--- edit:a lot of casters replied to this thread! enjoy!
BW: What ever happened to Klazart, Diggity, Moletrap (p8), Cholera, Nukethestars, Vaul, Greth, Sayle, SC2GG the website, Psyonic_Reaver, Rise, Rapid, Violetak, SC2GGRise, TL.net and many more BroodWar era casters and personalities!
Klazart was an incredible caster. Last I heard, his wife was giving him a hard time for dedicating time to SC instead of his writing career. No idea about Moletrap, though. Guess I haven't missed him.
All of the casters of the foreign scene left bw in 2008-2009 like , moletrap, diggity, greth, nukethestars, ranshin, rise, and never came back to the scene. sucks cus i think the korean pros were aware that america was watching what they do and it made from better match play for people to watch. Now english speaking bw players or fans have to suffer through artosis or tasteless shitty analysis and unspirited efforts from the boys of korea. its a shame really. possibly its related to the death of sc2gg.com and most of the real people behind these online personalities entering their late 20's/ 30s an stopped caring cause it does take some time and effort to cast bw games.
On May 28 2017 05:59 josephmcjoe wrote: Klazart was an incredible caster. Last I heard, his wife was giving him a hard time for dedicating time to SC instead of his writing career. No idea about Moletrap, though. Guess I haven't missed him.
What I liked about klazart is I felt he was like a Korean caster but in English lol. He spoke really fast and when games got crazy he got crazy as well
Moletrap went to cast sc2 in korea, was hated by almost all viewers. He left gom and did some stuff with OGN for a while. But that must have been like 3-4 years ago now, I don't know what he is up to now.
I do not want to share too much as I respect people's privacy so I'll just give brief blurbs of what I last heard about most of the YouTube casters from back in my time casting. I still have contact with some of them.
Klazart left to focus on his writing. Diggity was the one who had last contact with him I think.
Moletrap is currently living in California. He misses casting. He's found another line of work I believe.
Diggity is focusing on his work career and his family.
Cholera became a lawyer back pre-2010'ish I believe.
Not sure where Nuke went his last video is only 5 months old. I'm sure he's still around.
Vaul is a ? for me as well. He was around and then suddenly was not anymore.
On May 28 2017 06:16 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: I do not want to share too much as I respect people's privacy so I'll just give brief blurbs of what I last heard about most of the YouTube casters from back in my time casting. I still have contact with some of them.
Klazart left to focus on his writing. Diggity was the one who had last contact with him I think.
Moletrap is currently living in California. He misses casting. He's found another line of work I believe.
Diggity is focusing on his work career and his family.
Cholera became a lawyer back pre-2010'ish I believe.
Not sure where Nuke went his last video is only 5 months old. I'm sure he's still around.
Vaul is a ? for me as well. He was around and then suddenly was not anymore.
Greth is still putting out stuff.
Oh thanks a ton Psyonic_Reaver! The insider caster perspective :0
Didn't mind moletrap, was subscribed to him on youtube when he was active in BW. Cholera was good. Can't remember the others but if i heard them i might recall their voice.
If you guys have ever seen Klazart's last video he sounds so tired. I'd definitely say though he was one of the most colorful casters with his background in writing.
On May 28 2017 11:29 Ty2 wrote: If you guys have ever seen Klazart's last video he sounds so tired. I'd definitely say though he was one of the most colorful casters with his background in writing.
I remember thinking he had just been crying or something tbh, but that was years ago
Klazart and diggity were the best. Klazart was the closest we had to Korean commentators in terms of intensity and passion. Though later on (2010?) you could tell that he was not following the scene very closely any more and he was not up to date.
But I did enjoy watching moletrap and cholera's commentaries too.
I really enjoyed Cholera and Greth, for vastly different reasons. Nuke did some cool hype videos for starleagues + Show Spoiler +
though I felt his casting was aimed at more of an entry-level audience. Klazart was fun to listen to and a massive Savior fanboy, so that might have also contributed to him leaving casting behind.
I asked him like last year that with BW back on the rise in popularity if he would ever come back and do casts and he said he wouldn't because there's already enough English talent out there right now with Tastosis/Rapid coming back and I'm assuming with Bisudagger at the time holding up the other casting mantle in the English community.
On May 28 2017 14:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: I forgot about Rise. Him and I talked a few times back then but we never kept in touch. I don't know where he's at.
For those that remember PeanutSC she works at Blizzard now.
What have you been up to Psy? Haven't talked to you much since WCG USA.....2007? Insane to me that was almost 10 years ago now.
On May 28 2017 05:59 josephmcjoe wrote: Klazart was an incredible caster. Last I heard, his wife was giving him a hard time for dedicating time to SC instead of his writing career. No idea about Moletrap, though. Guess I haven't missed him.
time to ditch the wife.
He obviously (or at least 'seemingly') enjoyed it and did it with passion. Anybody who diverts a person from what they enjoy doing deserves a boot from that persons life.
On May 28 2017 14:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: I forgot about Rise. Him and I talked a few times back then but we never kept in touch. I don't know where he's at.
For those that remember PeanutSC she works at Blizzard now.
What have you been up to Psy? Haven't talked to you much since WCG USA.....2007? Insane to me that was almost 10 years ago now.
Working. Raising my 2 kids on my own. All the fun stuff that involves. Still playing BW and currently player unknown battlegrounds. Not much time for gaming these days though
I'm still here. Standing on the ashes of the SC2GG throne, worshipping the lost Gods of Battlereports.com and paying tribute to the elders of ~NoHunters by herding newbies into a cult named in their honour.
But I was never one for proper casting, I've always been the silly Belgian. Hoping to catch some of that remastered limelight...
One of my favorite casting moments was when someone tried to impersonate klazart during the TL vs GG.net showmatch. "Or it could be a fast expand you never know" TL vs GG
On May 29 2017 09:22 Iankill wrote: One of my favorite casting moments was when someone tried to impersonate klazart during the TL vs GG.net showmatch. "Or it could be a fast expand you never know" TL vs GG
You're forgetting the best BW caster of all time, Sayle. In terms of importance, he's probably less important than the guys who came before him, like Klazzart, Cholera, Nuke, etc.. But his knowledge of the game was amazing, and he had a period (2011. I think) when he was casting like a maniac, he casted ALL proleague games for a while I think.
I heard Moletrap was arrested. He led hundreds of police, state troopers, SWAT teams, firefighters, and National Guardsmen in a high-speed chase to Chicago, trying to deliver the funds to save an orphanage. He was successful before he was apprehended.
On May 31 2017 09:04 NukeTheStars wrote: I heard Moletrap was arrested. He led hundreds of police, state troopers, SWAT teams, firefighters, and National Guardsmen in a high-speed chase to Chicago, trying to deliver the funds to save an orphanage. He was successful before he was apprehended.
Now I realise this is a blues brothers reference, but I can't quite figure out how you've related Moletrap to it haha.
I'm going out on a limb and pick at an old scab. And maybe others could throw out their two cents.
I will only speak about klaz, diggity, moletrap and myself in this regards because I've never spoken to the other casters about this.
We got a LOT of hate. I mean it was brutal at times here on TL and GG. I could go back and dig up old threads where we were constantly torn apart but it's funny reading more recent threads in the past 2/3 years and people miss them/me and wish we would do more for BW again. The reason we stopped is that the voices yelling NO were louder than the voices yelling YES. We almost NEVER got positive feedback in any meaningful way. We'd get a thumbs up or a "nice cast!" but then pages and pages and pages of hate. That's why Klaz finally made the decision to truly stop casting. Yes, his writing/family was priority but the negativity finally got to him. As it did to us all eventually.
Are people just looking through rose colored glasses here?
All we did when we did what we did. We did for the love of the game and we would stay up night after night learning the game as best we could watching Korean games, talking to pro players, I even started practicing with the pro American players to gain better player insight but none of our passion seemed to matter. If we weren't tasteless/artosis, we were shit and that was that despite the leaps we had made.
In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Does anyone have any insight on that?
*checks TL join date*
uh, yup. I think the first pro matches I watched were nukethestars and petzergling (maybe?) casts of an MSL back before I knew what an MSL was. (Or maybe it was an OSL?)
I've loved it ever since, so hopefully that's a glimmer of light in the negativity. :/
I know exactly what you mean about negativity towards casters, I think most of us have been guilty of it at one point or another. When you're passionate about something it's easy for that to spill over, but that doesn't make it ok. I can see how hard that would be.
This is bringing up stuff that happened 10 years ago and as only an observer at the time my memories are a bit hazy, I used only lurk back then. It's tricky to write about and I know you know a lot of the history there too but for context I'm going to describe what I remember of those events too. I don't want to open up a can of worms though, we have moved on a lot.
Firstly I don't think people are looking through rose-tinted lenses. I'm sure you perceived you got a lot of hate but the people who criticise you are always going to be louder than those that enjoy it but just watch it and keep quite. The early commentators generally were popular, checking VioleTAK there Klazart, Diggity and Moletrap triple commentary videos have 10k-40k views. In 2007/2008 these are big numbers.
When Klazart started in 2007 I believe Superiorwolf was also commentating. As far as I remember they used both be active on TL and both received a good amount of support with a lot of constructive criticism. Kalzart was more popular but he didn't actively play the game (he had RSI in his wrist) and people would criticise his game knowledge. My memory is that initially some BW vets didn't like that but in general I think people were willing to help, and some were more diplomatic than others.
After Klaz took a break that summer Moletrap and Diggity both started and as they knew each other the used work together a bit and then Klaz came back too. Again they were all criticised for a lack of analysis, they were all familiar with the scene but some things that all of them used to say were incorrect.
I think you are correct in saying these English commentaries brought a lot of new people to BW and I would guess this increased casual viewership a lot. They were also inspiring more commentators to try their hand at it. However it was again mostly people who did not actively play so the analysis still wasn't great and this is what caused a lot of the hate. It wasn't just one person who you could help out and point things out, it was getting uncontrollable. This was getting vets to feel like the whole thing was bad for the scene as it was attracting new viewers but giving them wrong analysis, whereas the commentators felt like work they were pouring hours into each day was constantly being put down.
I think what set it all off is when Diggity asked if someone could point out 100 things he said that were wrong. After a thread (that has now been galleried) here did this things escalated quickly (there were a lot of angry and emotional posts and I think Klaz in particular took it very personally). To them it felt like the commentators and their fans against the rest. This is what started SC2GG.
SC2GG tried to attract a lot of casual viewers and I think there was an anti-TL attitude there because of what you described. TL was similarly quite dismissive of SC2GG (there was also some other stuff going on between staff too). However later there were some commentators who really tried to mend this divide, Cholera in particular was one who encouraged a healthy rivalry.
Also you have to remember that TL was a small enough place in 2007, a lot of the vets knew each other and were friends. Not getting one or two of them on your side was a bad idea. Now you can't really get away with caster-bashing and in general this is a much more diplomatic place than it used be because the number of users exploded after SC2 was released.
One other thing that happened in May 2007 was the announcement of SC2 so that might have brought more attention to the pro-scene and also brought more interest/viewers but I think those commentaries and the access to better streams and more regular VoDs helped a lot too.
Anyway I'm sorry to hear that 10 years on you still feel like you were treated badly, I think all those commentators were more popular than you are making out there (as can be seen from VoD views and subscriber counts). The community was a lot more volatile and a lot less mature. As it was smaller too you had more clear-cut factions.
In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Does anyone have any insight on that?
Psy – I actually liked your content in particular. I don’t think I ever posted that anywhere, so I suppose I was part of the problem. Unfortunately, it is much more common for people with negative comments to feel the need to post complaints in forums and on videos than people that actually enjoyed the content. I can imagine as a content creator, all that constant negativity must wear you down. But, you guys definitely helped bring the scene along.
As for Moletrap, I feel like he received a lot of criticism for saying things about the gamestate or units during his casts (in SC2) that were just plain incorrect. Otherwise I don’t know what there was to complain about with him; you could tell he had passion for the game.
On May 31 2017 08:11 Vuk_91 wrote: You're forgetting the best BW caster of all time, Sayle. In terms of importance, he's probably less important than the guys who came before him, like Klazzart, Cholera, Nuke, etc.. But his knowledge of the game was amazing, and he had a period (2011. I think) when he was casting like a maniac, he casted ALL proleague games for a while I think.
yeah, Sayle was the best. His ironic commentary and game knowledge was so good. Hope he returns someday!
On May 31 2017 08:11 Vuk_91 wrote: You're forgetting the best BW caster of all time, Sayle. In terms of importance, he's probably less important than the guys who came before him, like Klazzart, Cholera, Nuke, etc.. But his knowledge of the game was amazing, and he had a period (2011. I think) when he was casting like a maniac, he casted ALL proleague games for a while I think.
yeah, Sayle was the best. His ironic commentary and game knowledge was so good. Hope he returns someday!
wasn't sayle ranked pretty high on iccup once? B if iirc. he definately outclassed everyone in game knowledge but i also think everyone brought in something special.
what we're missing in the sc community IMO is pimpest plays, highlights, funny progamer moments. these things circulated youtube and inspired a lot of people to invest in learning BW back in the day
On May 31 2017 19:46 Crimson)S(hadow wrote: my favorites were klazart and sayle
Hehehe I remember when i beat sayle on stream
I think part of the reason why I got into competitive brood war was because of these casters... looking back, how else would I have gotten in the scene?
