EPTBlizzard's earlier announcement regarding the 2012 Battle.net World Championship was just the tip of the iceberg. In a phone call with TeamLiquid, Blizzard's Ilja Rotelli – Global Director of Community & eSports – offered some details about Blizzard's ambitious plans for StarCraft II in 2012.
The World Championship sits on top of a four-tier program, with tournaments at the continental, national, and sub-national level leading up to this final event. Blizzard hopes to cooperate with existing eSports organizations in order to implement this year long plan. Though fans are surely looking forward to the World Championships to be held in the Asia-Pacific region, the more interesting factor for the everyday StarCraft II player could be the lowest level of the tournament: the national qualifiers. By allowing everyone an equal chance at the national qualifier level, Blizzard hopes to make eSports a more participatory activity, and not just a pure spectator sport.
The World Championship sits on top of a four-tier program, with tournaments at the continental, national, and sub-national level leading up to this final event. Blizzard hopes to cooperate with existing eSports organizations in order to implement this year long plan. Though fans are surely looking forward to the World Championships to be held in the Asia-Pacific region, the more interesting factor for the everyday StarCraft II player could be the lowest level of the tournament: the national qualifiers. By allowing everyone an equal chance at the national qualifier level, Blizzard hopes to make eSports a more participatory activity, and not just a pure spectator sport.
Overall Structure
Overall Structure
Four Tier system with World Championships at the top
Tier 3: Five continental championships
Tier 2: 15-16 national championships
Tier 1: Grassroots national qualifiers
Each tier feeds directly into the one above it
World Championship
World Championship
32 players, doubled from last year
Held in Asia at the end of the year
Crowns official StarCraft II World Champion for 2012
Want to increase content, way more matches - heard feedback loud and clear from BlizzCon 2011
Continental Championships
Continental Championships
Five regions: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, "rest of the world"
Each has its own live event, in front of a live audience
Aiming for the same kind of atmosphere and vibe as the EU invitational in Warsaw last year
Each championship will be casted in English, possible options for local languages, too
National Championships
National Championships
Crowns national champion for each country involved
Want to create local heroes for national communities
Trying to grow local markets, especially ones seen as underrepresented
15 or 16 countries currently being looked at, based off StarCraft-playing population. Aim to increase for 2013
Qualifiers for Nationals
Qualifiers for Nationals
Not run directly by Blizzard, rather in cooperation with existing eSports organizations
Will talk with interested parties to assign invite spots from existing events
Hoping some organizations will create new programs specifically to qualify people for the national championships
Miscellanea
Miscellanea
Same ballpark of prizes from last year's continental championships, not a step back in that area.
Will be held exclusively on Wings of Liberty regardless of possible Heart of the Swarm release
Want to expand the sport, making as many people interested. Trying to be inclusive and aspirational, with transparency.
Open to working with existing eSports organizations
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/blizzcon/battlenet2012worldchampionsq.jpg)
First, a question that will be on a lot of peoples' minds. What kind of prize money are you committing to your 2012 plan?
Ilja RotelliRight now we are still debating the final figures. We need to clarify that we do not believe this program revolves around the prize pool. We believe this is an exercise in delivering high quality events that are up to Blizzard standards, and in having great competition that involves countries that are not typically involved in the general industry of eSports.
We feel that the eSports industry is taking care of the prize money side of the equation to some extent, and that our job is to focus on developing a true 'World Cup,' if you will, for StarCraft II.
So the main incentive isn't the prize money, instead it would be the prestige of the Blizzard name and of competing in a tournament on such a large scale?
Ilja RotelliYes.
There was a very respectable prize purse at the Battle.net continental invitationals in 2011. Will the prize pools for that tier of competition be comparable at least?
Ilja RotelliWe are surely going to be in that ballpark; we're not taking steps back. We just didn't want to create an impression that because we're investing way more in eSports in 2012 that the prize pool would be dramatically increased.
When will the first events in this qualification process begin?
Ilja RotelliRight now we are engaging in conversations with our eSports partners to finalize the details. We're hoping to be able to disclose those details soon, but right now we don't have precise dates. I can say that I would be surprised if the program wasn't underway by 2nd quarter this year.
Blizzard received a lot of complaints last year during the BlizzCon 2011 StarCraft II Invitationals regarding the number of games that were being streamed, and the selection of the games that did happen to be streamed. Have you taken steps to ensure a better viewing experience for the 2012 season?
Ilja RotelliAbsolutely, we heard the feedback loud and clear, and it's one of the first priorities we took up with our event team regarding the way we will be proceeding this year. I'm certain that you guys will be pleasantly surprised by the amount of content we'll be able to provide.
You've decided to hold the finals in Asia this year. Any particular reason for picking that region?
Ilja RotelliHonestly we think this program is going to be extremely global in nature. The five continental championships will play a major role, not to speak of the individual national championships. In terms of looking holistically at the plan, this is a true global program without a focus on a specific region. But the kind of excitement that exists for eSports in Asia, and especially in recent times in China made us choose Asia this year. This doesn't mean we'll be holding the finals in Asia every year, as we said the program is global in philosophy and scope.
At the national qualifier level, do you hope to hold some tournaments that are completely open to anyone who wants to compete?
Ilja RotelliThat is precisely one of the design philosophies we originally adopted. The idea is that we want to make a more aspirational and participatory eSports environment for StarCraft. The idea that there are superstars that seem so far away, that one can't hope to become; this makes eSports very restrictive.
