This post is over 10 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant. My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
Last night, one of my good friends Mellina Kong, manager of Astral Authority’s professional Heroes of the Storm roster, posted an update on Twitter about how her players had their dreams crushed. Curious as to what was happening, I looked into it.
Apparently, Astral Authority had qualified for the HGC Fall 2016 NA Regional, happening in early August. The winner of this regional will qualify for BlizzCon 2016 to take their shot at proving themselves to be the best team in the world, on the grandest stage of them all. Not long after, Astral Authority was notified that their qualification had been revoked and their team was disqualified due to bug abuse.
Tyrael has a bug with his trait where selecting a particular sequence of talents and inputting a series of key presses with the right timing will cause his Archangel’s Wrath to deal an unintentionally high amount of damage. According to investigations conducted by ESL and Blizzard, a player on Astral Authority was abusing this exploit to gain an unfair advantage in their games, and consequently, the team was disqualified.
Drama began to explode, with some members of the community and other professional players directing the hatred of 10,000 years at ESL, Blizzard, and Astral Authority’s opponents. People attempted to justify Astral Authority’s behavior by bringing up evidence of other teams using the exploit, claiming ignorance, and just spewing hatred to get the frustration out of their bodies.
What’s done is done. ESL disqualified Astral Authority from the tournament and are scheduling a match to determine their replacement. No matter how vocal Astral Authority fans get, I highly doubt that ESL will reverse their decision by reinstating Astral Authority or revoking the match offer they gave to the runner-up teams.
Having an educational and professional background in sociology and psychology, with a specialization in criminal psychology, I decided to write this piece to help explain this whole fiasco, and nudge the community in the right direction – away from drama, and towards a thirst for learning.
There are some valuable lessons we can learn from this situation about how life works.
Just because you work hard for something doesn’t mean you get it.
People will break rules.
Not everyone gets punished for wrongdoing.
Don’t get caught off guard by Schadenfreude.
Just because you work hard for it doesn’t mean you get it.
If you truly believe that you can try your best at something and get guaranteed results, you are terribly mistaken. The key to success is not to chase your passion and give it your all. The key to success is to chase opportunity and be smart about it.
Sometimes, you suck at your passion.
If your passion is painting, and you’ve been dedicated to becoming a better painter for the past ten years, but your products look worse than something I painted with my foot, you should probably give up painting. No matter how passionate you are about painting, it’s just not your thing.
There is no doubt that the members of Astral Authority worked hard to qualify for the North American regional. However, just because you work hard doesn’t mean you have the necessary skill. Just because you work hard doesn’t entitle you to results.
A Korean streamer by the name of chu8 threw together a random team to compete in the qualifier. Even though they didn’t put any effort into it, they had the skill to win and get far in the qualifier bracket – and ultimately, that’s what matters in life.
It really sucks that Astral Authority ended up getting disqualified out of the third and final opportunity to qualify for the regional. But if they were actually so good that they deserved a spot in the regional … Unfortunately, there’s no denying that they already failed to qualify twice.
People will break rules.
A psychologist by the name of Lawrence Kohlberg created a theory called the Stages of Moral Development. This theory states that, as people grow older, they shift from ethics based on simply avoiding punishment, to ethics based on societal well-being.
These are his stages:
Obedience and punishment (“How can I avoid punishment?”)
Self-interest (“What’s in it for me?”)
Interpersonal accord and conformity (“I want to act in a way that makes people like me.”)
Maintaining social order (“I have to follow the law.”)
Social contract (“I need to serve the greatest good for the greatest number of people.”)
Universal ethical principles (“I must use abstract reasoning to determine the best way for humans to exist.”)
The stage at which someone exists is the stage that best describes the primary reasoning behind a majority of their decisions. For example, if someone regularly shoplifts and focuses on not getting caught, they are at Stage 1. Just because this individual sometimes thinks about how society can help the homeless population does not put them at Stage 5.
Unsurprisingly, most people hit a ceiling at Stage 4. Adolescents and young adults – the demographic that best describes esports athletes and viewers – linger around Stages 1-3, before some of them mature into Stage 4.
What’s the point of going over the stages of moral development?
It shows that the young and fresh minds in esports still focus on avoiding punishment and acquiring personal gain. As long as they can make sure they’re subtle about their wrongdoing, and they can reap the benefits, it’s likely they will engage in the unethical act – especially when the punishment is abstract instead of concrete (“do not exploit bugs” vs. “Tyrael is banned”).
