[HN Gopher] The Sound Proof Booths of Silence ___________________________________________________________________ The Sound Proof Booths of Silence Author : namiwang Score : 213 points Date : 2023-09-16 07:40 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.dota2.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.dota2.com) | donatj wrote: | I don't really get esports or regular sports for that matter, but | this seems like overkill? How much of an advantage could they | really get from someone yelling at them in the audience? With a | decent audience they are rarely going to hear anything other than | a din anyway. | | Doesn't seem like much more of an advantage than people yelling | things at baseball players? | | Seems like it could just be part of the calculation of the | competition rather than working so hard to avoid it. | Forge36 wrote: | Enough to give pause. In StarCraft there was a trap set and a | fan favorite was about to walk right into it. The audience went | wild. And then he stopped all units, and retreated. When | interviewed he said he'd stopped because the audience went wild | when they shouldn't have. (They cleared the stadium for the | next match) | | Baseball isn't a game of hidden knowledge. The audience mood | can give away details about the other team. | | Think poker. If another player bluffed and the audience gasps, | you know something notable happened. | Forge36 wrote: | I did some more digging and found this post | | https://tl.net/forum/brood-war/40832-starcraft-audience#12 | doikor wrote: | > Doesn't seem like much more of an advantage than people | yelling things at baseball players? | | The baseball equivalent would be the crowd knowing signals | between the pitchers and catcher and yell them out so the | batter always know what pitch is coming. (this is pretty much | the only hidden information in baseball) | | That would pretty much ruin the game (in some players/fans mind | at least). And in fact this is something the MLB is actively | trying to solve by providing encrypted signal communication | devices so players don't have to rely on finger/etc signals | that can be decrypted by the opposing team. | andy81 wrote: | The noise is a common giveaway in pro League of Legends despite | similar efforts. | | Usually when a player is walking up to a hidden enemy the crowd | changes in a noticeable way, even on the stream. It's not an | individual shout so much as the overall noise. | donatj wrote: | And what I am saying is why is this a bad thing. Just make it | part of the competition, seems way more fun. | ufo wrote: | A baseball analogy would be if sign-stealing were allowed. | Aachen wrote: | The competition is about playing the game they came there | to compete on, not a different metagame. If you find that | fun, that's okay but your tournament is in another castle | dillydogg wrote: | My thought as to why that isn't good is because the game | you play to get to the International (often online and in | smaller venues) is a different game than the one you would | play in the finals. As a viewer, I think they should be | playing a higher stakes version of the game I can play, not | one with different rules because of the crowd. Either way, | I don't care so much, but I fall on the side of the sound | proofing being good. | spatulon wrote: | Two problems that have occurred in recent times when Dota | tournaments have not used booths: | | - the crowd whistling to tell their favourite team that the | enemy team is making some kind of secret play (e.g. taking | Roshan, or using a smoke). | | - clearly hearing the play-by-play commentary that's being | played to the crowd over the arena's loudspeakers, which can | also give away information about what the enemy team's doing. | OhSoHumble wrote: | Dota players have ears that are trained for keywords. For | example, the game has a minimap. Players can buy items to keep | the minimap revealed and to see the movement of enemy players. | The enemy team can buy an item to make it so that they aren't | revealed on the minimap while they move around. This is known | as "smoking" - as the item is a smoke that explodes over the | team before they make their movement. | | If a caster yells out "they're smoking" and the entire audience | hushes in anticipation then one team knows that the other is | trying to make a play and can either group up or avoid the | fight. | | The International is a tournament where the prevailing team | wins millions and millions of dollars. Sound isolation is | really important to provide an even playing field. | nivaldoh wrote: | A yelling crowd can be a dead giveaway that the other team is | about to make a risky play under the fog of war, and give the | defending team enough time to prepare. | | For instance, if certain characters from one team are not | showing on the map for the opponents and they suddenly hear a | crowd yelling, they could anticipate that the character is | about to do a surprise gank, attempt to solo Roshan, etc, and | shut down the attempt more easily. | | It can be heavily bias the decisions that players might make | under certain circumstances, so it makes sense that Valve would | go to great lengths to prevent that. | ufo wrote: | Dota is a game of imperfect information with "fog of war". | There is a large playing field but each team can only see the | area immediately surrounding their characters. Players will try | to ambush the enemy, or group with their team to sneak in a | side-objective while the enemy doesn't notice. Audience noise | can disrupt this. | ricardobeat wrote: | I wonder if they have looked into air curtains. Commercial | installations are at a point where you have this silent, | completely invisible sheet of fast-moving air that provides some | degree of noise isolation as well - maybe four walls of these + a | floating ceiling is enough when coupled with the noise-cancelling | headphones. | pstrateman wrote: | It's much much too loud for air curtains. | seanthemon wrote: | I think leave the audience participation in, let the chaos rain | supreme! | furyofantares wrote: | It would be less chaotic, not more. | | Think of it this way: any time the audience starts going wild | about something one team knows about but the other doesn't, | they're doing so in anticipation of dramatic moment when the | other team learns what happened and must adapt while the | first time is trying to exploit it. | | If it's given away instead, the anticipated event never | happens or is muted because the enemy is not caught off | guard. | TheAceOfHearts wrote: | There was once a big StarCraft 2 tournament where one of the | contestants walked out mid-event because he couldn't pull off | any cheeky tricks due to the audience giving him away. | wnevets wrote: | There was a recent dota2 LAN without