Drama of the Week Debrief: Grills Streaming

So the Weekly All In is taking a two week break while Nicolas has some other projects to finish.

This, of course, leaves me with a bit more free time on my hands than usual. Going to try and get a little hit ahead and do some mini features.

The grilling article from Issue 27 is THE article I've been wanting to write since we first started the paper. I actually pitched it for a fake ad in one of our first planning meetings, but I think Nicolas must have misunderstood me, because he wrote it off as sexist at the time, but was very gung-ho when I suggested it as a Drama of the Week a few weeks ago. I'm super happy with the result. Details after the text. Props to the people who catch the Pride & Prejudice reference.

A report of a most alarming nature reached me two day ago. Not only that grills of every kind all around the world were suffering untold prejudice as they attempt to stream StarCraft, but that I, Mike Harrell, was to become the champion to their righteous cause. A response in the affirmative was demanded. Needless to say, I was speechless except to say that I had no idea what they were talking about.  

For the next several seconds, I became forcefully acquainted with the plight of many grills, new, old, gas, electric, were being subjected to gross injustice. As the drama writer for the world’s #1 digital esports magazine, I feel it is my duty to make the community aware of the plight of thousands of would-be professional streamers who are constantly belittled and objectified, and that’s when they’re given a chance at all. And why? Because they’re cooking appliances. 

Grills, not Girls 

First, we will highlight the dreams and struggles of my own grill, who wishes to be known only by its StarCraft II handle, “DatGrill.” On its invitation, I went out back behind my home to check out its setup and see for myself the kinds of unique issues that it has to deal with on a daily basis.  

It began immediately in the very first game. DatGrill gave the standard “GLFH” and its opponent responded with “Girl?” DatGrill gave its canned response, as it has done so many times in the past, “grill.” The would-be casanova responded with, I kid you not, “hi baby.” Fortunately Player 2’s attempts at forming a romantic relationship ended there, but, as feeble as it was, it represents yet another member of the StarCraft community who doesn’t understand the difference between a girl and grill.  

“I mean, so I look feminine to you?” DatGrill lamented, “Do I even look like a human being? I’ve got friggin FIRE coming out of my insides! Some noobs eat cheetos and drink Redbull while they ladder. I ignite and evenly distribute methane gas to roast chicken, burgers, and ribs all day long. Let’s see one of you nerds manage to do that from your mother’s basement while you marinate in your own farts.”  

Marginalization of the Marinader 

When it’s not blatant speciesism, it’s out of control marginalization of the accomplishments of appliances. The most popular streaming grill, “Georgie4,” is always on the defensive. “When I hit GM for the first time, do you know what people said to me?” Georgie4 vented, “That I must have been boosted by a human. I can’t even understand why they would said such a thing. I hit GM live on stream! It’s just blatant prejudice. And when it isn’t an accusation that I can’t play as well as I do, it’s people saying that I ought to go back out to the patio, or worse, that I shouldn’t even try.”

Indeed, just like some of the other marginalized members of the community, many people say that if a grill can make GM, it must not be much of an accomplishment after all. “That’s BS!” sizzled Georgie4, “I make GM every season now, which only 200 people do. And somehow that means I’m not good? I’m in GM! That’s the definition of being good! And I don’t even have limbs! Those hypocrites on Reddit can go eat tofu.”
Yes, the old arguments continue to make their rounds: Why would I watch a grill stream when I can watch a real pro? Why would I watch a grill when I could watch a human? Why would I watch a grill stream when I could watch grillz strimming? It seems to have no ending. 

Eyes on the game, not the meat 

“The worst of it is when the accusations about appearance start up.” Georgie4 continued, “I was roasting up some bacon a few weeks ago and my owner left my lid open and you could see...pretty much everything I’ve got going on in there. You would have thought the world exploded. Every single troll on Twitch was in my chatroom accusing me of just trying to use my body and my bacon to get viewers.  

