Smogon Community VGC YouTube Channel: Who's up for it?

[TheGr8]

Actually, if someone got the footage together, I have a nice enough mic that I could narrate as well. I also agree with cross division matches showing up, it's always good to see how different playstyles might be.

If you have ever watched PMP, there has been narrations like as a guest say I narrate a battle between two player's or even have both players doing it. It's a lot of work and tough. I can narrate as well! I hope we can get this idea rolling at some point!

 

[Dozz]

I would like to draw attention to Biffsters post. He has really accurately identified some key points that we're going to have to kick off with. That's pretty much essential reading as food for thought.

Firestorm is a good person to wait for, he's got the contacts and is going to have a great say in where this content ends up getting posted. The initial enthusiam for this is so good though. Just as a question, besides battle vids, what else would people like to see on here?

 

[Eiganjo]

Im guessing you could put possibly movies from the vgc's venue during the event as well, perhaps some onsite interviews during the whole thing as well maybe?

 

[Admiral Kuzan]

I would love to be a part of the Smogon Youtube channel. I agree with Dozz that this channel should have certain standards to enhance the appearance of our brand. From this thread, we should identify < 10 key contributors to have a Skype meeting to sort out the following points:

1. Subject matter: What will we cover? VGC, OU, UU, Analysis?.
2. Who will administer the youtube account
3. How often will the channel release videos
4. Who will make standard assets to use for visuals/audio for producers to share?
5. Strengths of video producers? Should we specialize in certain areas? (Writing, video editing, music)

I'd like to be a contributor. If we don't use copyrighted materials, we could set up this account to make ad revenue. That money could be used to sponsor a Smogon tournament winner to go to a VGC event. We would have to build up a lot of viewers to make this happen.

I'd be willing to administrate the channel, if it's okay with you guys, and the mods and staff. XD

 

[Admiral Kuzan]

L

I would like to draw attention to Biffsters post. He has really accurately identified some key points that we're going to have to kick off with. That's pretty much essential reading as food for thought.

Firestorm is a good person to wait for, he's got the contacts and is going to have a great say in where this content ends up getting posted. The initial enthusiam for this is so good though. Just as a question, besides battle vids, what else would people like to see on here?

People might want to see interviews of VGC players, coverage in the building of the event, etc.

 

[Cybertron]

I'm not sure if you guys know about The Top Cut but they have basically done what we are aiming to do in TCG. They are basically four of the game's best players, and they provide weekly shows and streams. They were able to set up live streams at a ton of State Championships as well as Regionals. They were also able to provide live commentary while the matches were going on, which is absolutely incredible. Now, since TCG and VGC operate differently, we can't do exactly what they have done but this is what I suggest:

• Take 10-15 of VGC's best players and create a YouTube channel.
• On this YouTube channel, there should be several sections:
  • Tournament matches, mainly American Regionals since they just finished up. Provide commentary as well. The best commentary would come from the players themselves, since they can describe their thinking throughout the match as well as team preview.
  • Fun matches, whether they are matches from live tournaments (Skarmbliss / Smogon) or just for fun. Also narrate these. Try recording with team preview so viewers can see your opponent's entire team.
  • Interviews, both live and via phone call or Skype. I would love to do this myself in conjunction with the VGC Spotlight, an audio AND a text interview would be awesome.
  • Shows among players that can be watched live, whether they are weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc. The best time to have these would be around this time / right before Nationals, since American Regionals just ended. This is essentially what the Quackcast is.
  • Actual tournament coverage, we had some people (like Biffster) shoot videos of their respective Regionals, but if we could get a cool video like that for all the Regionals, it really would promote the game. (They're also just fun to watch!)
  • Event summary reports. For those that played in SPL, ifm had videos every week going over how each team did and highlights of the week. We should get players from each Regionals to make a nice report, detailing the attendance of the tournament, what was good and bad about it, and who ended up winning.
  • Team building videos, similar to what muffinhead did before. Get a bunch of people on a Skype call and get them to show you how to build teams.
• Some points to consider:
  • Staffing, we really need to make sure we have a set of dedicated people who are able to commit to this.
    This also needs to include people who are able to shoot quality videos and edit videos well. Running this will be a pretty big responsibility, put it into the right hands.
  • Smogon or universal? Should this be limited to Smogon? I like the idea of just a VGC channel. Tying it to Smogon promotes the website, but we could even create our own website for this.
  • RESOURCES. This is big. If we want to match The Top Cut in their coverage, we'll need resources. It would be amazing if we could set up a quality stream for Nationals and Worlds this year, not some poor iPhone stream where you can barely make out the Pokemon and what's going on. If we want to make this work, we need the proper equipment. If we're able to set up a partnership with YouTube, we can invest and earn the money back.

