EPTCatsPajamas pens a heartfelt and insightful message to the Starcraft community. As a BW old-timer, I feel that he's one of the guys who has got it right, in terms of entering the scene with respect for its history, the lore and the legends. I've been critical of the massive "OMG, Esports!" wave that has swamped Starcraft since SC2 came along, but he's done it well, and I thought his letter should deserve some attention on TL.
He also gives some pretty spot-on observations on the state of casting, some advice for any aspiring casters, and the state of Starcraft pro-gaming in general.
The entirety of the letter:
+ Show Spoiler +
Well, I have that damn cake next to my name so I better make use of it, I suppose. It's also a nice reminder of how I got involved with /r/Starcraft a year ago and compels me to draft this blog for others that want to get involved in the scene.
So, a little backstory: I graduated from college with a history degree (WWII European Theater emphasis hell yeah!) in 2009 with little to no direction as to what I wanted to do "when I grew up." I imagined that I wanted to be a history professor at that point, but I was quite disenfranchised with the educational system and decided to take a break before I got back into school. So I took the natural next step: I became a car salesman. No joke. I still love Subaru more than any other carmaker. But, I didn't like the lying and stealing of the job, quickly left, and bounced between different jobs, including but not limited to retail, telemarketing, call center customer service, and managing Enterprise Rent-a-Car's Twitter account (random, right?). I finally decided to go back to school, enrolling in a Masters Communications program because I wanted to explore how companies were using social media and why they were royally screwing up at it. That nicely coincided with the launch of Starcraft 2, and that's when I picked up the game.
Now, I have no shame in admitting that I'm not part of the "old boys club" in the Starcraft scene, and that’s really the point of this article (i.e. how to break into the scene without connections). I played Brood War casually at best. When I was a kid, it was way more fun for me to work on Tower Defense strategies rather than ladder all night. So I entered the world of SC2 casually as well, expecting to play the campaign, dive into multiplayer a bit, and explore the UMS scene. I really could not have been more wrong. I started laddering all the time. I hit diamond a short while after release and started scouring the web for more resources. Of course, that led me to the fine communities at TeamLiquid.net and /r/Starcraft. Those communities in turn led me to streams, and I started gobbling up live streamed content. Between IdrA, Trump, Spades, Debo, Ipp, Raelcun, Day[9], TotalBiscuit, djWHEAT, Artosis, Tasteless and the big tournaments, I don’t think I was productive at all for a span of about 5 weeks.
Obviously, I was watching way more Starcraft than I was playing. But I didn’t care. I just could not wait to get home from my job and school so I could consume more and more Starcraft content. I estimate that I was watching about 25-30 hours of streams per week. It was also coinciding with a period of time where I was very unhappy in life and watching my weight balloon (down 32 pounds in the last 8 weeks though! Woo!!). In college, I was on the radio for a student run station 89.7 FM, KMNR Rolla (http://kmnr.org if anyone is curious) for about 3 years. No training or anything, just volunteer DJs wanting to have a great time. So, as I got into Starcraft more and more, I realized how much I had missed being on a microphone in front of an audience. I saw that there were a ton of very knowledgeable and passionate Starcraft personalities, but not a lot that were attempting to approach casting with that professional sports-style play-by-play delivery, and I thought that was a fun angle to take.
Well, I fired up a stream (initially on own3d.tv and later with Justin.tv), grabbed any replays that were available, and started practicing. It was slow at first, maybe an hour or two a night. However, I quickly started realizing that this was actually a ridiculous amount of fun, and being able to interact with (even a very small) audience was actually some of the most fun that I had had in a very long while. So much so, in fact, that I started broadcasting about 30-40 hours a week. I couldn’t stop. It was an addiction like I had never felt before. Every conceivable replay I found, I cast. It wasn’t exactly to a ton of people, either. From about the very end of October 2010 through the end of December 2010, I was lucky to have about 5-10 people a night. But what wonderful supporters they were. To all of my original daily viewers (and you know who you are), you mean more to me than you’ll ever know. You shared my enthusiasm and gave me an outlet to interact with the greatest gaming community in the world.
