Hey Now~

First and foremost a little apology for the time it took to finish this. Lots of re-writes happened. You’d thing that I was trying to publish a novel or something with the amount of red pen I took to this. But it took me a while because I feel as if I have a lot to say, and I didn’t want to write that novel. So here it is, in all of its glory. My photos and personal stories from my adventure to TI5:

When the GA tickets were released to the public for TI, I was hiding in the back room at work. I manage a Lazertag business, although it sometimes feels like reddit is a full time gig, and I vividly remember giving an unhappy customer like ten free missions because I really needed her to go away so I can run back to my cave and try to get tickets. I was on my phone, work computer, laptop, on skype with my friends, and really didn’t want them to slip away. Refresh, refresh, f5, refresh, f5 f5 f5 f5 f5. I got fucked. My other three friends got tickets, and this was a bit crushing. Valve previously denied press tickets for reddit when I sent them an email prior to the GA release. I knew even if I wasn’t going to be legitimately there as press, I was going to go as GA and work my tail off to do things for /r/DotA2. But more importantly it was going to be a vacation with three of my best friends, so I was kinda bummed.

However I knew that something would work itself out. Eventually it did, and through the magic of Reaver both him and I found ourselves on the press list. It was a little dicey, because I had a flight and airbnb booked before I had the conformation. I guess whatever was in the back of my head was right about it all falling into place. This is where the theory crafting started in regards to exactly what we wanted to do at the Main Event that would provide some value to the community. Yes we already finished the subreddit redesign, Hellspawn would be working his ass off on daily threads and the survival guide. Intolerable implemented a bot that allowed us to make live match threads much easier than before. But even with a new coat of paint, all of these things are just standard practice for any major event for us. To do something new and special for TI it was decided to do a Reddit Live thread.

Reddit Live allowed us to do a few things, in theory. We could provide text commentary of the games, live updates from the venue, break news about what’s going on that the camera is not addressing (say G losing his lunch), re blog the best content form other creators at the event, create a “second screen experience” (god I sound like some Apple exec), but most importantly for me, give people a feeling of what it’s actually like to be at the venue. Pictures and snippets from the Seattle Center that gives someone at work or sitting at home some realization of what the people at the event are seeing and doing.

People have told me through a myriad of channels that they absolutely loved the Live thread. However personally I feel like it failed quite hard. Honestly I feel like I did a much better job of doing this on my twitter feed. If you haven’t seen it and are interested I’d recommend a quick scroll-down. It did feel shitty that it was easier to do what I wanted with my phone on twitter and periscope than it was to share this experience on Reddit live. But why do I think it failed? Simply put we maxed out at 700 people having the feed open. With the sticky and promotion that felt real poor, and I attribute that a lot to just not providing something that more people wanted. Now it’s not like I wanted to have a Ferguson level of people with the tab open, but it did feel real lackluster. I do think that a Reddit Live feed could be really cool for some events tho (The Summit, ESL), and I do not want to trashcan the idea completely just yet. Fingers crossed I can try again soon, and iterate on the idea.

What was however moderately more successful, was our snapchat story that we got up and running. Thanks to the assistance of /u/theclothesthief for giving us the software to make this possible, we ran a live snapchat story. Yes it was not the official one that we all hoped Valve would pay for with official filters and being broadcaster to everyone’s app as a default. That would have been legit. But for those who wanted to see live snaps from the event regardless, we had over 5,000 followers and accrued a shit ton of seconds watched. That project felt like a much bigger success to me as we received oodles of snaps to push to the story. Between those two projects alone, it was quite a bit of work at the event just to maintain those in addition to the daily (heavy TI traffic) grind.

Anywhoo, a lot of you noticed that the title said “Photoblog” and you might be disgruntled at all of that text with no photos. Well here have some damn pictures. I took 2,000 of them over the week and cut them down to 180 in the imgur album at the top of this post. Let me share some with you here, by giving you what I wanted to do with the Live blog; here are the sights of being at the main event.

Once one got to the venue you were greeted by the grassy lawn and the secret shop. The lines were actually short most of the time, probably because of the massive amount of pre-orders that people did. This made getting things a process that actually was not miserable. Additionally everyone got a legit backpack filled with extra goodies, and had the option to enjoy the games out in the sun.

HTC was around giving out demos of their new VR headset created with Valve. I was lucky enough to get to try it, which I will have a completely separate write up about.

Ontop of the secret shop you could go have some fun with the vendors. Steeseries, ASUS, Logitech, Redbull, and more were there with computers to play games, free gifts, music, and just a ton o’ cool things. There was also a beer plaza for those who wanted to drink outside and watch the games that was quite chill. Those brewmaster casks that you saw were up here being used as tables. The security guard made me delete a picture with him in it, he was old and grumpy.

Once you got inside (after the least-through bag check in the world, seriously I could have brought anything you could think of inside even with my bags being inspected) Key Arena was decorated quite well. There were informational signage about where things where, decorations for TI, and representation for all of the teams.

A lot of the decoration came from community artists / workshop artists concepts that were made into posters and slapped on the pillars.

DOTA was playing on every TV. Even the ten inch ones from the 90s.

A popular attraction was this panorama of the map that people were taking pictures in front of. It was located right next to the analysis desk and player elevator so this was a hot spot for loitering.

Said desk, sans talent.

It was much harder to find people for autographs or pictures, unless you were a VIP. But if you knew where to look, you could find most people who you were looking for.

You could also find preview cases of all of the merch by the bars. There was a strong positive correlation to beer sales and Secret losses. Fun fact.

There was always lots of cosplayers going around taking pictures and having a jolly time.

If ya keep making your way around the loop, on the opposite side of the analysis text there was the workshop creator area. Here people gathered around for art, signatures, live demos of creators making everything from in game couriers to loading screens. It was quite cool to take a break from the dota and see how some of the most popular workshop artists do their work.

If you got hungry there were always signs directing you to the food trucks.

Or you could pay out the ass for food from the venue shops. Special shoutout to this twat for making half the area smell like cinamon all the time.

Finally, upstairs, you could find the Juggernaut Plaza. This is where you would line up, so that you could proceed to wait in another line, to get your favorite pictures and autographs with pros and personalities. This was cool because as opposed to players being mobbed, there were scheduled metered appearances. You could get in game autograph codes, signatures, and professional pictures in front of the in-game panorama. A big improvement on previous years, even if there were less people around.

If you were confused, this is why it was called juggernaut plaza.

Most people really did spend all of their time watching the games in the arena. And who wouldn’t, even with all of the other cool shit we were there to watch some sick dota. Watching from the upper rows had a real nice view, as the four projection screens lead to a big viewing experience.

Downstairs was also nice, and what I perfected. The crowds came and went depending on the day and the interest in the teams playing. IG / MVP6 drew what might have been the thinnest crowd as everyone was bummed after the NaVi loss (and it was late, and it was like Monday). The section of seats behind the Chinese casters was filled with a majority of the Chinese fans. They got hype for their boys, and often times put the rest of the area to shame.

