Duckville's Asrock M8 Weekend writeup

Image heavy, please wear your seatbelt

Disclaimer: While I am the content co-ordinator and a member of the SC2 commentary team for Oceanic Esports (OeS) - this is not an official post on behalf of the crew. This is purely my personal thoughts and impressions as a commentator, and someone who had a fun weekend

It's amazing how long this has taken me to write - I was waiting on photos and I was going to start writing this before they were up so I could just slot them in - but I'm a master of procrastination so it has taken this long. But never the less! Here's my personal write-up from my perspective of the Asrock M8 Sydney Showdown, featuring PiG, Iaguz and Petraeus - up against the one and only LGIM-MVP!

So for those who don't know me too well - I'm a commentator primarily for SC2, but I do a little Dota2 on the side (not the best with "high level game knowledge" despite playing the game for about 6 years - but I can play-by-play quite alright I reckon) - and this event was my first "Live" event. As such, this was going to be quite a new experience for me, given that I've really only worked from home; controlling "production", stream entertainment, managing observing, commentating and in many cases - solo casting matches. I've done Dreamhack (Summer '13, VLC '13) and MLG ('11) "community streams", IEM qualifiers with some big name Korean players, a bunch of clan matches for my local compatriots in the SEA region, multiple local SEA events such as Masters Cups and the Masters of Koreign Invitational, and many hundreds of VoD productions for my Youtube channel. I was certainly looking forward to this event that we (OeS) were hosting though, as it'd give me my first experience behind a desk, with a camera, an excellent co-commentator, a production crew, big names on stage, etc etc. It was no doubt going to be great time and an intriguing experience for me!

Day 1;

Travelling up to Sydney was nice and easy - Cleighmoores, Spadez and I headed up on the Friday in our legless Jetstar plane - arriving in good time during the early morning. I'd COMPLETELY forgotten about early check-in at the hotel I was staying at, so bags were dropped off, and along with Nysyr the three of us went off on a journey down George Street to find some grub and use up some time until we could properly check in. Captain of the hipster squad Cleighmoores took like 900 photos of buildings and alleyways during our walk, which was quite funny to watch.

Dat sizzling lunch om nom nom

We had a meal at Pepper Lunch which was really nice - some sizzling Japanese food certainly filled me up - and then we all went on a walk down to The Rocks (I think it's called) to sit by the water, and I had a badass chocolate thickshake that Nysyr got for me. Later on the four of us had dinner at some pho place which was quite nice, I had duck and felt bad. Also remind me not to eat duck because it's never really that filling unless it's a super high quality meal. Pork is almost always better I've found. Your thoughts?

I am not a crook

TLDR: pepper lunch in george street is good

Day 2;

Originally we were going to be heading around the city doing touristy stuff with MVP, but unfortunately he and Mr Kang (IM coach and former badass BW player) didn't have the best of sleeps (aka none) on the plane trip over from Korea, so they were a bit sleepy during the day on Saturday, so basically skip to dinner.

Dinner at Seoul Ria was awesome fun - chowing down on some Korean BBQ with some fellow esports fans - this was originally going to be a dinner with MVP but unfortunately he was still sleeping O.o. Lots of people turned up though, OeS people, a few local folks (Dot, pig, and others), some of the other Melbourne trip-makers (Infeza, Katrina and Kez!) and it was really nice. Kez looked after the BBQ on our table like a champ - though after quite a few (many, many) bottle of Soju things started going a little arwy as we'd both drank quite a bit.

Chef Kez

Twas no trouble though, the food was excellent, and I had a great time with all the folks there. I got to meet Mary "Jiipd" and Bebe who were lovely, apparently we were going to Karaoke I think but plans changed a bit, which realistically is a good thing because with me being quite soju'd I'd probably want to start singing and that'd be a bad idea. Had some interesting chats with Benji and Kez about LoL, Dota2, SC2 and hilariously WoT (rofl) too.

Doing it wrong

TLDR: day 2 we had a dinner in MVP's honour without MVP unfortunately cause sleeping on planes sucks.

Day 3;

Setting up the place!

Big event day! After grabbing a Dare Double Espresso Iced Coffee (shoutout to Dare, sponsor me pls I love your iced coffee) it was time to head over for the event at the UNSW Roundhouse. Went in a cab with Nysyr because we both had NO CLUE how to get over there, but we got there and had a look around, it was a really nice looking place. The main "stage" area was all nicely setup, and the guys there setup chairs, expanded the stage further, and the OeS crew started putting together the PCs and all the gear we were going to use. We had the Esports Daily folks look after our production, so it was great to meet them and get used to the production setup of how we were doing things. Like I said earlier; it was vastly different for me as "the man" who controls all the shit when it comes to a broadcast - so it was kinda nice not having to do that stuff haha.

Me and Livi discussing pre-event

Eventually MVP, Mr Kang and our AWESOME interpretor/translator Kenny arrived - it was really awesome to have Kenny introduce Zepph and myself to the four time GSL champion, not to mention Mr Kang too who is not only an amazing manager/coach but a former BW player (much like MVP of course...) so it was great to shake his hand too. Though awkward, because of the issue of my lack of Korean haha.