Eventually though, those numbers started to grow. I began casting a nightly King of the Hill series titled, jokingly, the “CatsPajamas King of the Hill for Honor, Guts, and Glory,” or KotHHGaG. :D Each night, my regular viewers would tune in and take turns battling it out against each other for nothing other than the love of the game. There were nights where I would cast from 4:00 pm – 7:00 am, noticing that the sun was up and I better damn well get myself to work. Eventually bigger names became involved. I had players like LuckyFool, ThisIsJimmy, Cruncher, and Destiny competing in my casts. Destiny was an especially big help. He would come on and play and just divert a bunch of viewers over to me. I remember the first night I peaked over 100 (than later 500, and then 1,000) viewers, I quite literally flipped my shit on camera. Whatever anyone says about Steven, he will always be a friend to me because of what he did then. It’s also around this time that Mr. John Bain, TotalBiscuit, discovered my casting. He thought it was great but that I had a shit microphone. I didn’t disagree, but I didn’t have the money to purchase a nice microphone for myself. So what did he do? He bought one for me and started promoting my content. John, I still owe you about 1,000,000 beers. Can’t wait until we see you at an IPL stateside.
Around January of 2011, I received another big break. Up until then, I was starting to get asked to cover small tournaments like Craft Cup, Z33k dailies, etc. However, the fine folks at /r/Starcraft who put on the SCReddit Invitational (now the guys at http://wellplayed.org) asked me to cast for the first SCReddit Open after the Invitational was done. Suddenly, I was thrust in front of a couple thousand people. I remember how nervous I was before casting the first one, heart thudding in my chest. However, those guys know how to run an amazing tournament, and I got through it with a positive response. I went on to cast many of the SCReddit Opens through the beginning of the year. As time wore on, I started casting some bigger online tournaments and even a LAN in St. Louis where I first met my great friend Doa face to face. It’s still probably the most fun event I’ve ever done.
About April, I was casting about 30-40 hours a week, editing video about 15 hours a week, managing social media channels about 10 hours a week, working a 20 hour a week job, and trying to continue as a full time graduate student. Oh, and I’m married. A special shout out to my beautiful and amazing wife who put up with me through everything I’ve done. Enough can’t be said to measure the support she’s given me. However, I really didn’t have much free time. By now, I was averaging about 200-700 viewers a night on my Twitch.tv channel (and I owe those fine folks quite a bit as well for partnering me and giving me hope that I could pursue this as a career). I started seriously considering if I could live off of streaming money. I decided that it was probably best to fund a trip down to MLG Dallas to meet some people in the community. And that’s the trip that changed my life.
Thanks to my involvement with WellPlayed at the time, I was able to get a press badge for the event. I got inside the conference center early and quickly was able to meet Day[9]. Sean is undoubtedly the most genuine person I have ever met. How you see him on the daily? Yeah, that’s him in real life. Funny story: The first time I ever spoke to Sean, he started talking about a JRPG that creeped him out where you literally violate women with swords. As in the weapons. o_O It was totally hysterical and impressed on me right there that he was an incredibly friendly guy who never tries to hide who he is in life. Sean, you’re fucking amazing. Keep doing what you do for Starcraft. So anyway, as many of you know, MLG had issues with the audio at the event as the players could hear the casters (this was quickly fixed by the next event), so no caster commentary could be played to the crowd. During KiWiKaKi vs IdrA, I was sitting in the front row. Next to me, David Ting, the General Manager of eSports at IGN, sits down. We were introduced prior to this, but I hadn’t really had a lengthy conversation with him until then. Basically, I start personally commentating KiWiKaKi vs IdrA to him as we’re watching the games, with him asking me questions as I go along.
The rest of the event was great. I met everyone I could have possibly wished to from the SC2 foreign scene. And with only a few exceptions, everyone was as fucking amazing as you would think they would be. So, in a daze, I fly back to St. Louis to go back to my streaming/social media/job/college routine. A few days later, I receive an email from Mr. Ting saying that he wants to leverage my talent for IPL2 as a caster.