If you’re an Astral Authority fan, there’s no reason to be upset at the player who used the bug. This is the kind of behavior that a vast majority of people his age exhibit, and that’s just how life is.
Not everyone gets punished for wrongdoing.
I’d like to make a comparison here between Astral Authority’s disqualification and driving over the speed limit.
Driving over the speed limit
Astral Authority’s use of the Tyrael bug
Driving at or under the speed limit is the law.
Not abusing bugs is the rule.
Many people drive over the speed limit.
More teams other than Astral Authority abused the bug.
Not all speeders get a speeding ticket.
Only Astral Authority got punished.
Telling the police officer to chase after someone else will not get you out of your ticket.
Telling ESL and Blizzard to punish other teams will not change Astral Authority’s punishment.
Speeding just a few kilometers per hour over the speed limit doesn’t get you a speeding ticket. There are too many variables that could account for going a few KPH over the limit.
Teams that only abused the bug mildly did not get punished. Those teams could claim the bug abuse as a mistake, and it would be difficult to disprove otherwise.
You will probably only get a ticket if you are going 20+ KPH over the speed limit.
ESL and Blizzard determined that Astral Authority’s abuse of the bug was intentful and severe.
Just because you didn’t know the speed limit doesn’t mean you don’t get a speeding ticket.
Just because Astral Authority claims they were not familiar with the bug does not excuse them from punishment.
If people call the police to report a particular car and license plate number for reckless driving, they are more likely to get punished.
Members of the community called out Astral Authority publicly, which increased the likelihood of them receiving punishment.
If ESL and Blizzard’s investigations were 100% accurate and Astral Authority did indeed intentionally abuse the Tyrael bug, does Astral Authority deserve to be punished? Yes.
Do the other teams that intentionally abused the Tyrael bug deserve to be punished? Yes.
Do all wrongdoers always get punished? As we saw by the “driving over the speed limit” example, unfortunately, no.
And that’s just how life is.
Don’t get caught off guard by Schadenfreude.
Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.
This phenomenon is based on social comparison theory, where we feel better about ourselves when others around us have bad luck.
The bigger you are, the larger the target on your back.
Astral Authority has made a decent name for themselves so far. The one big instance I remember from Astral Authority is when one of their staff members chose one day to randomly publicly insult those with mental illnesses. The CEO stepped in within half an hour and fired the imbecile. This established the brand’s mission as one that cares about its fans, and the community in general.
Just because you’re building up a good reputation doesn’t mean everyone likes you. As your fan base increases, so does the number of people who dislike you – people who will gain pleasure from your misfortune.
This is why public figures need to be particularly careful about what they say – not only because they are a role model to many, but also because there are people waiting to pounce on all their wrongdoings. Don’t get caught off guard by Schadenfreude.
That’s just how life is.
This post is over 10 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant. My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
If you’ve been keeping up with the tournament, you probably know by now that Tempo Storm HotS didn’t do too well, dropping their series against Panda Global on the first day of the open stage tournament. The grand final is now over, travel day has come to a close, and I’m finally back home in the Chicagoland suburbs.
Apparently we were competing in front of a sold out crowd, but when I first went into the studio on the morning of the first day, there was a ton of empty spots. I figured that it was because it was early on the first day, but the crowd didn’t really ever fill up every chair throughout the entire two-day tournament.
I went into the stands and met up with Gelda, one of the content creators and producers for Tempo Storm’s Heroes of the Storm division, who works closely with me. Because there was nowhere near a lack of chairs, I was able to watch some games with him. I took a photo when Astral Authority were facing Naventic.
Once Tempo Storm got eliminated, I spent a majority of my time working and gathering information from people, so I didn’t really have much of a chance to have fun or take additional photos. But, I did catch Srey’s team’s series and took a picture of him from the front row of the stands.
(He’s the one behind the computer monitor, he’s one of my favorite players, and a former member of Tempo Storm.)
I also unexpectedly had my photo taken while I was watching the game from the stands. As you can see, I’m not very skilled at posing for selfies.
Yesterday was travel day, returning to ORD from LAX. It was quite a feat to even get on the plane itself. My flight’s gate was changed literally six times, and to thank me for running all over the airport, American Airlines then proceeded to add a 2+ hour delay to my flight.
I listened in on the announcements and discussion, and apparently, they ran out of airplanes, so they didn’t have one available to take us to Chicago. So, they had to send one over from Mexico City to come get us.
Luckily, even though this was a flight almost three hours after the one I was supposed to be on, the flight number remained constant, so I was able to get my window seat as originally scheduled.