I was a kid going into high school at the time and there was just no way I would have ever gotten into brood war like that... don't downplay your guys' roles Psy... there will always be haters in anything you do.
If it wasn't for you guys getting me into brood war, I would have never gotten into map making because that's where I saw the maps where pros played the game. I studied them religiously as a young kid for some reason, and even now I can recall by memory most KeSPA maps with a good degree of accuracy. I would have never joined BWMN back in 2008, I would have never made those maps that got into the ICCup mappool, I would have never contributed for tournament map packs, and definitely would have not gotten the opportunity to come back from my few years break and submit a map to ASL...
Sometimes all you can do is look back at the legacy you created, directly or indirectly, and know that things are different because of what you did. Whether you knew it or not, you touched people's lives by getting them into this impossible-to-let-go game.
Thnx psyonic_reaver for you and the rest of the caster's efforts. I still remember going to sc2gg before ever looking through TL ( I always thought TL was a weird website lol ), and you also helped me to remember that game between you and cholera on plasma
On May 31 2017 16:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: I'm going out on a limb and pick at an old scab. And maybe others could throw out their two cents.
I will only speak about klaz, diggity, moletrap and myself in this regards because I've never spoken to the other casters about this.
We got a LOT of hate. I mean it was brutal at times here on TL and GG. I could go back and dig up old threads where we were constantly torn apart but it's funny reading more recent threads in the past 2/3 years and people miss them/me and wish we would do more for BW again. The reason we stopped is that the voices yelling NO were louder than the voices yelling YES. We almost NEVER got positive feedback in any meaningful way. We'd get a thumbs up or a "nice cast!" but then pages and pages and pages of hate. That's why Klaz finally made the decision to truly stop casting. Yes, his writing/family was priority but the negativity finally got to him. As it did to us all eventually.
Are people just looking through rose colored glasses here?
All we did when we did what we did. We did for the love of the game and we would stay up night after night learning the game as best we could watching Korean games, talking to pro players, I even started practicing with the pro American players to gain better player insight but none of our passion seemed to matter. If we weren't tasteless/artosis, we were shit and that was that despite the leaps we had made.
In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Does anyone have any insight on that?
Dude, I only got in to BW in the first place because of guys like you. I was just a kid who loved Starcraft and who stumbled upon a couple of videos. I thought it was weird, and too foreign to understand, but when I found English commentary, it helped me understand some and them learn to love it.
It's an unfortunate part of human nature that people who are angry are always going to say stuff and be louder than people being positive. But I wouldn'tve found a passion/become a writer for TL/had hours and hours of fun playing this game without the english casters. You guys got a lot of hate, but that's because jerks are just louder. There were loads of people who appreciated what you all did - I can guarantee it.
I think some of the reason casters get hate is because casting is hard. Casting alone is harder. It's very easy to give no insight and just repeat what you're seeing. Some TL/GG users who knew the game very very well didn't like that. Fact is, it wasn't for them, and they should have known that and just closed their mouths.
Maybe rose tinted glasses is bang on the money but I have nothing but good memories and respect for all mentioned in this thread. It is a real shame to hear that they got so much hate. I find it hard to believe.
On May 31 2017 16:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: I'm going out on a limb and pick at an old scab. And maybe others could throw out their two cents.
I will only speak about klaz, diggity, moletrap and myself in this regards because I've never spoken to the other casters about this.
We got a LOT of hate. I mean it was brutal at times here on TL and GG. I could go back and dig up old threads where we were constantly torn apart but it's funny reading more recent threads in the past 2/3 years and people miss them/me and wish we would do more for BW again. The reason we stopped is that the voices yelling NO were louder than the voices yelling YES. We almost NEVER got positive feedback in any meaningful way. We'd get a thumbs up or a "nice cast!" but then pages and pages and pages of hate. That's why Klaz finally made the decision to truly stop casting. Yes, his writing/family was priority but the negativity finally got to him. As it did to us all eventually.
Are people just looking through rose colored glasses here?
All we did when we did what we did. We did for the love of the game and we would stay up night after night learning the game as best we could watching Korean games, talking to pro players, I even started practicing with the pro American players to gain better player insight but none of our passion seemed to matter. If we weren't tasteless/artosis, we were shit and that was that despite the leaps we had made.
In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Does anyone have any insight on that?
I think what remains is a community of generally nicer people. I'm no top tier caster, but I get positive feedback and PMs all the time when I cast stuff. It's what has inspired me to keep at it for half a decade. There have been many times where I question my commitment and people randomly send me a PM that motivates me back into gear. The people who listen now really do care a lot more and want to encourage everyone instead of tearing them down. I know about all the comments you are referring too and I think those people have simply drifted away or grown up.
On May 31 2017 08:11 Vuk_91 wrote: You're forgetting the best BW caster of all time, Sayle. In terms of importance, he's probably less important than the guys who came before him, like Klazzart, Cholera, Nuke, etc.. But his knowledge of the game was amazing, and he had a period (2011. I think) when he was casting like a maniac, he casted ALL proleague games for a while I think.
yeah, Sayle was the best. His ironic commentary and game knowledge was so good. Hope he returns someday!
wasn't sayle ranked pretty high on iccup once? B if iirc. he definately outclassed everyone in game knowledge but i also think everyone brought in something special.
what we're missing in the sc community IMO is pimpest plays, highlights, funny progamer moments. these things circulated youtube and inspired a lot of people to invest in learning BW back in the day
I think he was like a B- player who once hit B, or something like that...But I don't even think that this fact tells the whole story, there are some B players who just have perfect mechanics and overwhelm you with macro. Sayle wasn't one of them, game knowledge was his strong point.
Personally I'm not a fan of highlights, pimpest plays etc., but I do agree that those kinds of things bring people to BW.
On May 31 2017 16:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: I'm going out on a limb and pick at an old scab. And maybe others could throw out their two cents.
I will only speak about klaz, diggity, moletrap and myself in this regards because I've never spoken to the other casters about this.
We got a LOT of hate. I mean it was brutal at times here on TL and GG. I could go back and dig up old threads where we were constantly torn apart but it's funny reading more recent threads in the past 2/3 years and people miss them/me and wish we would do more for BW again. The reason we stopped is that the voices yelling NO were louder than the voices yelling YES. We almost NEVER got positive feedback in any meaningful way. We'd get a thumbs up or a "nice cast!" but then pages and pages and pages of hate. That's why Klaz finally made the decision to truly stop casting. Yes, his writing/family was priority but the negativity finally got to him. As it did to us all eventually.
Are people just looking through rose colored glasses here?
All we did when we did what we did. We did for the love of the game and we would stay up night after night learning the game as best we could watching Korean games, talking to pro players, I even started practicing with the pro American players to gain better player insight but none of our passion seemed to matter. If we weren't tasteless/artosis, we were shit and that was that despite the leaps we had made.
In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Does anyone have any insight on that?
Hey you guys shouldn't take the negative feedback too seriously. I'm pretty sure for every negative post there are 10 silent people who support you guys. And I'm truly thankful for all the work you guys put into getting people interested in BW. Think it was through klazart that I got into the BW scene and I can't thank him enough!
I was definitely never as big as any of the guys listed here, but I will admit that I stopped casting because of the negative feedback outweighed the positive. I was also 17 and an idiot and didn't play the game or invest time talking to others like Psyionic is describing, but I can attest to what he is talking about.
On May 31 2017 16:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: I'm going out on a limb and pick at an old scab. And maybe others could throw out their two cents.
I will only speak about klaz, diggity, moletrap and myself in this regards because I've never spoken to the other casters about this.
We got a LOT of hate. I mean it was brutal at times here on TL and GG. I could go back and dig up old threads where we were constantly torn apart but it's funny reading more recent threads in the past 2/3 years and people miss them/me and wish we would do more for BW again. The reason we stopped is that the voices yelling NO were louder than the voices yelling YES. We almost NEVER got positive feedback in any meaningful way. We'd get a thumbs up or a "nice cast!" but then pages and pages and pages of hate. That's why Klaz finally made the decision to truly stop casting. Yes, his writing/family was priority but the negativity finally got to him. As it did to us all eventually.
Are people just looking through rose colored glasses here?
All we did when we did what we did. We did for the love of the game and we would stay up night after night learning the game as best we could watching Korean games, talking to pro players, I even started practicing with the pro American players to gain better player insight but none of our passion seemed to matter. If we weren't tasteless/artosis, we were shit and that was that despite the leaps we had made.
In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Does anyone have any insight on that?
Always appreciated everything you did in bw back then. <3
On May 31 2017 23:11 RainmanMP wrote: I was definitely never as big as any of the guys listed here, but I will admit that I stopped casting because of the negative feedback outweighed the positive. I was also 17 and an idiot and didn't play the game or invest time talking to others like Psyionic is describing, but I can attest to what he is talking about.
Sounds like the negativity directed to you was deserved then, no?
That said, generally speaking, there was a lot of negativity in the BW scene back in the day across the spectrum. I know it drove a ton of volunteers away from various sites including myself (WGT, PGT, ICCup, etc.).
Well, with SC2 being out, being loved and now starting to get really, really boring - I think there will be at least a few months of big interest in SC:BW content. Also the old generation will at least be happy to get some of the nostalgia back and won't complain as much. The new kids won't even know about old stuff.
I for one am hoping that you guys will at least do some commemorative content, if not more.
On May 31 2017 08:11 Vuk_91 wrote: You're forgetting the best BW caster of all time, Sayle. In terms of importance, he's probably less important than the guys who came before him, like Klazzart, Cholera, Nuke, etc.. But his knowledge of the game was amazing, and he had a period (2011. I think) when he was casting like a maniac, he casted ALL proleague games for a while I think.
yeah, Sayle was the best. His ironic commentary and game knowledge was so good. Hope he returns someday!
After a stressful day I still like to load up old Sayle casts and listen to him while I lay in bed.
Maybe it's the Disney singalongs or something but the whole atmosphere of his casts is somehow relaxing to me.
On May 31 2017 16:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: I'm going out on a limb and pick at an old scab. And maybe others could throw out their two cents.
I will only speak about klaz, diggity, moletrap and myself in this regards because I've never spoken to the other casters about this.
We got a LOT of hate. I mean it was brutal at times here on TL and GG. I could go back and dig up old threads where we were constantly torn apart but it's funny reading more recent threads in the past 2/3 years and people miss them/me and wish we would do more for BW again. The reason we stopped is that the voices yelling NO were louder than the voices yelling YES. We almost NEVER got positive feedback in any meaningful way. We'd get a thumbs up or a "nice cast!" but then pages and pages and pages of hate. That's why Klaz finally made the decision to truly stop casting. Yes, his writing/family was priority but the negativity finally got to him. As it did to us all eventually.
Are people just looking through rose colored glasses here?
All we did when we did what we did. We did for the love of the game and we would stay up night after night learning the game as best we could watching Korean games, talking to pro players, I even started practicing with the pro American players to gain better player insight but none of our passion seemed to matter. If we weren't tasteless/artosis, we were shit and that was that despite the leaps we had made.
In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Does anyone have any insight on that?
I remember being so mad at the guys criticizing you. But even then Im sure a lot more people loved your content than not. Most people who enjoyed it were probably silent. I was definetly the most vocal when I had to defend klazart here on TL. Im still greatfull to this day for all the work you guys put in. Especially klaz. I love that guy.
On May 31 2017 17:54 moktira wrote: This is bringing up stuff that happened 10 years ago and as only an observer at the time my memories are a bit hazy, I used only lurk back then. It's tricky to write about and I know you know a lot of the history there too but for context I'm going to describe what I remember of those events too. I don't want to open up a can of worms though, we have moved on a lot.
Firstly I don't think people are looking through rose-tinted lenses. I'm sure you perceived you got a lot of hate but the people who criticise you are always going to be louder than those that enjoy it but just watch it and keep quite. The early commentators generally were popular, checking VioleTAK there Klazart, Diggity and Moletrap triple commentary videos have 10k-40k views. In 2007/2008 these are big numbers.
When Klazart started in 2007 I believe Superiorwolf was also commentating. As far as I remember they used both be active on TL and both received a good amount of support with a lot of constructive criticism. Kalzart was more popular but he didn't actively play the game (he had RSI in his wrist) and people would criticise his game knowledge. My memory is that initially some BW vets didn't like that but in general I think people were willing to help, and some were more diplomatic than others.
After Klaz took a break that summer Moletrap and Diggity both started and as they knew each other the used work together a bit and then Klaz came back too. Again they were all criticised for a lack of analysis, they were all familiar with the scene but some things that all of them used to say were incorrect.
I think you are correct in saying these English commentaries brought a lot of new people to BW and I would guess this increased casual viewership a lot. They were also inspiring more commentators to try their hand at it. However it was again mostly people who did not actively play so the analysis still wasn't great and this is what caused a lot of the hate. It wasn't just one person who you could help out and point things out, it was getting uncontrollable. This was getting vets to feel like the whole thing was bad for the scene as it was attracting new viewers but giving them wrong analysis, whereas the commentators felt like work they were pouring hours into each day was constantly being put down.
I think what set it all off is when Diggity asked if someone could point out 100 things he said that were wrong. After a thread (that has now been galleried) here did this things escalated quickly (there were a lot of angry and emotional posts and I think Klaz in particular took it very personally). To them it felt like the commentators and their fans against the rest. This is what started SC2GG.
