Awful title aside, i thought it was time Crossfire.nu was treated to some League of Legends wonder. Who better to find than one of the most promising casters, so Crossfire i give to you....
Q. Christopher “Panky” Pankhurst, why don’t you introduce yourself to Crossfire.nu.
A.Hi, I'm Chris or Panky to most people both on and offline. I work for Curse as their European house caster and host, this means that while we are in their gaming house I will work on creating some interesting shows for everyone to watch on a daily and sometimes weekly basis. Shows like "Cooking with the pros" and weekly roundups to give people a view into house life and the day to day experience of living within this environment.
Panky back in his FPS days
Q. Formal introduction out of the way, I was hoping you could shed some light upon your rise to “fame”. You are one of the stand out casters currently for League of Legends, how has that happened for you personally and have you got any comments towards the recent topic of the “old boys club” relating to this?
A. I have been casting League for about 8 months now after starting out with a year in Starcraft 2. I got my big break working for Absolute Legends back when League of Legends only had about 4/5 solid casters and most of those were RIOT based. Started out helping some small one off tournaments until the 4PL came to me asking about launching their LoL branch. I worked with them for about 4 months and after a great first month of viewer counts exceeding 30k+ my name was out there. From here I picked up work from TakeTV and cast the very first TSM Invitational alongside Dan Dinh to 52k people, still my biggest audience to date. While all this was going on I was still at university and my work/attention to that was suffering so when Curse made me the offer they did I jumped at the chance. So here I am now, writing this very segment from the crowd at the Season 2 World finals while we wait for the first game iG vs Azubu Frost to get underway.
As far as the perception of this "Old Boys Club" I do not believe such a thing exists, there is and always will be a select few casters who are on the top of the game but with hard work and talent anyone can reach that point. Having contacts in the scene will always speed up the process of getting to the big events but at the end of the day even with contacts a bad caster won't get anywhere. If you are a strong caster and you put in the time people will start to notice your work and then approach you when they want to run events. It will never be instant access to MLG/IPL/IEM but there is a progression to these things and the smaller events are arguably more important to the community. Not everyone can be at the top but everyone wants to experience the thrill of competition and have the honor of being casted. Even if its only to 200 people that is still a great number. If you envision that number of people in a hall they will take up a lot of space so these numbers are not too be sniffed at. Too many people start out and get annoyed when they don't get 30k viewers on their first stream. Put in the time, put in the effort and the "Old Boys" will stand up and take notice.
"Too many people start out and get annoyed when they don't get 30k viewers on their first stream. Put in the time, put in the effort and the "Old Boys" will stand up and take notice."
Q. That's a fantastic outlook upon the scene. Now as you stated you are already fairly established with working full time within eSports with Curse, is this somewhere you ever though you would end up or were there other plans in place before your eSports career took off? On a slightly pessimistic note, do you think it will last?
A.I had hoped I would be able to reach this position living from just eSports but I had always imagined it to be something that would happen 5 maybe 10 years down the line, not 10 months in. I was at University in Teesside before this really kicked off, I was in the middle of my second year and to be quite honest my work and interest in the course started to fade fast once eSports came along. I put all my time and effort into making eSports work that I actually failed the second year of my course, so I am really lucky this has worked out the way it is. The way Curse and RIOT are pushing eSports and League of Legends right now I honestly think it will last. The scene will need to mature and grow a lot in a very short space of time but I think we can manage it and from that this will only grow, hopefully mu paycheck will grow along with it.
Q. Well i can only hope the scene keeps growing to a sustainable level, on to a question im personally curious about too.. If you could talk to yourself back when you first started casting what would be your biggest bit of advice to yourself.
A. The biggest thing which I have told many people before, about 3 months into hitting the LoL scene I received a very generous offer which I rejected due to naivety. I got very lucky with the following opportunities to then end up where I am today but the biggest thing if I had to do that all again would be to not reject this initial offer. Outside of this it would be that make sure you are ready for things to happen on very short notice, esports seems to like doing things within 2/3 weeks of events going live, makings long term plans can often get in the way/get destroyed by this short term planning mentality.
I see. In any interview you need to cover the hard hitting questions...you also need quick fire questions so Panky...
Pepsi or Coke?
Coke
Steak or Pizza?
Steak
Burger King or McDonalds?
McDonalds
Lethal Virus or Nuclear Explosion?
Nuke, its quicker
Jacob Black or Edward Cullen?
Kill it with fire
Call or Text?
Call
N*sync or Backstreet Boys?
