My gaming station.

Some people asked me what my gaming station looks like. So I decided to take a picture of it :)



The banelings are there to scare me. I lost to ling+baneling allins too many times before! And the trophies are there for motivation.

I recently started using a wireless headset for the first time (Logitech G930) and I love it. It's so awesome while I'm talking to friends on skype. No more "brb" or "afk", I can just walk around in the apartment while on skype. I might be late to the party but it's just amazing .

Above my desk I have the painting of me morphed with Kerrigan. It's a bit hard to see so here is a better picture of it.

I'm playing on a XMG notebook. It takes up some space on my desk but it's totally worth it to play on a laptop considering how easy it is to bring it while traveling.

Oh, and I started using a 144 hz monitor. I'm late to the party again I guess, but it's actually quite a big difference. I love it!

~Keep smiling~

1 week, 2 tournaments and 2 wins!

In the past week I played in two female offline tournaments, one in Paris and one in Uppsala. How I did is not the important thing here. These tournaments were more than "just" tournaments to me. It's more about meeting other people that shares my big passion for the game. Normally at events there are very few girls, so female tournaments are more special to me since I'm a girl :).

Birdie

I really like how the events succeeded to motivate girls to play and how we found new female faces in the Swedish community. For example I got to meet the 9 years old Protoss player Saga. She came to the Swedish event this weekend in Uppsala with her dad who is supporting her play 100%. Seeing things like this makes me super happy. If it wasn't for the female cup she would probably not have played her first tournament this weekend. The same goes for many of the other participants.

The Swedish tournament was a part of a new project "inkluderande e-sport" that will hopefully change the fact that there are so few girls in esports. In SC2, for example, less than 5% of the players are female.

Me, Saga, QueenE and Trulz.

UniSL was there to do the production.

I uploaded some more pictures on my facebook page.

Ladies of the Swarm #3

This tournament was held at Meltdown in Paris. I played vs seven female players from France and in the finals I got to play Akane again (we played in the finals of the IeSF World Championship 2013). It was really nice to talk to all the girls and I love the community they have.

Awesome girls playing at LotS #3! Photo: Damien Cacheux

The crowd was really amazing. Right before the tournament I went to a restaurant alone to eat. At the table next to me sat four american guys. We started talking and they turned out to be huge SC2 fans. They loved the game and so I told them about the tournament and they went there to check it out. They joined forces with a Swedish guy I met the day before and they cheered for me all night. It was super cool!

The guys I met at the restaurant. 

In France the female community is really big around SC2. It might be the biggest of all countries! That is something that made my trip to Paris last week extra special. I tried to figure out the reason why :). It's not just the female community that is bigger. In France I feel like the community is closer to the players, casters and organizations. Meltdown Paris, a dedicated esports bar where people go every day to watch esports. A bar that organizes events, a place you can go to meet others who loves esports etc, it's pretty amazing. In Sweden we have STHLM e-sport. They are doing a great job but it's a lot smaller when it comes to events and frequency.

While in France I also had some time to hang out with my teammates Dayshi and MLord and my super nice manager Llewellys. I had a really great trip!

Have an amazing day <3

I'm in Paris!

Hello there! I'm in Paris! Today I went to Meltdown Paris to hang out with Dayshi, MLord and Moman. Tomorrow I'm playing in Ladies of the swarm 3. I hope I get to play Akane again. Didn't play vs her since the IeSF world championship finals. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-tournaments/450771-gda-ladies-of-the-swarm-3

Great news everyone!

I have some cool news. If you followed me for a while you know that I’ve always had a thing for Logitech mice. My first gaming mouse was the MX518. Up until a few weeks ago I’ve been using the Logitech g100s. Recently I got to try the new g502 Proteus Core and that is the mouse I’m currently using.

The good news is that I will be working together with Logitech for the launch of the mouse in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark! That also means you have a chance to win a g502 of your own or a trip to DreamHack if you live in one of those countries. So come challenge me in the precision game :) https://game-enough.com/

<3<3<3 Keep smiling <3<3<3

Combining casting and playing.

