Froskurinn is certainly not new to the League of Legends scene, but what do you know about who she is?

Indiana “Froskurinn” Black is a talented 24 year old color caster. She has earned her stripes in a variety of shows and regions. Most notably known for her work casting for the League of Legends Pro League; she also works passionately for the Oceanic Pro League and International Wild Card regions. When you see what she has to say about her beloved regions, it’s very hard not to become interested.

Since the start, Froskurinn has made an effort to improve herself and bring the best narrative and represent her regions well. Trudging through the depths of the most egregious critique and slander, she’s made no claim to perfection -- but a commitment to doing her best and striving for the next level in her work.

So, what does Froskurinn and the regions she represents have to offer? Let’s see what she says, in her own words.

--- Let’s get into the first question. Why did you originally get into video games and League of Legends?

 I grew relatively poor for the early part of my childhood. Single parent in a divorced household – my mother did fantastic with the resources given – but video games effectively acted as a babysitter for a good chunk of childhood. Between a full-time job and night classes, she couldn’t be there a hundred percent of the time, but that’s fine because I had Link.

This started with a Sonic the Hedgehog disk for the computer; which thankfully we had one in the early 90s due to my mother’s extracurricular studies in Computer Science night classes. This love transferred into a SEGA, then a Dreamcast, then a Nintendo – and soon we had every iteration of every console.

I think the idea was that if we were playing video games, my mother knew where and what we were doing. She was actually an active participant in my video game education, reading up on games and even trying her hand at Pokemon once or twice. This wasn’t a case of substitution.

But I learned how to read through the Pokedex and other Game Manuals. Due to the age gap between my brother and I, I had better coordination while playing, so he would read the guide and lead me while I would mechanically play the game. Together, we saved Hyrule, Princess Peach, and Midgar.

Quality bonding time.

How did you transition into competitive video games?  

I’ve always been a competitive person, but it really translated into video games when I picked up Mario Kart: Double Dash.  Normally, the big competitive title was Super Smash Brothers, but for a lot of these Smash/Melee tournaments there would be a tiny Mario Kart circuit that piggy-backed onto it. These tournaments wouldn’t give out cash prizes but would reward people with Nintendo Memorabilia. In the end, I would finish with a shit ton of Nintendo merchandise.  

[ … ] And that was the start of the competitive experience for me. Every spare moment would be mechanical practice, memorizing the muscle movements of how to snake through courses and where the most efficient lines where. Loading ghost after ghost and shaving seconds.

I didn’t get into League of Legends until college. One of my roommates had a beta key and introduced me to the game. [The] majority of my experiences were console-based outside my first Sonic game and Put-Put Adventure – screw that car. I remember, we had no idea how Champion Rotation worked so there was a very real fear that once a Champion left rotation or sale that you would never be able to unlock them again – or maybe would have to wait for their rotation – so he ended up compulsively buying Kayle due to the fear of losing her forever.

I didn’t really feel that love of a champion until Nidalee was released. Champion turns into a cat? I’m sold.  

 From there, how did you decide to transition into the casting side of League of Legends?

I attempted to be a professional player firstly, playing around 14-16 hours a day in a religious manner. It built off my Mario Kart experiences in that everything is mechanics-based – well, racing games in general are mostly mechanics – muscle memory and repetition of actions to smooth them out.

In League, that’s incredibly ineffective as the game has a far stronger mental component. In hindsight, it’s funny because I now act as an analyst and Caster that spends majority of my time on the mental aspect of League where in the bulk of my playing time I sacrificed that aspect and was punished.

There was a tutorial by a player named Chupper that would show how he warmed up for games through orb walking practice, a-clicking exercises, and general animation canceling. I’d spend hours doing these exercises that I achieved a fairly high Solo Queue at the time, D1, but that was nothing in the upper end of the ELO Spectrum and in the end, I simply was never going to be good enough to play professionally.  

