I. Evolution of Capstone
When I started my capstone journey in Fall of 2014, even going as far back as Spring of 2014, I wanted to make something that I would enjoy. The idea of capstone induced so much fear in me from seeing all the big, exciting, complicated projects from the seniors my freshman year, I was always dreading having to participate myself, mainly because I didn’t feel like I was as good at physically creating something. With that preconceived notion of certain failure, I was relieved to find that many professors in the major told me to focus on what I’m interested in and make it about New Media. I know Mike Scott was always talking about the most important part of capstone being “staying true to your concepts.”
That being said, in 306 when we were to brainstorm 5 capstone ideas off the top of our heads, the one that stuck out to me was CrowdCast, the idea of getting amateur broadcasters together, something similar to my experience at 91.9 WMEB, the campus’ student radio station. Eventually the idea evolved into a space for amateur e-sports broadcasters, which is something yet to exist. There were student-run radio stations for sports broadcasting, but nothing for video game e-sports.
With this concept in mind, I headed forth into 498 in Fall of 2014 with an idea of building my own forum and recruiting amateur shoutcasters to join in and get started pursuing a dream. My course was set for pretty much the next 6 months. However, that doesn’t mean that my capstone didn’t continue to evolve from the beginning. What had started as a self-built forum to upload recorded gameplay footage, which people could download and then cast over, eventually turned into a basic-level freeware forum for the same purpose, around the end of the fall semester.
I was discouraged because I knew I was not the best at web coding, especially databases, which are probably my weakest area of web coding. Because of that I switched to a super basic freeware forum, at first as a permanent solution, but eventually as just a placeholder. The general consensus between my peers and classmates was that a forum of that nature wouldn’t get nearly the time of day or the respect that a project like this needed.
It was also discouraging because around that time, my own contribution to the project other than just hosting the site was to create content. The feedback I got from that idea was less than encouraging. Merely providing content wasn’t good enough, so I had to rethink my steps. I had gotten too focused on making this capstone more about my own personal interests, which is what the concept was based on, and failed to adapt accordingly.
However, at the very end of the fall semester, at the mid-year showcase, I was able to promote my project to the point where it was presentable again. That was for the reason of taking a happy-medium approach to the software I was using, with the selection of a subreddit as my main platform. It was free and easy to use yet heavily customizable. While I had the platform down, and had yet to build a community, I found that in the meantime I could build up the project’s research potential; at the beginning of this project I had listed many references and presented them to the class as my research going into this endeavor. The articles and videos, which will be attached to this article, were easy for me to pull up and explain because of my interest around the subject. I think in the end that was the main reason my capstone was able to flourish here in late April / early May: because of my knowledge of the subject.
After building a hype video compiling e-sports broadcasting to entice people at the midyear showcase, which worked in bringing people to my table to ask me about the project, I was able to spend all of winter break thinking about how I was to change my capstone to adapt it to what the class was requiring of me. I went from a pre-made forum for people to upload their recorded videos for me and others to commentate on, I had switched to a subreddit and the notion of more live recording of commentaries and even live-streaming. Instead of just content-creating, I was going to also be taking a more active role in building the community.
The project had started as a concept of combining 2 of my loves and putting a New Media spin on them; broadcasting, video games, and many-to-many communication. For the entire first semester I seemed to focus mainly on the 2 loves instead of making sure I was adapting this to make it more a project rather than an excuse for a project. The final product ended up being more of a research project than anything. Not to say that a capstone can’t be that, I’ve seen many capstones focus primarily on research and presentation. It’s very rare, however, to see a New Media capstone do that, because of the nature of the major teaching you to build something. Did I fit the mold? At first, but at the end, not as much. But was it successful? To some degree, absolutely.
Although by the time capstone night rolled around it was more of a research and performance peace, it still held its main purpose as a community building project, since my partner for the afternoon, Jeff, was an example of what the community could achieve. Jeff had never broadcasted anything in that setting before, like play by play or color commentary for a sport or e-sport, yet with 1 practice run he and I were participating in recording broadcasts together and eventually commentating on games together for my capstone presentation.
This transition from mainly community building to half community half research came in the middle of the semester when my capstone finally officially launched. I got some decent feedback from some reddit users, a few subscribers to the subreddit, and an overall positive reaction from those who chimed in. That gave me the drive and the passion to keep going. However what changed was that that was the only positive recruitment I had. Not because anyone recruiting strategy was unsuccessful, but rather due to the fact that I had wasted so much time on finalizing my platform and my concept that by the time it was time to start more recruiting, it was time to focus on press materials.
II. Connection to New Media
As I’ve mentioned before, my project relates to New Media on several different levels of the many-to-many communication system of how the internet works in today’s age, especially in regards to broadcasting which is my main interest outside of school.
New Media is all about innovation and making old into new; now someone like me freshman year would assume this is only in terms of technology, making new improvements to make our lives cooler and make neat gadgets to impress other people and/or make life easier. However, in my 4 years of undergraduate study in this major I’ve seen the cultural meanings of New Media, and how technology merely helps us achieve these cultural goals, instead of being the end-all be-all goal.
A lot of this project ended up being research-oriented, as I’ve stated before, and that research mainly concerned the evolution of video games from just a pure form of self-entertainment to a spectator sport. In which I looked at the idea of e-sports and how they present themselves to the public. Instead of worrying about TV deals, or having people pay for online streams, most e-sports use free-to-watch streaming sites like twitch.tv and azubu.tv, which allows them to get such huge access and blow away other viewer numbers of other spectator sports that you would see on ESPN. It’s not just about the sites they use, it’s how they provide these streams to mass audiences. The technology helps, but the ease of viewing these streams, with minimal to no advertisement interruption, is in my opinion a cultural definition of New Media.
