Valve told how they created and improved player booths at The International
Author: Hawk Live LLC
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Valve released the second blog in the “Between the Lanes” series, where they talked about how they created and improved soundproof player booths at The International.
Valve:
Welcome back to Between the Lanes, 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.
The International is an unbelievably huge endeavor, watched by millions of people around the world. It’s easy to forget that the first ever TI was a modest, honestly pretty unrecognizable event held at Gamescom 2011 in Cologne, Germany, and took place in a trade show booth. In honor of TI’s humble beginnings, we decided to dedicate this installment of Between the Lanes to an often forgotten, rarely celebrated (and occasionally very poorly ventilated) piece of equipment that’s been with us since the very beginning, and ever since (except last year): the soundproof booth.
For the convenience of readers, we have highlighted in separate paragraphs the process of changes, improvements and problems that Valve encountered in the development and operation of player cabins for The International.
Problems Faced in the Development of Booths and Their Solutions
- Soundproofing:
- Introduction of pink noise inside the booths.
- Creating walls made of several layers of glass filled with argon, having different thicknesses and non-parallel orientation for better sound insulation. - Lighting:
- Improving the lighting inside the booths. - Ventilation:
- Equipping the booths with a ventilation system. - Complex and Time-consuming Assembly Process:
- Optimizing the booth designs to reduce the assembly time to less than 5 hours.
- Using sections on wheels for more convenient and faster movement and assembly. - Visibility of Actions Inside the Booths for the Audience:
- Utilizing fully glass walls with museum-quality glass to ensure transparency from any viewing angle in a round arena. - Transportation of the Booths:
- It was practically discovered that the booths are not suitable for long-distance transportation. This problem has not been resolved; the booths were damaged during transportation. - Personal Equipment of the Players:
- Introducing rotating tables that allowed convenient and quick equipment change, reducing breaks between games. - Acoustic Arrangement of the Arena:
- An attempt to abandon booths in favor of noise-canceling headphones and earplugs for noise suppression, however, a full solution to the sound insulation problem was not achieved.