There's a lot more on my mind, but this is a good start. I really hope we can actually turn this into something that expands the game.

 

[Admiral Kuzan]

Thanks for all the support everyone! Once Firestorm announces we can create a VGC channel, I'll start a new thread on what plan of action we'll take.

 

[Plusle]

I can probally help by recording matches if I can get it working.

 

[PungentFruit]

I can narrate if possible

 

[Admiral Kuzan]

Does anyone here know how to record with an emulator?

 

[Plusle]

Does anyone here know how to record with an emulator?

You need to backup your game save with the battle video in it onto your computer then use a program like Hypercam/Camtasia to record the emulator playing the battle video.

 

[tofucocoa]

Does anyone here know how to record with an emulator?

What Plusle said. I can record for you, along with anyone else who wants to record!

 

[Dozz]

Okay guys. I've been talking to a few people I know are really good at stuff like this, and Smods and such, and I think it's right to keep you (very enthusiatic lot) in the loop. It seems that it's going to be somewhat slower to take off, as we need to sort out good quality content. I'm going to (again) direst you to another post, as I can't like or highlight it any other way. This time, Cybertrons, it's full of great points, and essential reading imo.

Everyones been mentioning battle vids, but, lets look outside the box for this. Battle after battle will get tedious and unwatchable. so, let's take advantage of the fact we have IRL tournaments, and actually looka t how to provide coverage etc from them!

 

[Kaphotics]

Might as well correct Plusle's statement and describe actually how to do it.

1. You don't need to back up your save file to record videos. You can use DeSmuME's WiFi version to download videos with another sav file and record from that.
2. DeSmuME has its own built in record function (Record AVI), which you can either record uncompressed video or with a codec (Lagarith Lossless suggested).
3. There's background modifying codes if you want to change to a more 'official' background. There's also a music mod code which I haven't given out because people like to dub over commentary/music.
4. Video recording software can pan or crop your video to remove the unneeded lower screen. I personally use Sony Vegas' Pan/Crop event tool. It also can smooth edges to make large video's pixelation not be so obvious. You can add a narration sound track if you want, and/or speed it up with any video editing software.

 

[Admiral Kuzan]

I suggest we do a poll to nominate the managers and/or contributors who want to manage the YouTube channel (Once it's approved we can create one.) If you guys have any other way to choose the contributors for the channel, leave a comment below!

 

[LudiImpact]

I suggest we do a poll to nominate the managers and/or contributors who want to manage the YouTube channel (Once it's approved we can create one.) If you guys have any other way to choose the contributors for the channel, leave a comment below!

I would say, have EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO CONTRIBUTE post in a separate thread. Then, have a poll. The Top 10-15 people who were voted on can be evaluated by moderators. If the Mod thinks the person is trustworthy, they can be a contributor and if someone is denied, the next person on the poll can be added. Or something simpler or similar.

 

[Firestorm]

Ok. Just got done reading through some of this. At first it seemed like what a lot of you wanted was to create a repository of all the VGC videos that are floating around, but it seems people are interested in doing more. That's good. We've had ideas to do this multiple times but could never get the people to do it (or TPCi would throw us a curve ball and hold all the regionals and nationals in North America at the same time for example...).

In any case, for videos like this we can definitely do it on SmogonU. I don't need to talk to anyone about that.

Staffing
Don't make a nomination thread about staffing or anything. The person acting as the go-to person will be an existing VGC staff member or community member. As you contribute and make yourself a known asset, you'll get more increased responsibilities. This is the same as any other part of the VGC community. We unfortunately cannot just make someone the lead on this off the bat. That's burned us in the past. No one needs to be nominated for contributing obviously as anyone is allowed to contribute!

If you want to get narrated matches up, we already have a place to coordinate that here: http://www.smogon.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=182

Content
Cybertron's post really helps highlight all the stuff I wanted to do this season before they announced the dates of the events. I'll talk to Dubs about what could be done though as we were throwing some ideas about how we could pull streams off and he'll actually be there. Interviews should be easy enough (although in person whenever possible is best!).

