The whole is greater than the sum of its parts - Aristotle

Not to beat around the bush, today is the official birth of a collaborative project between TF2tv, VanillaTF2, and a prospected development of the old ETF2L radio – VanillaTV. I don’t have the habit of pulling Dr.Philian greek philosopher quotes outta my ass, but I can’t think of a better wording for the motivation our project. ETF2L radio had a strength in its quality control, and the share spectacle of any cast they did to prove it. TF2tv had a notorious chase for providing a quantity of match coverage to the masses, with consistency in streams and video on demand. With VanillaTV, we want to combine those strengths in one place, together with all the discussions and information surrounding our games. On a foundational level, the decision is a no brainer.

The hard decision, was done by Byte (ETF2L radio), Comedian (TF2tv), and their respective teams. The merger of the 3 services requires forsaking certain liberties and hours of former work hours for structure, for the sake of “the greater (longterm) good”. It’s a mature and noble decision, one deserving recognition.

The project won’t be a revolution, and there’s no intention of patting ourselves on the backs just yet. Like the birth of this very news site, it will be a continuous work in progress – iterative solutions, with hopes of as much help and contributions from anyone interested, as possible.

Keep reading for all the details! - Torden

Mantra

When we sat down around the eTable at the start of our discussions and looked back at the past ventures of TF2TV and ETF2L.radio one thing became pretty obvious, the goals and objectives were never properly defined. We decided to come up with some rules, the VanillaTV raison d’etre if you prefer.

  1. VanillaTV’s focus will always be on quality over quantity
  2. VanillaTVs will focus exclusively on interesting, high level TF2 games
  3. Transparency of all finances derived from donations is guaranteed
  4. We’ll always endevour to act with the best interests of the community at heart
  5. VanillaTV will remain unaligned and neutral to league or eSports outfit
  6. VanillaTV will provide a free platform for budding casters to develop their shoutcasting skills

Structure

The VanillaTV stands on it’s own feet, acting on behalf of VanillaTF2′s ethos and purposes For the purpose of keeping things clear: They are not involved with administrating the News content, and for queries about making news, or who has capabilities of checking your post, look at the VanillaTF2 admin list. Onto the media group:

Byte – Manager, Main caster
Shox – Manager, Co caster

Comedian – Stream Director, Technical, Open Mic, Co caster
Seriouscat – Co caster, Technical, Open Mic
Torden – Head of VanillaTF2, Art director, Co caster
Greg – Co caster
Pyor – Co caster
Hys – Technical, Co caster
Shrike – Stream Director
Taoism – Stream Director

/ Trell – Content writer
Atrox – Content writer
Crasp – Content writer, Match organiser
Waebi, Match organiser

Airon – Technical/Sound
Skyride – Technical
Grimm -  Technical, Match organiser
 Martn – Web developer for overall site design
Chippy – Visual design
inkysprite – Visual design

With the merger of 3 service, needless to say, the initial team is large. We’ll be testing waters, seeing how things naturally fall into place. If we end up with a situation where everyone are naturally able to be active, superb. At the same time, we’re open to keep the team no more large or inefficient than needed. Every single member have joined the project with the intentions of giving it all, as long as they’re an asset to the scene.

Open Mic.

TF2tv provided a home for casting gaming-allsorts, with video streams whenever possible. -Pirate radio, a casting platform allowing “talented” people to effortlessly jump on a game for the purity of what it is: A voice complementing the game you are watching. “Open Mic.” is an expansion of those ideologies. -As with VanillaTV, we expect it to be accountable as something of worth (within the same borders of reason as with all our post content), while allowing for upcoming casting talents to play and experiment.

VanillaTF2′s news and match information will remain exclusively focused on top level games, be it casted by VanillaTV or Open Mic. But fear not, implementation for information and documentation of lower level games, are in the works, and TF2tv’s service will stay open until we have that in place.

What’s next

We intend to cover the US vs Finland Nations cup game tonight! After that, the service is officially opened, and we will be adding more functionality, coverage and documentation, as we go along. In time, TF2tv’s services will be shut down, and referred to us. The new Vanilla design theme is to be expected within June. For starters, we will be using the pirate radio mumble.

You can find us on IRC @ quakenet: #vanillatv.

Needless to say we’ve only just begun, both visually and with match/discussion/media integration – and in time, we aim to be left with a whole greater than the sum of VanillaTF2, TF2tv and ETF2L radio could ever achieve on their own.

Hugs and frags,
- Byte, Shox, Comedian, and Torden.