Hey C_

Yes, this was/is the idea. I wanted to create this product just for the TF2 community at first. So that people from the TF2 community have a product they are proud of, love and use. Like this I would be able to see what it takes to build such a product/service for people from "smaller" Esports Communities. I would be able to learn, iterate and enhance the service to the point that it is also loved by other Esports-communities. It is easier to expand in circular motions than in one big attack. I rather build something a few love instead of building something a lot like.

However, it seems that indeed, there is not the need for the service I am trying to deliver. No problem to the solution that I am trying to provide. So I have two options: Give up oooor iterate on the service idea! I think you know which route I am taking.... :) I will try to enhance the service to the point that it becomes useful to the community.

Hey Sideshow,

thanks for that input, much appreciated. I feel like it is reflecting the opinion of the bigger audience! I have come to realize that there is the need for professional coders. But not because I am not capable of doing so (I am a lead developer at a MedTech Startup) but because the "professional-tag" will give people more security, people will be more relaxed and have more trust since "professionals" are at work. This mind set, even though it is understandable, is still unsettling. Since professionals are still every day humans too...

Also maybe you are right! Maybe there is just not enough of a draw above the competition... I have to evaluate this again!

Good feedback thank you. I like to hear/read other people's perspective. So what you are saying is that you dont see the benefit of a streamlined user environment, where it is made easy for the organizer and the payer to meet. For me this is exactly one of the strong points, since centralizing event creation and event funding seems already like a nice pain reliever. But again, this is just my point of view.

And as to "being worth my time" .. Well what can I say - I like to work! I am a person who does not need a lot of sleep and I like seeing progress during my day. So working is what I do :o (Eat, work, gym, gf, sleep, repeat)

Haha in the light of the recent accusations I am actually happy about the statement of being "clueless". And thank you for shading some light on my person! I could not have done it myself otherwise people would have raised the pit forks even higher.

But tbh, I don’t think I am that clueless. I do understand the current trends and movements in different Esport-communities. There have been quite some pushes towards streamlining "crowdfunding" in lately. Most prominently seen in the melee scene, they are in big parts financed by their own community. And hell, they had 100k viewer for their last big Smash event (which was quite impressive). Also another incidence of successful crowdfunding was about 1.5years ago where Axiom.Crank (SC2 pro gamer) got funded to go to Blizzcon. This then even pushed TotalBiscuit to launch Team-Axiom. And the most famous incident of crowdfunding has to be “The International”.

So imo, the willingness and readiness of crowdfunding "Esport"-events is already quite strong within many members of different Esport-communities. The only thing missing is a streamlined and easy way of organizing such a thing. But hey, this is the just vision and interpretation of one crazy guy, as I like to say! So maybe all the people telling me it is a bad idea and I should not put my time and effort into it are right after all... I just don’t know yet. I need to think and test more before giving up!

Okay, I see I see. People are getting fixated on the trust worthiness. However, please don’t insult the idea as being a scam, if you do so, argue for or against it. Like this at least I will be able to learn from the insults you throw at me!
Please try to still stay respectful. I am still trying to set up something that can/and will help the tournament scene of Tf2 and other smaller Esports communities.

About the trust issues, the system is as follows: Teams, trusted by the community, will create their OWN accounts, provide their own credentials, using their own paypal accounts. I myself will not be able to do anything. There is server security set-up by PayPal and/or Stripe. There is encryption service set-up by Amazon encryption.

Hey fellow doctor!

Great question, thanks for asking.
So your case is one that I am envisioning way down the road of EsportMe. The thing is, IF you want to host an Offline Event you will need to somehow provide additional value to all the people that have pledged money but will not be able to attend. I think you will need to create smaller perks for every donation level, otherwise people will just give you the money, will not attend, thus will never actually profit from anything. So either these are genuinely awesome and kind people or you will need to make perks available as mentioned.