Sometimes sitting to close to the stage, while giving you a cool view of the stage, made your neck hurt like being at the front row in any theater.

You could however sit behind the three sets of casters which was cool. Seeing them work and their different little quarks. OD becoming manic, Blitz having coughing attacks and pounding around for his mute button, Capitalist standing, stuff like that. The other languages which were being cast had tables along the side that were less glorious, but they were still on the floor nonetheless.

If you had the perfect seats you could see what the casters were browsing between games. Owen approved of the dank memes while he was fending reddit, again.

The center stage aegis statue was cool too.

Except it did kinda look like Tiny had a giant rotating erection on the stage at all times.

Finally when you were inside you did get to see a lot of the players in their pods, pending their seat. The pods were all glass and had monitors on both sides to see who was who in regards to not just their names, but their heroes and status. Sometimes you got to look on and see happy moments.

Sometimes you got to see sad moments.

Remarkably every day was remotely the same. Not much differed from day to day except the cosplay, the autographs, and of course the games. With that being said, here are some extra fun pictures with some context:

Occasionally you get cute pictures of casters.

Occasionally you don’t.

NaVi walkin’ in.

They didn’t stay long.

Neither did Secret, amiright?

But VP was okay with that.

They actually got locked in their pod and didn’t know what to do for a bit.

I actually took more pictures of fng than anyone else.

Complexity got hype before every game by huddling up after the draft, chanting, dancing, and gettin in their zone.

People told me all week that I looked like Swindle. I don’t see it. At the pubstomp I actually signed something as Swindle because I thought it was funny.

Two non-Americans who just dun get it.

I tell you he’s a mad man.

Off to the right: Dank Stats.

It was hard to take good pictures of people inside the pods.

This was my fav cosplay.

Some of the staff members were trying really hard to understand what was going on. I saw people every day answering their questions about the game and such.

Bruno was always around the analysis panel. I think he was directing it? Regardless he’s the best.

I think Vlat cast every main stage game in Russian.

What a charmer.

That face when none of this was your fault and you just want to enjoy your birthday.

All Stars!

I also took this picture-

Shesstillsicking

When everyone’s gone home

Last day, walkin the red carpet

My favorite sign of the event

PPD leads the squad into the grand finals

When you win a cool six mil

Everyone wanted to touch it all week, but he’s the one who took it down.

If only he knew he would be handing that thing over for the last time

Hold it real tight

So many things wrong with this picture, but so many more right.

Finally we closed out with this mouse

Ya still with me? I still got some more words to say. I guess kudos if you want to keep reading tho, I just hope I’m being mildly entertain to you. As this is still kinda muh blog I wanted to round out with what it was like to be press at the event, some of the problems, and some personal stuff. Ready, set go.

Being press at TI5 was kinda shit. In terms of how we were treated in comparison to the VIPs. Now that’s not that I am ungrateful, lets clear that up right now. I would have done it in exceeding worse conditions, but the ones that were presented to us was still disappointing. I realize that the players are the ones who did not want the press on the VIP level. Makes sense, as you could tell that this year is different than ones prior. People were more serious, less interaction took place, and overall it was less friendly for the media, and less access to the GA. This lead to a really imbalanced level of content that could be created. If you did not have a friend who could sneak you into VIP, your content was significantly worse off. People who were with a team, or work at a studio, or are an old boy, could easily get the best content because they had all the access that was being blocked off to other people. Additionally they got full catered meals multiple times a day. I got to live on warm soda, water, nature valley bars, pretzels, and cheeze its. Not even pre packaged ones, just giant bags that everyone got to stick their hands in. Mmmm yummy. I had to bug friends or lie and sneak past guards when I was in need of a real meal, as I was trying to do this whole trip on a shoe string budget. I only ever made it to VIP to eat and chill, never to work because I did not want to abuse power. Originally I wanted to do a “twitch_chat_reporter” esque spin to the reddit live blog getting people who the community like on vine and posting it to the feed. However unlike said reporter, I did not have people who I could pass the account off to who had special clearance to do this work for me. While I love what that product was, it sucked that without others who had clearance to bug people (who probably did not want to be recorded in the first place, hence the restrictions valve put in place) it would have not worked.

Don’t even get me started on the conditions for taking good pictures. All I wanted to do was be on the floor, or have a lenses with more than 250 zoom. Anything less than that you could not take player pictures. Even with the conditions were so poor with the angles, glass pods, metal struts in the pods, valve staff with their own cameras swarming, and everything in between. Hardest event I have ever had to take pictures of. Not because I was ill equipped, but because the setup was just kinda shit for taking a good picture of everyone. Real disappointing on that front.

Also press had three areas in the crowd where we got to sit with tables and power strips. I chose the less crowded option because I was running in and out a lot, but the security team was so lazy at checking badges I was scared about leaving my stuff there. Felt like a gamble every time I ran down, as routinely people would sit behind me who shouldn’t have been there. Not that some of you homies weren’t cool, but ya know leaving my laptop (or worse being logged into /r/dota2 on it) it only would have taken one asshole to do something….malicious.

Oh yeah and the wifi was garbage. I tethered a lot of the time because it was faster. I know some people went back to their hotel to encode. The fun part tho was being able to sit underneath the Chinese boxes. The IG suite went hard for their friends.   Also being able to enter key area through the player entrance (basketball player, not VIP/dota player) was quite nifty!

Salt aside, I had so much fun. I spent a lot of time on my feet walking around talking to people, taking pictures, and just hanging out with my friends. Every morning I would wake up in my tiny ass studio apartment and tip toe around my friends on the floor to make my way down from Capitol Hill to the monorail to take strait to Key. Some days I walked the whole way. Some day I took the bus. One night I took an uber because it was like 3am and I didn’t want to walk back with all my equipment alone.

The games were pretty good at the event. It was hard to pull myself away sometimes to go do other things. I tried to keep a low key profile when I was roaming around. Now I am a huge ham and totally dig talking to people, but when someone would be like “Oh hey it’s leafeator” and point to me, I was just berated with memes and necro love. When everyone wants to say the same thing it gets a little trying, so I’d rather just hide in the shadows. I did sign some things (which I promptly called my grandmother and told her about afterwards) and got quite a few necro plush gifts. Thank you to anyone who said you appreciate the work that we do to keep the sub running smoothly.

I was surprised that a few notable people came up and introduced themselves to me. Synd while we were playing pool recognized me from twitter which I thought was kinda cool/crazy. I had a bunch of good chats with a bunch of cool people, Toby, Redeye, Wronchi, now I’m just name dropping I’ll stop. Hanging out with people at the Weston was really fun tho, and one of the reasons that I loved starting to do these things in the first place. To shake hands and chat up people who you spend hours at home enjoying their work. While I feel like I did a damn good job over the years with Starcraft networking and bumping shoulders, I still feel like my dota Rolodex could use some work. Hands down my favorite moment when someone said hey to me was when I was taking a picture of the analyst panel. I felt a hand on my shoulder and then heard a voice say “Hey Reddit” and it was fucking Bruno. He picked me out of the crowd and we had a good talk and honestly it was one of the more memorable happy moments for me from the entire event. Three other people who I really enjoyed getting to meet that surprised me quite a bit was Turbo of reddit Empire fame, Toffees of podcast fame, and Noxville of stats fame. All three of those cats are super cool.

