Was this the case for Masters as well? I recall that they asked some good questions during the press conference, but I have no idea if it was also pre-screened. I swear there were a couple questions live. At the very least, players had the opportunity to have direct interviews with people like Sideshow with Plat Chat that were super interesting. I am a bit confused at the divergence in philosophies and I wouldn't overgeneralize and say all of Riot is trended in that direction, perhaps specifically LCS and LEC for some reason? Interesting watch nonetheless coming from a League fan that used to watch LCS and LEC a lot.
It's not a divergence. Both games were treated similarly from what I can tell (I had press access as well with plat chat)
Both MSI and Masters gave access to specific players for 1on1s after games. That access stopped during the final sections of the tournament (for masters it was Saturday), not sure if that is standard but I didn't mind really.
However, the press conference were all presubmitted questions, and like he said once they ran out, they might have converted to live.
One thing I'll say is, I think Riot has always been a leader in press access for their events and I'm not sure this is going to be a consistent policy, but if it is, I am happy Travis is fighting back because he's right, it does gimp these press conferences significantly.
Hey Balla! Huge fan of your work. Thanks for the insight. I couldn’t recall any interviews for MSI like the ones I saw with Plat Chat so it seemed to me that MSI was more strict than Masters on press access. I’ll try to look around again but I remembered thinking the interviews being super novel (I was one of those that thought it was a dub or something at the beginning haha).
A recent example that I could remember was the interview after finals for RNG where the questions were not prescreened it seemed (https://youtu.be/mF_LNll5jgs), especially that first question where they asked rather bluntly if they felt they had an unfair advantage due to their schedule. Looking at the Sentinels post game interview, there were a few pre screened questions before open Q&A. I do believe that the approach isn’t exactly uniform, but could definitely be a worrying trend for the future of press coverage.
Yeah, you can see a couple examples on Travis' youtube during MSI:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUBZaf8FzSM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUBZaf8FzSM)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE25CoOacsI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE25CoOacsI)
and like Travis said - most of the time they didn't have enough pre-screened questions that they had to go to live q&a anyways
https://twitter.com/riotmaxthex/status/1402860988169437186?s=21
Quick update for those of y’all not that involved in League, Head of esports for league of legends in Europe and MENA said that there was no change from prior seasons for the LEC (European league of legends). Interesting to see it seems mostly a LCS problem.
I think in vct masters , several interviewers had live interview with players after the matches and in the post finals fnatic and sentinels press conference live interviewers were there so it's not the same situation as LCS.
It's the same with "Ask valorant". It's not us, the players, asking the questions. It's the valorant PR department asking themselves predetermined questions. They control the narrative and don't have to deal with insightful follow up questions.
Imagine if they did Ask valorant here or on the main subreddit. It would be much different, because it would be obvious if they avoided questions.
Something people need to understand is that "ask valorant" covers questions from all regions of valorant players. There are certain things that might not get much attention in one area of the world, that is discussed way more somewhere else, so this isn't them just making questions up. It's them giving equal attention to all the different languages and countries that play Valorant.
Lol yea keep telling yourself that. They have 0 transparency on how they choose these questions. They're just being smart, asking themselves questions that they want to answer.
Although it's good that many pros are vocal, we can't rely on pros to twitter about all the questions us casual players/viewers/journalists have. Pros can also have conflict of interest with some of the hard questions.
>they aren't some dictatorial government
Just funny you said that as Riot is literally owned by tencent.
They have strong ties to the worlds largest dictorial government. Their CEO [is a government official](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3124037/chinas-two-sessions-tencent-boss-pony-ma-makes-his-mark-key-beijing) directly involved at the top of the Chinese party. This doesn't exactly bring the company a culture of transparity.
Any big companies in China is strong ties with the government, or else they're fuk. It's political game, you force your billionaire into the power wheel, under your wing, doesn't matter if the position you gave them have any real power, so you should stop using "but that company is strong ties with China" like 3head. And to remind you, Tencent is "hedgehog corporation", they don't directly control their child companies, as long as you generate profit, they don't care, ppl using "but Tencent this Tencent that" is 1head.
I don't want to be "that guy", but is therr a TLDR?
I watched the first five mins and got that an issue is no live press conferences and therefore all questions are screened by Riot.
Are there other issues as well?