W. T. F. I was blown away. This was truly an amazing opportunity and I would do whatever it took to impress the IGN organization. Not long after, IGN contacts me because some casts that they needed to get done for IPL1 were taking much too long to complete (i.e. weeks overdue). They asked if I could help. I uploaded the casts in 5 hours. This was way too big of an opportunity to pass up. This made a great impression on them, and shortly thereafter, they offered me a full time position in San Francisco at their headquarters. The rest most of you know by now. :D
So how does this help you become a caster? Well, with well over a year of doing nothing in my life but studying, watching, casting, and learning about the Starcraft community, there’s a few observations that I’ve made that may help you out:
1.) YouTube is oversaturated. Don’t try to become a YouTube SC2 caster. Just stop it. It won’t work. There are a few established presences on YouTube at the moment that dominate 99% of the traffic for SC2 VODs there (yeah yeah, #Occupy YouTube and all that, we’re the 99%). Even casters that previously made their living off of YouTube are now branching out into other games because that’s not the fight you want to fight.
2.) Streaming is key. Right now, the best way to get noticed as a caster is to fire up a stream and cast there. Download FMLE or Xsplit, grab a streaming account (I will shamelessly plug my friends over at http://Twitch.tv here), and start casting. Streaming services are much more likely to recognize success and partner people who are willing to put in the time and effort.
3.) Regularity is everything. To get better at something, you have to practice at it. My goal was to become a professional sports-style play-by-play caster, so I studied both the sportscasting world and my own mannerisms and speech patterns to improve. More importantly though, I did a fuckton of casting. I am not exaggerating when I said I did about 30-40 hours a week on top of my other responsibilities in school, work, etc. That’s a bit extreme, but if you guarantee your viewers that you will be on every night for a specified period of time and you hit that schedule 90%+ of the time, you will start to accumulate repeat viewers, the good kind of viewers that you can trust to give you critical feedback.
4.) Find your niche and stick to it. Don’t try to be a jack of all trades style caster. It won’t work out and you’ll come across as confusing when you try to mesh multiple styles together. I consciously decided that I wanted to be a play-by-play caster, so I studied how those casters operated and how I could improve upon that.
5.) Don’t copy anyone else. Tasteless and Artosis are awesome! I think Artosis is the best caster in the entire world. DON’T TRY TO BE TASTOSIS. They’re great at it, let them have their style. You will come off as much more genuine and engaging when developing your own personality.
6.) Be proactive in creating content. Don’t wait for content to come to you. I’ve seen plenty of people make 5 videos and then sit back and wait for tournaments to contact them. Bullshit. If there’s not a tournament that wants you to cast, make one yourself. Plan one with your friends and execute on it. We need people in all levels of eSports to get engaged in the community, and there’s no better way than for that to happen than people proactively creating content. I don’t care even what it is. Are you starting a tournament? Awesome! Making a news show? Fan-fucking-tastic. Is your niche writing rather than speaking? HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, we need you! I don’t care how you make content, just get out there and let everyone know how incredible this community is and do what you can to spread it.
7.) Going hand in hand with #6, engage the community! The Starcraft scene is the best one I’ve ever been a part of. I check /r/Starcraft probably 20 times a day. I actually literally wake up every day, roll over, grab my phone, put on my glasses, and check /r/Starcraft. Do not be afraid to submit anything for feedback from the community. Did you make an awesome video? Share it with us! We want to see awesome high quality content. Don’t be afraid to get downvoted as well. Only by gauging the community will you find out what works and what doesn’t.
8.) Get your name out there. Once you’ve produced a suitable body of work, make sure people notice. No, I don’t mean spamming 1,000 YouTube channels and emails with, “Ch3ck 0ut th1s guyz3!!” I mean travel to events and see how you fit best in the eSports world by observing it firsthand. Are you running an awesome tournament? Sweet! Feel free to send me an email asking if I’ll cast it. Is your casting ability fucking awesome now that you’ve perfected your technique? Double sweet! Start contacting smaller tournaments to see if they would like live coverage of their event.
