Commentators Announced for the 2014 Pokémon World and US National Championships
The Pokémon Company International has chosen its commentators for the 2014 United States Pokémon National Championships and the 2014 Pokémon World Championships! A few new faces will join the familiar faces from last year to help fill out the more comprehensive stream schedule announced earlier.
In the video game, we will see the return of the most experienced commentary in the community with two of Nugget Bridge’s co-founders, Scott Glaza (Scott) and Evan Latt (plaid), back on mic. Evan’s play-by-play and Scott’s analysis provided the best commentary our game has seen at the VGC ’13 World Championships last year in Vancouver as they helped veterans and newcomers alike follow the complicated thought processes and interactions that happen in high level Pokémon play.
Joining Scott and Evan will be veteran player Duy Ha (Duy), who many in the community may know as one of our tournament hosts and most well-known for being one win away from reaching the World Championships in three different seasons in a row. Duy has casted many tournaments for Nugget Bridge in the past as well both online and at live events such as Regional Championships and Premier Challenges. His experience and skill will surely be an asset to the team.
The last addition to the video game crew will be Justin Flynn (TheJustinFlynn) who started training for competitive play in tournaments with the release of Pokémon X & Y and steadily built up a fan base with regular content produced around the Video Game Championships. He is no stranger to performing live in front of large audiences with his almost daily stream and most recent stint as a host for Twitch’s E3 broadcast earlier this month.
The trading card game will see the return of last year’s knowledgeable casters in Josue Rojano (Crimz), Josh Wittenkeller (TheJWittz), and Dylan Mayo (Exobyte). Joining them to round out the crew will be the most experienced caster in the game, and one of Josue’s fellow Top Cut co-founders, Kyle Sucevich (Pooka) who has been commentating for tournaments since 2011.
If you missed the stream schedule, here it is again. You can tune in at the recently updated Pokemon Twitch channel once it starts up.
- Saturday, July 5, noon–5 p.m. EDT: Video Game
- Saturday, July 5, 5–9 p.m. EDT: Trading Card Game
- Sunday, July 6, 9 a.m.–2 p.m. EDT: Trading Card Game
- Sunday, July 6, 2–5 p.m. EDT: Video Game
About the Author
Firestorm is one of the co-founders of Nugget Bridge and the Community Manager for eSports Tournament Platform Battlefy. He has been playing Pokémon since 1999, competitively since 2007, and attending tournaments since 2010. He lives in Vancouver, Canada with a degree in Interactive Art & Technology + Communications. You can follow him on Twitter at @rushanshekar.
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Great lineup of commentators. Should be a great stream with these guys.
Looking forward to seeing Pooka commentating!
And I think Justin Flynn is a very good idea.
I’m sure Justin Flynn will do great! Big fan of his. He and Verlisify are the two who made me want to start getting into the competitive scene of VGC!
I’m the best Scott is the worst.
See you in Indy!
Stellar lineup!
Super excited to see all these guys.
I wanted to expand on Scott’s point on Justin, since I agree 100%. I know when I advocated for him earlier this year, a bunch of people poked fun at me, but Justin is one of the most oustanding guys I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. He’s incredibly outgoing and easy to get along with. When I started my YouTube channel earlier this season, I didn’t have too many subscribers/followers on Twitter, but he was kind enough to talk to me and even work on some collaborations. (We’ve had a bunch of battles and he did a really cool interview with me). I was also really impressed by his people skills in general, as he was super easy to talk to right from the start when we conversed over the phone. He’s just an incredibly kind and energtic guy, which as Scott pointed out, the stream could use for sure.
What I was most impressed about by Justin, however, is his genuine passion and interest in helping the game before himself. It’s not common you see a big YouTuber like him work with someone who barely has a thousand subscribers, but he reached out to me. At some point, he told me how he thought skill should equate to success on YouTube and that I deserved a lot more subscribers than I had, which meant a tremendous amount to me. My point is that he genuinely wants to help the game, rather than for personal gain (like a lot of YouTubers out there nowadays), which I think will go a long way in represnting the face of VGC well.