soundproofing and the | audience would ruin surprise attacks (aka smoke tanks) or | surprise objective taking (aka rosh), it made the gameplay | worse. | bspammer wrote: | That would encourage a much more boring style of gameplay. | | If you can't launch a surprise attack because the audience | will give it away, the best strategy would be to slowly and | incrementally build up a gold and experience advantage. | jfim wrote: | Players have said in the past that it makes it impossible to | do Roshan sneakily, since the crowd gives it away. | duskwuff wrote: | In some early tournaments, the casters would have to avoid | looking at Roshan fights, because the other team would | inevitably hear (or feel!) the bass-heavy sound effects | from Roshan's attacks and movement. | | Later versions of the client added an option to mute those | sound effects, for precisely this reason. | sundarurfriend wrote: | It especially screwed over pre-siren Roshans (which don't | seem to be much of a thing anymore). But yeah, there's | still a lot the sounds can give away, like a Roshan play, a | sneaky smoke, enemy tormentor attempts, etc. | pdpi wrote: | Even without knowing much of anything about DotA 2 in | particular: for any game with asymmetric information, the | crowd reacting to what your opponent is doing is _always_ | going to be a major tell. At least in LoL, managing that | information asymmetry is an important strategic element, | can 't imagine it being any less of an issue in DotA 2. | leetrout wrote: | Actual title: | | "Between the Lanes: The Sound (Proof Booths) of Silence" | | Is this actually by Valve employees? Or just with Valve's | funding? | VoidWhisperer wrote: | According to the text under the first image: | | "... a blog feature where we let members of our development | team walk through some of the challenges, bugfixes, and | occasional happy accidents we encounter while working on a game | as unique as Dota, and an event as unique as The | International." | | It appears to be from their team's experiences with setting up | 'The International' up till now | langsoul-com wrote: | It's crazy that the booths cost $200k, like how is it even | possible they cost THAT much! | falcolas wrote: | Soundproofing requires mass. A lot of it. It also requires | careful control of airflow to remove paths the sound can | travel. | | Museum quality glass and argon are both fairly expensive. | Especially in quantities sufficient to fill the mass quota. | Zathu wrote: | I don't understand the problem this solves - why not put the | players in noise cancelling headsets? | janosdebugs wrote: | Two theories: 1. Noise cancelling headphones don't cancel | everything 2. They needed to be able to use mics, which don't | work well with a lot of ambient noise. | npace12 wrote: | would that work? that's like wearing noise canceling headphones | to a concert. | lijok wrote: | Uncomfortable for the players if I had to guess | etskinner wrote: | Read the article; The last couple paragraphs talk about how | they tried that and it didn't live up to their standards | Nullabillity wrote: | Have you ever tried using ANC headphones? They'd be better | described as noise- _reducing_. They can also be uncomfortable | to some people when worn for long durations, and you presumably | _do_ want to let players in the same team communicate to each | other. | __s wrote: | In starcraft when they'll go with headsets it works by playing | loud whitenoise. Not conducive for a team game | [deleted] | Twisell wrote: | Maybe reading the article you are reacting to would have | helped: | | - It is a retrospective and the first edition held place in | 2011. At that time noise canceling in harsh conditions was not | a solved issue. | | - They actually tried the noise canceling, no box approach at | the 2022 event. They reverted to boxes for 2023 because it | still need tweaking to drop the box altogether. | [deleted] | doikor wrote: | They don't cancel well enough. You can still hear some noise. | You probably can't identify what it is but it is enough of a | signal to react to (spoiling your surprise play/ambush) | xvedejas wrote: | In Age of Empires tournaments, they simply put the players in a | different room from the casters/audience, with live streaming | cameras. Maybe because live audiences are relatively rare in | these tournaments, there's less of a demand for players to be | physically in the same room as the audience? | brainzap wrote: | That the players can see each other also allows for some | mindgames, for example "the paper" | https://youtu.be/ymWj2brfZlA?feature=shared | Aachen wrote: | Sorry, but what's this showing? Someone walks with paper in | their hands, that's what you're referring to, but did this have | an effect in some way that was noticeable later in the | tournament that isn't shown in the clip? | | It seems like a joke to bring a stack of papers to a computer | tournament, not something to trick the other team into | thinking... what, exactly? | [deleted] | pototo666 wrote: | context: at Ti8's final, Team LGD played against Team OG. | During the draft phase, OG players had some paper, which were | statistics of LGD (I guess). Somnus the player said: Ceb is | holding a bunch of paper. https://youtu.be/abEDXaPyIOE?t=15. | In that final, LGD almost won but they lost at the end. That | final is arguably the best final in Dota2 history. The moment | when Somuns taunted OG was captured by True Sight, which is a | documentary for every TI final. LGD players surely watched | the documentary or at least the clip many times. | | The first clip you questioned about is from Ti9, a year after | Ti8, where OG and LGD played again. Notail the player took a | bunch of paper (way too many for drafting analysis purpose) | to remind LGD their tragic loss last year. Hence the mind | game. Btw, LGD lost again. | Aachen wrote: | Thanks for that context! That explains | wincy wrote: | It was definitely an interesting article but the first sentence | of the article proper really grabbed me. | | The weird thing to me about the world is you can have an event | that literally millions of people watch around the world, and if | you had asked me "what's the International" five minutes ago I | wouldn't have had any idea, and I'm a very online person! I play | video games, even, and at one point played DOTA2! | | The internet has totally fractionated our culture to subcultures | within subcultures, to the point where when people meet in person | they have nothing to talk about. Down with the monoculture and | all that. | | It's astounding how much money and thought and effort went into | building the booths too! This is the least surprising part: there | is a lot of money sloshing around in the world. The amount of | talent to build soundproof booths so people can comfortably play | a