Interview with James 'Stress' O'Leary, EUCS and LCS caster

James ‘Stress’ O’Leary is one of the new faces in the EU LCS casting team this summer, but keen League of Legends fans will recognise Stress from his casting for the EU Challenger Series, or perhaps even from his earlier days casting at tournaments in the hope of his big break. Thanks to hard work and perseverance that break came, so Team Dignitas caught up with Stress to find out about his new roles for the LCS and the difficulty of providing expert insight to hundreds of thousands of viewers each week.

 

You’re a joint caster with Pulse for the EU Challenger Series and you’ve both moved up to feature more in the EU LCS. What has the transition been like for you from CS to LCS?

Stress: Working on both LCS and EUCS isn’t too different in terms of the team I work with. The staff behind the scenes on EUCS are heavily involved in other roles on the LCS broadcast, which makes the transition between the shows painless in terms of working with a good team of people. With regards to the differences in on-air/casting, the transition to LCS has been really helped out by the main LCS broadcast team. We’re constantly reviewing segments looking for ways to improve on air and preparation for our shows.

 

What are the pressure and the workload like for the LCS and how does this compare to the Challenger Series?

Stress: The LCS and Challenger schedules are fairly interlinked; rather than being separate days of preparation we tend go straight from LCS story planning meetings to Challenger story sessions, so that both shows are given enough time to prepare. The general workload for both shows is fairly intensive but it’s so enjoyable to work on two big projects within League of Legends at the same time. The biggest difficulty that stems from planning both sets of broadcasts comes to actually have the time to watch other regions to keep up with what LCK and LPL are playing, but scheduling the time to watch VODs as a group is something our team has been doing a lot this season.

 

How far in advance are you preparing for each week or an event?

Stress: Preparation is fairly constant throughout the split since the previous weeks games are a big part of expectations for teams coming in to a week. It typically takes 3 to 4 days to plan our shows alongside our production team in Los Angeles, where our graphics and scriptwriting team work from. We’ll usually start with a story meeting on a Monday morning with the caster team, followed by supplementing storylines with Stats and looking with Spellsy – our in house awesome stats wizard – at some in depth breakdowns of players, teams, and the meta.

Stress on the EU LCS Analyst Desk with Sjokz and Krepo. Photo courtesy of the LoL eSports Flickr account.

Does the excitement of the matches always outweigh the demands of the job?

Stress: For sure. There really isn’t any question of if the work is worth it. I’m incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to work in a position I truly enjoy and love, with a team of passionate people. Even when some matches aren’t the most exciting there’s always something interesting happening in game to focus in on.

 

How did you climb up through eSports to where you are today?

Stress: I’ll try and keep this fairly short because if I were to go in to full detail it’d probably be an essay in itself. I started out doing some freelance gaming interviews at UK events after seeing someone within the Starcraft 2 scene doing something similar at MLG’s [Major League Gaming]. I was using pretty basic equipment – a hand held camcorder that wrote to mini-dvd’s because I couldn’t afford a digital camera at the time – but I’d read a lot of advice from people saying “If you want to get involved in eSports, just start doing something and send it out to people.” That advice really hasn’t changed at all. At that event I actually interviewed some of the old Team Dignitas SC2 team which, when I came to apply for Team Dignitas as a volunteer member of their content team, ODEE [Team Dignitas’ owner] remembered. At that point I was doing articles infrequently while focusing on my University work, before transitioning to casting UK events for League of Legends.

My start in casting actually came about thanks to my time on Team Dignitas; I was at Insomnia 46, working at the sponsor booths and doing content for the website, when word got around they needed a League caster for the finals. Having never really casted anything bigger than a tiny stream to friends I ended up casting to the crowd of about 400 people for their final series. From there I never really looked back; opportunities opened up to work on shows run by Dreamhack, FaceIT, and working with Riot on LCS promotion qualifiers; each of which really helped with getting more and more on camera experience.

In May 2014 I actually applied to be an in-game observer for the EU LCS – a position I held for the Spring Split of 2015 – before transitioning to being on camera rather than actually controlling the camera.

Stress interviewing SC2 player blinG back in 2012. Sorry Stress!