9.) Look to glorify the players, not yourself as a caster. I truly believe that we need a marked shift in eSports from the casters to the players. I can understand why casters had received a disproportionate amount of attention in the past as they were the ones posting most of the content. THAT’S NOT TRUE ANY MORE. The players deserve our full attention and an honest shot at making a career out of gaming. So, when you’re casting, and you see a player do something amazing and mind-blowing, let the world know. Promote that however you can. We’re nothing as a community without awesome people getting into this game competitively.
The key point in this (now admittedly gigantic) post is that it’s only through hard work and dedication that you’ll break out in the world of eSports. I did not have the benefit of being part of the Brood War scene. Now knowing how fucking amazing the Starcraft community is, I regret not being part of it earlier. There are a few people in the community that would love for Starcraft to remain the intimate, small group that it was in the BW days, but not most people. The fact is, the more attention that’s drawn to eSports, the more money that will be injected and the more sustainable ecosystem we’ll have surrounding it. Those guys you see on streams, or tournaments, or talk shows? Yeah, they want you to start getting out there and fucking spreading the word about eSports.
Get into casting if you want. Maybe just surprise your favorite player with an awesome new background for their stream. You could even put up a sign starting a Starcraft club at your school. Maybe you get 3-4 of your buddies and agree to LAN the night away before a big event and then have a big viewing party. Maybe you set up a Barcraft at your local pub. Whatever it is, just get out there and do it. I’m living proof that you love something so much you can make it work. It just takes a lot of dedication and effort to get it done.
Holy shit, 3,000 word essay. Well, TL:DR – GO MAKE ESPORTS HAPPEN. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission to get started casting, or organizing tournaments, or contributing. Just go get it done!
To all of you at the /r/Starcraft community, I love you all more than you will ever know. You give me the ability to talk about what I love on a regular basis, and you support the greatest competitive game in the world. Fucking keep on being amazing. <3
So, a little backstory: I graduated from college with a history degree (WWII European Theater emphasis hell yeah!) in 2009 with little to no direction as to what I wanted to do "when I grew up." I imagined that I wanted to be a history professor at that point, but I was quite disenfranchised with the educational system and decided to take a break before I got back into school. So I took the natural next step: I became a car salesman. No joke. I still love Subaru more than any other carmaker. But, I didn't like the lying and stealing of the job, quickly left, and bounced between different jobs, including but not limited to retail, telemarketing, call center customer service, and managing Enterprise Rent-a-Car's Twitter account (random, right?). I finally decided to go back to school, enrolling in a Masters Communications program because I wanted to explore how companies were using social media and why they were royally screwing up at it. That nicely coincided with the launch of Starcraft 2, and that's when I picked up the game.
Now, I have no shame in admitting that I'm not part of the "old boys club" in the Starcraft scene, and that’s really the point of this article (i.e. how to break into the scene without connections). I played Brood War casually at best. When I was a kid, it was way more fun for me to work on Tower Defense strategies rather than ladder all night. So I entered the world of SC2 casually as well, expecting to play the campaign, dive into multiplayer a bit, and explore the UMS scene. I really could not have been more wrong. I started laddering all the time. I hit diamond a short while after release and started scouring the web for more resources. Of course, that led me to the fine communities at TeamLiquid.net and /r/Starcraft. Those communities in turn led me to streams, and I started gobbling up live streamed content. Between IdrA, Trump, Spades, Debo, Ipp, Raelcun, Day[9], TotalBiscuit, djWHEAT, Artosis, Tasteless and the big tournaments, I don’t think I was productive at all for a span of about 5 weeks.
