The much awaited SC2SEA yearly awards is here once again! Unlike the 2011 version which was more arbitrary where everything was decided by me(lol), this version had more input from moderators, admins, the writing team and the news team before taking up its final form. The awards are meant as a fun way to look back at 2012 and also give recognition to outstanding members of our community. I've tried to make them as fair as possible and account for the whole year but of course there is always going to be a certain level of subjectivity when it comes to rankings.
I would say all nominees are already big winners and in some categories anyone could have won. You don't get any prizes for winning and this is all just for fun so please no butt hurt emos or iaguz will make a blog about you. Without further ado, presenting the SC2SEA awards 2012!
The much awaited SEAL launch marked the start of the most massive league we've had. Spreading over 5 tiers through all the leagues and 60 teams - this was probably the biggest league to even run successfully in the world. And we from small SEA did it, an achievement we can be very proud off. dippas notice of ThePandarine's casual remark in a very depressing time of his life led to one of the most heartfelt threads we've ever had. ThePandarine later went on hold a BSG tournament for the community and today remains one of our most helpful members - he will be next seen admining the SEAL#3! The fraud chobo deceived a whole community, his girlfriend and clan for more than 6 months when it was found it was semi-pro Korean SeoHyeon playing on his account all along. Thanks goes to Rossi for helping to solve the case.
The HoTS beta key contest was a massive successive, we had so many fantastic submission of cheerfuls and articles that deserved to win... if only Blizzard had given us more give out then! And Singaporeans could not believe their luck when IEM Singapore was announced. Many Australian made the trip over and everyone had a blast meeting all the top players and playing in the open bracket. Last Year's news story winner "YoonYJ's promised flight cancelled" was all but forgotten already.
Cheerful by JayAiWhy
IEM Singapore with White Ra and unimpressed Mafia.
However, it was the tournament that sent Australia into a state of frenzy that wins this category. And when it was announced Tastosis was casting, shit hit the fan. Alarm clocks were set, arrangements were made and epeens were torn off in heated arguments. People rushed off to book interstate airline tickets. Heroes like Intoccabile19 emerged, arranging accommodation for fellow stranded travellers. Even a whole New Zeland Crew flew in. Then news broke out that there was 'misinformation' - not everyone was guaranteed tickets and pandemonium ensued. The hype was incredible and it set the stage for the greatest eSports event Australia would see.
Last year's winner was the collective Barcraft Phenomenon. This year was bigger and better!
The scene really grew and there were a ton of well funded and promoted major events throughout the year. GLaDe took his back to back victories with ACL Gold Coast & Sydney. PiG fought back and took his first ACL championship at Melbourne. TargA sunk his teeth into the biggest Australia prize payout in a long time of $2,500 at the $4,000 GESC Melbourne. Jazbas conquered New Zealand again at WCS. Tgun won an ASUS laptop thanks to Gamespot AU and amateurs got their chance to shine. Revenant was crowed champion of Singapore before his national service enlistment. Yekke and PiG won their iESF nationals.
At TGS Mafia reigned over Australia and Petraeus and Blysk emerged as surprising (back then) New Zealand and Singapore Champions that would go on to the new hot favourites in their country. Then the whole of SEA cheered on Nv and Immunity as they battled their way against the world @ MLG Dallas. The year finally ended with Singapore's Alienware Arena, and Drake picking his first major win.
Through all that though, there is one obvious event that stood out the most. It had food, beer and tasteless birthday cakes.(thanks Dot). Many people describe it as the best eSports event they have ever being part of. And for many it will remain that way.
So many fantastic SC2SEA events happened this year. All of these were purely sponsored and run by the community - come to think of it, if there wasn't SC2SEA none of this would exist! Its a shame I can only pick one. The SC2SEA Replay / Player Database announcement was huge. Not only were we in dire need of a proper replay database, the player database also offered a way to catalogue SEA players and teams. The coding for the backend was done thanks to the amazing Veteris who worked on it for countless numbers of hours. The front end user interface was built from scratch by nirvAnA. Special thanks to TheCSerps, Petraues and Spartaz who helped fill up the pages with data.
The return of Who's who was a much welcomed sight and was a team effort - cute came up with the snazzy looking design, paperclip with the slick css navigation and nirvana with the new profiles and manual implementation into the new framework.
And who could forget the birthday month contests where nirvAnA tortured people with a ridiculous last stage, dingobloo made an incredible custom map and xpaperclip created the most detailed and complex starcraft quiz the world has seen.
