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motbob
United States12546 Posts
A few years ago, I worked for NASL, and then I stabbed them in the back.
Sort of. It's not like what I was doing for them was critical for the success of the league. But looking back at how I conducted myself when dealing with NASL, it's obvious that I had a lot to learn about professionalism, burnout, and letting my emotions get the best of me.
In 2011, I was pretty excited about NASL's launch. Even after the ridiculously awful Clash of the Titans match[1], I was ready to get involved with the league. Xeris posted a notice on reddit looking for people to maintain Team Liquid LR threads. I decided that since I was probably going to be making a lot of the LR threads anyway, I might as well become the official guy doing it. So I sent Xeris a PM and got "hired".
The first weeks of the league were a total disaster. NASL didn't air matches live. Instead, they recorded the matches with live commentary, stored the VODs, then broadcasted those VODs during U.S. prime time. In retrospect, this was terrible in multiple ways. In general, it's better for tournaments to broadcast during EU prime. If you broadcast in the middle of the day on the west coast of of the US, both Europeans and Americans are awake. If you broadcast in the evening, half your potential audience is asleep. In addition, replays were aired WAY after they were recorded -- sometimes two weeks after. Nowadays, it's clear that matches should always be cast live, but back in the days when the hugely successful TSL 3 was wrapping up, that was less clear.
VODs were behind a paywall. They were organized haphazardly, so people who paid for them found it hard to watch them. I tried making a thread to fix the problem but I don't think anyone used it.
From the beginning, the NASL failed. Hard. In addition to the above problems, NASL streams suffered from crippling lag[2]. The sound was messed up during most of the casts. Every time a problem was fixed, another one seemed to pop up. Because of these problems, the viewership for NASL plummeted after the first casts. The LR thread for the first cast had 258 pages; the thread for Week 2 Day 1 had 181 pages; the thread for Week 6 Day 1 had 47 pages. Gretorp was REALLY bad during the first season (though of course he improved drastically later). Frankly, the NASL launched before they knew what they were doing[3].
On reddit, NASL was getting ripped to pieces during those early weeks. If I had not been so emotionally invested in making the league succeed, I probably wouldn't have defended them so vigorously. I defended the delayed broadcasts. I asked people to give NASL a chance to fix things.
But ten weeks later, at the end of the online league, I was burnt out. Viewer numbers for the daily numbers looked terrible in comparison to those for competing NA leagues (though of course this wasn't a fair comparison). The live playoffs would have been a disaster (more production issues!) had it not been for a stunning grand finals between Puma and MC. It didn't appear that the NASL was going anywhere. I told Xeris that I wouldn't do LR stuff for next season and that they'd have to find a replacement.
At least, I think I told Xeris. It shows how big of a dick I was being about NASL that I don't remember. If I didn't PM Xeris about it, he surely got the message when he saw me publicly badmouth the league I had been working for.
Thus, the title. I didn't stick with NASL when the going got rough. I wasn't strong enough to keep trying to keep afloat what looked like a sinking ship. I wasn't mature enough to keep my mouth shut in public.
The rest of the story is that the NASL got much better in later seasons, but it didn't matter. David Ting, who in retrospect did more to destroy the NA SC2 scene than any other single person, used Rupert Murdoch's money to put on million dollar tournaments that probably returned a fraction of their cost. The arms race that ensued between IPL, MLG, and other live event organizers is well known, and in that war, everyone lost -- or at least everyone in NA did. Those big expensive weekend events made NASL new-found competence look like mediocrity. WCS NA was NASL's last attempt to make SC2 work for them, and even that failed. RIP.
[1] NASL's casters used one computer to spectate replays and the observer/broadcaster used another, leading to constant desyncing. It's hard to overstate how much of a disaster the cast was.
[2] Instead of lowering the quality of their stream to try and fix the problem, NASL treated the lag as a problem on Twitch's (Justin.tv's) side. They didn't experiment with lower bitrates/resolutions. They just let the stream lag for most of their audience. If I have my facts wrong on this I'm willing to be corrected.
