Exploring the future of media technology
WOMEN IN ESPORTS GET READY FOR SDVS IRONMAN AUSTRALIA IBC REVIEW
Long live the digital gladiators
3 CLOUD FOCUS Wildmoka WELCOME
“We who are about to die salute you! Pew, pew, pew!” Yes, it’s our esports special! True, we cover esports in most issues of FEED , but this month we’re taking a deep dive into the world of competitive gaming. There’s so much to explore in
EDITORIAL
EDITOR Neal Romanek +44 (0) 1223 492246 nealromanek@bright-publishing.com CONTRIBUTORS Ann-Marie Corvin, David Davies, John Maxwell Hobbs, Elsie Crampton
this new realm of digital gladiators, mouse-clicking mages and keyboard katana-wielders that we can only just begin to scratch the surface here, but there’s no doubt that big money and big broadcast are lining up for a piece of the esports pie. To paraphrase what someone once said about Comic Con on Twitter: ‘Gaming is now full of people who used to make fun of you for gaming.’ In this issue, we look at a new 4K documentary series called Modern Day Gladiators , which covers the exploits of rising esports stars. We also talk with the team at ESL and the University of York who are part of a consortium turning esports viewing into a fully immersive experience. We also turn to the surprising problem of women in esports – the problem being that women are effectively excluded from the field and the surprising part being that esports is supposed to be the ‘sport of the future’. When there is every chance to start out on the right foot, why is esports racing back to the past? Finally, in this month’s Genius Interview, we talk to entrepreneur Sabina Hemmi, whose gaming data websites are turning player data into personal stories, gaming history and stats for self-improvement. Game on!
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06 NEWSFEED
62 HAPPENING – ACCESS:VFX The three-day event that’s dedicated to training the next generation of digital artists 66 CROSSWORD Complete our word puzzle and you could win an exclusive FEED T-shirt!
Dispatches from the world of online video
10 YOUR TAKE
What is SDVS and how can it help the world of content creation?
16 STREAMPUNK
How Auburn University in the US is taking control of its streaming content
46 THE LIVE LIFE
We look into how OB companies were able to provide a robust live stream over long distances during Ironman Australia
54 START-UP ALLEY
This month’s start-ups all have a music focus, with AI being used to help produce innovative soundtracks
60
60 HAPPENING – IBC
Our report on Amsterdam’s big broadcast tech show. Plus a goat...
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SEE PAGE 58
20
ESPORTS FOCUS
20 INVISIBLE WOMEN If esports is so ahead of its time, where are all the women? 28 WEAVR OF DREAMS
How one company is using data and AI to make esports more immersive
32 GLADIATOR GAMES A new show promises to
reveal all in the high-octane world of esports
38 GENIUS INTERVIEW
Sabina Hemmi, CEO of Elo Entertainment, discusses sexism and her love of data
BREAKING NEWS FROM THE STREAMING SECTOR
NBCU LAUNCHES STREAMING SERVICES
NBCUniversal has announced the name of its new streaming service – Peacock. Peacock is launching in April 2020 with over 15,000 hours of content, and will employ both advertising and subscriptions models. In addition to offering TV and film content from the NBCU archive, Peacock offers original drama, comedy and
unscripted series, including a Battlestar Galactica reboot (or reboot of the reboot?) The channel will also offer more than 3000 hours of programming from Spanish- language network Telemundo. NBCU is also launching a new streaming service offering long-form local news content. The new LX Network features a live stream internet channel and
multi-network linear TV, also kicking off in April 2020, which focuses on magazine- style local storytelling aimed at a younger audience. The channel is currently available on YouTube. LX Network will be headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and NBCU aims to eventually have a LX broadcast at every one of its local affiliates.
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7 NEWSFEED Updates & Upgrades
The telling signs of disappearing facial features or audio glitches usually make deepfakes relatively easy to spot, but the technology is rapidly improving. Facebook’s chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer is worried that AI experts are spending too much time perfecting deep fakes and not enough time finding ways to detect them. In response, Facebook, Microsoft, Steering Committee on AI and Media Integrity, composed of a coalition of organisations, including Facebook, the BBC, Microsoft and the human rights organisation Witness. Facebook is putting up a total of $10 million for the project. FACEBOOK CALL FOR DEEPFAKE FIGHTERS the Partnership on AI coalition and academics from seven universities have come together to build the Deep Fake Detection Challenge (DFDC). Open to the public, the challenge will include a leader board, and cash grants and awards for those offering solutions “to produce technology that everyone can use to better detect when AI has been used to alter a video in order to mislead the viewer”. The challenge will be facilitated and overseen by the Partnership on AI’s new
BBC is turning off its iPlayer radio app in favour of BBC Sounds, resulting in public grumblings. BBC Sounds is only available on newer operating systems, leading to criticism that the BBC is not standing behind its mandate to provide information and entertainment to the widest UK audience possible. BBC Sounds, launched in 2018, is an all-in-one audio app that includes streaming radio, podcasts and other audio on-demand programming all in one app. In response to the criticism, James Purnell, BBC director of radio and education, wrote: “Supporting older operating systems is very costly and does not represent good value for money for licence fee payers, given the relatively small number of users we have still using those older operating systems.” Encouraging viewers to adopt BBC Sounds, he said: “The great thing about digital products is they can continually change and improve. They’re never finished, so please, keep on giving us your feedback. I hope you can see how we’ve listened to you over the last few months.” BBC KILLS IPLAYER RADIO APP
EPIC RELEASES UNREAL ENGINE 4.23
Epic Games has released Unreal Engine 4.23, which offers a host of improvements, submitted by the community of Unreal Engine developers on GitHub. New key features include Chaos Destruction, labelled as “Unreal Engine’s new high-performance physics and destruction system”. In other words, a system that relies on Geometric Collections (items to be destroyed), the Fracturing Editor (tool used to define how items are destroyed) and Clustering (tool used to define the varying levels in which to break apart items). The update improves in-camera VFX, enabling filmmakers to achieve final shots live on-set, using LED walls that not only place real-world actors and props in UE4.23 environments, but also light and cast reflections onto them. Real-
time ray tracing has also been improved to support stability and performance, and to support additional material and geometry types. UE4.23 introduces both Streaming and Runtime Virtual Texturing, where large textures are tiled and only the visible tiles are loaded. This, in turn, reduces texture memory overhead for light maps and detailed artist-created textures, and improves rendering performance for procedural or layered materials. Its core also got an overhaul and developers can use the new Unreal Insights system to collect, analyse and visualise data on UE4 behaviour for profiling, helping users understand engine performance from live and recorded sessions. Users can also add their own code annotations to generate trace events.