[ … ]I did play “semi-professionally” for an organization called 4Not. What a disaster. They would later become Quantic Gaming and housed names like Kramer, Bloodwater, and OneBadBrad, I believe. I played on their all-female team before Team Siren was a thing. I actually jungled for them and this was during the high of Moscow 5, so Shyvana was extremely popular.

Anyway, I remember they were trying out this new Jungler on the A-Team and wanted to use the girls team as a tryout match. Frankly, I was pretty pissed they didn’t consider me for the position, so I insta-locked Shyvana and camped his Jungle over and over and over.

He didn’t get the job and neither did I, so we’ll call it a draw.

After that fell apart, I went into streaming. During this point in the community, coaching didn’t exist in a conversation, so what I did was labeled as “commentary.” Using the spectate feature, I would spectate viewers and then commentate (or coach)  over their games, then cut the VoD to their match and send it to them for review.

What ended up happening was the creation of a library of different champion matchups across all various skill levels. You could go to my Twitch/Own3d account and search: Nasus vs Singed Gold ELO and there’d be multiple videos.

It was an easy conclusion to think that I may have an ability to translate that to casting, so I approached the North American Branch of the ESL and got the job doing Go4LoL and EPS.

Are you satisfied with the type of work you’re doing now or is there something that you’re looking to pursue outside of casting?

There was never a moment where I actually wanted to be a caster; I gravitated towards through opportunity rather than drive. Like, me as a person has always been rather analytical on any kind of medium or media -- video games were just another avenue to dissect.

But when the opportunity to become a caster was presented, I took it and constantly kept working towards these short term goals: get into ESL, be the EPS caster – which is the Electronic Pro Series, effectively the NACS before the NACS existed. Start the LPLen stream, now get hired by Riot. Now be the best caster that I can.

So, the goals now are to refine my own techniques and be a reputable and respected caster, to give the best performance that I’m capable of achieving.

[But] the end goal actually has nothing to do with being a caster. My primary goal is to give the best and most accurate information that are true to the flavor, soul, and storylines of my regions; so that the audience cares about these Leagues and Players.

Think about it this way: there are so many fabulous resources for esports content besides the actual games. Fan art, articles, videos, songs – anything and everything. Chances are however that your very first experience with a team or region is going to be loading up the stream or vod and watching a cast.

Effectively, casters are the first taste to experience these players. It’s our job to sell you on these stories so that you, as the viewer, find the drive to deep-dive on these other resources.

So my job is not: be the smartest, most brilliant analyst in the world – that’s secondary and should be compulsive. My job is to simply make people care about the regions that I cast.

(The interviewer and Froskurinn go on to elaborate what it takes to invigorate the fanbase to watch and invest interest into a particular scene.)

[ … ]It’s unfortunate that the immediate access on a lot of regions is limited. It’s not a conscious consensus, but there seems to be this overarching idea that smaller or lesser known regions don’t have as strong of narratives as the bigger or more publicized regions -- which logically, everyone is going to understand that it’s simply a lack of coverage on those stories.

Let’s be frank: if people watched League of Legends simply for the level of play, Korea would be the most popular region in the world. And Korea is vastly popular due to its narratives and level of play, but North America is the most popular region – why?

Well, technically, the LPL is the largest and most popular on a sheer number spectrum – but let’s keep it to the Western audience.

It’s because people love the characters. They love the personalities,the polish, and the grandeur of it all. There a debate between international circuit and domestic competition, and I feel like that argument is skewed towards a need for more international competition. I would never argue against having less international events – I love them. The flavor is unique and the storylines are explosive, these are the kind of moments that make esports great -- the accumulation of all these moments into one super-charged play.

But there needs to be a recognized appreciation of the current ecosystem in place with leagues like the LCS. This ecosystem is supporting a profession of being a pro-gamer, a coach, a sports psychologist, graphic designer, esports journalist – the list goes on. It’s building viable professions and people can argue that esports has been around for a lot longer than LoL; which is absolutely true, but LoL – alongside DoTA2 and CS:GO – have recently revolutionized the industry on a massive scale.

The esports of the last three to four years has drastically changed.

