EPTI'm not much of a writer or (v)blogger normally, even though I think it's really fun to read about people's adventures and I often think of sharing stuff, it's still not something I normally or ever do. However , I've been really enjoying the blogs of my good friend Ben (DeMusliM ) and my 1 year anniversary in the US is coming up, I thought it would be a good time to share some of my experiences and let you guys know how my life has been and what I've been up too lately, this will probably be quite long ( it turned out VERY long :D ) and I'm of course expecting you to read it in my voice.
The Move:
As you guys may or may not know, March 2012 I decided to leave ESL/Turtle Entertainment to move to the US and work for the NASL. Some people were very surprised and others just wished me good luck. I've spoke about this before in interviews but to recap the chain events, here we go. I truly loved my time at ESL and I really enjoyed working and living in Germany, it was a fantastic time and deciding to leave wasn't easy. When the opportunity came along I thought about it excessively and decided to make the move in the end. I put all pros and cons against each other and decided to go for the adventure. Biggest cons were that I would live super far away from my family ( and Caytje my Akita ) who I obviously love a lot and I'm not sure what I would get into, living the US sounds awesome but I really enjoyed my job at ESL and I loved cologne and was quite pleased with how everything went and above all I really loved my colleagues. Joe Miller is not just a fantastic commentator, he's also a super fun guy to hang out with and guys like Carni or my bosses Sven and Toby were amazing guys too, so why give up a good thing? Well, in general I think it's good to put yourself out of your comfort zone and don't be afraid of Change. As you guys can see and know I really love working with bitter and he became more than just a colleague as he is one of my best friends in Life, the foresight of still being able to work with him was awesome for many reasons, as Ben is the type of friend that is good to have around. He will let you know when he thinks you're slacking or going in the wrong directions and won't hold back in lecturing me from time to time, all with good intentions though. I also figured living in an English speaking country would be good for me and living in the US seemed pretty amazing in general, but I still wasn't really sure if I should do it or not. After thinking about it for quite a while I decided to go for the adventure after all, also because this would be an improvement financially and even though I never made decisions in my esports life based on money this was quite an improvement and I figured it wouldn't be a wrong time to for once think about my future, as I'm not 18 anymore ( 26 soon grandpa Rotti. ) so after being indecisive for a while, I said, yolo let's do it, and the adventure begun! Here is a picture of us starting the adventure, first meal in our new house haha.
Ghello So Ghappy )))
Looking back at the decision I made one year ago I can say I'm happy with the decision I made, but I also know I would have been happy if I decided to stay with ESL. It was a decision where I couldn't really go wrong, but I'm glad with the move I made as I wasn't afraid of change, and I think that's always good in Life. I'm happy with the work we did at NASL but definitely not satisfied, I felt we did a really good job in Season 3 and reading all the comments of how much NASL has improved gave a lot of satisfaction. We had lots of great regular broadcasting days and the finals in Canada were amazing, big shout-out to all the Canadian fans who visited our finals , you guys made the event! Season 4 we unfortunately had a few issues, and even though people were still happy with the work we did, I felt overall we could have done a better job, even though most of the walkovers and what not were kind of out of our own control, you should always look at yourself and see what you can do to prevent that in the future. I do think it's safe to say in general that people look at the NASL as a brand better than ever before, and I've seen people on reddit saying " yeah yeah by now we know that NASL is doing a good job and I don't think we have to keep posting this", you guys would be surprised by how many fans there are out there who still say "ah stopped watching after season 1 or 2," didn't know they were still around, was terrible etc, so if you ask me, never stop with giving us love if you feel we deserve it. We are on the right track but obviously wanna grow and get better. I also truly believe a league like the NASL Would be extremely missed in the Sc2 scene if it would ever go away or stop to exist, more than you might think. Of course I am a NASL Employee and I am not completely neutral and I'm well aware of the fact that mistakes have been made, I really think from a player point of view NASL does and has done lots of great things. 4 Offline finals fully payed for everyone who made it, NASL Sunday showdowns where I think we took really good care of our players, if I think back of my days as a Wc3 pro I can honestly say I would really love the NASL, and that's not a biased employee opinion, it's the truth. I'm well aware of the fact times have changed and there are more opportunities out there right now, it doesn't change that I think NASL does so much right, and I hope you guys will keep supporting the League and me, and if you haven't in awhile, give it a shot in Season 5 and hopefully be positively surprised.
