Speaking of his career Ethan explains that he started as a referee, tried various game related jobs and at one point was even a PC cafe owner. At 32, running live events becomes difficult, as he decided to focus on creating content to let more people get to know eSports.
The interview focuses about fan interest as Ethan is asked about the OSL transition to SC2 and how fans are reacting to HotS:
I think Starcraft 2 is still only a half-success at the moment. While League of Legends is the most popular game in Korea, Starcraft 2’s user base is comparatively smaller, so there has yet to be a big expectation. But now that former BW players from KeSPA are joining Starcraft 2, more and more people are starting to watch the scene. Popularity in PC cafes is still very low, so I still say that the overall popularity is low at the moment.
For HotS there isn’t that much excitement for the game at this moment because it’s still in beta test phase (...) However, the curiosity about how HotS will change conventional Wings of Liberty meta game exists nevertheless, especially how it will reduce the gap between KeSPA and eSF players.
When asked about the boycott incident involving KeSPA, OGN, GOMTV and eSports Federation, Ethan had some pretty interesting things to say. He also talked about how OGN addresses foreign events:
After the boycott incident, we are having a five-party talk every week now. Representatives from OGN, GomTV, KeSPA, ESF, and Blizzard are meeting every week and talk about scheduling issue a lot.
In OGN’s case, the company is based on a cable TV network so they lack experts in streaming online content, as we have seen the lack of interests from OGN. However, they are doing oversea online streaming for League of Legends and OSL, so the interest seems to be growing. OGN has also said that they are preparing for High Definition broadcasting by the beginning of the next year.
Source: ESFI World