I’m a grill. I’m not ashamed of what I am. Yes, I’m what you would probably call a ‘larger’ model. Yes, I have a non stick surfaces. Yes, I cut down on grease. Yes, said grease will drip into my tray while the cooking is going on. It’s completely natural people. It’s not that I need to change myself to keep from offending you, it’s that you need to grow up. I get viewers from my gameplay and commentary. Everything else that you see is just gravy (which you could easily make using those same drippings).” 

Fire in the bones, but also the keyboard 

On top of all this, there are further handicaps that of grill streamers overcome: like the fact that there’s freaking fire everywhere.  

“It’s something that you learn to live with very quickly,” lamented DatGrill, “but safety must always come first. As a matter of fact, we’ve created a safety checklist to try and cut down on the number of ruined dinners (and builds).” I took a gander at the checklist. It was a lot less exciting than I’d hoped.  

#1: Keep clean to avoid flare ups. #2: Insulate to avoid melting the computer hardware.#3: Set a timer to avoid burning food. #4: If you must use an extension cord, be sure to use only heavy duty, all weather, cords.  

“Well what did you expect, that we would tell grills that they should just be flaming people all day?” rebuffed DatGrill when I asked for some clarification, “No, we’re just like your average stove or oven. We just like pwning noobs while we go about our business. And yes, every grill has a story about the time things got out of hand and that $100 Razor mouse that became a melting fireball and put the kibosh on a family reunion. But the fact of the matter is we wouldn’t be in either of these businesses if we didn’t have skins of iron on the outside and smoky, delicious, #passion on the inside.”

In case there is one person in the StarCraft community who doesn't know exactly where the idea for this comes from, I'll explain it now. There was spambot from Twitch.tv chatrooms that is now long gone, but the legacy of referring to girls as "grills" remains. Originally, the bot would put in a message like, 'See hot girls streaming!" accompanied by a link that was certainly to download malware or something. Once Twitch started getting wise and began to block the message, the message changed to "See hot girls strimming.", and then to "See hot grills strimming." and so forth until it was finally blocked altogether.

"Hot grillz strimming" always left an image in my head of a gas grill playing StarCraft while cooking something, using tongs and a brush for arms and whatnot.

I'm a pretty happy guy anytime I get to make a stupid pun, and this article was just BEGGING for them. Holy crap I had a good time writing this article. the more puns, the merrier! All of the photos of the grills are, of course, from my back yard and kitchen. And we ate the food shown in the pictures. Truth be told, I actually made two attempts on the grill + laptop shot. I had hotdogs at first (from lunch) but they didn't look substantial enough. So I ended up taking pics again with the chicken (from dinner). I think the chicken is definitely the better picture.

The in-game text pictured and mentioned in the article was the result of my trying to build a "DatGrill" account as quickly as I could for screenshots. I didn't want to the account level to just be 1, so I played a couple of games against the AI and did the 5 placement matches. I kid you not, the very first game I played against a person resulted in me getting hit on by some idiot. I couldn't believe it. Unfortunately for the story, he shut up and proceeded to drop mines into my worker lines. However, there was definitely enough there to add to the story itself.

Finally, I'm glad I got to show off some of my own StarCraft swag in the webcam photo as well. The autographed Wings of Liberty, unfortunately, came from eBay, as I didn't attend the launch event and I didn't buy a Collector's Edition right off the bat. That said, I'm still extremely proud of it. I got those stupid SWAG glasses at a Claire's a couple years ago looking for a gift for my niece. My son's high chair is in there too because I thought it sold the idea of a George Foreman playing games from its natural habitat even better.

I think that's about it for this post. As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to tell your friends about The Weekly All In!

Drama of the Week: The State of StarCraft - Let’s Get Serious

For a while there was a novelty account on the StarCraft Reddit where they had this checklist of hot topic issues and they would post on popular articles and check off the things that were hit. So, I naturally decided to write an article that would get every item on the list!