Chatting to the crowd as they started coming in

The event started up and we seemed to have some tech issues at the start which were causing grief - and for once it wasn't my fault that my stream was muted for 10 minutes! (My stream viewers will get this joke...) So we had to fill some time, and Crucius asked me to jump up on stage and entertain the crowd, which was a bit of an interesting experience too, given that I'd never really done anything like that before. I decided that given MVP was playing his placement games we'd do some ad hoc commentating of that for a bit, and also I'd try and chat to the crowd. Luckily PiG was on stage to help me out, otherwise it could have been a bit weird. Remember that IPL guy Randy with his stupid ex wife jokes?

Trying to entertain on stage... kinda nervous. (Thanks for the pic Dot!)

That's what I felt like haha. Luckily it wasn't too bad, but something quite funny happened during one of MVP's placement games - he was playing on SEA on this new account and faced up against some bronzie, who immediately once in game said in chat "U AINT MVP CHANGE YOUR NAME" oh how wrong he was. (I think MVP placed gold at the end of it btw - someone let me know if I'm wrong on that one).

So after that scary moment, we got into some casting. PiG and MVP had a wonderful set, games 2 and 3 were really really interesting - but yes I know, there were issues where the games weren't visible and such. Zepph and I will be recasting the games as soon as I have recovered from my cold which has gotten me down the last few days. Pet and Iaguz unfortunately didn't have the best of times against the King of Wings - but it was great to see them give it a go anyway. For me as a basketball player it'd be like asking to play against Michael Jordan or something I'd imagine. Actually I suppose maybe not, because that gulf of skill is far wider than the difference between our ANZ boys to MVP, but whatever you get what I mean.

The casting desk!

Eventually we got to our community match, with 2 folks from the audience brought up on stage alongside Kez to compete in a FFA against eachother, and MVP. What a crazy game that was! I won't spoil much because there is a vod around somewhere, but it was quite fun to watch.

Overall I think it was a good day, no doubt a wonderful experience for me to see what it's like behind the desk live at an event. We did have some glaring issues that came up, but eventually once everything worked out we got it going smoothly. There was one thing I wanted to mention as I know a few people were disappointed with these issues - keep in mind it's extremely rare to have someone like this come out here to Australia. I know that some people weren't fans of the presentations and whatnot either - but surely to have a 4 time GSL champion here to take a photo with you, and sign something, possibly even win some gear - it's worth sitting through a couple of presentations yeah? No doubt the OeS crew will be working on the technical issues for future events but I was a bit saddened by the fact that I saw a lot of "outrage" at the presentations that our wonderful sponsor Asrock were doing.

Anyway that aside - photos were taken, tshirts, items and whatnot were signed, and after a pretty long night it was all done and dusted!

Myself and Zepph!

I was really happy to meet everyone, lots of players, esports fans and all sorts of cool folks. I was even asked to sign some things which was at first... weird. I was like "ah wat" then it was really humbling :3 !!! Met some of the mGG folks, Erasmus and all the others too. Also I finally got to meet Livibee - we've done a little casting but had never really met up before!

Unfortunately I didn't get to go to dinner with everyone after the event because we were packing stuff up, but next time I'll make sure I do, I'm sure you all had a great time.

TLDR: Esports

Day 4;

On our final day we checked out and had a lunch with Jeff from Asrock, MVP, Kenny, Mr Kang, myself, Spadez, Cleighmoores, Nysyr and Crucius - it was really nice apart from the walk down to Hurricanes. Which was quite wet. Quite. I'm still not exactly sure why we decided to walk all the way down to Darling Harbour, but we did. I was ok because I love rain, but it was a little awkward at times given how heavy the rain was. Anyway we went down to the shopping center there where Hurricane is, and before the place opened up we sat down and had a coffee - along with making MVP eat some vegemite. It was the most hilarious thing ever. If you're not sure what vegemite is just google it because I cbf explaining. But the aussie folks will know what it's all about. Kenny brought along a couple of spoons and a jar and asked MVP to try it - MVP had a little bit and obviously didn't like it, he then offered it to Mr Kang who smelt it and immediately recoiled. So so funny to watch hahahaha. The lunch at Hurricane was amazing, I had basically an entire pig which was quite a challenge, and it was really nice to speak to Jeff Hong (from Asrock) about esports stuff.

Oh man, sooo many ribs

TLDR: ate a pig

Well, I had a great time and a great experience overall - I know there were many problems with the stream and other things, but hopefully getting to shake the hand/have a photo/signature of an awesome dude was a great experience for you guys too. Big thanks to the following: Crucius, Nysyr, Cleighmoores, Spadez, Kenny (you were awesome dude), Zepph, Jeff from Asrock, Livibee, all the other OeS crew who helped out on the day, PiG, Iaguz, Petraeus, and anyone else that I forgot. <3

PS: Normally I don't write these "dear diary" kinda things when I blog, hence why it's generally a badly written piece, but whatever hopefully you all understand what I'm ranting about.

Anyway, that's all for now, questions, whatever please post and I'll answer as soon as I can!

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