SC2GG tried to attract a lot of casual viewers and I think there was an anti-TL attitude there because of what you described. TL was similarly quite dismissive of SC2GG (there was also some other stuff going on between staff too). However later there were some commentators who really tried to mend this divide, Cholera in particular was one who encouraged a healthy rivalry.
Also you have to remember that TL was a small enough place in 2007, a lot of the vets knew each other and were friends. Not getting one or two of them on your side was a bad idea. Now you can't really get away with caster-bashing and in general this is a much more diplomatic place than it used be because the number of users exploded after SC2 was released.
One other thing that happened in May 2007 was the announcement of SC2 so that might have brought more attention to the pro-scene and also brought more interest/viewers but I think those commentaries and the access to better streams and more regular VoDs helped a lot too.
Anyway I'm sorry to hear that 10 years on you still feel like you were treated badly, I think all those commentators were more popular than you are making out there (as can be seen from VoD views and subscriber counts). The community was a lot more volatile and a lot less mature. As it was smaller too you had more clear-cut factions.
When we're already down memory lane here... Thank you so much for uploading those bw vods when they were really hard to get because of the copyright issues. You were a life saver.
I will concede the point that yes, early on we did make incorrect insights to builds and still did even as we strived to be better. I feel even the more professional casters to this day, day9, tasteless, artosis, Apollo, still make incorrect insights too but not very often, and I agree, the community here has mellowed out. But reddit and YouTube comments are still the absolute worst places...
Ironically that is where my quote below my name originated from I haven't changed it from 2008 when I asked for feedback and one person wrote that I was bad and that was it. Haha.
It's all in the past now anyways. I just wanted to see if there was any insight others could provide and it was nice to see it from multiple points of view. Thank you all. Next time I talk to diggity or moletrap. I'll see if I can get them to swing by this thread.
On May 31 2017 16:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Tasteless casted 2008 XNote GOMTV Star Invitational and the three Classic Seasons in that time frame. Youtube had all the videos. Also, there was livestream and after that ustream and after that justin.tv (where you were one of the first to stream from, if I remember correctly).
I didn't enjoy moletraps casting that much, but look at rapid, his game knowledge is lacking here and there, sometimes his jokes are bad, but at the end of the day he does a great job and is doing better day by day and i'm glad to see a new caster in the community.
Moletrap had a very passionate casting style which he often let overpower him, that's normal and to be expected when you're casting a game in korea that you loved and basically living a dream.
People, as usual, were dicks and gave him tons of shit, but with a bit more practice he would have been an excellent addition to the community. God, I could name plenty of casters way worse than moletrap ever was who didn't get 1/4th of the hate, it was truly one of the lowest points in our community, totally unacceptable.
Personally, I would love to see moletrap back again for BW HD, really, i'm sure he would get less hate and in fact would be cherished if he casted replays.
On May 31 2017 20:53 Greg_J wrote: Maybe rose tinted glasses is bang on the money but I have nothing but good memories and respect for all mentioned in this thread. It is a real shame to hear that they got so much hate. I find it hard to believe.
Oh I can believe it. Just from watching some comments on this forum/reddit on casters, they get shit on all the time. Even the good ones get a lot of hate. I feel bad for the casters that put so much time and effort and get so much hate, it's not easy and they aren't making that much money off of it. I commend all casters who can put up with it.
On May 31 2017 23:11 RainmanMP wrote: I was definitely never as big as any of the guys listed here, but I will admit that I stopped casting because of the negative feedback outweighed the positive. I was also 17 and an idiot and didn't play the game or invest time talking to others like Psyionic is describing, but I can attest to what he is talking about.
Sounds like the negativity directed to you was deserved then, no?
That said, generally speaking, there was a lot of negativity in the BW scene back in the day across the spectrum. I know it drove a ton of volunteers away from various sites including myself (WGT, PGT, ICCup, etc.).
I was never called out for that. I was called out because I talk with a bit of a lisp and got over excited sometimes.
We got a LOT of hate. I mean it was brutal at times here on TL and GG. I could go back and dig up old threads where we were constantly torn apart but it's funny reading more recent threads in the past 2/3 years and people miss them/me and wish we would do more for BW again. The reason we stopped is that the voices yelling NO were louder than the voices yelling YES. We almost NEVER got positive feedback in any meaningful way. We'd get a thumbs up or a "nice cast!" but then pages and pages and pages of hate. That's why Klaz finally made the decision to truly stop casting. Yes, his writing/family was priority but the negativity finally got to him. As it did to us all eventually.
I think it depends on why the person becomes a caster. The more you do it for just yourself, the easier it is to do. I was never bothered much by haters because I was making everything mostly for my own amusement. But if you're trying really hard to make the audience happy, the negative feedback will probably kill your spirit. The more you do it for the audience, the more that negativity seems magnified.
Every single caster in anything gets hate, mostly from entitled meganerds who simply aren't tuned to your frequency. It's a shame when they're louder than the rest, but there's usually just the same amount of them.
On May 31 2017 16:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Tasteless casted 2008 XNote GOMTV Star Invitational and the three Classic Seasons in that time frame. Youtube had all the videos. Also, there was livestream and after that ustream and after that justin.tv (where you were one of the first to stream from, if I remember correctly).
Besides Artosis at SCForAll, there wasn't a whole lot of content out there back in the day. I also know that for me, I lost interest(and have still never fully recovered) from the original BW matchfixing scandal. Yes the GOMTV stuff for Tasteless was a lot, but I remember at SC2GG we had nearly every game covered with either casting or an article for the 5 days of Proleague on OGN and MBC as well as OSL and MSL.
I was one of the people who got introduced to competitive starcraft by SC2gg caters early in 2008. For whatever reason I stumbled across a video by a guy called "Blade of Aiur" or sth like that and then discovered the community of the casters. Later, I migrated to teamliquid as the website was more active but I kept watching Klazart's and others commentaries.
I do remember that people here had extremely negative views on the casting by SC2gg commentators and I was really surprised by it. Especially that there was no better competition. Yes, Tasteless was casting GOM but that was it. So I never understood all that hatred.
But I thought you guys got a lot of love on youtube. Sure, there were some guys who were flaming you (as is always the case) but you were getting a lot of good comments and a lot of views. I remember being quite disappointed when you stop regularly posting videos. It is really sad that you stopped due to negative feedback.
And to be honest, I think few people that were watching english commentators were expecting super sharp analysis. No need to feel apologetic about that. You were doing a great job.
On May 31 2017 16:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Tasteless casted 2008 XNote GOMTV Star Invitational and the three Classic Seasons in that time frame. Youtube had all the videos. Also, there was livestream and after that ustream and after that justin.tv (where you were one of the first to stream from, if I remember correctly).
Besides Artosis at SCForAll, there wasn't a whole lot of content out there back in the day. I also know that for me, I lost interest(and have still never fully recovered) from the original BW matchfixing scandal. Yes the GOMTV stuff for Tasteless was a lot, but I remember at SC2GG we had nearly every game covered with either casting or an article for the 5 days of Proleague on OGN and MBC as well as OSL and MSL.
Exactly. There was very little content out there. SC2GG had every match covered. That was really amazing for a newcomer like me.
And I don't rememeber GOM videos being available on youtube. I always had to go to GOM website to watch them which I found pretty annoying.
On May 31 2017 16:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Tasteless casted 2008 XNote GOMTV Star Invitational and the three Classic Seasons in that time frame. Youtube had all the videos. Also, there was livestream and after that ustream and after that justin.tv (where you were one of the first to stream from, if I remember correctly).
Besides Artosis at SCForAll, there wasn't a whole lot of content out there back in the day. I also know that for me, I lost interest(and have still never fully recovered) from the original BW matchfixing scandal. Yes the GOMTV stuff for Tasteless was a lot, but I remember at SC2GG we had nearly every game covered with either casting or an article for the 5 days of Proleague on OGN and MBC as well as OSL and MSL.
Exactly. There was very little content out there. SC2GG had every match covered. That was really amazing for a newcomer like me.
And I don't rememeber GOM videos being available on youtube. I always had to go to GOM website to watch them which I found pretty annoying.
Ya GOM stuff was only available on their site. I'm glad to see that other SC2GG'ers seem to be successful and happy now. MrBitter works in the industry now I believe. I have fond memories of writing with him and being the two big KT/KTF fanboys in the irc chat.
Btw now that I've been casting for like 8 months I can safely say that until you get some hate thrown your way you're not a real caster.
The reason I say this is because of some quote I read and agree with; person said they love haters and want more of them because that to them proves that they are getting noticed, getting bigger, doing things that make people Jealous because secretly they too want some of the spotlight. Still waiting for my first hater tho.
So I had just recently moved to Ireland in 2007/2008 and knew no one, I was really lonely. I had played Starcraft pretty hard core but never got really great so I had quit playing a few years before. I just happened across a vid by Nuke and was immediately hooked. My mind was actually blown, I couldn't believe how good the players where. I then got into Cholera, Diggity, Moletrap, Klazart, well everyone that has been mentioned in this thread (Never Sayle though, odd). I looked forward to the vids so much that I would spam f5 on my subscription page, lol.
Anyway, THANKS SO MUCH GUYS!!!!!!! You really helped in kind of a dark time.
On June 01 2017 04:06 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: I will concede the point that yes, early on we did make incorrect insights to builds and still did even as we strived to be better. I feel even the more professional casters to this day, day9, tasteless, artosis, Apollo, still make incorrect insights too but not very often, and I agree, the community here has mellowed out. But reddit and YouTube comments are still the absolute worst places...
Ironically that is where my quote below my name originated from I haven't changed it from 2008 when I asked for feedback and one person wrote that I was bad and that was it. Haha.
It's all in the past now anyways. I just wanted to see if there was any insight others could provide and it was nice to see it from multiple points of view. Thank you all. Next time I talk to diggity or moletrap. I'll see if I can get them to swing by this thread.
Don't get me wrong, I was just trying to outline the view on both sides. On YouTube there is always a lot of idiotic comments, remember it's completely unmoderated and as Nuke said a lot of them have a bizarre feeling of entitlement.
Just looking at your channel the oldest videos there have over a thousand views, the vast majority of those viewers will never comment, if 1% of them complain you will then see 10 negative comments but it's still insignificant, most are happy and probably enjoy it, it's just unfortunate for you that they don't express that.
On June 01 2017 06:32 Jealous wrote: @moktira: Can I /please/ see the link of "100 things Diggity said wrong?" I tried searching but could not find ):
It is galleried so we can't see it anymore. It was mostly quite nitpicky but there were some good points there. I think immediately Diggity reacted quite well to it saying that was the sort of constructive criticism that was useful but then it got very hostile on all sides after that. Anyway, this was maybe January 2008 and things have moved on, if you really want to know more of what I remember pm me.
Also hello Elroi and NukeTheStars! Good to see you both still around, I hope you're both doing well.
I'm sad to hear that people's negativity bias played such a big role in some of the casters quitting. Considering all the effort and passion put into the casts that we were basically gifted for so many years I think it's pretty unfair that casters get any hate at all. Nobody is entitled to free content and so we should be thankful to those who put themselves out there and share their passion, insight, and personality with the world for others to enjoy. Also, most complainers are themselves anonymous which just adds to the unfairness of this.
I can see how people become disappointed when their favourite caster hasn't done an exciting match and so they have to turn elsewhere to get English coverage. But that's no reason to leave some angry comments in my opinion. I guess it's at least a good thing that this thread is turning a little bit into a ten years late caster appreciation thread.
Therefore: Nuke <3 watching your videos was definitely one of my favourite pastimes during high-school and you probably played a key role in me learning English, too. Thank you! I still watch some of your classic hype videos from time to time for nostalgia purposes :D
Edit: I'm convinced the vast majority of viewers does enjoy the videos. As has already been pointed out, people that are content don't comment as often. Also, it's always a lot easier to criticize others compared to actually doing it better - and I figure casting is hard, especially when you do it alone and when you do it for a community as hardcore as the Broodwar one!
This thread depresses me because I didn't know they got so much hate. The days when these guys were posting videos regularly I didn't post on Teamliquid. My early Starcraft interaction was casually playing co-op with my uni friends against computers normally drinking and watching some of these awesome videos. So I really didn't know I assumed they were universally loved.
Casters are genuinely creating great content and the thing that makes hate so stupid is if you don't like it you don't have to listen to it. If you don't like it just watch the Korean videos. I think it's crazy to expect an English comentary and then complain it's not good enough for you. Times are a little different now because people do expect a good English cast and the element of casters been employed by Korean companies makes that expectation a little bit more reasonable. But back in the Klazart, Digity, Moletrap days these guys were basically doing it for the love of it and to hear they where taking such abuse makes me feel really bad. If they did't do it no one would have and many people wouldn't have fallen in love with Broodwar.
SC2GG entered the scene among a dozen other websites trying to bank on the SC2 announcement. I got in because of a few articles I'd made, and then I made a few 'Vidreps' in the spirit of battlereports.com. I did this because I wanted to offset myself from the other casters, who were doing the serious games. After a while I slipped more into an admin role at the website, mostly moderating the forums.
It was a fight against TL.net from the start, as it was also working on reviving the ashes of its community after being near death for many years. TL.net made it, made the connections in eSports while the SC2GG crew was left behind to fend for itself.
