Coffee w/ Toffees - Behind the Summit

Alright I'm pretty biased but if Valve don't find some way to have Toffees involved with TI5 I will be genuinely disappointed. There's nobody else out there who provides content quite like this show and it really benefits the scene in my opinion. GREAT stuff.

Some timestamps:

02:06 - Podcast overview: The Summit 3 experience, technology, emotions

03:26 - BTS hiring content creators to staff the event

03:55 - SirActionsSlacks, the first driver to arrive

04:03 - Massive practice room at the hotel

04:35 - Vici preferred practicing at a local LAN center

05:00 - Practice room was probably the worst smelling room ever

06:26 - Driving teams around

06:45 - Short games and big sponsor requirements

08:50 - Reddit threads about the advertisement at The Summit 3

11:30 - The story of Fear: A minidoc by @ProveDota, @Toffees_Dota2, @TheWonderCow

16:45 - BTS responds to Reddit complaints (Wayne's World spoof video)

17:30 - Players didn't want to cast during the first two days

18:15 - 110,000 people watch the house tour

18:50 - Technology: SSD for each player, 40 self-built PCs, 24" monitors (same as TI)

22:10 - Technical issues: Bad wi-fi, slow internet at hotel

22:40 - Players so impressed with the tournament that they volunteered for casting

23:31 - Joy and Grace handled food and hospitality stuff (e.g., getting Puppey's glasses fixed)

24:00 - Dota players love Starbucks

24:55 - Behind the Summit / house tour

25:15 - fwosh: "Here at the Summit 3"

29:58 - Hard for staff to get from the practice room to the BTS house

30:55 - SirActionSlacks

35:05 - The top 3 teams; special preparation against Vici Gaming

36:20 - Players and staff are kind and welcoming to newcomers

37:26 - Dota players smoke like chimneys

38:03 - Toffees' Summit experience: Exhausting but exciting

39:20 - Q&A with Toffees (Summit 4, Empire, format of Summit 3, ...)

I hope you guys enjoy this podcast/vlog. I wanted to give you an unfiltered and honest perspective on my time at the lan.. both the highs and lows.

I made sure not to include personal information such as which players specifically smoke a lot because I want to respect everyone's right to the minimal privacy they are afforded in this business.

Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!

It was good to hear from people actually behind the scenes at the event and what was really going on there.

Big ups Toffees. Awesome content :).

I'd really like to know which players smoke and which don't, and which smoke the most.

Excellent podcast as always toffees.

While I agree with his point about how the advertising felt like it was less in previous years because it was stretched out over time... Even taking that into account there was still far more advertising present this time than the last. That said, an excellent review of the tournament and some nice insight into its workings.

Love the morning show idea. A College Gameday type environment would be great at TI.

I think this show is definitely a great new addition to the dota scene. There are literally no talk shows right now that bring on guests to talk about behind the scenes stuff or just have discussions about the scene in general. BTS used to do In the Studio, but they stopped doing it a while back. I think toffee's show could be a great replacement to that, but i think he will need to build relations within the scene before players trust him enough to come on his show. Keep it up though toffees, you are doing a great job!

Really nice show you have there Toffees, thanks for all of the insight on the tournament.

It's great to hear that a tournament finally went ahead and provided an experience for players that left no room for complains. Even though this means that you have to invest into the quality of your tournament it certainly pays off because you will have better teams playing in your tournament, the games will presumably be better and you will have less issues overall.

That being said, all these things mentioned by toffees as being new and revolutionary like the SSDs for players are actually nothing innovative. As someone who comes from following SC2, all these things were already done by TakeTV who have been running the Homestory Cup - which is kind off the role model for The Summit - for years now. I don't understand why it took the DotA scene this long to put such things into practice when it's already been done for years in other scenes. To this day the production value of most DotA events is a lot worse than it is/was in SC2, even though DotA is way bigger and all the know-how should be there.

I think the video kind of outlines how its almost impossible to have a contingency plan for everything. Over quite a few Dota2 talk shows, people from the community(managers, players, tourney organizers, talking heads), kept on making comments about "oh my god hire a consultant", "this is already your second or third tourney, learn how to run a tourney", etc. But I think even members of the community don't understand how hard it is to organize an event.

BTS has a HUGE amount of control in creating a LAN that did not have a crowd or a huge venue. It was at the BTS house where they had months to prepare and lay everything out. Not like a LAN where you have a time restriction of access time to the venue. Hotels and stadiums won't let you set up wiring or equipment until you pay a deposit. They don't have to worry about time limits and the venue closing.

But even with these advantages the TS3 fell to people not having the foresight of preparing a lot of B-roll or other entertainment for the viewers. They knew that they were going to provide practice computers offsite. So players would probably not be "just hanging around" the house. They didn't expect the games to be so short, but at the same time we've seen patches before where hyper aggression was the name of the game, Na'vi sub 20 minute games. And it goes to show, even with onsite editing gear, and simple interviews how hard it is to push out interview videos.

I can see where TS3 did a great job, but they have huge advantages compared to other LANs and they mostly took ideas from TI events. Things hot swap drives isn't a new thing, the idea came from TI.

I think the most interesting question out of this tourney would be, "was everyone paid for their services?". I'm not saying BTS didn't pay, but I think it would be the most interesting question to ask. People agreed with Envy's post about tourneys awkwardly not paying people from the community while using them as translators and other services, so would the same idea be applied here? Paying for your amenities and paying for your services are two different things, and one could argue paying for the amenities could count as an advertising cost or a marketing cost, since they know people from the community would give them free exposure.

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Toffes did they hire you or just invited you to go there ? When they invited you don't they brief you what they spected from you? I cant see what's the pourpose having you there as a driver instead a content generator as you are and I think it's kind of offensive

Awesome video. Very informative.

I agree with Toffees, 6.84 is shit for a spectators. You fucked up icefraud.