NASL Production Of WCS Season 2 NA Regional Finals

Apologies for both the wall of text as well as the formatting issues. Blogger is annoying, and Blizzard doesn't have any WCS media kits that I can find - and it's late so I can't go take screen shots and stuff. I will plan appropriately in the future!

On to the actual post!

I decided to do some thoughts on North American Star League (NASL) and their production of this weekend's Starcraft 2 World Championship Series (WCS) Season 2 North American regional finals. regional finals went in my opinion.

I should probably start with the fact that we did not watch live, but instead watched the VODs through Twitch. There's just too much going on in my house to watch most Starcraft events live, and pausing is a Godsend, when I need a break to get stuff done.

The Casters/Hosts

I tend to enjoy the NASL casters, when they can stay on target (ha ha). Sometimes Rotterdam and Mr. Bitter tend to go off on weird jokes from personal conversations that the audience isn't privy to. By the time they reign themselves in, the bit has gone from weird, to not funny. It happens very fast! Depending on the situation this can be a complete mood killer, taking away the attention from the match and players. Or it can be oddly entertaining in a WTF kind of way.

The NASL casters are great, and I am really hoping they go back to doing "The Pulse", but I don't see how they can do that as well as nightly content. I do miss that show though, it was a lot of fun and so different from the other options available in the scene for weekly breakdowns.

Mr. Bitter

Other than aforementioned weird tangents, I find Mr. Bitter rather entertaining. His play by play is not always accurate, but I find him to be both entertaining and I love that he explains things in a very easy to understand way. I suppose this could be taken as a bad thing (if you read a lot of Reddit), but I don't understand the game enough to know what most people watching know, so I think it's awesome!

Frodan

It's been fun to really watch Frodan grow from NASL 3 to today. He is fun to watch, and actually really hysterically funny. I enjoy his humor, his style, and his approach to casting. Overall sometimes he misses the stuff I want him to be talking about in game (he doesn't switch topics fast enough sometimes to match the pace of the game), but the rest of the fun of watching him makes up for it.

Gretorp

Gretorp is knowledgeable and brings excitement to the games. He's sometimes a little dry, but he and Frodan make a great duo. I will never forget the 36 orbital command game Gretorp played, I think it was during NASL 4. I enjoy the back and forth they have and think they complement each other well. I find his input on why a player is doing something and the moves it opens up down the road to really make the game easier to watch and much more educational.

Rotterdam

Rottie is fun. Weird, but fun. He, like Mr. Bitter, tends to get off track a little too easily, but at least they make the awkwardness fun to watch. He seems the most...comfortable with being a little crazy and that comes off very well.

Terry the Intern

Terry had some truly awkward moments where you could see his mind thinking "how do I get out of this?!", like during the "Who was the 50th president?" trivia. Otherwise, I enjoyed his appearances and find the strange awkwardness a little refreshing. As I mentioned before he needs to stop with the pushing social media like crack. It's annoying.

Clutch

Clutch needs to stop yelling into the microphone unless he's yelling "ARE YOU READY?!". This weekend I learned that he considers himself an actor and that he interrupted every interviewee for a quick story that somehow steered the story back to him. He comes across a little....off. I can't quite nail it down though, but he's didn't really add a whole lot to the whole production for me personally. Don't get me wrong, he's an awesome announcer, but the other stuff just doesn't seem as natural to him as it does to the other guys. Interview skills definitely need work.

DAY9

Day9 is always fun to watch, when he's not giggling like a crazy person when casting with Apollo. A lot of yelling, since he didn't have to cast the whole gig. This is normal for Day9. A little tiresom, but normal. He certainly knows his stuff and it's *really* fun to hear him talk out what timings could mean and what we need to see for each option to unfold in the right amount of time.I enjoy his casting but you just never know which Day9 you're going to get. A reason why I stopped watching his dailies. I always tune into an event when he's casting though, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. He's always entertaining, if a little overboard on the enthusiasm.