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8 NEWSFEED Updates & Upgrades
Twitch has acquired the Internet Gaming Database. Launched in 2014, the IGDB is a website that aims to gather all relevant information about games in one place and create an egalitarian community for gamers and gaming industry pros. The Amazon-owned streamer will integrate the IGDB database into its own apps and services and use it to enhance Twitch’s search and discover features. IGDB is merging its premium and free tiers into a single new free tier. TWITCH ACQUIRES IGDB
This year’s IBC show put esports centre stage – literally – in its Esports Showcase. The Showcase filled the auditorium in Amsterdam with curious tech-heads and very interested investors. The IBC Esports Showcase allowed tech vendors like EVS, IHSE, Lagardère and NEP to live demo the workings of an esports tournament broadcast with the gameplay displayed on a large cinema screen. Esport leagues provided National Championship teams from Germany and Spain, which went head to head in a live Counter-Strike tournament. A panel discussion included speakers from the British Esports Association, GINX Esports TV Canada, EVS, ESL, Twitch and Blizzard. IBC2019 HIGHLIGHTS ESPORTS
AIMS PUBLISHES NEWSPEC The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) has released an update to the AIMS roadmap for a standards-based approach to applying IP technologies in broadcast operations. to their networks and configure it with a minimum amount of human interaction. The JT-NM Tech Stack Part 1 summarises standards, specifications and documents specific to additional constraints related to this domain of use.
The update includes an important addition, developed by the Joint Task Force on Networked Media (JT-NM). The addition, dubbed JT-NM Tech Stack Part 1 (JT-NM TR-1001-1), provides specifications and guidance designed to make SMPTE ST 2110-based systems easier to deploy and operate, leading to greater efficiencies for broadcasters. JT-NM TR-1001-1 enables the creation of network environments in which end users can take delivery
This is the latest in a progression of IP-based standards that launched with SMPTE ST 2022-6, which established an SDI-over-IP baseline, then added AES67 for audio over IP, and followed with SMPTE ST 2110 for standardised transport of audio, video and ANC. “Now the industry is seeing broader and more mainstream IP deployments, JT-NM TR-1001-1 will play a key role in making IP installation and operation easier and more straightforward,” said AIMS board member Andy Warman.
of new equipment (compliant to the recommendation), connect it
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10 YOUR TAKE SDVS
Software-defined visual storytelling promises a content creation world of greater flexibility and service to customers DEFINING THE FUTURE WITH SDVS
he broadcast industry loves an acronym, and there is a new one that is rapidly gaining momentum. SDVS stands
Over and above what it offers to content creators, SDVS benefits the end user – the viewer. SDVS is the only way to provide enriched customer experiences in a scalable, on-demand, personalised and high-quality manner. Continuous innovation in the SDVS space will always have the end goal of enriching the viewing experience. So where does the broadcast technology industry stand at the moment with software- defined visual storytelling? Organisations are embracing the IP transformation for five main compelling reasons: 1. Smart studios and control rooms are future-facing. There are so many
for software-defined visual storytelling, marking a key point in the industry’s timeline when the major tasks in the media pipeline, everything from production and content creation to distribution and archiving will be carried out by software rather than dedicated hardware. It is now a given that IP will replace SDI, but simply adding an IP interface to a device isn’t going to be enough. Our industry is based on innovation, and studios need to invest in technology that is future-proof. The flexibility, precision and speed of feature delivery required by today’s workflows can only be achieved by basing the solutions on software. The immediate benefits of an SDVS- based workflow are impressive, and a good workflow is the cornerstone of world-class quality. With SDVS, you get real-time behaviour – no matter how complex the production – low latency in the production processes, and speed in both reconfiguring an ecosystem and fixing bugs. In the longer term, SDVS means increased efficiency, reduced costs, and the reuse of commodity hardware for multiple-use cases.