Here's the account details: SC2RedditChecklist

Here's the checklist:

[] People enjoy other Blizzard created games
[] Flash is a very good player
[] Flash is an overrated player
[] Winter used viewbots
[] The next Starcraft 2 expansion is different than the current one
[] Naniwa is rude and/or socially awkward
[] Desrow is rude and/or fat
[] David Kim is a Starcraft 2 balance designer
[] Demuslim is a drama queen
[] Starcraft 2 is not balanced
[] Starcraft 2 is balanced
[] Naniwa has a girlfriend
[] Individual that garners a lot of ridicule does not deserve it
[] Korea has better Starcraft 2 players than other countries

Here's the article. And the link to the full magazine.

Drama of the Week: The State of StarCraft - Let’s Get Serious

By: Mike Harrell

To all of our readers all across the country, nay, the world, I wish to express my deepest gratitude for the praise and encouragement we have received over these past 25 issues. That’s right, we’ve been going for over six months now, only not publishing two weeks since we started in February of this year.

Our last issue was devoted too much to an upcoming reality show featuring various people. I’ll admit it now: it was a total publicity stunt.

It wasn’t real at all. I made all of it up. I’m sorry to have deceived you but what was done is done and it was done for the best: to get more readers and Patreon supporters.

Now that it’s out in the open, we can move on to greater and more important things. Let’s talk about the State of Starcraft as a whole. Where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.

Blizzard Makes More Than One Good Game

Firstly, I want to talk about some other Blizzard games. We’ve been giving coverage for Heroes of the Storm for a few weeks now, and we haven’t heard one peep about it. I fully expected some backlash that we were money grubbers or losing #passion.

But it never happened.

For myself, I’ve grown to enjoy Heroes quite a lot. I play a lot of Hearthstone with my wife as well. We really enjoy it! Many former StarCraft pros enjoy them as well. It’s okay to like more than one game! I don’t think it’s too much for StarCraft devotees to admit there can be merit in other games, but hey, that’s just me.

Moving on to StarCraft

Alrighty, it’s StarCraft time. Let’s talk about Flash’s performance in the GSL this week. He’s advanced onto the Round of 16 in Code S, proving that he is a very, very good player.

Korea has better Starcraft 2 players than other countries, so a Korean tournament must have the best players. Getting into the top 16 has to mean he’s like one of the best 16 players in the world, right? Yeah, he’s amazing.

Now let’s look in the North American scene. The most popular StarCraft player in North America is obviously Winter, being that he routinely has the highest viewer count.

Sure, Winter used viewbots in the past, but let’s not dwell on that now. He is an individual that garners a lot of ridicule does not deserve it.

But more important than Winter. I wanted to talk to about DesRow. Desrow is rude. Or is it that DesRow is fat? I can’t remember exactly. Either way, Desrow is rude and/or fat. And as we all know, having been rude and/or fat makes him beyond redemption, even if he were to cease to be either.

Europe is also a Place

Let’s wrap around to Europe to discuss the scene there for a minute. Europe has always been a great place for StarCraft. Heck, that’s where Team Liquid originated, so it has to be good, right?

If I had to pick one European player that garners the most attention, I would say it was Naniwa. Some may say DeMuslim, but no, DeMuslim is a drama queen. Naniwa is awesome. Naniwa has a girlfriend/fiance.

Some may say that Naniwa is rude and/or socially awkward. (I mean, he proposed with a candy ring! SOMEONE didn’t get the memo about women and diamonds.) This, however, is not the case. He’s super awesome and “calls it like it is.” People love that!

StarCraft 2 Is Balanced

In his last Community Feedback post, David Kim (David Kim is a Starcraft 2 balance designer) discussed more ways in which the next Starcraft 2 expansion is different than the current one to ensure that no race will have an unfair advantage over another.

You can’t 6 pool in LotV unless the Zerg player kills off 5 of their starting Drones, that’s how you know it’s balanced. Additionally, Protoss will no longer be able to 4-gate people because “offensive” warp-ins will take literally forever.

StarCraft 2 Is Not Balanced

To bring our discussion to an end, let us return to Korea. It behooves me to speak of a hard truth. StarCraft 2 is definitely not balanced in HotS.

Flash only advanced to the Round of 16 because he sold his soul to the Mech devil. If he hadn’t broken away from his normal playstyle, he never could have beaten Curious and Pigbaby. Therefore, Flash is overrated. If you use imba strats and you’re winning from them, it means you’re overrated.