Last 12 Months in Review
Outside of the NASL I had a pretty good StarCraft year as well, I had a blast at Lone Star Clash one ( even though I gained 10 pounds because every generous Texan kept taking me to"the best barbecue place in town ( and they were all different :D ) and I eat way too much haha ) , I was happy and proud to be part of that event, unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to LSC #2 which made me truly sad, but I love all those guys and it was definitely a highlight. Casting MLG Raleigh was damn cool too, the MLG guys are awesome and I had lots of fun that weekend. I made the trip to Krefeld for HSC V as I love Dennis and needless to say, I had a lot of fun as always ^_^. During one my short trips home ( taking care of visa stuff ) I casted the WCS Ukraine and Russian federation national finals and as the people know who followed me for a long time, I love national competition and I really like Kiev as well hehe, it was a great weekend
. The last few months of 2012 were crazy as I went to the BWC finals in China ( was a honor to cast it ), Dreamhack Winter straight after that, where I had once more an amazing time. It was my first Dreamhack since 2008 as I went back then to participate in the Wc3 tournament, it's amazing to see how much Dreamhack has grown and how well they run their events. I felt the casts Ben and me did during the first 2 days were really fun and good as well, I'm often quite critical on my own performance and if I put up a mediocre performance or bad, it makes me sad for a while and it bothers me, but I felt really good after those days as I had so much fun casting and it was hard to imagine that the people who listened to it didn't have a good time. After every cast I always ask myself " If I was a spectator, would I have enjoyed this event/cast?" And the answer was definitely yes so it gave me a good satisfied feeling. Short after that we had the NASL Season 4 finals in Long Beach, which despite the low live spectator turnout was still a great event and I think we put up a really good online show. My last event of the year was HSC VI and it was quite complicated for me to make it regarding the plans I had already previously made ( it ended up me flying alone for 26 hours on Christmas t_t ) but I was still happy I made the trip. One of the things that Ben always says is that you should never forget the people that helped you in the past. I don't think there is anyone I owe more too than Dennis/Take . People like ToD, Bitter and DeMuslim have helped me a lot in the past and I will never forget that, or even very early on in my playing Career Grubby helped me becoming a better Wc3 player, but there is no one I owe more too than Dennis. Dennis pushed me to cast Home Story Cup 1 at a time in my life I had no idea what I wanted to do or what I wanted to become. I would have gave playing Sc2 professionally a serious go but it would have been very hard to become successful. Dennis convinced me to cast HSC 1 and after that convinced me to apply for the Sc2 casting gig at ESL and put in a good word for me. This alone will make me forever grateful towards Dennis and if he asks me to cast anything or to do anything for him, I'll always be available, even if it ends up spending 26 hours in airplanes on Christmas Day & eve hehe. HSC VI was obviously a blast and it was great being part of it, unfortunately there were some stream issues but I still had a great time with a lot of my good friends, even though some were missing.Life outside of Sc2:
The life outside of Sc2 has been quite cool in the US, even though it took a while before I got everything sorted out which ended up in me not being able to do a whole lot here. Without a car you can literally do nothing where we live, it's a 25 minute walk to the supermarket/closest place you can buy food, 40/50 minutes to a bar, funny thing is that it's not even far away, the streets are just longggggg and everything is spread out. I definitely miss just being able to walk outside like I was in Cologne, take a tram, be wherever I wanna be in 5 minutes to have a beer, or watch Football. I tried watching the European Championships here but it's not really the same when you watch your country play with 3 other people in a big empty bar, of which 1 is wondering why we are not showing some college basketball game and the other 2 just wanna enjoy their big ass mountain dew with extra large fries and would prefer the volume to go down a bit. ^^ Fortunately Holland was horrible this summer and I didn't miss much of the awesome atmosphere that is normally going on in Europe during big Football championships.
