The Virtual Set Tour Fiasco

That’s all we can ask for, Lesley—-thank you for your reply and looking forward to the next ones.

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Minor correction: Best Brains no longer exists. The current production company is Alternaversal.

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According to fandom.com, Best Brains was renamed Consolidated Puppets Incorporated in 2015.

Don’t know if it has anything to do with MST3K anymore.

Business Filing Details (state.mn.us)

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Yah, I thought that was the case after I posted, but couldn’t quite dredge up the new name. Thanks for the info.

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Everything worked fine for me during the Zoom call with the writer’s room, but the intro and Q&A parts were unwatchable. The video was constantly struggling to keep up, and the audio was dropping out every 2-3 seconds. I wasn’t part of the VIP group, so I was unaware of the issues with their video questions.

During other live events like the “Mindless Summer” live streams, there were also issues with the video dropping frames, although not as pronounced as last week’s issues. Obviously, I don’t know the details of the hardware and software utilized or the quality/speed of the internet connection used to stream these events but, as an IT professional, I can tell you with some certainty that part of this workflow - either the internet connection, the software being used, the hardware encoding the stream, or all-of-the-above - is inadequate to the task of live streaming these events.

Live streaming can be very demanding: requiring significant, stable bandwidth (both down and up) and plenty of computing power, depending on the software/hardware used for encoding it. If it is Ivan who’s hosting/managing these events (and I’m pretty sure it is most of the time) then please, I beg you, get that man a rig that is up to the task of handling all these streams and make sure he has the best internet connection possible.

I just want to see these events be the best they can be for this awesome fandom. I’m glad to hear Alternaversal is aware there are issues and hope that they can be addressed before the next event.

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I’ve been calling them the Gizmaniacs, myself.

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Appreciate the thoughts! You’re right that I’m generally the one running them, but we’ve actually been using cloud services rather than setups that specifically tax my machine, so the problem doesn’t tend to be local.

In the case of the Virtual Set Visit fiasco – as noted in today’s Backer Update – we were using a new platform that both livestreams and lets us capture HD local video recordings for later use, which we thought would be valuable for editing together these conversations for later. We tested it with the full group ahead of time, and everything worked fine… but we’re still working with the platform to figure out why it choked on us during the actual event.

Our best guess is that so many VIP set visit backers attempted to use the “video call in” feature at the same time to ask questions that the entire platform session just slowed to an abysmal crawl. Needless to say, we’re looking at other options for future sessions that don’t depend on that platform, but still let us make good on all of the specific features and experiences we’re after.

All of that said, if people want to crowdfund a rig for me to use just for live events, I’d be happy to have a dedicated machine that does NOTHING ELSE. :wink:

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I’ll interact with you, @Teflon93! I’ll interact with you!

Tim Ryder here, one of the room runners and directors of Season 13. The writing process has consumed most of our lives for weeks, but now that it’s (mostly) finished, some of us might have more time to hop on here before shooting starts and then we’ll DISAPPEAR again.

I know it’s not the same, but if your son wants to pose his question here, I’ll be happy to answer it as best I can. Also happy to explain any of our inside jokes, but be forewarned that the context will likely be as weird as the jokes themselves.

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Tim Ryder, legitimate good dude!

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Yeah, Timmy Tim Tim (Bonehead) Ryder!

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It was so terribly disappointing. The choppy audio gave me the worst migraine. Trying to watch at all past the one hour that worked became literally painful.

I found myself crying because it was just so upsetting. I felt alienated and honestly kind of fleeced. I mean, I don’t mind throwing tons of money at MST3K, I’ve done it plenty of times in the last 30 years. But this is the very first time it felt like they failed to deliver. I also understand technical difficulties are part and parcel for MST3K, and when the crap is addressed it can almost be fun, like you are there right with them watching the crash happen.

But none of that happened with this one. They just kept plowing through, no real acknowledgements that anything was amiss. I found myself wondering, if this had been a real set visit, instead of a virtual one, and the conditions suddenly made it impossible to hear or see anything, there would immediately be a cancellation, rescheduling, refund, something, whatever. No real seminar would continue if the audience all suddenly had to leave.

So the whole thing just barging through at ramming speed felt very hurtful, very dishonest, and so very disappointing. It made me question everything about every level I purchased and supported.

I love MST3K more than almost anything and looking forward to this “visit” is one of the things which has kept me going for months, facing some dire health issues.

Now it just feels like meh, they don’t care about us or putting on a good show like they used to. It affected all my anticipation of the new season even.

The right thing to do should have been to cancel right there. Reschedule it or at least allow us backers to make it to another seminar coming soon. It feels like we were the canary in the coal mine and none of us came out singing. A complete waste of time and money.

Not used to feeling more stressed after an MST3K interaction than before, at all.

Knowing they will get it right later for other backers doesn’t alleviate the sting because that was the only one I could afford.

So sad. So broke.

Oh well. Buyer beware I guess.

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This seems quite the reach. Yes there were technical issues, but it was the first time EVER doing anything like this before.

The language some people use when describing this situation is truly baffling.

Do you really think that you’re being taken advantage of? Do you truly think this is indicative of a subpar product? Did any of the livestreams, updates, posts or comments give you anything to substantiate this???

For me, things like this feel like the “anonymous” internet commenter looking for validation, because they were mildly inconvenienced by something. If you truly wanted to bring this issues up, then the email would have been the better Avenue. Or to request a refund if you TRULY no longer have confidence in the end product.

Otherwise this just comes across as unnecessarily negative, very self-centered approach to this scenario.

I’ve pledged, added-on, upped my pledge and added-on again, so I’m BEYOND the top tier of “VIP virtual set visit” offerings, and never ONCE have I felt the need to be negative toward the people that create something that I care for enough to give actual real life money to.

These are real people, and they are nothing but open, honest and transparent about EVERYTHING. So to have any sort of bad feelings seems to me just to be unnecessary, and it comes across as misdirected anger over SOMETHING ACTUALLY needing complaints.

But a virtual set visit for a puppet joke TV show ain’t it, dog.

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Everyone chill. We all have trauma in life, and sometimes we don’t express our stress/frustration in a healthy way.
@Bloo You should obviously contact the Alternaversal team regarding your complaints/concerns through the Kickstarter contact information

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I mean, unofficial Summer Bliss sponsor, undeniably handsome Bone Guy, and truly good person Tim Ryder has put himself out there to interact with and answer questions from people.

So if that isn’t a sufficient salve for the first of multiple set visits, then it obviously will never be enough. And you should email alternaversal, request a refund, and then exit the forums- because this isn’t a place for you.

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Maybe consider contacting them directly and asking if they’d consider a future visit a replacement at no charge. But… maybe avoid language like “fleecing” as it’s clear enough here that they never set out to deliberately dissatisfy anyone.

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Also- I was under the impression ALL the future set visits were included, not extra. So this wasn’t just a “one-and-done” scenario.

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Correct. The Virtual Set Visit reward level is for all set visits, not just one. There will be a series of them covering different aspects of the production process.

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Thank you for the clarification!!!

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I know that you’re disappointed. Some of us were. But things change, ya know? And I’m sure that the next virtual set visit we see will be much better in quality.

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Again, the first run of anything is almost always rocky. This is compounded by the complexity and unknowns of the online environment. Alternaversal has pledged to make the experience better, and that’s really all we can ask of them.

As inaugural events go, it could have been worse. At least no one took a goose to the face.

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