The SHOUTcraft Invitational series is the biggest, self-funded, unsponsored tournament series in Starcraft 2. Thus far we’ve done everything with no corporate sponsorship and intend to keep doing that. This tournament is a community-fueled, high-stakes, electrifying live event with some of the best players SC2 has to offer, battling it out in the SHOUTcraft Single-elimination format.

STOP THE PRESSES, SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF GREAT GRAVITY AND IMPORTANCE

The SHOUTcraft Single-elimination format is no more. It has been ground to a fine paste and rebuilt in a new player and spectator friendly form.

“In our tournament, every group is a Group of Death!”

Format – Introducing the SHOUTcraft Single-elimination group-stage invitational format. After careful discussion with various players and casters we have come up with a revamped format which we will test in this tournament. The RO8 will consist of 2 groups of 4 players. Each player will play a BO3 against every other player in the group. The top 2 players will proceed forward and the bottom 2 players will be eliminated. The remaining 4 players will be seeded into the RO4 depending on their performance. Seed 1 from group A will then play Seed 2 from group B. Seed 1 from group B will play Seed 2 from group A. These matches will be BO5. The tournament proceeds as normal from that point with the winners advancing to the Grand Final for a BO7 matchup and the losers entering the bronze match to compete for a 3rd place prize.

Solving the problem of the “meaningless match”

Over the past few months, particularly in the recent Blizzard Cup incident, the issue of “meaningless matches” has come to light. The idea that if a match does not gain you anything because you are already out of the tournament having lost too many games in the group-stage. Not only is this an issue when two players who cannot possibly advance in the group end up playing each other, but it is also a problem when who advances can be determined by a match with a player who is already out and may not play seriously as a result. This can affect the validity of the results of the tournament.

SHOUTcraft has always been about both entertaining the audience with star-studded matches and giving back to our pros, so to deal with this issue we will be trialling a “bounty” system. Players who have no chance of advancing (which will occur if they lose have lost their first 2 BO3s) will qualify for a $50 comeback bounty, if they are able to win their final BO3. As always, nobody walks away empty handed from the SHOUTcraft Invitational and disheartened players have the chance to win back their pride and an extra cash prize if they are able to rally for a glorious last-stand.

This system will be on trial this invitational and we’ll see how it works out. The tip-jar system will also make a return, allowing spectators to “tip” their favourite players. Last tournament over $1500 was given to players out of respect for their skills and entertaining matches.

When?

How will you split up the games between the two days?

Is this live?

Why has it taken so long to do another invitational?

Prize distribution

Who sponsors this tournament?

Casters

Players

Stream

VoDs

Other Improvements

What about the cryptic message that was given several months ago at the end of SCI3? – This plan has sadly had to be put on hold due to various factors however we fully expect to be able to have it happen in the near future.

Powered by the community, for the community

The SHOUTcraft Invitational series is the biggest, self-funded tournament series that Starcraft 2 has ever seen. Thus far we’ve done everything with no corporate sponsorship and intend to keep doing that. This tournament is a community-fueled, high-stakes, electrifying live event with some of the best players SC2 has to offer, battling it out in the SHOUTcraft Single-elimination format.

Format Our famous single-elimination 8-man tournament in a Best of 5 formatm makes it’s return. Every series until the finals will be best of 5, the finals will be best of 7. The tournament will feature a best of 5 bronze match before the grand finals.

When? – September 10 2011 11:00 GMT and September 11 2011 11:00 GMT

How will you avoid the overrunning from last time? – We hope that by starting earlier and streamlining our process further, we will avoid excess running times and player fatigue.

Is this live? – The entire event will be streamed live, no replays will be used and broadcast delay will prevent ghosting.

Prize distribution – Once again, everyone gets paid for their time. The participation fee is $100, so every player walks away with that. The rewards grow significantly larger as we hit the RO4.

First Place – $2500
Second Place – $1200
Third Place – $600
Fourth Place – $300

Knocked out in RO8 – $100

This is the first tournament powered entirely by the fans – We were able to raise $5000 in donations from the fans of SCI2. All of that is going into this tournament. There was also $1700 raised from the stream that month with my ad revenue, that will roll over to SCI4 to make sure we can keep the prizepool high.

Casters – TotalBiscuit and d.Apollo. Once again, we will return with our casting duo, now adding SCI2, IPL2, TLOpen, Assembly Summer and i43 to our duo experience. We continue in our mission to try and climb to the top of the EU casting scene.

Players – We will once again invite US and EU players to this tournaments. Koreans will not be invited due to the impossibility of playing a tournament live across so many timezones. We have a plan for Koreans which will be revealed later.

Stream – As always the event will be streamed on TB’s TwitchTV Channel.

VoDs? – Will be available on my Youtube channel after the fact as well as in raw uncut form on Justin.tv.

Any other improvements? – Last time we had a great Day 1 but suffered audio problems on Day 2. I believe I have identified the reason and am eliminating software mixing ENTIRELY from the equation. That means all our mixing will be hardware, cables, mixing desks and all, this should completely eliminate the issues we had last time and allow more direct control. We have also upped the quality of our stream, providing a much crisper 720p experience.

So who is playing? – We like to tease, so we’re going to be doing what we did last time by revealing one player a day in this thread. This time, since you guys know the format, we’ll start off with the #1 and #2 champions from SCI2. The new reveals will begin on a daily basis. Expect our usual mix of big names and a darkhorses.

and brackets