GERHARD LANG, CTO, VIZRT Software is the future of the broadcast industry
bonuses to having an IP-based studio, the most obvious being greater flexibility and automation, plus the ability to upgrade small components without changing
SDVS MEANS INCREASED EFFICIENCY, REDUCED COSTS AND THE REUSE OF COMMODITY HARDWARE FORMULTIPLE-USE CASES
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11 YOUR TAKE SDVS
devices. It enables a station to be reconfigured in hours instead of months. 2. IT and cloud security ensure full visibility and full control. Trust is growing for cloud security, and the industry is starting to see the benefits of it. 3. An obvious one – efficiencies. This is possibly most applicable to remote productions, enabling production teams to send the content back and work from a centralised and automated system. 4. Increasingly important is the fact that software has less of an impact on the environment than hardware. It also requires less power consumption and typically yields a smaller footprint requirement. 5. Set-up and maintenance are easier. We are advising our Vizrt customers that they need to look into UHD- 1 and UHD-2 and IP is the only solution there. But even for HD installations, the cable requirement is reduced and the bandwidth increases dramatically. Despite these clear benefits, there is still some resistance in the industry against fully embracing SDVS. Some of this is driven by
SOFTWARE-DEFINED VISUAL STORYTELLING – IT’S THE ANSWER TO STREAMLINEDWORKFLOWS AND GIVING YOUR VIEWERSMORE FOR LESS
commercial inertia. Many suppliers are not yet ready to disrupt their business models in favour of a more customer-centric, IP based one, remaining reliant on the revenue flows from hardware upgrade cycles. Also trust in software technology is just not as strong, yet, as it is in hardware, which is in turn exploited by hardware marketeers who have vested interest in delaying innovation. If unchecked, this, along with the current lack of software developers in AV, could slow the pace of transition. Software is the future! This is a big statement, I know, but one that I’m fully behind. Vizrt is committed to growing the functionality of our components, while the synergistic effects from our acquisition of NewTek and the use of AI inside our products will open new possibilities when defining workflows.
In terms of wider, tangible predictions, there will come a time, not too far away, when the only hardware on a production will be cameras, microphones... and not much more. The IP-based production workflow of the very near-future will be:
Highly automated Componentised Flexible, reconfigurable within minutes Highly efficient without the massive costs, energy and space requirements
Maintained by IT, not video engineers, operated by ‘non-specialists’
Using standardised interfaces with components registering and discovering themselves Using AI to further automate and simplify creating enriched content.
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12 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
HIGH-EFFICIENCY EDUCATION Digital learning company Cengage is using AWS tools to deliver the highest quality educational video to students, no matter which device they’re using
For both Cengage and Gale, video quality is key to delivering a great customer experience. Consequently, they selected cloud services from AWS to transcode an expanding content library – without compromising the viewer experience. “Scouring YouTube for the latest viral cat video is second nature to modern students, and having grown up with HD, 4K/UHD and HDR displays, they expect a certain level of video quality across experiences, whether watching a show or reviewing coursework,” explains Bill Binkiewicz, vice-
president of software engineering at Gale. “If video quality is lacking, students lose interest, so using HD as the baseline for all instructional materials is paramount to ensuring better engagement and retention.” Between Cengage and Gale, more than 450 videos in MP4 format, each averaging 15 to 20 minutes, are processed each month for viewing across a range of devices, including mobile phones, tablets, computers and more. Some of these are made available via Cengage Unlimited, the industry’s first all-access subscription
ideo is quickly becoming a preferred instructional tool for teachers and a learning aid for students. Recognising this
trend, education and technology company Cengage incorporates video into almost all of its instructional and research materials, which are taped by teachers and students in classrooms, as well as school, public and academic libraries around the world. Cengage’s library and research business arm, Gale, takes a similar approach with its own educational materials.
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13 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
for online textbooks, course materials and study tools. Cengage sought out AWS for a service- based file transcoding solution for creating video assets with better video quality and a better encoding efficiency than its previous solution. Video files are ingested into AWS MediaConvert from cloud storage and transcoded into HLS renditions using quality-defined variable bit rate control (QVBR). QVBR is an enhanced version of variable bit rate control (VBR), which AWS created to minimise wasted bits and automatically adjust bit rates to maintain consistent video quality. An Amazon S3 watch folder then triggers AWS Lambda with Simple Systems Manager to copy files onto Akamai NetStorage for playout.
The test file was footage of a talking head with minimal cuts and so easier than an action video to find efficiencies in. Still, MediaConvert was able to reduce total bits for all the different renditions of the video file from 115,687,393 to 53,402,682, which leads to an overall decrease in storage and delivery costs of 50%. This greater encoding efficiency also opens the way for a vastly improved viewing experience, with customers able to view larger format video at lower bit rates. “Bottom line, using cloud-based services from AWS gives us the best value in terms of quality and cost, as well as the agility we need to scale, which is why we’ve built our pipeline around it,” adds Coleman Greene, manager of cloud operations at Cengage. “We’re able to easily monitor and make changes to our pipeline, which saves us a ton of time,” he points out. “AWS Elemental MediaConvert in particular has made it easy to keep pace with the volume of content we produce and deliver by simplifying and
“We want every customer to be pleased with their digital experience, which is why we love QVBR in AWS Elemental MediaConvert,” says Binkiewicz. “It gives us the confidence that students will get a high-quality, low-latency experience across devices regardless of bandwidth, while simplifying transcoding and helping us save on costs.” The new AWS MediaConvert solution delivered substantially greater efficiency. In tests, Cengage’s previous solution delivered a 1080p MP4 test file, at maximum resolution, with an average bit rate of 7797Kbps with a total file size of around 46.1MB. Using MediaConvert, the same file was delivered with an average rate of 2763Kbps and a total file size of 17.1MB.