The Race Wars was a super fun event with the most absurdly biased casting which came down to the very last zerg match between the Protoss and the Zergs. Some would say Shieldz should be banned from ever playing for the Protoss team, after mannering nexusing Tgun at match point with a significant lead, only to end up losing the game and letting his Protoss brethren down. The Zerg race won the race wars for the second year running.
Thanks to Soulja a TGM subscriber from the USA who was so happy with the guide and starcraft taiwan account, he decided to put $750 into sponsoring this event for our SEAcommunity. The SEA Starleague saw the emergence of Sang and Petraeus who at that point were getting flak from people for qualifying! Starcraft 1 legend IntoTheRainbow also had his last hurrah making his way into the finals before retiring but in the end it was TSL Hyun the runner up in the last season's Code S who walked away with the grand prize, just before he would go on to reach GSL superstar status.
In the SEA Clan Cup, inFi and their super star lineup emerged as champions, with TargA and the emergence of his "TargA banes" delivering the All Kill and giving xGking their second runner up finish. All was not lost for xGking though, in a special Frog Cup put together by the main admin of SEAL - Frogmite, xGking beat TA in the finals to pick up their first team victory of the year.
The SEAL #2 so kindly sponsored by Sharn Kemp (JoFritzMD) was a massive effort by all the admins, team leaders and players involved - spanning a period of 3 months. Nothing of this scale has ever been attempted before. In the Tier 1 League, underdogs Clan aLt battled their way to victory over hot favourite xGking. It came down to the final match in the final Ace Set on the final day when ToT forced a draw with xGking and PiG came back from behind to give aLt what some would say the most climatic victory in the history of SEA team competition. Irrefutable proof that the league did not have to have a playoffs to be exciting. I was strongly against the idea of playoffs from the start and and in fact and left it up to the individual league admins to decided if they wanted it for their league. T4 and T5 did and the playoffs dragged on and and I believe the Tier 5 playoffs never even happened in the end, it just stopped halfway.
The full list of champions are as follows:
T1 League Champions: aLt
T2 League Champions: Team Onslaught
T3: League Champions: Iris
T4: League Champions: Terror Australis
T5: League Champions: Terror Australis
SEA Cup Champions: inFi
Frog Cup Champions: Xeria Gaming
Winner: Sharn Kemp SEA Star League Most Fun: Race Wars 2012
All four of these members have contributed so much to the scene it would be hard to believe that they only joined the site this year. TheGentleman first joined the site to post a picture on the nexus birthday cake he made. In his short time here he has already went on to spearhead the News Writing Team, hold regular News Team meetings and become a moderator.
UHF added a lot of depth to the site with his always very empirical analysis of data weather it be viking paths from hacking accusations or power rank research based on tournament results. Always providing a neutral analysis when he felt something was not right. Not only that, he brings to the community his amazing graphic talent helping Team Nv and SC2SEA occasionally with his designs - e.g MLG Dallas, Rising StarZ and Alienware Arena.
Dingobloo was the heart and soul of the news posting team. I first approached Ross after seeing his dedication towards Liquipedia. I wasn't sure if he should join the news or writing team - well the teams were even in activity back then and it was hard to decide who need his talent more. Eventually, I felt the community would benefit more from more frequent news. The moment he joined the news team he single handedly tipped the scales in their favour and it has been that way ever since. Always displaying top notch journalism reporting and formatting and always dependable, Dingobloo had also cruised to the top of the news team's internal ranking and produces some amazing art work from time to tome. Come on article writing team! We need more Cutes!
One thing that sets Baldie apart from all the other new organisers is initiative. He gets things going by himself and makes things happen. From Barcrafts to tournaments to casting, managing new teams and networking globally. He's one of the nicest guys around, helps out with artwork whenever he can. And he only joined in March 2012 and is a fantastic all round member of the community.
Vanz an events organiser by profession was the main man behind ACL and was the reason why ACL and WCS Oceania were such memorable events. Of course he did not do it on his own, there were a whole ton of people helping him. One of them was last year's winner Dox who helped with ACL as well as run many other events like the ASUS Pro-Am by Gamespot_AU. Asrathiel does the BSG Weeklies and their new initiative the BSG Cups with AsylumOfSouls and she also ran the mono battles and helped out as an ESL admin. Frogmite basically ran the SEASL. nirvAnA helped with SEASL, ran SEAL Star League #2, GESC, Tokyo Game Show Qualifiers and Alienware Arena Singapore. Benji did a sickening amount of work at the start of the year with the xGTL, TCL and Asian Star League. Arnor was the driving force behind the CO for most of the year, and not to mention all the live city hunter and misc tournaments he ran.