One of the more memorable nights was being invited to the Shitty Wizard Pubcrawl in downtown. It was kinda weird because they decided that I was a “noteable person” which felt all kinds of uncomfortable to me. Even tho I was on the list I did not party it up like the players or personalities that were there and instead just spent some good time talking to people. For the first time I got to meet both ReaverXai and Decency at the event. Weird finally saying hi in person to people who you have worked with and argued with and laughed with for a long time now. One IPA sends Reaver off the walls, and Decency has a fro that could win beauty contents. I really appreciate both of them a lot more now. Who knows what weird things they told their friends about me tho.

Another party I had to sneak into was the after party. Allegedly sneak into. I don’t want to incriminate myself, but apparently press wasn’t allowed in like they were in the past. It would take some fun lying and social engineering to get into that for networking purposes, I would imagine.

Speaking of differences at Internationals, I still do not know how I feel about TI5 vs TI3, the two I have been at. TI3 while smaller felt so much more homely. You got to connect and mingle with so many more people. It was intimate. TI5 while having so many improvements in terms of monetary backing, staff, and visual appeal, is just so sterile. Yeah it’s down right awesome to be at, but it is a completely different beast now.

All in all, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have the most fun getting to share the limited time I did with my friends who I stayed with. I think they are still sour that I took off for days at a time to network or do press things, but the time I had with them just walking around downtown or trying new food joints was simply the best.

Well congrats for making it all the way down here. Hope some of that was interesting for ya. I know that I enjoyed it all, so very much. I got a lot of encouragement to keep creating content and doing more than I am already doing. I will be doing probably two youtube videos a week, and streaming once I get back to school. I’ve always had a strong personal interest in those things, so I know I would be upset at myself if I don’t give them their fair shake and see if I can make things that people actually like. (I feel as if that comment about making more videos might just meme-trump whatever reddit comments this generates. No more satire builds. Maybe. ). It’s encouraging to have people tell you that they like your stuff and think you’re cool. Also having an active twitter feed for a week was supreamly addicing. I now know why people with lots of twitter followers can use that thing like a drug.

Finally, a huge thanks to all the cool people I met, again. Wil for being fucking awesome, /u/watbe (trackdota.com baby!) and /u/allthefoxes for helping keep the Reddit Live thread going with commentary and memes. Everyone else who I met because there are too many of you to name <3.

Here’s hoping we do a Major in Los Angeles so I can see you beautiful people again sometime soon.

Thanks for being awesome

<3 Joey “Leafeator”

Here is a real quick share of some pictures I took Sunday October 20th at Red Bull HQ for the WCS Season 3 America Finals. This was a free admission event hosted in Santa Monica California that featured the top 8 Americans (Read: Koreans). Unfortunately I was only able to attend Sunday, but felt right at home with a, small, hyped crowd and a bunch of friends from NASL and the SoCal scene. Personal highlights of the day included the copious amounts of free Red Bull, Gretorp hugs, Jaedong remembering me, and a Polt W.

I hope everyone in Toronto is excited for this weekend. Knowing a itsy-bitsy part of what is in store for you makes me envious I can not attend. You guys are going to have a blast.

Fingers crossed that I will be making it out to Blizzcon for some good times.
Have a good one yo,
Leaf~

WCS NA kicked off its first live broadcast at the NASL studio Monday. 3 of America’s top players (Jaedong, Ryung, and Oz) were all in Rancho California to play infront of a live audience. Since a fire broke out at the original venue the crew did not have much time to turn their office into a studio, a la MLG. Something new to this live WCS NA event was an audience! It did not come over well through the stream, and the guest list was 90% VIPS, but people were there watching and rooting for NA’s best. Since Violet could not come it was a rather short day with not too much to shoot, but a fun time with friends nonetheless. Hope you enjoy some of the pictures. Unfortunately this was the only day I am able to cover WCS stuff. I fly out to TI3 Friday. Hype as fuck.

Full album can be viewed here 

Additional shots and a vine pan of the set on my twitter

~Leaf

Who’s excited for another event recap blog?!? Here is my stories from MLG Spring 2013 in Anaheim California. If you don’t want to read the words and instead just look at the pictures, you can find them by clicking on this big ol’ link.

MLG is arguably the largest eSports organization in America. For the last three years the crown jewel of the MLG circuit has been MLG Anaheim. Located in southern California, and stones throw from Disneyland, Anaheim draws an unparalleled crows in the USA. All of those nice things were true again this year, but only for 66.666666666% of the featured games at the event.

Upon entering the doors of MLG this year it was obvious that they changed up the venue floor format. Here is a very not to scale, yet artistic masterpiece, map of the show floor.

The League of Legends and Call of Duty stages sat next to each other and drew some big crowds. In the middle of them was a steel loft that featured each games casting desk elevated over the audience. This side of the convention center was sick and well planned out.

Whoever said that all of the stages were of equal size is a liar. If you read carefully up to this point you might have got some clues to tip you off about the state of Starcraft at this event. Lackluster, dull, dim, drab and uninspiring are some good words to describe Starcraft at MLG. It was as if the event was literately pushed into the corner and poorly laid out. With no featured stage and only one side of the player pit viewable the fans there was not too much to do aside from watching the main stage. There were other minor things that were bothersome such as only having one screen per stage.

I don’t really know how much of these problems are directly correlated to not being able to finalize Starcraft as a game until only a month before the event started. Maybe I am just being necessarily rough.

The saving grace for MLG was the work that was put on by the casters, crew, and players. It is very hard to stay angry when the actually show was so good. I was more excited for this player pool than any MLG in recent history. I would much rather see Incontrol cheese on the main stage, Nani bm, Bubbles, Illusion, Tyler, LZ, 11 root players, State, and Xeno play than 20 kespa players.

Saturday: 
Saturday was my first full day at the event. Friday I arrived late and spent a lot of time bitching. I decided that I should do something more productive than that so I broke the camera out. All be it there was not too much work to be done. Between Carlton Beener, GHOSTCLAW, Tank, and the MLG photographers, I did feel a little inadequate lacking a real press badge. Since the Starcraft section of the floor was rather small and players were only ever playing on stage or in the pit most pictures turned out to just be “liquipedia-esque” head shots. Boring? Maybe. But some of these nerd ballers are sexy. Are you ready for a little photo dump?