[3] This footnote is half the reason I'm posting this blog. During Season 1, one of the NASL's guest casters had an interesting experience. He cast a day of games over Skype with Gretorp. For one reason or another, NASL's copy of the audio with his half of the cast was lost, but Gretorp's was still in their possession. NASL sent this unnamed guest caster Gretorp's audio and asked him to re-cast the games as if they were live. He did so, using the waveform of the cast audio to see when to let Gretorp talk, and no one watching the stream noticed.
  
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On March 09 2014 10:57 motbob wrote:
[3] This footnote is half the reason I'm posting this blog. During Season 1, one of the NASL's guest casters had an interesting experience. He cast a day of games over Skype with Gretorp. For one reason or another, NASL's copy of the audio with his half of the cast was lost, but Gretorp's was still in their possession. NASL sent this unnamed guest caster Gretorp's audio and asked him to re-cast the games as if they were live. He did so, using the waveform of the cast audio to see when to let Gretorp talk, and no one watching the stream noticed.
Damn. That guy has a future in voice acting.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
You can get paid for doing LR threads?!?!? i am doing this wrong
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after the NASL dropped sc2 all the bad sides of the NASL popped out, I wasnt even aware of them. I mostly blame the arms race that happened though, if everyone just worked together back then maybe the NASL would have been a bust. Maybe they could have divided NA into 3 regions to help everyone get a live event. I know this has nothing to do with you but I just wanted to state that. The problem was a lot deeper than just the NASL
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Wait, how did David Ting hurt the NA scene? Did I miss something?
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Katowice25012 Posts
On March 09 2014 10:57 motbob wrote:
The live playoffs would have been a disaster (more production issues!) had it not been for a stunning grand finals between Puma and MC.
This was the tournament where we all learned that no matter how bad a tournament goes during it's regularly scheduled operations, as long as the final series had interesting game content very few will care or even remember.
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Gretorp never got better.
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United States7483 Posts
On March 09 2014 13:24 MtlGuitarist97 wrote:
Wait, how did David Ting hurt the NA scene? Did I miss something?
IPL made NASL seem lousy, when IPL was never going to be sustainable. By running only a few super tournaments like that, it made everyone disillusioned with tournaments like NASL, which by comparison, looked shitty. IPL wasn't going to be around for a long time, so it kind of nuked the scene.
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Its not like they didn't deserve some serious flame after that first season.
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On March 09 2014 12:03 WikidSik wrote:
after the NASL dropped sc2 all the bad sides of the NASL popped out, I wasnt even aware of them. I mostly blame the arms race that happened though, if everyone just worked together back then maybe the NASL would have been a bust. Maybe they could have divided NA into 3 regions to help everyone get a live event. I know this has nothing to do with you but I just wanted to state that. The problem was a lot deeper than just the NASL
Not really. There were more than enough flame/complain/blame/bitch threads at the time for various reasons.
The nearly NASL was pretty much a disaster and everyone at the time thought so, even if not all of the details came out.
Now people are thinking back to their experiences of that time.
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Aside from the title and two lines near the end, the rest of this blog post seems to be NASL sucks.
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On March 09 2014 18:48 Darkwhite wrote:
Aside from the title and two lines near the end, the rest of this blog post seems to be NASL sucks.
Well did you watch season 1? It wasn't pretty.
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
On March 09 2014 13:46 Heyoka wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 10:57 motbob wrote:
The live playoffs would have been a disaster (more production issues!) had it not been for a stunning grand finals between Puma and MC. This was the tournament where we all learned that no matter how bad a tournament goes during it's regularly scheduled operations, as long as the final series had interesting game content very few will care or even remember.
Pretty much, great games trump everything no matter how bad. Though depending on that holding up your tournament is like gambling.
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On March 09 2014 13:46 Heyoka wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 10:57 motbob wrote:
The live playoffs would have been a disaster (more production issues!) had it not been for a stunning grand finals between Puma and MC. This was the tournament where we all learned that no matter how bad a tournament goes during it's regularly scheduled operations, as long as the final series had interesting game content very few will care or even remember.
