One More Year of Raising the Bar

by WaxAngel

One year after setting new standards for stream quality and production value that have been emulated furiously within the industry, DreamHack has trumped the competition in another area: The live finals experience.

I attended six live events this year: three MLGs, IPL3, IEM New York and DreamHack. All six events were highly enjoyable for a variety of different reasons, but DreamHack offered by a large margin, the best live grand finals experience.

The DreamArena venue should come immediately to mind, even to those who watched via stream. Of course, any event with 4,000 screaming fans will have an incredible atmosphere, but that number is not terribly far off from MLG events (the Rhode Island Convention Center's theoretical max occupancy is roughly 10,000). In truth, any locale can generate a similar energy to DreamHack – be it a live event or a Barcraft – as long as it's densely packed with ESPORTS fans.

However, there's just something different about watching ESPORTS in a stadium. Blame it on popular culture and outside influences (I happen to be a sports fan). Things inside such venues just take on a different air. They're the kind of places where Michael Jordan carried his team in a crucial playoff game while suffering from the flu, and Metallica reached the height of their powers and assaulted the world with some of the greatest metal performances to date.

I'm not saying those heights were reached at DHW 2011. But by being in the same setting, it feels like we're at least in the same conversation. The natural progression here is "Remember that time we saw iloveoov lift the trophy at the Astrodome in '16?" Hey, a man can dream.

Obviously, DreamHack wasn't just great because it let me wax lyrical. Let's talk tangible things. How about video production? Don't deny it nerds, we're suckers for slick montages, smooth transitions, and anything that looks polished. Though I'm not exactly an arbiter on aesthetic values, DreamHack's audio-visual presentation was the coolest I had experienced all year.

The entire arena setup was also full of clever touches, such as letting the players enter through the center of the crowd, high-fiving fans on either side. The runway projecting from the stage actually was reminiscent of a rock concert, allowing the players to get as close to fans as physically possible without performing a stage dive – a sure possibility in the future.

Heartbeat monitors! While they did prove their unreliability when HerO clocked in at a torpid four BPM for an extended period, it added another layer – if thin – of depth to the proceedings. Interest in players that goes beyond simply how they play the game and extends to their personalities and psyches is one of the main reasons fans love ESPORTS, and the heartbeat monitors allowed more involvement at that level. 'Puma is so calm, he's used to this kind of stage,' 'Look at those trademark HerO jitters, his heart is beating like he ran three miles!' That's the kind of speculation us fans revel in. God knows we're now dying to see what an IdrA rage moment looks like, or find out if Tyler can draw a cool 60 BPM for the entirety of a match.

The DreamHack ESPORTS couch also made a glorious return, with four of the most popular ESPORTS personalities chatting it up at any given time. It wasn't just good for making downtime more tolerable, it was actually a kind of setup Starcraft II fans would probably tune in and watch for hours without an affiliated tournament. Sorry SOTG, this was the true Starcraft II version of The View (if I were in charge of such a show, I would 100% cast djWheat in Whoopi Goldberg's spot). Sometimes, the best thing to do is give the fans exactly what they want: a huge dose of caster personality.

Also, there were two other ESPORTS finals outside of Starcraft II. Now I'm sure many people skipped over SF4 and Quake*, but as an ESPORTS fan, I'm interested in any game that's being played at the absolute highest level. These weren't some f***ing exhibition mobile games being played at WCG. They were games with well established, highly competitive scenes. Mastery in any discipline is a wonder to behold, whether it's carving sculptures into marble or carving holes into people with a railgun, and I appreciated DreamHack's patronage of two other high skill-ceiling games.

On the whole, DreamHack's greatness came from an agglomeration of little things – details that were not overlooked but fine tuned – combined inside the perfect venue to create a wonderful experience. With ten years of Korean Brood War to show us other possibilities, it's surprising that it took over a year of Starcraft II for an event to so emphatically declare that no! The cramped confines of convention centers are not the natural habitat of Western SC II. We can do better if we try. (I won't deny IPL credit for attempting to create such an experience at IPL3, but they failed to reach their goal after drawing a woefully inadequate crowd).

