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Heroes7 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

HGC's Sam Braithwaite on Phase 1: "It was an execution phase. Everything was new"

Ten miles from California’s beautiful Laguna Beach sits Blizzard Headquarters. A huge bronze Orc sits at the center of the courtyard entering the massive campus surrounded by a ring inscribed with Blizzard’s core values.

Only days before the HGC team hopped on a plane bound for Jonkoping, Sweden to the Mid-Season Brawl, I got a chance to sit down with the man behind the HGC curtain for an exclusive presentation reflecting the first phase of the new HGC format and the future of the Heroes Global Championship.

Consistency & transparency

If you were following the scene last year it was a very divided space. We had three global championships that happened throughout the year with regionals that fed into them but it wasn’t very cohesive. One weekend you were watching it on ESL’s channel, then Dreamhack’s channel, then OGN’s. It was very hard to follow as a fan and there wasn’t a good source of truth where you could go to find and follow that information. The first thing we wanted to fix was consistency. We want to make Heroes of the Storm easy to follow and we want you as a fan to know when, where, and why your pro teams are playing including what’s on the line.

In forming HGC we wanted to make sure we were able to provide to our players what we consider stability.

We sat down with every single team for over an hour from every single region to get a complete picture, top to bottom, “what’s wrong with our Heroes ecosystem and what could we be doing better?”

In the first couple of months I had the privilege of, my second day actually, I hopped on a plane and went to Korea for the Spring Championship. Right after that, I attended the Summer Championship at Dreamhack Summer. We sat down with every single team for over an hour from every single region to get a complete, top to bottom, “What’s wrong with our Heroes ecosystem and what could we be doing better?”. One of the key questions I asked them that was surprising was about prize pool and money. I wanted to know would they rather have bigger prize pools or more spread out events. These pros said they rather have a more prize money spread out. So what we did is we took our prize pools from last year and we put it directly into player compensation so every single team in the HGC is guaranteed $100k. That way nobody wins these big multi-million dollar prize pools, except for BlizzCon, but instead everybody earns a steady consistent wage throughout the season.

So all of these decisions were made from their feedback as well as our community’s feedback and from the organizations themselves. I sat down with Fnatic, Dignitas, etc, and I said “Hey, what do we need to do to get better?”. These guys have teams and well-functioning leagues like the LCS and CS:GO, what can we learn from them. I took all their pain-points to develop the HGC into what it is today.

Recognizing mistakes

We’ve already made mistakes this season, just some little things that we wish we’d done differently. Our team’s philosophy is we’re okay with making mistakes as long as we can tell and explain each decision and why. Explaining why we’re changing and what we’re doing is something we’re really passionate about.

Coming into last year, one of the things I noticed was there was never a time in 2016 when the number one team in Europe faced off with the number one team in North America. In my mind, that’s unacceptable. One of the things that makes esports so exciting is this regional rivalry. People need this antagonist in order to be able to cheer for their team. That’s the focus of the Eastern and Western Clash is really putting emphasis on these international rivalries and really drawing to attention why these guys are superstars and the best in their region.

Stability in the professional scene

We went from having a very unstable scene in North America and Europe to having a very consistent scene. Even after we saw every team in North America switch rosters it still looks and feels relatively the same. We went from maybe 4-5 teams disbanding every six months to only one team, which is a big improvement.

Open Division

Before the HGC, the experience was very much “I don’t know how to become a pro player”. Professional gaming can be very clique-y. It’s very much more of who you know than your direct skill level past a certain plateau. So we created the Open Division and it's designed to bridge the gap between Hero League and professional play. It should be that clear path to becoming a pro player and it’s one of the things we’re really passionate about.

We had over 300 teams sign up for the Oven Division, 100+ from all the different regions. The HGC Crucible just happened two weeks ago and we got to see some new blood rise to pro status. Two new teams in Europe were able to qualify in. In Korea, Team Blossom defeated Team RRR but with Blossom disbanding, RRR will be replacing Blossom in the HGC. In North America B-Step disbands so we have Even in Death coming up to replace them, making four new teams going into the next phase. 

Broadcasting and production
 
We’re hitting 10-weeks of league play, every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 16 hours worth of content, pretty much every single week so far this year. Last year we had more LANs than we had this year but we also had more stuff happening.

Already in Phase 1, we’ve had 700 hours which about doubles what we did last year

There’s only 340 hours worth of broadcast meaning that there were so many things going on all around the world that we only cast the regionals, we didn’t actually provide high-quality entertainment for qualifiers or things like that. Already in Phase 1, we’ve had 700 hours which about doubles what we did last year and we are on par to quadruple the amount of content that we had last year. As the content goes up, so does our viewership.

Our average viewership in 2016 ended up being 44 minutes and our average downtime between game one and game two of a series was 10 minutes, we have that down to about 2 minutes 40 seconds now. What we’ve noticed is that by building consistency and reducing downtime between matches we’ve tripled the average viewership time, so the average viewer now watches our stream for over 2 hours compared to 44 minutes. It’s our understanding that this is the highest performing program on Twitch.



We hired four professional casters, and this is the first production by Blizzard in esports that is fully done by us. Because of the Eastern and Western Clash, one thing we are able to say definitively now so far is who’s the better region. After both Clashes, Europe’s better than North America and Korea’s better than China.

To be continued...

We have several updates that are going to be coming throughout the remainder of the year, the first is team profiles which just came out.

Phase 1 was an execution phase. Everything was new, we’ve never done it before. Building out the studio, establishing our casters, running the broadcast, all of it is taking up the majority of the HGC team’s time. With the launch of Heroes 2.0 and with our team growing, we're able to step back and start looking forward.


Talking with Sam and listening to him speak, you can tell he eats, sleeps, and breaths HGC. This first half of our chat explored Phase 1 and the growing process the HGC went through. One thing stands out above all else; The HGC team are listening and growing the most dynamic and successful esports leagues the world has ever seen.

This interview continues, covering all the huge changes coming to HGC's Phase 2 here!

Follow us on Twitter @GosuGamersHotS and on Facebook for more competitive Heroes of the Storm news and coverage from around the world. You can follow me @renothefox.

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