Obviously, I was watching way more Starcraft than I was playing. But I didn’t care. I just could not wait to get home from my job and school so I could consume more and more Starcraft content. I estimate that I was watching about 25-30 hours of streams per week. It was also coinciding with a period of time where I was very unhappy in life and watching my weight balloon (down 32 pounds in the last 8 weeks though! Woo!!). In college, I was on the radio for a student run station 89.7 FM, KMNR Rolla (http://kmnr.org if anyone is curious) for about 3 years. No training or anything, just volunteer DJs wanting to have a great time. So, as I got into Starcraft more and more, I realized how much I had missed being on a microphone in front of an audience. I saw that there were a ton of very knowledgeable and passionate Starcraft personalities, but not a lot that were attempting to approach casting with that professional sports-style play-by-play delivery, and I thought that was a fun angle to take.
Well, I fired up a stream (initially on own3d.tv and later with Justin.tv), grabbed any replays that were available, and started practicing. It was slow at first, maybe an hour or two a night. However, I quickly started realizing that this was actually a ridiculous amount of fun, and being able to interact with (even a very small) audience was actually some of the most fun that I had had in a very long while. So much so, in fact, that I started broadcasting about 30-40 hours a week. I couldn’t stop. It was an addiction like I had never felt before. Every conceivable replay I found, I cast. It wasn’t exactly to a ton of people, either. From about the very end of October 2010 through the end of December 2010, I was lucky to have about 5-10 people a night. But what wonderful supporters they were. To all of my original daily viewers (and you know who you are), you mean more to me than you’ll ever know. You shared my enthusiasm and gave me an outlet to interact with the greatest gaming community in the world.
Eventually though, those numbers started to grow. I began casting a nightly King of the Hill series titled, jokingly, the “CatsPajamas King of the Hill for Honor, Guts, and Glory,” or KotHHGaG. :D Each night, my regular viewers would tune in and take turns battling it out against each other for nothing other than the love of the game. There were nights where I would cast from 4:00 pm – 7:00 am, noticing that the sun was up and I better damn well get myself to work. Eventually bigger names became involved. I had players like LuckyFool, ThisIsJimmy, Cruncher, and Destiny competing in my casts. Destiny was an especially big help. He would come on and play and just divert a bunch of viewers over to me. I remember the first night I peaked over 100 (than later 500, and then 1,000) viewers, I quite literally flipped my shit on camera. Whatever anyone says about Steven, he will always be a friend to me because of what he did then. It’s also around this time that Mr. John Bain, TotalBiscuit, discovered my casting. He thought it was great but that I had a shit microphone. I didn’t disagree, but I didn’t have the money to purchase a nice microphone for myself. So what did he do? He bought one for me and started promoting my content. John, I still owe you about 1,000,000 beers. Can’t wait until we see you at an IPL stateside.
Around January of 2011, I received another big break. Up until then, I was starting to get asked to cover small tournaments like Craft Cup, Z33k dailies, etc. However, the fine folks at /r/Starcraft who put on the SCReddit Invitational (now the guys at http://wellplayed.org) asked me to cast for the first SCReddit Open after the Invitational was done. Suddenly, I was thrust in front of a couple thousand people. I remember how nervous I was before casting the first one, heart thudding in my chest. However, those guys know how to run an amazing tournament, and I got through it with a positive response. I went on to cast many of the SCReddit Opens through the beginning of the year. As time wore on, I started casting some bigger online tournaments and even a LAN in St. Louis where I first met my great friend Doa face to face. It’s still probably the most fun event I’ve ever done.
About April, I was casting about 30-40 hours a week, editing video about 15 hours a week, managing social media channels about 10 hours a week, working a 20 hour a week job, and trying to continue as a full time graduate student. Oh, and I’m married. A special shout out to my beautiful and amazing wife who put up with me through everything I’ve done. Enough can’t be said to measure the support she’s given me. However, I really didn’t have much free time. By now, I was averaging about 200-700 viewers a night on my Twitch.tv channel (and I owe those fine folks quite a bit as well for partnering me and giving me hope that I could pursue this as a career). I started seriously considering if I could live off of streaming money. I decided that it was probably best to fund a trip down to MLG Dallas to meet some people in the community. And that’s the trip that changed my life.
