moses, SPUNJ, and YNk are Talking Counter as the Shanghai Major has concluded, reflecting on the playoffs and looking at the implications of what is to come. Join our Discord to discuss the episode with other viewers! https://discord.gg/9NQBxN5f 00:00 Intro 11:15 Major viewership during Shanghai 19:55 Shanghai Major Playoffs 1:14:15 Spirit moving forward 1:18:05 Rostermania dominos 1:21:35 Imperial.fe at BLAST Bounty 1:45:15 Flyquest -alistair 1:53:45 m0nesy and G2
Chapter 1: What were the major conclusions from the Shanghai Major?
It's just, it's chocolate honeycomb flavored.
Chocolate honeycomb protein powder. I've never heard anything like it.
I will come clean before we start because for me it's 8 p.m. I was just at the pub down the road with a couple of... I'm three beers deep on this Friday. Happy Friday, everybody. Happy Friday. I'm three pints deep on this Friday afternoon. We have a beer in Australia. Well, actually not Australia. It's a Western Australian beer. It's called Single Fin. It's delicious. It's great.
But I was just down the road literally five minutes from where my apartment is here because this is where... I started playing Counter-Strike at a LAN cafe that no longer exists. But the cousin of the owner I was hanging out with, one of the guys he used to play with, and there was even another bloke.
He didn't play competitively or anything, but he used to be at the LAN cafe, and I was just hanging out with him for a bit before we started this. So I did have a 10-minute nap just to recalibrate myself before we got into this, because Jason, you just woke up. Janko, it's the middle of your day. But for me, Friday's over, guys. Friday is done, and I'll let you know that the future is bright.
Yeah, this is weird now. You are about 13 hours in the future. That's a little bit crazy.
It's a good future. One of the potential titles for the podcast was globally offensive as well at the very beginning. Good logo, that one. And this would have been really that. We are global, three different continents.
I'll be in Serbia soon. We're looking at like, I'll be there, I reckon, on the 9th of January. I should get there then. I leave here on like the morning of the 8th. I think I get there on the 9th and then I leave on the 12th. But I'll be there for the award show, right? So I'm going to fly there and then fly straight back. And then...
If ESL ever get back to us, I'll probably be working out of it. So I don't know. Who knows? It's a mystery over there right now. Shout out to Joey, the Joe Boy Miller one time.
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Chapter 2: How did the viewership compare during the Shanghai Major?
Yeah, I hope he's doing great. Yeah, I'll be there on the 9th as well. So we'll hang out. And Jane will be there too if she gets her.
Yeah, yeah. Jane will be there too if her passport gets figured out.
What do you mean if it gets figured out, Jason? You're American. You can make anything happen. She has an expired passport, so we have to wait until it's within two weeks of the trip and then apply for an emergency passport due to already booked travel. And hopefully that comes in in two weeks. Ah, okay. Yeah, but it's right after the Christmas break, so I'm feeling relatively shifty on it.
You know, I'm not full confidence that it's going to happen.
And right before the inauguration, so, you know.
True, there's a lot of things that have a lot more focus than my wife's passport.
Jason, I've been thinking about something.
all right that's good news the the americans they they probably don't like me i'm pretty harsh on the americans i give them a hard time you know in terms of counter-strike or just yeah yeah yeah in terms of counter-strike right i'm always talking stuff and like they're easy to upset the americans you don't get upset like you don't seem like you give a fuck but i've upset like and you got a lot of people there you know and i want to make reparations you know what can we do how can i mend this bridge how can i how can i repair this fence
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Chapter 3: What were the highlights of the Shanghai Major playoffs?
You've got to bend the knee, Chad. I don't know about that.
Surely there's some middle ground here. I think at this point you've got to send a tweet to Donny T. And you've got to ask for forgiveness directly to the man. We're bringing Canada in as our 51st state, which is quite nice. And as part of the Commonwealth, I think we could extend some courtesy to you down in Australia to maybe find the reparations within your heart.
I'll make you a deal. You guys work out what the fuck's going on with these drones, and we'll think about bending the knee. If you can sort out this drone situation, Jesse, because I'm getting a little bit worried about these drones.
Come on. We all know we've had the drones figured out for a while. We're just not telling anyone. We just kind of find it funny at this point.
Well, I was just in China. I'm telling you, it's not their drones.
They got some crazy drones over there, but we were having a chat.
It's not their drones.
Oh, yeah. The perfect world have good information on that. Good intel to pass along.
Yeah, we were sitting down. We're having a good chat. You know, obviously, Australia and China, we get along very well. They own half the country. So basically, you know, we already have...
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Chapter 4: What does the future hold for Team Spirit after their victory?
Through the different stages, it dropped like 40-some percent, I think, in terms of average viewership and peak viewership for the opening and elimination stages compared to Copenhagen, which is entirely to be expected. I would just be really curious what the Chinese viewership stats come up with.
Yeah, that's a good point. But I don't know. I was talking to Valve. They were there. Same crew as always, like the same four blokes that were there. And like they know the figures of the markets, right? And they seem like it was something that, you know, there's a big market in China that they're, or at least in that part of the world that they were servicing. So like, yeah, sure.