video game in front of a bunch of people is wild. | jon-wood wrote: | Everyone being in different sub-cultures doesn't mean people | have nothing to talk about, it makes conversation way more | interesting if you're just willing to step out of your bubble | for a bit. Some of the best pub conversations I've had have | been chatting to someone about things I'd never even heard of | until that moment, and finding out about fun niches that I'd | probably still not know about otherwise. | Keyframe wrote: | Also, world got a lot bigger (more people) and smaller (a lot | of news instant and online) at the same time. | __s wrote: | TI is a bit notorious because it's prize pool is massive | compared to other esports. Winning TI puts someone's prize | earnings past lifetime earnings of most other top player's | career prize earnings in other games | | https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International#Tournaments | | https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Portal:Statistics/Player_earnin... | | https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Winnings | | https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Portal:Statistics/Player_ea... | fragmede wrote: | 1st place in 2022 got $8,518,822! Nice! | bspammer wrote: | To hammer it home even more: | https://www.esportsearnings.com/players | | 21 dota players at the top before you get a different game | (Fortnite) | alargemoose wrote: | Wow, Not only are the top 21 dota 2 players, all but *4* of | the top 50 earners are dota 2 players | tym0 wrote: | And the top 5 earners for CS:GO are all Astralis players. | q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: | Fascinating. This isn't a space I follow, but the data is | eye-opening. To contextualize it for myself a bit more, I | checked out _annual_ earnings [1] instead of lifetime and | compared it to the overall global list [2] of athletes across | all sports. | | One interesting takeaway is that it looks like eSports are | still a couple orders of magnitude away from breaking into | that rarefied air -- the top eSports athletes earned ~$1.8M | over the last year, while the cutoff to make it in the list | of top 50 global highest-earning athletes is ~$45M. It | wouldn't surprise me to see eSports start making it up there | over the next couple decades, though. | | The second interesting takeaway is that, for many athletes in | the global top 50, their off-the-field earnings are a _big_ | part of their total. By contrast, endorsement deals for | eSports athletes don 't seem like much of a thing nowadays, | other than the occasional team-up for a gaming | mouse/keyboard. This seems like it'd be a growth area for | eSports over the next couple decades, too. | | TL;DR: I wish there were some way to buy some ETFs or stake | some athletes in the eSports space. It seems like it has a | lot of growth ahead of it still. | | [1]: https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/highest- | earnings-las... | | [2]: https://www.forbes.com/lists/athletes/ | Huppie wrote: | You've probably missed that the former website only lists | winnings and does not include the player salaries and other | income like from streaming. | | The numbers are significantly higher for the top players, | but sure enough still a lot lower than 'regular' athletes. | kleinsch wrote: | This is only prize earnings, important to keep in mind that | Dota heavily weights prizes from tournaments. Highest total | prize earnings on that chart is $7M, Faker pulls in $5M/year | in salary alone. | NikolaNovak wrote: | Thing is, millions aren't what they used to be! with world | population at just over 8 billion, the viewership of 2 million | makes it pretty obscure. World cup final had 1.5 Bil viewers | apparently (TIL). | jack_pp wrote: | Well, can't really compare a fairly complex computer game | where you need to actively play in order to even understand | the stream with a.. checks Wikipedia.. 2000 year old game | with simple enough rules that you can watch without any | knowledge. | | Football also has the advantage of a fixed rule set. I've | played over 4000 hours of dota in my life but none in the | last 12 months. I've tried watching it on twitch and the map | layout changed, probably new heroes were added or old heroes | changed.. | Cyph0n wrote: | That's why I'm of the opinion that CS is the best spectator | esport out there. The rounds are short and the overall | barrier to entry for a viewer to enjoy the game is low, yet | the skill ceiling is extremely high. | | Edit: If you're not familiar with CS, try tuning in to the | ESL stream and see how much you understand: | https://www.twitch.tv/eslcs | matrss wrote: | Makes sense. Trackmania would fit that bill as well: it's | just racing, but most often without the burden of | following real-world physics too much, which can make it | very entertaining. | [deleted] | walthamstow wrote: | I'd read that article about association football again if I | was you. 1) just because kicking a ball is 2000 years old | doesn't mean soccer is and 2) offside and backpasses have | both changed in my short lifetime, completely changing how | the game is played. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > Football also has the advantage of a fixed rule set. | | I'd tend to agree that video games are ensuring they can | never stick around by constantly throwing the rules in the | garbage. | | But if you're going to claim that soccer is 2000 years old, | you can't also claim that it has a fixed rule set. It | changes at a slower pace. The slower pace of change is an | improvement over video games. But it still changes. There | is not even continuity between an attested 2000-year-old | game and soccer. | raincole wrote: | By Joel Spolsky: when I say "no one" I mean less than 10 | million people. | walthamstow wrote: | > where when people meet in person they have nothing to talk | about. | | Not true IMO. My friends are all nerds with widely varied | interests, there is no one single interest that we all share. | Only one of us is into model trains, for example, but he still | talks about it and we still listen and ask questions. | | (For reference, we're late 80s/early 90s millennials.) | dubcanada wrote: | That's strange, The International is a very well known esport | event, the biggest in it's hayday, it's certainly dropped off, | but at one point there wasn't a way to open Steam without | seeing details about the International. | | While I agree with your premise, The International was heavily | advertised on Steam products. Which is the biggest gaming | store. Outside of that, there was minimal but anyone who | watched esports saw TI stuff, it was always #1 on twitch during | its week playoffs/tournament day. | fragmede wrote: | I played World of Warcraft I and II on an