Clarity Gaming Bi-Weekly Wrap-Up #4

Welcome to another edition of the Clarity Gaming Bi-Weekly Wrap-Up! We've missed a week due to some unforeseen complications (mostly a lack of power at home), but nevertheless the information is here and ready for your eyes to peruse!

Also, in case you missed our new content piece where we help support upcoming talent in the community, check out our Player of the Month from January! Also make sure to keep an eye out for our February selection as the month draws to a close!

If Heart of the Swarm is your flavor, don't forget to watch the Clarity Gaming Pro HotS KotH hosted by ClarityPrOmise every week!

[image loading]

Following his recent recruitment to Clarity just a few short weeks ago, Felipe “ (Z)

cKiLLeR” Zuñiga has been hard at work competing all around Latin America. While IEM: Sao Paulo unfortunately did not have a Starcraft 2 main event, Felipe received an invitation alongside other top pros ( (P)

Grubby,

White-Ra and (T)

FXO.Strelok) to participate in a set of Heart of the Swarm show-matches. In addition to his exploits in Brazil, KiLLeR tested his standing as one of Latin America’s finest progamers in the South American qualifier’s of the Vasacast Invitational. Commentated by Italy’s biggest professional casters, the Vasacast Invitational boasts a lineup consisting of many fan favorites such as White-Ra, Snute, Dimaga, Nerchio and Lucifron.

[image loading]

Full Bracket

English Stream:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Spanish Stream:
Part 1
Part 2

On the weekend of January 26-27th cKiLLeR competed in the Vasacast South American Qualifier, his very first tournament while flying the Clarity Gaming banner. Despite considerable talent showing up to represent their teams and countries, the monster from Chile stood recognized as the favorite to make it to the end. KiLLeR was more than willing to oblige his fans, showing an absolutely dominant series of games in which he looked virtually untouchable.

KiLLeR was seeded directly into the Upper Bracket where he faced off and dispatched the talented Brazilian Zerg from Keyd, Tunico. With Tunico down, Felipe went into ZvP mode and ended up taking out the Argentinian Protoss from Isurus, Capoch in both the Winners Finals and the Grand Finals.

Felipe’s victory not only earned him $100, but a seed into the main tournament, the Vasacast Invitational 2013. KiLLeR will face off against players the likes of TLO, Kas, Vortix and more for a total prize pool of $3,000 on February 17th. Be sure to check out the event page (www.vasacast.com/invitational/) for more information with regards to the event and where you can watch it and as always, stay tuned to @Clarity_Gaming for real-time updates as they occur!

[image loading]

Full Event

Felipe started off the weekend by taking on the fan-favorite Protoss from the Netherlands: Grubby. Despite having switched over to Heart of the Swarm only a week prior to his competitive appearance in Brazil, KiLLeR started off with a bang taking out the former Orc champion to a tune of 2-1. While many Zerg’s have been struggling with the ZvP matchup as of late, Clarity’s Chilean warrior seemed to be at home despite the shifting metagame.

Coming into Day 2 of IEM: Sao Paulo up 1-0 thusfar in the Heart of the Swarm Showmatches, KiLLeR exuded confidence as he took the stage to take on yet another superstar Protoss, this time in the form of the 32 year old Ukranian White-Ra. Even special tactics could not hold Felipe back from taking his second series in a dominating fashion proving that the best way to deal with a carrier/tempest/voidray/high templar composition is to simply not allow your opponent to create one.

In the closing showmatch in Brazil, the Chilean Zerg took the field against an FXOStrelok that was well prepared for TvZ. Though Felipe fought valiantly bringing the final series to a full three games, the combination of hellbats, reapers and marauders ended up being too much to handle.

After the dust settled Felipe ended with a total map score of 6:3 against a group of incredibly skilled and experienced professionals. We here at Clarity could not be more proud of his performance in Brazil and we could not be happier to have Felipe as a member of the family!

[image loading]

This edition's interview brings us to talk with Alex " (P)

cShew" Raymond, the most recent player to move into the Training Facility!

Give us your basic bio--who are you. where are you from

My name is Alex "Shew" Raymond. I am from Irvine, California.

