AndrewGroen

Thanks for the links, Jolly! Rob and I had a talk about whether we should be covering the pre-season, but ultimately decided against it. We have to be really careful to avoid our compulsion to just sit on the mic and talk about StarCraft for the whole 30-45 minutes. XD

Haha Yeah, we're officially in the Dry Times of the esports calendar. We didn't think there was anything to make you all aware of, but we retroactively realized the Capcom Cup is on Dec 6. So watch that!

@dturtle My apologies for missing this! We absolutely know about the "new" Secret lineup. We've discussed that more at length in the past. It's sort of bizarre that they're even still called Team Secret. Probably creates a lot of unnecessary confusion.

Absolutely! We were so stoked to be able to get him on the show, and we just loved talking with him. Just basking in the depths of his knowledge and passion for the game. We will definitely be looking to bring him back for another segment during the run up to the Shanghai major.

I don't know if he's still playing StarCraft, but "noobeater" is still my pick for best esports name. And yeah, we recorded this before the crazy NiP/Alliance game so it wasn't on our radar. We generally have enough to watch that the qualifiers for an event tend to slip by.

I was thinking that same thing. I was really jealous of those folks that got to sit in a beautiful park and watch two of the best in the world play a wonderful match of SC2. This is really interesting. I came away from the Americas Championship really excited for Blizzcon. I think we're really going to get a sense of where HotS is as a game both in terms of the meta and the international community. If we see even a little deviation from the Americas Championship meta then I'll be thrilled. All a game needs is a small amount of change and growth to stay interesting.

And here is I've ever seen in my relatively short history with the game. EnvyUs was so good this weekend.

Ugh, that's terrible (if not entirely suprising.) Glad you're finding this to be a more approachable way into SC2. I think for beginners to the StarCraft scene the foreign WCS circuit is great. Eventually you'll get sucked into the Korean leagues if you enjoy WCS. I've come to love everything about the Korean leagues. Even the Korean vibe of the broadcast is appealing. Like a comfort food.

Yeah, you're never going to have to worry about Rob and I missing an opportunity to talk about good StarCraft.

I wish forums had a fav button. I would press it.

It's highly exclusive. I hear they can really knockout your competition, and punch up your marketing copy. :-D

Hey folks, just wanted to jump in here to let you know we saw the comments about the LoL interview being tough to follow and maybe a bit too inside baseball. We'll take that under consideration and try harder in the future to make sure we're making that extra effort to be accessible. That's a huge part of our mission, but it can be tough to not get excited about a conversation and want to dive into it as deep as possible. Thanks for all the comments! If there's ever anything we can do better please do let us know. :-D Andrew

I'd argue that tends to be Riot's diplomatic way of stepping into a region. Every conqueror who ever approached a city has said "Just let us in and we'll let you live as you always have done." But I think the truth is that Riot can't stop themselves from phasing out these third party tournaments. I don't think they banned LoL tournaments in the West, either. But they make the competitive environment incredibly difficult for those tournaments who now can't get top teams (because they're tied up playing in the LCS) and because hardcore fans aren't interested in watching those tournaments because they know they don't mean as much as the LCS.

Yeah, give it ten minutes and it'll show you what it's got. It's not a game that takes very long to prove its concept. The conversation on the show may not have sounded like it, but I adore the game. Play it every day.

Rob how could you not share that Fnatic hype video with me. I HAD TO FIND OUT LIKE THIS? That thing is so amazing I'm almost wondering if it's some kind of Swedish metajoke that I don't understand. Either way...I'm going to have to do some soul searching as to whether this makes Fnatic's CSGO squad my favorite team or my bloodsworn enemies.

For future reference, Rob includes a few links about what we talked about in the show in the top post under the "Crib Sheet" header. We might need to make that more visible.

@Badfinger Haha I'm a "living language" type. I know the real definition of "begs the question" but it's never used that way anymore. And thanks for the links! I wasn't aware of that calendar, and that will be really helpful. Re Aui: Yeah, I didn't really like what I was reading from PPD there. There's a telling moment where he says basically "I prefered having fun getting 3rd place to being stressed out and winning." Which I personally deeply understand, but I'm not sure that's what I want to hear out of the leaders of teams I cheer for. IT also highlights something interesting about the esports pay structure. You're not really salaried in the same way a sports star would be. I believe most of their earnings come from winning tournaments. So as long as you're making plenty of money getting third place (and your sponsors are still relatively happy with your results) while living the dream pro-gamer life with your friends...is there much pressure to push yourself the extra mile to get 1st? This post from PPD was basically the exact opposite of what I wanted to hear. You're so right, sclpls. This read to me like "I just wanna hang with my bros..." and that's always my fear with North American esports organizations.