IPX network, but I | stopped gaming around when Quake 2 died out in favor of CS. I | have steam installed on my MacBook. I used Twitch a lot in | 2020 and 2021; less so these days. I spend way too much time | on HN; I'm not ill informed about other things. | | Probably saw an ad for it sometime in the past but I can't | say I remembered its name or anything. The attention economy | is real. There are huge swaths of culture that I'll hear | about from friends of friends and it's astounding how much is | out there and the conventions they have for it. | taneq wrote: | I'm guessing that was muscle memory sneaking a 'World of' | in there. ;) | amelius wrote: | Another datapoint here: I didn't know about the event either. | dubcanada wrote: | Perhaps I over estimate it's reach, I don't know. I just | find it strange that people don't know much about a esports | even that is the largest prize pool in the world, and has | been going on for over a decade. It's not like the viewer | numbers are low. | | But I will say it's like watching chess, some matches can | take 1 hour or longer. It's certainly not for everyone and | you need deep knowledge of the heroes and items to fully | understand what is going on. | amelius wrote: | Reasonable points, but I don't think prize pool size has | anything to do with it. I mean some lotteries have crazy | prize money but many people in their right mind couldn't | care less. | | I think that the age of the internet has brought us the | effect that everybody can just mind their own thing. | There is not just a few TV stations dictating what | everyone should watch, like in the old days. | TheDong wrote: | > The International was heavily advertised on Steam products. | Which is the biggest gaming store. | | The biggest gaming store is almost certainly the Android | Google Play Store's gaming section. It also wouldn't surprise | me if the nintendo eShop is larger than the steam store, but | at the very least I'm very confident in Google Play and iOS | app stores being larger than steam for games. | | I think the majority of gamers have never played a PC game or | watched esports. The parent post only said "I even played | games", and you jumped to "watching esports" and "twitch". | Watching esports is a tiny niche of gamers. Watching twitch | also is. | flangola7 wrote: | No self respecting gamer calls mobile apps true games. No | one who gets excited about video game development wants to | work on candy crush v400 | ricardobeat wrote: | You might think that, but the "not self respecting" | mobile and console gamers out there outnumber you 3:1. | | Some of the most popular games have been PUBG, Fortnite, | Rainbow Six, Roblox... I don't play on mobile myself but | you can't deny this new reality. | Ntrails wrote: | The growth of mobile gaming in regions that used to be | dominated by LAN cafe based gaming is super interesting. | Most of the previously buzzing gaming hubs died during | covid. PC Gaming equipment is extortionate, even in | higher net worth areas, phones are ubiquitous anyway | danhor wrote: | High-end equipment certainly increased sharply in price | in the last few years, but few people gaming on PC spend | anywhere near that amount of money. If you just went to | play most games on a reasonable framerate (30fps) a Steam | Deck for 400$ is perfectly fine. | | For those with high-resolution screens and 144fps the | equipment is not affordable to most but not necessary. | | But an already existing phone is cheaper for sure | bigstrat2003 wrote: | Don't just sneak "console gamers" in there, that's | disingenuous when the GP didn't say anything about them. | | Anyways, statistics aside he's right. Mobile games aren't | the same thing as console/PC games. They are, almost | without exception, thinly veiled monetization machines | designed to be _almost_ fun but not actually fun, just so | you will pay money. They are literally _designed to be | less fun_ as a business strategy. There are games on real | gaming platforms which are just as exploitative and | poorly designed, but they are the exception. With mobile | games they are the rule. | | Given that the nature of the markets is so wildly | different, it's perfectly reasonably to say "no, these | are different things". | ricardobeat wrote: | You also seem to be thinking of Candy Crush style games, | whereas I was pointing out that in recent years some of | the most popular mobile games are FPS, RTS, also things | like Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin Impact and other | action games. On the other end, desktop games have also | become monetization machines in the same fashion - | Fortnite, Apex, CS:GO, OW, Minecraft, Roblox are massive | money-making machines. Any judgement about mobile games | being 'less fun' or 'less serious' is entirely | subjective. | | This thread started because someone though Steam stands | as _the universal entrypoint_ to gaming in general, which | is absolutely far from the truth. | Gabriel_Martin wrote: | Wouldn't be gaming without a healthy dose of gatekeeping | ;) | ufo wrote: | And to add to that, Dota e-sports is particularly insular | among other e-sports: | https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2015/02/04/visual-mapping-of- | twitc... | doikor wrote: | Dota players play/watch Dota. Similar thing also applies | to country strike players. | | At least this is the experience in my circle of friends. | Got a couple friends who have pretty much only played | Dota (or CS) for the last 15+ years and have 0 interest | in even trying any other game. There is also the crowd | (including me) who play video games in general but these | are very clearly different groups. | | So this is like saying "football fans are insular to | football". I mean yeah they are football fans not "sports | fans". | Retric wrote: | Most football fans I know watch other sports, often | basketball. If for no other reason than the season is | fairly short. | | Dora is insular in large part because it's always | available. | doikor wrote: | I think it also has a lot to do with it being much easier | to actually play the sport/game. | | When the pros are not playing you can just play yourself. | With football/etc playing the game in a proper | competitive setup is quite the hassle. In Dota or CS you | just get 4 of your friends and press a button and in 2 to | 3 minutes you are playing. | dubcanada wrote: | That's the point, if you don't know about any esport, why | would you know about this one? If you do know about esports | then you know about The International. | | But let's also say that The International was on ESPN, and | other "sports" TV channels. | camtarn wrote: | I watched Overwatch tourneys on Twitch for a bit. And I | played a little bit of League of Legends so MOBAs aren't | entirely foreign