Eric Van Allen's discussions

Ethan Gach, part of our weekend team, does updates every week on what tournaments are going on and what streams you can find them at! He’s pretty good at catching the main stuff and some of the more niche streams as well. Read more

Sometimes there’s a second camera, either another observer or the play-by-play person, that the producer could cut to in that case for stuff like base races. But now we’re getting into production set-up specifics, and it seems like StarLadder only has one dedicated obs to work with. Read more

Yeah, Lyrical tried pretty hard to get the obs to take the hint, but we don’t know if the English cast was even in the observer’s ear, let alone language barriers. I’m sure that’s a frequent issue for international tournaments with several different languages providing commentary. Read more

Often the commentators have their own camera, but that’s usually for the analyst / color commentator to look at specific things like builds, net worth, buyback status when they need those numbers immediately on-hand. Read more

Bookmarked this for reading tonight! Read more

These tournaments also stream online, and for a vast majority, that’s how they consume esports, same as many sports fans watch the NFL on TV more often than they see it in-person.

I have a few local places that do tournaments, issue comes in how much buy-in is necessary to be competitive. That’s been the key difference between in-person and online card games for me, is that no matter what, I’m likely to get matched against and have someone to always play of my (relative) skill level. Whereas… Read more

Players will probably bring goggles in anticipation of more soundbooth construction issues. Read more

I’m personally a big Hearthstone fan (if you couldn’t tell from my posting history so far), so it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility! Read more

It would mean less Target Dummies in drafts, which is at least a start! Read more

No firm numbers, but for the most part I end up in the 3-3 range. Read more

I was only being a little tongue-in-cheek. Read more

Yes, so the players play a game each on PlayStation and Xbox, and an aggregate score determines the winner. Read more

Here’s a link to the reddit user who solved it. Read more

Fellow weekender here Ethan pointed out to me that Duelyst, another online card game, has puzzles like this as well. Read more

All the suggestions and replies here have been dully noted. Sometimes you get tripped up on bad habits and jargon when you’re too psyched about 2OT! Read more

A few people have mentioned that, so I’ll be sure to note that going forward! And thanks, we’re really excited to be bringing esports out to a wider audience. Read more

That is Definitely Not Bane, probably just some dude named Steve from accounting. Read more

I totally agree that relationships are a two-way road, and especially if you’re like Ich, you have to take into account a lot more than just playing. Read more

No worries! There have been a few female League players, most notably Remi, formerly of Renegades, and there are a few all-girls squads. As for openly gay players, none that I’m aware of currently, but a Google search got me a few players. They didn’t have any citations though, so I’m less confident in declaring that… Read more