And here's a list of matches from the past week. StarCraft 2 GSL Code S Ro32 Group D GSL Code S Ro32 Group E Twitch Past Broadcast Link (Subscription Required, YouTube VODs not available yet) WCS Premier League Round of 32 Group A (Polt, Petraeus, Harstem, MajOr) Group B (Hydra, Elfi, Starbuck, Kelazhur) Group C (Jaedong, Sen, ShoWTimE, HeRoMaRinE) League of Legends NA LCS Playoffs Semi-Finals CLG vs Team Impact (August 15) Team Liquid vs Solomid (August 16) EU LCS Playoffs Semi-Finals H2K Gaming vs Origen (August 15) Fnatic vs Unicorns of Love (August 16)

Great to have you guys with us, McDoom/asciibear! We're really excited to have some people coming around who are new to esports or who are big into one esports and exploring the rest of the scene. Asciibear, I believe we're going to be doing a preview of the big $250,000 ESL One Cologne event coming up. Hoping we can get a knowledgeable guest to come on and really help us understand the scene before the big event. And yeah, I agree, anyone curious about CSGO should check that out. My advice is simply to be patient with it. Very hard to follow CSGO at first, but once you begin to understand the layout of the level and some of the strategies, it's a fantastic spectator game. McDoom, glad you enjoyed TI. They did a super job of packaging the event together into something that was fun to watch despite the intensely confusing and convoluted nature of Dota 2 (a game I dearly love.) As for women at the show, you're totally right. There is one great caster named Sheever who I would have preferred to have gotten more on-camera time, and the beloved host of the event is Kaci Aitchison. But other than that, it's unfortunately rare. Emily Gera wrote a good article on this topic over at Polygon a little over a year ago. http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/27/5723446/women-in-esports-professional-gaming-riot-games-blizzard-starcraft-lol

Tackling the concept of what "meta-game" means could be a good show discussion topic. You hear it constantly, but it doesn't really have one exact definition. As for learning Dota, I understand the trepidation. I played LoL for a year before transitioning to Dota. I've found Dota to be a far more complex and convoluted game than LoL, but that intricacy is what I enjoy about it. Rather than a set of rigid mechanics, it's more like the Lords Management equivalent of Spelunky: a series of interlocking mechanics that often converge in unforeseen ways. The mechanics can be manipulated in a way that you can't in most online games which allows you to do some pretty weird and fun stuff. Playing Dota is like being part of a scientific team that is still discovering what is possible. I've played almost 2000 hours, and I literally still learn something new about the game every time I play a match. I think of it more as a hobby (the way someone might practice their Tennis game) than as a video game for entertainment.

Oooh, really excited to watch that, jennegatron. Thanks for embedding that. And yeah, we'll definitely do FGC stuff at some point. I wouldn't be surprised if it became relatively regular once we get outside of the summer and fall months which are usually the biggest for the traditional esports. I personally love Smash, and I have a working relationship with Prog, one of Melee's most prominent casters (and a great dude who cares about making the game accessible to the non-hardcore). I've interviewed him a few times, and I'd be excited to get him on the show to talk Melee.

I love Dota so much. The mind games between captains in the draft are fascinating. I've spent thousands of hours on that game, and I feel like I've only scratched the surface of what there is to know and learn. All I know for sure is that this was a fantastic tournament. Possibly the most fun I've ever had with a week of esports.

Yeah, I agree. Valve isn't a huge company and The International is arguably the biggest event of the year in esports so you can be pretty sure their bandwidth for anything besides TI until now has been nonexistent. Hopefully we'll see them make more traction on this now that the behemoth is behind them. Personally I'd like to see them partner with a group like Starladder for an Eastern European major, and then perhaps something in South Korea (in addition to NA's TI, and China's DAC.) Continue the trend of showing support to the worldwide community.

I learned my lesson.

Haha Rob you don't know how bad I felt about that all week. Next two beers are on me. I spent my first year as a Lords Management player in LoL and then spent the last two in Dota so my vocab is super interchangable. I generally say "characters" rather than hero/champion, for instance. I just love Lords Managements, I don't care too much about the nitty gritty specifics. @Reyturner We'll be focusing a lot on SC2/LoL/Dota/CSGO as the bulk of the show, but I certainly know I'll be looking for any opportunity (particularly during uneventful weeks) to cover other scenes like Call of Duty, Hearthstone, Halo, Quake, and Fighting Games. Doing something on "weird, small regional scenes" could be cool, but I'm not sure how many opportunities we'll have to do it. It would be neat to go to something like a local Smash Bros tournament.