N*Sync, cos I like asterisks
And any last words or shoutouts ?
Big shoutouts to all my lovely sponsors! Logitech, Teamspeak and GUNNAROptiks and finally many thanks to yourself Lauren for doing this interview!
Q. Formal introduction out of the way, I was hoping you could shed some light upon your rise to “fame”. You are one of the stand out casters currently for League of Legends, how has that happened for you personally and have you got any comments towards the recent topic of the “old boys club” relating to this?
A. I have been casting League for about 8 months now after starting out with a year in Starcraft 2. I got my big break working for Absolute Legends back when League of Legends only had about 4/5 solid casters and most of those were RIOT based. Started out helping some small one off tournaments until the 4PL came to me asking about launching their LoL branch. I worked with them for about 4 months and after a great first month of viewer counts exceeding 30k+ my name was out there. From here I picked up work from TakeTV and cast the very first TSM Invitational alongside Dan Dinh to 52k people, still my biggest audience to date. While all this was going on I was still at university and my work/attention to that was suffering so when Curse made me the offer they did I jumped at the chance. So here I am now, writing this very segment from the crowd at the Season 2 World finals while we wait for the first game iG vs Azubu Frost to get underway.
As far as the perception of this "Old Boys Club" I do not believe such a thing exists, there is and always will be a select few casters who are on the top of the game but with hard work and talent anyone can reach that point. Having contacts in the scene will always speed up the process of getting to the big events but at the end of the day even with contacts a bad caster won't get anywhere. If you are a strong caster and you put in the time people will start to notice your work and then approach you when they want to run events. It will never be instant access to MLG/IPL/IEM but there is a progression to these things and the smaller events are arguably more important to the community. Not everyone can be at the top but everyone wants to experience the thrill of competition and have the honor of being casted. Even if its only to 200 people that is still a great number. If you envision that number of people in a hall they will take up a lot of space so these numbers are not too be sniffed at. Too many people start out and get annoyed when they don't get 30k viewers on their first stream. Put in the time, put in the effort and the "Old Boys" will stand up and take notice.
"Too many people start out and get annoyed when they don't get 30k viewers on their first stream. Put in the time, put in the effort and the "Old Boys" will stand up and take notice."
Q. That's a fantastic outlook upon the scene. Now as you stated you are already fairly established with working full time within eSports with Curse, is this somewhere you ever though you would end up or were there other plans in place before your eSports career took off? On a slightly pessimistic note, do you think it will last?
A.I had hoped I would be able to reach this position living from just eSports but I had always imagined it to be something that would happen 5 maybe 10 years down the line, not 10 months in. I was at University in Teesside before this really kicked off, I was in the middle of my second year and to be quite honest my work and interest in the course started to fade fast once eSports came along. I put all my time and effort into making eSports work that I actually failed the second year of my course, so I am really lucky this has worked out the way it is. The way Curse and RIOT are pushing eSports and League of Legends right now I honestly think it will last. The scene will need to mature and grow a lot in a very short space of time but I think we can manage it and from that this will only grow, hopefully mu paycheck will grow along with it.
Q. Well i can only hope the scene keeps growing to a sustainable level, on to a question im personally curious about too.. If you could talk to yourself back when you first started casting what would be your biggest bit of advice to yourself.
A. The biggest thing which I have told many people before, about 3 months into hitting the LoL scene I received a very generous offer which I rejected due to naivety. I got very lucky with the following opportunities to then end up where I am today but the biggest thing if I had to do that all again would be to not reject this initial offer. Outside of this it would be that make sure you are ready for things to happen on very short notice, esports seems to like doing things within 2/3 weeks of events going live, makings long term plans can often get in the way/get destroyed by this short term planning mentality.
I see. In any interview you need to cover the hard hitting questions...you also need quick fire questions so Panky...
Pepsi or Coke?
Coke
Steak or Pizza?
Steak
Burger King or McDonalds?
McDonalds
Lethal Virus or Nuclear Explosion?
Nuke, its quicker
Jacob Black or Edward Cullen?
Kill it with fire
Call or Text?
Call
N*sync or Backstreet Boys?
N*Sync, cos I like asterisks
And any last words or shoutouts ?
Big shoutouts to all my lovely sponsors! Logitech, Teamspeak and GUNNAROptiks and finally many thanks to yourself Lauren for doing this interview!
follow Panky -
http://www.facebook.com/Panky.lol
https://twitter.com/CrsPanky
But, why do you interview LoL casters?
;D i will when i have time :)
Please.