In an effort to get some main stream attention thrown at MLG; Dez Bryant, Dwight Howard, Ty Lawson, and Dejuan Blair all showed up to play some Call of Duty on stage. It was a fun little gimmick but holy shit was it hard to capture the moment with all of the people and security around the players. Dwight went over well with the local basketball fans. Some even chanted “Stay D12″ longing for him to remain a Laker. Love him or hate him, the guy is a bundle of charisma.

Normally when one attends a MLG they live off of a Doctor Pepper diet. This year Flipz pretzels was added to the list of sponsors. Now attendees can compliment their diet of Dr. P with some chocolate pretzels. Yummy. The Flipz girls spent the day showing off a lot of skin while literally throwing hundreds of bag of pretzels at nerds. It was almost as if they were trying to fend them off with carbohydrates. They really did give out a lot of pretzels.

I was refusing to eat the free crap in the venue and such was starving. [Blitz_Dota] offered me to come grab a bite to eat with himself, Purge, and MOTHER FUCKING 2GD. James was the one person in eSports who I have yet to meet and was still a fanboy over. He flew out to SoCal with Statman Bruno to go do some DOTA 2 stuff at the Beyond the Summit studio. I was pretty hype to go mingle with him over some burgers. He really is a dick, and I appreciated it.

As the day was coming to a close I spent more time snapping some player pictures with fingers crossed that some of them would be good.

Championship Sunday:
Wanna play a fun game? Next MLG count how many times djWheat says “Championship Sunday.”

Did you guys hear the juicy drama that happened Sunday? Naniwa called Polt……..a “bitch.” gasp The drama didn’t even end there! After Naniwa lost, Polt went to Naniwa’s booth to shake his hand. Nani refused and laughed. Funny how this was one of the high points of the event. I like that Nani can be the heal. I still am not that big of a fan of him in general.

Very few games played out Sunday. MLG had something super secret going on in the player pit. The main stage went along at a breakneck pace. The grand finals took place relatively early. Former TSL teammates Polt and Hyun took to the stage. The crowd was playing up Polt as an American hero since he is currently residing in Texas. They went fucking nuts when he ended up winning over Hyun and his crazy pants. I wonder if he liked the “USA! USA! USA!” chants.

Starcraft fans packed up early after the finals to head home. While exiting the roar of the League crowd was deafening. I was a bit envious. I made it back to the Hilton hotel bar after taking a shower. Everyone was getting ready for the Twitch after party that has become a staple of attending MLG. Instead of a club they rented out a sports bar. By 10pm that place was packed with everyone who was anyone. It was hard to walk from one side of the restaurant to the other. I attempted to play some billiards and 2GD thought he would be my coach. His pool advice is sub par. Some of the best networking happens at these after parties. I got to hang out with TB, djWheat, Deamon, Purge, MLG employees, Twitch folk, Alex Garfield, and even sit down for a long chat with Jaedong. Jaedong was sad that so many people were shy around him so we talked about being a celebrity and his fans in America. His English is damn good for never taking formal classes. I think if he worked at he he could become even more beloved in the west. I wish I took a damn picture with him.

After the Twitch party the cool kids went over to IHOP for some late late breakfast. By “cool kids” I mean I just went with Suppy, FireZerg, Sasquatch, 8mmspikes, Blitz, and Purge. It was a very nice way to end a crazy fun weekend.

Heading back to the hotel super tired I could not help myself but to join in on at least one Mafia game. If you dont know what eSports Mafia is, you can watch it on twitch every Wednesday night! [Stream Link]

At the end of the day/event the most unsettling thing for me is wondering what is next for MLG. Sure they announced MLG Columbus, Ohio, November 22 – 24. With all of the rumors about no Starcraft on the pro circuit, and only 3 live events in 2013, the future is disconcerting.

________________________________________________________

Thank you for reading. The next event I will be at will be TI3. It will be my first DOTA event and I am excited. I know the majority of people who read these things are just Starcraft fans, so it will be exciting to see if there is any interest in reporting DOTA.

I want to be putting regular content up here that is not just event recaps and pictures. I will be putting together some “eSports Journalism” pieces that are a little fun and different in the time between events. If there is anything you would like to see me write about drop me a line on twitter [@leafeator]. Hell even if you don’t have any suggestions maybe you could follow me anyways. We can be BFF’s

<3 <3 <3

~Leaf

Currently working on a photoblog / personal recap of MLG weekend with these pictures and more words. Should be able to get that out by the end of the night.

First a little bit of house keeping. Bringing the site out of “beta” today with some graphical and miscellaneous updates. No longer scared to link people here. Looking forward to the pointers I get on improving the place.

So I got a VIP invite from Rob Simpson and Sean Plott to attend the “Open House” final day of the Red Bull Training Grounds event. For the third of fourth time red bull opened the doors of their socal headquarters to the Day[9]tv squad to host a starcraft event. Two red bull sponsored startale Korean players, joined two Europeans, and four NA players for a three day production. Training grounds allowed these players a lot more than just the opportunity to play in an invite only tournament. These eight players were being put up for an entire week in Los Angeles and given the opportunity and tools to practice in preparation for MLG Anaheim next weekend. You can find the liquipedia recap of the event [here].

[If you are just interested in seeing my album from the event you can click on this big ‘ol link.] 

This was my first time visiting a production at the red bull HQ. I have only ever seen pictures from their previous events, even though I live rather close to Santa Monica. I arrived at about 1pm and the show was scheduled to start at 2. When I got onto campus I was greeted by some nifty cubicles and a massive wooden ramp spanning the length of the warehouse. The party was going on towards the back of the complex. Security escorted me through the cubicles and to the set. Everyone was just hanging out and I learned that the show was going to be delayed until home story cup was over for the day. The interwebs gave them a lot of love for this decision, and I agree. At the end of the day it was far and away the best business decision they could do tho.

Behind the set I found out that most people were actually gathered in a theater room. Here the other VIPs were hanging out and watching the conclusion of HSC. We all had catered food from a local taco joint, enjoyed the open bar in the corner, and had access to limitless amounts of red bull.

After Taeja won everyone gathered around the desk outside to skype Germany and say “HI!” to HSC. It was a maniacal cross-promotion between the two events; but I think there was a noticeable difference in viewers from the lead in from HSC.

The production was getting ready to go live and I was hanging out on the set instead of watching the action in the theater. Here is a little better of an idea for what the setup was for the cameras:

I climbed up the, rather steep, wooden ramp structure and snagged a picture of the entire setup. It’s one of my favorites from the day. I had a lot of fun sliding down the ramp like a little kid.

Demu and Sound was the first semi-final of the day. Ben did a great job of making sure that his monster bottle was in every shot red bull wanted to take. His games were not executed as well as his bottle placement and dropped the series to the Korean. Instead of watching the games I played a resounding game of table shuffleboard with one of the other camera men.

The players who were not enjoying the open bar were sitting on the set playing and watching some starcraft. Everyone had their designated station and computer for whatever they wanted to do. Grubby, who was out of the tournament on day 3, was the most disciplined practicing for MLG next week.