I think Nationals is a good time to start all this so we can learn from all our mistakes before Worlds so our live and media coverage will be perfect!

Channel
However, we still need to decide a couple things about the channel so we ask you to be patient with that. Creating a separate channel isn't too useful as all this content can go on SmogonU. The only thing I was worried about at first was sticking 50 VGC videos at once into SmogonU but we seem to be going in another direction now so that's ok. We do need to figure out a few things about SmogonU though!

 

[LR2K]

Everyones been mentioning battle vids, but, lets look outside the box for this. Battle after battle will get tedious and unwatchable. so, let's take advantage of the fact we have IRL tournaments, and actually looka t how to provide coverage etc from them!

While I agree that posting only battles videos will not do the channel justice, especially considering the large social aspect of the VGCs, I think the value of a large volume of battle videos cannot be understated. Actually watching different match-ups in action, and not just reading/watching analyses will help a lot of new players to really understand the thought process behind those ideas, along with getting players to see the whole spectrum of used Pokemon within specific strategies. Depending on how many people we get involved, we should aim to at least post 2 battle videos a week, which I think will help us get past the unfortunate nature of the VGC schedule and keeping a channel alive through solid and consistent posting. Plus, if consider how popular (relatively speaking for a niche video game channel) people like Shofu are for mostly posting narrated battles with the occasional LPs and how consistently popular those videos are, posting videos would not detract any from the channel at all.

If the VGC continues to follow a concentrated pattern of Regionals, with the possibility of such a situation happening in Europe if they start to follow the new American Regional format (granted, this is pure speculation), we need to really find ways to fill in "dead weeks". Now, even up to a month before events, we can have "trending metagame analysis from PO" or prediction videos and stuff like that, and then have reviews of the events afterwards for a good two weeks, but that still leaves up with gaps, the most noticeable between November and March (with a month of pre-/post-event analysis, January and February). Although we can continue to post videos from events (like pre-finals / not super stellar ones that would be post immediately), we may want to consider using the channel to advertise current tournaments or even independently run Wi-Fi events throughout the year, which could be a fun way to get subscribers involved and help motivate people to actually go to events, which cannot hurt our cause.

Regarding an independent channel or using SmogonU, I can see both sides, although I would prefer an independent one. I can see how Smogon would want us to use them as a way to gain new viewers who would probably use Smogon's other resources anyways, I feel like this channel could be much bigger and become a strong avenue for cultivating the VGC scene. We of course want to benefit Smogon, since we are all posting here, but I feel like the goal is almost more to promote the VGCs, and using SmogonU would make it seem as though we are just another part of Smogon; and if we get this thing going and start posting an insane amount of videos from battles, coverage, analysis, interviews, all that jazz, we could start to clutter up SmogonU and possibly outgrow it. But if we decide to kind of scale it back and keep this project smaller, I definitely see how creating another channel would be kinda unnecessary, when in that case it could serve nicely to bolster SmogonU's content.

On the final note for leadership, I wholeheartedly agree with starting with "renowned" members of the VGC community to get this project started right. Assembling a 15+ person staff to cover every event around the world and get content moving at a steady rate may seem a bit extreme, but like I said earlier, if we use this channel as a means to bring attention to the VGCs and focus the community as a whole to develop a better competitive field and greater turn-out, our efforts will be wholly justified.

 

[Admiral Kuzan]

While I agree that posting only battles videos will not do the channel justice, especially considering the large social aspect of the VGCs, I think the value of a large volume of battle videos cannot be understated. Actually watching different match-ups in action, and not just reading/watching analyses will help a lot of new players to really understand the thought process behind those ideas, along with getting players to see the whole spectrum of used Pokemon within specific strategies. Depending on how many people we get involved, we should aim to at least post 2 battle videos a week, which I think will help us get past the unfortunate nature of the VGC schedule and keeping a channel alive through solid and consistent posting. Plus, if consider how popular (relatively speaking for a niche video game channel) people like Shofu are for mostly posting narrated battles with the occasional LPs and how consistently popular those videos are, posting videos would not detract any from the channel at all.