As I mentioned before, I thoroughly enjoyed all the other live events I was at this year. However, DreamHack was the only one that saved the best for last. And by doing so, it became my defining ESPORTS experience of the year.** No other event made me so wholeheartedly feel 'Yes, this is the direction we need to go.'

It was hard to miss DreamHack's bobhund at IPL3 in his Rakaka.se shirt, but I didn't notice anyone from MLG or IPL present to take notes at DHW. That's a shame, because when you consider that 2011 was the year of tournaments stealing great ideas from each other (to the huge benefit of the fans), it would be unfortunate for the Americans to have missed out on one the biggest learning opportunities.

DreamHack Winter 2010's influence was felt throughout 2011. Hopefully, history can repeat itself in 2012.




*Not gonna lie, jet lag + migraine did force me to take a nap after the first map, until I could be pumped full of Japanese energy drinks.
**Yes, I got to rush the stage and celebrate with the rest of Liquid after HerO won. That may have very slightly influenced my opinion.


Attending a live event has many upsides, but also some downsides. One of them is that you can't catch nearly as many games if you're at the venue, and you usually only ever see one side of any match that you are watching. So when IdrA ragequit against Forsen in game two of their series, I caught the game in the Dream Arena, but didn't get to see either player's reaction afterwards. Or during the Happy-ToD match, I watched the second half from behind Happy's computer, making fun of the game with the Empire players. But I missed ToD's entire side of the game.

However, for the diminished coverage that you can tune in to, attending a live event does give you a whole new perspective on the players, how they actually operate in real life, how they approach tournaments, and how they actually physically play the game. After Dreamhack, I realized that any understanding of players is simply incomplete without actually watching them play in their native habitat. And in doing so, a few players made particular impressions.


eSahara.Naama

The 2010 Dreamhack Winter Champion was not expected to make much of an impact at Dreamhack Winter 2011. His performance in the summer was quite poor, and his results had never been anything of note since he left Mousesports for Virus. One year later, having switched teams twice more, Naama had fallen far. In an interview at Dreamhack, he called leaving Mousesports the biggest mistake of his life, crediting his move with ruining his attitude, depleting his motivation to practice, and providing distractions outside of starcraft. The Finnish terran arrived at Dreamhack as a member of the very new eSaraha SC2 team with nothing left to lose and a long road ahead to recapture his past glory.

But Naama had more than a hope and a prayer in his toolbox. Through one month of more dedicated practice than at any other point in the year, he had both elevated his own play and also come to terms with how lacking it was overall. Thus, at Dreamhack, Naama played smart. Against players like Nerchio, HayprO, ThorZaIN, White-Ra, and NightEnD, he understood that he was unlikely to win two macro games against either. Instead, in his series play, Naama almost uniformly favored aggressive, cheesy, tech and harass heavy builds. In challenging series situations, Naama pulled from a deep well of well-practiced timing rushes to secure victory.

By itself, aggression and cheese does not guarantee wins. But what set Naama apart, defined his tournament, and led to his stunning top finish, was the care with which he executed his strategies. Throughout the tournament, Naama babysat his units, prioritizing their safety over almost anything else. It frequently led to sloppy play on the macro end, but it paid huge dividends when it came to killing his opponent. In his final game against HayprO, a match I watched from the other side, Naama was frustratingly unkillable, refusing to overcommit and trade inefficiently with a mass barracks bio all-in. Instead, he pulled back as HayprO gained a foothold, then surged forward with reinforcements and broke it. Against ThorZaIN, he chose a 1/1/1 build in the third game, and simply refused to let his banshees die, eventually destroying ThorZaIN's defenses with tank positioning and marines. In his first set against NightEnD, I watched, tremendously impressed as Naama juggled marines in a medivac as NightEnD struggled to remove the army at his front door, a piece of micro that wasn't captured on stream. Throughout the tournament, Naama was content to call down supply, reinforce more slowly, and not make a third base, as long as his attacks succeeded and his units simply didn't die. Call it what you will, but I call it smart play.