There was a lot of direct hatred and boycotting going on back then. I can remember the amount of shit the casters got in the tl.net IRC while one of the first foreign bw streams ever was attempted by the SC2GG crew. It was a constant droning of negativity as Psy said. Every cast there would be the question of 'Why are you doing this?', 'Korean casts are so much better, just stop.', 'You don't know shit about the game, shut the fuck up', etc...
It broke any attempt at getting these guys off the ground; segregated SC2GG and tl.net and the site slowly bled out. I honestly was a SC2GG fundamentalist myself, things could have gone differently for a lot of people if we would have just joined forces. I know a lot of people made the jump to TL.net, and nobody was left to do anything with SC2GG once the game was actually out. Once we got on the press list at Blizzcon - me representing the site at two events - it was clear that we didn't really exist. The deals had been made, the plans set. But I'll be honest, we weren't staffed, we weren't prepared. We had the casters and some writers and a whole bunch of lurkers that seem to come out now to glorify those days ... But SC2GG was a shell of a site for a very long time.
The irony, of course, was that SC2 was a terrible game to cast. It's the main reason I quit doing my low level games back then. Everyone wanted SC2 and was blinded enough by the hope of eSports to ignore the terrible state of the game and push away everything BW.
TL.net got the eSports dream and we got years of an artificial scene built up on a game that was never in a proper competitive state compared to Brood War. But now that SC2 is running out of life support we are all going to glorify the early BW days again.
I'm glad though... Because I'm finally able to speak my mind again about SC2 without being hammered into the ground by people who clearly know better than me. But we wrote that prophecy many years ago, and it wasn't a hard thing to predict.
So yeah ... I'm fucking bitter about the whole thing. I'm a bitter grizzled veteran of a war everyone seemed to have missed. I've come to terms with 'missing my shot' back then. But hey, I'm making videos again and I'll wait for that meteor to strike me I guess. I won't go out of my way to whore out - another thing none of the SC2GG dudes ever did - not compared to HD or husky (which ironically we told they really needed to improve in order to be part of the SC2GG crew - guess that didn't matter if you have the marketing down).
I guess the SC2GG casters were too honest, were too much into the casting of the game instead of playing the scene instead. We weren't there to make a living, really. We were there to show people Brood War, and that was a mistake.
On June 02 2017 09:30 404AlphaSquad wrote: Damn reading all of this makes me kind of depressed :/
Well, it was depressing. A lot of us spent several years helping the Starcraft scene and almost none of us got any real return, even the 'good times' barely broke even with the amount of shit we've had to eat back then.
Before you know it the plastic SC2 eSport gets off the ground and nobody gives a shit anymore. Websites go down and they take history with them. Facts and events less detailed than in prehistoric times.
But hey, its showbizz kid, suck it up and move on. So we did.
I remember many months of constantly herding cats trying to get projects off the ground, only for people to flake out and piss off again. And once things starting going well we'd get shit on. I did a weekly tournament for about 6 months or something stupid like that and the second I'd turn my back the cats would scatter and nothing would get done anymore. But that's internet community unpaid volunteer work. Guess I was the idiot because I kept at it.
The sad thing is I'm not mad at all of that behind-the-scenes BS anymore, I was at the time. The only rage that remains is the fact that the game that took all that energy and manpower was Starcraft 2. A pile of garbage forced into eSports because corporate Blizzard wanted it to be. The fakeness of the whole thing is what pisses me off.
This was never nothing more than children's TV entertainment level. Never in the history of SC2 did the scene ever take itself seriously unless there was talk about money. There was never a step to legitimise the competition and have a competitively viable game - like what Brood War was.
But I digress.
But do grant me this - everyone seems a LOT happier now that Brood War is coming back. Everyone is relieved that the nightmare is over. BW is a game that can sustain itself, even if it is going to produce a torrent of crying children busting their knees on its sharp corners. At least now we don't have to rely on our own well thought out argumentation based in fact. Now we can show everyone a video that they're wrong to think BW is a bad game.
And there is a point to that last rant. We didn't play ball. We talked about Brood War like adults - even if we were silly and rude or arrogant. We talked about Brood War like it was a sport - because it is. But that wasn't allowed in the SC2 world. You needed the children's TV element. The PC executive curated 'HEY KIDS! LET'S WATCH SOME STARCRAFT! NERDS! LOL!'
Let us never talk badly about a pro gamer! No! They're connected to sponsors!
I'm exaggerating? Perhaps. But somewhere deep down that still nags at the back of my mind. And there is no proof, only one word against another.
We weren't marketable enough, a downside when your sport is owned by a company.
Anyway... Watch my vids, make me famous, I need the validation to survive.
Man I missed those guys so much. Klazart, Diggity, Moletrap, Cholera, and others I just went and rewatched the Best vs July OSL final commentated by Klaz, Moletrap, and Cholera, my first ever English-cast Korean BW experience. It never gets old, seriously. Good old days.
who was the more recent australian caster , and his co caster , was it eloquent? they were so funny. they ran gem league or something (bad memory here, easy enough to search for gem league)
i remember there was another guy who was soooooooo funny. he was in a group of maybe 6 guys who done a podcast type thing. i only tuned into it once, it was the first podcast i ever heard in my life, i don't remember what it was about but this guy was killing me. anyone remember a super oldschool podcast?
I liked the entire crew, the 3 and 4 way casts between the SC2GG guys was always fun.
Speaking of which, does anyone have any of Rise's videos? All his videos got wiped last year. This caused me to archive all of klazart, cholera, moletrap, and violetak channel videos. Are his videos gone forever? :\
Speaking of my little archiving project, what other sc2 channels should I save?
If you could somehow snag all of the Brent and Kenny shows and the JustinTV Starleague from twitch that would be awesome. https://www.twitch.tv/heyitskenny
I've been meaning to upload it all to YouTube someday on my account.
If Kenny would ever answer my emails I'd try to get him to remove the export restrictions.
Now that BW is making a resurgence with a polished version I think that people are going to be "nostalgic" and forget about the bad times. Instead of cursing bw era casters they will remember them on a pedastol and glorify them. Instead of demand better content, as many did, they'll compliment their skills and want to see more of them. Where are these casters so we can all apologize and want more of them? You don't know what you've got until it's gone!
I didn't realise the hate casters were getting. I will make an effort to write something positive to people who create youtube videos that I enjoy in the future. I've seen videos from pretty much all of the casters mentioned here. I definitely liked some more than others but I would still watch other casters when they had a match that I wanted to see (aka all the matches .
My top was Cholera. I loved how we was so brutal at making fun of Hyuk who always seemed to drop the ball in his videos. But then Hyuk managed an all kill and he swore that he was now a believer and became a Hyuk fan. Man that was a funny series to watch!
On June 03 2017 07:15 Muff2n wrote: I didn't realise the hate casters were getting. I will make an effort to write something positive to people who create youtube videos that I enjoy in the future. I've seen videos from pretty much all of the casters mentioned here. I definitely liked some more than others but I would still watch other casters when they had a match that I wanted to see (aka all the matches .
My top was Cholera. I loved how we was so brutal at making fun of Hyuk who always seemed to drop the ball in his videos. But then Hyuk managed an all kill and he swore that he was now a believer and became a Hyuk fan. Man that was a funny series to watch!
On June 03 2017 07:15 Muff2n wrote: I didn't realise the hate casters were getting. I will make an effort to write something positive to people who create youtube videos that I enjoy in the future. I've seen videos from pretty much all of the casters mentioned here. I definitely liked some more than others but I would still watch other casters when they had a match that I wanted to see (aka all the matches .
My top was Cholera. I loved how we was so brutal at making fun of Hyuk who always seemed to drop the ball in his videos. But then Hyuk managed an all kill and he swore that he was now a believer and became a Hyuk fan. Man that was a funny series to watch!
lol I remember the hyuk shenanigans
People were using a verb "to get Hyuk'ed" which, I think, meant that somebody surprisingly lost when he was supposed to win ezpz.
On June 03 2017 10:05 aRyuujin wrote: not a giant fan of moletrap (idk his voice or something just bothered me)
This was the stuff we disliked most. We can't do anything about our voice. Why post it at all?
If you say, "Hey. I listened to a few of your videos, your style just not for me yet keep it up because it seems like there are others that do enjoy it!" We can let it go.
But back then I used to freak out. I tried talking deeper, farther away, etc. Finally I just said fuck it and stayed with my normal voice because what the fuck is this high school again. If you don't like my voice fuck off.
I'm not attacking you personally Ryuu but your type of comments that were an attack on us personally and not our work was just a really low blow that we couldn't begin to even try and fix. Like Rainman said, he got so much shit for his lisp that nobody would try to give good, honest feedback.
Heck, I even had plenty of people who would go. "Psy. You're bad at commentating because you got X and Y wrong." and some casters would take that poorly but I would generally go "WHY?" I would PM people back. I would dig down and try to correct my poor analysis. I wanted to be better, I wanted to learn at WHICH point did I call or say the strat wrong. I want to be informative. I remember the EG guys just giving me tons of shit early on when I first started doing Yankee League that I got fed up and actually brought them on my stream to co-commentate. They actually started EXPLAINING things. It's great to have passion but I agree, you need to have the knowledge too. So yes they called me bad but they took the time to give honest feedback.
You don't hear baseball commentators going. OH YEAH ITS A SLOW BALL when clearly it's a fast ball. Granted it's harder to point out poor analysis in StarCraft quite that easily but you get my point.
If you're going to criticize, that's fine. Just give MORE than just "You suck" or "you're bad" because it's just frustrating.
Cholera, Klazart, Moletrap, Diggity, Nukethestars, Psyonic_Reaver, and Rise were a major reason I got back into BW 2008-2009. It was sad to see Moletrap get so much non-constructive hate when he casted SC2 after all the hours he put into casting BW. His dedication to Starcraft was insane.
In hopes that some of them see this thread I just want to say thanks for all the casts. You guys are awesome.
On June 03 2017 11:23 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: If you're going to criticize, that's fine. Just give MORE than just "You suck" or "you're bad" because it's just frustrating.
Only thing I ask of people when they want to criticize something.
Thought I would chime in on a couple of things. I will try to answer questions in a manner that makes cohesive sense. It is late for me and I am super fatigued so apologies for bad grammar or mispellings.
Why did I start commentating broodwar?
Klazart had stopped and no one else was stepping up to the plate in the community. I was watching games with friends during one of GGPlays run's and found that I was able to explain the game well enough for them to follow.
For context I was never a professional at any level like say Day9, Artosis, Tasteless, or Incontrol. Prior to that era, the last time I had dedicated time to BW competitively spawning pools were 150. Among a small group I was considered the best but nothing that meant nothing in comparison to the competitive scene even at an amateur level.
I figured I would still be able to get by. I studied up on the players and tried my best. I quickly found out I was in over my head. At that time people loudly criticized my lack of game knowledge which was warranted, but by the same token they generally did little to provide help. I realized later it was because most couldn't.
What was going on in the threat moktira is talking about?
[note] My memory of the events around that particular time are somewhat hazy. That being said, I trust moktira's accounts of the events. [/note]
I don't remember posting a thread asking for feedback in particular. I do remember asking for feed back at large and getting mixed results.
I DO remember a particularly heated thread that more or less contained e-peen threats. The general message from TL at the time to the entire youtube community was "quit". I ask that people try to empathize and imagine being a total social reject (it felt awful).
I seriously considered quitting but I didn't think it would benefit the community at large. So instead I made a series of personal goals
Keep going: 1) Until someone with a pedigree started posting regularly to the community at large 2) Until US/Foreign players were "competitive" with Korean players (not beating but respectable) 3) Until legitimate tournaments were running in the US.
1) Happened with Day9 (which I saw miles off after Socal lan II) 2) Happened with SC2 which is a half win but I will take it 3) Happened with NASL
On "the hate"
I always had a reputation of lacking knowledge. While I am still not a pro player, I definitely felt that after a year and 1/2 or so my knowledge was sufficient for casting.
On my later casts I was given kudos by G5 for being in his head and generally being solid on my commentary at large. G5 was one of the few US pros that watched a few of my commentaries as I progressed. Overall G5 was probably the most helpful to me both in advice on games early on and in providing a voice that let me know I was on the right track. If nothing else I want to say that he is an upstanding dude.
I quickly discovered that most people in the community don't know as much as they purport to know, and there is a touchy ego about it. I remember during one specific instance, I was watching louder play during the early days of streaming. I pointed out (via his fog of war view) that he had the game locked. Several people who had torn into me during previous threads claiming superior knowledge disagreed. Within 3 minutes the opponent gged and the replay confirmed all my claims.
After that I realized there was no escaping the "lack of knowledge" label without getting A+ on ICCUP or taking down a US national championship, but at the same time the community hate didn't faze me after awhile.
The real hate
As much vitriol there was in the forums, there was an immense amount of back stabbing, lying, rage, hate and venom behind the scenes that surpassed it all.
At a certain point whenever I think about coming back, I feel there is an overshadowing ill feeling in my stomach regarding the bad times.