The flight was as eventful as a flight could possibly be. My friend Ed Lam (better known as Grainyrice online) asked me to save him some airplane pretzels, because he “enjoys the taste of a well-traveled pretzel.” The guy sitting next to me pulled a sandwich out of his neck pillow. I dropped my can of Coca-Cola and it seemly went into a different dimension, because it disappeared without a sight.
Late into the night – somewhere around 2 AM – we finally touched down in Chicago, and my good buddy Josh was there to pick me up and drive me home.
This post is over 10 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant. My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
One of the biggest complaints I had for previous Heroes of the Storm tournaments was the fact that everything was packed into two days. Luckily, for this tournament, they split it up into three days so the broadcast personalities and production crew wouldn’t have to work 14-hour-long work days.
Unfortunately, Blizzard wasn’t able to provide enough money for ESL to do an official broadcast and open stage for a three-day broadcast, so the first day of group stage (which was today) happened behind-the-scenes.
Tempo Storm’s first matchup was against Naventic, the team expected to win the whole tournament. At approximately 9:30 AM PDT, the players got everything set up in the game room, and began reporting audio issues to the ESL admins.
The ESL admins promptly contacted some techs to get our audio problems resolved, but nothing seemed to be working. Some players had audio input and output problems, some players were hearing static, and some players’ white noise wasn’t working.
(For those who are not familiar with the tournament setup, the players wear earbuds for voice communication and in-game sounds, and headphones on top of their earbuds with white noise to block out outside noise.)
For over an hour, ESL techs went in and out of the game room trying to fix our problems. At one point, Tomster nearly had his eardrums blown up when a tech said all the audio problems should be resolved, but then proceeded to transmit a brain-bustingly loud crackling noise through his earbuds. After a massive delay, ESL finally got around to fixing everything.
This is where the real clown fiesta begins.
Because we don’t have a real draft built into the custom game interface in Heroes of the Storm, we have to use a third-party website to do our draft. Unfortunately, this website doesn’t really work properly, and the players have to constantly spam Refresh in order to see when picks and bans are locked in. Every several seconds, the whole thing would stop loading. At one point, for a little while, Zixz only had access to picking 10 heroes in the draft screen.
Once we finally get the draft website working, we discover that our observer had sent the wrong draft link, with only one ban instead of two. We obviously have to remake the draft lobby.
Then, the observer proceeds to send Tempo Storm one link and Naventic another link. Both teams immediately ready up, then sit and wait for the other team. After the countdown timer went down by a couple hundred seconds, I got suspicious and went over to the other side of the curtain to see what was going on with Naventic, when I found out that we were waiting for them, and they were waiting for us.
The observer finally sent both teams the same link, and we got started. The problems still weren’t entirely fixed, though, as the website continued to stop loading once in a while, and Tomster’s draft randomly crashed and gave 502 Bad Gateway errors. At one point, the drafting website force-picked Nova for Tempo Storm when we wanted to pick Uther.
Eventually, we ditched the website and did the draft in the lobby, which helped us make some real progress towards playing the game.
Unfortunately, Tempo Storm HotS dropped the series 0-2 to Naventic, but had some decently close games. This will place us in the lower bracket tomorrow, facing off against Panda Global in the second series of the day. If we rise victorious in this series, we will face the loser of Naventic vs. Astral Authority to decide who moves on to the semifinals on Sunday morning.
This post is over 10 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant. My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
The day started off with us waking up (sort of) bright and early and heading to the studio to start practicing.
There’s one missing from that photo because our support player (who is role swapping to tank for this tournament) lives locally, and he was driving this morning and wasn’t able to make it in until about an hour or so later due to the notorious Los Angeles traffic.
To start off the day, they assigned the garage near the studio as our practice area. At first, I figured that it would mean we’re going to burn to death in the California heat, but then we found out that it was actually an air-conditioned garage.
For some reason, there were train tracks right next to the studio, about ten feet away from the garage. This is a photo I took out of the window, because it seems so strange to have train tracks so close to a building…
After our first round of practice, we were pulled into the multipurpose room for our media session, where all the players got their photos taken so ESL would have assets to use in the broadcast. They usually don’t have a makeup artist, but they had one today to make sure everyone looked pretty for the camera. This is Zixz getting his makeup done.
After everyone got their individual photos taken, it was time for the group shot.
Once the photo shoot was over, it was time for our second round of practice. We were moved from the garage to the multipurpose room for the second half of the day.