BOTTOM LINE, USING CLOUD-BASED SERVICES FROM AWS GIVES US THE BEST VALUE IN TERMS OF QUALITY AND COST
accelerating how we set up, organise and transcode large volumes of video.”
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14 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
The National Hot Rod Association is moving to the cloud to get its races out to fans faster than ever
Sony’s OTT solution, Ven.ue, NHRA.tv is now available across multiple platforms on the web, iOS, Android, Roku and Apple TV. NHRA is currently working on providing original content for that channel beyond its race coverage, including a studio show. The NHRA has also experimented with bringing in content from other sources, like ANDRA, the Australian National Drag Racing Association. The channel has a growing audience in other countries, including Australia, Sweden, Germany and the Middle East. The OTT channel is currently subscription based, but the NHRA is aiming for on-demand, transaction-based content in the future, for those who want to see a specific clip or access a moment from the organisation’s vast archive.
ubbed the largest car racing organisation in the world, the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) oversees drag racing across North America. Founded in 1951, it has over 40,000 members. A couple of years ago, the NHRA launched an OTT offering. The channel, originally called All Access, featured a simple live stream of everything happening at national drag race venues, including announcer commentary and coverage of every race on the track. The streaming service soon became incorporated into the NHRA’s in-venue big-screen content, with a resulting boost in content quality. At the start of the past season, the channel was rebranded as NHRA.tv. With
The NHRA developed a partnership with Sony through using Sony’s Ci media cloud platform. During the 2015-16 race season, the NHRA renegotiated its linear TV distribution relationship with Fox Networks and, in doing so, decided to bring all its production in-house. “It was the only way we would have control over our messaging and content,” says Mike Rokosa, NHRA technology executive. “And it’s what started the process of building out our own production capabilities in our offices in California. With that came the necessity of building a library, which was almost all videotape – some film – sitting on shelves. “We started by trying to band-aid up a hardware solution, but found pretty
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15 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
quickly that it was unsustainable.” Rokosa knows what he’s talking about. He was responsible for building one of the first digital asset management systems for the NBA. “When I worked with the NBA in the year 2000, cloud was just something that moved across the sky,” he laughs. Using Sony’s Ci has allowed the organisation to easily store, access and move content across its business. Additional partners have come on board, including cloud post-production company BeBop. The NHRA has just begun the process of moving all its Adobe-based systems off the machines in its Glendora, California headquarters and onto virtual machines on the AWS platform in the BeBop environment, which can access any content stored in Ci.
ALL OF THIS MEANS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT AS FAR AS BEING ABLE TO EDIT AND CREATE CONTENT FOR THE NETWORK AND BROADCAST SHOWS
Additionally, past content produced for the NHRA channels is moved to the cloud using the AWS Snowball data migration service. Content is moved from Amazon S3 to Glacier for longer-term storage. Similarly, the NHRA archives, which extend back to the fifties, will be digitised by Sony’s Memnon service, which helps businesses digitise large media archives regardless of size or format. “All of this means process improvement for us as far as being able to edit and create content for the network and broadcast shows, for our website and for the NHRA. TV, as well as promotional material like commercials or sales material,” says Rokosa. Rokosa’s goal is to take the metadata- rich content archive the NHRA is building and move it to Sony’s Ven.ue platform, which enables a public-facing access point
for subscribers and fans to get the full range of NHRA content. The NHRA is also now able to stream its content directly to the cloud from its venues and OB trucks. It just signed a contract with AT&T for a 10GB bandwidth connection from each one of the organisation’s tracks, which will allow the transfer of broadcast data to the cloud to happen in almost real time. There will also be a direct connection from the NHRA’s
location in Glendora to AWS. With a fully deployed cloud
infrastructure, the NHRA will be able to move content around at high-octane, nitrous-injected
speed, allowing race fans – from Glendora to Bahrain – to enjoy the results.