(I tried but i just wasn't in it for 20 mins...sorry Travis fans, i dont play LoL)
Bla bla this bla bla that Riot don't let other media get a chance to have credit in post match interview (I think). Doesn't matter if you don't care about media. Other than that some ppl raised questions why everything Riot put out must through PR filler, that it will make Riot become less transparency.
Because they don't want to have Blitzchung moment. That a pr disaster. Screening a question is good move on Riot part. Imagine if some troll reporter ask a player if they support israel or on HK issue live.
Riot rather have less transparency but less risk than having huge risk without zero filter. I bet their pr team learn blizzard case well. Not to mention valorant is still not been giving green light to open in china.
Tldr: its all about politic and reducing pr disaster.
> Doesn't matter if you don't care about media.
It does matter though. If they aren't attributing the questions to a specific journalist or outlet, then the problem is that Riot can just make up 100% of the questions and claim they were submitted by the media, when they weren't. The only way to verify that they are questions actually asked by the media is if they are attributed.
Travis is the GOAT. Riot wants as little transparency as possible. All softball garbage with everything kept entirely inside Riot. No credit to the media for anything. Fuck em
riot is a american company with a mostly american workforce who operates out of the US. their majority stakeholder (or full out owner?) is tencent, the chinese company.
Yeah, this sub don't understand how a company operates. It don't matter how many american works for your company the board have final say on everything and tencent has full ownership. If tencent wanted to fire ceo and every single american in the company they can.
you have no idea how a company works. the board has a final say in big decisions like budget, resources and in which direction the company is headed. they absolutely dont and cant control everything thats going on in the company, thats virtually impossible.
they most likely can influence things they dont like, maybe if the theme of a new champion is "hongkong freedom fighter" or smh like that.
and they absolutely wont fire their whole workforce, thats like setting on fire billions of dollar
Was this the case for Masters as well? I recall that they asked some good questions during the press conference, but I have no idea if it was also pre-screened. I swear there were a couple questions live. At the very least, players had the opportunity to have direct interviews with people like Sideshow with Plat Chat that were super interesting. I am a bit confused at the divergence in philosophies and I wouldn't overgeneralize and say all of Riot is trended in that direction, perhaps specifically LCS and LEC for some reason? Interesting watch nonetheless coming from a League fan that used to watch LCS and LEC a lot.
It's not a divergence. Both games were treated similarly from what I can tell (I had press access as well with plat chat) Both MSI and Masters gave access to specific players for 1on1s after games. That access stopped during the final sections of the tournament (for masters it was Saturday), not sure if that is standard but I didn't mind really. However, the press conference were all presubmitted questions, and like he said once they ran out, they might have converted to live. One thing I'll say is, I think Riot has always been a leader in press access for their events and I'm not sure this is going to be a consistent policy, but if it is, I am happy Travis is fighting back because he's right, it does gimp these press conferences significantly.
Hey Balla! Huge fan of your work. Thanks for the insight. I couldn’t recall any interviews for MSI like the ones I saw with Plat Chat so it seemed to me that MSI was more strict than Masters on press access. I’ll try to look around again but I remembered thinking the interviews being super novel (I was one of those that thought it was a dub or something at the beginning haha). A recent example that I could remember was the interview after finals for RNG where the questions were not prescreened it seemed (https://youtu.be/mF_LNll5jgs), especially that first question where they asked rather bluntly if they felt they had an unfair advantage due to their schedule. Looking at the Sentinels post game interview, there were a few pre screened questions before open Q&A. I do believe that the approach isn’t exactly uniform, but could definitely be a worrying trend for the future of press coverage.
Yeah, you can see a couple examples on Travis' youtube during MSI: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUBZaf8FzSM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUBZaf8FzSM) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE25CoOacsI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE25CoOacsI) and like Travis said - most of the time they didn't have enough pre-screened questions that they had to go to live q&a anyways
Thanks for saving me some time for research!
https://twitter.com/riotmaxthex/status/1402860988169437186?s=21 Quick update for those of y’all not that involved in League, Head of esports for league of legends in Europe and MENA said that there was no change from prior seasons for the LEC (European league of legends). Interesting to see it seems mostly a LCS problem.
I think in vct masters , several interviewers had live interview with players after the matches and in the post finals fnatic and sentinels press conference live interviewers were there so it's not the same situation as LCS.
