EPT
In a mere couple of days we will be opening the first chapter in the history of StarCraft II as an esport with the IEM Cologne Global Challenge tournament. Sixteen of arguably the best non-Korean StarCraft II players will compete at the Gamescom trade show for $15,000 in what will be the first major live event for our new favourite game.
It is a debut for SC II in a live event but also a debut for our live events in front of a StarCraft community. You probably don’t know that much about the Intel Extreme Masters and what to expect from us. I am here to change that.
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A rendering of the Cologne Global Challenge stage
What is the Cologne Global Challenge?
The Cologne Global Challenge is a prelude to the 5th season of the IEM. It takes place at Gamescom, the world’s most important video games trade show (next to the Tokyo Game Show). One of our goals is to keep broadening the IEM audience by creating a fantastic spectacle for the trade show visitors and by delivering the games to SC II fans at home via the ESL TV stream.
For this occasion we have built a great stage where the gamers will be competing, with three big screens to follow the action on and we’ve and put up hundreds of seats. We have invited Sean “day[9]” Plott to and Dignitas Apollo commentate as many of the matches as possible and we will receive the gracious help of the guys from GLHF.tv (with Justin "TheGunrun" Ignacio and others) to cover the matches Sean and Apollo won’t be able to.
For five days you will gorge on a daily dose of several hours packed with high class StarCraft II.
Our event is for you
We’re a bit different from your regular non-Korean event. We operate to achieve a very simple goal: to show *all* matches and to allow the spectator to see every single match in the playoffs. We don’t run tournaments for the sake of completing an X number of matches in two days (this has been an unfortunate standard in esports). We run them for the sake of delivering great matches and allowing you to not miss anything.
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The Intel Extreme Masters IV World Championship
YOU are very important to us. We don’t want you to choose between two or four great matches that are going on at the same time. But we don’t want you to have to spend 10 hours out of your day (or night) consuming our product. We want you to get just the right amount of daily coverage and we want the press to have the time to interview the players and write analyses between different stages of the event, while you have the time to discuss the coverage and get excited for what’s to come.
Those are very simple principles, but very often overlooked in Western esports.
A packed schedule
We aim for 100%, but we can’t always hit it – we’ll be off the mark in Cologne. We operate under the constraints of a trade show with its opening and closing hours and with certain commercial activities that make our business model sustainable. We’re running a Quake Live competition pretty much identical to the StarCraft II one as well.
You will miss some of the matches live (a chunk of group play and two quarterfinals) but we will have two streams from the event just to make sure that the overlapping content is covered. On the upside: you’ll choose which games you won’t miss.
If you’re going to be among the lucky ones that will watch the tournament live on stage, then you should know that every single match will be played on stage. The “main event” will always be casted by Day[9] and d.Apollo and featured on the big screen, but you will be able to follow every single player’s progress on a plasma hooked up directly to his PC.
We will have live matches, live interviews and lots of YouTube stuff.
The bigger picture
The winner of this event will get the money and the title “first SC II champion”, but will also qualify directly to the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship – ESL’s most important event of the year. That ticket is very valuable, as the road to the World Championship is a very long and difficult one otherwise.
Normally you need to go through an arduous IEM Continental Championship. Those are held in Europe, America and Asia (you can participate based on your residence) and consist of a regular season played over a few months online and a live final for the best players of the continent. The first of those will be the Intel Extreme Masters American Championship in New York City in early October this year.
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The trophy
Depending on the continent’s strength, between 2 and 5 of the top finishers in a Continental Championship will qualify for the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship – 12 of the world’s best will play for the biggest money of the season and a cup on which the names of past winners are engraved.
Do follow!!!
Do follow us on www.esl.tv – both the SC II and the Quake Live action (which is extremely entertaining, by the way).
I will not promise you that the Cologne Global Challenge will be the most epic thing you’ll ever see. Running an esports event is not as easy as opening the gates of a stadium and flipping a switch to turn on the floodlights. So many things can go wrong… But our crew is extremely experienced and will truly do the very best, and more, to make sure that your experience with ESL and StarCraft II will have been amazing.
If you like us or want to leave us feedback, it is always very welcome. Our website is www.intelextrememasters.com with all the coverage, galleries and replays. Our Facebok page is www.Facebook.com/IEMtv, our Twitter is at www.Twitter.com/IEMtv – those two will prompt you to watch our live streams and remind you that we exist. Our YouTube channel is www.YouTube.com/IntelExtremeMasters and we have lots to find there.
We will give away a TON of goodies from our sponsors throughout the season on the above links, so visit us for that if not in order to give us feedback. As a freshly addicted Bronze player (#4 in my league) I will be reading TeamLiquid anyway – your feedback and criticism will be very appreciated.
So, TeamLiquid, this is me and my league. I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
- Michal “Carmac” Blicharz
