With the ASUS ROG Stars Invite starting fragster had the chance to talk to one of the organizers. Petri Hämälä is speaking about the ongoing tournament, the Assembly Summer succes and much more.
Link to the extended Interview!
Some impressions:
What do you think about the situation of eSports in Finland?
Hämälä: eSports in Finland is really close to a break-through. Finland has always had really potential players in all game titles. In organization level we have had some nice tries, which have ended more or less sadly. Destination Skyline was one of our pioneers, followed up by Astralis, Team Logitech and Insignia Cadre. All these organisations are now long gone. But few new ones have risen from their ashes. One of the most significant has to be eXelon Gaming with nice mix of players.
Finnish eSports Federation was also established around a year ago. The Federation has been able to make eSports more mainstream, by talking in morning shows at television, being present in radio programs and news papers. The chairman of the board is the long time multitalent Teemu 'wabbit' Hiilinen. He works with SETT.fi and Peliliiga these days as an editor-in-chief and shoutcaster.
On player level these days Finland has some rising stars in Starcraft 2. Samuli 'elfi' Sihvonen is playing in almost every major tournament, and he is really making us proud with great level of play. In Counter-Strike the old dogs lead by Tomi 'lurppis' Kovanen has really made impact this year in major tournaments. Also Jyrke 'Killerdoll' Savolainen has won major European tournaments in Tekken 6 and is traveling to World Cyber Games finals at Busan later this year.
Behind these stars we have lots of new guys with potential. I have to mention only 13 year old Joona 'Serral' Sotala who have won Santeri 'Naama' Lahtinen twice in LAN finals. Finland has lots of potential. If we succesfully break eSports through in mainstream it will be huge!
Finland often gets compared to Sweden in terms of eSports due to the close bonds between our countries. We are obviously not quite at the same level yet, with Sweden breaking new ground with things like eSports livestreams on major newspaper frontpages, progaming houses, and an event production value second to none in DreamHack. However, all the potential is there and we are certainly on the right track with the right mindset to make similar great things happen.
Do you think about other tournament formats for upcoming tournaments?
Hämälä: We plan all our tournaments really well. This planning always includes also a careful selection of the best possible tournament format. We decide the format by thinking the event length, players, audience and location. For example at Assembly Summer 2011 we considered different sorts of formats from double-elimination to single-elimination and also groups and single-elimination combo.
One of the best formats would be group stage followed up by a double-elimination bracket. However, this takes lots of time and in shorter events it is not possible. That's why we couldn't do it at Assembly Summer and we picked up groups and single-elimination. It worked really well too. We had high quality matches and the audience got a lot to see.
We are also thinking to bring up a combination of BYOC and TUP tournaments, where winners of the BYOC -tournament would advance to high level TUP tournaments. This type of tournament has been successfully tested in Sweden at DreamHack.
What are your goals for the ASUS ROG Stars Invite?
Hämälä: There are multiple goals for ASUS ROG Stars Invite. Our main goal of course is to run this tournament as smoothly as possible without any major problems. But when we think this tournament more closely there are other major goals as well.
One of the most important ones is to make eSports more known to public. All matches will be played at DigiExpo fair which is the largest trade fair in consumer electronics in the Nordic Countries. There will be over 60.000 visitors and we expect most of them to stop by and watch some of the hot action at the tournament stage.
We are also using this tournament to market it to our mainstream media. We are going to invite all major news papers, tv stations and others to visit us at DigiExpo. We are also planning to invite other people that could help out the growth of eSports in Finland like City of Helsinki Youth work coordinators, culture and sports minister, Members of parliament, Finnish sports Federation representatives. One of our goals is to market eSports as sports for them.
And of course for players we are planning to give them more than a nice tournament. We have planned some additional program for the players outside the tournament, to make it an experience for them as well.
Link to the first page of the interview
Link to the second page of the interview
ATTENTION: The interview consists of two pages!
Enjoy reading and enjoy the tournament