EPTLast Thursday I got off work and drove to Sun Center in Aston. It was a new venue, we had more gear and crew than we’ve ever had at a single event before. There were new faces I didn’t recognize helping us get set up, but it all felt familiar. After a six month hiatus it felt like I was finally coming home. I wanted to take the time to write some thoughts down about the event itself, and future plans for myself and Cheeseadelphia while everything is fresh in my mind.
Cheeseadelphia 5 was our largest and most ambitious StarCraft event to date. A larger prize pool and bigger venue meant more risks, costs, and challenges, but somehow it was the smoothest event to date. Our bracket wrapped up less than an hour behind schedule, we had more than 2,000 viewers tuning into the bracket stages, generous crowd funding allowed us to push up our prize pool, and the live audience was absolutely amazing!
We did experience some audio issues that were unfortunately not resolvable. Our production lead began experiencing issues with his soundcard part way into day two that caused it to begin picking up interference from external sources. Typically we would have had spare setups to swap in, but given the scale of the event every piece of equipment we owned was in use across our five stream setups. This is a valuable lesson about having spare equipment for next time and I thank Dre (our production lead) for doing an admirable job working with the gear he had to minimize issues. He was able to coax audio from what would have otherwise been complete static by going to extreme measures to eliminate sources of interference. Dealing with this was also the reason we were unable to roll credits at the end, for those that purchased the credit roll reward on Matcherino I am truly sorry. I am happy to refund you, or if you’d like to come to the next event let me know and I’ll buy your spectator ticket!
Groups and bracket play were mostly smooth of a few hiccups. I’m very grateful to my brother who was able to come down and do a terrific job as an admin for the stream station, freeing me up to focus the majority of my energy on running the bulk of the tournament in the player pit. I’d also like to say thanks to the players that put up with less than ideal playing conditions. One day I’d like to be able to offer one PC per player that players can stay on all weekend, but at this time it’s not something we have the resources to do. I was also blown away by the level of play at this tournament. Our top 16 would not have looked out of place in a WCS Challenger bracket which is something I’m really happy with!
Other than the audio issues I discussed our stream was terrific. Temp0 and feardragon crushed it all weekend as casters, and having players hop on the couch to guest cast was a terrific addition. We tried to cultivate a friendlier feel than a traditional premier tournament, and I think we did a terrific job of that. Having a flow of people hopping on and off the couch, and showing off the player pit behind the casters helped to create a vibe that I think is unique and hopefully engaging and enjoyable for our viewers.
One of the coolest parts of this event was seeing A LOT of new faces which is pretty unusual for Cheeseadelphia. Seeing young kids that hadn’t been out to previous events coming out to cheer on their favorite players gave me hope that there’s still a bright future for StarCraft. Our event garnered a lot of local media attention and I think that really helped to drive attendance by casual spectators that might have otherwise been unaware that there was a StarCraft tournament going on nearby them.
In terms of the future I have some lofty ambitions and goals for us. I’d like the prize pool of a future Cheeseadelphia to eventually reach $10,000. It’s my goal to create a truly premier and fully open StarCraft II event that literally anyone can enter as long as they have a competitive drive to succeed. We’re a long way off from being able to do that, but I believe we can grind our way there the same way we’ve ground to the point we are at today. The first Cheeseadelphia had less than half our current prize pool and was streamed out of a converted office. We’ve come this far in five events I’m very excited to see how far we’ll go in five more!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/g7AMSZK.jpg)
Cheeseadelphia 5 (left) vs Cheeseadelphia 1 (right)
Finally I want to say thanks to everyone that helped! Crowd funders you were amazing, our casters Temp0, feardragon, and NoRegreT crushed it and helped us cover as many games as possible. Thanks to players for coming out, thanks to Dre for running a terrific production, and finally thanks again to my brother who helped out. It had been more than six months since our last Cheeseadelphia, but damn coming home felt great.