After a long day of practice, Zixz got tired and wanted to take a nap. Fortunately, the chairs they got us recline quite a bit.
This post is over 10 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant. My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
Despite not liking traveling that much, I’ve been traveling quite a bit lately … and I’ve got another “surprise!” post. I spent the day today traveling to Burbank, California to attend the ESL Heroes of the Storm Global Championship, Summer 2016 Season, NA Regional.
My morning started off with a flight from ORD to LAX, with my preferred airline, American Airlines. I don’t think American Airlines is particularly better or worse than any other airline, they’re just preferred because I’m trying to get more miles in their frequent flyer plan so I can get more benefits.
After a copious amount of delays, I finally made it to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, I was on a standby list for a different flight than for what I had originally been scheduled, so I wasn’t able to get a window seat and get any photos during the flight.
A shuttle came to pick me up and transport me to the hotel, which was supposed to be about 40-50 minutes away. Unfortunately, due to the notorious Los Angeles traffic, we ended up taking over 2.5 hours to get to our destination, because we were driving 8 MPH in a 65 MPH zone.
After finally making it to the hotel, Tempo Storm’s HotS team, an early bird from Naventic, and I went to Olive Garden. I don’t like eating on travel days because I don’t want to risk vomiting on the plane due to airsickness, so this was essentially my breakfast.
One of the players ordered a drink that came with a massive orange. If a single slice is that huge, imagine how big the full orange was. He held up a strawberry for scale.
And of course, it wouldn’t have been an Olive Garden trip without the breadsticks.
So far, it seems like the schedule is going to be tomorrow for practice and media day, Friday for off-stage group stage, Saturday for the first day of the event, and Sunday for the semifinals and grand final.
This post is over 10 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant. My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
DreamHack Austin has come to a close, with the fortunate news of the rest of our teams doing much better than the Heroes of the Storm results we got from day 1. Our highest finish was our CS:GO team, scoring second place and falling a bit short to Luminosity Gaming.
For our Heroes of the Storm team, the day consisted mostly of doing interviews and getting their photos taken. Apparently, Blizzard is doing a television show related to Heroes of the Storm, and they wanted to make sure they had all the player assets they needed.
Out of all the crowds, the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive crowd was the most excited and passionate about their respective esport. My favorite moment was when Luminosity Gaming, a Brazilian team, was defeating Cloud9 15-0 in a set yesterday. For those who aren’t familiar, competitive Counter-Strike goes to 16 points, so Luminosity was about to sweep the United States’ Cloud9.
Through some black magic, Cloud9 managed to take a game off Luminosity, bumping their score up to 15-1. Upon this win, the crowd erupted in cheers, sending vibrations through the convention center. The production team didn’t properly adjust the crowd audio well enough in the television broadcast to properly show the energy in the crowd, but it was truly ear-shattering. They proceeded to chant “U.S.A.” until Luminosity managed to get their 16th point and defeat Cloud9.
Because of their passion, I made sure to snap a photo of the CS:GO crowd. This wasn’t the same crowd that was there for Luminosity vs. C9, but I’m figuring that a lot of the people were the same, and the stands were just as full.
I also spent a decent chunk of time with Reynad, the founder and CEO of Tempo Storm. As expected, he got pretty unlucky, and dropped from the tournament on day 1 due to some ridiculous Internet problem that made him lose a won game. So, yesterday, instead of competing, he spent time enjoying the convention and talking with members of the team and with fans. He also spent some time playing Smash with fans – this is Reynad and Frodan playing 2v2 against some con-goers.
Unfortunately, due to some miscommunication with our team manager, we were sent home a day early, before the convention ended. Because there were a bunch of people headed to the airport at once, we took a limousine bus instead of having private drivers.
After being taken to the airport two hours early, and having to wait an additional hour for delays, I got on my flight at Austin-Bergstrom Airport to head back to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, IL.
I ended up taking a nap at the airport because of how long I had to wait. The ultimate troll decided to put a “Reserved seating for special needs” sign right next to where I was sleeping, while I was already seated there and asleep for a few hours … lol
I used to not really like going to conventions or traveling, but I think I’m sort of getting used to it. It’s very chaotic and busy, especially considering how involved Tempo Storm is with so many different esports, but it’s inspiring and motivational watching the level of passion and excitement coming from the fans.
I also used to hate flying on airplanes when I was younger because I would get airsick so easily. I guess I’ve grown out of it, because I usually browse social media and text people using the in-flight wifi, and take a nap, and the flight isn’t really that bad.
