compLexity’s Andy “Bravo” Dudynsky put together a video that shows off the atmosphere, vibe, and sheer size of the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2011 from the LA Convention Center that took place last month. H walked around both exhibit halls and outside lounges to try and show you everything! Enjoy.
Today Major League Gaming revealed their newest project, MLG Weekly. Featuring “everything competitive gaming and everything MLG- interviews, behind the scenes footage, player profiles, and much much more,” MLG Weekly looks like a great way to build hype in between MLG events.
The first episode recaps all the exciting action from MLG Columbus, as well as all the big announcements from this year’s E3. There’s also a Halo Reach top 10 plays countdown, as well as a “classic match of the week” featuring oGsMC vs. EGIdrA from MLG Columbus.
Congratulations to the winners of the Sound Blaster 4th of July Contest! The winners are listed below, in the order of their placing and have all been contacted via their submission method to claim their prize.
1st. Caleb Miller
2nd. rillaz
3rd. Vandine
compLexity Gaming is excited to announce a special contest for the July 4th American holiday. SoundBlaster, one of the most prolific supporters of global eSports, is happy to reveal the prizes they have provided for the week long contest:
1st – $200 cash; Tactic3D Sigma headset; PNY GTX 560 Ti OC2 1024MB PCIe video card; compLexity Mousepad (~$565 value)
2nd – $100 cash; Tactic3D Sigma headset; compLexity Mousepad (~$190 value)
3rd – $50 cash; compLexity Mousepad (~$70 value)
1) Follow the SoundBlaster Gaming Facebook page.
2) Leave a comment in this thread telling us why you feel sound matters in gaming (first entry)
3) To gain a 2nd entry, Tweet the following and post your Twitter account name in this thread so we can verify the entry: “Follow @SoundBlaster on Facebook and support sponsors of eSports! http://on.fb.me/b58xML“
On behalf of SoundBlaster, we here at compLexity would sincerely like to thank everyone for your support. 2011 has been a busy year for us but we still have plenty of excitement planned for the second half. SoundBlaster has some exciting products in the pipeline and we have lots of plans we’re confident you’ll enjoy. Again, a sincere thank you for your support in 2011.
(Winners randomly chosen from eligible entrants. Limit 2 entries per registered user if Twitter option used, 1 entry per user otherwise. Limit 1 prize package per person. Void where prohibited. Contest ends July 6, 2011 at 12pm EDT. Prizes will be delivered 4-6 weeks after the contest ends. Cash awards paid via PayPal. Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc and is in no way affiliated or involved with this contest.)
Today the ESL (Electronic Sports League) announced that it will be holding IEM 6 at Germany’s GamesCom convention which runs from August 17th through the 21st. With a $53,000 prize purse split between its StarCraft II and League of Legends tournament, you can be sure the world’s best progamers will be competing. To add a bit more weight to the tournament, the winners will be granted a seat for the World Championships at the end of the season.
Michal Blicharz, Director of Pro Leagues at Turtle Entertainment, stated:
Last year’s Intel Extreme Masters at gamescom was one of the best events we have ever had. We are thrilled to be coming back and we have every intention of making this year’s event even better for the swarm of fans in the hall and on the streams.
Last year’s IEM 5 saw some amazing games with MorroW beating IdrA for the championship. With an increased prize pool, you can bet that this year’s IEM will see some fierce competition.
Source: ESFI World
First off, congratulations to you for winning the first ever compLexity Academy Tournament.
The first question I have for you is how does it feel to go 18-2 in this tournament and win so convincingly? It seems no one even came close to beating you.
Obviously, I am happy with taking 1st. However, I am a really competitive guy, and thus actually a little disappointed. I would have preferred to go 18-0, but that’s just the way I am. I want to win every game I play, regardless of if I win the tournament. I feel there is always room for improvement.
How hard did you prepare for this tournament and what did you do differently for this tournament than for tournaments in the past? Are you going to continue training hard now that you have made it into the academy?
I didn’t prepare insanely hard for it, just kept up my usual practice regimen of playing customs with some friends and laddering. As I said in my interview, I haven’t really had good practice partners, if any in some cases, up to this point, aside from my fellow academy member lagrangian. So, to answer your 2nd querstion, I now plan on seriously ramping up my training efforts now that I’ll be able to play with the guys in coL. I want to start bringing out my potential and showing good results in bigger tournaments.
Who is your inspiration for your builds and style of play? Who is your favorite Starcraft II player to date?