I am a little disappointed in some of my own actions as well. I love gambling but it happened a few times I just lost to much which made me feel dumb. If you don't gamble I truly recommend you to never start it either. I do know though that I will never stop gambling and I can live with that, it's a form of entertainment for me and if I go to a bar or buy useless stuff it costs money too, however the #1 rule should always be, never lose an amount that will affect your mood. If I go to a casino or poker room and lose a 100 or 200 bucks, I won't lose any sleep over it and as long as I had fun, I'm completely okay with that but it happened a few times I literally woke up and hoped that what happened last night was a dream, but I knew it wasn't. It's extremely dumb behavior and I should be better than that, which I have been lately and obviously wanna keep it that way. Having some fun is good, but don't be a donkey.
On a personal level I can say that I made some bad decisions as well, in Dutch we have a saying which goes "een ezel stoot zich niet twee keer aan dezelfde steen" , which basically means that you shouldn't make the same mistake twice. I however am an expert in that and did so ^^, which resulted in me being sad for a while and just doing dumb things and not feeling as good as I could and most certainly should, as it's safe to say that at the end of the day I live an amazing life and I should be extremely grateful as all my problems are not even real problems, but it doesn't make you immune to certain feelings of sadness once in awhile. Whether it's that the fact that things didn't work out with that one girl or miss family, friends or my lovely Akita. Of course at the end of the day, you should be a big boy and I am extremely grateful for the position I am in and very happy with my life and it shouldn't be too hard to accept that you can't always get what you want, no matter how badly you might want it.
So Fierce Rawr
Last but least is something that seems to be a hot topic lately. Getting fierce! My entire life I feel I have always been a little overweight, I've had times where I was close to being seriously overweight like at this lovely picture taken in 2006, featuring Grubby Creo Fire Nukeq and me, and there were times I was perhaps even Skinny, yet not in shape so I guess in my mind i was "overweight" since I wasn't rocking a 6 pack. It has honestly always bothered me but not to the point where I would be super determined to do something about it, I had times of small diets and then I was quite okay, but then I would fall back into old habits and eat lots of bad stuff throughout the entire day or once in awhile I'd be on a party spree ( btw I know there is this image of me giving 0 fucks and being super wild etc and always drunk and some people might think it's badass, the truth of the matter is that yes, I like to party and when I party I like to do it properly, but in general I never really party that much, in High school I never joined my friends on their party adventures, I was the kid playing Wc3 7 hours a day while they were getting drunk and getting their first girlfriends, I wasn't that guy and have never really been. I'm also not the guy who ends up fucking 4 girls in a week even though people make it sound like that :D, yes I have my adventures and I like to have fun, and sometimes I do stuff to forget about other things but at the end of the day, I'm honestly not that wild or crazy and might even be quite a softy but let's keep that between us. If I party I like to do it right, but I'm not the guy who can't wait to go out again, I'm perfectly fine with a quiet evening at home. ) Anyways back to the weight topic, right before I moved to the US and wasn't sure about my choice, I had one of those small party periods, where I would go out with one of my good friends in cologne ( Random Sc2 fan that recognized me while I was ordering a Subway Sandwich, asked if I wanted to join him on his Sc2 night with his friends haha, he said he lived very close so I said sure why not, joined 4 random german nerds on a saturday night and 1 of them turned out to be one of my best friends a year later, great guy! ) drink 6 rum and coke, some beer and close the night with a king kebab, so even if I watched my weight for a while, if you do that for 5 times I can guarantee you skipping that burger and ordering a water instead of soda is pretty useless haha.
