ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

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ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

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Post by EAGLEMUT »

ZeroEmpires goes into great detail about the whole story of Escape: https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sr2sqh
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by fightinfrenchman »

Bill Gates should have funded Escape
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by dicktator_ »

How did ECL make less money than NWC?
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

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Post by fightinfrenchman »

dicktator_ wrote:How did ECL make less money than NWC?
I paid several thousand dollars to get Interjection to give me lapdances over the course of the NWC
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by Dolan »

Lol, that's not how you run a business. You don't first jump into making big expenses then hope it'll all work out. You first work out how you will at least break even in the short term and then how you eventually turn a profit. Or try to attract some venture capital, but frankly, for such a small project, I don't see much potential. How could you expect to become profitable from Twitch streams and merchandise alone? Most streamers don't manage to earn much from that, only the top streamers that have more than 10000 live viewers and run ads on stream and have various sponsorship contracts.

Even 1500 subs was a way too optimistic target. You should have really understood that the AOE scene is currently way too small a niche to actually build a content business around it. The wrong decision was to build your own studio in a rented location, no big streamer on Twitch does that, except companies like Riot. No wonder this project failed, especially if you never had any previous business experience.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

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Post by dicktator_ »

I wouldn't say the project failed, they had two amazing lans. It just wasn't sustainable so their success was short lived.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by Dolan »

There was no viable business plan. They had a starting capital of 100k GBP and they just burned through that money that someone else put down as an initial investment. Anyone can spend money by renting a studio for a few months, then setting up a couple of small-scale events.

Of course the community was happy for the content, but the whole thing never even broke even. It was doomed to fail right from the start, because the expected revenue stream just wasn't there.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by japanesegeneral »

F
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by Astaroth »

Zak is a nice guy and the events were organized and great.

But as Dolan rightfully pointed out, you can't make enough money if you just naively finance a huge overhead without any sort of real business plan.

Most aoe2 streamers can barely afford to live off it with a couple of hundred subscribers - and that's with streaming all the time and having years of experience. Why would thousands of people sub to EscapeAoe, if they only stream rarely, often just random stuff, just because they have 2 nice LAN events that last a couple of days each?

Twitch viewers only subscribe if there is constant, high quality streaming content, not because there is 1 nicely organized Lan.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

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Post by querty »

Yeah maybe you are right about the whole business plan thing but consider this:

They (he) took a big risk. Sometimes these risks pay off, sometimes they don't. If you succeed, everyone praises you for thinking big and stepping out of your comfort zone.

If you don't succeed, the same people are telling you how you should have been more conservative think the whole thing through more thoroughly etc. If the ECL Finals would have been the same success in relation to the size of the community as the NWC were, the story might have looked very different.


I certainly admire them for what they tried to do and did.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by Sargsyan »

zach did what the sponsor wanted so i do t understand what point dolan is trying to make
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by Astaroth »

But this isn't a good example of "big risk, but potential for huge success". The entire way they went about this project it was doomed to fail from the start.

Now I'm not saying it would've been impossible to be profitable if they had chosen a different approach.

This discussion has already been held on aoezone, but the main things they did wrong imo (all of which could've been avoided):

1. Too little focus on streaming high quality aoe2 content (and some aoe3, but their financial success was only going to come from aoe2 due to the size if the community). Force yourself to stream lots of aoe2 on every single day, don't just stream board and card games. Streaming should've been their job, not a hobby to chill out.
Zak said they were too thinly stretched for that, but firstly that only applies to the weeks before the Lan (even B4 they rarely streamed aoe2) and secondly it's just a matter of wrong priorities then. Make the Lan be 10 % "worse" (could've just stuck to most of the NWC setup), but have like 50 % more viewers due to promotion.

2. Promote the events better and have a clear presence on forums plus schedule. For the most part, EscapeAoe seemed extremely unapproachable and as a viewer it was hard to find infos about anything despite them having a website.

3. Communicate better who and what you are and what your goals are. Escape was a small scale team of 4 friendly guys, but acted like this aloof cooperation with a massive sponsor. This had 2 downsides: one, nobody knew that they needed money badly (many assumed Microsoft was sponsoring them anyway). Two, people didn't have a close connection to the individuals, making them more hesitant to subscribe, donate etc.

Escape needed much more focus on the individuals, interviews with Zeroempires, Robo, Ham, Interjection. They tried a few videos like these, but it was never a focus. Instead they acted like this highly polished, anonymous company.

If they had done all these things, they might still not have gotten the money needed, but then it would've been a high risk, potential reward type of thing. In contrast, as it is, there was never any chance in hell that let's say 1500 subscribers would just randomly appear out of nowhere just because of one big Lan event without (at that point) any clear streaming schedule or follow up.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

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Post by deleted_user »

If success were only garnered by monetary profit, well, I don't even need to give examples. It's not everything when it comes to endeavor.