Here I do not look at the scope or magnitude of the events but rather consistency. And most consistent of them all throughout the year is Eddie, sponsor and organiser of the GPD weeklies and monthly master cups for 2 years in a row. Every single week, even when he was in Singapore at IEM he makes sure that the GPD lives on. The amount of dedication he has for the community is remarkable.
Winner: Eddie Honourable Mention: Asrathiel & AsylumOfSouls
Flamaga did a ton of wT weeklies and also many miscellaneous tournaments of his own like ThePad and his christmas specials. ThePandarine put together his own BSGP Winter Weekly Opens, a Brozne Silver Open and did fantastic write ups for SEAL #2. GriM, Bandit and Rhuubarb were new admins and great help to the wT weeklies and GPDs. Eddie especially speaks fondly of Rhuubarb.
The winner however has to be the fast rising super star Baldie for reasons already mentioned above!
2012 marked the conception of the News Team "Dead Poets Society" - formed with the idea of bringing the latest world news to SEA readers - while maintaining a strong SEA focus. Rogue did brilliantly with her NZ section. Breadfan covered tournaments thoroughly. TheGent set a fine example. MezjE did the roster reviews and Mox and Switch helped out occasionally too. At the end of the year, we unfortunately even lost one member, and picked up a new one in Zizlah. There was one standout who was the workhorse of the news team though. And I think you already know who he is!
Lemminks the interview mastero and Leader of TCP makes the list, please be more active! Last year's "Most Creative" winner Cute again wins an award for best style. The driving force behind the WCS Oceania Preview and SEAL magazine. If only you wrote more! Kez with his 2 articles a year barely sneaks in for his "ground breaking" code S piece. CeeSerps, the head of the writing team was really active at the start of the year with articles such like WCS Nordic: TargA Edition till work caught up. deL had amazing write ups and would be a serious contender if you hadn't left the Starcraft community 6 months ago!
The SEA Newsletters are the most difficult and take an enormous time to do. The idea is to give casual gamers or people do not follow news on a daily basis a recap of the past month's events in SEA and the world. Since taking over it. TheGent has gone way beyond expectations, delivering these news letters with meticulous precision and regularity. He is the most consistent writer this year.
All the new shiny achievements you see on the site were the result of TheGent's hard work, a process which took about a month to do if you consider the planning and ideas and then implementation... and this doesn't even include the the icons that were rejected by me!!
It was a really close fight between TheGent, Cute and UHF but the previous two already have too many awards anyway. The depth of UHF's work is unparalleled from the Nv Posters, "Best of the Week", "Rising Stars" and "Alienware Arena" overlays, posters and infographics he has created. Rumour has it he is a full time designer. Ahhh... that explains it!
Winner: UHF Most Dedication: TheGentleman Honourable Mention: Cute
Baka puts himself out there just to defend the honour of random sc2sea people and proper conduct. Dealing with a never ending stream of emo letters with every infraction from the butthurt has finally taken its toll on Baka. For those who do not know it is extremely time consuming and unpleasant. And he has been considering resigning as a moderator. Please don't or I'm going to make a petition!
Maynarde is an all round bad-ass and one of the few who still regularly moderate. More on Maynade later. Veteris is a lot like paperclip, a really kind and skilled soul who gives his all to the community expecting nothing in return. But Veteris has his MIA moments where he becomes completely un-contactable well cause he is really busy with medical school. But still he coded up the amazing replay database and SEA Bet for us and his legacy lives on! I eagerly await his return! And you know all about TheGent and DingoBloo already!
Finally.. there is only one other person in the world that has full FTP and administrator access, and that person is xpaperclip. I can feel completely comfortable leaving the fate of SC2SEA in his hands, should I get run down by an ultralisk on the way to work. I know he will take good care of it. And I have never even met him in person before! A man of insane technical expertise in various fields from video editing to coding and design. There is so much behind the scenes work he has done for SC2SEA this year and help he has given me that you guys are unaware of. From saving the site from its "hacked" attempt to ninja coding in new features regularly to improve the site wherever he can. And why do you not know about these? Because he could care less about recognition or awards, he seeks none of it and doesn't have the need for people to know. He always looks out for the community before himself. That's why he never posts much and is quite quiet. A really rare breed of gentlemen and kinda similar to Eddie I would say.