Thanks to my involvement with WellPlayed at the time, I was able to get a press badge for the event. I got inside the conference center early and quickly was able to meet Day[9]. Sean is undoubtedly the most genuine person I have ever met. How you see him on the daily? Yeah, that’s him in real life. Funny story: The first time I ever spoke to Sean, he started talking about a JRPG that creeped him out where you literally violate women with swords. As in the weapons. o_O It was totally hysterical and impressed on me right there that he was an incredibly friendly guy who never tries to hide who he is in life. Sean, you’re fucking amazing. Keep doing what you do for Starcraft. So anyway, as many of you know, MLG had issues with the audio at the event as the players could hear the casters (this was quickly fixed by the next event), so no caster commentary could be played to the crowd. During KiWiKaKi vs IdrA, I was sitting in the front row. Next to me, David Ting, the General Manager of eSports at IGN, sits down. We were introduced prior to this, but I hadn’t really had a lengthy conversation with him until then. Basically, I start personally commentating KiWiKaKi vs IdrA to him as we’re watching the games, with him asking me questions as I go along.
The rest of the event was great. I met everyone I could have possibly wished to from the SC2 foreign scene. And with only a few exceptions, everyone was as fucking amazing as you would think they would be. So, in a daze, I fly back to St. Louis to go back to my streaming/social media/job/college routine. A few days later, I receive an email from Mr. Ting saying that he wants to leverage my talent for IPL2 as a caster.
W. T. F. I was blown away. This was truly an amazing opportunity and I would do whatever it took to impress the IGN organization. Not long after, IGN contacts me because some casts that they needed to get done for IPL1 were taking much too long to complete (i.e. weeks overdue). They asked if I could help. I uploaded the casts in 5 hours. This was way too big of an opportunity to pass up. This made a great impression on them, and shortly thereafter, they offered me a full time position in San Francisco at their headquarters. The rest most of you know by now. :D
So how does this help you become a caster? Well, with well over a year of doing nothing in my life but studying, watching, casting, and learning about the Starcraft community, there’s a few observations that I’ve made that may help you out:
1.) YouTube is oversaturated. Don’t try to become a YouTube SC2 caster. Just stop it. It won’t work. There are a few established presences on YouTube at the moment that dominate 99% of the traffic for SC2 VODs there (yeah yeah, #Occupy YouTube and all that, we’re the 99%). Even casters that previously made their living off of YouTube are now branching out into other games because that’s not the fight you want to fight.
2.) Streaming is key. Right now, the best way to get noticed as a caster is to fire up a stream and cast there. Download FMLE or Xsplit, grab a streaming account (I will shamelessly plug my friends over at http://Twitch.tv here), and start casting. Streaming services are much more likely to recognize success and partner people who are willing to put in the time and effort.
3.) Regularity is everything. To get better at something, you have to practice at it. My goal was to become a professional sports-style play-by-play caster, so I studied both the sportscasting world and my own mannerisms and speech patterns to improve. More importantly though, I did a fuckton of casting. I am not exaggerating when I said I did about 30-40 hours a week on top of my other responsibilities in school, work, etc. That’s a bit extreme, but if you guarantee your viewers that you will be on every night for a specified period of time and you hit that schedule 90%+ of the time, you will start to accumulate repeat viewers, the good kind of viewers that you can trust to give you critical feedback.
4.) Find your niche and stick to it. Don’t try to be a jack of all trades style caster. It won’t work out and you’ll come across as confusing when you try to mesh multiple styles together. I consciously decided that I wanted to be a play-by-play caster, so I studied how those casters operated and how I could improve upon that.
5.) Don’t copy anyone else. Tasteless and Artosis are awesome! I think Artosis is the best caster in the entire world. DON’T TRY TO BE TASTOSIS. They’re great at it, let them have their style. You will come off as much more genuine and engaging when developing your own personality.