I think the Jflynn pick is absolutely the wrong pick. I get the reasons why he was chosen, he is among the bigger YouTube Pokemon streamers and has a decent personality for the mic, but those reasons alone should not dictate the choice. From his sheer lack of game knowledge to poor actual casting it is just a terrible choice all around.
1) If the YouTube star is the main draw, I have to question why that decision was even made. Pokemon is the draw, not a YouTube “celebrity.” I don’t think he brings any extra viewers that someone like PewDiePie (which would be an equally horrendous pick) or a mainstream celebrity like Hulk Hogan may have (as silly as that sounds). Pokemon is the draw here and should be the main focus of the cast.
2) His actual casting is either downright laughable and provides no insight or doesn’t actually exist. Watching his stream and his YouTube videos he quickly devolves into either just saying hi to the stream chat or saying things like “wow didn’t expect that to live.” He provides no insight and his lack of actual game knowledge is going to hurt majorly. His first audition was just a mess (which was deleted) and his second one isn’t much better. From being totally scripted (can easily tell he is reading something) and using his own battle while trying to pass it off as someone else to giving bad information (switching from Fighting weak to Fighting weak is not a “great call”). Watching his E3 stuff on Twitch it was extremely evident that unless he was reading a teleprompter or just reading tweets (which he was relegated to for a lot of the time) he is totally out of his element. Even just the casual chats on the couch he was just nonstop “um,” “like,” and “uh.” So even if you want him for the personality, he is somehow extremely lacking in it.
3) His lack of actual game knowledge means he can’t color which means he has to PBP. With this lineup you have 3 PBP commentators. Evan and Scott have clearly defined roles as PBP and color respectively and while Duy has been great, especially in solo casts, he has been practicing almost exclusively PBP. So do you overwork Scott? Forgo real color when you have the PBP guys duoing? Whoever is with Jflynn needs to carry very hard from a number of perspectives.
I thought this was a terrible pick to begin with but then I saw his tweet earlier today.
Which proves Aaron’s point of putting the game ahead of himself External. The second it is announced he is a commentator he starts asking for rent money? Charging $25 to play a game with him? Charging $50 to Skype with him? Note those figures are PER MONTH. You need to hit stretch goals for Vlogs of Nats and Worlds? Yes, this is entirely for the game. If he was for the game he would be doing those for FREE, not through some scummy Kickstarter campaign. He wouldn’t be charging people $50 to Skype with him if it was “for the game.” I get a dude has to make a living, but when you announce your “pay me money to be friends with you” campaign right after you are announced to be a commentator for one of the biggest brands in the world screams he is not “for the game” and for Justin Flynn.
This news on top of my previously outlined points just make me question this pick so much. Seems like there was some homerism going on at TPCi over this pick.
Congrats to Pooka and Duy though, very well deserved and about time in Pooka’s case.
Because usually what people do when they put the game before themselves is put a kickstarter clone up where they try to get people to donate money to them during their announcement that they were selected as a commentator
Yeah that completely contradicts my point, just found out about that after going on IRC… really disappointed tbh
i am… disappointed to see this. at first i thought it wasn’t a bad choice but now i’m learning that he’s not particularly familiar with the community itself, or even how the VGC circuit works in terms of CP, invites, prizes, etc. maybe he can prove us wrong and get in some sick research before the event (there are many years of VGC to catch up on, he should be aware of previous nats and worlds winners, how many times people have cut regionals, how many times a single person has won a regional, and he should be familiar with how each top player operates) but after seeing this kickstarter type thing i have to say i’m really disappointed. so many people are out there actually doing work solely for the game without asking for anything in return, and the second he is confirmed he announces it by asking for money? MONTHLY PAYMENTS? for skype sessions?!?!
i’m not against capitalizing i suppose, but i think he should really make the effort to establish himself as a person who is actually interested in the brand before himself, and he’s going to have to do that before a lot of us will take him seriously at all. please for the love of pokemon, show us you are familiar with and for the community and not just XY by itself as a game!
I’m really excited to hear about Duy. He’s a perfect mix of excitement, knowledge and a great voice. I still remember chatting with him during the 2009 Worlds semis. Dude was hillarious.
