It’s a pretty rare opportunity that I can attend a pro-gaming event in my area, but this past weekend Red Bull had their Training Grounds event in Orlando at Full Sail University. It was one of better experiences I’ve had at these types of events for a whole number of reasons.

Games

I made it out to all three days (save the first half of Day 1), and a more intimate setting like this gave the players way more leeway to practice with and tweak their own styles. A noticeable breakout player was Succeed, who defeated TLO and SeleCT with some great use of the Warp Prism and general harassment. Additionally, NesTea wasn’t exactly in his prime, getting crushed by TLO and Snute with some sub-par decision making, a far cry from the former king of ZvZ. He did however have his way with SeleCT, which included a nail-biting 45 minute game on Newkirk Precinct TE that involved back-and-forth base trading, drops, and some sick fungals at the end.

The overall victor of the tournament was (spoiler alert) Snute, who gave an impressive show with his ZvZ victories. He and HuK put on a great finals for everyone, where HuK’s aggressive play gave him some great victories but ultimately was no match for Snute’s decision making and unit control (I had to say at least once that he “HuK’d up”). Plus, confetti!

Social Experience

Events like these are full of interactions with fellow fans, players and casters. As well as with friends who were with me, I talked a great deal with the crowd over the weekend, meeting up with now TL staff BisuDagger, who just so happened to be the host of a GSL watch party I was at two years earlier (this was before the Barcraft scene existed). I also ended up sitting next to a guy who was best friends with EG’s COO, almost making a fool of myself when I unintentionally tried to get him to hook me up with a job – I was only commenting on how they were marketing the open position.

In addition, while in line for one round of autographs, I was interviewed by Walshy (former MLG but current Red Bull content producer) to explain what I was in line for and why I liked the experience of coming to events like this one. I was definitely prepared for most of the questions although I might have played the “eSports corollary to real sports” card a bit much. Additionally, a friend of mine who got noticed as very energetic during the first day had a different style sit-down interview. I anticipate these videos will be up sometime in the next month on Red Bull’s eSports portal.

Part [9]

Of course, no event is complete without meeting (or trying to) the headliner casters. djWHEAT was pretty happy to see my “Thread the Needle” poster I made even before I knew the bonus round would include Star Strikers, and I’ll definitely look to it every time I play.

After waiting in line, Day[9] vaguely remembered me from a previous event (CSL finals 2012, which I will go into detail in a later post). The next thing I did came from an experience I had just two days earlier – of course, knowing his background in math, I proceeded to give him a math riddle to solve.
Unfortunately, it couldn’t be done in a single sitting. Note that I wasn’t in the business of putting him on the spot, it’s just that I wanted to be a bit unique in this interaction.
After getting his signature, I decided to stick around and shoot the shit for a while with BisuDagger and Evan, creator of a future esports website, after which a very interesting thing happened. A security guard came up to us and asked in relation to the event, “How did this all come about?”. Here’s what Day[9]’s thoughts were (after shooing Evan’s camera away):

It was around 1998. There was an huge expansion of broadband Internet and communications infrastructure across the globe, and with that the competitive gaming scene exploded. Players from Europe, America, all over wanted to compete to see who was the best. The best in the world. Sean Plott (paraphrased)

What I loved about his explanation is that despite his background and experience, he made it both general and easy for anyone to understand. Following that, guard talked about his love for the NES Zelda game and Skyrim, and afterwards some other Brood War discussion followed (i.e. BisuDagger shit-talking Flash).

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In my opinion, this was the most enjoyable StarCraft II event I’ve been to so far. The smaller, more intimate setting made it better to experience the tournament and everything about it. Above all, it’s definitely made for some good stories.