Day[9] casted the entire show with help from Husky and Mr Bitter. Bitter had more of a host / analysis desk role but he did cast the ZvZ.

Sometimes silly things go on with casters when the camera is in game. With that being said I fucking love Ben.

It wasnt a super long day of starcraft, but it was flying by. I spent a lot of time just chatting with random people and old friends. The second match was between Kane and Golden. Found out that Kane was not just a super gosu NA player, but a fun guy who is always smiling.

Kane fought hard and did take a game, but Golden did advance to the finals.

Sound and Golden. The two Koreans, the two startale players, the two people sponsored by red bull. They played an exciting final and people were getting hyped. More exciting than the games, and the 40/40 jokes, was the trophy these two were playing for. Seriously, this thing looked sick. A mock disk hard drive with a weighted disk, California magnet, bull reader, and circuit board back is the coolest eSports trophy I have ever seen.

Golden was super happy to win and get his trophy. He was radiating happiness. After doing his little post tournament interview/ceremony he took his trophy and went to KBBQ with his teammate to celebrate. I was sad I couldnt get to do a little interview with him.

I stuck around after most of the other people left. We sat and joked and enjoyed some drinks with Day[9], MrBitter, and the players. Everyone took it upon themselves to play a micro tournament while the crew was tearing down the set. I believe they intended to stream this earlier in the day but because of the HSC delay they never got to it. I recoded the players while they were partaking in their micro tournament. Turned out to be 20 minuets of unusable B roll that I can never upload because of the beer in the shot with the red bull logo, and the banter between players and casters that really shouldn’t be hosted online. Grubby was going to win before the power cut out.

The party moved to K-town in downtown Los Angles. Puck, Vibe, Kane, Select, Demu, Bitter, 9, Tyler (of day9tv and Lone Star), and I drove about 15 miles through not ideal LA to get to a place that Sean proclaimed is the “best KBBQ in LA.” We waited a little while for our table because they place was not supper big but we joked around outside. We were trying to get Select to teach us korean, and tell us jokes in English. For 5 minuets of my life I knew how to ask a girl if she wanted to go to bed in Korean.

We got inside and had to split the party up because the tables were not big enough. I ended up sitting and having all you can eat with Bitter, Demuslim and Tyler. While the other table talked about games and light hearted issues, we had a serious conversation about love and life. The meat was uber good.

After stuffing ourself I bid the other fellows adieu and drove back home. All in all it was one hell of a good Sunday.

Hope you enjoyed my recap and pictures for the day. I am excited to be going to MLG Anaheim next weekend and I will be shooting significantly more pictures and have a lot more to chat about. I still have an E3 blog to throw up soon from the time I spent on the floor there. I am most excited about putting regular content on this site.

kbai <3

a href=”http://imgur.com/4RtkrG9″

Don’t care about my story being a VIP on blizzard campus, USA launch, and mingling with the “big boys?” Would you rather just look at the pretty photos? Click here for my imgur album of the event. I don’t blame you.

So how do I get invited to the Blizzard campus to hang out in the midst of this day long live-streaming bonanza? Back in February I woke up and found an email in my inbox from one Sean Plott. I was instantly confused as I consider Sean a friend, but not someone who I am in regular correspondence with. When I opened up the email I saw a long description of what was to be the community stream for the launch event. All of these hush hush details were being shared with me. The most exciting part was reading that I was being asked by Day[9]tv to be the representative of /r/starcraft for the launch stream. They were having videos submitted by teams, players, websites, animators, and leagues to play on stream. But they did not have any video content from the (second most) popular Starcraft site on the net. I was ecstatic with the opportunity and honor to work on putting something together for the stream.

After a few weeks of speaking to Sean, Cara, and /r/starcraft staff there was an idea in place to gather community video and splice it together into one uber-video. Everyone would be answering the same 6 questions, and with this I could show the diversity of the reddit user base. The stressful part of doing this was: A) the lack of time between the official announcement, being able to collect video, and the turn in deadline. B) Learning how to use Sony Vegas on the fly as I did not have someone to help me edit and view the video. C) The community reaction to the project. A was solved with a lot of pestering. I wish I could have done a better job with B, but I think it came out okay. C, for better or worse, never happened.

All in all it was one hell of a fun time, and a lot of work to push this video out in such a small time-frame. If you wish you can watch the /r/starcraft community video HERE!

The unforeseen benefit of doing this project was waking up to another email from Mr. Plott. This one was inviting me to be a VIP at Blizzard for the USA HotS launch party. March 11th I would be making the hour drive to Irvine to hang out on the Blizzard campus with other eSports figures, and then partying at the mall with everyone else who came to the launch. This is the story of that day.

1pm – 8pm Blizzard HQ 

March 11th. The day before Heart of the Swarm launches. I wake up with little sleep after playing way too much Sim City the night before. I turn on Twitch to see the start of the Europe launch party. Redeye is announcing and the crowd is going crazy. I watch a little bit while getting ready. Excited because today I will be visiting the Blizzard campus. I grab my camera and headed out the door. The drive from Ventura to Irvine is a good 60-90 minute adventure depending on traffic. Interstate 5 is often times a coin flip. Unfortunately I was stressed out as it looked like traffic was going to make me late.

I arrived at the meeting parking lot at around 1:15. The VIPs parked here and were getting on a shuttle buss down the street to Blizz HQ. We were gathered in a barren parking lot across the street from Taco Bell HQ and throwing distance to the Spectrum mall where the big party would be happening later. We got friendly under a tent and mingled with the lucky folks who won the free VIP package. Some folks even flew into LA after they got their VIP ticket. I was talking to Xeris, Gretorp, Shindags, and other fine fellow as the bus (that apparently was on Blizzard time) came to get us. When they loaded the first set of people onto the bus I had to stay behind because my name was not on “the list.” When the next bus rolled around all of that was cleared up. Getting on the bus anticipation built as I signed a non-disclosure and headed down the road.

Finally we were at the gates of Blizzard. Security was tight as we rolled into the compound. Walking off the bus I was greeted by friends and Mama[9]. After sorting out my lack-of-pass problem I went on a mini tour through some of the Blizzard buildings. Unfortunately it was not a Valve-esque tour. It was cool nonetheless to get to poke around a little bit. Papa Johns, Subway, and Red Bull were fueling a gathering outside. I happily gathered a plate of pizza and tried all of the new Red Bull. Red was the best, blue was icky, and silver tasted like gumballs.

I got to shake the hands of some people who I have only talked to online. It was a pleasure to talk to Chanman, Sixen, and many others. The best part of hanging out and enjoying the warm summer day was catching up with those who I already knew. Shindags attempted to start a game of Starcraft Risk. After reading the rules and realizing that there were no grown ups around, we all reconsidered. Clutch was off interviewing Arcturus Mengsk (well the voice actor) infront of the famous orc statue in the middle of the quad.

I decided to finally head inside to see how the stream was going. Day[9] and Husky already finished their first broadcast early in the morning. Now that Europe was ending they were starting their second, longer, run. They have been up for a long time to do this and looked a tad tired.