What got you into professional gaming?

My sophomore year of high-school I discovered the warcraft 3 pro scene. Since then I've immersed myself into the "world" of esports, watching a multitude of different games.

You recently had a very successful stream for your birthday. How much of a boost in viewers/followers did that give you?

Given that I had just moved to our team's training facility and had no means of transportation, I was forced to be creative with my 20th birthday here inside the house. I post my stream every time I'm live on reddit, so I didn't expect anything this massive to occur. I peaked at around 400 viewers, much to the help of being the #1 post on r/sc and having many retweets from people like TotalBiscuit and other large community figures. It was overwhelming

20 years old. Counting down the days until 21?

Alcohol is poison.

Starcraft stream numbers have been steadily dropping. Where do you think most of those viewers have gone? Do you think that HotS is going to bring a lot of people back to watching SC2?

The streaming "market" is extremely top-heavy. You get players/personalities who get upwards of 5 - 6 thousand viewers, then it quickly falls off. There are plenty of players who are deserving of that many viewers, but don't receive it. Not that those people at the top don't deserve it, but it is very hard to break into the streaming scene. A vast majority of the viewers from streaming (for Starcraft 2) come from TL... and if you're not featured on TL then you're in a list of 100 other streams, making it extremely difficult to gain exposure. I got extremely lucky one day for just doing something out of the ordinary, but that doesn't mean that I will instantly get 400 viewers every time I stream from now on

I hope our viewers raise again with HotS. I think come release time stream numbers will be very high for HotS because of not only the release, but also the 2 week downtime in HotS leading up to release.

What are your personal streaming goals?

I don't have any set goals as of this moment. Any time I get over 40 viewers I consider that a pretty big accomplishment, given where I am at in the scene currently. I would like to be able to break the triple digits on a daily basis, but that will take a while

What makes you different from other streamers?

I have a lot less fluff than other players... meaning my filter isn't always on... That can be a good and a bad thing, but I think it's entertaining for people to see someone who just has raw emotion, rather than a person filtering everything they do/say.

I also enjoy goofing off a bit... whether it be showing my stream cool phone apps, talk about dating/girls, or watching baller music videos.

Where can people follow you?

Twitter: @ClarityShew, and TwitchTV/Shew_TV

Recently, the IGN ProLeague held a tournament which attempted to address the lack of variety and stagnation seen in the map pools for major events. With a stated goal to add at least two new maps to their rotation, amateurs and professionals took the field to test the balance and entertainment value of the games. Representing Clarity was Brian “cSaroVati” Zhao, SungYong “cYong” Hong, SeongJin “cShuttle” Choi and ManHyeok “cJookTo” Jo and each of them pulled together strong runs with each making it to at least the Round of 16.

[image loading]

SaroVati faced off against Team Empire’s Beastyqt in the RO16 and, despite a strong, back and forth series, ended up dropping the series to the European Terran. The next Clarity professional to fall would end up being our ace Protoss, Yong. Although SungYong has been playing incredibly these last few weeks, the volatility of PvP combined with his focus on Heart of the Swarm were enough to give former SlayerS Arthur the edge and a 3-2 victory.

Opening the door to yet another Clarity vs. Clarity Finals, SeongJin and ManHyeok each performed near flawlessly throughout the day. As Shuttle took revenge on Arthur for his teammate, JookTo fought his way through FXO’s JimRising and TheoRy, coL’s Sasquatch and Axiom’s CranK before taking down Empire’s Beastyqt for his teammate SaroVati in the Semi-Finals. The final series of the day provided a great, fast paced set of games between two of Clarity’s finest progamers and after an incredible day and tournament, JookTo took the crown with Shuttle receiving the silver. We could not be any prouder of all of our players performance throughout the IPTL Map Tournament and we hope you got a chance to enjoy the games!

