North American Star League The Players
We hope that this will shed some light to the community about our application and selection process. On February 1st I contacted as many teams as I could and allowed them to begin preparing. These are the people/teams that fell under the category of direct approach. When we opened the application process, I contacted those teams again to allow them to officially submit their players. Anyone whose team manager was not directly contacted was part of the public application pool.
Because we were running at a fairly tight deadline, we had to close the application period at March 16th we were not able to consider all the public applications received after this time. This applies to players such as DIMAGA, Kas, and LaLuSh, for example. Now, to clarify: the application is not just the video. The application is complete when the contract has been signed. The process for a public application was for them to send their application video along with manager contact information to
apply@nasl.tv . After receiving their info, I would then send the contracts out to be signed. LaLuSh, DIMAGA, and Kas did not follow this application process.
Why does this bureaucracy matter?
We have deadlines. The contracts needed to be received before we could officially count any player in the league, and we needed time to do that. We needed to confirm every one of the 50 players before our website launched, to prepare content, and before the league starts, to ensure that it runs smoothly. Furthermore, because we need to run a broadcast schedule five days a week every week, we had quite a bit of concern over players who were unable to quickly follow these guidelines.
Now that thats out of the way
We had a grand total of 104 applications. We immediately eliminated 30 applicants who either: a) didnt have a video with their application, or b) posted a video on youtube without actually applying. This left us with 74 players on our board. Next, we separated the 74 players by region: Asia, Europe, and North America. After separating the players by region, we went down the list and selected players who: a) were considered top players and b) were fan favorites, starting in North America (KiWiKaKi, SeleCT, and IdrA for example), followed by Europe (MorroW, White-Ra, and TLO for example), and Asia (July, MC, and Boxer for example). After this first round we had: 9 North Americans, 8 Europeans, and 6 Koreans.
Before the second round, we went backwards through the list, eliminating the lowest skilled/fame in a group of amazing players: (Cezanne, KenZy, Antimage for example). Then we went back through the regions to select the second tier list of admitted players, again based on results and popularity. Players in this list included (some examples: KawaiiRice, Axslav, Haypro, HasuObs, and Ace). This left us with 42 total invites, and 8 remaining spots for the third round of selection.
At this point, we had a two day debate about the remaining players, in which we went to the poll and the application videos to help make our selections. Players who made the final cut included MoMaN and Dde for example. This left us with the North American Star Leagues 50 players.
How did we group the players?
The first thing we did is separate teammates we put all teammates in different groups. The next thing we did was to look at fun and exciting rivals and try to pair them: I.E. IdrA vs Tyler, Zenio
and Grubby vs Moon. After this, we attempted to create an equal balance between races and regions. Two Koreans were placed in each group, and each group has a balance of 4-3-3 (races). We also used our selection process to help the grouping, separating those selected in the first round in different groups, etc.
Overall, we chose 3-4 players (Artosis, Grubby, MoMaN) who were designated as fan favorites and 3-4 players (ViBe, CrunCher, DarkforcE) who may be considered underdogs. The rest of the players were chosen based on their results and skill level.
Why we picked them
Stalife: Stalife took 2nd place in the EG Masters Cup, multiple ESL Go4SC2 victories (including 1st in the Monthly final), and over $3,500 in prizes won, Stalife has shown to be one of the most underrated players in NA.
ViBe: Nearly qualified for the TSL and had an impressive showing at MLG Dallas 2010, proving that he is one of those up and comers we want to see in this event.
CrunCher: He validated our pick by defeating IdrA in the TSL, but his qualification was impressive as well, taking down top players in an official setting.
Dde: Similar to ViBe, Dde is another player whose results in online cups consistently puts him in the top3 and leads us to believe that he has the potential to surprise many people in the North American Star League.
Grubby: One of the most legendary RTS players of all time hes shown some good games at the
Assembly LAN and the FXOpen Invitational. He is one person that were sure everyone would love to see succeed.
MoMaN: Hes played pretty well in online cups, and we were really as impressed with his application video, which was one of the most popular we received. He was an easy fan favorite choice for us.
Artosis: Artosis posted some good results in the beta stages when he was active, qualifying for the first GSL. Now that he will be active again, we believe he can surprise many people, and of course was one of our fan choices!
Why we didnt pick them
DeMusliM: He was wearing a cast in his application video, standing outside of a hospital saying that he just had another procedure done, we can't really choose a player who hasn't played in months and have him work his way back into shape in the actual league.
Kas: Despite being late, he actually applied correctly. However, Ukraine does not have a VISA waiver program with the US, and we only wanted players who have demonstrated travel to the US before having a high risk player is something we didnt want (I.E. we dont want a situation where visa problems would stop a player like Kas from showing up to the finals).
*Note: players such as White-Ra have demonstrated on numerous occasions that he can travel to the US without problem, and we officially verified that BRAT_OK has a B1 VISA that allows him to travel to the US.
NightEnD: Same reason as Kas. He assured us that he could get a VISA, but we only accepted players who actually have a copy of a VISA that they could show us.
Minigun: This was a difficult pick, however, due to our attempt to balance by race and region, we only had room for one more Protoss. We essentially made a judgment call between two very very good players; and chose Cruncher over Minigun.
FruitDealer: Incomplete application forced us to remove him from consideration
Who didnt apply
DIMAGA: Application video past the deadline, neither him or his manager contacted me, so they were never sent contracts.
Jinro: Did not sign contract, probably to focus on GSL
HuK: Did not sign contract, probably to focus on GSL
IM: Nobody from team IM applied
Prime: Only asked about applying after the application process was over
Final Remarks
Unfortunately, in a tournament with 50 players, it is impossible to create a list that will satisfy everyone. We tried our best to make the most objective list we could. Remember, we have 16 spots next season that will be up for grabs. We encourage everyone to sign up for the Open Tournament and Seasonal Qualifier especially those that we unfortunately couldnt select to be in the league this season.
We hope that you all will enjoy the league and know that this process was lengthy and no decision was made hastily or without a great deal of thought.