 In the current structure of LoL, fitting in more international events could mean cutting into the domestic leagues.  Again, if the structure were to remain the same with just implementing more international events, that would mean shortening the domestic leagues...

...which could translate into fewer stipends from Riot to the teams and less exposure time for sponsors on the teams. See, international competition in LoL only supports the elite. Only the best teams qualify to compete and it should have a trickle-down effect on the domestic meta as the elite teams return to their regions and demonstrate what they learned internationally to level up their own region.

But that leaves out the majority of the professional player base, the mediocre if you will. Those teams that will never qualify and won’t be able to get the big name sponsor deal because they’ll never get that sponsor on the mainstage of Worlds. And there is for sure a discrepancy in the income of teams right now within the current system – but I just feel that, yes, I would love more international events to build incredible story-lines and rivalries across oceans, but it’s not as easy as plugging in more time.

There’s a balance to respecting the ecosystem and benefiting as many people as possible, and elevating the global competitive ceiling for the hardcore audience. We should be weighing the benefits of both and make a healthy compromise for the ecosystem and audience instead of writing off either.[ … ]There are just as impressive storylines in every region, it’s simply a matter of exposure.

Accessible storylines definitely make it easier for us to all stay interested in watching regions, I think. So, what is the biggest challenge for you in your current position?

In terms of self improvement, my biggest issue in casting language is what we call fluency and flow. What fluency means is your ability to express a concept in a very cohesive and clean way. This will depend on your vocabulary and cadence of speech.

Flow is a bit more of an abstract concept. Flow is where you fit in a cast or the tempo of a cast. My primary issue is that I will deep dive too far on a color point where I want to go in-depth and then I’m unsure how to say it in the most fluent bite, so it elongates the point to a timeframe that I don’t have.

What happens then is that I start speeding up because I notice that action is building elsewhere on the map, and I want to set up for the action that’s building because my play-by-play caster is about to jump in and take it. The correct method is to hit the point quickly and cleanly and then start building the set-up of the play about to happen -- which I actually did quite well in my KeSPA Cup casts.

[ … ]Internally, that’s what’s happening in the casts and my number one priority to smooth over. My flaws are technical in nature, which can only be refined through observation and conscious effort. An issue, however, is that the intricacies and vocabulary for casting isn’t readily known or available to the general community, which makes interaction and feedback through social platforms rather difficult, meaning that the majority of progress is limited to internal resources rather than external.

The community is a massive resource, but there is a gate to using it effectively. Example: there were issues in early casting where the community had the idea that LPL casters “didn’t know anything about League of Legends”. Okay, what is actually making the audience think that? What is being lost in translation?

[Because] we know that we as a team know the League of Legends game, that’s how we got the job. But obviously something is breaking down and it’s up to us to figure out what the audience actually wants. We figured out that by changing the balance of Micro versus Macro points in game that suddenly these complaints disappeared - in fact, we started to get compliments for our knowledge. [ … ]

What would differentiate between a micro point and a macro point?

A macro point is going to be a bigger picture point usually involved with map movements or rotations. MonteCristo is going to be a very macro-focused caster; likewise, my strength is in macro gameplay.

Micro is going to be more specific to individual mechanics and interactions of the game. Someone like Phreak is a very micro-oriented caster - in the OPL/LPL team that’d be someone like Rusty.

[ … ]Again, I think the larger issue is that the community doesn’t have access to how casting works and there’s not a great system to discussing casting externally. Naturally, everyone can have their opinions on what casters they do or do not like - that’s fine -  it’s an incredibly subjective art. But it’s very hard in terms of critique and feedback to pin-point why you like or dislike another caster when there’s no idea how it mechanically works.

And then the conversation breaks down from discussion to closed language and flame.

People give Quickshot a hard time under the guise that he “doesn’t know anything”, and true, Quickshot is not a color caster. He has a very different role and position compared to the likes of Monte, Jatt, Kobe, and Deficio, but technically speaking, Quickshot has a lot of strengths as a caster.

His vocabulary, cadence, and fluency are all subperb.  He gets a lot of criticism without supporting evidence.

