Smob's blog#4

Hey guys, I am Smob.

This is my fourth blog, I have been on vacation much for the past month so I haven't made a blog in a while. I came up with an idea of how to spend some of my last year of being a college student to give back to the community. Before, you know, life moves on.

In case this is the first blog of mine you've seen... I am an amateur SC2 player and commentator, and have been involved in the Starcraft scene for some time now. I play in the CSL for the San Diego State Starcraft team and compete regularly in local tournaments.

Over this Summer I have improved leaps and bounds in my play. I can say this with confidence as I have been beating players I could not touch before. I have beat a few GMs at various LANs and I have started to ladder against rank 25+ Masters players on the Korean server.I have been in Masters since the first Season, and I think largely the reason I have not yet made it into GM is my lack of games played between working, school, gf and other things. I have made it easily into Masters playing all races as I bounced back and forth between them and finally settled as Terran.
My gf is going away for a year to finish school so I will have a lot more time on my hands for starcraft. I have done coaching before, they all went really well and if you search on TL for "sm0b" you can find a nice review someone did for me (I didn't ask him to) after I coached for them. I have casted here and there for different tournaments with a good friend of mine who is a popular Shout Caster in the Tribes community (guitar guy).

So, I am considering doing live analysis of my own replays and that of others instead of just doing more coaching. Now before I get a lot of people saying I'm trying to steal any ideas from some current popular podcasters (Day9, Artosis, etc.) let me say this... I am only as good as I am because I have learned from others. There's really not a better way to learn than to learn from what others, or better yet better players, have to say about the game. I learned more from Day9 and his dailies that I ever could have hoped to learn on my own, and when I got into the community Day9 had just started his podcasts and they were so helpful. I really wished there was more. I feel now though, that Day9's daily podcast has before more about entertainment than it really has about learning and I totally understand why, Day9 wants to be more than just a nerd talking about Starcraft and all he does for this community is great.

But I found myself running out of places to turn for solid replays analysis from respectable players. Artosis doesn't really do his show anymore (and it was a really good learning tool), and some of the other videos online come from people who are popular as casters but don't know the game that well.

Most people have probably not heard about me, as I don't have a lot of tournament results (although I am working very hard to change this) and I'm not really a big name in the community. I just love talking about Starcraft, and going over strategies in general, I think I have a lot I can teach to players Masters and below. I have been told I am a good teacher and I make complex things seem very simple. As I said before, I am a Terran player so my first few podcasts would probably be TvX's but I know a lot about the match ups and could cover them as well.

So now to the reason for this post, I want to know if the community would be interested in this... I would try to release a couple podcasts a week going over things like: strong builds in the current meta, my own replays (from replays that I think are good learning examples), any pro play that I think is very important to the meta, or even user submitted replays.

I get a great deal of happiness knowing I have helped another person out and I think I can help a lot of Starcraft players get to a level of play that they can begin to be competitive. I'm not going to advertise, I have no sponsor backing me, I intend to make no money off of this, I just want to talk about Starcraft, what I've learned as a player and a competitor, and hopefully help you guys out with your own strategies.

Anyways, please leave a comment here if you feel like this is something I should pursue. If you feel like this is something that would not help the community and should not pursue, let me know that too.

Thanks guys :D

TL DR: Would the community like another in depth analysis podcast from a higher level player? Much like the Artosis hour or like how the Day[9] daily used to be.

EDIT: I realized I never updated the title, whoops >.<

Last edit: 2012-07-24 15:23:22

docvoc United States. July 24 2012 22:54. Posts 3475

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Its really all about how you present yourself, tbh, the only reason those shows got off the ground was because the players were pro and then they stayed popular because of the two's personality. IF you can emulate/have the second part of that statement, with some good marketing you are golden. If you only have the first part, you are pretty fucked when it comes to being an internet personality.

User was warned for too many mimes.

sm0b United States. July 25 2012 00:53. Posts 150

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On July 24 2012 22:54 docvoc wrote:
Its really all about how you present yourself, tbh, the only reason those shows got off the ground was because the players were pro and then they stayed popular because of the two's personality. IF you can emulate/have the second part of that statement, with some good marketing you are golden. If you only have the first part, you are pretty fucked when it comes to being an internet personality.

Thanks for the advice! I'll try to not make he pod casts too dull

I'm not really going into this hoping it takes off and I become some famous SC2 dude, I just want to talk about Starcraft and try to help out the community. I think I have a decent voice and I present myself pretty well, I know how to talk to people.

I'm going to record it later tonight so hopefully I should be able to post a link by tomorrow.

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