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!

I will focus more on esports!

My biggest problem in life is that there are too many things that I want to do. I am working on my PhD in Mathematics at the moment and that takes a lot of time. I am also running a student gym and I am casting the Swedish championship in SC2 and qualifiers for that. And of course I spend a lot of time playing StarCraft 2 and also some working out at the gym.  

This was all looking good but as I got some more really interesting opportunities within esports I felt like there was no way for me to do it all. So something had to go. One thing was for sure, I did not want to cut the time I am playing because that is something I really love to do.

Right now I am working 70% of fulltime at the university, 20% of that is teaching (that is 14% of fulltime). So even tho I love teaching math that’s what I decided to let go off. Starting next year I will work only 56% of fulltime at the university and at that pace I am supposed to finish my PhD in about two years.

So what will I do with all of this extra time (lol)? First of all, the things I will do will be in swedish (sorry). As some of you might know I did some writing for Aftonbladet. I will also do more casting in swedish, starting next week with casting the finals of DreamHack Winter on Swedish TV! Yes, on real TV! There are more things to come for next year and I am very happy that I get the opportunity to work more within esports. I think it’s a very important thing at exactly this time because of how much esports is growing. For me personally I am very happy that I get to try all of these things.

SVT will have both an English and a Swedish stream on their web TV from Ro8. Only the finals will be on real TV and with Swedish casters. Some people following the scene prefer the English cast. However when it comes to the then new audience a lot of people requests Swedish cast so I think the combination will be perfect!

I will be casting together with Petter Sjöstrand. I will be more of the analytic caster and he play-by-play. I prefer this combination of casters and I think that it’s even more important when it comes to a new audience. I always prefer it tho. I think that Apollo together with day9 is the best duo. Watching is then very entertaining and you also get the analysis. Personally I prefer to watch replays and do the analysis myself before watching two analytical casters, but that might just be me :)

On another note, I also think that it is very important that there are not just guys working in this area but also some girls if we want esports to really grow. We don’t want esports to be for half of the population but for everyone! That is actually one of all of the reasons I do all the things I do. Let me take ESPORTSM, the Swedish championship, for example. Last season we had 0 female players in the studio. ZERO! This was for 8 qualifiers and a final in SC2, Fifa, Street Fighter and CS. And we had one female caster – me. I would love to see some more girls within the scene and I think it’s important. How to make it happen is a really tough question tho.

This saturday I will be casting the second qualifier to ESPORTSM season 3 and on sunday I will be playing in The University Star League. This time the competition is a lot harder and I think that ThorZaiN will take the win. I'll post links on facebook and twitter when it is time!

As always, thank you so much for the support! If you live in Sweden don’t forget to watch some StarCraft action on TV next weekend. Much love and do me a favor and smile <3

IeSF World Championship

Last weekend I went to Romania to play the first so called world championship where the StarCraft 2 tournament was for girls only. And I won!!! I also wrote history, being the first e-sports player to get doping tested at a tournament!

The tournament

In total 13 girls were playing in the tournament.

On the first day of the event we played the group stage. I didn’t know a lot about the players but from what I could see Akane was my biggest threat in the whole tournament and we played the first match so it felt a bit sad. I managed to win all my matches in my group and I was very happy about that. I felt a lot better going in to day 2. Tournament experience is really important to me since I never seem to be able to play my best when I’m playing at offline events. It’s good that I get opportunities to practice that.

I think a lot of people where surprised that Aphrodite didn’t do better and here is the reason. Aphrodite might be top 8 master on Kr. I doubt she has ever been close to GM tho. But doing ok on ladder is very different from doing well in tournaments. On ladder you can play one playstyle only and it will work because your opponent doesn’t know your style. But Aphrodite came to the tournament with one single build in ZvT, a mech build. She did well at the start but then when everyone knew what she was doing it didn’t work anymore. I hope she learns from this and starts to mix it up in the future because I think she is an important role model in the female scene. She was one of the female players I looked up to when I started playing. I got warned about her playing mech before the tournament and had some time to practice vs it and wasn’t too nervous about it after seeing her play. One thing about Aphrodite was really impressive tho. You should have seen her nails!!! I could never play with nails like that. For me it’s actually quite important to keep them short. Hers were long and had a lot of stuff on them! I say stuff because I am quite lost in the manicure world *n00b*.