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16 STREAMPUNK Auburn University
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17 STREAMPUNK Auburn University
Auburn University is kitting itself out to stream whatever it wants, wherever it wants SOUTHERN STREAMING
ne of the oldest universities in the US state of Alabama, Auburn University, has built a forward-looking streaming-
social media content and streaming of various events. Around 100 students and freelance employees work on the team, with students working across a variety of production tech, as well as organising and scheduling coverage. Auburn doesn’t stream the ESPN coverage itself. Feeds bound for ESPN are generally sent via fibre directly to the ESPN studios in Charlotte, North Carolina or ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut and then broadcast to the public via ESPN’s app. The rest of the streaming done at Auburn University is done with the newly acquired Lightspeed Live Stream hardware from Telestream. Lightspeed Live takes live video feeds from production switchers, video routers, ISO cameras and other sources and streams them simultaneously to Auburn’s YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and website. “Lightspeed Live allow us to be very flexible and go onto different platforms,” says Carter. “It depends what the strategy
centric video production centre engaged with both the local community and the professional broadcast world. Weston Carter, Auburn’s director of video services, came to the university five years ago at the time of ESPN’s SEC Network launch, which covers college sports across the American southeast. Carter works on all aspects of video and graphic production, including live big- screen productions, video requests and the SEC Network digital productions put together by the university’s sports department. “We knew the SEC Network launch was going to mean ramping up our efforts in terms of our live productions, working with ESPN,” recalls Carter. The university built two control rooms during that time for broadcasting Auburn’s raft of sports. They are also used for post-production for coaches’ TV shows,
WE’VE BEEN ABLE TO ENGAGE OUR FANS INWAYS WE HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO BEFORE
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18 STREAMPUNK Auburn University
is, but we can go to multiple social media outlets with it.” Streamed content includes press conferences and live pregame content. Before games, there is a tradition of releasing a live eagle that flies around the stadium and makes for some great content, along with game-day marching bands. The Auburn University channel also streams graduation ceremonies and convocations for the university – as well as recording campus speakers. The new set-up at Auburn has allowed the university to expand its service to the community, too. “This past spring, we did two different memorial services in one of our venues. One was for the city for a fallen police officer. We did that production with a couple of cameras and streamed it to their YouTube channel, which we hadn’t worked with before. It has allowed us to work collaboratively with other organisations, like the city. Another
memorial service after that was also streamed to YouTube,” says Carter. Lightspeed Live is also used for capturing any content Auburn produces for archival purposes. The Auburn studios house four Evertz DreamCatchers for instant replay, as well as a motion graphics server. The studios also share seven Ross Video XPression boxes for computer graphics and two Ross Video Acuity switchers, along with a Grass Valley router and two Midas Pro3 audio consoles. The team has also just acquired a Telestream Vantage media asset management system. Last year, the studios acquired one petabyte of Dell EMC Isilon storage, which resides in a data centre five blocks away connected via fibre. The Isilon storage has dual 40Gb back-end switches and a 10Gb switch at the data centre, which connects via single-mode fibre back to the building. Most of the workstations have dual 1Gb connections to their editing clients.
WE WANTED TO BE ABLE TO RECORD EVERYTHINGWITH ONE BOX AND ONE INTERFACE
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19 STREAMPUNK Auburn University
IT GIVES US A LITTLE MOREENGAGEMENT WITH OUR FANS ANDMORE OPPORTUNITIES
The studios are connected by 48 strands of fibre to each of the Auburn’s main facilities, including the university’s arena – home to its major indoor sports including volleyball, basketball and gymnastics, as well as graduation – to the soccer stadium, the swimming natatorium, the softball field and the baseball field. The football stadium is connected by 96 strands of fibre. “Our fibre infrastructure is very good when it comes to speed and delivery of our content,” enthuses Carter. The team use a Stagebox at each location, mainly for audio input/output and comms, and the rest of the cameras are connected via single-mode fibre back to the CCU’s at the production facility. “One of the things we looked for was having a box that could do multiple channels. We wanted to be able to record everything with one box and one interface, and then I wanted that same box to be able to stream with the same input channels,” explains Carter. “If I wanted a single SDI input going to multiple social media outlets, we could do that. We were running into situations with our old system where we would have at least two streams going out at once and we would max out
on that or it would fail. The Lightspeed Live has given us a reliable box that gives us a lot of flexibility.” That flexibility has meant more varied and better sports coverage for the university. When its broadcast with ESPN is concluded, the team at Auburn can go directly to streaming a press conference or postgame coverage right to any of their social media channels or other content around events like National Signing Day, when US university sports sign new recruits onto their teams. Carter adds: “There are different levels of exposure we can do, before a broadcast begins or after it’s complete. So it gives us a little more engagement with our fans and more opportunities to give them a peek at what’s going on live.” Next up, Carter is looking at incorporating closed captioning, which will allow wider access to content and better exposure on social media, especially around press conferences. And the university’s sports communication staff are working closely with Carter on how they can do clipping for social media, even when out on the road. Ultimately, says Carter, “we’ve been able to engage our fans in ways we haven’t been able to before”.
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20 ESPORTS FOCUS Women in Esports
WHERE ARE THE WOMEN WARRIORS? Words by Neal Romanek Esports is supposed to be the sport of the future... so why aren’t there any female pros?