Yes, he created this for "fun". Someone asked to use it in their project (lol) to which he replied "Sure, go ahead. You should probably give credit to the ABC and BBC for the original sources instead though!" effectively completing somebodies homework and removing all credit from himself.
He is probably going to say he doesn't deserve this award and there are others out there but don't get tricked! Now all that is left is to convince him to get on facebook.
We had such a great blog year so it was a shame that they ended on a low full of butt hurt and childish grudges. I hope this lists serves as a reminder on the proper usage of blogs and how they can be such a great feature to have when used properly. The WCS blogs in particular were really good!
The winner however, goes to a blog which isn't even a blog. Not only was it extremely detailed and with pretty pictures (hi tgun, plz learn) - it also came at a time where everyone wanted to know how our SEA heroes was doing. From lost baggages to American food to preparation for the final event. And I'm sure Dox had better things to do in Dallas then to write blogs for us, but he did it so the rest of us could easily follow their dream.
Loach, is an awesome human who writes on the news team and has been giving casting a shot, casting GPDs occasionally. mattyb21 is another new caster who loves drinking and streaming and occasionally casts SC2SEA tournaments and other casual games. Like mattyb's facebook page here! CleighMoores made a strong introductory post in Nov and already has 26 youtube videos. He has a great sounding voice and it would be nice to see how committed he becomes.
ToRVenom is the resident caster for our "BSG Open" and "Razer Cup" and has been helping cast without fail nearly every single week and his dedication is admirable. LaughingMan previously on Quantic gaming for 5 months did casting for CSL. He will be casting for AHGL all HoTS soon got accepted to go to a pro gaming house in America to pursue casting full time!! Amazing news so wait for the announcement... he is a bit too disconnected from our scene though apart from his “Build to win explaining build orders” series and we hope he casts more SEA events.
Finally, the winner has go to duckville who according to Ali has done "many clan wars, GPDs, Masters cups some wt weekly casting, and a lot of videos coming out on his you tube channel giving some good exposure for some of our top tier players." He was recently also featured on Clutch's show Shifting Gears.
Zain is a fantastic co-caster. So is Zepph. Co-casters normally do not have the liberty of free time so they join up and add immense value whenever they are paired up favourably. I loved the Baldie-Zain and System-Zain combo. Zain is so naturally talented but way too busy with practising law but he still helps out when he can. Zepph is always a pleasure to listen to, especially when she is paired up with Maynarde. I would go as far as to say she is the best female caster in the world now and definitely the most knowledgeable.
System and Flamga are great solo casters who can carry a show by themselves. So is last year's winner Benji, who earlier this year did an enormous amount of work in his various projects with backdrops that raised the bar. System's pushes himself to improve and pick up new skills.. and new games... Its unfortunate his interest in Starcraft has waned but his legacy the SEA podcast is well loved and lives on. He cast a lot of high profile online events from TGS to SEA Starleague. Flamga is so naturally charismatic and diverse piling a ton of organiser work with his casting. Baldie is somewhere in between a solo caster and pair caster and it will be interesting to see how he develops over the year.
The winner though is someone who has been extremely consistent throughout the year. He flew himself out of his own pocket to ACL events just to cast in them. He took time off from his full time job to cast events like IEM, ASUS Pro-Am Gamespot_AU, Alienware Arena. He MCed at WCS and cast a few games with living legends. Hes in the semi finals of Day9's casting competition. He represents our region proudly and this year was his to shine as he made the transition from SC2SEA moderator / admin into super bad-ass commentator / MC. There is something about Maynarde that makes him incredibly likable. Maybe it is his dreads or his incredible good looks that is hidden by it. You be the judge!
Winner: Maynarde
** Now for the other Honourable mentions that don't really have "nominees" to contend against therefore no category of their own but nonetheless deserve their awards.**
Best Non-Starcraft 2 Moderator Winner: Cyanide
Cynaide was an amazing moderator churning out all the latest Diablo 3 news, content and updates. Its such a shame that he was the only one still playing the game! I should really be giving him moderator ability on the other forums too.
Best "Questionable" Mod Winner: tgun
When I appointed tgun mod, I remember my frenemy making a remark along the lines of "who would be so stupid to do that". After a lengthy trial period, I am glad that tgun has proved his doubters wrong. He often has strong viewpoints yes, but this did not follow in his moderation and whenever he made decisions he would consult others. And one of the reasons why I've always respected him was because of his impartiality. He just infracted his team mate Mafia btw (for his blog) whom I did not want to infract because I was showing favouritism I guess. He doesn't show any.