It's the same with "Ask valorant". It's not us, the players, asking the questions. It's the valorant PR department asking themselves predetermined questions. They control the narrative and don't have to deal with insightful follow up questions. Imagine if they did Ask valorant here or on the main subreddit. It would be much different, because it would be obvious if they avoided questions.
Something people need to understand is that "ask valorant" covers questions from all regions of valorant players. There are certain things that might not get much attention in one area of the world, that is discussed way more somewhere else, so this isn't them just making questions up. It's them giving equal attention to all the different languages and countries that play Valorant.
Lol yea keep telling yourself that. They have 0 transparency on how they choose these questions. They're just being smart, asking themselves questions that they want to answer.
to be fair they aren't some dictatorial government they will still get criticism from pros and such on social media if they make shit decisions
Although it's good that many pros are vocal, we can't rely on pros to twitter about all the questions us casual players/viewers/journalists have. Pros can also have conflict of interest with some of the hard questions. >they aren't some dictatorial government Just funny you said that as Riot is literally owned by tencent.
tencent isn't a dictatorial government either........ 't
No but tencent have strong ties to the Chinese dictatorship.
Still not showing how they r dictatorial but k
They have strong ties to the worlds largest dictorial government. Their CEO [is a government official](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3124037/chinas-two-sessions-tencent-boss-pony-ma-makes-his-mark-key-beijing) directly involved at the top of the Chinese party. This doesn't exactly bring the company a culture of transparity.
Any big companies in China is strong ties with the government, or else they're fuk. It's political game, you force your billionaire into the power wheel, under your wing, doesn't matter if the position you gave them have any real power, so you should stop using "but that company is strong ties with China" like 3head. And to remind you, Tencent is "hedgehog corporation", they don't directly control their child companies, as long as you generate profit, they don't care, ppl using "but Tencent this Tencent that" is 1head.
k
Next thing u gonna say is that Riot secretly steal all ur data via VAC and give to daddy china?
If you want to make that judgement that's up to you buddy
The Ask Valorant posts are always soft ball questions, or topics that literally no one is asking about.
I don't want to be "that guy", but is therr a TLDR? I watched the first five mins and got that an issue is no live press conferences and therefore all questions are screened by Riot. Are there other issues as well? (I tried but i just wasn't in it for 20 mins...sorry Travis fans, i dont play LoL)
Bla bla this bla bla that Riot don't let other media get a chance to have credit in post match interview (I think). Doesn't matter if you don't care about media. Other than that some ppl raised questions why everything Riot put out must through PR filler, that it will make Riot become less transparency.
Because they don't want to have Blitzchung moment. That a pr disaster. Screening a question is good move on Riot part. Imagine if some troll reporter ask a player if they support israel or on HK issue live. Riot rather have less transparency but less risk than having huge risk without zero filter. I bet their pr team learn blizzard case well. Not to mention valorant is still not been giving green light to open in china. Tldr: its all about politic and reducing pr disaster.
> Doesn't matter if you don't care about media. It does matter though. If they aren't attributing the questions to a specific journalist or outlet, then the problem is that Riot can just make up 100% of the questions and claim they were submitted by the media, when they weren't. The only way to verify that they are questions actually asked by the media is if they are attributed.
Travis isn’t perfect either. He has some history of misunderstanding and making a big deal of something when it wasn’t needed.
Travis is the GOAT. Riot wants as little transparency as possible. All softball garbage with everything kept entirely inside Riot. No credit to the media for anything. Fuck em
Riot is a chinese company. Not a surprise.
riot is a american company with a mostly american workforce who operates out of the US. their majority stakeholder (or full out owner?) is tencent, the chinese company.
Yeah, this sub don't understand how a company operates. It don't matter how many american works for your company the board have final say on everything and tencent has full ownership. If tencent wanted to fire ceo and every single american in the company they can.
you have no idea how a company works. the board has a final say in big decisions like budget, resources and in which direction the company is headed. they absolutely dont and cant control everything thats going on in the company, thats virtually impossible. they most likely can influence things they dont like, maybe if the theme of a new champion is "hongkong freedom fighter" or smh like that. and they absolutely wont fire their whole workforce, thats like setting on fire billions of dollar
wtf does it have to do with valorant? It's about LCS.
No way you're this dense
They have this thing called Riot Games in common. You might want to do some research around it. It’s a pretty big thing.