INTERVIEW: DreamHack: 'it's about creating something unique'

GosuGamers' editor-in-chief Patrik "Raistlin" Hellstrand sat down with the DreamHack's Head of Esports Tomas "gREYKARN" Hermansson to talk about the coming DreamHack Winter 2011.

The groups were just revealed for the StarCraft 2 competition at DreamHack, and the groups seem very evenly drawn. How did you guys determine the drawing process?

- Players are divided into 4 seeding pools and then we draw randomly 1 player from each seeding pool to each group. We have chosen to make this final DreamHack event of the year a double group stage tournament because we believe it's the most balanced and best competition for everyone participating - and it also gives the most fair playoff bracket in the end.




You guys present a heart beat monitor for the first time in DreamHack history. Tell me more about the thought behind that. How did you come to think of this?

- Yes, we will host the last 3 matches in the tournament (semifinals + grand final) in our new arena - DreamArena AMD Sapphire, which is built inside one of Sweden's largest sports arenas: Kinnarps Arena - for 1 day and it will be a very special show with hopefully 4,000 fans attending in the audience and six of the world's best casters on stage - Day9, Tasteless, Artosis, MrBitter, Apollo and TotalBiscuit. We really want to bring eSports to the masses and push eSports as an spectator sport. This is when we decided to create some special features for the show and thanks to one of our crew members, Coral, we decided to set-up a heart beat monitor-system so we can show how the players handle the pressure in most important moments in-game. It's about creating something unique for the audience on-site and the worldwide audience watching on the live stream.

You really went all-in with the casters this tournament, having 6 very top notch casters. As you said before, you want to push eSports as a spectator sport. What are your thoughts on the the fact that it's a very much a caster-oriented eSports scene, StarCraft 2 in particular?

- A good question that we discuss a lot in the office actually. Well, I think casters is better to take care of their career, fan base and business opportunities. Many players are focused on their game only - and many organisations don't take care of the important things like PR and marketing in a good way. However, I believe this is changing. Thanks to Twitch.TV for example, many players is broadcasting all their practice games which leads to active communication at Twitter, Facebook and/or their personal blogs. Players are much more aware of their fans today then 2 years ago - which is the first step.




You have once again taken DotA to your hearts, after having featured Heroes of Newerth under a couple of years. How do guys tackle the MOBA genre war? How much are your game decisions based on sponsorship (from both game producers and regular sponsors) and how much on your own gut feeling of what will "work"?

- We at DreamHack love all games. We actually believe that all three big MOBA titles belong at DreamHack. We're a huge festival with a lot of different gamers attending our events. Some publishers of course boost their attendance with having a booth as well in DreamExpo. Last festival we had RIOT Games with League of Legends attending, this time we have S2Games with a Heroes of Newerth booth. We're happy to host to official tournaments in both Heroes of Newerth and Dota 2 this time and in the end our selection of games is decided by many factors including number of of players, number of of websites doing coverage, support from the community, spectator possibilities, support from the game publishers and support from other sponsors. I think the most important thing for us is how easy you set-up tournaments when talking to game publishers. I think it also applies for all tournament/event organizers and in the end - it will be a deciding factor on how influential the game will be in eSports.

This year you have been very busy, with DreamHack Valencia and DreamHack Stockholm, featuring StarCraft 2. What lead you guys to want to hold such events focused on only StarCraft 2? Will we see more of this in other game disciples and perhaps on other continents than Europe?

- Our StarCraft II tournament DreamHack Sapphire AMD Championship sponsored by EIZO, SteelSeries, AMD and Sapphire was our first one-year eSports project with yearly sponsors and we stuck to the plan and delivered. Around 2 million unique viewers have watched our streams and many more have followed the results and coverage around the world. Next up is the Grand Finals at DreamHack Winter 2011. It's been an very exciting and challenging year for us and I think we will improve a lot next year.

But, I don't see a future where we will do StarCraft II-only events in the same way we did in 2011. It will probably feature more games and also have another set-up than this year. We will take the best parts of our successful invitational and festival format and merge it into something even better.

What are your expectations for the Dota2 tournament, it being one of three major tournaments in the game in 2011? Do you think Dota2 would have been able to draw a full crowd in Kinnarps Arena if you had placed the finals there? How close has your cooperation with Valve been?

- The interest is huge. I think over 500 teams have signed up online to participate. Some kind of new record for us I believe. In the end we'll see how many that will show up and confirm their participation and we'll also limit to 64 teams since it's still a beta game and our first tournament in the game. I have big expectations at the game and the response from the community have been great so far. We have found a great team of admins as well which was the key to succeed with our StarCraft II events so I believe we'll continue do DotA2 in the future. But you never know - one year in eSports and gaming is like three years in real life.

We're very satisfied and happy with our co-operation with Valve. They know eSports very well and without their help this tournament would of course not happen.

Anything else you would like to say or plug to all the DreamHack fans? Anything special up your sleeves that hasn't been given enough limelight?

- DreamHack Winter 2011 LAN tickets are sold out. We will have a new record in attendance. DreamArena AMD Sapphire will be something extra for all eSports fans out there and make sure you don't miss the opening show of DreamArena AMD Sapphire at 17:30 CET 26th of November. It will be 7 hours of action and hopefully a show nobody will forget. Finally I want to declare something: DreamHack is not only about eSports. We're a festival and something you can't experience online, it's one of the coolest events you can visit. All this is possible thanks to our amazing DreamHack Crew consisting of over 500 people that work for 1 week and put in months of planning to make this possible. All DreamHack fans should send their tributes to DreamHack Crew.

About DreamHack
DreamHack started as a small LAN in a school's diner. In 2001 they entered the halls of Elmia in Jönköping, Sweden. It is today the world's largest LAN party. It also features a small fair in and outside the premises of Elmia, called DreamExpo. DreamHack Winter 2011 has several eSports tournaments where the biggest are StarCraft 2, Dota2, Counter-Strike and Heroes of Newerth. The overall prize pool for all eSport titles sum up to over €134,000 EUR.