EPTDH Atlanta was the first event I got to cast live since MLG Anaheim back in 2014 (when I was still primarily a player), a few people might remember I also casted a couple of RedBull events and did some studio work for WCS NA Challenger in California, but as far as conventions and casting in front of a live audience, this was an experience I had to miss for nearly 10 years - and it was well-worth the wait.
My most recent 'career' as a StarCraft commentator began near the start of the Covid era, when Heyoka (now StormGate) and ESL gave me an opportunity to join the broadcast on 'trial' to give it a go. I initially was hired for 4 dates total, but I was well received enough by the community, brocast team and crew, that they decided to bring me back for more dates, and then the next season, and the one after that, and the online cast we did for 'Katowice' and so on so forth.
As Covid became less of a concern and things opened up, I was invited to cast other offline events, but their international nature always made it complicated for me for a couple of reasons; for a long time I was on an O-1 Visa/permit that allowed me to stay in the US, but if I were to leave, I would've needed to first travel to Peru to stamp my passport and be able to travel back to the US after going wherever I was invited - this process meant spending a 2-3 weeks in Peru with bad internet and bad internet for a streamer meant no income. Second is chronic pain and diminished hearing in my left ear, ongoing for a few years which gets worse whenever I get sick or get on a plane, so I try to avoid planes as much as I can. All this combined with the urgency and short-notice afforded for these opportunities made me regrettably skip them all (until now).
So you can imagine how excited I have been to part-take in this event. I drove to the venue last year and had a blast, but unfortunately I couldn't have my return to offline commentary then. This year, on the day of my 50-minute flight to ATL, I woke up with a sore throat and thought to my self: "Well fuck". But there was no chance I was going to miss the event - Because on top of this being my opportunity to finally cast an offline event, I was also involved and invested into a booth at DH Atlanta for the RTS title that I am Lead Designer for; ZeroSpace - Where I get to work with a team that I helped assemble and features some of my favorite people in the world, working hard to make the best game that we possibly can - this is not a beat I could miss either, not a chance.
So I got up and blew my nose, jumped on the plane with my roomie (Pili) who helped man the ZS Booth and landed in Atlanta; half-deaf and with the worst ear pain I've had in a long time. I then went to meet with my ZeroSpace family (including my 'boss' Marv who is one of my few idols and I was actually meeting irl for the first time). We had dinner, I got sicker, could barely sleep, chugged some night-flus pili had brought just in case and woke up for SC2 rehearsal the day after.
I then got to meet with my SC2 family; my lovely & amazing peers; casters, hosts, producers, Alex our fearless product manager and many others at ESL that I never got the pleasure to meet in person before, like our super cool player manager Betty, or friends who I got to interact and talk to on online broadcasts for years but never met in person, like Njal (observer) or sound producer Carito who are both incredible and brought yoga mats to stretch and do mobility exercises (I briefly joined them once).
I went to sleep because the next day the event would start and we know how that went - the games were AMAZING all weekend long, the crowd was as good or better than last year (which I quite frankly did NOT expect).
My first cast on Friday was a TvT with ZG. Still a little under the weather and in a mix of nervousness and excitement I jumped into the cast and then CYCLONES happened.
Now -full disclosure- few of you will know I have almost no time to stream or play much SC2 these days (because of how busy it's been at ZeroSpace) - At ZS we have our first alpha phase starting (today) backer-kit/pre-order here for anyone interested and we had a DreamHack Atlanta Booth we've been planning for and that I tried to sneak to on the few breaks I had.
DH was a giga important beat for us to show our progress to the most endemic & passionate hard-core RTS audience we could possibly find. As one of the main product owners, I have a ton of responsibilities and an immense thirst for the RTS game that I am designing to succeed - ZeroSpace is my full-time job, and for the last 3 weeks it's been VERY full. That means that most of the SC2 I got to watch leading to the event (not a lot) was on my second monitor while working.
So.. we jump into a TvT for my first cast and I felt lost in the cyclone vs cyclone meta. I am usually good at making sense of what is going on on my screen; in fact that is how I did most of my playing as a pro back in the day and how I do all of my casting (vs trying to memorize build orders or timings or acquiring any sort of what a traditionalist may consider "knowledge"). But I quite frankly, in my foggy state, in a new environment and with this devil of a unit running around I felt like I could not piece things together well enough to be informative or offer much insight - and I usually take pride in that - so it was a pretty disappointing cast for me. Luckily I had ZombieGrub sitting next to me and she carried the cast forward as I tried to do what little I could to support. I wasn't happy with myself, but I was lucky and glad that she was there to raise the quality of the cast. ZG was also excellent at being encouraging by nodding decisively, almost like saying "you got this keep going" which was super helpful to help me get past my initial bundle of nerves. I regret that I didn't get to cast another one with Jess, sort of to like 'redeem' myself and carry my own weight, and help lift the cast and each-other in the process.