I think the angle I take on it is, We've had 21 majors. So if every 20 majors we do one in China, it's probably fine, right? It sucks, right? And I get it hurts for the Europeans and the Americans more so based off what Jason's saying there. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. Like, it just... I think it...
If we want to try and be more global, we need to be able to embrace these different time zones.
Chapter 5: What is the significance of Rostermania after the Shanghai Major?
I think the bigger problem is not that part of the world as much as China, because the games have to be scheduled earlier. You could not have a game scheduled at 8 p.m., which would have been fine, right? Because of their own rules and whatnot in regards to venues or gatherings or whatever it is. So I think that hurt it a little bit too, because...
If you were able to push it by three more hours for EU, that would make the first game in the main time zone at 10-11 AM. Sure, it's not... Or even 12. That's not ideal, but you can catch the game. It's not like in the evening, so you can combine it with other things, or I don't know. But it would be fine. Like, NA still gets wrecked.
But even for them, then that second game is, like, early in the morning. It's perfect, yeah. So you can wake up for that. You can catch the second game on each of these days. And you can catch the grand final. So, yeah, it's not ideal. But as Chad said, I don't even think... I think it's actually pretty crazy that it's once every 20 majors. Like, if it's once every... Eight to ten? Yeah.
Like something like that. Like once every four years you have an event in that region. I think that's reasonable sort of for everyone to be like, okay, it's been a while. It's their turn. Let's give it to them.
Chapter 6: What can we expect from Imperial.fe at BLAST Bounty?
What if it's once every two years? Would you guys freak the fuck out?
Yes. Well, it won't be because the next two years we know where all the mages are. Jason, where's your mic stand?
So I said, what if? I don't know. I couldn't find it this morning. So, yeah. It's unpacked somewhere in the house.
i'll get to it you know i didn't want to delay things this morning so i just decided i'd go to school in that i have to as someone who is the resident sort of not having a mic stand guy yeah that's not how you do it like you can't lean it on the table because then it makes all these sounds and noises a little bit like you have to hold it in your hand it has to hold on it has to there has to yeah you can't be doing that yeah i can
Watch this shit.
There ain't going to be a single fucking noise.
I have my volume low enough that it's not bothering me. I can hear that he's making external noises, Janko, but it's not loud enough it's going to bother me.
Wait, what external noises am I making?
Moving the microphone around. When you move the mic, it makes a noise because it hits the table. Yeah. Now it's fine. Now it's like, okay, but let's see when it falls down in five minutes.
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Chapter 7: What are the thoughts on Flyquest and Alistair?
That's how I look at it.
Can I get grim? Because again, I am a little bit fucking- You can get grim, yeah. I'm on the source right now. What happens if you have a kid and they, like, I'm not saying that you neglect them and they die, but like, what if they like choke and they die? Like, what happens? Yeah. Do they just die? I think they just die. Do the cops come after you or what happens?
I think it depends on the context and if someone's going to be charging you with the crime. I don't know why we went to this place.
Do the cops do an investigation? They must do an investigation.
What if you're a terrible parent? Yeah, what if? I don't think they do an investigation unless there's evidence that you are, in fact, a negligent and terrible parent. I don't think they can just, you know, open an investigation on their own unless there's some kind of evidence of neglect.
Okay, all right.
Well, I don't weigh down on any children.
Trust me, this is a segue into, like, a Counter-Strike team or an org or a player or... Somebody bail me out of this.
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Chapter 8: What does the future look like for m0nesy and G2?
Who do you want to look into, Chad? There's some topics tonight that are going to be a bit tough that I didn't want to do, but we're going to have to do them, aren't we?
We're going to have to do this. I can think of one right out of the gate.
Yeah, and I sat and I actually thought about it for once, and I was like, okay, I know what I'm going to say. At least I did know what I was going to say, so we'll see what comes out of my mouth when we get there. But where do we want to start the discourse, the dialogue, the discussion?
I guess we should just get the major, finish up the major playoffs out of the way before we move on to the other stuff. I say get it out of the way as if it's some minor bullshit that went down.
I think the major playoffs were sick. We had a lot of good games, actually. Agreed. Wild games. Even on the quarterfinal days, we had some sick individual performances from different players on different maps, sick moments, exciting games, exciting narratives. So just the first overall impression, it was a good major. Yeah.
Like, there weren't any big hiccups in terms of, like, problems, issues, nothing like that, right? Am I forgetting something?
There were some slight tech delays in the Malz versus Spirit game. I think Torji was having PC issues, and that was about it, really. Me and Alex were doing that one, and there were slight delays on that. But otherwise, it was pretty straightforward, pretty standard.
When games would end, they tended to be about an hour depending on like the schedule wasn't really adhered to in the arena, which is fair enough because like teams need to go out and warm up.
I saw backstage that they had like, not only did they have a room for each team to chill in on their own while they were waiting to go and play, they also had setups available so they could make sure that they were, if they wanted to, they could warm up before they were playing. What else did I see? In the hotel, I was on the eighth floor, and I could see down to the fifth floor.
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