The original purpose of my project, as well, was an example of the many-to-many communication format that New Media boasts. A forum site where people can crowdsource their footage to broadcast and also get feedback on their own “performances”. Even if the project didn’t end where I had originally intended it to, the concept of many-to-many was implied and aimed for. The notion of broadcasting in and of itself is a form of many-to-many, having a combined amount of broadcast crew presenting a sport or event to millions of people at once, live on air.
It’s humorous to me the notion of what is a concept of New Media and what isn’t is widely debated by some in the major and also kind of thrown around as a joke at times, that when someone actually gives me a compliment about my presentation being very close to their own personal understanding of New Media, they would say “That’s SO New Media!” I know friend of mine in the major when we see something even remotely innovative or new-age we might half-sarcastically remark to each other “THAT’S New Media!” Sure, we may be half-joking at the time, but there is some merit to what we’re declaring as “New Media.” So when I was receiving this compliment about my presentation on Friday, it struck me as a joke at first, until I realized they actually thought my project fit that idea of “New Media.”
III. Successes and Failures
So in terms of success, would I say my capstone was successful? Well it all depends in what context you ask that. If you took my beginning of the year goal, which was to have an active and learning community by May 1st, then absolutely not. That was in part to my indecisiveness in terms of how I wanted to go about the project. I spent the entire first ¾ of capstone worrying about logistics and the final ¼ actually carrying it out. Had I spent only ¼ of the class working on the idea, and finalized the idea that I came up with by spring, I might have had a lot more to show for it by now. Would’ve had at least 5 months for actual community building and participation. I keep telling myself “Why couldn’t I have had this idea earlier and acted upon it?” When you have to keep flip flopping about something as huge as this, your hindsight becomes more and more annoyingly clear.
However in terms of what I had to work with after my own indecisiveness bit me in the butt, and what I was able to present on New Media Night, what I would’ve presented in a more full, longer presentation or defense, was mainly that of my own research and performance. Because of switching to a performance piece to cap off a research project, Capstone night was a huge success for me. Everything from the press materials time period until May 1st at 5pm was incredibly successful. I had concise, informative research, a performance setup that enticed viewers and encouraged questions, and informed a lot of people about the growing idea of video games evolving to spectator-sport status.
I determine the success of this presentation because of the feedback I received from staff, other students, and out-of-department visitors. Everyone I performed for, answered questions for, and talked with for extended periods of time, were thoroughly impressed with my passion and knowledge of the subject.
I think what I learned from this, what could’ve made this capstone more of a success in terms of my original plan, was to stop doubting myself so much, and to think more clearly and concisely. If I had just gone with the plan I had in mid-March, instead of deciding on that plan until mid-March, I would’ve been more successful in that regard. I also learned that just because plans don’t work out the way you planned them to doesn’t mean to blow up the entire project and start over. I was still able to salvage the project and take a more research-centric focus towards the end, and it ended up, as I thought, as a success.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I feel that despite the original intent of my capstone project not going as well as planned (to put in nicely), I was able to make up for that disappointment by presenting my project as a performance peace and informing and educating others about this growing culture of e-sports and the evolution of video games to spectator-sport status, both in e-sports and in internet culture in general. Had I had to defend this project in a presentation, this is basically what I would’ve presented; the results of my research, my performance piece, etc. I’m hoping what I was able to pull off in the end was enough to make my year in capstone worthwhile in terms of being able to pass and move on to graduate. The amount of work I put into making this project presentable and “successful” in the end makes me hopeful for a good result.
Figures
r/crowd_cast after launch
An example of me providing shoutcast tips to new users
Annotated Bibliography
http://www.polygon.com/2014/1/27/5350944/league-of-legends-has-27-million-daily-active-players
This article shows the sheer popularity of League of Legends, one of the main games I’d be using to shoutcast. This is the basis for most of my other points and articles.
Expanding on League of Legends, this article highlights the 2013 World Championship, in which an entire sports arena in Western America was sold out and got a total of 32 million online viewers. This shows how popular E-sports are getting.
While this article doesn’t boast the numbers of Dota2’s World Championship, it still puts e-sports in the same category as the world cup.
This article plays off the last 2 of e-sports becoming more prevalent like real sports. This article is for a new bar opening in Portland which is marketed to video game young-adult (21+) fans. Most bars like these have been popping up all over California and are famous for showing ESports streams on their bigscreens.
“http://team2g.org/”>http://team2g.org/
An example of how a community can start from just one person; Trick2g is a famous League of Legends streamer who gained success and fame in the League of Legends community for just his attitude and his skill. A year later he now has 1000’s of fans and they all interact on this one website. This shows how quickly something in the League of Legends community can create a completely new and different community.
An example of League of Legends amateur shoutcasting by CodyPOV, a semi-known content creator in the League of Legends community. He would hopefully be one of my contributors once the site’s up.
Another example of amateur shoutcasting, this one by MaximusBlack, a semi-known content creator in the Starcraft 2 and League of Legends community.
Here for your viewing pleasure, a full professionally casted professional League of Legends game.
This isn’t just League of Legends either, here’s this years DoTA2 World Final
My last post is very recent; it’s from the League of Legends World Championship tournament currently happening in Singapore. A video was requested of the shout-casters from an intense moment in the game, and someone was actually filming them and synced the audio up to them. Their energy is great, and it’s what caused someone to request that recording/record it.
