Moving "behind the scenes" in the industry has never been something that bothered me. My time spent casting StarCraft accounts for some of the best years of my life, but it wasn't something that was hard for me to move on from. Yet, recently, I've found myself more and more driven to write blogs and talk to the community. Ultimately I think it's just important to stay close to the communities you care about, and maybe doing this is my way of doing that?
Anyway, and, I guess in that same vein, today I want to take a look back at what I'll affectionately refer to as the "Glory Days".
This afternoon I had lunch with an old colleague. It's been a couple years since I really sat down and caught up with him, and throughout our conversation, I was overcome by such an awesome sense of nostalgia.
The NASL days are really not so far gone. It was just a little over a year ago that I jumped ship, but anyone who's read even a little bit about it knows that the boat had been taking on water for some time. To really speak to the glory days, we've got to go back about one more year to the time of NASL Season 4.
While I'm very proud of every event I've worked on, a part of me will always believe that the show we put together for the NASL Season 4 Finals was the best show I've ever been a part of.
I've never worked harder, longer hours in my life. But I've also never had more fun working with some of the most creative, passionate people I've ever had the honor of knowing. While plenty of the names that graced the NASL staff sheet belong in the clown book, just as many of them continue to be leaders in our industry, and I feel strongly that the show we put together in Long Beach really was one of the best eSports had seen to date.
At a time when crowd shots and countdown timers were the norm, we took the concept of zero down time and delivered on it as well as we possibly could. From Fierce Fitness to Carbot, to amazing art work by Soe to compelling interviews and hilarious free for alls, the show was absolutely packed. Tack on some of the best finals matches we could have possibly hoped for and we were left with an incredible recipe for a perfect final.
Except, at the end of the day, it wasn't. As proud as I was of that show, no one really came to see it. Most the crowd shots you'll see from the final were of the first four rows, because the many more behind them were empty. And most the conversation you'll find about that final amounts to the same. "Why's there no audience?"
It really stung that, at the end of the year, when people would talk about "the best events of the 2012", NASL Season 4 was just an afterthought. Of course it wasn't as hype as DreamHack or MLG. You can't fake crowd. But the show was so much better! Why couldn't anyone else see that? Who else put in the hundreds of hours of filming? The thousands of hours of editing? The weekends spent planning, and shooting, and writing, and revising?
Of course, the answer is easy. At the end of the day, it's not about the show, it's about the games. It's not about the work that goes into a finals. It's about the players competing there.
In the end, I understand that the NASL Season 4 Finals were forgettable for most people. I can get why no one recollects SortOf's amazing run, or Hyun's creepy-as-fuck massage.
But I'll never forget.
When I'm buried in planning for the next big show, wondering how I'm ever going to dig myself out, it's the NASL glory days that I'll think back to and remember fondly. And while I hope like hell we never see another NASL repeat, I'm always seeking to once again feel that pride that comes with delivering a show that I poured my heart into.
Just a few of my favorite moments. There were so many more.
My lasting impression of NASL's finals was that they were simply too ambitious, and not enough market research beforehand. S1 was disastrous all the way until the final (Lindsey, those dodgy white booths, black logo on black background etc), which was one of the best final to date at that time. S2....I'll never forget the shots of players walking down the red carpet.......to the empty crowd. S3 final was of course amazing, but I felt like its success had more to do with it being the first big event in Canada, with a potent dose of spice in Huk, Scarlett, and of course Stephano.
Mr Bitter and others, I hope you read this: I am the biggest fan of NASL Season 4. Going to ramble a bit here:
I started playing Starcraft around late 2011 because a friend lent me his account and I realized I liked it enough to buy it for myself. Soon enough, I found myself watching Day9's Funday Monday as I was messing around in team games with my friends. I got hooked on Funday Mondays and was making sure to tune in every Monday at 10PM (I was East Coast at the time). Around the summer 2012, I discovered professional-level play -- first, I discovered Liquipedia and soon I tuned into my first ever "real tournament," which was the summer MLG circuit.
It wasn't long until I started scouring Twitch for streams, and this was around the time that viOLet left Empire, went solo and eventually got sponsored by Azubu. Then I learned about NASL Season 4.
It was the first real league I began watching and I quickly snatched up a ticket. Thanks to the summer of TaeJa (the first summer, where he wreaked havoc on MLG and IPLTAC4) and watching viOLet's streams, it was an easy purchase. I would come home every night and ready myself to watch NASL and I began learning about all the players. On the weekends, I'd watch y'all muck around on Dota 2 (still in beta) and even played a Subscriber Sunday and catch up on all your extra segments (a lot of which are linked above). I still respect Soe for her NASL/Starcraft days, even though she's gone on to do much more. I was crushed when there wasn't a S5, elated when you took on WCS AM, then felt like a part of my gaming history died when NASL closed down.
Ultimately it was NASL S4 that got me hooked on Starcraft and hooked on esports. I've since gone to a couple tournaments, met a bunch of progamers and got more involved in "the scene," and honestly, I only have NASL S4 to thank for that.
For that, thank you! Even if you didn't get the viewers both online and at the venue for NASL S4, the whole crew made me a lifelong fan of video games~
As someone that has kept with the NASL since the birth of "announcements of announcements" in 2011, all the way to organization's end after Season 4, I can unequivocally agree that Season 4 were the glory days.
Everything was going well for the NASL at that point. The storylines were pretty good, all the personalities were well-liked (compared to viewer opinions of Frodan and Gretorp back in 2011), and the production was great. When I learned of the NASL picking up WCS America, I thought that there was a good future for the organization. It was disheartening to learn that there would be no NASL around for Season 5. It was also disheartening to learn of your depature, Mr. Bitter, as it meant the uncertainty of when the casting archon BitterDam would be on stream again. I really wish that there was an audience size that reciprocated all the hard work that you and everyone on the NASL team put out.
I hope that RedBull and ESL can fill the void left by NASL, for the North American scene.
You guys were the driving force for my interest in SC2 during your time at NASL. It was SC2 content easily available to me in Eastern USA, unlike GSL broadcasts that start at 4am. Your production value was pushed to its limits and it showed, you always put on a great show and made the whole thing seem more like a show than "here is some games that we will now talk about".
You, Rotti, Gretorp and Frodan all brought so much to the NA scene and the SC2 community in general. Even The Pulse was good after the NASL Seasons finished. And you guys just clicked. And I really enjoyed it.
And while I hope like hell we never see another NASL repeat, I'm always seeking to once again feel that pride that comes with delivering a show that I poured my heart into.
I think I wouldn't mind seeing a repeat of all the good things NASL did, without seeing a repeat of how the star burned too bright too fast and then right out.
I remember NASL and hold it as an example of how good an online broadcast can look. Really amazing production (mostly) from people that cared about putting on a great show. Reflection is a good thing, and keep up the good work at Red Bull. Take the hard learned lessons and apply them. (Also, hey, Red Bull Chicago would be a nice event. Just sayin'.)
Stephano winning NASL 3 is one of the best memories I have had in the (almost) 4 years I have followed SC2. NASL has always been for me the "chill tournament" as opposed to the very serious MLG. I will never forget these moments.
In the end, I understand that the NASL Season 4 Finals were forgettable for most people
Maybe to some. I really felt that later on, NASL became one of, if not the, most entertaining SC2 streams online. NASL had a rough start, but nailed it later. There was quality content almost every night.
Great post. I felt really underwhelmed by NASL but always felt bad about it because I wanted it to succeed, but it just didn't compete with any of the other leagues out there.
My favorite thing MrBitter took part in was the 12 Weeks With The Pros series, that defined me as a player I feel.
EPT