The broadcast room was a desk for the hosts, two cameras and lights on them. Behind them was a team of 5-6 people running the stream and all of its assets. The back of the room had computers set up to play HotS multiplayer. The rest of the room consisted of chairs and a projector to show what was being pushed to stream. The audience was doing a stellar job and everyone was excited to be there.

Along with GHOSTCLAW I was the only other real shooter taking pictures at the party. All be it there was not a lot to capture. “Real” media was showing up and taking pictures too. This one lady committed the biggest sin of them all by shooting the casters, while they were live, with a flash on. Someone should have sent her to eSports jail. Aside from the awesome clips that were community submitted and playing on stream; some cool interviews happened at the desk. Kevin Knocke reading poems and Mike Morhaime being interviewed were just a few of the high points.

I decided to sit down and play some games of HotS. I launched a game and 5 minutes in I hear Day[9] start to intro what is to be the video that I created for /r/starcraft. He melts my heart with this awesome shout out in the lead-up to showing the video. I was way too distracted to be playing this game, and before I knew it I was floating 2k minerals. I believe the video came off really well. I felt a sigh of relief and happiness breeze over me.

I spent most of the rest of the day outside mingling with more people. Some people confused me for the head of /r/starcraft. Others thanked me for the redesign of the site. All things that I had to deny and give proper credit for. Before I knew it the sun was setting and everyone was starting to pack up to get on the bus that would take us to the mall. As we gathered out things and shuffled around we all received goodie bags from Blizzard. A Starcraft 1 music cd, book, thundersticks, marine figure, and poster all graced our bags. We also learned that when we got back to our car we would get our own signed collectors edition of the game.

Very satisfied with my day I drove back to the mall to see the “real” party. Not knowing that there was still a solid 8 hours of time left before I would be heading home.

8pm – 3am Irvine Spectrum Mall. The “big” party

Getting off the bus I immediately met up with some friends who unfortunately had a problem getting into the VIP event. I dropped my bags and headed for the heart of the mall to see the stage and people. This massive titantron was playing a (pre recorded) state of the game right in front of a ferris wheel. Close to a thousand people were huddled together in a standing room only space. They would remain standing there for about 4 hours while taking in the show to come.

The crowd was diverse. Every age group and race was in attendance. Mothers standing at the very front of the stage all along enjoying the show while picking up the game for her kids. College kids carpooling from all over so cal. Grandfathers, and even Dads bonding with their brood.

With there not being much to do aside from watching the show; I went to the bar (aka restaurant) to mingle more with the likes of Chanman, Odee, the NASL crew, and Blizzard employees. We talked for hours about teams, leagues, pop culture, and everything in between. 10:30 rolled around and we decided to get back out to the crowd. More people have shown up and Suppy was just getting ready to play Vibe in a best of 1 of 3. I took my place by the stage and spend the rest of the show using my camera, while dodging theirs.

The crowd was hyped as the games were played in a very fun and exciting manner. Lots of chatter and banelings were shared. The crowd was fixated on the games. Except for Clutch who has an uncanny ability to find cameras that are pointed at him.

The games ended and the clock was drawing ever closer to midnight.

The last bit of time was filled with interviews and throwing gifts to the crowd. Chris Sigaty, Carbot, and Robert Clotworthy all took to the stage and threw some sick gear to the audience.

Day[9] threw some more things into the crowd before him and husky tempted the audience with the collectors edition of HotS.

The crowd was counting down the seconds to midnight. I watched the stage hands give the players and husky confetti guns as I got ready for what was going to be an epic series of photographs and memories. When the clock hit 0 everyone was going crazy. People were jumping up and down and cheering. Confetti shot through the air as the stage lights went bonkers. Finally HotS was here.

K[9] Said good night to the stream and brought what was a full day of world wide streaming to a close. However things were not done for those in attendance. When the cameras went off the duo stood at the end of the stage and explained how distribution was going to work, how awesome the event was, and how there was still more stuff to toss into the crowd.

The players aided in a lot of the throwing. Mousepads flew left, right, and center. MC tried to fly his far. Polt decided to hand his to a young kid in the front row. Suppy’s flew crooked, eventually tumbling end-over-end and hitting some poor soul in the face.

As they tossed; raffle tickets were drawn to give away processors, video cards, cases, laptops, the works. The people in attendance were showered with gifts. As I walked away a Blizzard dev who I recognized from traveling to Shanghai with him handed me a collectors edition of the game and said thank you. I don’t even know his name, just his face, but you made my day that much better. Thank you. Again. <3

As the sea of people started to thin people were picking up their game. Everyone had a ticket that corresponded to the order they paid for the game in. 1 to 960. You could either take your game and get home, or stick around and get your whatever signed by all of the devs / personalities. This process took a lot longer than I expected it too. I felt sorry for Clutch, Husky, Chris, and others who were sitting there for three hours signing and greeting non stop. It seemed as everyone really enjoyed being able to interact with the team like this. Smiles were the most prevalent thing on this cold late night. When you exited the signing station you were gifted a HotS poster and asked to sign a cardboard HotS display for the team to take back to the offices.

I had to duck out around 1 am to take the bus back to the parking lot. I rode alone as I missed the memo that most people went to get their car earlier. Upon getting back to where I started this adventure the day before I was greeted by the Day[9]tv crew in the back of a windowless van. They were packing up and I was one of the last people to stop by to get their HotS collector edition. I love that gang and happily talked to them for a little bit before I headed back to the mall to say goodbye to fiends there.

After all the good byes I got sucked into chatting with Clutch and Vibe as they continued signing things. I think they were only around #750 at the time. Sitting at the table I got recognized by a few people and was asked to also sign their box. Boy did I feel both shocked and ecstatic, but unworthy to ink my name on this box with the devs. A few of the devs also called me by name. I had copious amounts of joy.

We chatted until the last copy was signed and then picked our tired bodies up and headed to the parking lot. The crew was still breaking down the stage, and the Blizzard team was happy to be headed home. After the last few hugs were dealt out I got in my car and made the hour drive back home to my bed. Which I promptly passed out in with a huge smile on my face.
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It truly was a day that I am going to remember the rest of my life. I really have to thank Day[9], Blizzard, and TL for the event. After driving the hour back home at 3am I passed out only to get right up and play the HotS campaign.

I am looking to a very exciting 2013 in Starcraft and eSports. I am going to keep networking and attending as many events as I can. I love doing event photography and live reporting, but in reality I am not the best at it. Here’s hoping for more opportunities working in the future.

If you would like to keep up to date with everything I am doing you can follow me on twitter @leafeator. Thanks and I wuv you guys~ <3emimg class=”aligncenter” alt=”” src=”http://i.imgur.com/jVpPy2al.jpg” width=”640″ height=”427″ /

Guess who is back with another photoblog / story time post? This guy. I really do enjoy being able to put my thoughts here and share me event experiences with all of you. If this is your first time coming across my blog then I would love to welcome you. Sit down and join me for some tea.
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IPL5, Las Vegas Nov. 29 – Dec. 2

You can find all of my IPL5 photos on my imgur page, at this link!