That's not what I'm seeing at all... Don't get me wrong, as far as I'm concerned, PuMa vs MC @ NASL 1 remains one of the best TvP series ever played in this game, and yet more people seem to remember and quote the "nasl sound guy" thing than the games themselves... :S
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On March 09 2014 18:54 Jaaaaasper wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 18:48 Darkwhite wrote:
Aside from the title and two lines near the end, the rest of this blog post seems to be NASL sucks. Well did you watch season 1? It wasn't pretty.
The point is that, if you want to apologize for something, you do it and move on - you don't dilute it with ten paragraphs about why NASL really did suck and justifying yourself. If it's really meant as an apology, it's kind of hard to tell.
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NASL was always a distaster. I don't think anyone can fault you for not believing in some of the clowns back then. It was getting better over time, but when you start very weak and then spiral down into the abyss, only inhuman amounts of struggle will get you even remotely back to where you started.
Those leagues surely had their part in destroying at least some viewership in regards to SC2. It is very demotivation as a viewer for me at least, if the only thing you hear after each broadcast is apologetic bullshit and "they will get better, they will improve, they will learn from their mistakes" and then a short while later, it's still disgusting, but a small part was improved on "WOW THE SOUND GUY WAS GREAT THIS TIME, THE REST WAS SHIT BUT YOU CAN SEE IMPROVEMENT!!". If you spend a lot of money, I cannot fathom why you would spend it amateurishly and produce sometimes basement-nerd quality level production and then afterwards have the guts to tell the fans to shut the fuck up, because they are hating out of sheer disappointment. I don't even wanna know how much of that money just disappeared mysteriously in smoke, because sometimes it was obvious, that it was not spent on the production.
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Even though IPL set horrible expectations for the future I loved the shit out of IPL 3-5, they were so good.
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On March 09 2014 19:14 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 18:54 Jaaaaasper wrote:On March 09 2014 18:48 Darkwhite wrote:
Aside from the title and two lines near the end, the rest of this blog post seems to be NASL sucks. Well did you watch season 1? It wasn't pretty. The point is that, if you want to apologize for something, you do it and move on - you don't dilute it with ten paragraphs about why NASL really did suck and justifying yourself. If it's really meant as an apology, it's kind of hard to tell.
Hes talking about feeling bad for making himself one of the public faces on nasl (even a minor one) and shitting on it publicly, not apologizing for what it was.
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In the end, the NASL finals gave us something to treasure. The broadcast quality was horrible most of the time, but sometimes it is hard for less experienced people to run a successful event in this world of high standards and big expectations.
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On March 09 2014 18:54 Jaaaaasper wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 18:48 Darkwhite wrote:
Aside from the title and two lines near the end, the rest of this blog post seems to be NASL sucks. Well did you watch season 1? It wasn't pretty.
It was never pretty lol and the expectations people have is ridiculously high.
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Later on, Mike Ulaky made NASL LR threads through a script.
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Man. S1 of NASL. Starting this format is bound to have hiccups and stuff. But I fucking loved s1. Went to playoffs, and thought it was awesome. Had so much access to pros than any other tournament, and the games were so good
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Title should be "They suck". Not sure what the point of this blog even is beyond beating a dead horse. Being the LR guy for a season hardly makes you a part of the organisation in any serious capacity.
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motbob
United States12546 Posts
Hmm, maybe I could have elaborated more on the "I suck" part rather than the "NASL S1 sucked" part, but no one wants to read about that.
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On March 09 2014 14:57 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 13:24 MtlGuitarist97 wrote:
Wait, how did David Ting hurt the NA scene? Did I miss something? IPL made NASL seem lousy, when IPL was never going to be sustainable. By running only a few super tournaments like that, it made everyone disillusioned with tournaments like NASL, which by comparison, looked shitty. IPL wasn't going to be around for a long time, so it kind of nuked the scene.