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21 ESPORTS FOCUS Women in Esports
verybody seems to agree that esports is the future of
Hegerberg, the game’s highest paid female athlete, makes around £340,000 a year. But other sports – virtually all other sports – have decades of sexism built into them – both in their fan culture and in access to the sports themselves. True story: women were told well into the 20th century that excessive sports play could dislodge their uterus. No, seriously. The number of women video game players approaches 50% of the population. This is confirmed by several studies, including a 2015 study by Pew Research Center, which found 50% of men and 48% of women play video games, with 15% of men and 6% of women identifying themselves as ‘gamers’. In the 18-29 age bracket, the numbers jumped to 77% of men and 57% of women playing video games, but with 33% of men, compared to 9% of women, identifying as gamers. So what’s esports’ excuse? A CULTURAL ISSUE Sabina Hemmi (see this issue’s Genius Interview, page 38), CEO and co-founder of popular game data sites Dotabuff, Fortbuff et al, was head of one of the world’s top World of Warcraft clans before becoming a entrepreneur. She knows first- hand how hard it is to be a women in a male-dominated gaming space. “There was a study done where they saw that men had higher reaction times. But then after you practise for a short period of time, reaction time difference between gender basically disappears,” Hemmi explains. “Any pro player in any game is going to have a great reaction time and great mechanical skills compared to an average person. I don’t know that gender plays the biggest role. That’s clearly a cultural issue.” She continues: “When I go to a sports data conference, the professional women in traditional sports feel like esports is almost proof women are not treated well, because there’s no reason on paper why women should not be able to play a video game at the same level.” Hemmi’s insights on the industry are based not just on her own experience, but on the study of the data her company collects. Is there anything in the data that shows there should be this discrepancy between male and female esports participation? “There are interesting things going on when we look at the data for a game like Dota 2, which doesn’t have any females professional players,” says Hemmi. “The skill level men need to be at before they get scouted, there are women playing now at that skill level. There are women
unscripted content. Broadcasters and producers, tech companies and advertisers are falling over themselves to get a piece of the esports gold rush. Esports athletes are global megastars, and the games they play are some of the biggest entertainment brands in existence with spin-off content including everything from fashion to music. I think we can all agree that esports is the signature entertainment for the 21st century. And there are no women in it. The website esportsearnings.com collates results of esports matches and how much money is being earned by individual esports athletes and teams around the world. Danish esports pro Johan Sundstein (“N0tail”) is the highest earning male esports athlete player and, according to the site, has earned a career total of $6,889,591. Sundstein is captain of top Dota 2 team OG and – if you don’t know it, gramps – is one of the world’s biggest esports stars. In second place is Finnish player Jesse Vainikka (“JerAx”) with a career total of $6,469,000, then Anathan Pham (“Ana”) of Australia with $5,999,411. The site also features a listing of esports’ top 100 earning females. Heading the list is trans woman Canadian gamer Sasha Hostyn (“Scarlett”) who has earned a career a total of $335,551. Hostyn is ranked 331 in earnings among esports athletes worldwide. Second in the female players list is the USA’s Katherine Gunn (“Mystik”) with a career total of $122,000 (ranked 941st worldwide), third is Ricki Ortiz with a career total of $80,780 (1418th) and fourth is Marjorie Bartell (“Kasumi Chan”) with a total of $55,000 (2069th). This disparity is seen in most sports. Lionel Messi makes over $100 million a year, while the Norwegian footballer Ada
A MAN’S WORLD Although an equal proportion of men and women play video games, pro esports players are predominately men
WHEN I GO TO A SPORTS DATA CONFERENCE, THE PROFESSIONAL WOMEN IN TRADITIONAL SPORTS FEEL LIKE ESPORTS IS ALMOST PROOFWOMEN ARE NOT TREATEDWELL
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23 ESPORTS FOCUS Women in Esports
PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE
Founded in 2015, AnyKey (anykey.org) is an advocacy group supporting diversity, inclusion and equity in competitive gaming. Co-sponsored by ESL and Intel, the organisation was formed under the leadership of Dr Morgan Romine, professor at University of California Irvine and former pro-gamer, and Dr T L Taylor, a sociology professor at MIT. AnyKey invites companies and individuals to take the GLHF (good luck, have fun) pledge, which includes promises to “be a good sport whether I win or lose”, “know that people online are real people and my words have real impact” and “respect others, even if their sincere opinions are different from my own”. Affiliate organisations include everything from the Dignitas women’s team and LBGTQ gamer groups to groups that promote gamers with disabilities. The organisation’s name is a reference to the phrase ‘press any key to continue’. The group’s website explains: “We chose that handle because we believe that anybody should be welcome in gaming.”
