Nick Plott

Nick "Tasteless" Plott is an American StarCraft 2 eSports commentator. Together with Dan "Artosis" Stemkoski, he provides commentary for GOMTV Global StarCraft II League games.

Early life
Plott grew up in Kansas City, Kansas. Upon graduation from high school, Plott attended college in Denver for philosophy and psychology. He considered law school and philosophy Ph.D. programs before going into StarCraft full-time.

StarCraft career
Plott and his younger brother Sean bought a copy of StarCraft from a local video game store in 1998 after hearing about the game's popularity. The brothers would watch each other play while offering gameplay advice. They played casually online, but were hampered by a slow Internet connection. The Plott brothers visited a nearby Internet café where they met a man about five years older who would play and beat them. This loss and the ensuing trash-talk were an early inspiration for the brothers to hone their skills, though they never returned to the café.

With the advent of high-speed Internet, the brothers played StarCraft competitively on Korean servers. They entered and won tournaments while in high school. Plott became uninterested in school when it did not let him incorporate StarCraft into his studies. He played the game through high school and college.

Upon losing to his brother early in the 2005 World Cyber Game finals, Plott watched the rest of the games as a spectator. He became frustrated by the tournament commentator's inexperienced handling of game's nuances and requested to co-host the commentary, which was a success. He received offers to commentate without pay in Europe, Japan, and Singapore.

In Plott's last semester of college, Korean broadcaster GOM TV invited Plott to provide English commentary for the recently announced StarCraft II as part of a strategy to extend their reach. The offer was given with guarantees or moving assistance, but offered Plott an opportunity to make a career of his StarCraft commentary and become the first Western StarCraft commentator, or caster, in South Korea. He dropped out of college and arrived in Seoul within a week.

In Korea, Plott slept on friends' couches and worked as a caster where he could. As StarCraft II's launch neared, Plott and another American commentator living in Seoul, Dan "Artosis" Stemkoski, had individually amassed significant followings, and had the interest of commercial broadcast networks. The two began casting together and became known by a portmanteau of their nicknames, Tasteless and Artosis, as Tastosis. Before this partnership, the two knew each other through their former competitive gaming careers, but became friends in Korea. Polygon attributed their success to their "magic" dynamic from complementary personalities, with Plott bold and sociable, and Stemkoski encyclopedic and analytic. In July 2013, Polygon reported Tastosis to be the best-known StarCraft II webcasting team in the world, both broadcasting for GOMTV Global StarCraft II League. A crowdfunded documentary about their careers, Sons of StarCraft, is scheduled to be released in early 2013.

Plott and Stemkoski prepare separately, with Stemkoski constantly watching StarCraft matches and Plott studying commentary from non-traditional sports and major StarCraft news. Together, they incorporate team histories and their respective strategies into their commentary. Plott has said that he considers Tastosis's nuanced readings of player tactics and their eventualities as a "gateway" for bringing unfamiliar crowds into StarCraft.

In StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, Blizzard Entertainment added an Easter egg, where two in-game characters were named after the casters.