In the early days of EsportMe I am envisioning almost exclusively Online products to be crowdfunded since the value chain is intrinsically given. People pay for tournament to happen and to consume content -> Tournament will actually happen and generate content for them to watch.

As for handling large amounts of money and being better as the traditional crowdfunding sites:
The teams pledging for money will have to register with full name and address ofc. Also the money will not be sent for transaction before the goal was reached.
Also we have to understand that Kickstarter or Indiegogo cannot guarantee that the money will be spend wisely. The only safety measurement is that the team/guy pledging for money is up for evaluation by the community (since he puts his name/face out there) and if he does not deliver on his promise again his name and face is known throughout the community.

Edit: Removed "my own quote"

Yes guys, I can understand why you are skeptical. So let me explain:

It is true I have always been a more or less casual player. Only "competitive" plays I ever did were back in the days of the GTFO Servers where I climbed pretty high on their ladders (top10 at the time). And yes it is true that I have not played tf2 a lot lately, due to the fact that I am a funder of a MedTech startup centered on nanomechanical assessment of breast cancer (nuomedis) where I am working day and night basically. The little time I have left I am spending thinking of new technologies etc. (I love living in the future) AND watching STREAMS on twitch (I am human too :P)
A lot of the streams are TF2 and or SC2 related!
And here is where the idea comes from. The SC2 scene is under a dying star right now, with Koreans more or less "band" from foreign tournaments and few offline tournaments announced. So I thought to myself that a crowdfunding platform would be well suited for such a community since if everyone is as passionate about the game as I am, we actually could move things, we actually could create tournaments and fill them up with players and caster we enjoy watching.
Now why did I not start with the SC2 scene, the answer is straight forward: I wanted to test my hypothesis about the idea with a smaller and maybe even more enthusiastic community I consider myself part of: TF2!

This is the story of how I cam up with the idea and this is why I have created that post on here.

I hope this does make some sense to you, and cleares some of the skeptical nature you have. But again, I understand the concerns and I need to find a way how to be come more trust worthy I see.

This is a fair point yes! But FYI I am part of the TF2 community since 2007 just not registered... only on steam :3

Also I believe people misunderstand. You will not be giving money to me, you will be giving money to whatever team/org will try to get a bigger tournament going. I will have nothing to do with your money, your money will directly go to the PayPal account of that said team/org. The only thing I can do is "blocking/canceling the transaction" but I will not be able to get the money. This will all be handled by PayPal

And thank you for your feedback (also all the other thanks for your feedback guys). This is actually helping me. I can now clearly state that one of the central problems is a "trust and security"-issue.

Okay great input Sideshow, thanks for this!

So to answer the question how EsportMe will differentiate itself from other, bigger, crowdfunding sites. The answer is: It will be way more specific. EsportMe is here to supply the niche of Esports in the space of Crowdfunding. Basically it is here that Esports-enthusiast find what they are looking for more rapidly and that tournament-provider know that their target audience will be the right one. The problem with the bigger Crowdfunding Websites is that often a project gets lost amongst the 1000's of other projects. Only heavy marketing/buzz activates beforehand will somewhat ensure recognition. Thus, EsportMe should represent the blue ocean, resegmenting the crowdfunding market and deliver a space where smaller Esports organizations can get funded.

Concerning Security/not running away with the money:
Imo here is where the launch event will be important. First the guys who want to get funded will need to register an account to be able to post their own "tournament/player/event". After that they will have to set-up a crowdfunding goal and only after reaching that goal the money will be available to them. Now the important part, in the early days of the website, it will only be open to trustworthy community figures, which somewhat ensures the correct usage of the money. No "random" people will be allowed.

Btw: Ofc the server's backend has the state of the art encryption services to provide the other aspect of security issues. (FYI PayPal transaction only then become available if there is the state of the art encryption service.)

Does this clarify some of your concerns/questions?

Hey m,

While Esports in general is doing fine, however TF2 Esports is lacking bigger tournaments/appearances at bigger events. Maybe yes, you are right that the phrase "Saving Esports together" is over the top. But this is also a catching phrase on a landing page.