TL;DR: Nailed It

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey around the StarCraft world in The State of StarCraft. I’m pretty sure we’ve hit all of the most important topics. Thank you for your continued support of The Weekly All In.

Daed Gaem Dramatic Reading by desRow

So, my article got some good responses this week! Even, somehow, by some of the people featured in the article. Below is a video of desRow reading the article on his stream after we went to press.

Daed Gaem - The StarCraft 2 Reality Show

My story about a new (fictitious) reality show is the cover story this week! I'm so pumped I decided to make a post for it! :D Plus...I haven't posted in a really long time. Full issue here.

What do you get when you put desRow, Naniwa, Destiny, TigerLily, and Winter, all in one house full of video games and cameras for four months? You get “Daed Game: The StarCraft 2 Reality Show” the latest and greatest of StarCraft 2 entertainment!

Why Should The Game Be The Good Part?

That’s right, Blizzard continues to expand on its cash cow of media content related to the community surrounding StarCraft, instead of focusing on StarCraft itself. "We suddenly realized that it doesn't matter if we make a good game,” said Chris Metzen, Senior Vice President of Story and Franchise Development, “We just have to make an okay game, and then focus on the tawdriness of some of the more prominent, yet mediocre, players. That’s where the real fun is!"

Aficionados will remember that there have been some flops in addition to the successes.since Blizzard decided to take StarCraft in this direction. “Well yeah,” Metzen responded when questioned on the likelihood for success of such an initiative, “not everything can be ‘Flash Flakes: The StarCraft 2 Breakfast,’ our flagship breakfast cereal. For every ‘HuK ChuK: The StarCraft 2 Emetic ’ you may end up with a “Grubby: The StarCraft 2 Friendly Centipede.’ I still don’t know how Grubbys weren’t a hit. They were adorable!” He continued, “I just want you guys to know that we’ve done our research on this one. We’ve seen what the fans respond to and we’ve prepared something delightful for them!”

Early previews of the footage are extremely compelling.  

In standard Blizzard fashion, we haven’t been able to see much. Clips from the show include an angry Destiny shouting “If I can’t prove I’m better than you by beating you in StarCraft, then I will prove it by stirring the pot on Twitter and Reddit until everyone hates you more than me!” Another clip followed desRow bumbling his way through San Diego to get Winter to Best Buy in time for his regularly scheduled maintenance. TigerLily never really seemed to be doing anything. She was just kind of there in the background in many of the clips focused on other people. But now we know what the record number of StarCraft developers have been working on!

While we didn’t get to see a lot of clips, we were able to get an explanation of the format. “It’s pretty simple, really,” said an unnamed Blizzard spokesperson, “these people live for this kind of thing. They were doing it all on their own without anyone making money off of it before we pitched them the show. So now we just have them living together so we can film it easier, plus it’s a lot more visceral. Each week we bring in a guest to live with them for a few days to mix things up a bit. For the weeks we couldn’t fill, we just sent out a mean, anonymous text so one of them will feel wronged. That usually keeps them busy for a week or so.”

An annotated list of visiting gamers leaked last week and distributed online included HuK, Stephano, MC, NeaTea, FruitDealer, and even IdrA as featured guests. Husky is briefly in the show at one point when desRow and Winter bump into him at the Chic-Fil-A adjacent to Best Buy. It appears that the list was incomplete, however, as we also saw footage of Avilo in the kitchen making breakfast and then suddenly bursting into a fit of rage, taking all of the eggs out of the refrigerator, and mercilessly throwing them to the ground, one at time.

An eSports Show About Nothing

The primary cast was also on the scene to hype up the show and answer questions. One audience member asked Naniwa to share a story from a challenge or competition of some kind in the show. “Oh no, we didn’t have to do any of that crap.” Nani answered, “At first they were trying to make it like Top Gear or Survivor or something and make us do interesting things together. We stomped that out right away. We’re best known for sitting in front of computers and arguing with people, not doing interesting things or charity work or anything. We wanted to stay true to what made us who we are today. Adding substance to our personas would only hurt the show.”