The second day we played out the rest of the matches and the match I was most scared of was the finals. The reason being that I usually play bad when I play on stage and in front of people. In the first game I wanted to get an early advantage with a 9 pool since I expected Akane to go for hatch first. But that didn’t happen and I did some mistakes and got behind in the game. I continued doing mistakes but I still managed to win. After that I felt very confident that I would win the whole thing and I could relax and play better. At this point I felt better than I have ever done playing in front of people. It felt as if I could finally breathe :) The crowd was really amazing!

On the downside I felt that I didn’t really get to show my skill. ZvZs can be quite short and I would have loved to play some more vs terran since I practiced ZvT so much before the tournament! But I’m sure I will get my ass kicked soon by the boys :). In total (including the Swedish qualifiers) my score for the tournament was 20-0. It feels a bit sick to think of it and I can tell you that this gave me a lot of motivation to continue practicing and try to compete more. I would really like to be able to do well in mixed tournaments but I know it is very hard to compete with fulltime players when you can’t play as much. I will do my best!

The prize was a nice medal and about $1400 (the information is very unclear).

When I play I always get really cold hands. So what I do now is that I bring a USB heating blanket (it just so happens to be pink) to tournaments and it helps a lot. I also bring the nutella at all times (ofc). The crowd had a lot of fun about that… Everytime I ate my nutella the production decided to put me on the big screen… Well, at least I made some people laugh, that’s good right?

The doping test

The first thing that happened after the winners interview was that some guys came to me and wanted to make a doping test. And of course there was a guy with a camera in my face asking how it felt to make e-sports history since apparently this was the first time an e-sports player got tested at an e-sports event. So what I had to do was to pee when some girl was looking (ye, this didn’t feel strange at all…). Then I thought I was done. But NO. Then I had to play with my urine, but it in boxes and measure stuff, like really? And I had to do a lot of paper work, and this at a time when I wanted to celebrate and be with my friends. Oh well, I think the hope of this is that e-sports will be taken more serious and seen as a sport. I do however not think that doping is that big of a problem within esports but what do I know?

Romania and the after party

Before I went to Romania I got a lot of warnings from other players who played at DreamHack over there. It seemed a bit scary to be honest. When we got there we got the warning that girls should not take a cab themselves. But I didn’t have to since IeSF organized transfer between the hotel and the venue so it didn’t worry me too much. On Saturday there was an unfortunate incident. Long story short, one of the players got kidnapped and mugged. I’m really happy he is ok. But that made me even more skeptic…

After the prize ceremony they sent us with a bus to “the after party”. We got dropped off at a scary lane (in my eyes) where we saw a lot of broken windows and graffiti everywhere. Then we were told to go down in this basement where everyone was smoking inside. As you might know I really can’t stand smoke and so I didn’t want to go in. Then I basically had no choice but to stand outside waiting for the bus for four hours. It’s not like I could take a cab myself in Romania. I mean, I might be strong but I'm not very big :D Oh well, at that point I was a bit shaken up because of everything that happened and I was lucky that the others didn’t like the party either and  I left with a big group of people. Oh, and we were supposed to have a nice dinner at the after party but as every lunch and dinner before they got us pizza from Jerrys pizza. Talk about bad advertising. I will never eat from Jerrys pizza again :D

In general we were treated very well and were taken care of tho :) But the so called after party was a big fail imo.

Team Sweden

The Swedish A.V.A team did really well too and got third place. In total Sweden got second place after Korea, yeeeey.

The future

As I came back home I got sick, it was kinda expected since it happens to me quite often after travelling and this time I came from Romania so... But as soon as I get better I will go back to hard core practice and prepare for the university star league later this month. I have a lot of things going on within e-sports right now and I will let you know as soon as all papers are signed and everything is set.

Thank you!

Thank you so much for supporting me. I’m so happy that I have so many people around me spreading love within e-sports. And I’m so happy that my ex forced me to start playing and that there were some female cups a couple of years ago that made me want to compete and play even more. And thanks to everyone who helped me practice for this event, I think I learnt more the three days before the tournament than what I usually do in a month. I will try to practice more like I did then in the future! Thanks to IeSF for organizing and SESF for sending me. And thank you Millenium for all the support and help I get, and big thanks to my family for all the support you always give me. Just thank you to everyone, and please ~keep smiling~