EPTIt wanted to write this up much earlier in January, but to be honest everything hadn’t really set in yet. Getting to cast with Mr. Bitter for MotM (Map of the Month), casting for the MLG community program, casting the live beta streams at MLG Orlando, meeting Day[9], Artosis, Tasteless, Mr. Bitter, JP, djWHEAT, Husky, Lee Chen, Sundance, Clutch, and of course all of the great players (Boxer, MC, Nestea, etc.). And above all, proposing to Lily on the main stage at MLG Providence after getting to interview my favorite player MC. It was surreal; it was all so amazing; honestly there are no words. All I can say is that I cherished every moment. So much so that I figured that I’d better get it on paper, as it will no doubt be great to reflect on many years in the future God willing.
So that is where my 2011 ended, but where it started is actually even closer to my heart. It may not sound as cool, and you may have never heard of the people I mention, but that doesn’t make them any less awesome than the eSports mavens mentioned in the first paragraph.
So for years I ran poker tournaments in South Florida. One of the things I loved about SC2 was its similarities to poker. I wanted to participate in a tournament and stumbled across a site dedicated to running SC2 tournaments. It was called ASCW (Amateur Starcraft Weekly). They had a simple check-in and bracket system that would fill up minutes after opening up (days before the actual tournament). It was literally the only site dedicated to running tournaments for the average or even below average player. Every day was a different league bracket. So Monday was Bronze/Silver, Tuesday was Gold/Plat. Wed. was Diamond and Thurs. was Masters/Grandmasters. On top of that every tournament was casted! I just want to take a step back and explain what that means. Four tournaments a night with casting that could go on for five hours or more. These guys were doing this for weeks on end and not a dime was made. I was blown away by this community initiative and loved the events. This was grass roots at its best.
NASL made its debut and through there I stumbled on to Wellplayed.org, a new redditesque forum site where you could up/down vote etc. I had become an active member on the site and decided it was time to run my first SC2 tournament. So the “Unofficial” wellplayed.org community event was born. But who would do brackets, administration, and cast? Clear choice, I contacted ASCW and spoke to the founder Sympatico. Being the super nice Canadian that he is, he instantly agreed to host and admin it and help out as much as possible. We got Alex “Orejasr” Rosales to sponsor it, TL put it on the event calender, and Diggity agreed to cast the finals. RootDdoRo, now VileDdoRo, won the tournament as casted by Sympatico, Sleepercells and Diggity, and it was a great success. I didn’t cast, play, or admin. I just got to enjoy and I was hooked.
I wanted more SC2 community involvement and this is where I got my start in casting. I was inspired to start after watching iNcontroL & Gretorp cast the show match between IdrA and Jinro that lead to the much anticipated “announcement” of NASL. I remember thinking “man that looks like great fun!” I had already been a huge Tastosis fan, but after realizing that the NA scene was developing I was excited to get involved. That leads me back to Sympatico at ASCW. I offered to cast for ASCW if needed and it turned out everyone got sick that week so I was able to cast all four days! From the Bronze league up to Masters in front of like 30 people a night viewing the stream, man it felt like the “big time” no joke! I was so excited. Someone said “but Tumba, it’s only 30 people”. I said imagine 30 people in a room with you and you are responsible for entertaining them.
I went on to become the regular caster for Bronze/Silver Mondays and Masters / Grand Masters Thursdays. I had no idea where it would all lead and I didn’t care! I loved every moment.We all took it every bit as serious as a legitimate job. Everyone made sacrifices. I remember casting an event from the bathroom of the house I rented for a Disney family vacation. We refused to miss a night.
So as our popularity increased so did our ambition. I wanted to start producing more show matches and it was exactly what Sympatico was thinking too. So between Orejasr, Sympatico, and myself we started funding the show matches. Hotkeyit.com also contributed and was our very first sponsor. The first “mini-tournament” consisting of Destiny, CrunCher, dde, and ViBE. We had around 7k viewers and I was casting with Vorapsak, an amazingly analytical AND funny caster. He coined the name “slowverlord”. We were not used to that many viewers and with Sympatico being in the web business our production looked amazing, live updates on the series, ads, great overlays, and all done custom on the fly. So as good as that was the opposite could have been said for the obsing and casting, lol. We had a lot of room to improve, myself especially. Vorapsak really did a great job that cast holding it together. At one point the Destiny fans were calling for the observer’s head, which was me! lol. What they didn’t know was I had to actually leave for 4 minutes or so due to an emergency, but in typical ASCW fashion NoobyMcNoob one of the best obsers in the biz left work and came to the rescue.
After that we knew we had outgrown the title “Amateur” and Stim.tv was born. So quickly gone were the days of having tournament “after parties” of FFA’s and joking about casting Tt eSports events, now we had a sponsor and had to actually cast Tt eSports events! We had an email list of over 8k users at this point and Playhem had agreed to sponsor us. Weekly show matches and our podcast “Stim Cast” ensued and before I knew it my entire life was consumed by StarCraft 2. Casting, playing, studying, and watching. I was on a Korean time schedule and every day was 99% dedicated to SC2.
Now even more ambitious we decided to open a new EU market and service tournaments using the Playhem brackets Monday through Thursday. So we would have NA and EU 4 nights a week. Early on the Playhem brackets were a bit rough, but they were adamant about fixing any issues. They were very easy to work with.
I had pitched the idea of a Twitch channel for Playhem to “Neeb” who agreed it was something they wanted to do for a while. So literally within 48 hours of that conversation I had the Playhem Twich.tv channel up and partnered with content almost ready to go. When I started looking for casters to fill the slot they were easy picks. Robin was casting Z33k at the time and he was my first call. After that Neeb lead me to Kibblez, Frodan was already money in the bank, and Kaelaris was casting with me on Stim.tv EU so he was a natural choice for Playhem as well. This was before he was “mouz” Kaelaris. Playhem and Stim were having a bit of a hard time co-existing. It just didn’t make good business sense to fund Stim.tv show matches when they could be Playhem show matches. I was right in the middle of both organizations, and frankly spread too thin at the time. Sympatico and I spoke with Neeb and everyone agreed to part ways amicably at that point. Due to some unfortunate circumstances and one rather upsetting conversation with Neeb after MLG Orlando, I parted ways with Playhem and returned to Stim.tv full time. As far as the commitment of the Playhem staff including Neeb, Ben, and all the casters I can say they really do care about the community and do their best to put out the very best product available. It saddens me that I wasn’t able to finish out all of my plans for Playhem.tv, but they are doing just fine without me. <3
I then got to cast SNF (Sunday Night Fights) with Adebisi whom I would later cast with at MLG. The production was amazing. We had a producer in our ear telling us how long to commercial, a dedicated obs, it was sweet. It was tricky to listen to directions from a producer while casting but definitely a great experience.
From there it was on to MLG beta streams, what can I say.... Dreams come true. Intimidating at first, but guys like Clutch, Ghandi, Nexy, Lee “eDad” Chen, Stephen, and Ben made me feel right at home, including Ben picking on me constantly. Sundance inspires greatness in his employees and can do it without a speech or even a word. He can give you a wink or a thumbs up that create sparks of inspiration which sometimes turn into to full on bonfires of inspiration. Thank you to Day[9] who gave me a hug before I went on because I was scared shitless and it showed. The beta streams are an entire post onto themselves. I did at one point on Championship Sunday have to turn my stream off during broadcast because I burst into tears after HuK won his match. Initially, I though it was because a foreigner was doing so well, but I think Robin hit the nail on the head when he said it was the culmination of the entire event. It was amazing. Getting into the studio with Clutch and hearing everyone at the Orlando venue chant Tumba (Sympatico started that by the way) was amazing. I knew those people had no idea who I was, but I didn’t care. I casted for bronze league for 30 people once, they didn’t know me either but I was just as happy to entertain them. Providence was equally amazing. What a great way to end 2011.
So this year I am helping produce the community caster content along with Clutch and will be casting the EU Winter Arena Qualifier tonight with JP, another dream come true. Here’s to 2011 in eSports, it was a great one! Let’s make 2012 even better!
A very special thank you to the following Stim.tv crew: Sympatico (without you none of this could have happened), Orejasr, Darkenedlite, Nooby, iGrok, Sleepercells, Vorap, Moe, Travis Hezel, and of course Rajun. Plus our newest addition Daq.
Also thank you to the following people whom collectively have had the largest impact on my life to date: (you may not even realize you had a personal impact on me in 2011)
iNcontroL, Day[9], Artosis, Tasteless, Mr. Bitter, djWHEAT, JP, Husky, Chill, Sundance, Clutch, Nexy!, Gandhi, Shibby!, Ben Balbona, Stephen (best TD ever), Lee Chen (my eDad), Wiggin, Galen, Ryan Thompson, Rob Simpson, Skew, Suitguy, Kennigit, Gunrun, Diggity, Adam Contini, Adam Apicella, Nerski, Tempo, Zack (Mioff), Adama (saga), Roscoe (saga), Seagnome, primadog, Axeltoss, SirScoots, Anna Prosser, Digiwombat, Frodan, Kaelaris, catsPJs, Feargorm, Adebisi, Robin, Duckville, Vindexus, Marc Turner, and of course Puckett!
To all the players it’s all about you! Without you there is nothing to cast! Especially iNcontroL, Destiny, dde, White-Ra, thank you for your time and helping make Stim.tv great in 2011.
Huge thanks to all the fans and community sites that support me!
Finally thank you my fiancee Lily “Tigress” who puts up with me on the plane rides and wakes up early to make sure I have coffee... the list goes on she is amazing.
<3
Tumba
Congratz on making your dream come true and keep fighting the good fight #ambition #passion payoff.
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