TL;DR – In this blog I summarize my year of doing interviews with people from SC2 - All links to all interviews at the end of the article. And sorry but there are no pics. Thank you.
A Year of Talking to People that are Awesome – A Year in Interviews
How did it start?
“Yeah man its cool, we can do it!”
I sat in front of my screen and couldn't believe what I was reading – NonY just confirmed that he was willing to do a written interview for his Fan Club. With ME!
Out of an impulse that I still can`t explain, in the middle of a hectic 2016, I took over the TL-Fanclub of NonY.
I just wanted to upgrade it a bit and at some point I thought –
“what the hell man, lets ask him for an interview!”
His response was, for many that know him, maybe not to surprising, polite and positive.
Suddenly I had to prepare a questionnaire for somebody that I admired as a person and a player since Broodwar-Days!
My mind and heart were occupied with it for days – how to approach this? What questions to ask?
How to not suck? An acute case of Fanboy-Feelings was hitting me.
Until then, I was mainly lurking TL, mainly watching things unfold from a distance. Since my first visit to a live tournament (IEM 2011 in Hanover, Germany) I was following SC2 develop and grow. But I never felt that was part of it “for real”.
I knew how smart NonY was and I didn't want to disappoint him with stupid questions that would feel superficial. Finally I sent my questions to him and posted it in TL, heart racing.
Exposing myself like this to the world of TL was a big step for me. Maybe a lot of “consumers” don't realize it, but if you post something online, you really feel you make yourself vulnerable, especially nowadays where the Internet is full of hate and vile.
The responses where positive and very encouraging. After this first bold step I took others -Zombiegrub were very helpful and did write a lovely interview.
I got even more bold and just fired away with messages and requests for interviews. Then something equally amazing like NonYs answer happened.
Tasteless agreed to an interview, but only via Skype, he doesn't like written interviews.
This was so amazing that, for the whole day, I was going on the nerves of my wife about it, and she got really annoyed.
I was totally panicking about this though: because I had NO idea of how do record and set things up!
Luckily Cyan helped me out and so it really happened:
when Tasteless` smooth voice was sounding in my hears, for the first seconds I couldn't even talk because it felt so unreal!
After that the following months became really busy: Nerchio, Maynarde, DIMAGA, Take, NoRegret, Kelazhur, feardragon, PtitDrogo, ShowTime, Optimus.
With every interview I grew more confident and relaxed, in part because the people I was interviewing were just very very nice people.
What did I learn?
I learned that a lot of “our” people in Starcraft are human beings that are engaged, that want to achieve something. Human beings with dreams, hopes, and a lot of humor.
Doing proper interviews is also hard – but every bit of preparation is rewarded with good answers and even sometimes the surprised faces of the interview partners.
At some journalism page I once read:
“don't forget this while doing an interview: your interview partner is giving you a part of his life time, respect that through preparing as good as you can for that so that he or she can feel, you value this and that you and they are not wasting time!”
Now this year is coming to an end. The feedback of the listeners and readers where basically good and encouraging.
Of course there were some disappointments – people I would love to interview, that just couldn't find the time or just straight told me that they don't do interviews at all (and maybe, just maybe, it is because I m a little unknown noob)
But never in this year was there a person related to e-sports and Starcraft that was not polite. Sometimes the answers were short and still hurt a bit. But not because of the people, more because of my own expectations and wishes.
What the future brings (hopefully)
A lot of things have changed over the past months in Starcraft, but also in my life.
Soon I will be moving from on country to another (South Africa to Germany), I will become a father, will start a new job.
So for the next weeks and months to come I will probably not be able to do a lot of Interviews. But one thing is for sure: If time permits, I will try again and see what surprises await we along the road.
Until now every answer to one of my messages inspired in me the same excitement and terror of being able to connect to human beings like NonY and so many others.
Humans that I admire, that I am curious about and that have so much to say.
Thank you for support, following and reading! This is not a goodbye, more a life sign and a greeting!
See you very soon!
Benjamin
Here is my youtube channel for all interviews done this year:
https://www.youtube.com/user/BenFromm/playlists?sort=dd&shelf_id=0&view=1
Here are the written interviews:
NonY
Zombiegrub
DIMAGA
ShowTime
Take