Over 10 years ago, the EU LCS was a growing, dominant force on the League of Legends world stage. It captured the hype of teams like Fnatic, CLG EU, Gambit, and other spin-offs around that time. One of the UK’s own cast and analysed those games in what were LoL’s booming esports days. That man is James O’Leary, who you may recognise by his moniker, ‘Stress’.
James retired from casting the League of Legends pro circuit in late 2017, becoming part of Germany’s wrestling scene and even working with Splyce and Mad Lions around the pandemic years of the LEC.
With Riftbound’s launch, it was the perfect time to combine both passions once more: League of Legends and his 15 or so years of playing TCGs. He has since gone on to play in his own games and even commentated at RQ Barcelona and Lille. He also subbed in for Medic, another British LEC caster, for RQ Utrecht in the set just gone.
It is a notable set of skills and passions that ultimately inspired him to make his own event, taking place on August 15th at Dice Saloon in Brighton and Hove, England. We spoke to James ahead of the event to get an idea of what drove him to this point and his unique perspective on broadcasting the game.
Esports News UK previously interviewed him talking about his time casting, alongside comments on Pride in esports several years ago.
Why build his own event?
TCGs are often supported by their grassroots scene. And with how large Riftbound has become alongside its growing competitive nature, many are picking up the game.
“The UK has a lot of Riftbound players. I’ve met many of them across the three RQs that I’ve been to, and a bunch of different places around London, and my LGS,” James told me. Some of the bigger events often get upwards of 80 people in London on weekday nights, a sign that there is certainly interest in the game from casuals, collectors, and those looking for deck practice alike.
It was at these events earlier in the year that he realised he wanted to make his own event and help celebrate that interest and passion for the space.
“If no one else is going to build it, I will,” James said, speaking about making a properly prized event outside of the usual big store win-a-boxes, UVS-supported Skirmishes, and other competitive fixtures like RQs inside Riot’s own competitive formatting.
It comes as national showdowns are starting to pop up. Poland had an interesting event with some of the biggest players competing, including AlanZQ alongside notable Polish content creators like Lothar. Over the last weekend, the Ottawa event took place, where another notable player, Prismaticism, took the trophy.
That built even more hype around James’ event. While it is not as large, with 64 players compared to their several hundred, nor any plated legends up for grabs, there is solid prizing on the line that should entice the best of those competing.
The logistics of building your own event
While passion and idealism certainly played a part in its creation, pure grit and determination led it to completion. “I candidly didn’t really understand how much goes into running an event,” he admitted, telling me about the entire ordeal.
“My break things and move quickly brain did have to get slowed down a little bit by things,” James says candidly. “I don’t think people understand if you run an event on a tournament platform, then the tournament platform is dealing with tickets. You have to build in ticket overhead fees, booking fees, and platform management fees. And then as soon as you bring in an actual business, you’ve got to think about VAT and all these types of things.“
“Suddenly, the profit margins, when people see expensive entry tournaments and lots of people in them, and they go, ‘Wow, you just must be making so much money.’ It’s like, no, actually, it really is not so easy to do anything other than break even.“
James’ event ticket costs £45. It factors in all those metrics alongside the prizing, where everyone gets a custom playmat. The winner of the event can also take home a signed Yasuo, provided by the store itself. The secondary market rate for the card currently sits at roughly £850, unslabbed, with English text, from the cheapest UK-based shipper.
James expects to roughly break even, and that is after help from partners and others. But it is about the quality of the event, which he is happy will not be affected despite the surprises that come with running the show.
That quality is shining through. He tells me of an anecdote about a new player at his local LGS. The player has only played a few games, being a beginner to the space. Yet the custom art, worked on alongside Saria, a designer who created her own version of the Lillia legend on a playmat, was enough incentive to sign up and compete.
“Everybody who attends as a part of their ticket price is actually getting a playmat that I created with a community artist, Saria,” he said. “It’s like, you know, you buy a playmat, any decent quality playmat is like between £20 and £25.”
“And I’m like, yeah, you get a playmat as a part of entering. Like the whole point is I want you to feel good about coming to an event that we run. I want you to feel like you’re getting something as well as experience at a tournament, good community sentiment, that type of thing.”
Helping Hands
I asked James about the events on the day, where he is running it alongside actually commentating on feature matchups throughout. In my head, it felt like he was going it alone. He tells me an anecdote from his early casting career, back when he was an amateur of the UK scene.
“It reminds me of one of the first times I actually cast League itself, which was Insomnia. And I did a full day of solo casting, like 12 hours,” Stress reminiscently tells me. “It was a great day. I was right at the beginning of my career, and this kind of reminds me a little bit of this.“
Those early days will not be returning however, as he is not alone this time. In a twist of fate, a rising Riftbound creator named DubbyCast is helping with the event. He is often seen commentating on other community events like Runes and Rift and the Nations Clash event, which I recently interviewed the organiser for over on ESI.
They are flanked by other names like MaskedSwan, who has worked on broadcasting at RQs, alongside graphic help from Rift Labs, a production team with skilled players behind it. Will Hall, a well-known Magic: The Gathering commentator, is also helping to get the broadcast set up and has offered some equipment.
It is wonderful to see creators and the community pull together to do something special.
Casting Riftbound versus League of Legends
While I had him, I asked how James feels about casting the game versus what he built his career on. And it comes with striking differences.
The main one is that in a tournament like the LEC, you can plan for the big teams and names, the matchups are pre-scheduled, and it is a lot easier to study and shape a narrative in advance. But in Riftbound, you have a large field of players and no idea who will end up facing whom.
“Riftbound, I’ve got a room full of players. I have no idea who’s playing what from the majority of it. Like, I have maybe a list of 20 names that I’m watching out for for the tournament, and like a hundred more that I know of, familiar names that I’m keeping a track of. But then I randomly will end up casting like the best player in Italy against like somebody random from France. And I’m like, I have no idea who some of these people are and what they’re playing, but I have to live in this moment.“
That unpredictability extends to the decks themselves. Unlike League, where draft tendencies and champion pools can be studied ahead of time, in Riftbound you often do not know what is on the table until the game is already underway.
He said: “Casting is always like you do 90% of the prep that you do, you don’t use. With this, it’s just like, I have no idea what story we’re telling when the camera goes live. Sometimes, I don’t even know what decks we’re doing when we go live, which is fun in its own right. It really forces you to actually fully pay attention to what is going on and not be bogged down with some of the logistics that go into doing a broadcast.“
There is also the hidden information problem unique to 1v1 card games, which changes how a caster has to frame what they are watching. In League, if a player makes a questionable call, you can usually explain why it was wrong. In Riftbound, you often simply cannot.
“When you’re playing a 1v1 card game, it’s kind of impossible to know the line that the players you’re watching are following. Because there’s so much hidden information, I as a player might be playing around my opponent having Punch First, but actually my opponent has Starcrossed in hand. And like the lines are totally different with very different results.“
It’s a very different nature to League, where he said “there’s an easy to see objectively correct thing and you can see what teams are doing and how their teamwork kind of plays out.”
The solution, as much as there is one, is reps. Playing locally in paper, watching as much footage as possible, staying across the meta as each new set reshapes the matchup landscape.
“I play as much as I can, like locally on paper, and also watching as much as I can,” James told me. “But as we add more legends every single time a set comes out, the actual matchups themselves are almost impossible to fully comprehend to a top level.”
In the end, he says, you simply have to trust yourself.
“I have to completely channel just my intuition on the card game. […] I have to live totally in the moment.“
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