MonteCristo reveals how Cloud9 is shaking up esports entertainment Cloud9\/YouTubeBack in the mid-2000s, gaming programming was in its infancy and an experimental boom began with G4. Programs such as X-play and Attack of the Show tried to appeal to a niche audience of young adults. AOTS in particular was a talkshow aimed directly at them. Whether it was ahead of its time or not, one thing was clear: this was not your mother\u2019s talk show. And while it, just like the rest of G4, has long been off the air, with its former studios now the home of the LCS, its influence remains. Cloud9\u2019s weekly show \u201cThe 9s\u201d merges a traditional sports talkshow with pre-taped and live segments where hosts can interact with chat. This makes it unique and something that typically can\u2019t be done as seamlessly with a traditional televised broadcast. Why do a show about Cloud9? Dexerto spoke to Michael Hughes, the show\u2019s executive producer and owner of DLP Media Group \u2013 the same company that produced Watchpoint for the Overwatch League last season about what it takes to produce a show about Cloud9. \u201cThe 9s was an appealing project for us to take on because it really is the first (that we know of) show from the perspective of an esports organization,\u201d the Sports Emmy winner said. \u201cThere have been shows around individual games and general esports in the past, but we couldn\u2019t find another example of an organization using a show like this to connect directly with their fans.\u201d Cloud9 is one of the most recognizable esports organizations in the world with over 800,000 Twitter followers. It has teams and players competing in League of Legends, Fortnite, Rocket League, Rainbow Six Siege, Counter-Strike, Apex Legends and Overwatch to name a few. \u201cWhen developing the show, we took to heart the idea that we weren\u2019t looking to produce a show about Cloud9, but one that would be for Cloud9 and its fans. Tapping into the organizational culture, we wanted to have the types of conversations and talk about the topics that were being talked about at the Cloud9 house and by their fans online,\u201d he added. 600A rotating chair Speaking of hosts, The 9s has a lot of Overwatch League ties. Christopher \u201cMonteCristo\u201d Mykles and Mitch \u201cUber\u201d Leslie are mainstays alongside Dan \u201cFrodan\u201d Chou. There\u2019s also guests like Michelle Morrow. MonteCristo told Dexerto that he likes having a revolving set of casters because \u201cit gives me a chance to work with people that I\u2019m friends with from other games that I\u2019ve never had a chance to actually work with before.\u201d For Monte, the sky is the limit with potential guests. \u201cI\u2019d love it, for example, if we could get some really good insight and interviews from league representatives, whether that\u2019s the new head of League of Legends esports\u2026 [he] would be awesome to have on the show. Nate Nanzer now that he\u2019s over at Epic would be awesome to have on the show, so we can really dig into some industry issues. I think that would be fun.\u201d Just don\u2019t expect to have Slasher and Thorin on at the same time. \u201cI don\u2019t think that they\u2019d agree to that, but I would be entertained by that\u2026 I hope it happens, but I don\u2019t think they\u2019ll agree to it.\u201d With The 9s being a hybrid of live and pre-taped content, it gives the hosts a way to interact that just can\u2019t be done through traditional means. \u201cWe created an innovative format that includes segments from traditional sports talk shows, and combined that with the streaming immediacy of a live broadcast on Twitch,\u201d Hughes told us. \u201cThey thought, \u2018what could we only do on Twitch given that they have so much experience producing television shows.\u2019 We do the pre-taped segments and then we have those live segments interspersed where we can talk directly to Twitch chat or react or expand upon our points. I think that\u2019s really fascinating. I think it\u2019s just an amazing thing that wasn\u2019t possible before live streaming,\u201d said Mykles. What does the future hold? For Monte and Hughes, it\u2019s all about evolution. \u201cWe should integrate more of those actual Twitch features because the polling would be things that we could \u2026 questions we could answer or ways we could react live. There\u2019s definitely more we could do with it still,\u201d Monte explained. \u201cAs we look to continue to evolve and grow the audience, we hope to continue to entertain fans of esports and Cloud9 around the globe with smart analysis and opinion using an innovative format,\u201d Hughes told Dexerto in an email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MonteCristo reveals how Cloud9 is shaking up esports entertainment Cloud9\/YouTubeBack in the mid-2000s, gaming programming was in its infancy and an experimental boom began with G4. Programs such as X-play and Attack of the Show tried to appeal to a niche audience of young adults. AOTS in particular was a talkshow aimed directly at them. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}