What's neat, normally, about trying and failing is that it actually isn't entirely failing. Because someone somewhere might've, probably valued it. In this sense: a lot (a lot!) of someones really valued it. A person's gratitude is not always inherently linked to his willingness to spend. The community isn't always comprised of enough persons. It is somewhat, and that's risk. There's a priceless element at play, which is priceless. Boy, what a bargain.

I'd like to offer a deep thanks for your (Zach's) work with Escape, for Till, Will, Ham, and Robo too. NWC was a personal delight I'll never forget. If such a thing were always so easily financially viable people wouldn't ever be so unhappy.

So Till made an effort to spread his interests, Zach made an effort to spread his interests, and some persons were really interested. It's refreshing that it was ever even in a position to try to not fail.

This is just a viewpoint that maybe financial accruement isn't an end-all, be-all, although that'd be sacrilegious and dumb to say, they say -- that the archetypal reason for being, thus trying, isn't only to turn a profit, strictly. But it's nice to get to do so, but it didn't happen, so anyways hold your head(s) up high. It didn't not matter.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by Astaroth »

Callen, ofc you're right in so far as money isn't everything. But it's nice if you can pay your bills and have an employment.

Not trying to be a negative nancy, but it must suck that you worked hard for a year, only to lose your job and have to move in at home again at 27. Meanwhile, others are making a (even great) living from aoe2, like t90, nili_aoe or theviper. Zak could've done the same if he had focused on what he's good at (casting high quality aoe2 content).
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

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Astaroth wrote:Callen, ofc you're right in so far as money isn't everything. But it's nice if you can pay your bills and have an employment.

Not trying to be a negative nancy, but it must suck that you worked hard for a year, only to lose your job and have to move in at home again at 27. Meanwhile, others are making a (even great) living from aoe2, like t90, nili_aoe or theviper. Zak could've done the same if he had focused on what he's good at (casting high quality aoe2 content).
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by Astaroth »

Wut?
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by princeofcarthage »

But money is really everything, without money at this point in time you can do nothing. Wake up, Money is reality.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

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Post by deleted_user »

princeofcarthage wrote:But money is really everything, without money at this point in time you can do nothing. Wake up, Money is reality.
Boy, that doesn't sound fun.

Some money is everything, I guess. Emphasis the some, not sum.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by Challenger_Marco »

Money is life but life is not money
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by Riotcoke »

Yeah Callen is right, the experience in itself when looking back on things, even if it fails monetarily, can speak more than the financial success .


However in regards to the finances, I'm not actually surprised the NWC made more than the ECL. Aoe3 has a very tight nit community where you have people donating when something is done by someone for the community (or to run something themselves ) on the other hand aoe2 has a lot more natural money in it, so you have large tournaments frequently that I think aoe2 players simply take for granted in essence the difference is Aoe3 viewers tend to more thankful for tournaments while aoe2 viewers sort of expect them to happen
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

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Post by edeholland »

Another explanation is that the AoE3 scene only had 1 channel to follow and support (ESOC). Escape was a huge addition to the scene so it was worth investing in. The AoE2 community is already split and the impact of the ECL was relatively a low smaller.

What also didn't help is that Escape hardly ever mentioned they needed the support to continue with their studio. They even invited an extra third team to the ECL because they had money left over, so from an outsiders perspective it seemed like they had all the money they needed.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

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Post by Goodspeed »

Zak mentioned this in his post but I think an issue that is generally underestimated was the ECL format. You don't want to be playing AoE2 teamgames, which can last a long time and take much longer to set up than 1v1s, at a LAN event where you have limited time and need to keep the stream going. Large delays and long, stalemate-y games can kill the hype fast. I watched what I could, but I had moments where I thought "meh, maybe I'll watch something else". The hype wasn't really there. And considering I tend to watch AoE2 1v1 events religiously and the quality of the content was great, I have to conclude that it's the format's fault.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by bwinner »

Yeah for the aoe3 community, I feel like we could have helped more if they asked. For instance they always paid 100€ the players for showmatchs but I am sure players would have done that for free or at least half the price.
A lot of this kind of stuff they copied aoe2 standard while as a small community we are ready to sacrifice more and still be very happy with it.
Anyway would not have been enough to maintain the studio I guess.
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Re: ZeroEmpires: The story of Escape, the hardest year of my life

Post by Riotcoke »

Goodspeed wrote:Zak mentioned this in his post but I think an issue that is generally underestimated was the ECL format. You don't want to be playing AoE2 teamgames, which can last a long time and take much longer to set up than 1v1s, at a LAN event where you have limited time and need to keep the stream going. Large delays and long, stalemate-y games can kill the hype fast. I watched what I could, but I had moments where I thought "meh, maybe I'll watch something else". The hype wasn't really there. And considering I tend to watch AoE2 1v1 events religiously and the quality of the content was great, I have to conclude that it's the format's fault.
I think you can also blame the hype behind Escape from an AOE2 perspective. A lot of the hype behind big tournaments in aoe2 tends to be linked to the personalities that host them, t90 is a prime example here, meanwhile Escape never seemed consolidated with the Aoe2 crowd, with them streaming Aoe3 more than Aoe2 being a big reason imo.
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