Aside League, what games really got you hooked as a gamer and which of these would you like to cast for? (again, aside LoL)

Stress: My first memories of gaming are the same as a lot of people’s with Pokémon Red/Blue. Growing up I never really had a good gaming PC until moving to University so I predominantly played a lot of Xbox 360 games like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 & Halo 3. Other than that, my friends and I used to play a bunch of Smash Bro’s Melee on weekends, which from an enjoyment standpoint would be a game I guess would be cool to cast but I’ve not really thought about it as League is my passion.

 

You previously managed Team Dignitas UK back in 2013. Was that something you enjoyed – being involved with a team – and would you ever consider management (or coaching/being an analyst) in the future?

Stress: Managing Dig UK was enjoyable and really helped me grow when it comes to understanding the dynamics of player interaction while on a team. It wasn’t without its difficulties though as it was a lesson in differing attitudes in the team and how to deal with conflict. Working with the players for the most part was really rewarding and seeing KaSing and Impaler do well over the last year or so has been an awesome experience. Also, working on management aspects behind the scenes with Team Dignitas helped my understanding of how a lot of eSports organisations work. I doubt I’d work as a coach or manager for a team any time soon as it’s not something I’m 100% invested in, unlike casting. Our scene has evolved a lot since I was a manager two years ago, and I look at what it takes to make a top team from a support staff perspective and have a lot of respect for what Fnatic are doing with their support staff in creating the best environment specifically for their players to play at their best.

 

With regards the scene, this season saw Fnatic do what Arsenal FC did back in 2003/04 and go a season undefeated to become the ‘Invincibles’. With an 18-0 record it’s almost inevitable Fnatic will secure their passage to Worlds after Playoffs but do you think that Fnatic have been properly tested by Europe to be able to excel against the best from the rest of the world?

Stress: I feel like ODEE had something to do with this question since it’s about Arsenal, but I guess remembering the good times helps forget the last few seasons of not being at the top of the table. Realistically though, Fnatic have been tested slightly by a handful of teams here in Europe, but when it comes to anything more than just being down in a few games, Fnatic have been head and shoulders above than the rest of Europe. Currently I don’t think Fnatic are in a position to excel against the best teams from LPL and LCK. I think Fnatic will give SKT some close games, but that being said, I don’t think it’s fair to judge conclusively until after all of the regions playoffs are completed and we know who is going to worlds.

 

On Wednesday night (August 12) you casted the EUCS Final between Team Dignitas and Mousesports. How do you think it went?

Stress: The games were pretty long and one dimensional at times, but they showcased some of the growth both teams have made since the beginning of the split. I'd rather have five longer games that have some tension than a fast 3 game series; it gives the teams more time to show what they can do. While it might not have been the best iterations of Mousesports and Team Dignitas EU we've seen this season, it certainly was a tense series and provided the teams with a good gauge of what to improve on before the Promotion Tournament and LCS.

 

Who would you say is the best caster you’ve ever worked with, or the one that most inspired you to improve?

Stress: I casted with Quickshot back at Insomnia 47 and learned a lot from him in just a few games. Having the opportunity to work with him in the office is a pretty unique experience. Trevor is try-hard at life. If he’s not going 100% on something, he’s not happy. His attitude is pretty infectious and is a really good drive to continually work and keep on improving. When it comes to specifically improving in content, working with Deficio and more recently Krepo after he joined our team has been so beneficial for me both as a caster and an analyst.

Photo courtesy of @StressCasts Twitter page.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time with regards your career?

Stress: Answering where I see myself in 5 years’ time is fairly difficult since I don’t have 2020 vision… [Editor’s Note: Phreak, is that you?] But seriously, it’s difficult to predict what I’ll be doing. My goals right now for the future are to improve on my casting and hopefully down the line cast at Worlds.

 

Do you have anything you’d like to add; any final remarks or shout-outs?

Stress: I just want to say thanks to everyone who’s given me feedback and helped me over the years and that continue to support me.

Thank you for the interview and giving us a great insight into your work as a caster and analyst.

 

You can follow Stress via Twitter, Twitch, or by checking out the LoL eSports YouTube channel to see VODs of the latest matches, including Stress’ casting of the EU Challenger Series Final between Team Dignitas EU and Mousesports. The match might have already been played but you can still relive the excitement of the close 3-2 win which saw Team Dignitas claim promotion to the LCS. Congratulations to the team!