Red’s Corner is a weekly column by Paul "ReDeYe" Chaloner released every Thursday exclusively at Cadred.

Paul's last three columns can be read by clicking the following links:

In just a few days time, QuadV will celebrate a small milestone, its second anniversary. You might be thinking that’s not much to celebrate, but you only have to look at the many eSport projects that have failed in the same period of time. For us at QuadV, it represents an achievement to have not only stayed in business through times of personal struggle and economic turmoil, but to actually remain active and flourishing and still has a bright future.

We are lucky enough to have some of the finest commentators in the world on board and in that sense we certainly are very well off. We also deliver, what I believe is one of the few remaining truly independent international broadcast stations for gaming, at least in terms of live commentary for online and offline events and tournaments. Gone are the days of the mighty iTG and TSN and although a few upstarts do come in to cover European tournaments, they are either half hearted or don’t have the talent to make an impact. In a few cases, they have found niche parts of the market and deliver something close to an acceptable broadcast, but it’s rare.

I am not saying QuadV delivers the perfect experience either, in fact far from it, we work within the confines of the internet which as we all know can be temperamental, flaky and wholly unreliable. In fact, when you factor all of the things that have to go right, in order for a stream to even reach you at home, it’s a wonder that even happens at all. Yet on the face of it, it shouldn’t be difficult. I am not trying to make excuses for a poor service here as I still believe we offer a good service, far better in fact than most who try to do the same thing as us. We have remained free of charge too, which has always been important, but perhaps it would be better to charge a small fee for a large event, much like pay per view on TV, but instead of hoping that the internet will hold out and restricting our output to 700k to allow almost everyone to tune in and sacrificing higher quality, we could then offer a premium service.

Iain is one of many behind the scenes for QuadV.

We have done this before, although not charged for it and the feedback we got was mixed. We ran a 2mb service from a Crossfire event last year and the picture was awesome, even if the window was still not full screen as you would get from a SourceTV client for example. However, it was in a window bigger than a film you may have downloaded in the past and the quality was just as good, if not better. Add in the fact it was being broadcast live and I would say that’s as good as its going to get for now, until new technology and the internet catch up with ordinary digital broadcasts.

As ever, this costs money and although I mentioned there is a possibility of paying for this via subscriptions, my gut feeling is that whilst a few would be happy to pay a small fee for a stream from a big tournament, most wouldn’t. QuadV has never been about alienating its user base and I fear this may well lead to doing exactly that, so we have looked at other business models to help keep us moving forward.

I don’t want you to think that we are in any kind of trouble either, despite the credit crunch, we are doing fine. The way that we set the business up in the beginning is now paying dividends as far as protection from the economic problems afflicting other parts of the eSport world are concerned. But again, we are examining how we move forward and how we grow and how we deliver a better experience for you, our customer. It’s tricky without spending a great deal of money, but we think we have now found the right set of partners to take us forward.

On of the issues with a streaming company like ours is of course bandwidth and whilst the technology is enough to send you to sleep faster than taking night nurse, let’s just say, it’s not cheap. Luckily we have had a partner in Multiplay who has paid our bandwidth bills and kept us afloat through thick and thin and whilst we have both had issues regarding payments of invoices in the last 6 months, it would be safe to say that without the support of Multiplay, we would not be able to deliver anywhere near the level of programming we currently offer.

This business, it IS expensive, make no mistake about it. What we spend in an average month of bandwidth would exceed most websites costs for an entire year and what we have spent on equipment in our two year would make a small TV station blush. Not to mention the hours, days, weeks and months of preparation and training by and for our staff that goes in to bringing you live coverage when you want it, free of charge.

To save money Jay now travels to events on Corin's back.

Think of all of the hours of dedication that go in to bringing you one single cast for 45 minutes. You would be astounded if I ran through how much work goes in to one broadcast of one single match. It’s not uncommon to spend 12 hours preparing, writing scripts, arranging the game, making intro videos, gathering the info you need for the show, interviewing players and reading lots of data, doing the show, editing it afterwards and converting it for the vod player and uploading. And most of the time, this is still unpaid.

Sure, it’s getting better and most of our staff now get paid to go to events and rather well. They also get all of their travel and hotels paid for them, but despite what might look like glamorous lifestyle, jetting all over the world and being paid to commentate at live events and on TV, sadly, still isn’t a full time job for most of the people who work at QuadV.

Getting paid at all is still hard work for people like me who negotiate the deals with events. In fact some events, which shall remain nameless, still believe that WE should be paying THEM for the chance to cover their tournament and I am not even talking about the big ones like WCG. It’s astonishing when you think about it, but not completely unreasonable if you compare to what happens in other sports. The difference is, we aren’t ESPN and they aren’t the English Premier League. We don’t have millions or even billions of people watching to sell advertising to and make our money back and they don’t have the broad appeal to attract that many people to watch their tournament.

Catch 22 it may be but the fundamental issue is how the tournaments are funded themselves. Mostly, it’s paid for by sponsors and they are looking for one thing as a return, exposure. Exposure to the right demographic too and in most cases that’s 16-35 year old males, exactly the demographic that tunes in to QuadV anyway. In other words, we can help them reach the audience they want to reach, so in effect we are nothing more than a glorified promotion company for the tournament to aid them sell their sponsors brand to people tuning in. Thus, it is not unreasonable to demand payment for doing so, especially when some tournaments cost us over £10,000 to attend.

I didn’t want this to become a big QuadV column, but it turned in to one and mainly because I wanted people to see just how hard it is to run a business like this, stay alive and continue to grow and offer the coverage people have come to expect. So next time you get a bit of lag, or the picture quality isn’t quiet right, have a think about what you are getting, appreciate how hard it is to keep doing this for free and marvel at the fact that you can even tune in at all.

I am not saying you should accept bad service just because it is free, but let’s be realistic with the criticism. This isn’t going to ever match an in game TV client for quality because it simply cant do so, its impossible and without boring you with the tech stuff again lets just say, most of the graphics you have in game are done by your PC and just a tiny amount of information is sent on player positions and guns being fired by the net, where as ALL of the data that you see and hear from QuadV has to be pushed down a tiny internet tube.

I hope you will join me in thanking all of the staff who have dedicated their time and effort to making QuadV a success over the last two years, those who are still with us (most) since the very start and the new blood which has recently joined us. But if not, at least be thankful there are still gaming broadcasters around at all as without them, the entire scene is worse off.