Interview with the London Barcraft manager

This is my latest re-post on my london barcraft blog - an interview with the owner of the bar we use (the Assembly house)

Still high from my experience of championship sunday at the UK WCS tournament, I thought I would bring you guys a short interview with Jon Matthews, manager of the Assembly house where we enjoy our barcraft events. Such a cool guy, and Id recommend you all go have a chat with him at the next barcraft you attend.

[image loading]

Jon chilling with the ‘Crafters

Who first approached you with the Idea of holding a barcraft at the Assembly House?
Zach from LBC, apparently we were the 38th call out of a list of 40 bars, everyone else turned them down

What was your first impression on hearing the idea?
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think much of it at the time – they wanted to do the event on a Thursday night I think. We didn’t have too much happening in the bar at that time, and Zach said about 20 or so people would turn up. I thought, well if they get 20 people in and its not too much hassle to set up (which it wasn’t) then what the hell. They brought in 20 people and were so nice and accommodating that we kind of fell in with what they wanted to do straight away. From a bar managers perspective, if you bring the numbers in, and they’re spending cash, then why not. As time has gone on we have realised just how good a thing it is to host Barcraft events.

[image loading]

Adding a bottle of champagne to the raffle, what a hero!

Do you play any games, or specifically real time strategy games, yourself?
I’ve played computer games since I was 3 (radar rat race on the commodore 64), So I’ve been playing for 30 years, but I’ve never been into real time strategy, mainly because I went from a commodore to sega mega drive and then other games consoles. Strategy games have mainly been a PC thing and I just never got into them. I’m not much of a 1st person shooter or an RPG fan either. However, I respect all types of games and have happily spent time watching various mates finish Final Fantasy, or get destroyed on COD online (except my mate Chris, he’s a Battlefield 3 expert, fairly high ranking).

What is your favourite game of all time?
Easy: NHLPA ’93 on the Sega Megadrive. The learning curve is ridiculous and my brother and I would play that game for hours – we were better than anyone else, but hardly anyone knows it. It’s a topdown Ice Hockey game by EA sports and was before everything tried to be ultra realistic.
Other greatest games: The Last Ninja 2, Myth, GTA Vice city (playstation), Streetfighter 2 championship edition (Ed. Sick game right there), Odd world Abes odyessy, SSX, Portal 2, Tekken 2 & 3, loads really.

Have you ever played any starcraft yourself?
Nope, sorry, I’ve never been into RSG’s or RPG’s. Just not really my thing.

Now that you’ve been exposed to quite a bit of Starcraft, do you have a favourite player/race/team?
Protoss (remind me of the borg) & DRG (actually quite interesting player)

What do you see as the advantages for the Assembly House by staging barcraft events? It seems such a win-win with the bar not having to pay any licence fees to stream the games.
Great crowd, great atmosphere, USP (unique selling point) as we are really the only successful one so far. A great comparison is against all the people who moan that I don’t have Sky Sports. Sky sports would cost around £2000 per month to run, and yet every time we host a barcraft, its like watching Arsenal v Tottenham, except we have no aggression in the pub, great atmosphere, the match runs for 12 hours, for two days and everyone has a burger. Basically its a lot more profitable than showing Sky Sports. However, in order to keep up with the increasing numbers of attendees over the 1st 6 months, we have invested a fair amount; projectors, screens, cat6 cables, fibre optic broadband, converters, sound leads…it all adds up, we reckon we’ve spent somewhere in the region of £6000. But this outlay is all hardware, not rental, so we can get a solid return on that investment.

Any disadvantages?
Our pub has other events and things we have to cater for, so sometimes it can be a little tricky to make sure that the Barcrafters are in the right area to make sure they are comfortable, and still be able to host a private party or music gig; but I love the challenge of trying to keep everyone happy. And Barcrafters are a great crowd, not easy to please, but very understanding that because of the nature of the event sometimes we have hiccups (like losing sound during a match due to an over-excited fan pulling the cables loose, or losing our internet stream because of a faulty cable and sprinting to Maplins to get a new Cat6). The only real disadvantage we have now, is constantly having to explain to other customers what Barcraft actually is:
“They’re watching a live professional computer game tournament”
“No they’re not playing, they’re just watching. Like football”
“No its not over the internet (Ed. Oh if only…), the players are in a room in New York”
“Actually, the players fly all over the world to play in tournaments and most of them are on 6 figure salaries”
“Well, I could get Sky, but you have to promise to bring 100 of your mates along once a month and they have to not drink 8 pints of Fosters and then throw up everywhere – is that ok?”
“No, we don’t serve Fosters”
We’re actually hoping someone will create a factsheet for people we can handout during the events, as we get quite tired of people asking us about it all the time (Ed. Already on it ).

[image loading]

Helping out as ‘tech support’

What advice would you give to any starcraft fans looking to approach a bar about hosting barcrafts?
Be sensible in your approach. Find out realistically how many people you can bring to the event, that’s what venue’s are most interested in. Choose your location wisely (transport links, internet availability, closing times, is it big enough, does it serve food and is the food good). Try and find a bar manager who is sympathetic to what you are asking (ie: a 60 year old pub manager is unlikely to get where you’re coming from). Your downstream is the most important bit. Most public WIFI just won’t cut it. You need a cable connect to a dedicated router (pub wifi’s can call up the company to turn the wifi off and then run a CAT5 direct to the laptop without interference, but don’t think you’ll get a 1080p picture from that). Can they do sound? Theres loads of stuff really, but the crowd is the biggest thing from a venues point of view. If you don’t go in asking for too much, (get your own HDMI cables to begin with!!) and show them that you can consistently bring in 30 or 40 people who have money to spend, they should start realising that its worth the (initial) hassle to set up the events. Oh, and don’t charge people to come, and don’t let the venue charge people. Other Barcrafts have tried and failed principally on this issue.