If the VGC continues to follow a concentrated pattern of Regionals, with the possibility of such a situation happening in Europe if they start to follow the new American Regional format (granted, this is pure speculation), we need to really find ways to fill in "dead weeks". Now, even up to a month before events, we can have "trending metagame analysis from PO" or prediction videos and stuff like that, and then have reviews of the events afterwards for a good two weeks, but that still leaves up with gaps, the most noticeable between November and March (with a month of pre-/post-event analysis, January and February). Although we can continue to post videos from events (like pre-finals / not super stellar ones that would be post immediately), we may want to consider using the channel to advertise current tournaments or even independently run Wi-Fi events throughout the year, which could be a fun way to get subscribers involved and help motivate people to actually go to events, which cannot hurt our cause.

Regarding an independent channel or using SmogonU, I can see both sides, although I would prefer an independent one. I can see how Smogon would want us to use them as a way to gain new viewers who would probably use Smogon's other resources anyways, I feel like this channel could be much bigger and become a strong avenue for cultivating the VGC scene. We of course want to benefit Smogon, since we are all posting here, but I feel like the goal is almost more to promote the VGCs, and using SmogonU would make it seem as though we are just another part of Smogon; and if we get this thing going and start posting an insane amount of videos from battles, coverage, analysis, interviews, all that jazz, we could start to clutter up SmogonU and possibly outgrow it. But if we decide to kind of scale it back and keep this project smaller, I definitely see how creating another channel would be kinda unnecessary, when in that case it could serve nicely to bolster SmogonU's content.

On the final note for leadership, I wholeheartedly agree with starting with "renowned" members of the VGC community to get this project started right. Assembling a 15+ person staff to cover every event around the world and get content moving at a steady rate may seem a bit extreme, but like I said earlier, if we use this channel as a means to bring attention to the VGCs and focus the community as a whole to develop a better competitive field and greater turn-out, our efforts will be wholly justified.

True, the well-known members of the VGC community should manage the channel, considering they're more experienced and more popular.

 

[Teya Tsuki]

here's mine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au0SnwO4uoU
i like the idea of having a youtube channel for vgc players. hope it really happens =^_^=

 

[The Knights of Wario Land]

I'd be beyond up for it. Doing practice matches, providing articles and stuff, even promotional art, I'd do anything within my power. Due to the TPCI not really showing the energy that last year's organizers did, this could even get us noticed by the organizers with our dedication to the community.

 

[PaperGlaceon]

This is a great idea. I really only played VGC when it was time for the tournaments, but the idea of this channel already motivates me to both play more and start making videos again. :]

 

[Admiral Kuzan]

So, what's the plan going forward? Please, I don't want this vision to fade.....

 

[evan]

Staff are discussing how best to move forward on the Youtube front. In the mean time, Firestorm's post basically outlines what we're looking at along with some of the other posts in this thread like Biffster and Cybertron's.

Ok. Just got done reading through some of this. At first it seemed like what a lot of you wanted was to create a repository of all the VGC videos that are floating around, but it seems people are interested in doing more. That's good. We've had ideas to do this multiple times but could never get the people to do it (or TPCi would throw us a curve ball and hold all the regionals and nationals in North America at the same time for example...).

In any case, for videos like this we can definitely do it on SmogonU. I don't need to talk to anyone about that.

Staffing
Don't make a nomination thread about staffing or anything. The person acting as the go-to person will be an existing VGC staff member or community member. As you contribute and make yourself a known asset, you'll get more increased responsibilities. This is the same as any other part of the VGC community. We unfortunately cannot just make someone the lead on this off the bat. That's burned us in the past. No one needs to be nominated for contributing obviously as anyone is allowed to contribute!

If you want to get narrated matches up, we already have a place to coordinate that here: http://www.smogon.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=182

Content
Cybertron's post really helps highlight all the stuff I wanted to do this season before they announced the dates of the events. I'll talk to Dubs about what could be done though as we were throwing some ideas about how we could pull streams off and he'll actually be there. Interviews should be easy enough (although in person whenever possible is best!).

I think Nationals is a good time to start all this so we can learn from all our mistakes before Worlds so our live and media coverage will be perfect!

Channel
However, we still need to decide a couple things about the channel so we ask you to be patient with that. Creating a separate channel isn't too useful as all this content can go on SmogonU. The only thing I was worried about at first was sticking 50 VGC videos at once into SmogonU but we seem to be going in another direction now so that's ok. We do need to figure out a few things about SmogonU though!

 

[Firestorm]

I'll make a post tomorrow about this. Just want to talk to a few more people and look at a few technical things.