Full-Time StarCraft 2 : One Year Later (Wardí)

Introduction

I wrote this blog out once, got about halfway through and decided I didn't like it and so I started again, hence the reason this is coming out a couple days later than I originally planned it to. I wanted to post this on June 5th, which was the date of my final exam last year and hence the starting point of my life as a full time StarCraft 2 streamer/caster/content producer. You can read my original post about going full time here.

Quick Announcement / Info

Before I get talking about some of my experiences and stuff that I learned, I have a bit of an announcement. If you watch my stream regularly this shouldn't be a surprise to you as I've discussed it a couple of times on my stream.

The announcement comes in two parts I guess, so to begin with : I will for now be continuing as full-time in StarCraft. When I originally planned this I always said to myself that one year was going to my cut off point and that was when I would move on to something else after having my fun. However the progress of my stream and so on in the past few months has been very promising and I feel it would be a stupid time to stop, when my numbers are growing with each month that passes. I do not know how long I will continue for - I am continually assessing my financial situation etc and so if the time comes when this isn't working out I will stop. This might not happen, it might happen in 3 months time. As long as the stream continues to grow and my fans continue to support I am confident that I will be able to continue for quite some time.

Sorry SC2 but you gotta put up with me for a while longer! (Me & Illidan chilling at Blizzcon)

The second part of the announcement isn't quite as important, but it is to me. I'm going to be moving out from home and moving back to Leeds where I went to University. This is a big step for me as it means I am becoming a lot more independent and making my own way in life, instead of just living at home. My parents have been super awesome in letting me stay at home for the past year and making a bunch of noise shouting at my computer screen all day without asking too many questions. But it's time for me to take this step and to prove that what I am doing can sustain me in the real world.

I'll be moving in with a friend, Kalvin, who runs Molotovs and Marshmallows, a UK eSports team. This means I'm going to be in a better environment than ever for streaming & producing content as I will be with someone who understands what I am doing and can help me out here and there. I'm also going to be a lot closer to all of my friends and so my social life is probably going to be alive again, something which I feel will actually improve my work ethic and mood a lot.

So that's the announcement, sorry everyone that thought it was going to be special T_T I didn't mean to hype it that much... A lot of people thought this was going to be SC2ITL S7, but still working on that. Anyways to wrap up this section, if you want to support me in the future please check out this page of my website to see how you can do so.

The Past Year

When I originally wrote this I split it into each month and talked about what I did, but it was pretty dull to read. I think instead I'm going to go for a bit of a pre-face and then talk about a lot of my goals that I set for myself and what I have and haven't achieved, with a few stories here and there. Not sure how long this is going to be but here we go.

One of the main things to note about the last year is that very early on I decided to sort of split it in half with two different goals. In July I streamed for 30 days in a row for 8+ hours a day, excluding one day where I had to go and graduate. It was a pretty awesome month of WCS, HSC, Assembly Qualifiers and a bunch of others things. The SC2ITL S4 Finals in particular was a huge highlight of my time in StarCraft, pulling 4.5k concurrents for my own event is just, well, I can't think of words to describe it :D

Me & Mum at my Graduation

Anyways, so after July I was pretty certain I knew I was going to be able to do the full-time streaming thing, because I loved it. Working hard and streaming for long periods of time actually motivates me a lot. the more I do the more motivated I am to do even more, but when I get lazy it becomes much harder to get motivated again. That was something I have learnt about myself over the year. BUT YES the year was split in two - after July I knew the next few months would be focused on travelling and then after travelling I would really settle down and focus on building my stream and streaming full time.

Goal Check

When I made my post about going full time I had a clear idea of the ways in which I wanted to use this opportunity. They were as follows :

- SC2Improve Team League Season 5
- Consistent Streaming
- SC2I Spring Series Finals
- Youtube Content
- Travelling
- UK Tournaments

To quickly summarize - I have really come a long way in each of these areas. We all know SC2ITL S5 wasn't great (due to my change in plans of how I split the year in half), but Season 6 has been fantastic and we have gone from casting less than 50% of the matches to casting over 90% of the matches in First Division.

Obviously in last months I have been streaming consistently - in April I clocked up 8.5 days of stream time and was live every day but one. Nowadays I stream pretty much every day, so that's another of the goals ticked off.

Spring Series? Okay well that was a disaster and I just decided to cancel it and use my money elsewhere such as increasing stream quality etc etc. The event ran on too long and it was hard to schedule among WCS and so on.