[image loading]

Event: IPL6 American Regional
+ Show Spoiler +

Casted by: Robin, Kibbelz
URL: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=392580
Date: January 23rd 2013
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/ignproleague
Participants: cYong, cSiphonn
Results: SemiFinals: cYong (2:1 QuanticHyuN, 2:0 Genius), RO16: cSiphonn
Recap:: http://claritygaming.com/2013/01/killer-wins-vasacast-south-american-qualifiers/

Event: Vasacast Invitational: South American Qualifier
+ Show Spoiler +

Casted by: Vasacast, EmpireCheeseHeadLogic
URL: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=392580
Date: January 26th -27th 2013
Stream: Part 1 - http://ru.twitch.tv/cheeseheadlogic/b/360918211
Part 2 - http://ru.twitch.tv/cheeseheadlogic/b/360933928
Part 3 - http://ru.twitch.tv/cheeseheadlogic/b/361293166
Participants: cKiLLeR
Result: 1st Place - cKiLLeR
Recap:: http://claritygaming.com/2013/01/killer-wins-vasacast-south-american-qualifiers/

Event: Clarity Gaming vs. Western Wolves Showmatch
+ Show Spoiler +

Casted by: cWyrd and cPrOmise
URL: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=395707
Date: Monday, January 28th 2013
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/wyrd5/b/361696818
Participants: cYong, cSiphonn, cJookTo, cMercy, cSaroVati
Result: Clarity Gaming 5:4 Western Wolves

Recap:: http://claritygaming.com/2013/01/clarity-gaming-vs-western-wolves-recap/

Event: IEM Sao Paulo: HotS Showmatches
+ Show Spoiler +

Casted by: cKaelaris
URL: http://us.intelextrememasters.com/season7/brazil/
Date: January 29th 2013 - February 2nd 2013
Participants: cKiLLeR
Results: cKiLLeR 2:1 Grubby, cKiLLeR 2:0 White-Ra, cKiLLeR 1:2 FXOStrelok

Event: ESET UK Masters Invitational Cup #2
+ Show Spoiler +

URL: http://esetukmasters.com/seasons/season-1/tournaments/invitational-cup-2
Date: February 13th 2013 - February 14th 2013
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/esetukmasters
Participants: cShew

Event: IGN Pro Team League (IPTL) 2013 Season 1, Amateur Division
+ Show Spoiler +

Bracket: http://challonge.com/iptlamateur
Date: Ongoing
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/ignproleague
Participants: Entire team

Event: Spotlight on Clarity Gaming
+ Show Spoiler +

Hosted by: ClarityWyrd
Link: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=396047
Date: Every Wednesday, 9PM EST
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/thehandsomenerd
Participants: The guest on the Spotlight for the episode on the 13th will be the lone American attendee at IEM: Katowice, cSiphonn!

Event: Vasacast Invitational 2013
+ Show Spoiler +

Casted by: Vasacast and JoRoSaR
Bracket: http://www.vasacast.com/invitational/
Date: Ongoing
Main Stream (Italian): http://www.twitch.tv/vasacast
Main Stream (English): http://www.twitch.tv/vasacast_stream2
Participants: cKiLLeR

Event: Clarity Gaming Pro HotS KOTH
+ Show Spoiler +

Hosted by: ClarityPrOmise, QuanticNathanias
Link: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=397772
Date: Every Sunday, 9PM EST
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/thehandsomenerd
Participants: Selected Clarity progamers will play in each episode alongside the top North American, European and Korean professionals.

Event: LigaSamsung.cl HotS Showmatch: cKiLLeR vs. cJookTo
+ Show Spoiler +

Casted by: Hazuki (Spanish), ClarityPrOmise + ClarityWyrd (English)
Link: ligasamsung.cl
Date: February 21st, 6PM EST
Stream: http://es.twitch.tv/ligasamsung
Participants: cKiLLeR and cJookTo.

To keep a closer eye on our players in the future, as well as to receive immediate updates to exclusive content from our players during, before, and after events check out all our social media platforms below!

Website: ClarityGaming.com
Twitter: @Clarity_Gaming
Facebook: Facebook.com/ClarityGaming
Twitch: Twitch.TV/Clarity_Gaming
Youtube: YouTube.com/ClarityGamingSC2

If you haven't joined the Clarity Family already, we hope you'll do so now to stay with us through 2013!

Clarity Gaming Bi-Weekly Wrap-Up #4

Completed

Ongoing

Upcoming