Also the part about asking too much money from the community, might be right but in the case of a crowdfunding site it is way different imo. You are not just asking money from them, you are delivering value in return specifically tailored towards the members which gave you their money. People will only fund something they actually want to see/get, thus there is a difference in how value is provided.

haha actually that is a good point.. I am no spy!

Hey riotbz,

great question! I am aware that this might be a concern people have. However, I hope this will only be in the begins of the movement. I am working on one possible solution to this problem by trying to get a big launch event going, where trusted community figures will try to crowdfund their next tournament or player. Like this the community can be sure that their money will be used as it was intended.
Next to that I will have two further precautionary measures (1) The early pledger will have to work closely with me, so to ensure they will use the money as intended and (2) There will be a “reach-the-goal” model (Kickstarter-model) and not a “keep-what-you-raise” model (Indiegogo-model). This will ensure that no one can just keep the money if they are not capable of realizing an event/send a player.

I hope this explains some of the mechanism I will use to enforce trustworthiness of the system.

As mentioned in the title, I am currently spending a lot of my time setting up a crowdfunding site where it will be possible to publish your own tournament and get it funded by the lovely community! Like this I want to give the possibility to create bigger, better and more attractive tournaments both for the players and viewers. All it takes is sponsoring efforts from community members.

As of right now the site is still in alpha (landing page :o ), since it took me longer than I thought to set up all the crowdfunding features and setting up paypal security etc.. [ The Website can be found here: www.esportme.org ]

However, I want to show you guys the site and the idea, so I can start to gather honest feedback and implement the right options! Also it would be good to start and gather community favorites who will either run or participate at a crowdfunded tournament.

So please check it out (just one "landing page"), maybe subscribe to the "newsletter" and let me know who you want to see getting funded during the early days of the site!

I am actively hunting honest feedback, so keep it coming! Where do you see the strong points and where do you see the weak points of such a construct. In your eyes, is it viable? Does it need more incentive for the "sponsors/funders", or is it enough to make great tournaments happen!?

The Website can be found here: www.esportme.org

Edit: Removed "mentlegen"

Hi,

my Name is DrManhattan I am 21 y/o and I come from Switzerland.
I actually come from the SC2 community where I stream alot. I have always played TF2 casually since it came out, but now I am really focusing on the game as in the competitiv term.
I have high goals since my SC2 lvl was GrandMaster in EU and NA, and I always have been a quiet decent Medic I would say scoring the highest rank on the GTFO servers for a long time LOL ^^" (sounds very cocky.. sry :(( )

Aaaanyways I am listed as trusted streamer on TL.net but they dont like TF2 so I need to find another place to show my stream to the public, since I really love streaming and chatting :)

The last 3 weeks I have constantly been streaming TF2 with a webcam atleast 2 hours per day I would say and I really enjoyed it. I did not have crazy amounts of viewers (always around 10) but I still liked to chat and exchange thoughts with them ^^

Have I been in any teams up until now? No I have not, because like I said it was actually always only the game which I used to play to distract me from SC2 tilt days :P

Here is my Stream link: http://www.twitch.tv/itsdrmanhattan

Why do I often wear tank.tops you ask, two reasons! 1. It is toooo damn hot these days, aaand secondly well I need to impersonate DrManhattan in some form... and he is naked all the time so be happy xD

Here I will list some of my YT highlight stuff I did the past few weeks:

- Here at the end I played some nice games with, amongst others, kKaltUu on Gold Rush : http://www.twitch.tv/itsdrmanhattan/b/435652087

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cstBw42tMTA&feature=c4-overview&list=UUrPhG4M_f_Ccc-O32G3u2rg

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRpCooO3Tus&feature=share&list=UUrPhG4M_f_Ccc-O32G3u2rg

I hope I did write down all the information the officals want from me :) If not.. just txt me on steam or on here!

-DrManhattan