Youtube Content is definitely on the up as well - since December I am up from 100 YouTube Subscribers to almost 800. I now upload daily at least two VODs of recent matches on stream. I would still like to do more Youtube only stuff, such as guides which I dabbled in a bit back in December, but it's hard to find the time and motivation to really do these while streaming live so regularly.

Travelling I definitely did and is going to have a section of it's own in a moment, and finally UK Tournaments is something I achieved as well to some degree. I set up an event and it was going well, but it has been hurt by lack of scheduling and other issues. It's something I could definitely improve on.

Travelling

SO the first half of my year was dedicated to travelling, more or less. I went to a lot of places, the first being the Dutch StarCraft League finals in Amsterdam where I met a lot of friends which I would spend a lot of time with over the next few months.

DSCL from the crowd - this is where I met a lot of awesome people and close friends who I visited a lot over the next months!

Between June and January I went on the following adventures :

- Netherlands 3 times (DSCL, Visiting SC2 friends twice),
- Leeds Music Festival (not really eSports related but oh well),
- epicLAN 3 times (biggest SC2 LAN in the UK)
- Singapore (vacation with uThermal)
- California (BLIZZCON!!!!!!) & Las Vegas
- Germany twice (HomeStory Cup, DreamHack Leipzig)

It was pretty busy, and you can probably imagine why I decided to really focus on the streaming thing after my travelling months. Consistency is so important when you are trying to build a following, and I had 0 consistency during this. It was actually demotivating as well because even when I could stream I had the feel of "man but I'm going to stream for a week and then I have to go again..."

Kelazhur, Hydra & Me at DreamHack Leipzig

After this I decided travelling is fine, but I really need to time things well. Going to SC2 events for example is usually okay, because there isn't much point streaming things over a HSC or so on, but extending my trips and having too many close together was going to be too difficult to pull off. I actually haven't traveled since January except for one of the UK LANs, this next month I will be going to HomeStory Cup & DreamHack Valencia, but again both are just for the weekend and hence it doesn't take away much from my stream consistency and are days I would probably not stream on anyways.

NoRegret, Me & Sylvanas in true HomeStory Cup fashion... Drunk and not sure what we are doing

I'd tell you all about stories from my travels, but that might be for a blog another time, or just to keep on stream or something :D Otherwise this is going to get too long... Some of the highlights though :

- BLIZZCON IN GENERAL - childhood dream literally come true. Nothing can describe this.
- Night in Amsterdam where all our plans went wrong but we were saved by a random hero who was there to spectate DSCL
- MjolkieLAN (this was a LAN of about 10 people? at Mjolkie house... we had my 50 sub party there and well the entire weekend was crazy fun.)
- Getting addicted to Hearthstone in Singapore (thanks Marc, you took me to the dark side and left me here)
- Monopoly Man Story (Only Miniraser will understand this, but I cannot leave it out)
- DID I MENTION BLIZZCON IS JUST LIKE OUT OF THIS WORLD
- Meeting people from around the world and putting personalities to the names you see online

BLIZZCON!!!!

The last point is something I think I will close this section off with. It's really amazing to think of the opportunities StarCraft has given me, but most of all the people I have met through this game. I've met people from around the world, some even multiple times now, and a lot of them have become my best and closest friends.

I have more memories than I could discuss with all of these people, it's really incredible. I think what really gets me is that you see these people in real life so infrequently and yet everyone is so friendly and warm to each other. I'm sort of just going on a bit here, I can't really describe what I want to say so I'll stop trying to.

I just think that the fact I can fly to Singapore with someone I met through StarCraft and have one of the most memorable weeks of my life, is pretty amazing. I think that I can go around the world and know people and have people know me, is pretty crazy. And not just knowing each other, but really being friends with all of these people. : ' )

uThermal and his Coconuts in Singapore

Streaming

Okay so let's finish this off and talk a bit more about the past few months. I really pulled out all the stops, in my opinion, to make this dream of continuing streaming full time a reality. I have streamed pretty much everything I have had the opportunity to, at all hours of the day any day of the week. In some ways I limited myself socially in the past few months, but I don't regret it because sometimes to get what you want you have to make sacrifices.

When I started streaming again after most of my travels in December I was on about 20 subscribers. As people saw I was back I got back some of my regulars and I peaked at 116 subs last month (now at 93, RIP WHERE U ALL GO). One of the most amazing things about this experience is really seeing a community build in my chat. There are some people who are in my stream every day I'm live - which is most days.

sc2iHeart in the sand

I've literally seen people becoming friends and StarCraft practice buddies in my stream chat. People have really gotten to know each other and it's probably the one thing I never really thought would happen. So to all my regulars - you know who you are because you will know this "community" feel that I'm talking about - thank you for your support. You have been incredible in helping me to build up the stream and to keep pushing forwards.

