• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Kotaku: Fans Are Ripping The Halo World Championship For Its Shabby Venue

IHaveIce

Banned
Link to the Kotaku Article

I know a lot of people on here think 343/Microsoft catered to much to the esports scene with Halo 5 now, see how much MS only invests in the organizement of these tournament.

Just for information, the tournament has a prizepool of 1,000,000$.

Here have a paragraph out of the article:
Nothing screams esports quite like some deflated balloons blowing in the wind and a lone family homesteading on some abandoned bleachers inside a tent. One Twitter conversation about the images, approaching Beckettian levels of eloquent absurdity, went like this:

”This can't be real"
”It could be worse. The mainstage could be shared with Just Dance."
”That is not worse than this."
”Even the balloons look like they don't want to be there."
”Begging for someone to snip them loose."
The contrast was so stark it drew comparisons to the year prior when the Halo Championship was held in Raleigh Studios Hollywood with a prize pool of over $2,500,000.

Comparison pics:
2016
hsF9xGZ.jpg

2017
choice pics, but in the article it goes indepth on it.

As a invested fan of the competitive side of Halo this is hilarious but also so sad to see.

Other Esport veterans are joking about the Halo tournament live on twitter
 

Sölf

Member
Is... is that just a normal house? Are they going to play in the living room?

Edit:
Looking at the article, it's a tent. The fuck.
 

jem0208

Member
Good thing the venue makes fuck all difference to the viewing experience.

The tournament has been fantastic to watch so far.
 

Wallach

Member
Sölf;232764861 said:
Is... is that just a normal house? Are they going to play in the living room?

Edit:
Looking at the article, it's a tent. The fuck.

As the same article says, it's the overflow viewing area. Not the actual venue.
 

jem0208

Member
This is the actual stage by the way:
C7yqIuUVYAAmXNP.jpg


Also what's the going bet that this thread gets more replies than the thread about the actual tourney?
 
Man last time i watched an halo Xbox tournament the rival teams were screaming at each other like a bunch of apes trying to protect the fig tree.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
LMAO at the comparison in the OP.

What the hell is going on, Microsoft?
 

IHaveIce

Banned
This is the actual stage by the way:
C7yqIuUVYAAmXNP.jpg


Also what's the going bet that this thread gets more replies than the thread about the actual tourney?

Given, this photo excludes the 4th rows, where people could sit, but it is reserved for media people... so people have to sit outside if they don't have legendary pass.

And dude even that stage is a shame compared to the one of last year. And look at the CoD stages.
 
From reading the article, it sounds like org that's putting this on had their preferred venue not pan out, so they had to use this as a backup. But yeah, not a great look.
 

CyReN

Member
This is the actual stage by the way:
C7yqIuUVYAAmXNP.jpg


Also what's the going bet that this thread gets more replies than the thread about the actual tourney?

You forget that it's only for media, vip, players, etc.

Everyone else is stuck in a tent.

Stop trying to put a happy face on this situation, I've been in the competitive Halo community for 10+ years and this event is disgraceful.
 
I wonder if they did a cost versus reward comparison on how much they spent on the arena versus the online viewership.

I mean HWC is not exactly The International.
 

jem0208

Member
Given, this photo excludes the 4th rows, where people could sit, but it is reserved for media people... so people have to sit outside if they don't have legendary pass.

And dude even that stage is a shame compared to the one of last year. And look at the CoD stages.

The venue is absolutely not up to par and it's a shame that it was held there.


However, the event has been fantastic so far and it would be a real shame (and not at all a surprise) if this is how it's represented.

You forget that it's only for media, vip, players, etc.

Everyone else is stuck in a tent.

Stop trying to put a happy face on this situation, I've been in the competitive Halo community for 10+ years and this event is disgraceful.

The venue (which again is frankly irrelevant for the vast majority of the audience) is shit. However, for 99.9% of the people watching the event has been great.


I just think it's a shame that this event is going to be remembered for a sub par venue rather than a really well run and entertaining stream.
 

LQX

Member
This is the actual stage by the way:
C7yqIuUVYAAmXNP.jpg


Also what's the going bet that this thread gets more replies than the thread about the actual tourney?

Still looks really shabby and cheap for a game like Halo from such a huge company.
 

IHaveIce

Banned
Phil Spenser: esports are really important for us.




(Op pics are not indicative of the actual event and main arena)
Main arena is also super small and it is mentioned in the article
The fuck, put this in the OP before we have another antixbox shitpost thread galore.
It is now in, but it is also mentioned in the article, even the main area is super small
https://twitter.com/Greenskull/status/845738875108536320

Seems like another case of quality Kotaku game journalism.

This is addressed in the article.

Guys I posted "choice pics", everything is explained in the article.
Even the main area is super bad.
 
Wait the pot is $1 million and people are complaining? To me the pot is the most important part. Who cares about the venue?

Also I don't get why there's the tweet comparing COD to Halo. Of course the COD tournament is going to be way nicer, COD is like 100x more popular a game.
 

Madness

Member
Good thing the venue makes fuck all difference to the viewing experience.

The tournament has been fantastic to watch so far.

Have you heard what Pros are saying. Unless you bought Legendary or VIP tickets you cannot even see the main stages. Plus guys like OpTic H3cz and a lot of others are trashing it nonstop. Guys like the Buk twins are saying people should stay home and watch rather than go out. You can criticize HCS for once. The viewing experience is from the fact we have great casters and pro players who make it fun to watch. But the scene and they and we all deserve more. It is one event after the other where competitive Halo is working in spite of the HCS.
 
I was in disbelief until I saw the inside. Still, this was Microsoft's idea, right?

I'd like to see the venue for their TV, sports, and Call of Duty.
 

mrlion

Member
LMAO at the comparison in the OP.

What the hell is going on, Microsoft?

They're going insane now that no one is paying attention to the Xbone..

Wait the pot is $1 million and people are complaining? To me the pot is the most important part. Who cares about the venue?

Well according to the article, the prize pool in the year previous was 2.5 million. So yeah even that is going down the drain.
 

IHaveIce

Banned
Wait the pot is $1 million and people are complaining? To me the pot is the most important part. Who cares about the venue?

There also technical issues, Pros are saying the stations feel like they have lag and are on different servers.

Last years WC also had a bigger pot.
 

CyReN

Member
For reference, this was Sony and Call of Duty event last week with MLG for one of their regular tournaments (not their worlds)

biHGTFk.jpg
 
Top Bottom