Foto: Jonathan Reider Lundkvist

This weekend I was playing in top 8 of University Star League. I managed to beat Xylla 2-0 but in the semi I fell 1-3 to Mekar, from Team Property, who later won the tournament. We had some really close games so I’m not super disappointed even if I obviously wanted to win.



The day before I was casting e-sport-SM (Swedish championship qualifier) from the DreamHack studio in Stockholm. Casting is of course something that takes up time and sometimes, depending on the timing, even focus from a tournament. But casting also has a positive effect on me as a player. When I’m practicing I’m often watching replays and streams to get inspiration for my own play. While casting I’m watching the game super carefully and not only from a zergs perspective. That makes me realize details I’m usually not seeing while watching replays at home. It can be the way players are scouting, or to see small indications of what builds players are going for or ideas for new builds. It can actually be really helpful.

The past months I’ve been casting almost every weekend (in Swedish). A week ago I was casting on Swedish TV during DreamHack and will continue to do so most likely. This is a big opportunity to spread the word of esports to people who doesn’t follow it or doesn’t play at all. I love it and I hope more countries takes after :).

I love casting zerg players. That is the easy part since I play a lot and have a good understanding. When it comes to the other races it’s a bit more tricky. Since I got so many casting jobs I decided it’s not enough to just watch other match-ups and study strategies. It was time to put some time and effort into playing another race. I gave both Terran and Protoss some games and realized that it was easier for me to learn Protoss (Power of Protoss). And so I started to play. My PvZ was super gosu but I was terrible at PvP. I also realized that this was also helping my ZvP as I got a better understanding of Protoss. I reached Diamond but didn’t get to master as Protoss yet XD. Sometimes when I lose as zerg I get a bit frustrated and then it’s pretty nice to switch to Protoss and play a bit more casual and abuse the race. So playing another race ended up being a great idea!

Ayway, after UniSL I felt very motivated to play. I have plenty of ideas and I already have a few tournaments planned for the coming months. Hopefully I will also play in the iesf female world championship later this year :). I’ll keep you updated on facebook and twitter!

~Keep smiling~
MaddeLisk

My 2013

I didn’t have the best start of 2013. But in the end, looking back, it was a very good year. A year that I will look back at as a happy year and a year filled with love, challenges, travels, StarCraft and many new friends. I appeared in a coke commercial, won the first season of University Star League and the female world Championship, casted StarCraft for national TV in Sweden, wrote about esports for one of the biggest newspapers in Sweden, joined a team that I love, got a personal sponsorship with XMG and stayed at a gaming house to practice. Many things that I would never have thought possible for me.

When 2013 started I had no team, and I had totally given up the hope of finding a good team for me. I was a bit unlucky (and naive) with eSahara merging with Absolute Legends and then Quantic disbanded (the first time). I still wanted to play StarCraft of course but I was planning on doing that without a team. At this point I was also going through things in my personal life. My dad died and it had a big effect on me even tho we barely spoke anymore. In the end it made me grow as a person.

Casting at DreamHack winter. Photo: Jeroen Weimar.

I got in contact with team Millenium early in 2013 and soon I understood that it was the perfect team for me. I joined the team and I am happy to tell you all that I renewed my contract! Millenium has throughout the year given me so many things. I got a lot of opportunities, like living in the gaming house for example. I will go back to the gaming house for some hard core practice later this year! I also made many friends and I got super good practice, with Dayshi especially. My teammates helped me a lot when I had questions or needed practice for something special. I gained motivation. Motivation that helped me win the female World Championship later in 2013. I never expected that a team could help that much with motivation, but it’s all about finding the right one :) When it comes to skill I did aim higher but unfortunately I didn’t make it much further. I will set up new goals for 2014.