 I think literally the only caster I’ve ever critiqued (and again, I’m not a caster,so I didn’t jump on the hate train) was Jatt,  and it was because he made some explosive comments about a player and then didn’t back them up. And it’s not that I disagreed or agreed, but I just wanted him to back up his statement because without a context it seemed unfair. That’s really the only critique I ever have for casters, is just back up what you say. But generally, I like him.

Again, Jatt can certainly deep dive on an analytical point, his content with teamfight breakdowns illustrates this ability perfectly. But it’s very important to understand the difference between an analyst and a shoutcaster. I am an analyst on the desk, I am a shoutcaster on a game.

An analyst explains the game. A shoutcaster delivers the most educating and entertaining narrative of the game. I personally think that Jatt’s greatest strength as a caster is his ability to create and drive a cohesive narrative through an entire game.

The formula for Jatt is typically adjective and then immediate consequence. Example:  say an Oriana in a game hits a 5 man shock-wave on the backline. Jatt will open with the adjective depending on his set-up narrative. Say it’s CLG vs TSM, if he’s setting up a point for TSM where they’re ahead or they have a critical play coming up, he’ll grab that:

“DISASTER FOR TSM! POBELTER’S SHOCKWAVE ROCKED THE BACK LINE AND CLG TAKE THE ACE AND ARE LOOKING FOR MORE!” He’ll save the in-depth analysis and breakdown for  the upcoming replay and focus more on the immediate consequences of the play in question. It’s this idea that you don’t want to blow your load before the replay and then have to repeat yourself in slow-motion a second later.

But your criticism sounds like a spacing issue. You say: “I wish he would support his analysis a bit better.” And I think: I’m sure he could given the platform and time, but in the cast you only have a select timeframe to get the information or narrative out, it’s not that Jatt can’t, just that he didn’t use his timeframe like that.  

 Moving on, specifically, is there anything about yourself or your history that you think makes your job easier? Or consequently harder?

I lived a mediocre existence for a very long time in that I never particularly excelled at anything. I dropped out of college, lived middle-class – like, I was never the valedictorian or star of the science fair. I set the bar pretty low out of the gate with the neck tattoo. Any expectations you have? Should probably drop those because we’re not going anywhere.

This created a rather low period in my life. I was tired of living a mediocre existence in a job that I hated, a relationship that I resented, and just moving sideways through life because I was trapped in the convenience of security and safety.

Someone once told me that I had forgotten how to dream and I just burst into tears. It was so  true. I had lost the ability to question and push for grander things. I forgot what I was capable of – I effectively gave up on myself at 20.

And I was sitting on the floor one night, staring into my hands and thinking: what do I want to be doing right now? I wanted a sandwich, so I got up and made one at, like, four in the morning.

The next day I quit my job. I left my relationship. I threw away all financial stability and reasonability and I reset my life. I only did shit that I wanted to do – and that sounds so basic, but if you talk to people, there are so many trapped living sideways and killing themselves every day because it’s safer.

I’ve had to choose between paying rent and eating. I’ve slept on the park bench and crashed the friend’s couch. I would rather do that over again than continue to wake-up, collar up, and work 9-5 – digging down. I know what I want now. I don’t care if it’s unsafe or insecure or inconvenient – all those things got me was sitting on the floor and hating myself. That path is shit.

(The two discuss the inspirations and tangible gains to be taken away from the risky-yet-satisfying philosophy, and go on to talk about the unrecognized talent and challenges, citing the community -- namely Reddit -- for failing to identify these personal challenges.)

Reddit can be an often toxic environment.

Reddit can be a phenomenal tool if used correctly. But the learning curve and RNG of utilizing that system can be very punishing.

In every interview interview that I’ve done, Reddit has always come up as really damaging to the psyche or really frustrating to deal with. They’re such a small percentage, but they’re so loud and discouraging. So, I know you guys recently had a run in with Reddit...