Blizzard has a slightly different goal from eSports companies. If you think very frankly about the business goal for Blizzard as a company, we gain when more people play the game, and a strategy that makes sense to achieve that goal is to go grassroots. We don't have plans in place yet, but in my dreams, this is the beginning, where we go as grassroots as we can for the first year. Then, in 2013, we would love to add an additional layer to the bottom of the structure, to be even more grassroots than now. This is just a philosophy, not a practical plan that we have in place, but certainly that is one of the design principles we have been using so far.
In terms of delivering content – be it through streams or holding live events – have you been looking into partnerships with streaming platforms, large tournaments, or other existing eSports organizations?
Ilja RotelliWe are open to conversation in both those directions right now. I can only tell you about the design principles so far. Clearly we want maximize the amount of viewership we can generate out of this program, so the general philosophy is not going to be to protect and contain the content, but rather multiply the number of platforms it gets distributed through. But in terms of tangible plans, we don't have details right now.
A large number of eSports organizations popped up in 2011 and the market has become somewhat congested. With Blizzard adding a further layer of complexity to the market, do you plan to act as a regulator or take on some other similar role?
Ilja RotelliNot at this time. We love what eSports organizations have been doing so far. As a matter of fact, we want to work with all these eSports organizations to execute our plan. We don't imagine we will implement all these programs and events directly, and we will be working with organizations to create these plans. We certainly hope that eSports organizations will want to focus a lot of effort on these programs we are bringing to the table, because they will have a mutually beneficial impact.
Right now, we don't have immediate plans to provide any form of regulation of the sport across different organizations. Different regional realities are delicate to "mess with" if you will, and we don't want to break something that is working well in Korea, North America, or Europe with their different organizations. Certainly we would love to facilitate conversations between the organizations, and we hope that by providing a model of how we do things, we might provide some level of standardization in the formats, quality of competition, streaming and so forth. We want to be leading by example, instead of telling people what to do.
The Battle.net ladder has become relatively stagnant as a form of competition between top players. Are there plans to make it play a deeper role at the regional qualifier level?
Ilja RotelliWe never stopped considering the ladder as we built this program, and certainly we brought that conversation up. But for the time being, I don't have anything to offer immediately about how we are going to be able to use the ladder for competition purposes.
Your competitors, Riot and Valve, took an approach to eSports that involved injecting a considerable amount of prize money. How do you think your philosophies differ?
Ilja RotelliWell, what I would like to say is that there is one approach to eSports that relies a lot on what I would call "stunts," in what you are trying to achieve is a lot of media attention while asserting yourself in the industry. And then, we are treating eSports as a sport. We have the notion of building an organic, creative plan that really is global in nature and creates an aspirational infrastructure for all the countries we are operating in. That probably is the bulk of the difference between what we're trying to do here and what other competitors might be interested in doing.
We feel that for example we might have a lot of grassroots level competition that maybe differentiates us from other opportunities out there. We are still working from the top down and putting together an infrastructure that starts with the World Championships, so it's not like we don't understand the value of making a statement. But for us, this is an 'excuse,' if you will, to go all the way down to the grassroots level, because it's just easier to build this kind of pyramid from the top down than it is from the ground up.
How would the release of Heart of the Swarm in the middle of the year affect the competition?
Ilja RotelliWe had that conversation and we had to decide. Obviously we don't have a release date announced yet for Heart of the Swarm, and we had to decide how eSports would behave in 2012 for StarCraft II. We felt that any form of switch whenever the date would be, from Wings of Liberty to Heart of the Swarm, would betray the nature of the sport. I can't tell a bunch of professional players because of marketing that "You know, you need to promote Heart of the Swarm, could you show up next month and switch the game you're playing?" So the entire 2012 season is going to be played with Wings of Liberty, regardless of when we launch Heart of the Swarm.
Will the process for qualifying for the World Championships be completely void of invitations? Will everyone have to go through the same process?
Ilja RotelliEverybody goes through the same process. Basically, we're trying to move away from the notion of invitationals that we used in 2011, and move into a transparent infrastructure that allows people from the outside to look in and say "Okay, if I want to go to World Championships, there's a path in front of me that allows me to qualify." It won't be Blizzard just picking people who are good for marketing purposes; it's really a sport.
You are in a peculiar situation where a lot of eSports organizations are competing to be the 'best' in the world, and now you have entered the picture as well. Are you trying to compete with these organizations and become the so-called best as well?
Ilja RotelliAs far as I'm concerned, I want everybody to be the best, I want every organization to be able to deliver amazing eSports experiences to our audience. Blizzard wins if everybody wins, and we're certainly not competing with eSports organizations. If anything, we're trying to find new and engaging ways to support them and make them financially viable, and make sure they have long term financial stability. This program is actually done in cooperation with all these eSports organizations. We're definitely not competing face to face.
We need this program because there are aspects of eSports that the current business model of eSports cannot naturally take care of. For example, if I were an eSports organizer my goal would be to create the best possible content, so that I can monetize it through sponsorships and advertisements. So I would just need the best players in the world regardless of where they were and I wouldn't have specific market growth needs.
Blizzard has a very different mission, so we felt that this program was needed to let eSports emerge in markets that might not be so attractive for the regular industries in eSports, but are important for the overall health of the system.
Thanks to Kennigit and Blizzard's Bob Colayco for making this feature possible.
The first one Blizzcon I was looking forward to attending too! Oh well, til next time!