I can think of 4 moments in particular that really took the wind out of my sails: 1) SC2GG staff leaving to be TL admins (right as we were delivering content on a strong cycle) 2) NASL-TL-EG-Reddit divide as SC2 was picking up steam (this spun the community into the muck pretty fast) 3) The failure of ultimate barcraft, in particular the organizer lying to me about assurances of particular guests who agreed to be in attendance. There are several other aspects but I don't think I am prepared to talk about them. I will just say it takes the cake. 4) The poor treatment of a friend putting in a lot of effort in small arenas
[note] I felt it was important to note the problems above as I always felt that the following problems were crippling to the community at large:
1) Low level/local contributors were often overlooked/abused and 2) Community divisions were rampant heated and vicious. [/note]
Reflections
At some point shortly after SC2 release I realized that I had accomplished all of my goals.
After casting for NASL, I mostly spent my time in the background trying to create financial viability for the scene via barcraft and other efforts.
Then #3/4 above happened and I had a hard time staying motivated.
Considering all the work in the starcraft community was essentially a non/low-paying second job and I wasn't really contributing anything of value I decided to drop off quietly into the shadows. Even at my most optimistic, I believe the community at large really wanted/needed casters with a better pedigree than I could provide.
For die hard fans, I played/casted league (to relax after work) and eventually due to increased work demands, I just stopped producing media altogether.
I am fairly proud of the mark I made on the scene. I feel like I influenced a great number of people in very positive ways. I made a lot of great friends and met amazing people that I will never forget. I helped esports and twitch get up off the ground and enter a new era. I definitely feel like I helped pioneer things, and for a time I was the "bar" of commentators which is saying something.
What am I up to now? I am currently a full stack engineer, working primarily on web based medical systems.
Will I ever come back? I would need things to calm down at work. I do want to see another Socal Lan happen for the HD Broodwar release.
If I did come back I am not sure I would do broodwar content again. I feel like there are a lot of guys that already have it covered, most notably, Artosis and Tasteless.
Also sorry if this is pulling this thread out from the grave, I wasn't told about it until about 2 hours ago.
i always used to think how blessed i was to have terrible game knowledge so i could just enjoy starcraft with my 'friends' who were the casters i would listen to every day
Hey Diggity! Its easier said than done, but I think internet personalities really just have to shrugg off all the hate they get. and in your case im positive so many more people enjoyed it but didnt say anything. The haters are mostly a very loud minority. Those commentaries really meant the world to me at least.
On May 31 2017 16:31 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: In some ways, I feel us YouTube casters brought many, many, MANY people to this game during the 2006-2010 period. None of the TL or GG guys were casting or putting up content. Artosis and Tasteless weren't. If you look through that period we were it for people that couldn't watch the games live or wanted to figure out the stream launchers, fuck even internet and streaming were fucking SHIT back then. Amazing how far it's come in 10/11 years. Nobody ever seems to recognize that it feels.
Tasteless casted 2008 XNote GOMTV Star Invitational and the three Classic Seasons in that time frame. Youtube had all the videos. Also, there was livestream and after that ustream and after that justin.tv (where you were one of the first to stream from, if I remember correctly).
Besides Artosis at SCForAll, there wasn't a whole lot of content out there back in the day. I also know that for me, I lost interest(and have still never fully recovered) from the original BW matchfixing scandal. Yes the GOMTV stuff for Tasteless was a lot, but I remember at SC2GG we had nearly every game covered with either casting or an article for the 5 days of Proleague on OGN and MBC as well as OSL and MSL.
And I don't rememeber GOM videos being available on youtube. I always had to go to GOM website to watch them which I found pretty annoying.
You are correct, I just checked my old bookmarks. The Youtube part was about Valor Starleague (also casted by Tasteless). GOM had their own thing, I remember them eventually introducing anti-spoiler games, so that you weren't able to see whether the matches ended in two or three games.
On June 03 2017 11:23 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: This was the stuff we disliked most. We can't do anything about our voice. Why post it at all?
The voice is a big deal, if not the biggest, of the package you're presenting. You're not going into hosting radio or announcing when your voice isn't liked. Now if it's just like one or two people saying this and you still get 10+k viewers and like/dislike ratio is better than 1, you shouldn't worry about it. I think negative feedback is often too easy to tunnel on, because -like it's been said before- it's easier for people to comment something negative (and people that liked it aren't going to comment as fast imo). If 1000 people said something about your voice, I'd understand that maybe doing something -and uploading that for everyone to check out- while only using your voice, isn't the best of ideas. Your commentary may be the best, the most analytical, the funniest, but if the voice is just too harsh to listen to, it all falls flat on its face.
Also: I got primarily into starcraft because of Diggity/Klazart/Moletrap/Cholera. I registered on SC2GG before I even heard of TL and thought TL was their nemesis (which I guess seems kind of correct now lol). Sadly I also switched to TL because they had the live streams, which could temper my ever increasing BW addiction.
On June 03 2017 11:23 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: This was the stuff we disliked most. We can't do anything about our voice. Why post it at all?
The voice is a big deal, if not the biggest, of the package you're presenting. You're not going into hosting radio or announcing when your voice isn't liked. Now if it's just like one or two people saying this and you still get 10+k viewers and like/dislike ratio is better than 1, you shouldn't worry about it. I think negative feedback is often too easy to tunnel on, because -like it's been said before- it's easier for people to comment something negative (and people that liked it aren't going to comment as fast imo). If 1000 people said something about your voice, I'd understand that maybe doing something -and uploading that for everyone to check out- while only using your voice, isn't the best of ideas. Your commentary may be the best, the most analytical, the funniest, but if the voice is just too harsh to listen to, it all falls flat on its face.
Completely agreed.
I don't know why you'd get offended by someone saying they don't like your voice (unless they were being a dick of course); it's literally such an easy pure subjective thing that you can just chalk up to "well obviously not everyone is gonna like my voice" and move on. It's not like you're expected to change it lol (unless, again, the poster was being a dick).
On June 03 2017 11:23 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: This was the stuff we disliked most. We can't do anything about our voice. Why post it at all?
The voice is a big deal, if not the biggest, of the package you're presenting. You're not going into hosting radio or announcing when your voice isn't liked. Now if it's just like one or two people saying this and you still get 10+k viewers and like/dislike ratio is better than 1, you shouldn't worry about it. I think negative feedback is often too easy to tunnel on, because -like it's been said before- it's easier for people to comment something negative (and people that liked it aren't going to comment as fast imo). If 1000 people said something about your voice, I'd understand that maybe doing something -and uploading that for everyone to check out- while only using your voice, isn't the best of ideas. Your commentary may be the best, the most analytical, the funniest, but if the voice is just too harsh to listen to, it all falls flat on its face.
Completely agreed.
I don't know why you'd get offended by someone saying they don't like your voice (unless they were being a dick of course); it's literally such an easy pure subjective thing that you can just chalk up to "well obviously not everyone is gonna like my voice" and move on. It's not like you're expected to change it lol (unless, again, the poster was being a dick).
If the criticism was constructive, like you talk too fast/slow or too loud/soft that would be fine. But when you get YouTube comments saying you sound retarded or to come back when you don't have braces or other stuff along that line it's frustrating. I remember one of the early criticisms of moletrap was that he swore too much, so he worked harder to not swear during casts. I'm not sure if it's still out there, but he made one video where he swore like a sailor the entire time and it was hilarious. If you don't like the sound of my voice, fine. Don't watch my videos then. There is no positive outcome from posting an insulting YouTube comment on my video.
All of the commentators mentioned like mole trap, Diggity, Klazart, Nuke, Greth, Psyonic and supernova you guys are awesome! Like always the haters speak louder than the supporters I always loved your commentary it is because of YOU that I fell in love with Starcraft and I still play competitively till this very day and love Starcraft as much as I do. Big thank you.
God I remember listening to Moletrap cast from his car outside university/college because he was using the internet. that takes me back ><
Back then I was one of the silent listeners, just enjoying the casts by Moletrap, Diggity and Klazart and not posting much. Its almost always a small group of negative people who post hate/complaints while the silent majority simply enjoys the content provided.
I'm sorry to hear you guys took so much hate, so know that there were plenty of us quiet folk that immensely enjoyed the effort the spend on bringing BW to the west.
Every time I watch the ASL, I can't help but think about how different things are now than when I had to load up a sketchy VLC stream and hop into a teamspeak server to hear some of these guys talk over the game.
I can't necessarily say I wish everyone who was involved back then would jump back into the scene-- what we have now is definitely way better. But I really appreciate all the more-or-less selfless work those early casters put in to pump out all that content that got me (and many others) into brood war in the first place!
I've got to say though, I'm kind of disappointed that people who were involved in the scene back then haven't come forward to tell more behind-the-scenes stories. The circle of foreign BW pros/casters/community members always seemed to allude to crazy stuff that had gone down that they couldn't talk about. I specifically remember Kennigit saying on a stream or an interview or something that as soon as he was out of the scene he was going to dump so many juicy drama bombs about what REALLY had been happening at tournaments, between players, etc-- but obviously that's never going to happen now
Never really watched any of the streamers mentioned aside from maybe a single video from Nukethestars. The only streamer who I can partially credit for getting me back into the game is Sayle. His english casting of PL and playing BW on stream complete with Disney songs and such was fantastic. He's really knowledgeable but also really humorous and that's something I like to see in a caster. Sayle had the right balance between the two and casted lots including Gamble Cups which I greatly enjoyed at the time.
Ah the good old days ... It's true there was a lot of hate, but I think the entire community was in a different place. At that point, as an active member of SC2GG, I was quite upset about all the negativity because I really didn't understand where it was coming from, but now looking back at things ... I guess most people, myself included, weren't that mature.
On June 05 2017 03:57 Gorsameth wrote: God I remember listening to Moletrap cast from his car outside university/college because he was using the internet. that takes me back ><
Throwback to whisper commentaries, those were always a treat.
On May 29 2017 09:22 Iankill wrote: One of my favorite casting moments was when someone tried to impersonate klazart during the TL vs GG.net showmatch. "Or it could be a fast expand you never know" TL vs GG
Nice to see you in the thread, I had no idea about your work in barcraft, I wish that had of worked out. I really appreciated your casting though and just want to add my voice to the others thanking you for your efforts.
On June 05 2017 03:57 Gorsameth wrote: God I remember listening to Moletrap cast from his car outside university/college because he was using the internet. that takes me back ><
Throwback to whisper commentaries, those were always a treat.
OMG Yes I loved that. Having to pop into ventrilo for casts live and all the syncing, good times.
Hey diggity, thanks for sharing your story. I actually really appreciated your commentaries. I probably missed your early commentaries, but when I got into BW I felt you definitely had good grasp of the game. Actually, in terms of explanations you were my favorite commentator.
But I think that the time I got into BW you soon started to commentate less and less of pro BW and switched to SC2, even during beta, and LoL...
Anyway, the bottom line is that somehow when people can post their comments anonymously there is always much more vitriol than otherwise. I know it first hand as a lecturer. In my evaluations there is always a sizable and vocal group of students often complain regardless of what you do, and regardless of the effort I put into my lectures.
Diggity, and literally anyone else talked about in this thread who may want a no strict guidelines casting gig:
I fully open Have At You up to be casted. If you wanna be my co-caster I just ask for a quick DM if you're interested. I'm trying so hard to bring SCBW viewership back up a bit and I'd love to have some of you few who are renowned to reclaim some throne and have some fun like you used to.
It's actually very hard to find SCBW Casters every other week.
To Diggity: Read your update, thanks for it I know a lot of the pain you feel too, as a caster from the SC2 days. If you host or wanna plan together something in SoCal i'd be down to fly down from SF with some people!
On June 05 2017 22:51 Xeofreestyler wrote: Anyone remember the TL vs SC2GG crewbattle? good times
I loved that shit. I recently rewatched that series. Hilarious all the way through. To this DAY I still laugh at myself on Medusa.
I rewatched this because I forgot what happened and I legit 100% thought you won vs Rage even watching the VOD ... you even offensive GGd what a game lmao
I haven't been actively watching BW for years, basically since SC2 was released. Haven't seen a single BW match until recently, when somehow Flash vs Jaedong arrived to my recommended youtube video list. I didn't even know BW was "back". Since then I watched the recent ASL and truly enjoyed. Feels like the level of progaming went up further still, who would have imagined (that it was even possible).
So I'm seeing this thread now, and even though I haven't been any kind of active for the post SC2 days, I'd still like to add my point of view. Forgive me for starting with somewhat of an intro, because it's important in order to reach a specific point about all this.
So I created the Jon747 youtube channel in 2005 if memory serves, and then the VioleTAK youtube channel beginning of 2006. These were still the "early days" of youtube and you could freely apply for director account, and youtube easily approved. I was lucky that both accounts were director status before November 2006 when youtube went strict with the 10min video limit, and new directors took forever to be approved if at all.
I had a blast with VioleTAK. Because I've been watching BW long before creating it, I had lots of VODs that were not really available to general public, I used to collect them on CDs for years, had my spots in Korean forums and websites where I knew they would post matches for download, and Korean friends on bnet that helped me out if needed a specific match. Then when I created VioleTAK I just slowly put them out there for everyone, with some nice video descriptions about the players with my general knowledge... That's basically all I ever did.
Still, back then it was new and people saw it as unique, to watch full length pro matches. It was like a glimpse into a secret world that up to that point was more or less a total mystery to the western player! That's how it felt, from the overwhelming amount of comments, it felt like people were discovering some kind of Shangri-La.
At some point I gave the Jon747 to a Korean guy that had total access to all pro matches, he used to upload them on his channel but he didn't have director, which made it very annoying to cut them in pieces. Anyway he made Jon747 into an amazing source of progaming for the western viewer. Later he got banned or something, I can't exactly recall.