I’ve experienced quite a few run-ins with Reddit. The most recent would be my appearance at IEM Cologne; which was a very fun event. I would love to be involved with them against in the future. Frankly, that backlash  was fairly damaging to my psyche, but it is part of the public perception. And yes, it’s incredibly hard to read comments that target my physical appearance, like someone commented that Riot couldn’t fire me since I’d come out as gay and that I’d play the minority card – effectively I was an affirmative action gimmick caster. That’s incredibly hurtful.

But, again, Reddit can be an excellent tool and avenue to communicate with the community. I love discussion over League of Legends, and thus, love Reddit. But it’s a tool that I feel is abused to tear the community down rather than bring it together, which is just a shame.

It does many wonderful and terrible things.

It’s hard to understand how people can say things like that. People on the internet seem to forget they’re talking about people.

 I actually try to get to threads ahead of time that I think will bring me up. I’ll hop in and get a comment: “Froskurinn here! Thanks for the feedback!” Or some quick little line. Typically, if people see that I’m actually in the thread, reading what they write, they’ll curb their opinions to at least be constructive. And then we can open a dialogue rather than just getting beat with a stick.

So, obviously, you’ve probably gotten discouraged before; what types of things discourage you? Or do you not get discouraged very easily?

What types of things? I’m actually keen on constructive criticism and feedback in general. The idea is never do anything subconscious during a cast.Always be aware of what you’re doing, so if it doesn’t work, we can consciously change it as opposed to it becoming like a subconscious bad habit.

 I don’t need someone to just blow smoke up my ass. I have no problem for someone to bluntly tell me something isn’t working. But that is not how majority of feedback is presented through our social media platforms.

 I went on Summoning Insight in 2014 and was there to represent the Chinese region, which I thought was a criminally under-represented region at the time to its relative power. So, I got on the show and said that NA/EU don’t need to just be afraid of Korean 1st seed, or even 3rd seed - they need to be afraid of Chinese 3rd seed, because these teams are incredibly strong. Now, how the information was presented was abrasive and received lashback, and given the chance, I would restructure the presentation absolutely.

 Today, I still receive lashback or quotes - both correct and misquoted - concerning that episode. And my 2014 appearance seems to overshadow my subsequent performances and the hundreds of hours I’ve put into content since then. It’s just an uphill battle of trying to open this conversation of: this is a cast I did last week, here is one I did two years ago - can everyone agree there’s improvement? I’m not a perfect caster, but I’ve gotten heaps better and will continue to grow and strive to be better.

 And I would love to be able to utilize Reddit as a tool for that growth and these conversations, and be able to reach out and discuss with the community. But there comes a point when you turn to someone to get their opinion and they just smear shit in your face. It just makes me want to cut off access to them.    

What do you use to motivate yourself when you get discouraged?

I remind myself that my primary goal is not what people think about me. I don’t care if I’m represented or not, again, that’s secondary. I care that the players and region I represent are getting the best exposure they can.

Even if I take an egg on the face for being considered biased , if I can put myself in the best position to tell these incredible stories, then it’ll hopefully incite more people to invest in the region.  

So, is there a particular person or persons that have inspired you and helped you grow?

There have been three primary people in my development as a professional: Thorin, MonteCristo, and Spawn.

Thorin was actually the guy that “discovered” me. He’d been watching the LPLen stream before Riot picked up the broadcasting rights and saw it as an opportunity to drive interest coming into playoffs. His exposure and platform opened a lot of doors for the better of the coverage of the region.

We took that broadcast from 8 to 48,000 people watching a stream manned by three people.

He’s an incredibly interesting guy. The thing about Thorin is that doesn’t care if he completely disagrees with your opinion, or what the opinion is in general. He cares far more about why you think the way you do – the logic and systems you use internally to come to your conclusions. And if he spots a weak point there, you’re bust. He’s for sure helped my own processes to counteract for biases and I think it was a critical skill.

MonteCristo has been nothing but gracious in the opportunities he’s helped me achieve and giving direct feedback. Incredibly approachable and intelligent.  Everything you would expect. The two of them are actually quite invested in helping develop the 3rd party scene, taking time to invest their time and energy into promoting their peers and open doors.

