EPTIn case you missed it, the event was called Kings of the North and while it may not have been a Dreamhack of an IEM it was an awesome grassroots event that's seriously grown a lot. Season 1 was back in 2014 as a purely online event. Season 2 returned in March of 2016 where it emulated the early days of Homestory cup with all the players living in a house for a few days and playing in the event in a relaxed setting. This was the third season where the event took place live at a two venues, a pc cafe and a movie theatre. Interesting venue choices but I'll get into that later. I stayed at the tournament organizer, Drekken's place. I have to give him a huge thank you because he actually slept on his own couch so that I could sleep in his bed and get a full night's rest each day.
I could go into a play by play of the order of things that happened at the event. I actually really enjoy reading those kinds of blogs but I don't think they're really my style. Instead, I think I'll talk about interesting things that happened during the event and more of my thoughts on them.
Casting live events when you're so used to casting online events is weird. I have rituals I go through before every cast and they're a lot harder to do at an offline event. Some are simple and easy to do things like I go use the restroom before every broadcast as a symbolic "releasing of any stress or tension" I have. Some are a bit more focused like watching some videos that get me excited or put me in the right mood for casting. But at an offline event, especially one full of people you consider friends, you don't really have all of that available to you as easily. There's also a weird pressure you feel that you shouldn't just sit in the corner and be anti-social doing your thing. You want to sit and talk with people. Especially the players since you don't always get a chance to do that with these guys outside of random skype conversations.
I was also mentally preparing myself to open up the stream that day. I had no idea if I would be on the opening caster panel to introduce the stream, but I sorta hoped I would be. I had spent a decent amount of time in the days leading up to the event going over the opening in my head, figuring out exactly how to word everything, and recited the entire intro multiple times to myself out loud. I even spent time figuring out where would be a good place to cut off to my co-caster and some of the possible topics I could hit into to start building some of the emerging stories I anticipated that weekend. Unfortunately, I wasn't picked to open though so I was a little disappointed, but Temp0 and Steadfast did an awesome job with it. I think everyone will want to open the stream and everyone will want to cast the grand finals, but at the end of the day some people will walk away disappointed. I think I bounced back pretty quickly and didn't let it bother me, and I definitely have to thank Artosis for that on another book recommendation(Ego is the Enemy). I reminded myself where I was at and that if I wasn't picked for the job, I hadn't proven without a doubt that I was the best man for the job and that was on me. I also felt better since I got to talk more with PandaBearMe and Scarlett during that time and see how they were doing, basically adding to my prep for upcoming casts and spending time with friends.
When I was finally brought on, I was casting a series with Steadfast for the first time since we casted Kings of the North 2 back in March 6 months ago. I was a little worried it had been a while and I hadn't been able to ask Steadfast to co-cast more before the event. He did an awesome job breaking the tension immediately with a joke about how Temp0 and I were basically wearing the same clothes and I think things went really smoothly from there. It really feels great when sometimes you get so into your own preparation that you forget you're not going into the broadcast alone and they can immediately pull you out of your notebooks and remind you you've got a teammate in this fight. I'm incredibly appreciative that Steadfast did that because I think the entire cast went smoother just based off that throwaway gag.
The series itself was Creature vs Jason, a pretty awesome matchup. Creature is a player that hasn't really gotten massive results but has been a player of some small note for a while. I'd also lately been hearing more rumors about him getting better lately so I was excited to see him go up against one of the players I considered a big dark horse for the event, Jason. The series ended up being incredibly eventful with some crazy big disruptor shots from Creature, but nonstop powering macro from Jason. I was pretty fortunate to cast a PvT as my first series because it's been my favorite matchup since the beginning of Wings of Liberty by a large margin. Outside of the in game casting itself, which I think went satisfactory though not amazingly, I was mostly concerned with all of the small differences with offline event casting out of game.
I immediately regretted my bright white collared shirt that didn't show up very well on camera. I also remembered from my limited offline experience in the past that I often get in the habit of darting my eyes between the camera and my co-caster a little too often, so I tried to make an active effort to improve my camera presence this event. I think I did a better job than I did in the past, but definitely knew I still had a lot of room for improvement. I think I also sometimes don't handle hand-offs from my co-caster very well and really heavily rely on a two-three words like "yea". I was more ok with that because I think if you try too hard to focus on fixing everything at once, you'll end up worse off than if you fixed nothing. Thanks for that lesson sports psychology book. At some point, you have to accept your training should have prepared you for the challenges you face, and when you step into the real thing you have to check your brain in at the door. If your training fails you, then do a better job with your training for next time and learn from the mistakes.
After that series Temp0 and I got to cast together. Casting with Temp0 puts me in my comfort zone because we've cast so much together in the past. He's one of the few people that when I'm casting with him, I very often completely forget I'm on a broadcast and I feel like I'm just watching Starcraft with a friend. There's a reason he's one of my favorite people in eSports and I honestly think I'm both spoiled and blessed I can call such an amazing human being my friend. That said, Temp0 totally relaxed me to the offline LAN setting cast and I felt like I did a much better job in the second series. I think one of the best signs that you feel comfortable casting with someone is that you can add comments and say things to your co-caster without awkwardly interrupting them. It sounds simple but in my experience it's an insanely hard thing to do unless you feel really comfortable with your co-caster. I definitely made some mistakes during the series but I felt good about the cast after and I think that helped build my confidence for the rest of the day.