to me. | | Didn't know about The International - I had to go look it | up. | | The world is stranger than you might believe. | Unfrozen0688 wrote: | Mobile games are not real games. | kibwen wrote: | I assume this is being downvoted because arguments like | this are usually either no-true-scotsmanning or borne out | of elitism. | | However, what is true is that "video games" are so | variegated as a medium that it's probably worth splitting | it up into multiple mediums, in the same way that | television, short film, and feature film are all | considered different mediums despite being largely the | same in many ways. If The Godfather and Caillou are | different mediums, then Red Dead Redemption and Candy | Crash can also be different mediums. | raisedbyninjas wrote: | It's not that candy crush and other casual games aren't | real games. It's that the modern versions currently in | the app stores aren't games. Original versions of candy | crush, angry birds, etc. have been removed. What is | available now are time-gated gem stores. Maybe 1% of | titles aren't reskinned clones that can be played more | than 5 minutes straight. | ncphillips wrote: | > very well known | | I think you're illustrating their point. I'm no stranger to | internet or video game culture but I've never heard of The | International. | fomine3 wrote: | I'm too used to ignore irrelevant ads so I've never noticed | it on Steam. | usrusr wrote: | Never heard of it and I stare at the steam store frontpage | more than anyone should. There's a thing called | personalization and apparently your dataset triggers the | "show The International content" and mine does not. The days | of broadcast are gone and whatever you may think is shared | media experience is most likely not. | IggleSniggle wrote: | That's an interesting take. I've been playing on Steam since | HL2, very regularly, and although I remember DOTA2 being | heavily advertised, I don't think I ever saw an ad or | promotion for The International. Unlike the other poster, | however, I never actually installed DOTA2. | redder23 wrote: | Is this supposed to be impressive. A company who owns a money | printing machine is able to build multiple layers of glass with | argon pumped between them? | | Sorry, not impressed. | WhereIsTheTruth wrote: | Must be super boring to not hear the crowd, perhaps why I found | watching dota esport to be super boring | none_to_remain wrote: | Ctrl-F "stink": 0 | | Ctrl-F "stench": 0 | | Ctrl-F "smell": 1 hit but only for hot insulation smell | exabrial wrote: | Aging myself here... I played a ton of DOTA on the WarCraft3 | engine... probably when I should have been studying for | engineering finals. | | What amazed me about the game, and probably why it is so | addictively fun to play is you always have two competing things | gripping for your attention. On one hand, resource farming | _demands_ incredible attention to detail (obtaining the last shot | on creeps for a kill, ergo a gold reward). Then on the other | hand, you must also be planning your character's build, | monitoring minimap, monitoring others' builds, and most | especially watching missing enemy players. It's hard to do all of | the things effectively... one has to make the farming aspect of | the game second nature and remove the distraction to be a good | player. (Which I never was) | | I don't have the luxury of spare time to play long DOTA games | anymore, and largely I've replaced it with building things and | outdoor sports (MTB racing, Gravel Racing, climbing) but I still | look fondly at those times and the IRL and online friend group I | had. | matthewaveryusa wrote: | They've added turbo mode recently which keeps most games | between 15 and 30 minutes! | adamrezich wrote: | if it weren't for Turbo I probably wouldn't still be playing | 11 years after beta. Turbo is great. | sundarurfriend wrote: | Since parent said they played DOTA on the WarCraft3 engine: | Turbo mode is basically `-em` (easy mode) from Dota 1 with | some quality of life improvements. | [deleted] | eastbound wrote: | I don't understand their setup: | | - Standard stage/audienxe inclination is 4%, so you'd think | they'd set it up at 4% or above... Nope, they incline the windows | towards the ground! To wit, they had to transform the ceiling | into glass panels, which shows they did have the problem of | audience seeing from atop, which adds weight which they later say | was one of their major problem. Talk about solving a problem by | adding another problem. | | - Their entire setup has big white beams everywhere, there's no | angle where the audience can see clearly. Why not having seams? | | - My house has larger glass panels than that, and they are | soundproof for the highway. | | Surely it was possible to ship bigger glass panels, simpler | design, oriented towards the top so that the roof can be plain. | lijok wrote: | This is a great article and I understand the need for the booths, | but to me personally, they look horrible. It looks as if the | players are sitting in a kiosk. Surely it would make for a much | more enveloping experience for the spectators if the players were | in an open space. | [deleted] | jwatzman wrote: | League of Legends (a similar game) does this -- no booths, only | noise-cancelling headphones, for its large tournaments. There | have been several major tournaments where the players have | complained afterwards that they could not hear anything during | big late-game fights due to crowd noise (since the crowd is | also super excited at the big fight). Players need to be able | to hear not just the game audio but also communication from | their teammates and, despite noise-cancelling headphones, the | crowd just drowned everything out. I'm honestly not sure why | League of Legends hasn't moved to booths like Dota uses. | | I'm not sure if you've ever watched one of these tournaments, | but they get _super_ noisy, and noise-cancelling all of that is | not an easy problem (as the article says). | NelsonMinar wrote: | My understanding is LoL productions are still trying to make | it look like you are watching actual athletes do a sport. If | you lock the away in booths it puts too much of a distance | between the audience and the players. | | OTOH crowd noise giving away what's going on in the game has | been a problem since their broadcasts start. It doesn't ruin | the game but it's definitely a factor. | kang wrote: | One solution could be to standardize the "esport booth", so | it becomes more like a squash court for example | NamTaf wrote: | That doesn't account for the fact different esports | demand different requirements, just as a squash booth | isn't used for tennis. | | CS for example is also Valve but does not use booths. I | think a major part of that is that the delay between | audience reaction to