IPL is a trip that almost did not happen for me. With my friends bailing on me I had no way to make my way from LA -> LV, and nowhere to stay. It is a good thing that everyone in Starcraft is awesome. After a few texts and tweets I made arrangements and found myself driving down to GHOSTCLAW’s house Thursday night. It sucked that we had to miss Thursday at IPL, but a 4 day event is silly long.

After meeting up with Robbie, our ride arrived. Gary, a CSL admin and all around cool kid, showed up in his mother’s lexus SUV. We packed out bags in the back and made out way from UCLA twords Vegas. However we decided that it would be a good idea, at 8pm, before our 4 hour drive to stop and get Ramen in downtown. Needless to say the noodles were gewd, but we did not leave downtown until 11pm. We were not going to get to Vegas for a looooong time.

On our drive up I sat shotgun. This turned out to be very necessary because Gary’s sense of direction was quite subpar. We made our way from the 10 to the 15 as we sang with the radio and chatted. eSports, politics, school, engineering, and Katy Perry were all discussed in detail. GHOSTCLAW download and played a solid 3 hours of Hill Climb Racing for his, now cracked, S3.

We finally made it to Vegas at 3:30am. After parking at the Cosmopolitan we took the elevator up to our rooms. I was calling drazak 100 times over as I was suppose to sleep on his floor. He would not answer so I followed Gary to the room that he was crashing in. I was welcomed in and offered a floor by two guys who I have never seen before in my life. Turns out that one was Cheesehead, a CSL caster and Empire Media, and the other his friend on leave from the Airforce. They were drunk. It was great. I made a bed with the couch cushions and crashed for the night.

Waking up Friday morning we all scantered down stairs to the fourth floor. As soon as we got out of the elevator the amount of people was evident. IPL too over the entire floor, using one wing for sponsors, one as a lounge, and the last as a SC2 / LOL venue. I met up with Paul, the CSL web dev, and got some Panda before picking up our badges and heading on into the venue. We got to walk across the bridge hanging over lv blvd, and take in all the crazies.

Back from food I got my media badge and decided to check out the venue. Already missing a day I was curious what it looked like, as I was not able to see many pictures from inside the hall. When I walked in Scarlet and DRG were playing. Almost all the seats were filled. GOM production was in the corner, Grubby was on stage casting like a boss. The voting scoreboard was front and center, and the casters were flanked by two booths on each side. Not much to do aside from sit and watch the games. The Media pass did not allow us to sit in the first four rows of VIP seats, but it did allow us to sit right in front of the stage. Guess I could not complain about that.

Players were gathered to the right of the stage by the bay of computers set up for them. This is where most of them hung out during the entire event. If they wanted to sit in the VIP area they needed to get a VIP tag themselves, so it was easier for them to hang here. The shitty thing about this is that the lighting to take pictures of them was bollocks. Aside from the standard eSports dark venue which makes taking pictures near impossible, everyone was glowing weird colors like purple, blue, or green. Here is MC in the player pit sporting his sexy purple hue, and his Obama tshirt.

Alex Garfield was also looking like a boss in the player pit attending to his ever so important business. He looks damn good in blue.

A bunch of stars were in the audience. Well eSports star atleast. Joinging the crowd as spectators were the likes of Mike Morhaime, and djWHEAT (Making side-bets, none the less)

I decided to go check out the League room next. They were making a lot of noise. They in fact had the bigger hall, which was a good thing because they needed the seats. They had ~200 more seats than starcraft, and also more people standing. They had a little better lighting too…

I walked in during the middle of a 70+ minuet game. Which is pretty extreme for a moba. Turns out with the delay that the players actually get to turn around to watch the last 30 seconds of the game. You know who wins before the gg. They had a very similar stage setup and was a very fun environment.

I love FPS games. Valve shooters brought me into eSports. With that being said, I am a big fan of Shootmania. The shootmania room had a really small stage and audience, but also a bunch of computers to come play on. Everyone also got a beta key with their IPL pass. The environment was small, but fun. Joshy did a good job casting the games with TB. I spent more time in this room than I care to admit.

On the way back to Starcraft for GSL ro4, I found a wild Hot_Bid. This is what the interviews look like from the other side.

The GSL intros were fucking epic. I actually had chills. Everyone came out and stood under their spotlight. The Korean announcers were on point. John was extra cute.

Artosis was ready

Mr Chea was ready

Definitely the highlight of my day. Tastosis did an awesome job on stage interacting with the crowd. The games were fun. I got to sit three feet in front of the casters and take pictures of the players. I felt spoiled. Ultimately Hyun and Sniper won. Setting up the ZvZ that really, no one wanted.

I went out with Shindigs and his UC Irvine CSL squad to go get some Earl of Sandwiches. Hot Hawaiian was a good choice. Getting to interact with the all of the colorful vegas night-goers was fun too. Really tho, I just love the look and lights of the city.

After playing Mafia until 6 am, I slept in a wee bit too late. I missed all of the IPL happenings on Saturday. I arrived just in time for the opening ceremony for Korea vs World. Shit was going down. Robin marched his players down the isle hoping to snatch victory from the GSL Koreans.

Unfortunately for the world, the Koreans had this in the bag. With the exception of Scarlett and Stephano, the Koreans won out. They were very smug at their table.

After Korea won day 1, everyone got on stage for the camera.

After a little break it was GSL Finals time. This was the most crowded that the venue got. Everyont was piling in to watch Tastosis cast a GSL Finals on American soil. Both of these players have been waiting all day for their chance at the trophy.

Sniper making his way down the isle

Hyun on stage ready for battle

Tasteless being sexy, as always. His interaction with the live audience really made the finals that much more awesome. Joking and doing call / response with the crowd just raised everyone’s excitement levels.

Now Sniper did win. Congrats to him. That kid was in so much shock coming out of the both that he was shaking. Hands on face, tears in eyes, he won the highest prize in the land of Starcraft.

With every winner comes a loser, and it was heartbreaking looking at Hyun in his booth.

With the night over we all went to KBBQ. JoRoSar owed GHOSTCLAW dinner from an old bet. Turns out 40 of us walked down to this hole-in-the-wall scary 24 hr kbbq place. We found Korean players, GOM staff, and a bunch of other friends here. We ordered a lot of food. However our table got the wrong order. With the waitress coming back after we finish eating in a panic telling us “NO WAIT, THIS IS YOUR ORDER!” we were a bit scared to find out what we really ate. And that’s the story of how I ate tongue for the first time.

We all went back to the fourth floor to play some more mafia. Jorosar joined us and got his mafia beak wet. He really enjoyed it, and tweeted a bunch of panoramic of us playing. Untill 6 am, again. Bad call. It is hard to balance eSports work with getting to hang out with these wonderful friends that you make.