I’ve seen his stream once or twice. Justin Flynn is probably a nice guy, but he is almost completely oblivious when it comes to the game itself. I remember one time he mentioned that he didn’t create the teams he used, someone else made them for him, which made me question why he was even streaming the game and not his buddy….
I’m not really a great player myself, but I would still expect someone, who supposedly is a fan of the game and tries to become a competitive player, to at least have some kind of knowledge when it comes to strategies, typing, abilities and teambuilding.
Also, he used Facade Kangaskhan on his Regionals team
I think overall both casts have great line-ups, although on this post I’m only gonna talk about the VGC because is the first thing I’ll look for in both National and Worlds.
I am just dissapointed to hear those things about JFlynn, even though I still think of him as a chill dude and that, but the kicktstarter, patreon and skype stuff scared me a lot…
Anywho, I’ll be looking forward to watch both tournaments, have fun and also learn a lot from great players and great commentators.
Can’t wait to see Duy on stream! Scott and Evan did an awesome job last year, but it’s gonna be fun to have Duy in there too. As for the JFlynn nomination, I personally wasn’t too impressed with his videos, and the kickstarter thing is pretty ridiculous in my opinion. As Makiri said, I understand he needs to pay his rent but it’s pretty disappointing to see something like this happen right after he gets nominated. I kinda thought they’d pick PokeAimMD, as he could do both color or PBP, but eh. I guess JFlynn could surprise us.
SPF RIDE OR DIE DUY
I agree with kalarse about JFlynn, the patreon and skype stuff really does scare me.
The Patreon thing? To make more videos he has to sacrifice hours somewhere else. For a lot of people, presumably including him, this means working less. But if he works less then he makes less money and needs something to fill in the income gap. Patreon is just the method he chose for this. With Patreon you basically commit to donating a certain amount of $$ to him a month.
But IMO the timing is too early for this, and I don’t really like the method he chose to begin with. I feel that asking for Twitch subs and Paypal donations on a regular basis comes across a lot better, especially since the donors aren’t committing for each month. Also, the reward tiers he chose are really creepy and also aren’t enough compensation for people donating that much. I get that he wants low-cost reward tiers, but this comes across as “Pay to be my friend! :D” as makiri mentioned.
I don’t think he’s a bad person but by golly he definitely could have thought this through more.
Congrats to the commentators, looking forward to seeing and listening to them at the events! =]
No Shofu…
It sure seems like AZ has dropped the ball with letting justin flynn through the net. He does not represent the vgc community at all
After hearing about the campaign Justin Flynn is starting, I am a little concerned. I fully understand we all have bills to pay, but why did he wait until after it was announced to do this? I could be totally wrong here, but my initial thought was that this whole announcement will get people psyched up, like “yeah! JFlynn is commentating a Pokemon tournament! I can’t go myself, but I wanna Skype him so I can see the tournament and..” yadda, yadda, yadda. This influx of excitement and anticipation will undoubtedly boost the amount of these “packages,” he has available. I see no issue with a growing YouTuber having something like this, because JFlynn is about at the sub count where he doesn’t have to work a real job (not saying YT isn’t a job), but he doesn’t make quite enough to live off of yet, so I get that. The thing that genuinely grinds my gears is that it seems he using the Nationals announcement to boost selling these packages. I don’t think Justin Flynn is a bad guy, and I want to believe he’s not just a moneybags (see: Spyro character). I get where his intentions were, but his timing was done pretty suspiciously. I don’t hold anything against him and these packages since he is just starting to get into the place where he’ll be able to make enough money to support himself without this kind of financial aid, I just think he could have executed this in a better way. That’s just me, though.
Justin’s a really cool guy and his stream is rather enjoyable, but I’m unsure as to whether we’d get the professionalism we normally do, as he seems to get confused over a lot of simple things (type effectiveness etc.) and hasn’t been on the VGC scene particularly long.
Who knows, maybe he’ll prove us wrong.
Sad as a competitor that Duy won’t be competing, but I do love his commentary. Looks like a solid group all around, though I’m more surprised Pooka on the TCG side won’t be playing instead.