6.) Be proactive in creating content. Don’t wait for content to come to you. I’ve seen plenty of people make 5 videos and then sit back and wait for tournaments to contact them. Bullshit. If there’s not a tournament that wants you to cast, make one yourself. Plan one with your friends and execute on it. We need people in all levels of eSports to get engaged in the community, and there’s no better way than for that to happen than people proactively creating content. I don’t care even what it is. Are you starting a tournament? Awesome! Making a news show? Fan-fucking-tastic. Is your niche writing rather than speaking? HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, we need you! I don’t care how you make content, just get out there and let everyone know how incredible this community is and do what you can to spread it.
7.) Going hand in hand with #6, engage the community! The Starcraft scene is the best one I’ve ever been a part of. I check /r/Starcraft probably 20 times a day. I actually literally wake up every day, roll over, grab my phone, put on my glasses, and check /r/Starcraft. Do not be afraid to submit anything for feedback from the community. Did you make an awesome video? Share it with us! We want to see awesome high quality content. Don’t be afraid to get downvoted as well. Only by gauging the community will you find out what works and what doesn’t.
8.) Get your name out there. Once you’ve produced a suitable body of work, make sure people notice. No, I don’t mean spamming 1,000 YouTube channels and emails with, “Ch3ck 0ut th1s guyz3!!” I mean travel to events and see how you fit best in the eSports world by observing it firsthand. Are you running an awesome tournament? Sweet! Feel free to send me an email asking if I’ll cast it. Is your casting ability fucking awesome now that you’ve perfected your technique? Double sweet! Start contacting smaller tournaments to see if they would like live coverage of their event.
9.) Look to glorify the players, not yourself as a caster. I truly believe that we need a marked shift in eSports from the casters to the players. I can understand why casters had received a disproportionate amount of attention in the past as they were the ones posting most of the content. THAT’S NOT TRUE ANY MORE. The players deserve our full attention and an honest shot at making a career out of gaming. So, when you’re casting, and you see a player do something amazing and mind-blowing, let the world know. Promote that however you can. We’re nothing as a community without awesome people getting into this game competitively.
The key point in this (now admittedly gigantic) post is that it’s only through hard work and dedication that you’ll break out in the world of eSports. I did not have the benefit of being part of the Brood War scene. Now knowing how fucking amazing the Starcraft community is, I regret not being part of it earlier. There are a few people in the community that would love for Starcraft to remain the intimate, small group that it was in the BW days, but not most people. The fact is, the more attention that’s drawn to eSports, the more money that will be injected and the more sustainable ecosystem we’ll have surrounding it. Those guys you see on streams, or tournaments, or talk shows? Yeah, they want you to start getting out there and fucking spreading the word about eSports.
Get into casting if you want. Maybe just surprise your favorite player with an awesome new background for their stream. You could even put up a sign starting a Starcraft club at your school. Maybe you get 3-4 of your buddies and agree to LAN the night away before a big event and then have a big viewing party. Maybe you set up a Barcraft at your local pub. Whatever it is, just get out there and do it. I’m living proof that you love something so much you can make it work. It just takes a lot of dedication and effort to get it done.
Holy shit, 3,000 word essay. Well, TL:DR – GO MAKE ESPORTS HAPPEN. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission to get started casting, or organizing tournaments, or contributing. Just go get it done!
To all of you at the /r/Starcraft community, I love you all more than you will ever know. You give me the ability to talk about what I love on a regular basis, and you support the greatest competitive game in the world. Fucking keep on being amazing. <3
The above spoiler content is entirely from CatsPajamas.
Edit 1:
On December 17 2011 17:19 SeaSwift wrote:
Further down the reddit page, he has more advice and posts etc, so visiting the link is worth it for the other massive posts he wrote.
Further down the reddit page, he has more advice and posts etc, so visiting the link is worth it for the other massive posts he wrote.
Edit 2:
On December 17 2011 16:15 sashamunguia wrote:
love it, I thought he will be the one posting it on TL though
love it, I thought he will be the one posting it on TL though
I think it was a reddit birthday thing, something about cake day. Usually casters and event promoters multi-post within minutes on different sites, and I saw that the post was two hours old, so it's safe to say I'm not stealing his thunder. CatsPJ, if you do want to do a TL link here, please contact mods with what you want to do with this post. I leave it to your discretion.