Anyways, after I went to CES this year in Vegas, I walked through the Wynn at night and i've seriously never seen so many good looking people in one place, it was ridiculous. And right after I had one of my dumb gambling nights again, I realized, instead of losing money on gambling or getting drunk in some shitty bar, what about getting in shape for once in my life and then if I go to Vegas in 5 months, visit a cool "beach" party where I don't have to feel uncomfortable, cause yes even though I know I'm not ridiculously overweight , going to a pool party or the beach are things I wouldnt do, which I know it's dumb it's just a mental thing I guess. This is probably a pretty dumb motivation to finally start working out but it was a tipping point and glad my brain somehow came up with this ridiculous idea, yet enough motivation for me to make a change and a big statement to Benni. I texted Ben and said "omg ben, I've never seen so many ridiculously hot girls in 1 place, Tonight and the next 74 days I go to gym, if I won't go I owe you a 100 $ for every day I don't go" Well, Ben wouldn't be the amazing friend that he is if he wouldn't make sure I kept my word ^_^. So Far I did and I'm feeling good about it, even though I'm far from done as 1 month gym won't do much, mentally I'm feeling better and actually feeling super motivated to go more, I started to really enjoy going to the gym rather than "ah I still have to go to gym fuck dont wanna go huhu". In the past I had moments where I tried going to the gym as well, but after a few days I always stopped going, "wanna stream, gotta play ladder, got a clanwar, got a cast tomorrow, stomach feels bad, not feeling strong today, ah really exhausted" the same old same old. Back then ben told me " Kef, excuses are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink" . It's a pretty silly saying but after going for a week or so and I tried to make my first excuse, I told myself, No fuck that. No Excuses, they're like assholes, we all got one, and they all stink.
The final funny motivation I have is that my brother has pretty much called me a fat ass my entire life, and I love my bro so it's all good but when he was teasing me when I was 14/15 I always said, "just wait one day when I'm bigger I'll beat you up" . Well my brother turned out like this and won the state championships in Boxing, so even though that's going to be a tough challenge, one day, I will get him .Closing thoughts
Ohoh, super long blog, anyways I just wanted to share what's been going on in my life and mind, I often stay out of being "news" all the time or do whatever to show my face or give my opinion about something, which is perhaps silly since it's my job to be a public person in this industry. I am fine with just casting the events and stuff, I don't have to be in the "spotlights" all the time for whatever reason , trying to show how amazingly nice I am, or stir up some drama, give my opinion about sensitive topics etc, I rather avoid that stuff. I am always extremely involved in Sc2, I watch pretty much everything ( and I know that's close to impossible but seriously I'm trying :D, GSL PL, EU Events, MLG Showdowns, you name it I watch it ) and still try to play on a regular base, which I always do unless I'm travelling. As long as I work 40+ hours a week at the office I know I will never be extremely good but that doesn't stop me from trying, and as long as I can take games of top players, even when it's just a random bo1 at ladder, it gives me some satisfaction and makes me feel better about casting this game. And I know I haven't streamed a lot in the last few months, which is mostly because I didn't have the best mindset and I only wanna stream if I feel happy and energetic, as I hate putting on bad shows~ and I know myself, I get whiny if I'm not feeling all that awesome and start complaining about losses, rather avoid acting like a little girl since I'm in no position to whine, despite being quite good I'm no where near top Pros and in my opinion have absolutely 0 right to whine about imbalance. Anyways I am oh so excited for this year. I can't wait to cast NASL Season 5 and I really hope you guys will support our league as I truly feel we produce a good product and all my Colleagues are extremely hard working and very nice people and we are always trying to improve.
This blog/book will be a one time thing, as I previously mentioned I don't have the urge to give my opinion about everything or pretend I am so important that I have to share whatever goes on ;P, at the end of the day I'm just your average 25 year old Wc3/Sc2 fanatic, who happens to work in the industry
. I do hope you guys enjoyed it and I hope this year will be as good as the last 2. Last words go to Ben&Ben, my family, Caytje and everyone who reads this and has something nice to say, love ya'll! <3 Working on a better me
. Xoxo Rotti.Ps: Must see ! And remember guys, Mommy always taught us ; if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all! :D Jk I don't really care
Rotti without Piercings and Lauren posing in the back
Something I wanted for a very long time
TL DR: #YOLO
www.twitter.com/RotterdaM08
www.facebook.com/Rotti08
