What is Esports without Sean Plott?

What is Esports today without Sean Plott?

Well to really dive into answering that question I think it would be prudent to first answer the blasphemous question a couple people might have.  And that question is "Who the hell is Sean Plott?"  So here we go....

Sean Plott was born June 27, 1986 in a small village named Leawood just outside of Kansas City, Missouri.  Now I say village because there was a point in time up until the 90s in this place that they actually banned fast food and even gasoline stations.  OK now I get fast food, but gas stations come on did Day9 take a horse to preschool?  Anyways I digress, this was simply where he was born and I am not even close to qualified to theorize on what his pony ride to preschool and lack of fast food had to do with him becoming a super nerd.  It is also worth note that not one but two influential nerds came from this tiny little suburb.  The other person is known by most as "Tasteless", one of the main English speaking commentators for GOMTV a StarCraft broadcasting community based out of Seoul, South Korea affectionately known by the gaming community as the "Mecca of Esports."  Now not only are these two from the same Suburb they share something else and that is a last name, that's right Tasteless is none other than Nick Plott, Day9's brother, I know right, someone get their mother a book deal writing about how to raise the perfect nerd.  Anyways as one could imagine Sean Plott did more than just be born in his life.  Sean Plott attended High School at Rockhurst High School, a school that boasts several NFL players, politicians, and even a Pulitzer prize winner.  It is in this place Sean Plott became Day9, and it is probable that this transformation did not literally occur at the school but rather in the time he and his brother were playing StarCraft instead of going to school, nevertheless Day9 was born (would love Sean Plott's personal estimate on Day9's actual birth date).  I would guess around March 31, 1998 since that was when the orignal StarCraft was first released maybe Mr. Plott can respond to my blog clear things up for me :). (a little boy can dream right haha).  Day9 became a highly rated StarCraft Broodwar player right around the time he graduated High School showing his first major results in 2004 when he placed 2nd in the World Cyber Games USA tournament (considered at the time to be like the Olympics of Esports).  He then went on to take 1st in 2005 and then 2nd again in 2006.  As one could imagine this earned him a great deal of respect in the StarCraft community.  Now where Day9 starts to part from a lot of the past and present champions is his insatiable passion to share what is going on inside his head.  While continuing his education at Harvey Mudd College where he earned a degree in Mathematics, Day9 continued his career as a professional gamer remaining active in the ever growing online communities developing around StarCraft one of the most notable ones being Team Liquid which was, and still is, one of the largest if not "the largest" starcraft 2 forum community.  In the early days it was primarily a strategy forum where a gamer could go to discuss strategies or ask for advice in certain match ups.  Day9's urge to share was first predominately demonstrated in these forums where he was always willing to give advice and let people know what he thought about certain builds and strategies.  Not all players like to divulge their strategies these days, and they especially weren't as open back then.  There were not easily accessible "how to" videos, and keep in mind you tube wasn't even created until around 2005.  Needless to say the idea of a live stream wasn't something all that common in the early days of StarCraft.  Now Day9 had been playing in front of audiences at tournaments, and sharing his feelings on forums; but as you may recall I described his desire to share as "insatiable and obviously forums just could not accommodate this kind of an appetite to share.  Now along with competing I understand that during the early days of StarCraft tournaments the casting was originally being done by the casters that did some of the popular FPS tournaments at the time, and that during a couple of these tournaments the Plott brother's offered to cast when they were not playing (one could imagine because listening to SC being casted from an FPS point of view was eating at their soul, but again only Mr. Plott could verify this).  Now a few years into Day9's illustrious career he started his post graduate education at USC, and along with this in 2009 he began, what has been so aptly described as edutainment, the Day9 Daily.

The Day9 Daily is where success first starts to become fame.  Where one nerd begins to make a difference.  Now there are a great many professional gamers with streams, rebroadcast casting, and other forms of video entertainment revolving around the StarCraft scene.  The Day9 Daily is, however, on a level all of its own.  Now Day9's goal was not to be the best player anymore (whether he knew it at the time or not), but it was to raise the bar on what the average player was.  Thousands of players tune in each night to watch Mr. Plott every evening, where he asks everyone to learn to be a better gamer.  There are countless stories of people that watched Day9's stream that have literally gone from bronze league to high diamond and masters.  By raising the level of the average player Day9 has not only made the game more attractive to casual gamers, but he has indirectly increased the skill level of the best players.  Most of the practice games progamers will get in will be on the ladder, and the ladder is filled with what...thats right the average players. Now along with basically coaching thousands of people at a time, Day9 casts almost every large North American StarCraft event, and even a few European ones.  What brings so many people back to Day9 night after night is his unique personality, he is the type of guy that would make a Yeomen Warder giggle so hard they would mess them self.

Now not only does he bring his vibrant personality to the events he is casting, he also brings his fan base from his daily show.  Recently I believe Day9 is up to around 110,000 followers on twitter alone.  Almost anytime Day9 is casting an event it will be watchable via his stream website as well, and will almost mirror the entire live viewer count for the main tournament stream itself.  Needless to say having Day9 casting an event is a must if you want good online media exposure, and media exposure is the blood of Esports.  The big companies like Razer, Steelseries, Sony, Alienware, Redbull, and countless others are all the ones that fund the events that allow for the Esports events to take place around the world.  They fund both gamers and tournaments alike based on exposure.  If a player or event is likely to have a great deal of exposure then that makes that player or event worth more money.  It is advertising space for a very target specific community that is likely to buy merchandise related to the source of entertainment they are watching.  Not at all different from the logos on the side of NASCAR race cars.  It is also not at all hard to believe that Esports media exposure can one day rival something like NASCAR with the help of personalities like Day9.  Would a world where people did the fusion core dance in unison around a stadium filled with nerds instead of the wave not be a better place? :).

So the answer to the question "What would Esports be without Day9?"  The loss of the media exposure his personality brings to the StarCraft scene alone would be catastrophic to Esports.  The bar of what is good and what is average would fall and again so would the exposure as a result.  Without Day9 and personalities like his (or as close to his as possible, as he is undeniably one of a kind) Esports would simply not be what they are today.

Please reply and let me know what Esports would be to you without Day9, or even just to tell me something new about Day9.  Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed.