EPT
1,000,000 is a magical number. Have a million dollars? That means you are rich. Have a million hit points? You can't die in tower defense. Have a million IPs connect to your website? You are a sucess. Somewhere, some executive in Korea must have been doing the same little happy dance that I was when I heard the final tally of the GOM StarCraft Invitational. For him, it meant that potential sponsors and companies would be far more attracted to his product than if the number had been, say, 750,000. For me, it meant the dream of professional English StarCraft was becoming a reality. Not just a tournament here and there, but a real sport.While the GSI is finished, GOM certainly is not. Today I had a talk with Jae-Uk Jung, aka pocari, who is a project manager for GOM and a titan in the world of eSports in Korea. He has worked for FighterForum and was our nemisis in the SandLot Tournament. He has been a WarCraft III commentator, worked for WCG Korea, the KeSPA Cup, and much more. He is now part of the team determined to bring the Korean vision of eSports into the international sphere.
Mani- Hello and thank you for making time for us today. Can I get your name, race, and APM?
pocari- Hello, my name is Jae-Uk Jung, I like to play terran, and my APM is about 220. I am a Project Manager for Gretech.
Mani- Just so that people are clear, how are GOM and Gretech related. Are they the same company?
pocari- Gretech is the name of our company, while GOM is the name of our brand. GOM means Gretech Online Multimedia, so the GOM player is the Gretech Online Multimedia player. We provide the largest Video On Demand service in Korea over the internet. We are different from services such as YouTube as it is not a UCC site (User Created Content). We actually purchase or get into revenue sharing agreements with professional content providers, and we offer movies, news clips, music videos, etc. So far GOM Player has been downloaded 210 million times, and we have about 6 million daily users.
Mani- And how did you become involved with them? I only know you from your FighterForum days.
pocari- I'm a big fan of eSports, and I believe Gretech is the best company to create eSports content. I have been working here for 6 months now.
Mani- Ok, lets talk about the GSI a bit. How did the idea come about?
pocari- We've been airing MBC StarCraft leagues for some time now, and we thought there was a huge demand for eSports outside Korea which isn't being tapped. And we also thought that creating eSports content would be a great fit for us, since most of our users are in their 20's and 30's, and very tech savvy.
Mani- You reported after the GSI that there were more than 1 million unique hits on the website for the tournament. Did this meet expectations? And will the GOM player hold more English content (especially an English skin) because of the result?pocari- We certainly believe that this project was a success. We are planning to create more eSports content in English, because we did see a huge market potential. We are thinking about the games what we broadcast in English. It's not exact, but for example StarCraft, WarCraft, WoW, etc.
Mani- About the invitational itself, it was GOM's first production... what were some of the challenges, and what were some of the highlights?
pocari- First, we had some trouble in the beginning meeting the huge demands technically as we weren't expecting as much traffic as we did receive. For our next invitational/league, we'll definitely be putting more time and efforts into the development work.. such as more bandwidth, better forum online, stability, etc.
As for the highlights... I think the best part of it was the games Boxer played. He didn't exactly show his best performance there, but it was his first appearance as an individual player ever since he joined the air force, and watching him play was enough to get me excited. I think Boxer is legend.
Mani- Yes, me too The quality of games was very good I thought. Sometimes Invitationals are not so competitive, but this was. That was a highlight for me. What was the best match to watch, regardless of the players?
pocari- The Final match on Kartrina, Flash vs Stork. As you know it's too hard for Terran to defeat Protoss on Kartrina. but Flash did it. He is an unbelievable player.
Mani- Yes, the goliaths were invincible. Lets talk about Nick Plott for a minute. How did he do? Will he be rehired for the GOM StarLeague? And will he have help?pocari- As you know, Nick is one of the best StarCraft commentators out there. We need an English commentator (or commentatorS), and this time, fortunately we could work with him. We do want to work with him again in the future.
Mani- I heard that Artosis will be coming to Korea to help him. Is that true?
image by nevergg
pocari- It hasn't been decided yet.
Mani- But it is a possibility?
pocari- Ya, but it hasn't been decided yet.
Mani- Im also wondering, what details about the GOM StarLeague can you give us at this time? How will it fit where there are already two StarLeauges?
pocari- We are planning on holding the matches that do not overlap with other leagues'. That part is still under negotiation, so I can't say anything for sure yet. We are planning on starting GSL in the beginning of April. OGN and MBC have contributed immensely to eSports in Korea, but I think our market is a little bit different, however. GOM TV is trying to focus more on the audiences outside Korea as well as people who consume content online whereas OGN and MBC mainly broadcast their games on TV.
Mani- How is GOM going to try and connect with the established foreign communities? The biggest barriers for foreigners so far have been
1) Language
2) Timezones
3) Access, there are only illegal ways for us to watch OGN and MBC until very recently.
pocari- We are expanding our Global Business Team, and in doing so we'll definitely be having more English speakers on board. For timezones.... that's a difficult issue as we have audiences around the world, and we can't just accommodate audiences in one particular timezone. But when we are doing the scheduling, we'll try to accommodate as many viewers as possible. For #3, we don't really see access as a huge problem as we are the content creator as well as the distributor.... I don't see any legal issues there.
Mani- That is great news. It has been frustrating in the past, because the other companies have never allowed us in. Ok, that is all I've got at this time, but hopefully GOM and TL.net can work together in the future. Thank you for your time.
pocari- I hope so too. Thank you very much.
So, a short but enlightening glimpse into the world of GOM TV. We will continue to stay in touch with the GOM team, and anxiously await thier upcoming creations.
Mani
Thanks nice work
Looking forward to Gom's future events.