I know, it's not something I think most people think about. But commentating is a thing heavily affected by your mental state and similar to competing, your ability to control your mood and build confidence through successes and shrug off failures is incredibly important to bringing your best.
As a side note, I just want to say it's so amazingly much more fun to commentate when you don't have to worry about running production for the stream or observing for the viewers. Big thank you to EnderSword for observing and Mike for running production the whole event and allowing me to bring something closer to my best to the event. I felt incredibly liberated not having to worry about a bunch of other things with the corner of my eye and honestly just felt a lot more clever during the cast(sometimes too clever and I had to cut back with my newfound ability to concentrate on the cast).
The day kept going on and eventually Scarlett ended up qualifying in the winner's bracket. After that series finished, I wasn't brought on to the caster desk but it wasn't to cast the next series. Instead it was for an interview with Scarlett. I actually really enjoy interviewing players because to me it's an opportunity to bring out the awesome parts of their personalities I know they all have. The stuff that naturally invests you in them, adds to the stories for the event, and often creates a lot of the great memories. It's really easy to do an interview. It's really hard to do a good interview and get good answers from someone. I consider Scarlett a friend, and like to think she considers me one too, but I was really unhappy with the interview I did with her. I talked way too much knowing that she is sometimes a shyer person, but she was giving good answers so I didn't need to. My questions also didn't have a lot of direction because it was a somewhat impromptu interview, and ended up actually focusing a lot on Neeb, who wasn't even at the event, rather than Scarlett who had just qualified for Day 2. I also think Scarlett has a very fun personality and is best in interviews when you're being a little silly and I eventually caught on and remembered this but I think if I had caught on earlier, I could have asked some of the more serious questions later after things were "warmed up". Hopefully she didn't mind too much that I'm still a bit of an interviewing scrub, despite having run 4 seasons of a show where I interview people. Tournament interviews are a little different and require a slightly different touch than what I'm used to.
I later ended up interviewing PandaBearMe and I think that went a little better with lessons learned from the first interview. Issac in some ways is similar to Scarlett in that he is a very funny guy if you give him the chance to be, so I tried to play more toward that. It's moments like this that I'm really grateful I actually take the time to talk with a lot of NA players on skype when I can and build a repertoire with them, as well as an understanding of their personality. Sometimes I execute on it poorly, despite having the knowledge available to me like I did with Scarlett, and sometimes I feel like I actually do a pretty decent job like I did with PandaBearMe. One of my favorite things about the interview was that I felt like even though the interview didn't have an incredibly amount of direction, but I felt like I was able to get PandaBearMe to fill most of the air and I primarily drove some of the discussion. Toward the end of the interview I also felt like we turned it into an actual fun conversation rather than an interview, which I think is pretty much all I could have asked for. Issac was definitely an easy person to interview but I was glad I felt like I handled my job well and played to his personality ok.
The day continued on, we cast more great games. Some were more one sided than others and I spent a lot of my free time hanging out and talking with players and friends. Big shout out to ZombieGrub who I still consider one of my best friends in eSports. I was sorta sad we didn't get to hang out more but similar to how Steadfast making a good joke at the beginning of a cast or Temp0 being Temp0 both relax me for what I have to do, being around Zombiegrub reminds me that while I have a job to do it's important to remember to have fun. Spending time with friends and not leaving regrets is an important part of staying happy during the event and I don't have to constantly look internally to manage my happiness at an offline event like I do for an online one. In a lot of ways, I think the biggest thing I'll miss from casting the offline event and going back to online is that I felt like I had so many dependable people to rely on and help me manage my own mental state.
After Day 1 finished, we all went to my favorite restaurant that exists in the world, The Korean Village. It's become a tradition for Zombiegrub, Rifkin and I to go there every time we are in Toronto because it has the best service of any restaurant I've ever been to when a particular guy is there(his name is Jason). I got to hang out with Zombiegrub and Temp0 more, talk with people I only sometimes get to talk to like Creature and Mejerwall and finally got to interact with puCK for the first time in the whole event. I love puCK and I find his sense of humor hilarious. He's a total troll but he's an incredibly loveble guy so I'm always grateful when I get to hang out with him. In a lot of ways, I respect him more than a lot of other Starcraft players because I think he's one of the guys whose focus in Starcraft is to have fun many other players. As a player of his level, I don't think that's easy to do and it really makes me appreciate his unique playstyle even more. After all, who doesn't like the idea that someone plays their best when they're having fun?
At the end of the day, I got back to Drekken's place at a pretty reasonable hour and was able to get a lot of sleep in preparation for Day 2, while still leaving some time to review notes. That being said, I think this blog has already gotten long enough. It's also getting late for me so I'll try to finish Day 2 tomorrow while it's still fresh in my head! Hope you enjoyed Part 1 of my Kings of the North recap! Big thank yous to all of the people I mentioned as well as Techcore and Kelsey for constantly getting me food/Starbucks and the entire rest of the production crew who did an amazing job with the event, despite a lot of stressful situations. Also thank you to everyone I talked to who attended the event and bothered to talk to me, because at the end of the day I'm just a guy who really likes talking about Starcraft with people and talking with you makes me happy.
Tomorrow: Day 2 - Theater Boogaloo.