that are good enough to be scouted and join a team and become pro players. The problem is, those women are also really smart and see what happens when a woman becomes a pro player. They often decide, for their own happiness, they don’t want to put that pressure on themselves, even though they are good enough.” She adds: “I also notice that a lot of the women successful in esports don’t always love doing conversations about being a woman. Like Geguri (the South Korean pro Overwatch player, Kim Se-yeon) won’t do interviews about being a woman. That’s controversial sometimes for people who really want her to be a role model, but trying to be the best in the world at a game is enough for a lot of people. Most people never reach that point.” EVERYBODY CAN BE ANYBODY Charles Conroy has been in esports since the very beginning, as a pro player and team manager and, most recently, as the esports expert at broadcast tech provider The Switch. He sees esports as a great opportunity for diversity across
gender, racial and cultural lines. “One thing I personally love about esports is that it’s the ultimate equaliser. There are no physical limitations. Anyone can get up and kick ass, no matter your race or religion or gender,” says Conroy. “But I think that esports needs to be more welcoming to women. I think the community, in some ways, has been a bit juvenile. That’s changing a lot. But when I started in 2003, if you’re a girl and you’re playing in esports, you were singled out.” Still, Conroy is optimistic about how esports could be a force for inclusion in the future. “There are some great female champions out there. There are some great champions from all sorts of different races and backgrounds, different countries. I think it’s truly going to be the great equaliser. And I’m excited to see that continue to grow,” he says. Rob Black is COO of ESL UK. He admits the games that have become major esports already have a hyper-masculine tendency – an emphasis on intense direct conflict with victory achieved through violence. “Traditionally, the games that became esports were made to appeal to a male audience, so a lot of people getting involved in the industry early on were men. In the last few years, we’ve started to see a big shift and an influx of women being involved in consuming and playing esports. Inclusive games such as Overwatch and Fortnite are really helping to open up opportunities for women. “We’ve also seen female-only leagues and competitions set up in order to
I NOTICE THAT A LOT OF THE WOMEN SUCCESSFUL IN ESPORTS DON’T ALWAYS LOVE DOING CONVERSATIONS ABOUT BEING AWOMAN
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24 ESPORTS FOCUS Women in Esports
IT’S GAMING MEN Despite efforts, most gaming leagues are made up entirely of men
Dreamhack’s stated goal for the event was “to elevate ambitious women CS:GO players in the global esports scene and provide a dedicated platform to support their professional growth. We aim to raise the visibility of the women currently in the space, provide equal access to competitive support as their male counterparts and offer a concrete way for women players to find guidance and inspiration to establish their path to pro”. Promoting women-only leagues and teams yields some great results. It shines the spotlight on women in the league, gives them a chance to grow their own fan bases and is likely to encourage other potential players. It will also give commercial interests the opportunity to see how popular women in esports can be – that there is some money to be made on it (see this year’s Women’s World Cup). But within that solution is also the problem of creating a ‘separate but equal’ league. By it’s very nature, it gives permission for other leagues – currently the bigger ones and the ones making the most money – to become all-male leagues. Showing that women are ‘as good as’ men at esports is not exactly the same as welcoming them into the sport as equal participants. Most of us still cling to the idea that greater digitisation leads to wider participation, greater freedom and more equality. The facts don’t really bear this out. Digital tools seem more often to result in the concentration of power and influence into fewer hands. Esports promises an even playing field where ‘anybody can be somebody’, but if the real world hasn’t solved its sexism problem, then we shouldn’t expect the digital world to be any different.
TRADITIONALLY, THE GAMES THAT BECAME ESPORTS WEREMADE TOAPPEAL TOAMALE AUDIENCE
SOLUTIONS FOR SHOOTERS One of the ways to bring women into esports is to create female leagues. This summer, esports organisation Dreamhack launched a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) showdown in Valencia, Spain, with a prize pool of $100k, open to female and non-binary players. Dreamhack partnered with Zowie, which established the Divina initiative – an initiative started to help women show off their gaming talent and promote
provide a platform for idols and role models to be discovered by other women interested in video games,” he adds. Black thinks time will work in women’s favour, with new female leagues slowly gaining traction, but he admits these still can’t compete with the general leagues, which, though nominally open to all, are essentially male leagues. “One of the great things about esports and gaming in general is that it doesn’t look at nationality, race, sexual orientation or gender,” Black says. “Our company motto at ESL is ‘where anybody can be somebody’. We embrace that, from our tournaments to our hiring. We want to create a world and company where no matter your background, you can come into esports and succeed.”
professional female esports players. Zowie’s Divina ran a women’s CS:GO championship in Shanghai, which served as the Asian LAN qualifier for the Dreamhack Showdown.
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26 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE The Switch
Charles Conroy is the new vice-president of gaming at The Switch. He started as a pro esports player, but now he’s hoping to bridge the gap between esports and broadcast ESPORTS IS CERTAINLY NOT A BUBBLE
FEED: YOU HAVE A BACKGROUND AS A PROFESSIONAL GAMER. HOW DID YOU END UP WORKING AT A BROADCAST TECHNOLOGY COMPANY LIKE THE SWITCH? CHARLES CONROY: I’ve been in esports half my life, which is kind of crazy to think about now. I started in 2003 as a player, then I started a team called JMC (JaX Money Crew), which was absorbed by DirecTV and become the Dallas Venom. I became their general manager at age 19. This was part of DirecTV’s championship gaming series. It was the first time esports was on global television. There were eight teams in the United States, each assigned to a city, and after season one that grew to 18 teams. About $50 million was spent on that league in two years. When that didn’t work, it was honestly sort of a dark time in esports. People thought: if News Corp couldn’t make it work for that amount of money, who could? I then joined a team called Complexity that my friend owned. He gave me an equity share and we ran it together for about eight years. We made Complexity the powerhouse it is now, one of the top eports teams in the world and, dating back
love this esports thing. We want you to dive right in and we want to give you the support you need,” it was a no-brainer to take the baton and run with it. FEED: HOW DO YOU THINK THE SWITCH CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THE WORLD OF ESPORTS? CC: You see major brands taking notice of esports and we’re starting to see traditional broadcast sports quality on the championship level. I feel like we really need that. It used to be very grassroots. We were figuring things out as we went. And there’s nothing wrong with that – it was clearly successful – but now bringing brands in like The Switch who do the Super Bowl, the Oscars, the Grammys and have 32 years of expertise, is going to do nothing but elevate everyone on both sides. There are things that esports can learn from traditional sports and there are things that traditional sports can learn from esports. And we’re trying to build the perfect hybrid to elevate everyone’s game. FEED: AND HOW DO YOU THINK ESPORTS CAN HELP OUT TRADITIONAL BROADCAST? CC: One thing I’ve seen in broadcasting is that sometimes people can go a bit stagnant and rest on their laurels. No offense to anyone in particular; innovation might happen on a technological level, but as far as fan engagement and things of that nature go, esports is light years ahead.
