I got to cast my first set of tournament games for the SoCal Esports tournament today as a part of their amateur casting competition. It was some of the most fun I think I've had in quite some time.
Some notes:
1. Casting is much harder and more tiring than I originally thought. There was a portion of today's events where I had to fill for around 15-20 minutes with my Co-Caster Glitch (Ironic considering the technical difficulties) and that turned out to be a tiring ordeal.
2. Observing! Tasteless has mentioned numerous times that he finds observing difficult and now i totally understand why. I didn't realize it until I started watching the recordings of my castings after the fact that I realized how careful that balance is of showing the viewers what is going on, and not making the camera shake like mad.
3. Once again, I continue to be absolutely blown away by how awesome the SC2 community is. I didn't meet a single unfriendly person at the event all day, and everyone just seemed well mannered polite and just in general a joy to be around. It really makes me feel good that the positive vibes I've experienced at major events like MLG Anaheim are still felt at a local amateur run event like this one.
4. Finally! I found that I absolutely LOVED casting. I kind of thought that it would be fun before today but today's trials actually confirmed that for me. I got a lot of positive feedback from the spectators (which i must take with a grain of salt considering everyone was so nice) and I've decided that I think this is something I want to do more of in the future.
Major props to everyone who helped make the SoCal Irvine E-sports event possible and to everyone else that came out to do casting today. You guys were all real cool and I look forward to seeing you at more events.
I'm going to try and upload the recordings of my casts for further feedback as soon as they are uploaded. As I understand it, all of the games are going to be uploaded to a youtube channel thanks to the hard work of Mike who was the guy in charge of the stream.
I look forward to making more blog entries about my experiences as an amateur caster! :D