an event and the event unfolding is | much shorter, so the crowd can't give as much away as | quickly. | VoidWhisperer wrote: | According to the article, they tried this this past year and | unfortunately weren't able to get the sound dampening up to an | acceptable standard, so for the time being they are going back | to the booths | rtpg wrote: | Valve seems like such a blank check company, able to jump onto | projects and apply so much effort to things thanks to their | resources | | Would love to see more about what they're doing and how they're | organized recently (an updated employee handbook?) | [deleted] | solardev wrote: | My understanding is that they're still privately owned and | pretty free, culturally, right? Yeah, I wish they'd make a few | blog posts about how they run projects. Would love to see how | the Deck, Index, GeForce Now support, etc. all came to be. | | They're that rare tech company from the 90s/2000s that I still | adore today. | adventured wrote: | You can definitely see the difference in ownership that Gabe | Newell brings to Valve, just as Tim Sweeney has to Epic, as | founders that have been with the companies from the | beginning. They can do things just because they're | interesting. They clearly feel free to explore. It's a | remarkable luxury of their financial success. Mojang perhaps | had that potential (due to how hyper profitable Minecraft | was), but, well.... | Synaesthesia wrote: | Wow they went as far as multiple layers of glass with argon | pumped between them! | flangola7 wrote: | Wouldn't a vacuum between be better? | jccalhoun wrote: | Argon is commonly used for double glazed windows so I would | assume that the manufacturer has the experience to do that. | Vacuum insulated panels exist but since that is for | insulating properties I don't know if there would be any | advantage for sound deadening. | nativeit wrote: | Sounds cannot pass through a vacuum, as sound is | fundamentally pressure waves that propagate through air. | Someone also mentioned the thermal properties of the fill | gas (argon being less conductive than air) and it's also | correlated, as temperature is simply a measure of the | kinetic energy of molecules, so a higher mass molecule will | require more energy to move, which applies to both thermal | conductivity and sound transmission. | | The more you reduce these problems down to their physical | fundamentals, the more related they seem to become. It's | that elegance that got me hooked on electronics engineering | --our experience of the universe is remarkable in how | frequently a given phenomena can be described using little | more than basic principles applied recursively. | cwillu wrote: | You can support two panes with a gas in between with a | strip of soft rubber, whereas with vacuum, I suspect the | rigidity of the frame needed to support the panes against | atmospheric pressure can easily kill the gains you make | in isolation. | Synaesthesia wrote: | I'm also wonder what it is about argon gas that helps prevent | sound transmission. | fennecfoxy wrote: | Argon gas does not conduct heat as well as air, so it's an | excellent insulator. <--- why it's used for double glazing | in housing, to insulate heat transfer. | | Which is interesting because the density of argon is | greater than air, it does not block or insulate against | sound other than the general deadening effect you'd get | from multiple layers (energy loss in kinetic transfer from | gas to glass to gas to glass to gas again). | | Vacuum, He or H would've been better imo | pbhjpbhj wrote: | I'd speculate that with it's "full outer shell" of | electrons the nucleus is more shielded and the repulsion of | other Ar atoms is higher and so perhaps density is a little | lower than might be expected? | abdullahkhalids wrote: | This [1] explains Sound Transmission Class (STC) ratings. | | > An STC label delineates how partitions and walls | effectively block sound and reduce noise. Ratings are | determined by broadcasting a specific auditory tone near | the material, and measuring dB on both sides. The higher | the STC value, the better its insulation. | | From the table STC=25 means "Normal speech easily | understood" and STC=50 means "Shouting not heard" | | This [2] table has one datapoint comparison of "airspace" | vs argon filled windows. Both have an STC of 35. So maybe | it doesn't help. | | [1] https://www.dillmeierglass.com/news/stc-ratings-of- | glass | | [2] https://www.general-glass.com/wp- | content/uploads/2020/09/Aco... | mrob wrote: | I wonder if somebody vaguely remembered the effects of | helium fill, which actually does reduce sound | transmission, and vaguely remembered that argon-filled | windows are a commercial product, and conflated the two | because they're both noble gases. | the_sleaze9 wrote: | Nothing about the story of this project suggests they are | top-tier sound engineers, and when you don't really know | what you're doing (said very respectfully) the | proposition "we need to fill windows and this is what | other people normally do when they fill windows" is a | very positive data point. | | They didn't even start with museum-grade glass for | optimal filming, which to a absolute layman like me seems | like they just hadn't bumped most of these problems | before. | abdullahkhalids wrote: | When they started doing these tournaments over a decade | ago, esports LAN tournaments was barely an industry, and | crowds were small. Also, MOBAs are unlike many other | esport genres [1], in that the two teams have partial | information about the state of the game, and illegally | getting information a few seconds early can change the | entire outcome of the game [2]. | | Meaning there was no one in the world who really knew how | to build such booths. Moreover, they discovered required | features of the booths over the years. In such a | scenario, the early mistakes are very understandable. | | [1] Think Street Fighter, or FIFA | | [2] I don't think games like Starcraft has such low time | tolerances on information flow. Even cheers in Dota can | be enough of a clue. | jaggederest wrote: | Starcraft has the same problem and also uses "soundproof" | booths, fwiw. I believe the practice started under SC:BW | h2odragon wrote: | Yes, but then you have the danger of implosion and shards of | glass flying everywhere. | | That's a _different_ kinda spectator sport. | flangola7 wrote: | Then how is argon better than nitrogen and oxygen? | h2odragon wrote: | More expensive and sexier. | | What gas you fill that space with is far less relevant to | noise cancelling than how the pane is mounted to the | others and the floor; but "argon filled!" is great | marketing bullshit. | jwie wrote: | Argon is more dense and inert. | mrob wrote: | But wouldn't density make things worse? Helium can