Lately, like a lot of others I suspect, I have been drawing alot of my inspiration from MMA, especially in TvZ and TvT. He’s just got such great, well thought out builds combined with insane execution. My favorite player to date, and knowing the history, I’m probably going to get a lot of flak from some of you guys for saying this, has been Idra. Let me first say that I definitely don’t agree with how he bashes a lot of players for seemingly no reason. What I really like about him is his approach to the game. I love his macro oriented style, and no nonsense attitude toward the game. He takes it very seriously, practicing as hard as anyone, and really dedicates himself to winning and improving more than anything else. After leaving early against MMA and in various other games, I have started to lose a little respect for him, but I hope he can turn it around and return to form.
What is the most exciting thing about the compLexity Academy for you?
For me, the opportunity to get to practice with a lot of great players. I think it’s really going to help me start improving. Even after a few games with Ryze, I’ve been able to work on new builds and analyze where I can do better in TvZ, where as before I would mainly just ladder over and over again. While that can be good, I’m really looking forward to consistent, structured practice focusing strongly on my weaker areas of play.
Looking at the rankings, there is only 1 protoss, 3 zerg and 6 terran. How is that going to effect your practice terran vs protoss? Do you wish that the team had more variety?
It’s not so bad, knowing that complexity has a lot of protoss players to practice with as well. It would be nice to see an even variety on the team, but at the same time these are the 10 players who made it in, so you’ve just got to work with what you have.
Finally, do you have any shoutouts?
Shoutout to my fellow academy member Ke Li (Lagrangian). He’s my buddy in Ann Arbor, so congrats to him and thank you for being my only real practice partner for the last couple weeks. Also I’d like to thank complexity for this opportunity. I’m really hoping to break through competitvely through the academy, and it wouldn’t be possible without you guys. There are definitely very few chances like this to get notices, so I’m very grateful.
Thank you for your time and once again congratulations for winning compLexity’s first ever Academy Tournament and good luck in your competitive future!
In the 11th episode of “Mind of the Gamer,” the show that has professional gamers explain their replay and describe what they were thinking during the match, Paulo “CatZ” Vizcarra, a highly skilled Zerg player recaps one of this matches to give insight to this gameplay.
On behalf of the Syndicate, we are proud to announce the latest addition to the compLexity Gaming Starcraft II roster, in Joshua “TriMaster” Niven. Joshua is an up and coming Terran player and is on his way to becoming the next shining star in the SC2 community.
Paulo “CatZ” Vizcarra had this to say about the acquisition of TriMaster:
I‘m really glad about the addition of TriMaster to our squad. I’ve always taken pride in scouting for potential and TriMaster has a TON of it. I was eliminated by him two MLGs ago, and to be honest I wasn’t impressed but I played him a few weeks ago and I was VERY impressed with his level of improvement in such a short time. Since then, I had him play many good players like Destiny (who he 3-0’d in practice) and Cruncher who he broke almost even with. He still has a lot of potential ready to explode and I think that with the help of experienced Terrans like Drewbie and Stalife and the practice he’ll be getting from the rest of us, Josh will be able to maximize that potential. I am confident that he will become one of the best Terran’s out there.
The addition of TriMaster makes the coL.SC2 roster:
Paulo “CatZ” Vizcarra
Sung “Stalife” Min Park 
Victor “Antimage” Poon Sam “FireZerg” Prowse Ryan “Ryan” Rushia Julian “rsvp” Xu Abdulaziz “CrunCher” Abed Brendon “Ryze” Walker Andrew “drewbie” Moysey Chad “Minigun” Jones Jung Ho “DdoRo” Moon Joshua “TriMaster” Niven
Please join us in welcoming Joshua to the family!
Any opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of compLexity Gaming or its parent company.
Spoiler Alert: HuK wins Homestory Cup 3!
eSports events are broadcast live, just like any other sports event. The only difference between eSports and sports broadcasts is that there is the option to play games in advance, cast from replays and broadcast the games at a later time while keeping the results secret. Think about how ridiculous it would be if a soccer game that was being played live in front of thousands of screaming fans was to be broadcast at a later time or spoilers were to be kept out of newspapers. No one tries to keep the results of the World Cup soccer matches a secret so people can catch up on the matches at their convenience.
I realize that it is much more exciting to watch the VOD of the Homestory Cup 3 finals and see the excitement of Chris “Liquid’HuK” Loranger’s win without knowing the results prior to watching, but it is a live event. Gay marriage was just legalized in New York this past week, and can you imagine the ridiculousness of someone saying “no, don’t tell me if gay marriage was legalized or not. I want to read the legislation in my own time and find out the outcome for myself!”? The Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup, and regardless of whether you were able to watch the game or not, the news and its riots were plastered on newspapers and all over the internet. No one would be able to keep that game spoiler-free, and I do not understand why people in the SC2 community expect special treatment.
