E3 was busy and filled with distractions. Games were literally all around you and everyone was either too busy playing them, or in Anna's case, just too busy interviewing the developers that made them. We had tried to meet up several times throughout the event, but her hosting duties for Twitch left little down time. Determined to chat with the Eye on the Storm co-host, and now caster for the Road to BlizzCon NA open qualifiers, I found a break in between the Twitch broadcast. Leaning awkwardly over the stage where Anna and the other hosts were sitting, I explained loudly (in an attempt to be heard over the noisy trailer being played) that I will be waiting "right over here"
I was pointing to an area next to the Twitch booth. Anna gave me a thumbs up. After the broadcast, a rush of people scattered all around, and Anna made her way to my makeshift interview area.
Hello! Great, glad we made it happen.
Yes! I've been up there all day.
So let's just get started. You’ve casted all sorts of different MOBAs, but it seems safe to say that Heroes is something you’ve really grown to love. What makes Heroes so fun for you?
I am a huge Blizzard fan, first and foremost. I started in Starcraft and that was my entry into eSports. When Heroes came out, I gave it a try, not expecting to like it very much, and the game itself just grabbed me. I loved it enough that I could spend hours a day to get the game knowledge I needed to become a caster, and being a caster was always something that I’d had as a lofty goal — that I wasn’t sure I could reach, and so I realized that this was the opportunity to do it.
You’ve been playing Heroes since the Alpha. As someone who has watched and casted so many games, what is one piece of advice that you could give to new players?
Find a group of people you enjoy playing with, and make sure to focus on what [aspects of the game are] fun for you. Because, when it ceases to be fun, you’ll stop practicing.
You recently hosted the North American Open Qualifiers with Gillyweed. There were so many crazy strategies and people coming out of the woodwork. How was that experience for you—casting all those games with all of those streamers?
It felt really neat to be rubbing shoulders with those people, and to be part of something as big as the official Blizzard competition that would lead to BlizzCon. I think that Gilly and I kind of had a moment where we sat back — and, Eye on the Storm, our show, was originally both of us coming together and saying, “we want to become casters, what can we do in order to make ourselves ready for that?” — so we both sat back and realized, “we’re actually casting something that really matters, we’ve actually become casters, and we can really count ourselves as having really succeeded.” For us, it was a huge milestone.
Would you say that the North American Open Qualifiers was the most memorable event you’ve casted so far?
I think the most memorable event was probably Heroes of the Dorm... I put more work into that than, I think, any event I've ever done.
I think the most memorable event was probably Heroes of the Dorm. I wasn’t as visibly involved, in that I wasn’t onstage or part of the live broadcast, but I put more work into that than, I think, any event I’ve ever done. I worked four weekends straight, and every day during those weekends I was watching games, analyzing plays, and helping capture footage, and then writing scripts. So all of the videos that you saw for Heroes of the Dorm [featured] a lot of my real work as an analyst. For me, I’m a lot more quietly proud of that, because I proved to myself that I was capable of doing all of those jobs. And the reward of it being on ESPN2, and the feeling of that event, it felt amazing, and it gave me hope that Heroes was really going to succeed more than we’d even hoped for.
What are you most proud of, and what do you want to see more of from the Heroes community?
The community is so young that this is the point where we really start to define ourselves. I want to speak in faith that we will be the community that is hallmarked by togetherness and supporting each other. The problem with eSports, especially on the entertainment side, is that many people live in this culture of scarcity, and there are only so many jobs to go around, and therefore [they] have to be looking out for number one all the time. That translates into not being happy for our peers when they succeed, and I think I would like to see us be characterized by not only fun but also by goodwill, regardless of anything else.
when we looked around at eSports, most of our female peers would come in with all sorts of motivation and passion and excitement, and then after about a year, they would be gone.
Let’s talk about Misscliks, and some of your goals for it. Where do you want that project to go, and what do you want people to know about it?
Man, I could start crying about Misscliks right now, because three of our co-founders are here at E3. [We all had] the understanding that, when we looked around at eSports, most of our female peers would come in with all sorts of motivation and passion and excitement, and then after about a year, they would be gone. We theorized that that was because they didn’t have the support and the role models that they needed. We knew that those role models existed, but we didn’t feel like they had been brought to light and become connected [to the community] enough.
So, we formed this four-person coalition to not only support each other through those challenges — and make sure none of us left the industry — but to provide support and exposure for the female role models that already existed. All of us have full-time jobs in gaming, so it’s been a very slow progression, but this weekend, all of us had major successes, and were very visibly reaching these peak experiences that we had been looking for, so we experienced that, on a small-scale, and realized we had [accomplished our goal] for our co-founder group.
Then, on the other side, one of our main goals has always been to expand the number of shows that we have on the Misscliks livestream channel, because we see that as one of the best ways we can provide exposure for female role models. We’ve officially released one new show that’s coming out July 6th, and we have a few other shows that are in the late stages of development, so those will be coming out soon as well. These shows have to do with geek and gaming culture, cosplay, and other topics that feature female role models in the industry.
Anna was then promptly whisked away, as she was needed elsewhere for E3 hosting related duties. After some quick goodbyes, I was reminded that Misscliks is currently recruiting new shows and you can contact them at [email protected] for more information. Follow @Misscliks on Twitter, or you can follow Anna directly on @AnnaProsser
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