From the gaming house :)

During the year I realized that it will be really hard for me to compete with the top as long as I’m doing my PhD. Before IeSF I took a few days off work and everything(!) just to focus on playing and nothing else. In those few days I learned a ton. I’d say I learned as much in a day that I normally do in a month. It is however really hard for me to get that focus when I all the time have math problems flying around in my head trying to get solved ;) I will try to make some kind of schedule and hopefully that can help a bit, because I really want to improve! And this was a good lesson.

Looking back at 2013 I would say it wasn’t the best year for StarCraft 2. Many things could have been done differently and tbh I was pretty disappointed at WCS and always felt that the 2012 version was a lot better. I think the system was more motivating for players and more enjoyable for the audience. I loved how national heroes were crowned and the European finals of 2012 was very memorable. I think WCS 2014 will be better than 2013, but we have to w8 and see how much will actually be changed.

For esports however I think it was a really good year. Media is getting more and more interested in esports. I wouldn’t say being a progamer is accepted as a job even in Sweden as of yet. But we are getting closer that’s for sure. More and more newspapers are writing about esports, more TV channels and radio stations are getting interested, politicians are even discussing esports and I think that it’s just a matter of time before it is as big as any other sport. But getting the older generation interested will be hard so we might have to w8 until we get old ;)

I’m struggling a lot with time. It’s the one thing I wish I had more of. I love esports and I want to do what I can to help the scene and to become as good of a player as I can. But at the same time I am not willing to give up my PhD. As I stated before I will be giving up teaching for 2014 and I will work less at the University and try to get the best of two worlds. Because in the end life (to me) is all about being happy and doing what you love to do.

Oh, and the obv nutella pic :D

I want to thank all the people following and encouraging me. I want to thank Millenium for a great year and I hope for another good one. And big thanks to my personal sponsor XMG, because of them I don’t have any computer problems anymore :) I’m looking forward to 2014! Much love and ~keep smiling~

Mitt liv som drönare.

Klockan står på 00.00, tideräkningen har just börjat och mina nästan identiska syskon börjar genast samla naturtillgångar. Själv låter jag min nyfikenhet ta mig ut på äventyr. Jag tar en sista titt på kläckningscentralen sedan spanar jag ut över terrängen och ger mig av. Efter en lång vandring kommer jag fram till ett förråd. Jag slår på det med hjälp av mina vassa taggar i hopp om att ta mig in, men blir snabbt bortjagad av en SCV. Kanske var det hans förråd? Jag ser en ståtlig kommandocentral och ett halvfärdigt vapenraffinaderi. Det är en SCV som jagar mig så jag bestämmer mig för att lämna det terranska området. På vägen ut ser jag även en halvfärdig förläggning. Det verkar vara en SCV som bygger på den.  

Jag fortsätter min spaning. Efter många minuter inser jag att det inte finns så mycket mer att se på kartan. Jag återänder hem men möts till min förvåning av ett massivt hav av äckelkolonier. Jag blir nästan lite rädd men minns att äckel var det första jag såg när jag öppnade ögonen. Jag petar på det. Det känns slemmigt och skönt. Jag vandrar in på äcklet och känner mig som hemma. Mina syskon har blivit fler, många fler. De samlar både vespengas och mineraler.

Jag förstår att det behövs råmaterial för att kunna bygga en stark armé. Det måste varit därför mina syskon instinktivt började samla naturtillgångar i tidernas begynnelse. Jag inser att jag försatt min ras i en dålig situation då jag lekt spanare istället för att hjälpa till.  

Kläckningscentralen har förvandlats till en lya och jag ser nya byggnader överallt. En äggpool och två utvecklingskammare bland annat. Plötsligt hör jag skrik och det kommer en hel grupp med soldater och landsättningsskepp. Jag blir vettskrämd och vet inte vad jag ska ta mig till. Jag bestämmer mig för att gräva en håla i marken. Det fungerar. Jag gömmer mig där och hoppas att striden ska gå över. Det är mörkt och kallt men efter en stund somnar jag.

StarCraft(1)manualen på svenska är inspirerande om något!