With the overwhelming amount of SC2 content to consume, there is no way to watch everything. I can understand being upset over spoilers if you are extremely attached to one tournament or player, but let’s be honest: even if you work from home and have hours per day to watch tournaments and VODs, you could not consume all the SC2 content available. Trust me, I know. There is a good reason that SC Center had job postings up looking for people to help watch and summarize games and results: there is too much for one person to watch. Between the GSL, IPL, NASL, MLG, TSL and every other league, invitational and tournament, we’ve got a lot going on. The common excuse of the spoiler-free crew is that they want to watch the content in their own time, but how will they ever catch up? There is no way that someone can use wanting to watch the games at a later time as an excuse for why they don’t want spoilers unless they are committing to one tournament. Even then, some of the content is overwhelming. The NASL had five nights of content per week averaging over three hours of games per night. That is 15 hours of content per week from just one tournament. How could anyone possibly keep up with every tournament?
“If you want to live a spoiler-free eSports lifestyle, it is your responsibility to avoid spoilers. You cannot blame everyone else for spoiling results if you’re not doing anything to avoid them.“
If you want to live a spoiler-free eSports lifestyle, it is your responsibility to avoid spoilers. You cannot blame everyone else for spoiling results if you’re not doing anything to avoid them. Don’t want to know who won last night’s GSL matches? Keep off of Reddit. Avoid Twitter like the plague. Do not browse GSL posts on TeamLiquid. Watch the matches as soon as possible to ensure the outcome is a surprise. A friend of mine wanted to avoid the results of the latest NHL Draft until he was able to catch up on his PVR recording that night. In order to keep the results spoiler-free, he turned his phone on airplane mode and kept himself off sports sites for the day. Do what you can do to avoid spoilers if you don’t want the results to be spoiled.
I like spoilers. I love using Twitter to connect to the SC2 community and to find results in real-time with next to zero effort. On a regular basis, I ask friends to tweet results at me when I miss big games. I love SC2, but sometimes I do need to leave the house or sleep. It is unrealistic for me to want to catch up on matches at a later time. too. With dozens of games being played every day, there is even more content to catch up on later. If I was particularly attached to a particular tournament or player, perhaps I’d feel differently, but every tournament has its charm, and I adore too many players.
Community sites like TeamLiquid and tournament sites like the NASL do their best to keep the site as spoiler-free as possible to keep everyone happy. In this community, it is best to remove spoilers than face the wrath of the spoiler-free crew. I do think there should be a point of no return, though. How long do you think we should save the results of tournaments before they become common knowledge? For the NASL, it makes sense to keep spoilers off the site or tournament Twitter until the European re-broadcast, but when should results be posted all over the site? What about for community sites? Moderators do a fantastic job of keeping sites spoiler free, but when do you think results become common knowledge? Is there a timer?
After years of playing World of Warcraft, a friend introduced Jacqueline to Starcraft early last year. Jacqueline’s relationship with Starcraft started out slowly: a handful of casual dates, a little bit of flirting but nothing serious. She took her relationship with the game to the next level after BlizzCon 2010 where she experienced eSports magic first-hand and realized that Starcraft was the one. Despite being a mediocre player, she has been clambering the ladder at a glacial pace and has spent more time watching Starcraft online than she’d like to admit. In March, Jacqueline made the leap from eSports fan to eSports professional when she was hired by the Handsome Nerd as their Art Director, combining her design skills with her love of Starcraft. Since its start in April, Jacqueline has been a contributing writer for the North American Star League, writing coverage for Division 1. Offline, Jacqueline is a bookworm, a runner, a freeride snowboarder and has a Human Ecology degree with a Clothing and Textiles major.
View Jacqueline’s profile here.
Visit @jacquelinesg on Twitter
In this Excellent Adventure… Gootecks and Mike Ross encounter a gauntlet of obstacles! Gootecks gets DISTRACTED! Mike faces a DAN player (who happens to be a familiar face)! The guys receive an OBSCENE MESSAGE! And MUCH MORE! This one is pretty good, folks!
The ESL organization has announced, via their website, that the Intel Extreme Masters for 2011 will feature Counter-Strike 1.6, StarCraft II and League of Legends as the main titles and $635,000 seasonal prize money.
This will be League of Legends first appearence at the IEM after an incredible response in Hannover led to the decision to use LoL as a primary title.
The Intel Extreme Masters will make five event stops to five different countries. More information about the 2011-2012 season will be released within the next few months.