But generally speaking, times were good! Youtube statistics weren't like today, all that detailed information... But there were some options. When you guys, the English commentators, started to enter the scene... I gave you access to the VioleTAK account so you could have the full match upload time length. Still as the original owner I could see the stats, and in total awe I was witnessing as viewers were staying tuned for length of entire videos. You were keeping the viewer's attention for 70, 80%+ of the video. That was A LOT (and in today's attention-standards maybe even more amazing). Even in the best matches I used to upload in pure Korean the general average was 40% or less (sometimes way less), but you guys kept them glued to the screen.
I don't think anyone has any idea how much you... the group of English commentators... actually contributed to BW.
No one can really know. But I had a better view on the situation than most, and I can share what I saw and felt, that English commentators brought a passion into the western BW scene, in ways that never existed before! And that this passion rippled and made countless people aware of the existence of BW, and even more so - of the very existence of progaming. That there is such a thing as a professional gamer. I honestly felt this was happening, BIG TIME, more than anyone including the commentators themselves had any idea.
That passion was very special. For example the way Klaz spoke *really* quickly as action was happening in the match, his passion matches the Korean commentators in my opinion. He spoke like 3 Korean commentators put together. I've never seen anything like that since. People felt your passion, your love of the game.
People that never played BW before, through your commentaries - realized that this was more than a game, that there is something here beyond what meets the eye, something behind it all, some grand phenomenon in south Korea that they never knew existed.
You were important seeds for various aspects of gaming today. I know it sounds grandiose, but this is honestly my point of view.
At the time I was utterly surprised with the amount of hate that was directed towards you, it really was... something... I don't think I fully understood it, but what I did think was the following:
Like I said, the progaming scene of BW for the western player/viewer/fan was relatively small, and English commentators brought a huge wave of life into this previously exclusive club. I think many of the self proclaimed 'elite' felt threatened, for various reasons (most of which were probably completely unrealistic), and translated those fears onto the commentators via misplaced hate, and a lot of envy!
I remember watching the 'commentator idol' contest while traveling in Europe, and thinking it was such a beautiful, hopeful, vibrant project full of life, full of love for the game. I know a lot of TL users looked down on such things, but those were exactly the kind of people that were just living in fear as I saw it.
On June 03 2017 17:37 Diggity wrote: I quickly discovered that most people in the community don't know as much as they purport to know, and there is a touchy ego about it.
That was a big part of it as well, without a doubt, I fully agree.
On June 03 2017 17:37 Diggity wrote: Considering all the work in the Starcraft community was essentially a non/low-paying second job and I wasn't really contributing anything of value I decided to drop off quietly into the shadows.
I am fairly proud of the mark I made on the scene. I feel like I influenced a great number of people in very positive ways. I made a lot of great friends and met amazing people that I will never forget. I helped esports and twitch get up off the ground and enter a new era. I definitely feel like I helped pioneer things, and for a time I was the "bar" of commentators which is saying something.
So true! You and your fellow commentators were pioneers, nothing less.
I have a lot of respect and admiration for everything you and your fellow commentators have accomplished. I think it was meaningful and fantastic for everyone involved, and that you are owed a great debt of gratitude.
On June 05 2017 05:54 BigFan wrote: Never really watched any of the streamers mentioned aside from maybe a single video from Nukethestars. The only streamer who I can partially credit for getting me back into the game is Sayle. His english casting of PL and playing BW on stream complete with Disney songs and such was fantastic. He's really knowledgeable but also really humorous and that's something I like to see in a caster. Sayle had the right balance between the two and casted lots including Gamble Cups which I greatly enjoyed at the time.
just after i started dating my girlfriend in 2012 she was over one night and had fallen asleep while we were watching a movie on the couch. i wasn't that tired and didn't want to wake her up, so i started watching sayle laddering on fish (or maybe iccup) before a gambit cup broadcast. after a while she woke up and ended up watching sayle casting bw with me until like 5am in the morning (gambit cup broadcasts used to start at around 1am australian time).
~5 years later every time i'm watching starcraft she asks me where sayle is.
Great to see people like VioleTAK and Diggity posting here. Back in 2007 VioleTAK and Jon747 were my sources of VODs, great to see you're still around and following the scene again!
On June 06 2017 23:16 moktira wrote: Great to see people like VioleTAK and Diggity posting here. Back in 2007 VioleTAK and Jon747 were my sources of VODs, great to see you're still around and following the scene again!
Klazart and the entire sc2gg guys have my eternal gratitude. Without them I would never have been able to get into broodwar in the early 2007 ish (if I remember correct).
I still remember the proleague finals live cast that I watched at 5 in the morning where FireBatHero jumped in the ocean, that was legendary.
VioleTAK/Jon747 was later my source of VODs when I couldnt wait for an english cast because I had become so addicted that I needed to watch VODs as soon as they are out. Moktira, you were legendary in the small VOD thread, I must have thanked you there many times
Always wanted to try commentating myself from time to time, but I never really had the balls to start somewhere. Now it seems too late.
The people mentioned in the this thread - some even posting and explaining in detail. We're privileged to have had you all in the BW community. And how awesome it is to see some still so emotionally/passionately connected to it all. I am too, and reliving that era through this thread has been quite a ride.
In the end, this is what drew me to the BW community. You see people doing so much for absolutely nothing but the passion of it. In this environment, you do your damnedest to contribute in any way you can. For me, that meant live relay of the korean TV channels - that's what I (along with many others) could bring. But damn near everybody who got into this community through you guys have done something in return. Not because they had to, but because we were and are completely spellbound by the work and passion of the people before us. That is treasure, and that is something to be proud of.
Violetak: None of this would have been possible without you. Your channel is what originally allowed Moletrap and I to follow broodwar. We owe you a huge debt of gratitude.
On June 07 2017 22:43 Diggity wrote: Violetak: None of this would have been possible without you. Your channel is what originally allowed Moletrap and I to follow broodwar. We owe you a huge debt of gratitude.
Amen to that. Boxer vs 13 Zerg video got me into Starcraft.
But I think some people have had contact with him since. It would be interesting to know what he's up to now. I think he was directing short films a few years ago.
I watched and enjoyed all of these casters at different times, and as with a lot of commentary here earlier I can say that they helped me get into BW originally. Though I did eventually move onto just Korean commentary and my own analysis of the games as they happened, I can't say that it wasn't important to be introduced that way. Sure, the commentary was never the pinnacle of BW knowledge, but that wasn't what really mattered. It helped us full noobies get our foot in the door and get an understanding of what was happening.
It's unfortunate to me that a lot of people say they quit because of the flak. If people quit because their lives don't allow them to cast, I perfectly understand and accept that. I know that I myself almost completely dropped off the Starcraft scene when my own life became too busy to spend time on the game. But people leaving because they felt unloved? Really unfortunate given how much you all did help us noobs get into the game.
Well, I guess I can bring it full circle and answer the original question Nuke, stop spilling my secrets!!!
Although its kind of cool that this turned into a nostalgia thread, and so many old casters and fans have chimed in!
I had some rants ready to go, but since things got all warm and fuzzy now, I'll hold back. I'll make some brief comments about some other things that have come up in this thread though, since I have kind of a unique perspective on some of them...
First of all, +1 on whiners not knowing as much as they think they know. Let me first fully admit that when I started I knew absolutely nothing. But I got better and people ignored that silly fact. And yes, I never knew everything, and I made mistakes. But I loved it when people criticized me for saying something that I just watched Flash do 10 times or something that a progamer told me in the Gom studio. I appreciate that you're Diamond, kid, but I'm gonna defer to what the Code S players told me about the matchup. But if you complain hard enough, people will believe YOU know what you're talking about. SMH. And something I'll add is that if you think you get a lot of shit on Youtube, where people watching you is voluntary, wait til you are casting a public tournament where it goes from "you suck I'm out" to "you suck and you're ruining something I care about." I never had people request I commit suicide until I started at Gom. But what I tried to do was filter it all through a sieve and see what nuggets of shit wisdom were left, and then tried to improve myself. I think a lot of people had their minds set and wouldn't change their opinions when I did improve, though.
Second, there is a lot of backstabbing in this community, now this industry. I know that Psy and Dig have both gotten royally screwed over in the past, as have I, and I'll bet others have too. eSports companies are generally pretty shitty to work for, often asking too much, being inconsiderate, forgetting to pay, and breaking agreements. And I'm not going to name names but specific people in the industry have screwed me pretty hard, too. And some people were not all the community cracked them up to be. Oh, the stories I could tell, hahaha.. That said, some specific people were really helpful and supportive, too, and there are a couple people that weren't well liked but who were actually good people... but I don't think people know what a generally cutthroat place eSports is behind the scenes.
So what kept me going in the Youtube days? The knowledge that there were people like those of you in this thread who were getting something great out of it. I knew that the people throwing shade were either too stupid to realize or too afraid (I think you're right about that VioleTAK) to acknowledge that we were bringing more fresh eyes to the scene than had ever been brought before. That I was actually helping them even though they hated me for it. (Klazart even used to tell people in every video to go to TL) But most of all because of all of the comments of thanks and the emails telling me about what a positive impact I was having on people's lives, giving them something to relax to after school or sometimes something to give their life meaning in dark times. Not only did I selfishly enjoy casting, but if I stop, the assholes win and I stop helping people. In that context, there was no way I could stop. So I took the high road and just kept faith in my knowledge that quitting was the wrong choice. The thing that is in common between all of the Youtubers mentioned in this thread is that we all did it out of passion for the game and the scene.
Then I went to GomTV, and then OGN, and the hate intensified greatly, and seemed to outweigh the positive feedback. And Korea was already a rough time in my life for reasons unrelated to the casting hate, and so being shit on daily on social media didn't help. But I never went into a broadcast with the negative on my mind. I always just cleared my mind and enjoyed the game and did the best broadcast I could. I still refused to quit to satisfy my critics, to let them win like that, but for reasons I won't go into the specifics of, eventually staying in Korea became untenable for me. Anyway, when I got back from KR, there weren't really any options for me to get another casting job, and so to answer the question of "what happened to moletrap" I'll quote Klazart from his thread that was just linked by Moktira to explain:
Commentating: I had a blast doing it but it took up a lot of my time since I can't do anything by halfs. If I did one commentary I'd end up doing fifty. Plus, if you want to do it properly you can't just do one commentary, you got to watch all the games and stay up to date with the scene and I just didn't have the time to keep up with it anymore.
So it was all or nothing, and since it wasn't all, it had to be nothing. I was burnt out from all the hate, and my Youtube viewership had all left, so I didn't feel like I was doing anyone a service, so I turned my back on esports and didn't watch a single professional SC match for years. I got a "real" job in the field I was in before casting, education. I actually got my start in casting while procrastinating from my grad school homework. And actually, I wanted to combine the two, and get people to let me use professional educational methods to improve the field of LoL and SC coaching, but everyone ignored me on that.
So I spent some time getting my life back together (I went through yet more personal drama shortly after returning to the US) and advanced my education career. I taught high school for a few years, and it was really amusing when my students found out I was slightly efamous. One time I actually caught a kid watching one of my videos on his phone in class, and another time a fellow teacher found out who I was while we were talking in the copy room told me he was a big fan. Surreal.
Last summer/fall I spent some months on an epic road trip through the rocky mountains, living in my car. Most recently I spent some months chillin with friends and family while hunting for a job. And this thread is extremely timely, because just this week I got a fantastic new job in education working for a non-profit. It's kind of the culmination of my career thus far, and it's going to be an exciting challenge that scares me a little but that I'm also looking forward to.
Brood War Remastered admittedly has me a little intrigued... and since BW doesn't change every 5 minutes like SC2, I feel like I still mostly understand the game, although I'd have to catch up with the meta. I've watched a little ASL and it's pretty neat to Flash back to the BeSt times of Brood War, with all the old pros switching back to it. I'm really glad that Tasteless and Artosis are doing it, because they have the history to give the proper appreciation to the old days. That's the one thing I was most sad about leaving Gom, actually, was that I was the only one bringing the rich history to Code A, which had so many old B teamers and veterans. And ASL needs it even more, but Nick and Dan know what's up.
Oh man... there's so much nostalgic waxing I could do now that my mind is there. Maybe I should write more about the old days before I forget it all. Maybe we all should.
I'll end with adding my thanks to all of you folks who I casted with or beside, and who made it possible, and who kept us going with your appreciations. Our far fetched dreams of spreading eSports around the world have been realized, at least in some form. We were the pioneers of what is now a legitimate industry. Good game, well played.
Awesome post Moletrap. I hope you are truly happy with your new job! I'm sad you had to have those negative episodes in your life. But I think those times make you stronger as a person.
Great post moletrap. I miss the good ole days hanging out in irc and watching the last nights games. ASL has definitely got me back watching games too. I miss the finals live casts over ventrilo in the days before twitch. I'll never forget getting up st like 3 in the morning at a random hotel on vacation and using one of their two computers to tune into the PL finals and watching FBH dancing.
On June 06 2017 21:11 VioleTAK wrote: At some point I gave the Jon747 to a Korean guy that had total access to all pro matches, he used to upload them on his channel but he didn't have director, which made it very annoying to cut them in pieces. Anyway he made Jon747 into an amazing source of progaming for the western viewer. Later he got banned or something, I can't exactly recall.