The goal of competition is to be better than everyone else. IPL wasn't thinking they were going to die, they were trying to grow just like NASL. IGN just didn't want to fund IPL anymore. NASL did things right and other things bad. We probably won't know the cost structure of NASL ever, but I promise you they were in the red and that is why they had to shut down.
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Ohh c'mon motty you know we love to hear about how you suck.
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Israel2209 Posts
Man that was such a bad apology. You really do suck 
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United States7483 Posts
On March 10 2014 03:09 HeeroFX wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 14:57 Whitewing wrote:On March 09 2014 13:24 MtlGuitarist97 wrote:
Wait, how did David Ting hurt the NA scene? Did I miss something? IPL made NASL seem lousy, when IPL was never going to be sustainable. By running only a few super tournaments like that, it made everyone disillusioned with tournaments like NASL, which by comparison, looked shitty. IPL wasn't going to be around for a long time, so it kind of nuked the scene. The goal of competition is to be better than everyone else. IPL wasn't thinking they were going to die, they were trying to grow just like NASL. IGN just didn't want to fund IPL anymore. NASL did things right and other things bad. We probably won't know the cost structure of NASL ever, but I promise you they were in the red and that is why they had to shut down.
IPL was from the beginning stated to be an investment in growing the name of IGN in the esports community, it was an expensive advertising campaign. Any basic economic knowledge would have been able to tell you that they were losing tons of money on each event, and it was pretty obvious they were never going to do that many of them.
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I like honesty, but more importantly, history. NASL is/was just a crucial stepping stone in the massive rush to capitalize on modern e-sports. The idea behind the league was 100% solid, maybe more than that. Execution is everything, but I still appreciated the efforts. So much so that I'm glad NASL happened rather than never at all.
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On March 10 2014 02:44 motbob wrote:
Hmm, maybe I could have elaborated more on the "I suck" part rather than the "NASL S1 sucked" part, but no one wants to read about that.
I dunno, I could stand to read more about how you suck. (How people denigrate themselves is often an interesting window into their psychology.)
But, in reality, I'm wondering... you worked for NASL? Or were you just the NASL-only version of opterown? I'm confused.
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On March 10 2014 08:49 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2014 03:09 HeeroFX wrote:On March 09 2014 14:57 Whitewing wrote:On March 09 2014 13:24 MtlGuitarist97 wrote:
Wait, how did David Ting hurt the NA scene? Did I miss something? IPL made NASL seem lousy, when IPL was never going to be sustainable. By running only a few super tournaments like that, it made everyone disillusioned with tournaments like NASL, which by comparison, looked shitty. IPL wasn't going to be around for a long time, so it kind of nuked the scene. The goal of competition is to be better than everyone else. IPL wasn't thinking they were going to die, they were trying to grow just like NASL. IGN just didn't want to fund IPL anymore. NASL did things right and other things bad. We probably won't know the cost structure of NASL ever, but I promise you they were in the red and that is why they had to shut down. IPL was from the beginning stated to be an investment in growing the name of IGN in the esports community, it was an expensive advertising campaign. Any basic economic knowledge would have been able to tell you that they were losing tons of money on each event, and it was pretty obvious they were never going to do that many of them.
ok and they died. NASL lost money too and they died so what is your point?
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United States7483 Posts
On March 10 2014 13:17 HeeroFX wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2014 08:49 Whitewing wrote:On March 10 2014 03:09 HeeroFX wrote:On March 09 2014 14:57 Whitewing wrote:On March 09 2014 13:24 MtlGuitarist97 wrote:
Wait, how did David Ting hurt the NA scene? Did I miss something? IPL made NASL seem lousy, when IPL was never going to be sustainable. By running only a few super tournaments like that, it made everyone disillusioned with tournaments like NASL, which by comparison, looked shitty. IPL wasn't going to be around for a long time, so it kind of nuked the scene. The goal of competition is to be better than everyone else. IPL wasn't thinking they were going to die, they were trying to grow just like NASL. IGN just didn't want to fund IPL anymore. NASL did things right and other things bad. We probably won't know the cost structure of NASL ever, but I promise you they were in the red and that is why they had to shut down. IPL was from the beginning stated to be an investment in growing the name of IGN in the esports community, it was an expensive advertising campaign. Any basic economic knowledge would have been able to tell you that they were losing tons of money on each event, and it was pretty obvious they were never going to do that many of them. ok and they died. NASL lost money too and they died so what is your point?