Never heard of JFlynn, though I’m guessing by the comments here he’s a youtuber?
I’m really glad that TPCi reached out to the community to find personalities to represent Pokemon for a broader audience. It’s a big risk they’re taking – these people are not official employees and it’s not easy to hold them accountable for what they do. I’m sure TPCi will make adjustments if any caster starts to go a direction that doesn’t align with their views.
Kudos to them for trying this. Looking forward to seeing how this evolves.
He’s a growing External.
I don’t think JFlynn should be a commentator at this point. Perhaps I’m a bit harsher than others in this judgement but he’s included a link to a kickstarter (or whatever) in his announcement. That is so incredibly unprofessional I can’t even (…for lack of a better way to put it).
I’ve known so many people who have literally put their blood, sweat, and tears into this community solely for the sake of the community. Nobody I know looks to Pokemon to sustain any form of living (I’ve heard many people joke that this lifestyle is unsustainable, it’s true), and for this guy to come out of nowhere and immediately ask for donations is completely asinine. I’ve been running the servers behind Team Magma for five years now and have never charged anybody a dime, the Lava Pool is completely funded by DrFidget, Nugget Bridge is completely funded by their admin. Why should he get the job after displaying this unprofessionalism when there are so many others who deserve it more and have shown more commitment to fostering the community and helping it grow?
I will be the first to admit that if he were to have done this a few months down the road, I could’ve cared less. He could’ve done this without being a commentator and I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. The fact that everything is falling into place like this doesn’t sit well with me at all. If he were to formally apologize for the juxtaposition of these things I could be open to giving him a chance to prove his heart is in this game alongside the rest of us. But until then, I’ll stand by the points I made above.
(and on a somewhat related note I’m disappointed at the lack of gender diversity in the commentators chosen, but that’s nothing against them personally, it’s a problem within the greater competitive gaming community in general. hooray soapboxes!)
On a completely different note, I have the utmost faith that Evan, Scott, and Duy will do an amazing job. Congratulations guys!
To be fair, like Reading Rainbow, Nugget Bridge is funded by
And surplus goes to tournament prizes, obviously. None of us make anything and a lot of us give up quite a lot of time.
The point is, though, that we all consciously made the choice not to monetize our content. In Nugget Bridge’s case, it was a very deliberate choice because of the way Smogon (which makes quite a lot of money) handled its earnings when we were there. We had always planned to use our earnings the way we are now. When the five us talked about founding Nugget Bridge we were all basically or literally done with our undergraduate degrees, and we had all planned on getting normal jobs to support ourselves and keeping Pokemon on the side on Nugget Bridge so we could produce content here the way we thought was best for the game’s growth(I apparently missed a training course on the get a normal job part). Everyone else who produces content for free, whether they do it as deliberately as we did or not, made the same sort of call. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with being a content producer that tries to make a living out of producing content, and while VGC and Pokemon’s competitive scene in general is still raw enough that I think there’s very limited room for people to actually profit off of it, people creating content is good for the game, regardless of the pay structure.
I don’t think it’s really any of our business how JFlynn tries to make money. I imagine in the future he’ll be more tactful about when he makes the sort of announcement he did today, which I think is really the only thing that people can justify being a little critical of. He is going to be a commentator for US Nationals and Worlds, and the one thing that can happen here that will be good for the game is for him to do a good job so that the game looks good and we continue to see more people playing it. So let’s be supportive, because that’s what’s in everyone’s best interest right now.
Hey everyone I apologize for the incredibly poor timing of my patreon platform release, it’s been in the works for a long time, but I just couldn’t squeeze it in before leaving to host E3 two weeks ago. That’s no excuse just maybe a little incite. I totally understand and appreciate your concerns, and like Scott said I will do everything I can to make this the best VGC possible! Good luck to everyone and see you soon!
Justin Flynn doesn’t have the credentials to commentate VGC, he’s just a pretty face and a popular poketuber. And yet, he’s perfect. His presence in VGC will increase the visibility of the esport and draw more people to it. Isn’t that what we all want?