Statement from Guardsman Bob

Hello Reddit,
A little introduction seems in order. I am Guardsman Bob, some people may know me as ‘Chop Chop The Panda’ from Guild-Wars or ‘Danger Panda’ from the LoL Beta.
In December 2010 I started streaming League of Legends (current stream link: http://www.own3d.tv/live/34046) and for reasons still beyond me many people started watching, so I kept at it, and now I stream for a living.
I turned 28 3 days ago, I live in Denmark, and that is about as interesting as my life is.. (please note that I may/will not be able to answer certain personal questions)
I currently do not play in a professional team, nor do I claim to be good enough to do so, I am just a normal guy who plays for the enjoyment of the game. I play with viewers most Thursdays (free raffle anyone can join), as well as other days when I feel like it. Many people appear to enjoy the music I play so I would advice you watch for the music and not the game-play
As the title goes, ask me anything (preferably related to league of legends or streaming), I will answer as many questions as I can.
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/GuardsmanBob?feature=mhee subscriptions are much appreciated.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Guardsman-Bob/316802258368275
Stream: http://www.own3d.tv/GuardsmanBob/live/34046
If you ask a question or intent to read this AMA, then I also advise watching my stream as I will likely elaborate on some answers.

 

Some of the questions and answers

What sorcery do you use to always get the songs to match the plays on boblights?

GuardsmanBob: 10% Luck, 20% Skill, 15% Making boblights at will! Some days I seriously think my playlist is sentient! But I must confess to occasionally queuing up a song that I think could fit well in a game, so that it plays say 25 minutes in, and then just hoping it plays out well  And the more boring reason is just that I don’t make boblights when it doesn’t match

What are you guarding?

GuardsmanBob: My sanity.

If a professional team invited you to join them, would you? Have you been staying off of teams by choice? Have you ever REALLY considered announcing? I heard you talk about it on your stream about a month ago.

GuardsmanBob: I believe the saying goes, if any team would want me to join, then they have terrible standards and I wouldn’t want to play for them.

Being a good caster would be very helpful to me, as it would open more options for me (I would very much like to get payed trips around the world to various events ) and give me a way to create me interesting content for my stream. But that being said, I am not any good at it, and it would take a big effort to get into.

What is your relationship with Riot like?

GuardsmanBob: Riot is a big happy family and I am a stray cat, occasionally they put a little food outside for me.

Are you doing your own programing or did you hire someone to make you a website, stream bot etc?

GuardsmanBob: The bot I code myself, usually on stream (I just haven’t had the time/effort to do bot coding recently).

The website is mostly made by a Swedish guy who hangs out in my chat under the name Afraithe.
Also my website is starting to become a bit of a shameful thing for me, I keep meaning to spend time putting content on it, but being a one man show, time is what I do not have much of.

What Tea do you prefer?

GuardsmanBob: Earl Grey – Silver rose. But I pretty much drink any tea, I am not picky!

If you were to be any profession other than a “Guardsman”, what would you want to be?

GuardsmanBob: I am working on becoming lieutenant Bob! That or game designer bob!

Where did your name come from?

GuardsmanBob: I just picked it at random, but probably inspired by stuff I was reading at the time, such as Discworld. (the best character of any book I read is Samuel Vimes) so probably somewhat inspired by him / his watch.

How do your parents feel about your career?

GuardsmanBob: Do people normally ask for opinions from their parents about everything they do? I can’t really say since its not really a topic of discussion with mine.

Why do you think you get so much popularity? Where does the awesomeness come from!?

GuardsmanBob:  Lots of tea and a healthy dose of humility helps Honestly? I don’t know why people watch me  I also have a tendency to act like a 10 year old when I’m tired which seem to amuse

Some days I wish I actually was awesome and fun, so I could get those silly viewer numbers I see some of the actually popular streamers have

Where is that girl you spent so much time with?

GuardsmanBob: I do not wish to out other peoples personal life on the internet, sorry.

Where did u get thet Teemo hat D:

GuardsmanBob: Vegas, I do not know if the one on etsy is the same model, someone else will have to answer that.

 What is your favorite position in the current meta, why?

GuardsmanBob:  Counter picking mid with non standard champs (yorick, malph, ww), but its not worth the fight over the lane in solo most of the time.

If I had to play for rating I would play AD carry, which I thinking is quickly becoming my strongest role.

Basically, what’s your ‘story’ with LoL? Did you have experience with Dota beforehand? What have been the highlights of your climb up the elo ladder?

GuardsmanBob: Didn’t play much dota, preferred other custom game types (hero line wars / enfo’s) And I really didnt ‘climb’ the elo ladder as such, I started in the beta, before there was any real ladder and mostly played team games with jatt and other GW friends.

In fact almost all my solo queue games are from after I started streaming.

Do you have any plans to cast any future Tournaments? I think you did pretty well in your last one`.

GuardsmanBob: Truth is that I would need to spent a lot of time practicing if I were to cast professionally, it is one of many potential long term plans I am considering.
But committing the time to it is not an easy decision.

What is the line you would use to get someone motivated?

GuardsmanBob: The best revenge is success.
If you put a bit of effort in then it isn’t hard to do better than most ‘haters’, since they often are quite lazy.

Is the new Warwick Q so unsatisfactory that it made you quit playing him?
You should karaoke from time to time. I bet it would be extremely well received among fans.

GuardsmanBob: Honestly, WW is probably still an ok pick, but there are 3 reasons I do not play him at the moment.
1) I played him so much prenerf I constantly get sad when I am in a situation I knew would have played out differently if he had not been nerfed.
2) Warwick already struggled in many common lane matchups, now he just straight up loses to common picks such as irelia.
3) I currently consider warwick slightly worse than the top picks, and given what happened to many champs who used to be good and got nerfed (xin/gp/etc.) I do not see a future for him, I do not wish to play the ‘will riot make him useful in the near future’ lottery.

About the current state of all the champions:nerf one, buff one, rework one which three would you? Happy birthday by the way! P.s. my English is bad.

GuardsmanBob: Alistar, xin, eve would be the cheap answer.
But I without access to riots secret data it would be hard to for me to really tell.
Incidentally I would commit many crimes to get access to riots match statistics, I have a lot of hypotheses about the game that I would love to test

You have a huge history with League of Legends. How far do you plan on taking your League of Legends career?

GuardsmanBob: I would be lying if I didn’t say that I wake up every day hoping that I will play my way into 2500+ rating and end up on a pro team, travel the world and get 10k viewers daily.
But alas I am a mere mortal, so I just take the opportunities I can.

How much money do you earn/day just trough streaming per average?

GuardsmanBob: There really isn’t much I can say without getting in trouble (contracts).
The slightly longer answer is I make a reasonable amount given the time (12+ hours a day) I spent on my stream and related projects.
The even longer answer is that if what a streamer for a certain website made was public knowledge, then competing sites would know exactly how much to offer said streamer to make him move site.

To find more questions and answers from GuardsmanBob please visit www.reddit.com