I want to say it was something like he deliberately nuked the channel after he misunderstood something from the English speaking community as racist. He was like, super nationalistic and wouldn't back down even after Korean speaking people tried to explain it to him.
I wanted to thank all the SC2GG commentators, but especially
Moletrap : for his infectious passion for the game Diggity : for his calm, soothing voice. Making a great duo with moletrap Klazart : for his breadth of vocabulary, his prowess at making metaphors and of course his legendary speed and passion Cholera : probably my favorite because of all his idiosyncrasies. WW2 comparisons, Flash is a robot, Hyuk-ing, talking up Bisu and the Mantoss' sexual prowess, etc. Non-technical cast is best cast. Nuke : for succeeding in being the invisible buddy talking about the game next to you on the coach
I used to hate TL for the many vitriol they've thrown at the sc2gg casters. I just couldnt and still cannot understand how they'd prefer korean casters when they dont even speak korean. I still think the TL admins at the time dropped the ball in not stomping down on such elitist attitude. Elitism caused me to not post anything lest I'd be subjected to ridicules by the would-be Royal Roader (aka regular posters).
Anyways, thank you again to the SC2GG crews. Back in my college days when I only had like 5 euro for the whole evening, I would rent a PC to download SC2GG commentated VODs then spend the evening watching them while eating dinner. It was a blast.
Why Moletrap wasn't liked in SC2 is something that I simply don't know much about. I was aware that he was particularly disliked, but I never knew why. I wasn't interested enough in SC2 to find out.
But I do have to wonder if a lot of the streamer animosity came from the bitter feelings surrounding the developing BW vs SC2 fights. I know that for some streamers, I definitely felt a sense that they were abandoning the game not for a better game, but out of a selfish desire to "make it big." Whether or not that was fair is almost irrelevant at this point; it happened, people had resentment, and we all hated each other over it. Given the rather narrow band of one to two years of most streamers disappeared, I wonder if that played a role.
While you're all here let me pray to the casting gods of bw that if I ever start casting that I will not let constructive criticism or negativity knock me out of my niche hobby, I WILL TRIUMPH lel
Judging from these posts, I think many more people liked the casters than the amount of people who disliked them and left disparaging remarks via social media. There's a real nostalgia for those types of casts and a real amount of respect for them, with people exclaiming "you're what brought me into broodwar / starcraft 2!" all nostalgic-like. Glad to hear that Moletrap and the other casters are doing well!
On June 14 2017 03:15 LegalLord wrote: Why Moletrap wasn't liked in SC2 is something that I simply don't know much about. I was aware that he was particularly disliked, but I never knew why. I wasn't interested enough in SC2 to find out.
But I do have to wonder if a lot of the streamer animosity came from the bitter feelings surrounding the developing BW vs SC2 fights. I know that for some streamers, I definitely felt a sense that they were abandoning the game not for a better game, but out of a selfish desire to "make it big." Whether or not that was fair is almost irrelevant at this point; it happened, people had resentment, and we all hated each other over it. Given the rather narrow band of one to two years of most streamers disappeared, I wonder if that played a role.
wow.. that's actually quite spot on and rings true to me. And you managed to say it w/o the big bias many people bring into the debate. Honestly, well said.
On June 14 2017 03:15 LegalLord wrote: Why Moletrap wasn't liked in SC2 is something that I simply don't know much about. I was aware that he was particularly disliked, but I never knew why. I wasn't interested enough in SC2 to find out.
But I do have to wonder if a lot of the streamer animosity came from the bitter feelings surrounding the developing BW vs SC2 fights. I know that for some streamers, I definitely felt a sense that they were abandoning the game not for a better game, but out of a selfish desire to "make it big." Whether or not that was fair is almost irrelevant at this point; it happened, people had resentment, and we all hated each other over it. Given the rather narrow band of one to two years of most streamers disappeared, I wonder if that played a role.
You know, I've never casted as prolifically as the people mentioned in this thread and I've only been casting very casually like once/twice a week for about 8 months now, and I think that this really hits the nail on the head for me now that I've gained some perspective on the other end of it. Here is my thinking process, not really as an inductive list, just some notes:
1. People who cast put in a lot of work. Even just to get the program to connect to Twitch and display Brood War is a headache, and was just as much if not more so in the past. I remember when I first started streaming all the way back then, it was using Camtasia and Adobe or FMLE or whatever it was and then Justin.tv and boy was it a fucking nightmare. So with that in mind, we can't forget that everything that goes into a cast is lots of work too. After your cast you have to process, edit, etc. which is again a pain right now but was probably even moreso back then. Let's also not forget about promotion and the other social elements of it. These are diverse requirements and demands placed upon people who are doing this as a hobby, "for fun," or at least that's how they started out. In other words, to even start out, you have to be relatively invested (assuming you have any sort of standards for yourself). If you aren't, people will complain, talk shit, berate, or simply ignore and that would be an unsatisfying venture as a result so I think it needs to be pointed out that to even have your name out there, there is a massive barrier of entry imo.
2. You enter a market that already has professional voices and professional players as an amateur. Therefore, comparison not only to your nearest peers in terms of skill/voice/presentation, but also to those who are at the top of the two peaks - skill and commentary. People with skills who are keyboard warriors will often be more correct than you about game elements, and they SHOULD point it out because in my opinion entertainment is just as important as accuracy and education in casting this game. People with professional commentating experience and positions will often sound better, be more natural on camera/in front of the microphone, and have more chemistry with other casters. It's almost like Brood War itself, where everyone starts off as a scrub but at this point in the game there are A rank players ready to whoop your ass. The difference is that you are putting your name out there to the masses, and likely promoting yourself at the same time, unlike NoobieZerg123 on ICCup who just plays the game in silence/privacy. The other difference is that the pressures from this line of work don't end when you log off ICCup or turn off the recording device - because it is a multimedia, interpersonal pursuit, the work doesn't really leave you until you turn off the computer entirely, and even then it can be on your mind.
3. The point in your post that really caught my attention here and that I have been thinking about recently in light of this discussion is that people got a certain following and tried to "go big." It's one thing to be compared to the professional commentators and the high level gamers' knowledge as a casual caster who does it for fun, but once you start getting a bit of an ego, or a dream, or a desire for more fame/exposure, you may begin to think of competing with the pros. This in turn raises the standards of people around you for your product, and the competition with the top is now direct. It's no surprise that many people didn't make it once that transition happened, no offense to anyone reading who was in that situation - we're not all cut out to be Olympians, rocket scientists, or professional commentators. I don't want to target anyone directly, but in the past few years there was a commentator with a clear lisp who seemed to be trying to make it big... I mean, come on. That's like trying to go pro in Brood War in 2017 with one arm and a shitty internet connection that turns off when your mom charges her vibrator.
In summary, the rise and fall of some of the casters can be looked at through the following avenues:
Casual commentator -> Get shat on by the community too much -> quit Casual commentator -> Get some praise, get a big head -> try to go big -> get shat on by the community -> quit Casual commentator -> Get some praise -> try to go big -> can't cut it compared to the established pros -> quit Casual commentator -> New game comes out, think it's your time to rein in some followers -> get shat on by the community -> quit Casual commentator -> Life gets more hectic and you can't keep it up anymore -> quit
I'm sure you can remove, rearrange, and combine some of the above elements to play your own version of the "Life: The eSports Commentator Edition" board game, but I think that the desire for more is something that is probably overlooked as an unrealistic fault by some.
I think that's a weird way to look at it. I don't think having a lisp totally stops you from being a commentator. A lot of what makes a personality is persistence, visibility, networking and working well with others. The beginning of the SC2 commentator scene was much like the beginning of the Heroes one, and i was part of both. SCBW had a weird situation where streaming wasn't easily accessible to anyone until SC2 was already underway. Not saying it was impossible, but as Jealous mentioned the tools back then were atrocious.
I know people who have succeeded in all instances, it's a lot of luck. That's why persistence is key, some people get lucky really frickin quickly and so they don't have to go through the stages of being persistent. Some people cast for years and years and eventually get their big break.
The biggest important things I've noticed about people who've gone from casual to pro -> Did they have the ability to give up everything? Did they give up everything and have 1000 hours a week to devote to casting/personality stuff? and most importantly Did they have an avenue of becoming a professional caster?
That last question is key. It doesn't mean anything specific, but it asks if the person had networks of friends to leverage, a lot of money, good equipment, something to springboard them from being just a casual to the next level, and most of all, the goal to do so.
Me? I'm a casual commentator. I probably will never explode into fame because it would take a lot to draw me from my day job, so i play it casual. Many of the people i know in the sc2/heroes scene who've gone the distance and cast HGC and all that had it as a goal, or as a way to divert from being a player/personality into caster/personality.
Because of these things tho, I go in and out of being a commentator. Is that fair to say about everyone in this thread? I don't know the full story but for every person who is a big-deal caster in SC/HOTS/etc right now? Theres 100 that started off at the same time, and eventually they just didn't see it as viable, fun, or interesting anymore.
Quoting my 5000th post, some good English commentaries from when they were more fresh in my head.
On January 29 2011 17:22 jalstar wrote: I don't have as many stories as most of the posters who get to 5k. I didn't play much on iccup and I only got gold league in SC2. So I decided to go from all the VODs in the TL database from June 2009 to the present, see which games I remember watching, and tell a quick story about why.
Then I realized that would take way too long, so here's a bunch of English commentaries from when I started watching BW. I only picked games I definitely remember watching.
Leta vs Lomo on Shades of Twilight, proleague OZ vs hite which Cholera had decided to cast because it was important for the playoff race or something, I don't know. The only reason I remember this is because both terran names started with L, most of the early games I watched were a blur and I didn't know who either player was at the time, it wasn't even a great game.
Backho vs Yarnc from the same series. This was my first introduction to the Jaedong/Lomo/Backho love triangle, which was nearly confirmed by this interview.
Idra vs Yayba from an SC2GG tournament. (the one that "useful skill toi have" came from, though that was an earlier series with Draco) My first introduction to how fucking solid Idra is, as well as how entertaining future WCG semifinalist Yayba is.
The epic Flash vs firebathero game. I didn't get why people complained about TvT until I started watching proleague regularly, because good TvTs are so awesome to watch. And if you're not watching a lot of games, the length isn't a problem.
Piano vs Canata from the Avalon MSL. Don't even bother asking why I remember this, I have no idea.
Bisu vs fantasy, also from Avalon MSL. fantasy made like no units and one commentator suggested that Bisu was throwing OSL to fantasy while fantasy was throwing MSL to Bisu.
Boxer vs Reach from e-stars. When I started watching BW I was surprised at the amount of respect old players get, with most sports you tend to get people thinking old players should retire already (Brett Favre anyone?) and looking for the next big thing.
Calm vs great from the 2009 playoffs. Nothing special about this except an underwhelming ending to the first Bo7 I ever watched.
A GIRL WON A GAME? AGAINST THAT GUY CHOLERA WORSHIPS AS A GOD?
Boxer vs Yellow on Nostalgia. Besides a few LAN games I had only played the SC campaign, where you used almost every unit. So I was wondering why these pros used only 3-4 units every game. Then Boxer nuked Yellow.
Savior vs Nada on Neo Medusa. I guess I just thought mech play was nice, and that Savior's face looked kind of weird. Didn't really know who they were yet.
Jaedong vs Canata on Carthage. My first intro to the role of scouting in BW, he kept an expo hidden forever.
Hyuk beating Jaedong. Apparently this was a huge upset or something?
Bisu vs Iris game 5. Iris' comeback was almost as insane as Klazart's wpm. Best game I had watched up to that point by far.
Fantasy vs Jaedong from PL, one of the first VODs I watched in Korean. Also a precursor to Flash's mass tank build against Calm in the EVER OSL.
Jaedong 4-pooling fantasy as revenge for the proleague finals. I really got a sense for Bo5s and rivalries after this.
I stayed up almost all night to watch the PL finals and it was the first time I watched BW live. Everyone was hyping a Bisu vs Jaedong finals and instead we got this cheesefest. I was not disappointed.
So apparently BeSt was some sort of monster and Lomo was a bit of a joke. That just made Lomo's comeback all the more impressive though.
Calm vs Kwanro from MSL finals. The first game was epic (and showed that Kwanro was completely outclassed) but the rest of the games were meh.
So yeah, I could go through games from late 2009 and all of 2010 but that would take forever since my memory's improved since then, and also this is a good way to introduce people to some good English commentary, Cholera especially was very good in the months before he quit.
Thanks to all the English casters, everyone who streams, every LR thread OP and poster, and all of TL for making me love this so much.
On June 14 2017 03:15 LegalLord wrote: Why Moletrap wasn't liked in SC2 is something that I simply don't know much about. I was aware that he was particularly disliked, but I never knew why. I wasn't interested enough in SC2 to find out.
But I do have to wonder if a lot of the streamer animosity came from the bitter feelings surrounding the developing BW vs SC2 fights. I know that for some streamers, I definitely felt a sense that they were abandoning the game not for a better game, but out of a selfish desire to "make it big." Whether or not that was fair is almost irrelevant at this point; it happened, people had resentment, and we all hated each other over it. Given the rather narrow band of one to two years of most streamers disappeared, I wonder if that played a role.