be | used for noise attenuation like this because it's light, | so you get worse acoustic impedance matching between the | panels and the gas. Argon is denser than air. | h2odragon wrote: | Helium would leak out fairly rapidly, no? | | I can see the benefit of impedance mismatching but i | truly think that for an application like this it cannot | be worth the effort until you add in the "marketing" | intangibles. | | Why not fill the panels with water? _gloinggg_ | | edit: IIRC argon filled double pane windows are a thing | partly because the argon doesn't absorb moisture like air | does; so there's less chance of condensation happening in | between the panes. So perhaps they just bought double | pane panel that were commercially available and ran with | the sales brochure from that to fill out a press release. | cinntaile wrote: | It's inert, it's abundant and it's the gas of choice in | windows so it's probably simply the cheapest choice. | jaggederest wrote: | Argon transmits sound much worse than air. I believe it's | due to the fact that denser gases require more energy to | compress and decompress, thus dampening sound vibrations. | | Even more fancy windows use Krypton, since it has | superior thermal and acoustic properties over Argon, but | is about 60 times more expensive. | | Xenon would also be a candidate, but it's about 10 times | more expensive even than krypton, and also has the | extreme downside of being an anesthetic when inhaled. | | Edit: Sorry, I guess it has better thermal properties but | worse acoustic ones. Helium or Hydrogen would be the | ideal gasses for sound reduction. | pclmulqdq wrote: | In general, denser materials are better (and faster) at | transmitting physical waves sound and worse (and slower) | at transmitting electric waves like heat. | Terr_ wrote: | > Xenon [...] an anesthetic when inhaled. | | That reminds me of a bit of dialogue from the classic | game Deus Ex (2000), where a biotech office-worker is | complaining about their job: | | > This chemoreceptor patent-proposal is kicking my ass. | Hundley won't let me down until it's done. Hardly worth | filing for, in my opinion. Who wants to smell the | difference between xenon and radon? | bri3d wrote: | This is a common consumer product, "gas fill" multi-pane | windows. Argon is used in this application because it's not | very thermally conductive (it's also used to fill dry suits for | the same reason). I found a pretty good "sciencey layman" | explanation of "why Argon" for dry suits here, which matches | the reasoning for windows: | https://www.decompression.org/maiken/Why_Argon.htm . | | I'm not sure how much this carries through to sound | transmission and I couldn't find a lot of good literature about | it. I'd have loved to see if they did any quantitive testing. | It makes sense that Argon would reduce sound transmission some, | but I would expect that the properties of the glass sheet | itself and the interface between the panes and the frame would | be more of an issue than the void between the panes. | kzrdude wrote: | Unfortunately, they serve a machine translated version of the | blog text. Well, I don't even know. The language is technically | correct I guess, but completely without life and using | expressions that one would use in english. That's not bad for an | automatic translation. | Aachen wrote: | Oh, that's good to know. I was surprised to see a German | article on HN and, while it's not the first time, I did kinda | expect it was a translation. But I didn't think it was a | machine translation: anyone so bad at English that they can't | read a regular text about a topic they're interested in will be | used to running pages through a translator, probably via a | browser extension. No need to serve up a machine translation | noninteractively. | | As a German learner, I take every German text at least somewhat | as a learning experience and look at the conjugations used. If | it had said "this is a computer-generated text" above, I'd have | done that. Now I'm not sure what mistakes I've been using as | example... | [deleted] | december456 wrote: | You sure about the machine part? While a surprise, it was one | of the better localizations i have experienced in the world | wide web. | teshigahara wrote: | In the Japanese translation it was extremely obvious and I | had to switch to English. The tone is completely off | kzrdude wrote: | I'm sure that this is a very low quality text - I was reading | the Swedish language version. It has technical qualities | similar to human language which makes it harder to pinpoint | the problem, but it does not read like something a proficient | writer would create. | | It is translating too literally, preserving almost every word | from the original (while adapting sentence structure) and | that's maybe the thing I can most easily pinpoint. Colloquial | phrasing like "We also had these enormous PCs that Nvidia had | lent us" is preserved by translating literally instead of | choosing an equivalent level of conversational language but | more natural word choice. | ascar wrote: | GPT translates incredibly well. | Dowwie wrote: | this photo from the article amazes me: | https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//3703047/a37c... | | that's a packed stadium, up to the nose bleeds | [deleted] | pyreko wrote: | Similar photo from League of Legends' world finals from 2022 | (Chase Center): | https://res.cloudinary.com/dxb0ptf6a/image/upload/c_fill,dpr... | | If you haven't been paying attention to the eSports scene it | can definitely be really surprising, but the crowd size and the | production value of these things is insane to think about, | especially if you aren't expecting it for just a video game. | ilyt wrote: | Well, according to many complaints over time, the answer is "not | very well". | | Oh, well, 12th time the charm | ateng wrote: | Could you delay the large screens, commentaries, and live | broadcast by 3-5 seconds (or more) such that any information | gained from leaked noise would have minimal impact to the | players? This would make ANS headphones viable | xxs wrote: | 5sec would be way too low for anything meaningful. One of the | more pronounced cases, where the audience reacts, is 'smoke' | which makes the players invisible until they are close to | opponent player (or tower), used in a way to initiated a gank. | The 'smoke' last 45seconds. Killing a big NPC (Roshan) is | another example as it takes time (and usually more than a | single player) to down it. Other cases: buying a rapier - very | high damaging and expensive item but it does drop on death - so | it's a warning sound, that may take minutes between a conflict | and used. | | Sound proofing however still doesn't solve the issue as it | doesn't deal with the vibrations in the venue. Pro players