fnaticMSI.NightEnD

NightEnD was another big surprise of the tournament, but his success came as no shock to anyone who watched him play in the group stages. NightEnD executed simple, safe, and strong play time and time again. He was mechanically precise, and mechanically fast. Yet what really was most impressive of all, was that NightEnD was the most diligent scouting player I watched all event. He opted for a fast observer in almost all of his games, sent out probes for hidden expansions early on, and planted pylons all over the map. In PvP, he secured wins against top PvPers like SaSe and MaNa, simply by playing safer than them, taking an early advantage, and then refusing to let it go. This style had a drawback of looking boring on stream occasionally, but it delivered results.

Normally, overly safe play is a dangerous plan, as it can often give away a lead as surely as it is supposed to hold it. The famous line about the "prevent" defense in American football; that it 'prevents' you from winning, is similar in starcraft. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, effective defensive play is not easy to pull off. What was so impressive about NightEnD was that his safe, 'boring' style was quite complex. His timing on expansions (get more ahead), his prediction of his opponent's movements, and his attentiveness in not slipping up were all quite clearly well practiced and carefully considered. He more commonly feinted an attack than actually attacked, sheeping his opponent into not cutting corners. He never gave away his army for no reason. And when he finally engaged, he always had more money and infrastructure than his opponent. That's not by accident.

NightEnD impressed for the exact opposite reason of Naama, he was confident in his super standard play, and was practiced and diligent enough to make it work. He was rarely flashy, but rarely cringe-worthy. When he and Naama made the round of sixteen, few gave them a chance to advance past White-Ra and SaSe. But those who watched their play, obviously including this writer, (if you'll permit the brag!) knew they had an excellent chance to advance. They had a clear plan, and enough skill to make it work.


Gamania.Sen

In contrast to NightEnD and Naama, Sen did not make the round of sixteen, instead having his tournament end as the odd man out in the second round group of death. Yet ironically, it's not a big deal that Sen was impressive. Before Dreamhack, I and many others regarded him as one of the foreign scene's top three zerg players, at least. But if seeing Sen's play in abstraction on stream was good, seeing his play live was incredible. Mechanically, Sen blew me away. He rotated through his hatcheries and control groups BW-style, kept his larva injects on a strict rhythm, and made excellent choices with his army in fights. It's difficult to pick out one single thing that stood out with Sen's play, because there were so many things. Mechanically, Sen was absolutely stellar, every minute I watched him.

It was strange that I saw him bow out to HerO from a seat on the bleachers of the Total-Apollo booth, because as tremendous a player as HerO is, it just seemed incredible to me that Sen could ever lose. In the games he lost, he actually made horrendous decisions; not expanding or teching rapidly enough with a lead against HerO, and not spotting or anticipating HerO's warp prism sentry drop in time to prevent it from killing him. With overall game sense and decision making then, Sen seemed just a bit lacking, perhaps not coming into his series with as through a goal as Naama or NightEnD. Or perhaps, as the results from the tournament indicate; his loss can simply be explained by tougher opponents. Nonetheless, it was an incredible treat to see him play firsthand.



Of course, there were plenty of excellent players at Dreamhack Winter. Seiplo and ToD deserve tremendous credit for their dedication in practice. Seiplo arrived to his computer before anyone else of his time slot, every time. ToD was always the last to leave his computer, even meeting Ret, who had beaten him hours earlier, on ladder as Ret prepared for his semi-final against HerO. ToD was still sitting at the place where he had been eliminated. But overall, in watching how they played the game, I gained a real appreciation for how Naama, NightEnD, and Sen operated. I loved Naama's strategic thinking, NightEnD's practiced calm, and Sen's remarkable talent. Beyond the Liquid` guys, whom I followed most of all, these three players entertained and impressed me a great deal throughout the tournament. Hopefully they can continue to keep and build upon what brought them success here.

Day Three Gallery: Before the finals