Seeing my community and chat is one of the things that motivates me to cast. Even when I've been live for 12-13 hours, if my chat is full of people having a good time and enjoying the games, I really don't feel tired. In fact I feel like the only times I feel worn out is when the chat is a bit empty because another event is on or something, then I find it hard to keep casting some nights. But this is pretty rare. I mentioned it earlier, but the more I cast and the more viewers I get and the longer I cast for each day gets me pumped up to keep going. Some of my best casts have probably been 9 hours into a stream when I'm just feeling the energy of the chat and the fact we have hours of awesome games ahead of us.

It's weird, I don't really think what I just described makes much sense, but that's the way it is and that's how I feel so you'll just have to try understand. What else can I talk about with streaming... I learned that consistency is key. Consistency is everything in terms of building viewership and stuff. Right now I'm in a good place, casting the Leifeng Cup & Douyu Star Masters on a regular basis each day and then having a mixture of events in the evening to cast.

Back from travels and ready to cast! LotV came out while I was away in America. Also featuring my FIRST EVER STARCRAFT SWAG!!

I really need SC2ITL S7 though -- without it I do lack a bit of stuff to cast some evenings and it makes me feel bored. So I'm excited to have team league back and have something to cast every evening again, because it really does suck when after a great few hours through the day I have to say "sorry guys I have nothing to cast tonight, see you tomorrow". That sucks the most actually. At first I was like WOW A NIGHT OFF AWESOME! Now I hate it. SO LETS GO SC2ITL SEASON 7 SOON!!!

Idk what else to say. Financially and in terms of numbers everything is generally going up, I went up A LOT in April so a natural slight decrease in May was expected and that happened, but I am generally still ahead of the trend with the growth of my stream, so all looks good on that point. I don't see any reason for the stream to stop growing really, I have people in chat every day joining and being like "wow first time here, really enjoying it" which is GREAT! A lot of hardcore SC2 fans obviously know who I am, but the fact people are finding me each day I cast is pretty inspiring too.

Financially I'm obviously feeling more comfortable now, with moving out and all I expect that sort of tells its own story. If I maintain my current income then I will be able to live cheaply, but not badly. And as I said everything points towards more growth rather than a decline.

Casting set-up at MjolkieLAN, where we had the 50 sub party!

I don't know, talking about the stream side of things is a bit limited right? It's not as exciting as travelling and stuff. Basically I'm streaming and I'm enjoying it and my fans are awesome. Always looking for more stuff to cast because if I could cast all day every day I probably would (until I hit that one day where I just need the day off ;d). Onwards & upwards!

Yadda yadda boring boring. Uhh. I'm looking for sponsors for my stream? I have something sorta exciting coming soon on that front. But just in general, continuing to grow etc.

IF ANYONE HAS ANY QUESTIONS THEY WANT TO ASK PLEASE DO, I'D LIKE TO TELL YOU MORE ABOUT ANYTHING I CAN, I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO SAY REALLY

Outro

Alright well I think I've wrote more than enough!! Hope you all agree. We're approaching 3k words, if we add a bit of pretending to know about Physics here and there I would have basically redone my Masters Project report...

Well obviously, thanks to everyone who supports me. Whether you just follow me, subscribe, donate, patreon, tell me I suck, tell me I'm awesome, whatever you do thanks. I appreciate it. I can't say that enough -- you are all giving me an opportunity to make my dreams a reality and I am doing everything I can to make the most of that. To anyone who spreads kind things about me, thank you. To all the pros / organisation who let me cast their matches/events, thank you. To all the people who promote what I do on Twitter and with stream hosts, thank you.

THANK YOU

I'm really excited to move out and start a new chapter of my life and I hope that the move will reflect on stream in my mood and so on. I think I'm going to be in such a great environment to continue the whole stream thing, so that's really exciting.

Here is to achieving more of my goals and to meeting more of you at events and continuing to live the dream.

Until I next blog, which will probs be like "OMG SC2IMPROVE IS 5 YEARS OLD IF IT CAN GO TO SCHOOL NOW" in December, cya and thanks for reading / scrolling through.

Cheers until next time yo

Here is a full album of pics I uploaded. I only picked a select few to upload from my phone. There is a bit of backstory to each of the photos too, worth a read maybe! Maybe more of the fun ones if you ask nicely ;D http://imgur.com/a/t3bsK

Full-Time StarCraft 2 : One Year Later (Wardí)

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