As the event progressed I got a lot less nervous, a lot more comfortable and a lot less cycloned in the head, I feel like I kept improving with every cast, and I felt right at home whenever there was a Zerg in the game. I got to do a couple of segments with pros and audience and got to talk to to a lot of my friends and I also love doing that so I was happy to volunteer and it helped me chill and get in sync with the environment and ecosystem that made me into who I am.
I got to breathe a few sighs of relief as I re-adjusted and re-evaluated myself (I can be rather harsh internally) and went in my head from major disappointment in my somewhat sick and foggy brain to re-gaining my usual confidence by the hour.
With each instance of nose-blowing and each Dayquil I felt better about my ability to out-put a good product. Hey you, what's going on, you got this! - I would say internally as I stared in the mirror, until I eventually felt clear-minded enough to share with Kaelaris and ZG while waiting at the desk (paraphrasing); "You know what guys - I know what's going on now" (A bit like saying I know this game; it's my jam, always has been).
I mean surely, right? I wasn't super plugged-in for a couple of weeks, sure, but I've been around 25 years of it.
On Saturday I woke up feeling better and I had good casts that I felt I could be proud of, if you pay attention to the cast you can definitely hear that my nose wasn't 100%, but close enough. My favorite casts were the zerg ones that I got to do with Rotti - Solar vs Dark (ZvZ) and in the quarterfinals especially: Dark vs Classic (ZvP).
There are qualities to great experienced casters (and desk hosts!) that aren't easy to value or see as the audience who can't peek behind the curtains - and they can be really helpful to relatively less experienced commentators like myself relative to the 'live' environment. I've been lucky enough to know Rotti for a very long time now but I can't recall the pleasure of sitting down next to him to commentate a game live, and it was great.
He had this amazing magic trick; what he would do is he would pat me in the back/shoulder when throwing the mic over for me to do play-by-play (which I really enjoy) and omg; it was actually crazy how encouraging it was - I felt like a horse or something and like I was being set free and given free reigns to yell and regulate my intensity however I wanted in these moments without feeling like I was interrupting him, it also offered confirmation and reassurance that; "we're on the same page; this moment's big" and I knew we would both be staring intently and that whatever details happened during those fights, we would spot to unravel and discuss; it was a real blast. It's always fun talking SC2 with Rotti but these casts were really something else for me.
Both of us were a bit under the weather, but I thought they went great, and by the end of Saturday I felt I was back to "myself". Then the day ended and bad news came - I wasn't scheduled to cast any match on the final day. As I was notified, my ego hit the floor and I questioned if my staring at the mirror and telling myself how "I got this" was just a bit of cope, maybe it's what I deserve, maybe I was too sick and maybe I did a shitty job. I asked and I made it known that I would love to cast any of the 3 remaining matches, 2 guaranteed TvZs and 1 very likely TvZ or ZvZ in the finals. But I was told I'd be better on the analysis desk.
I don't hold anything against stakeholders / decision-makers here, I appreciated the opportunity to be casting at Atlanta in ANY capacity at all, but my god did I feel like shit. I went to the hotel that night and I stayed up late reviewing the VODs and chat / feedback for the series I casted - did the audience not like me? Did I sound bad? Was I not insightful? - I found in that process that feedback in the chat was -overwhelmingly positive- and I didn't find any hate-threads on reddit, so I didn't get it, I was still really sad but at least a little more at peace and less feeling like an idiot and a victim of cognitive dissonance, and there was still much to be happy about still - the SC2 event was still awesome and the convention as a whole was great, especially when it came to ZeroSpace and everything we had going on at our booth.
So I woke up Sunday with no fever and feeling physically the best but mentally probably the worst I felt all week. I tried to do my best to add something to the analysis segments that I was scheduled for, I put on my 'finals day' shirt that I went shopping for a couple of weeks before and thought at least i'll get to show that and my deer antlers on camera a bit more.
As the day progressed, my grievances dissipated as my good buddy Clem (who had also stayed up extra time the day before to help me and ZeroSpace put on an after-hours showmatch at the venue <3) finally overtook the goat Serral and would go on to beat Dark to become the first European Terran Champion in a long time while putting his long-awaited extremely-deserved first offline tournament win on the board. I was so happy to see him filled with such real emotion being let out in catharsis for all the hard-work he's put in for so long while managing to be one of the friendliest, kindest people in the scene. It was kind of a perfect ending.
All of this combined with a great success of the ZeroSpace booth that I have been working so hard on had my heart and my head (and my nose, and my ears) truly just all over the place this weekend, literally and metaphorically speaking - but hey; I've always loved a good rollercoaster.
The only thing that I can't shake the feeling of is that I think opportunities for me in SC2 are likely to continue to become more rare, as much as I will continue to follow and love this game and this scene, the truth is I am busier and I am putting more eggs on the ZS basket (full time gig and a project that I am extremely passionate about) - I can't help but to feel that just maybe I overextended my stay - and maybe 25 years of StarCraft is enough (?) I really hope that isn't the case, but I always go with the flow, and the waves seem to keep pushing me to shore on this most beautiful beach.