What advice would you give to bar-owners approached about hosting barcraft events?
Be flexible. Don’t be greedy. Gamers are savvy, they know if they’re being ripped off; why pay to watch in the pub when you can watch at home for free. Don’t charge ‘Crafters to come in, but be sure to point out from word go, that bringing your own food and drink will get you kicked out (theres always someone wanting to take the p?”£). Be patient and help with the setup, they’ll need your internet connection and you need a good one – at least 10mps to do anything reasonable. Be prepared for a bit of investment. Make sure you have enough burgers. Really, that last one is important (I’m not implying ‘Crafters a fat or anything, they just really seem to like good burgers!)

[image loading]

Nerds are hungry!!

What internet speed does the Assembly house have now ?
I say 30mps – Florian would say otherwise. Put it this way, nowadays when something screws up with the broadcast, 90% of the time it’s not us

Best experience (so far) with barcraft?
Running down Kentish Town Road to pick up some burger buns and hearing the roar of 100+ ‘Crafters as Marine King won a match at about 8pm. The whole street looked round to see where the noise came from – I couldn’t help but chuckle. A close second is the ‘Crafter who ordered 5 stim packs for a friend who lost a bet on a match – turned out he didn’t like Tabasco very much!!!

What are the general views of the staff about the barcraft events?
They actually love these guys. Working in a pub, especially close to a railway station, & a music venue, you always get a real mix of people, which can include some fairly annoying or aggressive or just plain crazy customers. ‘Crafters are just a really likeable crowd, no attitude, happy guys who want to have a laugh and enjoy the day. We genuinely love them (although we still won’t give out our phone numbers!)

Anything that we could do on our end to help the staff out?
Not really, when we get busy its hard to move through the tables to pick up empties, buts just natural, but sometimes when we lay out the furniture a certain way people move it, but that’s natural for all types of events or bookings. We’d prefer ‘Crafters thoughts on how we could help them out.
1 thing though – we’d love it if we can have more guys stay for the MLG events right through to the final – I think we should look at cheapy hotels nearby so we can put people up for the night and they can stay to watch the finals live – that would be awesome!

What kind of comments have you had from other patrons about the barcraft events?
“Weird. But they seem to be enjoying it.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this before. Its amazing” – that’s a direct quote from a guy who popped in for a beer, and stayed for 2 hours after a ‘Crafter explained how it all worked. He came back for the next one and brought 2 mates with him.
“Geeks n Beers, it had to happen someday!”
Generally people are a bit bemused, but because its such a big crowd and a good atmosphere they are prepared to engage in it. A couple of my regulars think its some sort of pub blasphemy and avoid the events, but for the most part people are very accepting.

[image loading]

What other forms of entertainment do you have on at the Assembly house that we could enjoy when barcraft isn’t on? We often see live bands playing for example.
We do live Jazz on a Sunday afternoon, pub quizzes on Monday nights, and acoustic nights on Thursdays – all of it is FREEEEEE! We love to put stuff on that’s free. I think it makes the world a better place. Pay for DVD’s though – don’t download. We do have occasional music upstairs in our disused function room that you need to pay for, but the performers are seriously talented, so its worth it. We’re planning some other stuff over the next few months, but we need to get our upstairs up and running (In-house Starcraft tourny’s anyone? We’re a long way off, but working on it). We want to show movies too at some point but we need to iron out the details.

You must feel proud to see how barcraft at the Assembly House has grown. Where do you see barcraft at the Assembly house going in the future? Any big plans? Some people have requested computers to play Starcraft at the events for example.
We feel it’s a shared thing really. Not really proud, more humble that the ‘Crafters seem to like the pub and the events Florian and the guys put on so much. As for the future? I want to see more e-sports watched and played in pub venues through out the country. This isn’t just a kids thing – in fact it should definitely just be an adults thing. We also want to eventually be able to host tourny’s and stuff, but it might not be so practical in our current location. What I’de really like to see is a completely symbiotic games & bar venue, I don’t think anyone has got the balance right just yet, but it’ll come. I also want to see Games companies specifically making spectator friendly games to increase e-sports popularity.

Any last shout-outs?
Florian Doyon – you are THE man. Dave Bizzaro, Adam, Dave, Tom, Rob, Jason, John Sargeant, Zac, The guy who helped me solder the Virgin Super Hub back together again – twice! –, tophat guy, you are the men also. All the girls who come to Barcraft events – Bert the Barman loves you all (probably a bit too much). Kate, my beautiful girlfriend, co-manager, and the brains of the Assembly House, if she didn’t indulge me this sort of stuff, I’d be nothing. The team at the Assembly House; we are nothing without you. All the ‘Crafters who been and will keep coming, we think you are the best
Cheers
Jon “TGMF” Matthews

[image loading]

Jon chilling with the Trolls

GG

Rob (aka Furtle)

Interview with the London Barcraft manager

Completed

Ongoing

Upcoming