Spawn works with me in the Oceanic office. I don’t think I could ever capture everything he’s done for me professionally and personally. I’ve technically been involved with the LoL scene for a few years, but I’ve only been casting with Riot for two splits and the scale of growth in that time frame compared to the whole of my career is astronomical. He’s a massive part of that.

But he’s also just been a fantastic sound board in helping me right myself and find a direction that makes me a better person and caster.

Do you have any funny or embarrassing stories that you can tell about yourself or your fellow casters?

 I got a very cool opportunity to cast for the KeSPA Cup between the World Championship and start of the Spring Split in Korea. It was the famous moment when EVER qualified for IEM Cologne and beat SKT.

I ended up doing this event with a good friend of mine, Tsepha. We learned we were going to do this event about four days before the event. We were in Berlin for the World Championship and going out to dinner to discuss the contract for the event; it was an incredibly limited time frame for the event.

So, during Worlds where Tsepha and I had been backpacking across Europe, we suddenly were extending our trip by two weeks to cast this event.

We were graciously staying with PiraTechnics of the EU LCS and this was during his vocal surgery, so he couldn’t say a word; which if you know Pira – guy talks a lot – it was impressive that he kept silent. But to compensate he had rigged this white board that he wore like Flava Fuckin’ Flav around his neck. So, picture this: the apartment is covered with paper as Tsepha and I scramble to prep for this event. We’ve got everyone on call: WHO IS EVER? TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT KOREA! There are three screens with different Korean games on 2x speed, just trying to absorb this mountain of information through osmosis.

We attempt to practice cast because- fun fact – that was Tsepha’s first ever cast as a play-by-play caster on that stage. We’d only done one previous event together months previous. So we’re trying to nail the dynamic and train him up on the role swap; which ends up creating this weird dynamic where I lead the cast as the veteran caster.

Anyway, at some point I just throw my hands up in frustration because the stress is mounting an nothing is working. Tsepha and I end up in a shouting match, just going back and forth in a frenzy.

Eventually it settles to a tense silence and above it all – this obnoxious squeak of a marker on whiteboard. PiraTechnics flips over his necklace after some careful consideration:

:(

I lost it. Laughed so hard.

And then it gets worse! We end up going to Korea – love Seoul – and during the event I end up losing a crown and need to get a root canal, but I have to cast every single day. So what they do is that I come in early every day and get a part of the procedure done and then have a temporary filling put on my tooth.

I end up casting the event not being able to feel my face or eat any sort of solid food in a region. There may have been very strong pain killers involved.

What is your advice to people starting out in eSports?

 Do as much content as possible. It’s literally as simple as” just do it”. Nike the s**t out of that. If you want to be a caster, start casting games. Go to LoLEventVODs, mute the sound, cast over it, replay, listen to yourself cast over it again, replay, listen to yourself.

Here’s the other thing, eSports moves super quick. So, if you have an idea, don’t hesitate, don’t wait. Literally turn on your camera, start typing right then. Because the relevance of a TSM article is literally 48 hours. It could be like TSM just had a major upset and if you write that two weeks later no one cares because another upset has already occurred.

 What are your hopes for yourself in the future?

To represent my regions to the best of my technical capability. That means refining my fluency and flow and adjusting energy levels. With that standard, I hope to one day represent on an international desk like MSI or Worlds.  

Lastly, is there any final thoughts that you’d like to share with the people reading this?

 Whatever your perceptions coming into this interview on me, I just ask to be given the chance to consider my ceiling. I don’t think there’s dispute that I’ve gotten better over the course of my career, and I hope that the community will give me the chance to continue to grow – and hopefully help on that journey.

---

Overcoming preconceived notions is something that is very difficult in the unforgiving age of technology. It’s fair to say that quite a bit has been laid out for reasons to reevaluate and come to new conclusions about Froskurinn. Did you gain new insight from this in depth glimpse into who the person is behind the persona?

If you enjoyed this feature, feel free to follow the author on Twitter at @poetsanarchy.

Images courtesy of Froskurinn's Twitter.