Photo source: CyberSports.net
JP "itmeJP" McDaniel, creator and producer of State of the Game, sat down with the folks at ESFI World to talk in length about what the future holds in store for the popular podcast. Discussed topics include SotG moving away from MLG and going independent, the future focus of the show and the renewed hunt for sponsorship.
On January 12th it was announced that the StarCraft 2 podcast "State of the Game" will throw away the MLG hat and function as an independent show once again. In his blog from the same day, JP wrote that this was his decision and was not asked to leave. Now, McDaniel takes the opportunity to clarify the process more in-depth.
[Sundance] asked me how State of the Game was going this season and it came up how we could possibly take State of the Game back and become independent again. As soon as he said that, I jumped on board, and that’s not to say MLG treated us poorly in any fashion. It’s just to be independent again, in my eyes, is something you strive for. ESFI knows that first hand. To be independent is the primary goal - it’s the golden status for any show or type of media.
To set the fans of the podcast at rest, JP assures that the show will not go into a negative direction after losing MLG sponsorship. In fact, JP is confident that SotG can only benefit from this move by returning to its more outspoken background.
One of the things that we can do now is literally talk about anything we want in the sense that we can be as open-minded and say anything off the top of our head. We can be more critical of things now, especially MLG. That is something I told a lot of people that the show is kind of built upon. [...] It didn’t make sense to have a MLG-sponsored show and yet rip on MLG. We did do it a little bit where we felt things needed to be spoken about, but we weren’t all that critical and now we can be.
In the end, the question of how SotG will get funded in the future still hangs until McDaniel takes the time to tell the audience how the search for sponsorship goes and the approach he uses to negotiate with names both novel to and experienced with the eSports scene. JP also throws in a few lines about what aspects of professional StarCraft 2 he desires to focus on with State of the Game in 2012.
The basic guidelines we're setting [when pitching to] sponsors are simple : We are not changing any content on the show and we’re not filtering ourselves. If we want to go and read fan fiction of ToSsGirL and IdrA – we’re going to go and do that. We’re not going to be told “don’t do that”.
We want to produce more segments focused on actual gameplay. A segment showing how players did at a recent tournament is another idea. I think episode 60 with the call-ins was a big hit, so we definitely want to do more of those insted of just reading off questions.
Links
ESFIWorld.com - Source