The general gist here is that IPL knew from the beginning that it wouldn't be sustainable: they weren't trying for it to be. IPL was just an advertising campaign for IGN on roids, but other leagues, like NASL, were trying to become sustainable and long term events.
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United Kingdom20323 Posts
[2] Instead of lowering the quality of their stream to try and fix the problem, NASL treated the lag as a problem on Twitch's (Justin.tv's) side. They didn't experiment with lower bitrates/resolutions. They just let the stream lag for most of their audience. If I have my facts wrong on this I'm willing to be corrected.
It was twitch issues, they transcode anyway. There's nothing that could have been done here to my understanding on NASL's side
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To clarify, motbob didn't work for NASL. During Season 1 motbob created the LR threads on TL for all our broadcasts. We also had a few paid writers and organized weekly content. We were also one of the first orgs to pay people for things like journalism as far as I know.
For example, Jacqueline Geller, now working at Blizzard got her first real eSports experience writing for us in Season 1.
Also, at the time I was super taken aback because motbob offered to help out and then became one of the most vocal critics of NASL. It was weird and surprising. Anyway - 3 years is a long time, hi motbob.
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On March 10 2014 14:18 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +[2] Instead of lowering the quality of their stream to try and fix the problem, NASL treated the lag as a problem on Twitch's (Justin.tv's) side. They didn't experiment with lower bitrates/resolutions. They just let the stream lag for most of their audience. If I have my facts wrong on this I'm willing to be corrected. It was twitch issues, they transcode anyway. There's nothing that could have been done here to my understanding on NASL's side
I don't think that streaming at a lower bitrate would have solved the problem, plus viewers always had the option to lower the quality. I would imagine that at the time Twitch was still in its infancy, NASL was basically a majority of the traffic to Twitch, and possibly Twitch wasn't able to accommodate. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I'm fairly certain that lag on the viewer end shouldn't be caused by what bitrate we are trying to stream out of inhouse
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Canada13392 Posts
On March 09 2014 14:57 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 13:24 MtlGuitarist97 wrote:
Wait, how did David Ting hurt the NA scene? Did I miss something? IPL made NASL seem lousy, when IPL was never going to be sustainable. By running only a few super tournaments like that, it made everyone disillusioned with tournaments like NASL, which by comparison, looked shitty. IPL wasn't going to be around for a long time, so it kind of nuked the scene.
I never thought of it like that but yeah, that makes sense.
Sadly, the IPL did do more to hurt NA than help it in the long run with completely unreasonable spending of money it can only make future investments look terrible 
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TLADT24920 Posts
hmm I kept reading this and felt like you were trying to apologize but I never saw one lol. Closest was this part although that's still far from an apology XD
Thus, the title. I didn't stick with NASL when the going got rough. I wasn't strong enough to keep trying to keep afloat what looked like a sinking ship. I wasn't mature enough to keep my mouth shut in public.
Anyways, I don't recall the issues with NASL as much as everyone else, possibly since I didn't watch every single game so I missed most of it but I do recall the finals of Puma vs MC back when the 1-1-1 was pretty strong and popular. I don't recall having stream issues when I saw those games and Puma beat MC on that last map(some snow map). I think having NASL was beneficial for the scene so it's pretty sad that they left SCII.