Winter confirmed a similar story. “Affirmative. No encouragement to give show redeeming social value given. Mostly just fight with nerds. Many nerd tears shed. Avilo breaks things and yells. TigerLily is bad at Skype. Destiny yells. NaNiwa yells. DesRow gets drunk, puts on panda makeup, yells, cares for WinterBOT. WinterBOT smurfs.”  One alarmed journalist asked Winter to elaborate on the “care” that desRow has been giving to Winter, which was thankfully benign. “Affirmative. The human DesRow has been helping with WinterBOT maintenance as repentance for drama sins,” Winter finished, “other than that, everyone behaves as they otherwise would.”

Redemption for desRow?

“Yes, I felt that this would be a good opportunity to show that I have changed,” added desRow without prompting. “I could think of no better way to show that I’ve moved on from my past misdeeds by coming on this program, conducting myself well, and try to add some positively to the universe. Mostly I was able to do this by helping out Winter. He’s really not such a bad guy once you get to know him. It turns out the botting has literally been part of him all along; he was programmed that way!”

“Other than that, I’ve just been trying to not be a jerk. I post stuff to YouTube when I say I will, I start ReMax on time, and have been continuing to live a healthier lifestyle. After we’d been in the house for about a week, a camera showed up in the bathroom. I can happily say that I haven’t taken or sent ANY pictures from the bathroom. Not even once!”

“Just keep that Revenge Cycle Going”

“The key to conflict resolution in any scenario is communication and taking ownership, so we just try to encourage the opposite of that,” said Psione, who was recently promoted to ‘Psione: The StarCraft 2 Turkey Wrap Eater in Chief: StarCraft Community Related StarCraft Media; “I never saw myself in a position like this when I aspired to work with the Blizzard community. But hey, you gotta give the people what they want. We didn’t even have StarCraft installed on the computers in the house where the gamers live for the first two or three days of shooting. Winter was the one who figured it out first, but that’s a GamerBOT for you. It’s in his code to be the #1 StarCraft streamer on Twitch.tv at least one every couple days.”

“I’m just really excited for the community to get to see ‘Daed Gaem - The StarCraft 2 Reality Show,’” Psione continued, “it really illustrates everything the community values. People will see the gamers in a whole new light. I mean, you can already listen to them in their homes all day and see everything they’re doing. But this way you can see them all on one channel, at the same time! All while avoiding cumbersome StarCraft gameplay and strategy. I’ll admit it, it’s easier for us when people aren’t focused on the game, too.”

Coming this Fall to a Computer Near You

“Daed Game: The Starcraft 2 Reality Show” will be available for unlimited streaming for a one time fee through the Battle.Net launcher. Watching the entire show will reward players with an exclusive portrait in StarCraft 2, an exclusive cardback in Hearthstone, an exclusive banner in Diablo III, an exclusive “Human Streamer” skin for the WinterBOT in Heroes of the Storm, an exclusive WinterBOT battle pet in World of WarCraft, and technical pre-alpha access for Overwatch. Pre-ordering will unlock the above immediately as well as a virtual decoder ring that will reveal the release date WarCraft 4 when the secret code is released. (Code to be released Winter 2020/2021*)

The Weekly All In!

I've got a good excuse for not posting, I've been writing for The Weekly All In, a new digital magazine exclusively about Starcraft. There's some news and commentary, but also lots of satire. Also there's been a lot of time constraints in my personal life that have been keeping me from posting, so The Weekly All In has been getting 100% of my writing time. There are five issues so far (see links). I'll start posting here each week until we get a proper website going. There is also a Patreon if you like what you see so much you just have to throw money at it. :D So yeah, I'll put links to each article here and a list of what I wrote that week.

First issue - Streamer profile/interview

Issue #2 - Brief News

Issue #3 - Brief News. SC2 Community manager interview.

Issue #4 - Brief News. 

Issue #5 - Brief News. Streamer profile/interview. A second interview that is not yet published (hopefully next week).