Best Stream Interaction Winner: PiG
Next, PiG wins the award for best stream interaction. He is the only SEA player to consistently get 30+ viewers every single time he streams from loyal fans, and that is probably because of the way he interacts with them. From coaching to random games to PiG fun days and give aways and streaming his workout session - he works hard for his viewers and hes deservedly SEA's most popular streamer.
Best Forum Game Winner: Mafia (Opps x2!!)
Mafia Round 8 which was once run by Benji, again proved to be a highly popular forum game - this time being run by Zanderax and TheGent. GratZ to the ToR boys and Rogue for winning.
One half of "The Bee Duck" - commentator, ACL Host, and queen of mOOnGLaDe's heart - LiviBee has released her Book "Uncovering the World of eSports." It is a 74 page illustrated book complete with exclusive interviews with community figures and members of Team Nv while introducing the world of eSports. A nice summary of our community and eSports today! All the illustrations/artwork in the book was done by Livi Bee and the book wouldn't have been created if not for her undying passion for starcraft.
Best eGuide Winner: Zepph's Casting Guide
The best female caster in the world (imo) Zepph recently wrote a detailed guide intended to help new and up and coming casters become better at commentating games. She covers everything from the ground up including "How to talk about the game" and "Promoting yourself & Networking".
SEA's undisputed best observer inFeza who recently was flown to Singapore to observe the IEM grand finals wrote a guide way before that on how you could be like daddy.
Saviour's ZvP well received guide takes the award for best non-TGM guide this year.
Best Unsung Hero Winner: Cute
Baldie: "Cute donated $20 every single week of wT Weekly in 2012 since its conception (42x$20=$840) and I know for a fact he isn't rolling in cash but he does it both to keep his memory of wT clan alive but also to contribute to the scene and to SEA tournaments. That kind of generosity is so few and far between I personally think it is an honour to work with him.
He will continue to contribute $20 every 2nd week this year and likely will contribute to the wT Majors as well. People like Flamga who donated upwards of $300 and CSerps who now is approaching similar numbers are also such generous people. Your $1,000 donation is fast approaching and I will be sure to make it noticed."
Team & Player Awards
INCOMING DRAMA!!
I've tried to account for everything and spend some time asking admins and digging up old threads. But I might have missed a few nominees here and there so please make suggestions if you have any and I'll add them to the list when I'm back. I will try to do the next part SOONISH.
nirvAnA I know making this was no small task and would have eaten up a lot of time so thank you for the time you (and everybody else who contributed to this) spent to make this all happen!
Awesome write up nirvana, the sc2sea awards one of my fav things about sc2sea very fun.
Just want to throw out Duckvillelol's name out there for casters. Who I personally think is the most talented caster in SEA.
Has done many clan wars, has done GPD, Masters cups some wt weekly casting, and a lot of videos coming out on his you tube channel giving some good exposure for some of our top tier players (first thing that comes to mind is mafia vs yang where yang went mass voids on mafia , and mafia vs MKP with some of the most amazing creep spread iv ever seen.)
Thanks again for the awesome write up nirvana, look foward to the teams and players section
Very very good write up nirvAnA. Congratulations to all medal winners and especially the people listed. Even though you didnt win anything, you are still listed. Be proud of that
Stally should have best writing while drunk award cos drunk stally is best stally!!!! also love maynarde but think its a bit harsh on Benji not getting best caster again after all the work he put into xgtl and things (just my opionion) no real point to post as per usual just saying (mainly aimed at tgun cos he thinks theres no point to my posts..... HES ******* RIGHT!!!!) idk love stally
Everyone who got an award or a mention, and quite a few of you who missed out closely, thanks for your dedication to this site! My involvement with the sc2sea community is what made me want to devote my life to eSports and Starcraft. It's great to see it's still going so strong and has had such a great 2012. It really put a smile on my face reading these awards .
Best New Clan would be close, mGG have been amazing, it was our first year too for the Fusion Slugs, so id obviously hope we would be in with a good shot.
nirvAnA: u and del can compete for the get a gf and disappear award!
nah he would win :P im still around anyway just not as active, ill be coming back stronger and harder in 2013 espically with hots (thats what im working on anyway)
A shout-out and big thank you to everyone that have contributed to our home. So many of us would be lost & perhaps on another route if not for this home~
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