Camille Versteeg comments on ESWC-criticism

Several of the latest announcements by and surrounding the worldwide e-Sports competition ESWC have not been taken lightly by the communities, professional gamers and the press. The indignations peaked around two weeks ago, when six renowned multi-gaming organizations threatened to boycott the tournament, after news of a recognizable registration fee emerged. We spoke with Camille Versteeg, the tournament director and community manager of ESWC, about the issue and a lot more in the following interview.

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Thank you for sitting with us today Camille. Would you please tell us what your job within ESWC is and what it involves?
Hi, thanks for having me. I'm Camille Versteeg and I'm the tournament director and community manager of ESWC. My job is to take care of the tournaments, its staff, the application selection, and the online qualifier. And as community manager I talk to teams and community websites.

How did you get to fill such a high profile role? How long have you been with ESWC and how has your way within the organization developed?
I'm a freelancer in e-Sports and I've worked for many tournament organizers. I'm mostly known as Counter-Strike (head) admin. I've worked at ESWC, WCG, Intel Extreme Masters, Kode5, Dreamhack and many other events. In 2007 I started to work for ESWC as admin, then last year I was head admin of CS 1.6 and now I'm the tournament director.

ESWC has been facing rough responses from e-Sports communities as of late. Criticism partly touched upon you in response to the cut in prize money that some games, especially Counter-Strike 1.6 (which is losing $40,500), are facing. What are reasons for the austerity measures?
Well the selection of games and its prize-money are based on numbers. These numbers get generated by the community itself. It's how many people play the game, how many people watch the game, how many people register on our website to vote for their game and many more factors. All these numbers are put together and based on that you can make a proper decision. This is how we do it, but I think many other organizations as well. We love CS, I love CS, its not dead, far from it, but its numbers are not backing up to have the biggest price pool. But hey, if a community proves its bigger than we thought, we'll take that into account for next year. In the end, its up to the teams, players, spectators etc.

Also not well received was the announcement of a registration fee in the qualification process, upon which six of the biggest eSport organizations, among them Na`Vi, threatened with their absence at the tournament. Allow me to quote ZeroGravity, CEO of Na`Vi who issued on the team's website:

“

The decision itself contradicts with the concept of World Championship because anyone can now "buy" himself a slot in the Grand Final”

what would you respond to him, respectively the other organizations?
Well I don't agree with the fact that teams are able to "buy" themselves into the tournament. The application procedure is an extra community service to make sure everybody is able to attend the event. All the applications we got will be reviewed by people from the community. The CS team of Na`Vi are defending champions, so they don't need to pay anything, they even get [their] hotel [paid for]. As far as I know it, they accepted the invite. I think this issue is not about buying yourself into the tournament, but about how much it costs. If a team thinks its too much, sure, fine with me. Its up to a team to decide that. But at least, be honest about it.

The reason why this 'exploded' is because teams are not used to paying this fee or their travel for ESWC. In the past we always had national qualifiers around the world. But that model is hard to maintain. These qualifications were organized by small local e-sports companies. Since the crisis, there are not that many left able to organize it all. They have a hard time surviving and a hard time making money to pay the winners to go to ESWC. So what we see is that this model is not working, at least for this year. We came up with two solutions, the applications and the online qualifier.

And it looks that its working successfully, mouzesports signed up for the online qualification. I hope more big teams will follow. Its a 'easy' way for them to enter the tournament without paying that much. Also I was surprised by how many semi-professional teams applied and are willing to pay the fee.

(Off-topic, regarding the qualification model. There's not a real working model out there any more. With WCG, its 'Samsung that pays everything', that's working as long as Samsung pays. Which they are not apparently this year for WCG USA. I hope this is just temporary and that all tournament organizers find a way.)

What is the situation regarding the planned boycott of these teams? Did any of the six teams change their stance on their 'threat'?
I did not talk to the teams yet because of a lack of time, but also there's not much to talk about. These are our options for them to attend and its up to them now to decide what to do. I hope for the best. I love these teams, I've known their managers and players for many years. but this is business now. I think many of them are deciding whether they want to attend the online qualifier or not.

mouzesports already signed up and paid, Na'Vi will, I think, be at the event as defending champions, their DotA team signed up for the qualifiers and I heard that the EG SC2 players will play in the US SC2 qualifiers (not yet confirmed). I didn't see anything from the rest yet. Time will tell.

Sad for a regressing, but very loyal community, is that Warcraft 3, despite being initially announced as an official ESWC game, did not make the cut in the end. ESWC could have been one of the last major tournament series to feature this game. What factors made the committee decide otherwise?
At the start of the year we've asked to all of our partners around the world who would like to organize a Warcraft 3 qualification. It looked like we had enough players (8 in total) to have a tournament. But then many cancelled their WC3 qualification so we had no other option to cancel the tournament. Its disappointing, we tried, but it didn't work out.

The official ESWC online qualifiers have been announced recently, also being bound to a fee, but an acceptable one. Please tell us a bit how the tournaments are set up and whether they will have a broadcast, for the public to follow.
There are 6 qualifications in Europe and one in the US. All information can be found on our portals, for EU: http://www.esl.eu/eu/eswc/ and for US: http://www.nationalesl.com/us/eswc/

Teams can sign up, but will be accepted as soon as the payment gets confirmed. The top 2 of each qualifier gets a slot in the grand final, paid fee and paid hotels. Number 3 and 4 get a slot and paid fee. All attendees of the ESWC Grand Final get discounts on plane tickets via Air France/KLM, access to the fair, access to the ESWC party and tickets to use local transports during the event. In case of Starcraft 2 in Europe, its the top 8 that get a slot etc.

Click on more information to find out tournament rules etc. We will be updating some of them, so stay tuned. Regarding broadcast, all streaming organizations out there can contact me via support tickets and I'm pretty sure we can arrange something. Its basically open for broadcast. In the case of DotA, we are already talking about certain options.

And if there are any other questions in general, just write a support ticket. I'll answer them as soon as possible: http://www.esl.eu/eu/eswc/support/

Very promising. How are the preparations going in general, compared to the last year's? Are any particular aspects easier or harder to execute this time around?
Well this year the event will be at a fair: Paris Games Week, which takes place in the center of Paris. I think its really good for the amount of spectators. This year Oxent will help us out organizing the event. Oxent is a company owned by one of the previous owners of ESWC. So there's a ton of experience. The downside I think this year will be is that we have limited square meters, so a limited amount of teams. As tournament director I want as many teams possible. But there are limitations.

Among the DotA community, ESWC is regarded as the European part of a trio of high-caliber LAN tournaments, together with the Malaysian SMM (Sendi Mutiara Multimedia), and the Chinese WDC (World DotA Championship). Last year both provided a commentary booth that hosted live-streams, whereas ESWC settled with WTV, that partly crashed in the beginning, and the casters broadcasted from home. How will the DotA tournament of ESWC get covered in 2011?
I don't know, I'll talk to my DotA head admin to find out what the best solution is and then discuss this matter internally to make sure its better this year. Thank you for bringing this up.

Thank you for recognizing and I would also like to thank you for taking the time to do this. We're at the end of the interview, so if you have any last words to say please feel free.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about all these topics. If anybody wants to get in contact, just write a support ticket. Our goal is to make a really cool tournament, for players and spectators. I hope to see many teams sign up for the online qualifier and via the application procedure. See you in Paris!

Links
eswc.com - Homepage