Implementing a collaborative approach of two major factors in virtualising a live physical esports event: broadcast production and mass consumption by sub-grouped socialised audiences

该项目旨在探索虚拟化物理电子竞技活动的两个主要因素。首先，我们评估了制作团队可以在现场制作中进行远程协作和工作的方式，其中包括现场直播内容，协作内容创建和社交通信管理。电子竞技已经在效率方面突破了直播制作的界限，挑战了现有的广播工作流程，并利用了最新的技术。目前的局势无疑进一步挑战了这一点。我们将开发新的工作流程和系统，以实现极高效的分布式创意工作团队，从而在封锁情况之外采用新发现的效率。其次，我们评估群体之间的行为、首选的沟通和协作活动形式，而不仅仅是在线的单一观众群，以复制人们参加活动并在物理领域共同参与的方式。这特别着眼于通过合作贡献的替代价值主张，独家访问和现场生产的影响力。游戏观众已经倾向于在线分组，特别是玩基于团队的多人游戏，然而，围绕现场娱乐的较小和多个分组/团队参与所做的工作很少。我们希望开发新技术并建立平台，让人们在线上进行分组和协作，我们相信这将引发人们围绕特定事件在线社交的新思维。电子竞技在当前全球疫情期间处于独特地位，因为我们能够继续在线运营比赛。然而，我们相信我们在这段时间的学习可以应用于未来的其他形式的现场娱乐。在接下来的几个月里，我们将持续并立即接触到大量的在线受众，以开发、实施和试用新的创新技术。该项目也建立在现有的AOTF项目的基础上：Weavr.tv，该项目旨在探索通过跨现实、人工智能和机器学习数据分析以及个性化叙事与受众互动的方法。Weavr目前和不久的将来的许多开发也可能通过我们在本项目计划中概述的新技术来实现。

This project sets out to explore two major factors of virtualising a physical esports event. Firstly, we assess the ways in which production teams can collaborate and work remotely on a live production which includes live broadcast content, collaborative content creation and management of social communication. Esports already pushes the boundaries of live production in terms of efficiencies, challenging existing broadcast workflows and harnessing the very latest in technology. The current situation is certainly challenging this further. We will develop new workflows and systems to allow for an extremely efficient distributed creative workforce in view of adopting newly found efficiencies beyond a lockdown situation.Secondly, we evaluate the behaviours, preferred forms of communication and collaborative activity between groups rather than just singular viewership online in order to replicate the way in which people would attend events and participate together in the physical realm. This specifically looks at the alternative value propositions, exclusive access and influence of live production through collaborative contribution. Gaming audiences already tend to group online particularly to play team based multiplayer games, however, very little has been done around smaller and multiple grouped/team based engagement of live entertainment. We would like to develop new techniques and build on platforms that allow people to group and collaborate online which we believe will initiate new thinking around how people socialise online around specific events.Esports is in a unique position during the current global pandemic situation because we are able to continue operation of the competition online. However, we believe that our learnings throughout this period could be applied to other forms of live entertainment in the future. We have ongoing and immediate access to a large online audience to develop, implement and trial new and innovative techniques over the next few months and beyond.This project also builds on an existing AotF project: Weavr.tv which has been designed to explore ways to engage and interact with audiences through means of cross reality, AI and ML data analysis and personalised narratives. Many of the current and near future developments of Weavr would potentially be also delivered through new techniques we outline in this project plan.