You know, I've never casted as prolifically as the people mentioned in this thread and I've only been casting very casually like once/twice a week for about 8 months now, and I think that this really hits the nail on the head for me now that I've gained some perspective on the other end of it. Here is my thinking process, not really as an inductive list, just some notes:
1. People who cast put in a lot of work. Even just to get the program to connect to Twitch and display Brood War is a headache, and was just as much if not more so in the past. I remember when I first started streaming all the way back then, it was using Camtasia and Adobe or FMLE or whatever it was and then Justin.tv and boy was it a fucking nightmare. So with that in mind, we can't forget that everything that goes into a cast is lots of work too. After your cast you have to process, edit, etc. which is again a pain right now but was probably even moreso back then. Let's also not forget about promotion and the other social elements of it. These are diverse requirements and demands placed upon people who are doing this as a hobby, "for fun," or at least that's how they started out. In other words, to even start out, you have to be relatively invested (assuming you have any sort of standards for yourself). If you aren't, people will complain, talk shit, berate, or simply ignore and that would be an unsatisfying venture as a result so I think it needs to be pointed out that to even have your name out there, there is a massive barrier of entry imo.
2. You enter a market that already has professional voices and professional players as an amateur. Therefore, comparison not only to your nearest peers in terms of skill/voice/presentation, but also to those who are at the top of the two peaks - skill and commentary. People with skills who are keyboard warriors will often be more correct than you about game elements, and they SHOULD point it out because in my opinion entertainment is just as important as accuracy and education in casting this game. People with professional commentating experience and positions will often sound better, be more natural on camera/in front of the microphone, and have more chemistry with other casters. It's almost like Brood War itself, where everyone starts off as a scrub but at this point in the game there are A rank players ready to whoop your ass. The difference is that you are putting your name out there to the masses, and likely promoting yourself at the same time, unlike NoobieZerg123 on ICCup who just plays the game in silence/privacy. The other difference is that the pressures from this line of work don't end when you log off ICCup or turn off the recording device - because it is a multimedia, interpersonal pursuit, the work doesn't really leave you until you turn off the computer entirely, and even then it can be on your mind.
3. The point in your post that really caught my attention here and that I have been thinking about recently in light of this discussion is that people got a certain following and tried to "go big." It's one thing to be compared to the professional commentators and the high level gamers' knowledge as a casual caster who does it for fun, but once you start getting a bit of an ego, or a dream, or a desire for more fame/exposure, you may begin to think of competing with the pros. This in turn raises the standards of people around you for your product, and the competition with the top is now direct. It's no surprise that many people didn't make it once that transition happened, no offense to anyone reading who was in that situation - we're not all cut out to be Olympians, rocket scientists, or professional commentators. I don't want to target anyone directly, but in the past few years there was a commentator with a clear lisp who seemed to be trying to make it big... I mean, come on. That's like trying to go pro in Brood War in 2017 with one arm and a shitty internet connection that turns off when your mom charges her vibrator.
In summary, the rise and fall of some of the casters can be looked at through the following avenues:
Casual commentator -> Get shat on by the community too much -> quit Casual commentator -> Get some praise, get a big head -> try to go big -> get shat on by the community -> quit Casual commentator -> Get some praise -> try to go big -> can't cut it compared to the established pros -> quit Casual commentator -> New game comes out, think it's your time to rein in some followers -> get shat on by the community -> quit Casual commentator -> Life gets more hectic and you can't keep it up anymore -> quit
I'm sure you can remove, rearrange, and combine some of the above elements to play your own version of the "Life: The eSports Commentator Edition" board game, but I think that the desire for more is something that is probably overlooked as an unrealistic fault by some.
This is a pretty damn articulate, accurate post in my opinion. I agree pretty strongly with all those points. There is definitely a barrier of entry to casting. It's not the Camtasia + FMLE days anymore, but it's still a learning curve just to get a working screen and good presentation up on twitch. Then there is the matter of filling out calendar events, preparing stuff for casts, etc. I'd say for every cast there is probably a good 45 minutes to an hour on both sides of it just for some really light informing people about your cast and a highlight + export to YT so people can watch the VOD if they want.
Point number 2 really struck out with me about how casting is inherently different than say playing BW. You can be an anonymous BW player, but you can't be an anonymous caster (well, I can't imagine anyone wanting to do so anyway). So it's like being a D- newbie but having to advertise it to the world and put your skill out there in front of people.
With regards to point 3, I think its pretty accurate there too. I know for me the key to beind shat on (although I rarely seem to get hate) is that you can't really be casting for praise/adulation. I started casting D ranks games cause some people mentioned it would be cool if their games were casted and I thought "sure, why the fuck not; if some people enjoy it then it's worth it to me". So even if I had 20 voices yelling about how bad I sucked if I had one person tell me they enjoyed the cast I had all the value I needed to be totally satisfied.
One other thing I would add is that there are different ways to try and "go big" or at least different ways intensities of doing it. Like on the one hand you can go all crazy, start talking about all these goals, trying to do big events, etc. and yes if you're sticking your neck out into that arena it's more expected that you'll be really good. Most good casters bring either a good voice/style OR a really solid game knowledge, usually on par with strong amateur (think high master/D or better fish) or approaching pro level. If you're a C- guy that wants to be a big thing in casting then you absolutely must have a REALLY good voice and excellent, excitement inducing (without being over the top) casting style. I think regardless of who you are though, casting and playing BW go hand in hand. If you're trying to be a big deal caster and aren't playing seriously, it just doesn't look good and you aren't do anything to add to that game knowledge weak spot. This jives pretty well with who some of the top casters have been: Incontrol, Artosis, Day9, Tasteless, and Sayle all come to mind. The first 4 were all A- or better ICCup players competitive on the foreign stage, and Sayle was a low apm, B- protoss that really put quite a bit of time into talking to other good players to learn the other matchups quite proficiently.
Actually thinking about it, I'm not sure there has ever been a super popular/accepted solo caster that wasn't reasonably high level. If you have killer play by play, you could probably be successful "making it big" IF you had a high level player casting with you for play by play. I'm not sure a pure play by play guy could ever make it big without a partner who knew what he was talking about.
MTA: Actually Husky/HD might be a pair that did. I don't know enough about their story and how popular they got in SC2. They had a following in BW, but weren't "big time"; but I seem to remember like a Husky/HD invite and some other things in SC2?
Cholera was my guy. Found his casts back in 2007-8 when I was depressed out of my mind after my brother had died. My mind was blown when I realised the game I had loved so much playing office LANs when it first came out had become such a huge thing in Korea with the whole pro scene and all. His demeanor cheered me up and gave me back the will to live, and honestly that's no exaggeration. I remember when he melted once when the camera zoomed in on Tossgirl. All the hilarity with Hyuk and how Cholera lost it that time he suddenly all killed... Shit I forget which team. But yeah. Such good times. I devoured all his previous casts like some great TV series you suddenly discover and just go live in its world for a time. And I followed all his new ones until he retired which gutted me. But then SC2 came along and I probably never would have enjoyed it so much if it weren't for Cholera's casts. A passion that still burns today.
Well, I guess I can bring it full circle and answer the original question Nuke, stop spilling my secrets!!!
Although its kind of cool that this turned into a nostalgia thread, and so many old casters and fans have chimed in!
I had some rants ready to go, but since things got all warm and fuzzy now, I'll hold back. I'll make some brief comments about some other things that have come up in this thread though, since I have kind of a unique perspective on some of them...
First of all, +1 on whiners not knowing as much as they think they know. Let me first fully admit that when I started I knew absolutely nothing. But I got better and people ignored that silly fact. And yes, I never knew everything, and I made mistakes. But I loved it when people criticized me for saying something that I just watched Flash do 10 times or something that a progamer told me in the Gom studio. I appreciate that you're Diamond, kid, but I'm gonna defer to what the Code S players told me about the matchup. But if you complain hard enough, people will believe YOU know what you're talking about. SMH. And something I'll add is that if you think you get a lot of shit on Youtube, where people watching you is voluntary, wait til you are casting a public tournament where it goes from "you suck I'm out" to "you suck and you're ruining something I care about." I never had people request I commit suicide until I started at Gom. But what I tried to do was filter it all through a sieve and see what nuggets of shit wisdom were left, and then tried to improve myself. I think a lot of people had their minds set and wouldn't change their opinions when I did improve, though.
Second, there is a lot of backstabbing in this community, now this industry. I know that Psy and Dig have both gotten royally screwed over in the past, as have I, and I'll bet others have too. eSports companies are generally pretty shitty to work for, often asking too much, being inconsiderate, forgetting to pay, and breaking agreements. And I'm not going to name names but specific people in the industry have screwed me pretty hard, too. And some people were not all the community cracked them up to be. Oh, the stories I could tell, hahaha.. That said, some specific people were really helpful and supportive, too, and there are a couple people that weren't well liked but who were actually good people... but I don't think people know what a generally cutthroat place eSports is behind the scenes.
So what kept me going in the Youtube days? The knowledge that there were people like those of you in this thread who were getting something great out of it. I knew that the people throwing shade were either too stupid to realize or too afraid (I think you're right about that VioleTAK) to acknowledge that we were bringing more fresh eyes to the scene than had ever been brought before. That I was actually helping them even though they hated me for it. (Klazart even used to tell people in every video to go to TL) But most of all because of all of the comments of thanks and the emails telling me about what a positive impact I was having on people's lives, giving them something to relax to after school or sometimes something to give their life meaning in dark times. Not only did I selfishly enjoy casting, but if I stop, the assholes win and I stop helping people. In that context, there was no way I could stop. So I took the high road and just kept faith in my knowledge that quitting was the wrong choice. The thing that is in common between all of the Youtubers mentioned in this thread is that we all did it out of passion for the game and the scene.
Then I went to GomTV, and then OGN, and the hate intensified greatly, and seemed to outweigh the positive feedback. And Korea was already a rough time in my life for reasons unrelated to the casting hate, and so being shit on daily on social media didn't help. But I never went into a broadcast with the negative on my mind. I always just cleared my mind and enjoyed the game and did the best broadcast I could. I still refused to quit to satisfy my critics, to let them win like that, but for reasons I won't go into the specifics of, eventually staying in Korea became untenable for me. Anyway, when I got back from KR, there weren't really any options for me to get another casting job, and so to answer the question of "what happened to moletrap" I'll quote Klazart from his thread that was just linked by Moktira to explain:
Commentating: I had a blast doing it but it took up a lot of my time since I can't do anything by halfs. If I did one commentary I'd end up doing fifty. Plus, if you want to do it properly you can't just do one commentary, you got to watch all the games and stay up to date with the scene and I just didn't have the time to keep up with it anymore.
So it was all or nothing, and since it wasn't all, it had to be nothing. I was burnt out from all the hate, and my Youtube viewership had all left, so I didn't feel like I was doing anyone a service, so I turned my back on esports and didn't watch a single professional SC match for years. I got a "real" job in the field I was in before casting, education. I actually got my start in casting while procrastinating from my grad school homework. And actually, I wanted to combine the two, and get people to let me use professional educational methods to improve the field of LoL and SC coaching, but everyone ignored me on that.
So I spent some time getting my life back together (I went through yet more personal drama shortly after returning to the US) and advanced my education career. I taught high school for a few years, and it was really amusing when my students found out I was slightly efamous. One time I actually caught a kid watching one of my videos on his phone in class, and another time a fellow teacher found out who I was while we were talking in the copy room told me he was a big fan. Surreal.
Last summer/fall I spent some months on an epic road trip through the rocky mountains, living in my car. Most recently I spent some months chillin with friends and family while hunting for a job. And this thread is extremely timely, because just this week I got a fantastic new job in education working for a non-profit. It's kind of the culmination of my career thus far, and it's going to be an exciting challenge that scares me a little but that I'm also looking forward to.
Brood War Remastered admittedly has me a little intrigued... and since BW doesn't change every 5 minutes like SC2, I feel like I still mostly understand the game, although I'd have to catch up with the meta. I've watched a little ASL and it's pretty neat to Flash back to the BeSt times of Brood War, with all the old pros switching back to it. I'm really glad that Tasteless and Artosis are doing it, because they have the history to give the proper appreciation to the old days. That's the one thing I was most sad about leaving Gom, actually, was that I was the only one bringing the rich history to Code A, which had so many old B teamers and veterans. And ASL needs it even more, but Nick and Dan know what's up.
Oh man... there's so much nostalgic waxing I could do now that my mind is there. Maybe I should write more about the old days before I forget it all. Maybe we all should.
I'll end with adding my thanks to all of you folks who I casted with or beside, and who made it possible, and who kept us going with your appreciations. Our far fetched dreams of spreading eSports around the world have been realized, at least in some form. We were the pioneers of what is now a legitimate industry. Good game, well played.
Ok, first of all, it was incredible fucked up what happened to you at GOM... after every commentary of you i raged at and argued with all the morons in the comment section and i legit canceled my Gom subscription after you were gone.
But i just wanted to say that YOU were the one that got little noob me into competitve BW. I was one of those new eyes that only got to love BW because of you, diggity, klaz, cholera, rise....and im still subscribed to the violeTAK channel. You guys were the only way to get to know the game because i was way to afraid to post here on TL where everybody seemed to know each other and if you said something wrong god help you.
I know i posted here and there on your channel to thank you and whatnot, but i´m really grateful for all your guys work and will never forget the time! This thread took me to some nostalgic places...to the pioneers! ^^