GosuGamers Barcraft World Tour

Tell us a bit about yourself.
Hey my name is David, 28 years old, moved to berlin last fall, finished my law degree, and now I’m not really working in that field. I love being active in the community and I’ve been working on doing more and more in that area.

So how did you start organizing barcrafts, where did you hear about the idea?
My buddy and I, both not living in Berlin, were watching summer MLG in 2011, the term barcraft was just being coined. We were watching a stream during which the caster started talking about barcraft, and showed a couple of pictures of events and we thought that’s a really cool idea. We were already having a fun time getting together and watching the games, so we thought let’s try that. We were living in a small town and thought let’s try once we get to Berlin.

Was getting started difficult?
In Berlin there were 2 other guys who have done barcrafts, and stopped due to some technical difficulties. People were kinda happy when we came up and started doing our thing. It’s really unfortunate that the previous guys kinda failed, because the community here could be a lot bigger if we had started it, but we’re winning all those people back. It was fairly easy to find a place, this club is really unique, it’s not a bar, it’s not a commercially run place, it’s sort of a computer club. The general sense of the place is digital culture, computers and the such. They usually have meetings there for programming and other things, we’re the first event that’s gaming focused.

Sounds like a cool place, was it easy to get people to come?
The aesthetic of the place helped - it’s called a spaceship under Berlin. We used all the platforms to advertise - Team Liquid, German community sites, reddit, facebook, twitter. We were really lucky to bump into one of the german casters - Mori (Maurice "Mori" Lange), and he was really supportive, he keeps advertising our events, he even casted our tournament.

Tournament you say?
Last time was a double event, alongside the barcraft we had a community tournament, we even managed to get Razer to sponsor. It was easy to get sponsorship - they are just happy to help, especially if they get cover via Mori streaming. It was just a local community tournament but it was great. We want to build up a strong community in Berlin, people will start to interact around SC2, and we want people to do that around barcrafts as the main event.

We think it’s a great thing to get people out of their desk chairs, and interact in a real life level. It’s not just through the internet, you play with someone on B.net and you know who he is, and later you meet him at the barcraft. This was just a little step towards that goal. We plan to do more stuff towards the summer - more tournaments and events, you know - not just watch pros, but also play ourselves. We also want to have more interaction with other local scenes, we keep in touch with a lot of European barcrafts, we’re hoping to grow, maybe even have city competitions.

How did the club react to your events?
They were a bit skeptical, they don’t have entertainment activity on most cases but even though it’s not what they usually do, they started to see it growing and they like us. We get some sweet deals and we even developed some theme drinks with the community. We have this thing called the “6-Pool” - ends the game quickly - 6 shots in a row. Also “The Stimpack” - doesn’t last long and ruins your health - vodka + clubmate (caffeine drink). Community came up with the idea, made the deal with the bar and they said great.

You talked a lot about growing, what about streaming different games?
So far this is the only game where it’s been working. I’m part of ONOG (One Nation Of Gamers), and they tried with LoL but it doesn’t draw as many people to events. There’s potential, and I don’t know where it’s going, but for me at this point we’re only into SC2 events. If other communities step up I’ll be more then ready to help out by organizing events.

Any advice on barcraft organizing?
We discovered that Saturday night is the night for barcrafts, which is bad for some reasons - since Saturday most sports bars have agendas and also because finals are usually on Sundays. Getting feedback from the community, they love to just get together and party staying up late, and it doesn’t matter that it’s not the finals of a competition. It’s cool to just hang out till late and be part of the experience not having to worry about the next day being a work day. We do love the European events that have the finals on Saturdays though.

Thanks a lot! Got any shoutouts you wanna give?
Shoutout to the German community on mystarcraft.de, big shoutout to Mori for being a badass support to this entire thing. The community helps us a lot, and of course to ONOG as they are taking a step in the right direction. Thanks!


Run a barcraft event? Leave us a comment with a facebook link and we’ll contact you.



This is a GosuGamers weekly feature by Eyal "KOKOStern" Stern, that is published every Wednesday.