have | commented that if they start feeling vibrations while 'farming' | alone, they become more cautious - asking a support player to | cover the gank or move to a safer area. | ufo wrote: | translation: gank = ambush, farming = collecting resources | without engaging against the enemy team | xxs wrote: | I'd have considered 'gank' a fairly known/used term. | Cyph0n wrote: | Not for people who've never played MOBAs. | xxs wrote: | The term predates moba, it's early RTS, early MMO stuff, | around late '90s, early 2000s. | Cyph0n wrote: | Good to know, but based on numbers, most people would | have been exposed to the term through MOBAs. | dzddd wrote: | Most people have never played a MOBA. | Cyph0n wrote: | We're going in circles here.. where did I say most people | have played MOBA? | 0xcde4c3db wrote: | My memory of this long ago is fuzzy, but I believe the | word itself is originally from LA gang subculture and was | spread more broadly via gangsta rap in the late | '80s/early '90s or so (cf. the trend of people spelling | certain words with "ck" changed to "cc", which was a | feature of Crips tagging). The earliest documented use I | could find referred to someone selling fake drugs, but I | seem to recall that as it spread it turned into a generic | placeholder for just about any offense from petty theft | to cold-blooded murder. | hattmall wrote: | Yeah it's just slang for some kind of nefarious action. | It's in a lot of rap songs, west coast origin seems | possible for sure but been around a long time. East coast | version is juug. | ericbarrett wrote: | In the early 90s in NorCal, we used gank to mean "steal" | or "snatch", and you can still find this definition | online. I don't think it ever meant murder until it got | used in PvP games. | Aachen wrote: | I played RTSes from the late '90s as a kid but still | don't know the term | doikor wrote: | MOBAs are from the 90s. But yes the terms are from RTS | games (MOBAs started as custom maps to starcraft) | | Aeon of Strife being the first one from 1998. | nickthegreek wrote: | It was a heavily used term in early WoW pvp. | jlokier wrote: | I hadn't encountered 'gank' before these comments. | | But I had to look up MOBA too :-) | | And I used to write multiplayer battle games for a | living! And my favourite recent game was a MOBA without | me knowing that was a term! Which goes to show, times | change, words change, and it's easy to live outside gamer | subculture, even while playing. | plopz wrote: | thats surprising, its such a ubiquitous word in | multiplayer games. i think i first heard it used back in | the early 2000s in wc3 or wow. | Aachen wrote: | I've never heard it in my life and I play games (not | Dota) and get around on the internet generally. My first | association was clank from hermitcraft's decked out, but | that didn't quite fit. Farming is what I figured from | context, though | charcircuit wrote: | It's such a common term around mobas that I doubt you | haven't heard it before. Considering the popularity of | the genre it's statistically unlikely that it hasn't come | up. | sincerely wrote: | Unlikely things happen all the time :) | eterm wrote: | This isn't feasible. | | Riot tried this with League of Legends and the result was that | you'd get players jumping up celebrating 30 seconds before the | audience saw the nexus falling, which was incredibly anti- | climactic. | | Imagine if you were watching tennis and halfway through match | point you suddenly see the player celebrating. | | To be fair, most of the time it's GG well before the nexus | actually falls, but it's sometimes meaningful, and it still | ruins the moment to have that sudden de-sync effect as you see | live players reactions before you see why on screen. | | As a result, as far as I know Riot abandonned having any | meaningful and deliberate delay (There's still some technical | delay natural to broadcasting). | tetha wrote: | This was an entirely weird thing at the last soccer world | cup, or the one before that: TV via Satellite, Video streams | and TV via DVB-T had different transmission delays, with up | to 15 - 20 seconds of delay between them. As such, the people | across the street started cheering first, then the goal would | show on our screen and a bit after that the people across | from the balcony out back started cheering. | dubcanada wrote: | No, as another comment said this doesn't work in Dota 2, | sometimes it can take 15-30 seconds of gathering before you | trigger an action. And if you know X hero is in the fog of war | you can easily gain an advantage. Or if you know X hero is | jungling or stacking creeps or what not. There is just too much | information you can gather from being able to see the enemy. | CyberRage wrote: | some information can be viable for longer than that, there are | some extreme cases where 2~3 minutes would not suffice | holoduke wrote: | A bit off topic. But this site is auto translated? Its in Dutch | for me and reads like a llm translated piece of text. Very | unpleasant to read with overly long sentences and weird | expressions. | roughly wrote: | It looks that way, yeah. It's fine in English, but their | "select languages" list has about 30 different languages | listed, and I can't imagine they've spent the money to do that | the right way. | AndriyKunitsyn wrote: | Valve uses volunteers for the majority of translation work. | Some languages are lucky to have competent and committed | volunteer translators, others not so much. | hyperman1 wrote: | I was served the Dutch translation, and I must say I am impressed | with the state of the art of this machine translation. While this | still feels mechanically translated English, and accents are | missing, it was very readable. I am used to having to translate | each individual word to English and swap some verbs to end up | with something readable -- with the regular paragraph of total | gibberish in between. This reads like at least a high school | student's homework. | [deleted] | batshit_beaver wrote: | Valve uses human translators, not ML. So unless you're talking | about your browser's auto-translation feature, you are, in | fact, reading human-produced text. | jvdvegt wrote: | Do they? I got the dutch version as well, and it's full of | english sentences translated word-by-word. | hyperman1 wrote: | This one is in the uncanny zone. If it comes from AI, I | salute the AI. If human, I'd advise Valve to find better | Humans. | pluijzer wrote: | I guess the allure of physical events is twofold, to feel a | connection with other fans and to feel a connection with the | players. I wonder if this diminishes the latter. Maybe put the | players somewhere else entirely and stream it in the form of | these stage holograms. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-09-17 23:00 UTC)