EPTI wrote this while sitting in the airport this morning. Wanted to wait until after tonight's cast to post it, though. <3
So right now its 5 AM on a Sunday morning. I'm red-eyed and a little bit hung over from the Dave and Buster's party last night, but I'm also absolutely giddy over the last week. The Starcraft community is so amazing, and having the opportunity to come out here and pretend to be a caster for a week has been great. The whole reason I'm writing this is just to share with everyone my experience for the week, and also to go on the record about my take on casting, and some of the perceptions of people that are in these roles.
On Travelling....
So I flew out here a week ago. I had a 7AM flight out of Atlanta that was supposed to connect once in Phoenix, and then land me in Ontario, California around like noon. Of course, that's not how it went down. My flight out of Atlanta was cancelled, and - as anyone who's ever flown out of Atlanta can attest to - getting any sort of help in sorting out my new travel plans was a headache. I got to do stuff like wait in line for 2 hours, missing the only other flight direct to Phoenix, and instead getting to go from Atlanta to Charlotte, to Phoenix, to Vegas (wtf?), to California. Total travel time: something like 16 hours. Nice.
Going home wasn't (isn't?) any easier. I was actually supposed to leave yesterday, but a bomb threat at the airport messed up some schedules, and then my own incompetence found me stuck here for an extra night. No biggy, of course, as it allowed me to attend the Dave and Buster's meet and greet, which was totally freaking awesome. Did you know astronauts are Starcraft fans too? True story.
On Casting....
So I've never really considered myself a caster. I've commentated a showmatch or two, and, of course, I do my show, but at the end of the day, the amount of games that I had literally "casted" before coming out here could have probably been counted on one hand. The prospect of coming into a real studio (contrary to popular belief, NASL is actually NOT produced in iNcontroL's basement) and live-casting the world's best players in front of a pretty substantial audience was a little bit nerve-wracking. Gretorp really helped to take the pressure off, and I want to speak to that for a minute.
On Gretorp....
So this guy has caught some flack, and the God's-honest-truth is I don't understand why. He is literally one of the smartest (maybe the smartest) Terran players outside of Korea. His analysis is
absolutely 100% correct, 100% of the time in the Terran matchups, and I'd say in the non-Terran matchups, he's still batting about .950. There were literally at least 100 occasions this week where I didn't have a clue about wtf was happening on screen. Whenever that happened I was just like "and what do you think, Gretorp!?", and every single time he killed it. He's an amazing resource, and, in my opinion, a fantastic caster. Working with him was freaking great, and I really hope that the community enjoyed the dynamic we had going on.
On Analysis....
Speaking of analysis - %^&* that's hard to do. It's easy for even a platinum level player to watch a replay a couple of times and pick up on things that could be better, or that might need to change completely. Calling that stuff on the fly isn't always as straight-forward, primarily because things just can't be unsaid. There were a couple times when I would make a call, and immediately think to myself "oh God that was so wrong" but when you're being recorded, and when the game is live, you can't really go back and undo those mistakes. My favorite blunder was from Boxer vs. Cloud, + Show Spoiler +
where I literally said "no way is Cloud in a good position to push here" mere seconds before he a-moved through the entire map, winnig the game. "lol bitter".
Obviously, I'm a Zerg player, and my knowledge of the Zerg matchups is a lot more thorough, but being out here has really, really underscored (for me, at least) how bad my understanding of the other races is. Calling PvP was especially hard because I couldn't just pass it off to Gretorp every time I got confused. To be fair, though, I don't think anyone really knows wtf is going on in PvP these days...
On Arm-Chair Quarterbacks....
Admittedly, I'm probably using the term wrong here, as casters are the epitome of the "arm-chair quarterback", but this feels like an appropriate time to call out the vocal minority. When somebody is wrong about something (casters especially, because we genuinely WANT to improve) then put it out there. Tell us how we screwed up, call us bad, whatever. But make sure that you know wtf you're talking about when you do. Nothing is more frustrating (at least in my opinion) than the people that show up in the live report threads and spread misinformation. It's bad for the community, and it doesn't help anybody. My favorite example of this: "wtf, Zerg isn't behind, he has a 20 supply lead over Protoss". It's not always as simple as "whoever has more supply is ahead."
On receiving criticsm....
I've been pretty overwhelmed by the amount of positive feedback I've received since this whole little adventure began. I came out here ready to get eaten up by reddit and TL alike, but to my astonishment, most people were pretty receptive of my attempts at play-by-play. (yay!) But there are still critics out there, and they are 100% justified. I made plenty of bad calls, and probably came off a little whiney (c'mon, I play Zerg...) and those are things I definitely want to improve on. Please, tell me how I can be better. I don't know what the future holds for me in terms of casting, but the next time I do it, I want to be noticably better.
On racial bias....
One thing that I'm not sure that I want to change is my racial bias. Maybe I went a little overboard this week, but I want people to understand that part of that was for the back and forth between Gretorp and me. It's fun being up there on camera and joking about how hard it is to be Zerg, or how overpowered creep is. I've watched every broadcast that I took part in, and I agree I could tone it down in some places, but I think one of the roles of a caster is to be opinionated. It gives depth to the show. If anyone out there was a Braves fan in the 90s, you have to remember Skip Carey's amazing call of "Braves Win! Braves Win!" when the Braves beat the Pirates to advance to the World Series in 1992. Skip was a huge Braves fan, and people loved it when he showed it. Maybe that level of bias doesn't really work for Starcraft, but I absolutely feel like a little bit is good for the show.
On the future....
Being a part of the whole NASL experience was pretty great this week. I literally have no idea what the future holds for me. I want to continue to work on improving my own personal play level, but after this week, I'm feeling a pretty big calling to work on my off-races so I can better understand the game from an analytical point of view. Obviously that means taking a couple steps back so that I can (hopefully) take twice as many strides forward. That's going to have to wait at least one more week, though, as MLG is just days away, and to off-race before that would be a little bit silly.
Speaking of MLG....
And of live events in general, everybody needs to go. It's one of the most awesome gamer atmospheres imaginable, and Columbus is shaping up to be one of the greatest shows ever. Also, don't forget to get those Blizzcon tickets (hopefully I'll see you guys there) and don't even think about missing the NASL finals. Insider scoop: The finals are going to be freaking incredible. Like, indescribably, mind bogglingly amazing. (And it's going to be the biggest purse EVER in the foreigner scene)
And lastly, a thanks....
Thanks to everybody for being so supportive! You guys watching my show, and sending all the positive (and even negative!) feedback - It's amazing, and I'm so greatful. Without that support I would have never been given this opportunity. The Starcraft community is the best on the planet, and I can't wait to see how big it really gets.