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United Kingdom20323 Posts
On March 10 2014 14:40 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2014 14:18 Cyro wrote:[2] Instead of lowering the quality of their stream to try and fix the problem, NASL treated the lag as a problem on Twitch's (Justin.tv's) side. They didn't experiment with lower bitrates/resolutions. They just let the stream lag for most of their audience. If I have my facts wrong on this I'm willing to be corrected. It was twitch issues, they transcode anyway. There's nothing that could have been done here to my understanding on NASL's side I don't think that streaming at a lower bitrate would have solved the problem, plus viewers always had the option to lower the quality. I would imagine that at the time Twitch was still in its infancy, NASL was basically a majority of the traffic to Twitch, and possibly Twitch wasn't able to accommodate. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I'm fairly certain that lag on the viewer end shouldn't be caused by what bitrate we are trying to stream out of inhouse
Everyone got burned quite badly by twitch problems, i'm in eu with ~6-7mbit down and in 2011 and 2013, i was basically unable to watch even the lowest quality transcodes without lots of freezing, stuttering, video pausing etc. 2012 had a long time where i could watch three 1080p streams at the same time though and likewise i seem to be able to do that again now (i guess twitch/isp's hate odd years :D)
Like we both said though, i don't think NASL could have done anything at all here. I still watched 
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I dont understand why the SC2 scene was so NA focused at the time. Half an hour of research shows that the RTS market in NA is just laughable compared with West/East Europe and Asia.
I can see that there are limitations on live events with things like a crowd and locations and that you can´t really have a EU friendly GSL but i just dont see any reason to broadcast your first and most important season like this timewise especially if it is replay casts anyway.
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There were some nights that I couldn't stay up and watch NASL.
"I broke the dam."
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That's really weird, but during those times, it seems that the NA events scene was in a SC2 crazyness with a lot of big events projects ("sc2 works guys ! Let's go for big leagues/tourneys/events with huge cast blabla"). Euro seemed more "slow" or "step by step" (with less ambition: look at ESL at this time).
But at the end, NA scene just disapperead with his Las Vegas finals, and other bling-bling events. EU had more success on the WCS changes.
NA RTS scene seems more volatile, sc2 is no more "fashionable" on NA so sc2 is no more played and far less watch (i saw that 50% of ladder games are on EU now).
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For me NA tournaments always felt a little bit too "sterile". They seemed to try hard to be professional, but if you do this and fail at production you are really screwed because there is nothing left.
EU productions may be less professional or expensive but always felt way more likable for me. Look at TakeTV, from an objective view they are cheesy at best, had production problems in the past, have a german cast that insults everything between Protoss, Women and Asians and annoy you with advertising their stuff 50% of the time. But you feel in every show that they just have fun what they are doing and that makes them likable.
Or look at the biggest thing (i think ?) in Europe right now, IEM. You can think whatever you want about it but Carmac just looks like a nice dude overall. And i personally never made this kind of connections for any NA tournament wich maybe sounds irrelevant but you are willing to forgive problems way easier if you want this guys to succeed because you like them.
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Motbob, you are a good person. You were right to be disillusioned with NASL during their early days, but it's good that you stepped up to get the guilt off your chest. I remember when eve had it's japan relief (or was it the Philippine or both?) drive. You donated everything you had in eve to help.
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5 stars for being honest.
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Not sure if there ever was a chance of NASL really "making it" considering their (everyones) inexperience with the business model and format and how hard it was (is?) to be profitable for anything esports related. They tried, they failed (not sure what is actually left of them now) but they provided valuable examples, both good and bad, to everyone who followed after. And yeah, I'm fairly sure better LRs would not have saved NASL so don't sweat it -_-
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Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.
And mostly what I need from you.
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I feel like you claiming you stabbed them in the back to be an overstatement, they didn't walk away from the community because of an intern... Don't feel bad.
Edit: spelling.
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[3] This footnote is half the reason I'm posting this blog. During Season 1, one of the NASL's guest casters had an interesting experience. He cast a day of games over Skype with Gretorp. For one reason or another, NASL's copy of the audio with his half of the cast was lost, but Gretorp's was still in their possession. NASL sent this unnamed guest caster Gretorp's audio and asked him to re-cast the games as if they were live. He did so, using the waveform of the cast audio to see when to let Gretorp talk, and no one watching the stream noticed.
