is messy, incomplete, no professionnal, and/or hard to find. That's something I wanted to change, at least with my region.

As some of you may have noticed, the French Melee Community has recently been trying to share its activity with other regions, not only with the usual tournament threads through a network called "LeFrenchMelee", which now consists in a Youtube channel, Twitter account, the French Boards, and a new Facebook page.
So far, we had a pretty good following, especially on Youtube, and we have projets to expand this (with an active Twitch account, among others).

However, before carrying it any further, we'd like to receive feedback in order to improve our content and the way we handle it. Therefore, I'm creating this thread to ask a few questions, and to allow anyone to address us their remarks.

So first of all, let me ask 2 or 3 questions :


Youtube

• What do you want to see ?

So far, we only uploaded tournament sets. We decided no to add freeplay, money matches, crews and any "non-official" events, to avoid overshadowing the other active Melee channels from France. But we'd want to upload other kinds of videos : interviews, combo videos, tournament montages... who knows ? Therefore, what would interest you ? Is there anything you'd find interesting, besides tournament sets ?

• What do you think of the upload rate ?

We only update the channel after we have a tournament, that is not so frequently. Usually, we upload the all the sets we have under a week, which is pretty efficient.
However, we often record many sets (up to 80 per tournament), and we are a bit afraid to "spam" our subscribers with, sometimes, pool sets. For instance, in early 2012, we noticed quite a few unsubscriptions when we uploaded MANY videos in a short time. If you have subscribed to LeFrenchMelee, were you flooded with videos at some point ? If that's the case, are you fine with that, considering that it doesn't happen very often ? What would you prefer ?

• What do you want to see in the title/description ?

At first, some people complained that not adding the characters names in the title was better, as it made shorter titles, and prevented spoilers (a player who switches during a set is often losing). So we added the player names in the video, under their character's percentage. However, people recently objected that it was easier to pick the match you'd want to watch if the character names were in the title, especially if you don't know the players really well.
Otherwise, our titles are as follows :

[Tournament abreviation] - [Round] - Player 1 (character) vs Player 2 (character)

And our descriptions like that :

[Tournament name]
[Date]
[Location]
[Host]
Hosted by [host(s) name(s)]

Uploader's own channel (most uploaders don't add this line anymore, though)

Would you change anything ? Or would you add/remove something ?


Twitter

I've been doing Twitter updates at a few tournaments, and I always have the feeling I'm spamming everyone with these (very) frequent updates. Also, I'm not really sure about the best way to format the tweets efficiently. Does someone has/has seen an efficient method he'd want to share ?

As those are the only two supports we currently use a lot, besides the French boards which aren't relevant here, these are the only specific questions I currently have.


Any other suggestion/remark/critics is welcome, so make sure to say what you think, we'll take it into account to improve.

Merci beaucoup !

 

[unknown522]

If you guys have casuals with your top/high level players there, you should probably stream or record that (like if you guys have weekly casuals or something). Even though they are not official matches, it may give them more exposure.

 

[Slhoka]

If you guys have casuals with your top/high level players there, you should probably stream or record that (like if you guys have weekly casuals or something). Even though they are not official matches, it may give them more exposure.

Thanks for the feedback !
We don't record friendlies that often, but I'll try to do it more often, and we'll feature them on the youtube channel (even though I'll probably let the players upload it on their own channel).
As for streams... we kinda suck regarding this, but hopefully we'll be able to fix that issue as well.

 

[TheZhuKeeper]

I really like random combo / excerpt videos. They shine through the hours of livestream, friendlies, tournament matches and stuff because they leave a lasting impression.

Things like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyctXaK-cK4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8srtrJdf5c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOUPrS3TJT0

Cambodian Young Links...

 

[Popopidopop]

I havent checked any of your videos yet, but I probably will soon, but:
Something that really helps popularity is a great commentator or two...

All of my favourite videoes were so enjoyable because of the great commantary.
The difference between a match with and one without commentary seems to me almost be as big as playing the game with a real person as compared to playing against a computer...
When listening to good (or just decent) commentary you feel like you are there acually watching it and chance of feeling the hype is greater.

Just my opinion but I'm sure there are those who share it.

Good luck with your work, I always like to see more competitive smash scenes, especially on youtube, since there is where I found the competitive scene and I wish any casual fan of the game to have a chance to find our community!

 

[Ryuker]

What do you want to see?

Since the channel comes across as professional I'd say it could feature anything that comes across as professional. So interviews, montages and combo vids are fine as long as they are done well (good quality, don't drag on, informative etc).

What do you think of the upload rate?

I was thinking about this after out last tournament. One the one hand players want to see their matches as soon as possible and the further from the date of the tournament the more viewers you'll lose. So uploading everything as soon as possible would seem the most desired option.

On the other hand most viewers only look at a couple of vids a day and they will start with the most important fights eg. the finals. So a very small group actually looks at the other matches. They might be more interested to watch the other matches when they are waiting for their own vids (as they are still in the tourney hype)

What do you want to see in the title/description?

Your title is very informative. It seems a bit crowded though. Maybe lose the "-" . I dunno it's a balance between being informative and readability. I don't put player chars anymore but just player control ports but that's probably to unclear for some aswell.

General thoughts:
Overall 'LeFrenchMelee' comes across as professional. The vids are clear. The threads are clear and offer a little taste of the event through pictures. And you seem to be doing all you can in terms of updates(your facebook updates seem to be french though which doesn't help the international appeal)
What it lacks in my opinion is a bit of character. One of the reasons waffles channel is so popular is because it's fun to watch and I know it will be when I visit it. I'd watch the french melee channel to stay informed of the latest player performances not because it's fun.

Overall it seems great though so keep doing what your doing.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I'd very much prefer if you listed the characters in the title for the reason you said - makes it easier to tell which matches I want to watch