Kiett also decided to take a bunch of pictures of me playing. Stone cold Mafia killer over here. Just ask Shindigs.

When Gary and me got back to our room we found our roommates to still be up. Cam was bleeding all over the place. He had a nasty cut on his nose and above his eye. He was so drunk from the club that he tripped in the bathroom. After tending to him and getting him to bed, I did not get to pass out on my comfy floor until about seven am. w00t.

Sunday started for me with the Brothers Spain trying to take down the Koreans in all-kill format and send the show-match into an ace match.

Even with Stephano trying for his reverse all kill, it was kinda hopeless

The Koreans won 2-0. We were ready for IPL finals.

At this point TB came upon stage and hyped the shit out of the crowd. This was needed because most of the media staff was falling asleep on the right side of the stage. This was not helped by Leenock and Violet playing all 8 of their games. We actually thought we might have gotten out of their early Sunday….lol

Leenock and Violet hugging it out before the finals

However 8 games later, the winner arose

Polt is beautiful. I have a man crush on him.

IPL Top 3 posing

I stuck around after everyone cleared out to talk to some people. The GOM staff all lined up on stage for a photo. Was really happy that by change I was able to snag it and share it with everyone who wanted to thank them for the awesome job they did over the four days.

So the event was over. Twitch had an after party at the hotel bar. That was really cool until I found out that they carded at the door. #under21problems. I got to hang out with the other youngins until the party moved to the downstairs open bar. I was able to interact and mingle with everyone there. The night gets a little fuzzy after that part. I just remember getting to hang out with a lot of people, talk, and hugging Artosis. After getting kicked off the casino floor really early in the morning, we talked on the fourth floor for a bit before calling it a night. Sadly Julian did not last too long

The next morning we all arose in our tired state. Had some buffet and left vegas around 4pm. GHOSTCLAW slept, Gary and me sang along with the radio on our trip home.

NASL4, Long Beach Dec. 8 – Dec. 94

You can find all of my NASL4 photos on my imgur page, at this link!

NASL was a completely different beast than IPL. Aside from going from Vegas in a convention hall to a theater in Long Beach…I was no longer just Media picture boy. Now I was volunteer dood on the production wall.

Normally I take thousands of pictures during an event. I was not able to do that. My duty here was to make sure that every piece of media out of game (Segments, back-from-commercial videos, and so on) were played with the correct sound and able to be broadcast to the stream. Everything went smoothly as I have worked with a lot of the NASL guys before. After all they really are the ones who put my foot in this proverbial eSports door.

I arrived Friday night driving from Ventura CA to Long Beach CA. Normally a 75 minuet drive that took over two hours. Anyone familiar with LA traffic will know why. I arrived twords the end of rehearsal. Everything was set up and we were just practicing for tomorrow. I got to snag some pictures of the venue to release.

I drove back to Van Nuys to sleep at my grandmothers house. Gas < hotel. After catching a few winks I headed back out to Long Beach for the 9am call time. We had to delay starting the show an hour, and admittedly got off to a rocky start. We were startled by some things but kept on pushing through. The crew is tight nit and very kin to a family. I really love being back stage with everyone involved. The production wall consisted of about 12 people in total, so we were all working our asses off. It was good to see the show get started.

Everyone was huttled backstage working on the next move and watching the games being played. All of the players and interviews were taking place under the stage in the dressing room areas. Directly behind the stage was where the production was going on, along with the PC’s for the FFA.

Fierce Fitness Happened.

Mr. Bitter enjoyed it a lot.

Soe does an amazing job in her couch/corner doing interviews. She is also a very pretty and funny lady. If you ever get the chance you should say hi to her.

Rotti also adds some sex appeal to back stage

Gretorp catching some Z’s

Ken was a great addition to the NASL staff. He sacrificed a lot to move down from Canada to SoCal to help eSports.

Lauren and Chance are the real sex appeal of the show. They are also BFF’s. Chance is actually an immaculately trained dog. Morgan, the director, treats him like a king.

Violet rounded off Day 1 punching his ticket to the grand finals Sunday. It was a long day working and waiting. I drove back to grandmas for the night, excited for the events of Day 2.

So we started off arriving a little later day 2. We were all in our rhythm and ready to roll out. The day started off with White-Ra and Ret playing their HOTS show match. Both of these guys are personal friends of mine. Hell I am the Liquid`Ret fan club head. I should update that. Alex kicked the shit out of Jos. It was the first time I really watched HOTS play.

the FFA was coming up. The last bit of silly before the serious finals time. We knew how epic it was going to be, but not how viral it turned out. The viewer ship peeked during this time, and everyone loved the interaction between the players on stream. The combination of casters / cameras on the players / the players willingness to be silly with each other hit a home run.

After the FFA break, the mood shifted. It was no longer time for silly segments and laughs. It was time for the NASL Grand Finals. This was serious. HerO was the hero we deserved. I looked over to Elliot (the bad ass who is responsible for almost everything that goes out to stream. He is the man technically producing the show.) and told him that I was going to run off now to go take pictures. He couldnt really say no to me. Now here a bunch of pictures from the championship celebration.

After the finals ended and clean up stopped we went to Roscos. Dat shit gewwwwd. Silverfire had chicken liver, and that was discussing. Everything else was wonderful. The rest of the staff went off to PF Changs to have some drinks. Eventually we all met back up in the hotel lobby. Players, staff, fans, and insiders all mingled over some Makers Mark, 151, and coke. This went on until we got a bit too rambunctious and had to take the party upstairs. Mr. Bitter told a story about turtles for about 15 minuets. Unfortunately I had to say my goodbyes and drive home. I arrived back home at 5:30. A 60 minuet drive greeted by the sun rising. I slept for 13 hours.

There are a shit ton of pictures that I did not post here because they have no context. I like a lot of them. If you would like to see them, this is a link to the imgur page that houses all of the event pictures.

Again, since I had a job this event I did not get to do a lot of shooting. QQ, I need as much practice as I can get. If you would like to see more photos please check out my friend’s albums. Carlton, the ESFI Guy & Silverfire/Ghostclaw/itsjustatake, the TL guys. Both have really good stuff.
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There is a part of me that is happy now that I can spend the rest of 2012 relaxing with my family, and focus on other parts of my life. It is not long before the tournament scene will be back in full swing for 2013. I hope that I get to attend more events next year. I love networking and meeting new faces, along with getting to shake hands of those who I have spent hundreds of hours of my life watching. Maybe if I am really lucky I could get a job in the scene. Twitch just put out a new listing for a “Content Manager,” and god damnit I feel like I fit their requirements well.

I hope that you all had a great year. 2013 is looking bright for not just Starcraft, but eSports on a whole. Trying my hardest to suppress the cynical side of me that is concerned of a “bubble.” I hope to be able to meet more of you in the future.

If you would like to follow me on twitter to keep current with everything I am doing, you can find me @leafeator. Thanks for reading. I wuv you <3