What, seriously? Shit :D
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Interesting read & discussion. Also, post-mortem apologies better than none.
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United Kingdom14464 Posts
On March 09 2014 10:57 motbob wrote:
[3] This footnote is half the reason I'm posting this blog. During Season 1, one of the NASL's guest casters had an interesting experience. He cast a day of games over Skype with Gretorp. For one reason or another, NASL's copy of the audio with his half of the cast was lost, but Gretorp's was still in their possession. NASL sent this unnamed guest caster Gretorp's audio and asked him to re-cast the games as if they were live. He did so, using the waveform of the cast audio to see when to let Gretorp talk, and no one watching the stream noticed.
this is lowkey one of the most insane things I've read on team liquid.
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On March 09 2014 10:57 motbob wrote:
[3] This footnote is half the reason I'm posting this blog. During Season 1, one of the NASL's guest casters had an interesting experience. He cast a day of games over Skype with Gretorp. For one reason or another, NASL's copy of the audio with his half of the cast was lost, but Gretorp's was still in their possession. NASL sent this unnamed guest caster Gretorp's audio and asked him to re-cast the games as if they were live. He did so, using the waveform of the cast audio to see when to let Gretorp talk, and no one watching the stream noticed.
That's fucking badass
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Wait, the co-caster was Incontrol actually right? Who else could it have been?
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I would much rather have the memories of IPL4/5 than a NASL that's still alive.
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On March 11 2014 04:16 ZenithM wrote:
Wait, the co-caster was Incontrol actually right? Who else could it have been?
He was the regular co-caster who would be on site. It's written that this was a guest caster.
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On March 11 2014 05:10 Gorlin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2014 04:16 ZenithM wrote:
Wait, the co-caster was Incontrol actually right? Who else could it have been? He was the regular co-caster who would be on site. It's written that this was a guest caster.
Oh yeah, "guest caster", you're right
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General comment, since IPL was mentioned a number of times: I would not have taken a job at IPL if it was just an advertising engine for IGN. Anyone thinking we weren't trying to become sustainable is just wrong. IGN clearly invested a large amount of money, but it wasn't for nothing and there were plans in place. IGN had a different CEO when IPL was established than when it was sold to Ziff Davis. ZD didn't care about eSports, nor did it care about 25% of the writing staff at IGN for that matter. New owners, new business plan, IPL didn't fit.
The work our sponsorship team was doing could have resulted in wonderful things, and what happens in that alternate timeline is anyone's guess. We were taking on several new titles (James Reilman was doing work for World of Tanks and Infinite Crisis towards the end, I was on ShootMania, Mike Ross was doing in-studio Street Fighter shows with guests, and other developers were lining up.) and dealing with several new major title sponsors when things began to shift toward new ownership in 2013.
This post was probably not necessary for most of you, but it hurts to see people who have the opinion that IPL got too big too fast or didn't properly allocate funds or whatever theories they've come up with to justify its closing.
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On March 11 2014 04:16 ZenithM wrote:
Wait, the co-caster was Incontrol actually right? Who else could it have been?
Was not incontrol
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On March 11 2014 07:55 JoshSuth wrote:
General comment, since IPL was mentioned a number of times: I would not have taken a job at IPL if it was just an advertising engine for IGN. Anyone thinking we weren't trying to become sustainable is just wrong. IGN clearly invested a large amount of money, but it wasn't for nothing and there were plans in place. IGN had a different CEO when IPL was established than when it was sold to Ziff Davis. ZD didn't care about eSports, nor did it care about 25% of the writing staff at IGN for that matter. New owners, new business plan, IPL didn't fit.
The work our sponsorship team was doing could have resulted in wonderful things, and what happens in that alternate timeline is anyone's guess. We were taking on several new titles (James Reilman was doing work for World of Tanks and Infinite Crisis towards the end, I was on ShootMania, Mike Ross was doing in-studio Street Fighter shows with guests, and other developers were lining up.) and dealing with several new major title sponsors when things began to shift toward new ownership in 2013.
