ChillingWok | The Man, The Myth, The Legend
Upsurge Esports (Written by Tejaun Richard) 1/27/2021
If any of you have kept up with an UPL season, then it’s likely that you’ve come into contact with one of the most decorated casters in the amateur League of Legends scene, William “ChillingWok” Moua. Recently, I had the chance to sit down with him and learn about his story and learn from him just what makes him so successful in the field. Contact Information | Website | Request a Partnership Packet | Join an Esports League
Now I get to share that with you all.
ChillingWok’s foray into esports began over five years ago as an amateur League of Legends coach. Between then and now he jumped back and forth between casting and coaching before finally deciding to maximize his time and effort spent in casting. His tenured career so far stretches over three major titles: Tekken, Super Smash Bros., and League of Legends. His casting has enabled him to collaborate and meet some of the most influential faces in esports, such as Ender, who is most notably seen nowadays casting League of Legends in the LEC. Among other established casters in the amateur scene, ChillingWok is considered a veteran.
Upsurge was a no-brainer for ChillingWok in terms of whether or not to join and lend his casting expertise to the family. Though his job duties are strictly related to casting, he actually learned about Upsurge through his coaching. Most of the teams he coached pursued Upsurge tournaments as their endgame goals, with many collegiate teams looking to play in the Upsurge leagues during the fall before the collegiate seasons picked back up during the spring semesters. Once he transitioned back into casting, he decided to advertise himself to Upsurge and, after doing his first cast, the rest is history. From this has come numerous experiences, with his most recent one being casting the UPL Grand Finals and his most memorable one (for him) being his first cast for Upsurge following his most recent return to casting from coaching. He has never looked back and absolutely loves what he does, and the amount of time he has put into his craft definitely reflects that.
I also had the chance to ask him for some tips regarding casting and how to effectively jump into and/or excel in the field. He noted that one of his role models in the casting realm is Clayton ‘CaptainFlowers’ Raines because of his approach to casting, which is that he doesn’t aim to be the next someone else, but rather the best and most authentic version of himself as possible. ChillingWok also told me that while it’s true that most on-air personalities have a distinct difference between what they are like on air vs. off air, the best casters merely exaggerate traits they already naturally have when they’re on air. This makes it so that way you wouldn’t really see much of a difference between the way they act on camera vs. off camera and allows them to be more personable, relatable, exciting, and authentic with the audience. Through him, I also learned the importance of not just individual casting skill, but the ability to be funny and have rapport with not just your caster duo, but your entire broadcast team. Another tenant that ChillingWok strives to meet is always trying to stand out. According to him, his specialty is his ability to flex between play-by-play and color commentary. His parting advice to me was that if you focus most on making sure you tell the right storylines, making sure your facts are correct as far as the players you talk about, and making sure that you are uniquely yourself and the best iteration of you possible on camera, you’ll be fine.
While ChillingWok will continue to deliver that excellent casting content you know and love within Upsurge, he also has big dreams of his own. He wants to help revolutionize the Smash commentary community, which he described as having been in a bit of a lull for a while now. This is largely because he feels they lack an identity of their own, so he wishes to help them find one in order for them to be uniquely themselves. In addition to this, he has big aspirations of making it to a Tier I broadcast team for the LCS Proving Grounds. He thinks only time will tell if he actually makes it to these things, but with how big these goals are, it’s no surprise that his current list isn’t very long. For now, he’s very much content with just putting more time into his craft.
Catch ChillingWok and some of our other amazing casters during the broadcasts of our leagues and tournaments, which you can learn about on the Upsurge website at Upsurge.GG.You can also check out his Linktree, where you’ll find various ways to connect with and follow his adventures here.