CHARLES CONROY “ I’ve been in esports half my life, which is kind of crazy to think about”
to 2003, the oldest team in North America. It was sold to the Dallas Cowboys, at which point I exited. Now I’m just a fan. Go, Complexity! I became an on-air personality, working for digital networks like MLG and Sony Online Entertainment, and I decided I wanted to get back into esports full time. But I wanted an opportunity that combined traditional sports with esports. When I was approached by The Switch, the world’s leading broadcaster of traditional sports, and they said, “We
I THINK THE NUMBERS ARE GOING TO CONTINUE TO GROWASMONEY IS PUMPED IN
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27 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE The Switch
AI AND VR ARE GOING TO HAVE HUGE PARTS TO PLAY IN THE NEAR FUTURE, ESPECIALLY FROMA BROADCAST LEVEL
Look at how fast esports has grown, compared to, for example, American football – I mean, they were wearing leather helmets for 40 years! Esports was invented 15 years ago. There has never been a sport that’s grown at this lightning rate. Esports has been forced to evolve at a rate that traditional sports hasn’t. Because of that, things like fan interaction from companies like Twitch are completely game-changing. Now pro sports are seeing those numbers and growth, and they’re taking notice and trying to figure out how to bring that into their business. FEED: HOW DO YOU SEE ESPORTS CHANGING OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS OR SO? CC: The answer is I don’t know, and I think most people would consider me an esports expert. But because esports is growing at such a rapid rate, all I can say is we’re excited to be part of it. The Switch is hopefully going to be a big leader in that change and will help continue that growth. AI and VR are going to have huge parts to play in the near future, especially from a broadcast level. As you saw with the broadcast of the League of Legends championship last year, there was a VR dragon that flew through the stadium, and they won an Emmy for it. So esports is leading innovation and broadcast is then raising its technological skills to match that innovation. I think the numbers are going continue to grow as money is pumped in. Esports
ESPORTS ARE GOOD Traditional sports broadcasters are beginning to see the growth in esports and the advantages of getting on board
dreams and plans are now being fuelled by actual cash. That’s the difference between esports ten years ago when people had these ideas, but no capital, and now when the capital is at a point where they can realise these concepts. People can start trying something different and just roll the dice. In the NFL it’s hard to roll the dice, because you have a set format. In esports the format and the barriers are being broken every day. I think the game-changer has been the advent of Twitch. All of a sudden these metrics were viewable – 22 million eyeballs over a weekend was a real number that you can actually measure, and pro sports took notice of that. As their numbers may have been declining, esports numbers were shooting up at a pace that has never been seen in any other sport. Twitch has helped with that influx of capital and it has allowed
esports to move at a full run, and I don’t think it’s going to slow down. Esports is certainly not a bubble. People say: “Where did eSports come from? It’s only been around three years.” Well, it actually started in 2003. We were on DirecTV, on Sky, on Star Asia. We had a league in 2007 that had $50 million of capital. Like any other industry, it has gone through ebbs and flows. We’re at a high right now, and I don’t think it’s going to crash anytime soon. It’s a rocket ship and I don’t see it going anywhere besides up.
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28 ESPORTS Weavr Consortium
Weavr Consortium is a UK-funded project using data and AI to make esports a fully immersive experience WEAVR OF DREAMS Words by Elsie Crampton
ata is the heart of esports. Video games themselves are literally no more than a visualisation of data manipulated in real time by
and traditional sports. The aim is to create a kind of data-driven entertainment with greater commercial opportunities for brands and teams and a much more immersive, interactive experience for viewers. ESL, the largest esports organisation in the world, has been at the centre of the Weavr project which kicked off in January of this year. The company had been collaborating for some time with researchers at the UK’s University of York, experimenting with using AI to improve the storytelling at ESL tournaments. “It was cutting-edge stuff at the time. The industry hadn’t seen this sort of thing
before,” says James Dean, ESL UK CEO. “Suddenly out pops this opportunity to bid for some funding as part of the Audience of the Future programme.” The Audience of the Future initiative, run by of UK’s Department of Digital, Culture, Media, & Sport (DCMS), aims to bring creative businesses, researchers and tech experts together to create new types of storytelling, with an aim to make the UK more competitive in content creation and development internationally and to create experiences that are culturally impactful. Out of a total of £33 million available for research, £16 million was to be split between four “demonstator” projects in four categories, one of which was sports. ESL put forward its Weavr concept. “Lo and behold, we won it. We at ESL had never actually won any funding before – or even applied for it, for that matter. Although the University of York was quite attuned to the process.”
humans. A new UK tech collaboration, the Weavr Consortium, aims to take the mass of data embedded in esports and create a new way of viewing competitive content. Weavr is a collaboration between six UK companies with expertise in esports, education and entertainment, supported by a grant from UK Research and Innovation. The Weavr platform uses live and historic game data to create mixed- reality experiences for fans of both esports
IT’S A MASSIVELY CHALLENGING AND VERY COMPLEX SYSTEM. IT’S GOT A LOT OFMOVING PARTS
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