[Interviews] Aligulac's founder Eivind Fonn

When and how did you come up with the idea of Aligulac?

I was trying to predict the results of the up & down groups in the GSL. So, I was using the Team Liquid ratings, but they were really bad and it was hard to automatically get the data from their website. I also used SC2 charts and it was better in some ways but worse in others. So, I made something of my own and just made it available, and people really liked it.

When did all this happen?

That was in December of 2012.

The website was meant to be a rating website at first, but now it’s a great database website where you can find so much information on a player and their teams. Did you expect this?

Not at all, that’s a great question. I think now it maybe is even more useful as a database then it is as a ratings system. In fact, I use it mostly as a database. Maybe I have less confidence in the ratings system than other people (laughs).

Can you explain how the ratings system works?

I can try! Every player has four ratings. A mean (average) rating, and then three race-specific ratings. The average has to be equal to the mean of the three others. When you play against someone of a certain race, we assume your skill level is equal to your rating against that race. When we adjust ratings after a two week period, we adjust it based on all the games you’ve played during that period. We adjust the average rating first, then we adjust the other ratings if you have games against those ratings.

If you play games against only one race, that will affect your ratings against all races as well. It creates an interesting interplay about your ratings against all races, which I think is the strength of the system.

Do you keep trying to improve the ratings system?

There is a lot would could do to improve it. We have some ideas, but it would be a ton of work. We’ve more been focusing on the database part to be honest, and the rating system hasn’t changed for quite a few months.

So, you have a feature to calculate the ranks of teams, and the results were a bit surprising. For instance, CJ Entus is ranked 2nd, but they haven’t been doing so well in ProLeague. How do you compute rating for teams?

I can see how that’s confusing. Actually, team leagues aren’t factored in at all here, we just pull data from individual leagues. It just runs a lot of simulated matches in both proleague format and all-kill format using the individual data.

How many people on the team?

10 people. I’m the only one who doesn’t work on the database, and there’s one programmer who does a lot of work. It’s remarkably self-sustaining.

Are you still looking for more volunteers?

Yes, still looking for more volunteers. It’s not a major need but I’ll take anyone who wants to help. If you do want to help and send an e-mail, don’t just add results for specific players and such though. Contribute to the overall site. Also, programmers are always welcome.

Do you particularly need more French people following French tournaments?

I haven’t paid too much attention to what we’re lacking, but I do have a Frenchman who submits the French games. If any French fans though think something is missing, please do let me know.

What new features do you want to implement in the next couple of months?

The biggest one we have is an incorporation with GameHeart, we were trying to build something where the observer would run a client that would stream data to Aligulac and they could have an observer view.

What kind of data?

Supply numbers, income numbers. You could look that data up or if the tournament has like 15 games going at the same time, and you could have some sort of an overview. Just know, this is in the early planning stages still.

You must have heard the constant debates about the game balance. Aligulac doesn’t actually give game balance data for specific maps. I’m mentioning this because of an article by MC where he said that in his opinion, he believes that on many of the current maps, Protoss all-ins are very easy to do. This is why he believes that Protoss is doing so well against Terran at the moment.
My question is, would it be a pain to add statistics on the map on the website?

So, maps is a feature request that we get every now and then. The thing is, we don’t track individual games, we only track matches as a whole. That is actually a ‘3-2’, not like a Loss, Win, Win, Loss, Win. So, if we were to do this, we would need to begin tracking individual games. So, although I love the idea, it’s a lot more work than I think it is ultimately worth.

I had the same question about patches. Could we track this data over time?

This is much more reasonable. Currently we track Wings of Liberty vs Heart of the Swarm. We would just extend this. Currently we use these vertical lines that show when patches are implemented, so you could use that. But I’ll keep this in mind, that’s actually really easy to do.

Have you gotten any support from Blizzard or any of the sponsors to help you develop or host the website?

Absolutely no support from Blizzard. I may get a couple of retweets from the StarCraft twitter. That’s about it.

Okay… are you disappointed? You sound disappointed.

I’m sure they know about it, and it would be nice to get that confirmed, but it’s not something I lose sleep over. I don’t have any sponsors, this is purely out of my own wallet. Although I have been offered advertising, I turn it down. Once I got a donation for $10 from an anonymous donator who managed to find my PayPal somehow, though I never asked for it. Actually, the website is not that expensive to run and I’m doing fine working on it on my own.

So you’re not particularly looking for sponsors or any financial support?

I should mention that the Romanian team NewRoSoft put our website on their shirts for free.

That’s good. So, I wanted to know where the name Aligulac comes from.

That’s something I came up with as a kid. It’s an anagram of the Roman Emperor Caligula. And if I had known that I would run a popular website on it, I probably would have chosen a different name. I’m not sure if you know your Roman history but… Caligula was not a nice guy.

So, to finish the interview, I’d like to ask a few questions about yourself. I’ve read you’re a PhD student in Applied Mathematics?

Yes, I finished a few months ago. So I’m now a Doctor in Applied Mathematics who’s looking for work.

Congratulations on your thesis. Did your thesis have anything to do with ratings system?

Absolutely nothing. It was about numerical methods for solving what is known as transport equations.

It’s a physics equation?

Precisely.

Are you a StarCraft 2 player? Or do you just enjoy watching.

I just enjoy watching. I played during Wings of Liberty, but I was never very good. At this point, I just play for the story I think. I haven’t played any multiplayer in HoTS.

Are there any other e-sports projects that you want to work on?

No, I haven’t found anything else. Aligulac is my contribution and it stops there I think.

Thanks for the interview. Would you like to add anything else?

Thanks to all the people that visit our website, and offer feedback, and thanks to the team that I work with as well. They get less of the spotlight, but this wouldn’t be possible without them.





Edit: Fixed team name to NewRoSoft