Husky

Husky gets a lot less credit than I think he deserves for his ability to quickly and efficiently call good play-by-play. There's very few in the industry that I have seen that can do it and get away with it. Husky actually does it really well, but there's still a lot of yelling going on. Husky and Day9 make a great casting team overall, so it was really fun to have them both there.

Production

NASL did a really amazing job with their overall production. They had a LOT of B-roll. A whole lot! And it really added to my enjoyment of the cast overall. Their music was pretty good too, but could have used one more song to add to the rotation. By the end of Sunday I was a little sick of the same song - and of Dimli walking around humming it. I also love that they have countdowns during their downtime, so I can see how long I have to get stuff done before I miss something - though we did watch everything on VOD, so I suppose I could have paused it.

Almost forgot to mention there was no dubstep! Did you hear that?! Other music DOES exist! I loved it!

Also, while there were some sound issues intermittently they were minor and quickly fixed (except for Clutch's mic right there at the end).

One things I did miss was some community stuff like Carbot's Starcrafts, and Temp0's stuff. It wasn't a bad production without it, and I'm not sure if it would have been better with it - but for some reason I did notice it wasn't there.

The B-roll features (that I saw) included:

Interviews with all the players

 Outros from the players ("I'm so and so, and you're watching WCS something something") 

I really loved this and think EVERYONE should be doing it! A great addition that made it feel like I was watching a real production.

Paintball Competition 

This was a really fun and just great entertainment. Less shots of Lauren's ass would have been fine, but I suppose their market is 18-24 year old guys. As an aside, I've been wanting to try paintball, and the injury report at the end kind of ended that for me. A big thank you to NASL for saving me from injuring myself greatly!

Rotti's Wing Eating Competition

This one was....weird, though the commentary of the spectators was entertaining.

Santa Monica Pier Meet and Greet

This was a little short, but was fun to watch the players doing something other than playing. It was just fun to watch.

Walkthrough of the Player House

The NASL personalities never cease to amaze me with their deadpan commentary and general funny stuff they say. I liked kinda seeing the "behind the scenes" how players live kinda stuff. I haven't really seen anything like this except Dr. Pepper gaming house stuff, which just feels like a gigantic advertising waste of time which doesn't tie in to SC2 directly.

Website and Social Media Stuff

I am 100% tired of NASL pushing the social media stuff. ESL does a much better job of making Twitter an organic part of their production. The NASL approach of "OMG TWEET! TWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!" is very tiresome and feels so forced it's just not cool.

The NASL website is pretty easy to navigate, except that there doesn't seem to be a lot there. Even now, the FAQ and schedule says it's coming soon and the newest "news" is the announcement that they were doing WCS Season 2. Clearly, they are focusing elsewhere, but it'd be nice to see some stuff there. They do have a mention of the Santa Monica fan meet and greet, but it didn't make it into the news section. Picky? Yes. Requirement for a site to file stuff properly? Yes.

I do really like that they have an option to turn spoilers off and on. That's a must have!

I couldn't really check out Twitter or Facebook during the weekend because we were always so behind the live event that we didn't want to risk having the winners announced. So I can't really say here, except that they can stop telling me to do it.

Final Thoughts

I thought NASL did a pretty good job on the regional finals that took place this weekend. Part of me wonders if this is because of the horrendous job that Major League Gaming (MLG) did last season set the bar pretty low. Yes, I'm hating on MLG. I thought the overall production value for the  was not as good as it could have been.  I thought could have done more than a regular MLG event for their production. I do realize they were in a bind, and I thought the event was fine - but it wasn't particularly interesting or appealing as an observer. I haven't figured out whether I blame MLG or Blizzard more, but certainly both are responsible.


I know NASLs production value comes in part from having more time to prepare and seeing the mistakes that were made previously. Nevertheless, it was a typical NASL broadcast. It was fun, lots of high energy and lots of great stuff to watch that wasn't always the games. I am definitely excited to see what they come up with for Season 3! And for figuring out Bloggers retarded formatting rules! *points at the "final thoughts" header I spent 30 minutes trying to fix*