I’m not entirely sure when my next event will be, and like usual, I most likely won’t be revealing more details until I’m 100% sure of my attendance. But, even though I thought I would never say this … I’m actually somewhat looking forward to getting back on a plane and attending my next tournament and/or convention.
I went into the stands and met up with Gelda, one of the content creators and producers for Tempo Storm’s Heroes of the Storm division, who works closely with me. Because there was nowhere near a lack of chairs, I was able to watch some games with him. I took a photo when Astral Authority were facing Naventic.
Once Tempo Storm got eliminated, I spent a majority of my time working and gathering information from people, so I didn’t really have much of a chance to have fun or take additional photos. But, I did catch Srey’s team’s series and took a picture of him from the front row of the stands.
(He’s the one behind the computer monitor, he’s one of my favorite players, and a former member of Tempo Storm.)
I also unexpectedly had my photo taken while I was watching the game from the stands. As you can see, I’m not very skilled at posing for selfies.
Yesterday was travel day, returning to ORD from LAX. It was quite a feat to even get on the plane itself. My flight’s gate was changed literally six times, and to thank me for running all over the airport, American Airlines then proceeded to add a 2+ hour delay to my flight.
I listened in on the announcements and discussion, and apparently, they ran out of airplanes, so they didn’t have one available to take us to Chicago. So, they had to send one over from Mexico City to come get us.
Luckily, even though this was a flight almost three hours after the one I was supposed to be on, the flight number remained constant, so I was able to get my window seat as originally scheduled.
The flight was as eventful as a flight could possibly be. My friend Ed Lam (better known as Grainyrice online) asked me to save him some airplane pretzels, because he “enjoys the taste of a well-traveled pretzel.” The guy sitting next to me pulled a sandwich out of his neck pillow. I dropped my can of Coca-Cola and it seemly went into a different dimension, because it disappeared without a sight.
Late into the night – somewhere around 2 AM – we finally touched down in Chicago, and my good buddy Josh was there to pick me up and drive me home.
The ESL admins promptly contacted some techs to get our audio problems resolved, but nothing seemed to be working. Some players had audio input and output problems, some players were hearing static, and some players’ white noise wasn’t working.
(For those who are not familiar with the tournament setup, the players wear earbuds for voice communication and in-game sounds, and headphones on top of their earbuds with white noise to block out outside noise.)
For over an hour, ESL techs went in and out of the game room trying to fix our problems. At one point, Tomster nearly had his eardrums blown up when a tech said all the audio problems should be resolved, but then proceeded to transmit a brain-bustingly loud crackling noise through his earbuds. After a massive delay, ESL finally got around to fixing everything.
This is where the real clown fiesta begins.
Because we don’t have a real draft built into the custom game interface in Heroes of the Storm, we have to use a third-party website to do our draft. Unfortunately, this website doesn’t really work properly, and the players have to constantly spam Refresh in order to see when picks and bans are locked in. Every several seconds, the whole thing would stop loading. At one point, for a little while, Zixz only had access to picking 10 heroes in the draft screen.
Once we finally get the draft website working, we discover that our observer had sent the wrong draft link, with only one ban instead of two. We obviously have to remake the draft lobby.
Then, the observer proceeds to send Tempo Storm one link and Naventic another link. Both teams immediately ready up, then sit and wait for the other team. After the countdown timer went down by a couple hundred seconds, I got suspicious and went over to the other side of the curtain to see what was going on with Naventic, when I found out that we were waiting for them, and they were waiting for us.
The observer finally sent both teams the same link, and we got started. The problems still weren’t entirely fixed, though, as the website continued to stop loading once in a while, and Tomster’s draft randomly crashed and gave 502 Bad Gateway errors. At one point, the drafting website force-picked Nova for Tempo Storm when we wanted to pick Uther.
Eventually, we ditched the website and did the draft in the lobby, which helped us make some real progress towards playing the game.
Unfortunately, Tempo Storm HotS dropped the series 0-2 to Naventic, but had some decently close games. This will place us in the lower bracket tomorrow, facing off against Panda Global in the second series of the day. If we rise victorious in this series, we will face the loser of Naventic vs. Astral Authority to decide who moves on to the semifinals on Sunday morning. 
There’s one missing from that photo because our support player (who is role swapping to tank for this tournament) lives locally, and he was driving this morning and wasn’t able to make it in until about an hour or so later due to the notorious Los Angeles traffic.