This post was probably not necessary for most of you, but it hurts to see people who have the opinion that IPL got too big too fast or didn't properly allocate funds or whatever theories they've come up with to justify its closing.
Nice post. I'm still pretty sad about what happened to all of the IPL guys
I really liked you, DoA, CP, Kibblez, PainUser and HD (never really cared for Robin to be completely honest). It seemed like after IPL dissolved, only PainUser really stuck around to anything else with SC2. I know Blizzard hired the IPL guys that were still around, but it seemed like there was no tangible result from their work and they ended up just being some of the many organizers of WCS.
Anyway, sorry to go off topic.
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Great blog. 5 stars.
Thanks for trying, man. NASL was almost impossible to defend, having so many problems. Even though you turned your back on it, you learned a lesson in business. It's not always a smooth ride.
I imagine you invested yourself emotionally quite heavily to have become burned out by a season's end. Your subsequent backlash to NASL was obviously just you venting truth, and keeping honest to yourself. Again, thanks.
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On March 11 2014 08:11 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2014 04:16 ZenithM wrote:
Wait, the co-caster was Incontrol actually right? Who else could it have been? Was not incontrol
Can you tell us who it was so we can give them the praise they deserve?
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Why can't we give the co-caster the praise they deserve? I don't understand this (I know who it is). It was okay to mention that NASL blew it and lost the audio, but we can't give a pat on the back to the guy doing the extra work?
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On March 09 2014 11:34 RaiKageRyu wrote:
Was that Diggity?
It was Kevin Knocke.
edit. He deserves the praise and I never even heard the story from his mouth. It was told to me by Gretorp who was pleasantly floored by his professionalism.
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United States7483 Posts
On March 11 2014 19:33 FrodaN wrote:It was Kevin Knocke. edit. He deserves the praise and I never even heard the story from his mouth. It was told to me by Gretorp who was pleasantly floored by his professionalism.
That does not surprise me in the slightest.
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CatsPajamas (Kevin Knocke, you will always be CatsPajamas in my heart) is pretty awesome. Even when he pulls out the "I sometimes think I'm a pro wrestling announcer" voice at a GSTL finals.
so much passion.
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On March 11 2014 14:58 evoli wrote:
Why can't we give the co-caster the praise they deserve? I don't understand this (I know who it is). It was okay to mention that NASL blew it and lost the audio, but we can't give a pat on the back to the guy doing the extra work?
oh i have no idea o-o
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On March 09 2014 19:30 Jaaaaasper wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 19:14 Darkwhite wrote:On March 09 2014 18:54 Jaaaaasper wrote:On March 09 2014 18:48 Darkwhite wrote:
Aside from the title and two lines near the end, the rest of this blog post seems to be NASL sucks. Well did you watch season 1? It wasn't pretty. The point is that, if you want to apologize for something, you do it and move on - you don't dilute it with ten paragraphs about why NASL really did suck and justifying yourself. If it's really meant as an apology, it's kind of hard to tell. Hes talking about feeling bad for making himself one of the public faces on nasl (even a minor one) and shitting on it publicly, not apologizing for what it was.
And then he comes back to shit on it publicly again with this thread!
Oh the logic
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Northern Ireland26235 Posts
'[3] This footnote is half the reason I'm posting this blog. During Season 1, one of the NASL's guest casters had an interesting experience. He cast a day of games over Skype with Gretorp. For one reason or another, NASL's copy of the audio with his half of the cast was lost, but Gretorp's was still in their possession. NASL sent this unnamed guest caster Gretorp's audio and asked him to re-cast the games as if they were live. He did so, using the waveform of the cast audio to see when to let Gretorp talk, and no one watching the stream noticed.'
Now that is impressive
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Papua New Guinea1059 Posts
On March 09 2014 10:57 motbob wrote:
He did so, using the waveform of the cast audio to see when to let Gretorp talk, and no one watching the stream noticed.
Well the casting itself was so bad no wonder nobody noticed its slightly worse on one episode.
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EPT
