I miss SCG p9 coverage, do you?

[nataz]

The unfortunate reality is that we stopped offering live SCG P9 event coverage because hardly anyone was reading it, despite Premium articles on Vintage being quite popular, and the quality of the SCG P9 coverage being very good. Not to oversimplify things, but readers basically wanted to know who won, see the deck lists, and, well… that was about it.

I know I really enjoyed the coverage. Some of it was just fluff, but the interviews and top 8 match coverage had some really great gems that you can't get anywhere else. Do people generaly agree with me, or am I truly in the minority?

My theory behind not many premi members reading it was that not many vintage players have premi accounts as opposed to type II/extended players. Is this correct, or do players, even the vintage players, really not care? 

[Klep]

I did love the coverage, but if it was too expensive to justify, then I can't blame Pete for getting rid of it.  I can just hope that someday our format will be popular enough to make doing coverage an economically sound move.

[nataz]

from the same reply

Despite what some have implied, we did not decide to stop providing live coverage because it wasn’t profitable.

here is the thread, I can understand if people aren't exactly up to date with the SCG topics.

http://www.starcitygames.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=283285&start=25
its the last reply.

[Pyromaniac]

I really liked the coverage, which unfortunately was one of the 2 reasons for getting premium: The other being the hadfull of good Type 1 articles being osted.

[forests failed you]

yeah, what the hell?  The old coverage was awesome, and now, nothing...

[rvs]

Pete probably has a good point that most people just want to see the decklists anyway. I have to say though that this is really a bad move from them since there are people that went premium mostly because they had coverage. I wonder if they are willing to refund.

[Eddie]

I contacted Pete asking to freeze my membership until some Vintage content is back on site. He promptly replied:

Unfortunately, we are unable to "freeze" memberships as you requested. However, we are seeking extra Premium Vintage content to make up for lull, and believe that it will all balance out shortly.

Maybe an easy answer, but we can only hope I guess...

[Komatteru]

I think it would have at least been nice to have coverage for the Top 8.  That wouldn't have required a huge staff, as I'm sure there would be people in not in the T8 sitting around willing to do it for some store credit.

[Kowal]

For store credit?  Shit yo, I do that for free.  I just wish I could travel as much as I used to.

[forests failed you]

There were people sitting around taking notes and doing match coverage to post it on themanadrain.com for free, (in particular captain jon) I'm sure none of those folks would object to Pete putting their coverage on an even bigger website.  If he had asked me to do it, I would have done it for free.

[Bram]

Don't have premium, didn't see myself gettng it in the near future anyway, and will most certainly never do so now.

[nataz]

Don't have premium, didn't see myself gettng it in the near future anyway, and will most certainly never do so now.

but would you be interested in seeing a non-premi versinon?

[forests failed you]

I'm sure there are lots of people who would be willing to write up coverage for free, just to have their writing on SCG.  If Pete could get a few people to write it up for free, he should consider putting it up as non-pay reads.  It couldn't hurt, if anything it just brings more traffic to his site.

[Machinus]

I thought that the problem was that people just are not interested in reading about the tournaments.
Most of the people who were interested in reading about the tournaments already had premium. The issue isn't about having to pay the reporters, its about the work required to put together and edit the pages when not many people would read them.  I am guessing that making it freely available would not generate much more traffic than the pages were already getting.

[nataz]

I thought that the problem was that people just are not interested in reading about the tournaments.
Most of the people who were interested in reading about the tournaments already had premium. The issue isn't about having to pay the reporters, its about the work required to put together and edit the pages when not many people would read them.  I am guessing that making it freely available would not generate much more traffic than the pages were already getting.

have premi & yes  21 (42%)
I have premi & no  1 (2%)
no premi & yes  22 (44%)
no premi & no  6 (12%)

so far, you would double the number of readers by letting it go non-premi. Sure, the stats behind this are far from perfect, but TMD has the highest concentration of English speaking type one players on the internet that I know of, and this is the best I can do. It's a fairly weak extrapolation, but at least its got more teeth then guessing like you did.

I have no idea where you got the info that "Most of the people who were interested in reading about the tournaments already had premium". After reading the responses to SCG going premium on TMD, I would say exactly the oppsite. I think that MOST people on TMD would want to read coverage, but MOST people on TMD DON'T have coverage.


.: having non-premi coverage of the SCG P9 events would = greater hits and a larger audience

If we can agree on this premise (which was why I put up the poll), we are left with another question.

Does TMD (and the greater Type I community at large) have a significant amount of people with/o premium membership that would actualy make a dent in the number of hits of SCG coverage?

I.e., if everyone from TMD did read the coverage, would that still be too small of an "n" to keep the coverage going, where "n" is respective to the number of hits a type II or extended article has. With out knowing the actualy site traffic on SCG (which they will never tell us), its impossible for us to get a really good grasp on this question.

My hope is that we are enough to make a difference, and the SCG coverage returns, but we'll never know if they don't try. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and hopefully threads like this will spark a little discussion and catch the eye of pete.

-huggs and kisses
carter