To start off the day, they assigned the garage near the studio as our practice area. At first, I figured that it would mean we’re going to burn to death in the California heat, but then we found out that it was actually an air-conditioned garage.
For some reason, there were train tracks right next to the studio, about ten feet away from the garage. This is a photo I took out of the window, because it seems so strange to have train tracks so close to a building…
After our first round of practice, we were pulled into the multipurpose room for our media session, where all the players got their photos taken so ESL would have assets to use in the broadcast. They usually don’t have a makeup artist, but they had one today to make sure everyone looked pretty for the camera. This is Zixz getting his makeup done.
After everyone got their individual photos taken, it was time for the group shot.
Once the photo shoot was over, it was time for our second round of practice. We were moved from the garage to the multipurpose room for the second half of the day.
After a long day of practice, Zixz got tired and wanted to take a nap. Fortunately, the chairs they got us recline quite a bit.
After a copious amount of delays, I finally made it to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, I was on a standby list for a different flight than for what I had originally been scheduled, so I wasn’t able to get a window seat and get any photos during the flight.
A shuttle came to pick me up and transport me to the hotel, which was supposed to be about 40-50 minutes away. Unfortunately, due to the notorious Los Angeles traffic, we ended up taking over 2.5 hours to get to our destination, because we were driving 8 MPH in a 65 MPH zone.
After finally making it to the hotel, Tempo Storm’s HotS team, an early bird from Naventic, and I went to Olive Garden. I don’t like eating on travel days because I don’t want to risk vomiting on the plane due to airsickness, so this was essentially my breakfast.
One of the players ordered a drink that came with a massive orange. If a single slice is that huge, imagine how big the full orange was. He held up a strawberry for scale.
And of course, it wouldn’t have been an Olive Garden trip without the breadsticks.
So far, it seems like the schedule is going to be tomorrow for practice and media day, Friday for off-stage group stage, Saturday for the first day of the event, and Sunday for the semifinals and grand final. 
Out of all the crowds, the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive crowd was the most excited and passionate about their respective esport. My favorite moment was when Luminosity Gaming, a Brazilian team, was defeating Cloud9 15-0 in a set yesterday. For those who aren’t familiar, competitive Counter-Strike goes to 16 points, so Luminosity was about to sweep the United States’ Cloud9.
Through some black magic, Cloud9 managed to take a game off Luminosity, bumping their score up to 15-1. Upon this win, the crowd erupted in cheers, sending vibrations through the convention center. The production team didn’t properly adjust the crowd audio well enough in the television broadcast to properly show the energy in the crowd, but it was truly ear-shattering. They proceeded to chant “U.S.A.” until Luminosity managed to get their 16th point and defeat Cloud9.
Because of their passion, I made sure to snap a photo of the CS:GO crowd. This wasn’t the same crowd that was there for Luminosity vs. C9, but I’m figuring that a lot of the people were the same, and the stands were just as full.
I also spent a decent chunk of time with Reynad, the founder and CEO of Tempo Storm. As expected, he got pretty unlucky, and dropped from the tournament on day 1 due to some ridiculous Internet problem that made him lose a won game. So, yesterday, instead of competing, he spent time enjoying the convention and talking with members of the team and with fans. He also spent some time playing Smash with fans – this is Reynad and Frodan playing 2v2 against some con-goers.
Unfortunately, due to some miscommunication with our team manager, we were sent home a day early, before the convention ended. Because there were a bunch of people headed to the airport at once, we took a limousine bus instead of having private drivers.
After being taken to the airport two hours early, and having to wait an additional hour for delays, I got on my flight at Austin-Bergstrom Airport to head back to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, IL.
I ended up taking a nap at the airport because of how long I had to wait. The ultimate troll decided to put a “Reserved seating for special needs” sign right next to where I was sleeping, while I was already seated there and asleep for a few hours … lol
I used to not really like going to conventions or traveling, but I think I’m sort of getting used to it. It’s very chaotic and busy, especially considering how involved Tempo Storm is with so many different esports, but it’s inspiring and motivational watching the level of passion and excitement coming from the fans.
I also used to hate flying on airplanes when I was younger because I would get airsick so easily. I guess I’ve grown out of it, because I usually browse social media and text people using the in-flight wifi, and take a nap, and the flight isn’t really that bad.
I’m not entirely sure when my next event will be, and like usual, I most likely won’t be revealing more details until I’m 100% sure of my attendance. But, even though I thought I would never say this … I’m actually somewhat looking forward to getting back on a plane and attending my next tournament and/or convention.