Hello Michal, thanks for your time. First of all, can you introduce yourself quickly for the ones who don’t know you yet ?

Hi. I am a VP of Pro Gaming at ESL in North America and I manage Intel Extreme Masters, one of the world’s oldest esports competitions. Most of my job is to put up events and make sure that they’re fantastic entertainment for the community. Before that I was a journalist that covered esports, traveled the world and interviewed people.

You were journalist for SK Gaming and then you have been recruited by ESL. You’ve been the IEM director for several years now. How did you come up to this position ?

It’s actually quite amusing. They were interviewing me for the position of the editor in chief for the ESL website and I mentioned I’d like to help shape the story around IEM. The guy running IEM was leaving the company to finish his college degree, so they just gave me all of IEM to manage with no management experience whatsoever. There was nothing than the CEO’s hunch that would suggest that I would be good at this!

Modern Times group bought ESL back in July 2015. After a year and a half, how is it going ? Did you notice a before MTG and an after MTG ?

There were multiple companies that wanted to acquire ESL but MTG was selected because of the expertise they offer in the media space. The one big difference between pre-MTG and post-MTG times is the fact that we at ESL have unlimited access to a huge wealth of experience and expertise in the media side of things.

MTG also bought DreamHack AB. Do you work together ? Are there any link between DH Masters and IEM ? Some common expertise you share, like in the production for example ?

I think in the long term it would be a missed opportunity not to work closer together with DreamHack on building an ecosystem that does not cannibalize on itself. The current CS:GO landscape is facing challenges similar to StarCraft II in 2011. Almost every week you see the same teams competing in different competitions to the point where some would say it’s too much.

It’s tough to get excited over Virtus Pro vs. Fnatic any more because those teams can face each other almost every week, all in different competitions. Those stories are all on top of each other and it’s very hard to follow a swell. I would compare it to trying to listen to music while someone’s playing 4 tracks at the same time. It’s hard to pick out the melody and follow.

Maybe we can try to play music that fits well together. It would be to everyone’s benefit.

Since Esports Services (ESEA, etc…) was acquired by ESL, you’re working in the American ESL studios in Burbank. Was it a difficult decision to live abroad ?

It wasn’t really that difficult since I thought my time in Germany was up. I wanted to try to something different before my daughter turned the age where you go to school, since that’s when I wanted to come back to Poland. I have to say that it could not have been more valuable from the point of view of life experience.

Do you notice any major differences between the Polish, the German or the American perspectives about eSports or is there for you any “common occidental esport culture” ?

I think there’s a massive problem in what kind of sports systems Americans are used to and what they think can work for esports compared to Europeans. In Europe there’s much more diversity in terms of how sports are structured and we are used to so many different formats. In America it’s all franchise models, college teams, combines and drafts. That stuff does not translate to esports very well. 

If you want to have the esports version of the NFL, you need to be able to ensure that in the long run it has a stream of fresh blood delivered to the league. In basketball and football it’s colleges that provide those players. It makes sense because when you enter your peak physical condition you’re just about college age. But in esports a player’s peak age is already a few years before college, so colleges won’t be the place that produces the next n0thing.

So you have a problem with delivering talent to your league if you build a closed NBA style thing. That’s just one example of it.

IEM was the big ESL eSports product till the arrival of the ESl One. We can now add the Dreamhack Masters too. These are the three main entertaining products for MTG. Any rivalry between these three brands ? Is anyone depending on each other or is it up to you to produce your events how you want them to be ?

I think anyone that says there’s no rivalry has no ambition! Whenever you’re trying to produce something that’s good, you look around and see what the benchmarks are for “good”, and then you try to do better than that. In that sense, there’s a rivalry between all esports events in the world.

There’s also the benefit of being able to try out different things and see what works, and why. IEM has, for instance, 12 teams and two groups with round robin. ESL One New York had 8 teams with Swiss. No one has a blueprint for esports, so it’s immensely useful to the scene that we get to try out different formats and see what works under which conditions. It’s the same principle as Valve having different approaches to DotA 2 and CS:GO, and it works.

Very powerful speech during the IEM Katowice 2016 opening ceremony. (starts around 6:00)

 

It's not a secret that Valve wants their majors to be hosted in events with an only game. It’s putting offside every IEM stage which are historically hosting at least two games. What’s your point of view regarding this decision ? Did you ever negotiate with Valve precisely on this subjet ?

I think it would be a very bad business model to rest all your hopes on hosting a Valve Major. If there’s ever an opportunity to make an IEM event work as a Valve Major, I would be pleased to take it. We did not negotiate this with Valve because Valve typically have very well thought out decision-making and if you understand their priorities, everything they do adds up quite well.

MLG, E-League, you have many opponents in North America, or even worldwide. Is there any room for all these actors ? Aren’t you scared that this bubble created by these numerous investor explodes someday ?

In general, it’s good that competition exists. That is absolutely fantastic for the fans because if ESL does well, someone else needs to do better next time. I think the only thing to be scared of is people doing irresponsible things with money that did not come from sustainable revenue streams. I think the concept of a bubble applies to esports right now. In the long run, companies with the healthiest approach to their business have the best chance of survival in such an environment.

The CS:GO scene becomes more and more saturated. We have online games every night which could be major finals. Is it a real issue for you to create some enthusiasm around the IEM where Fnatic is going to face EnVyUs for the fifth time this week (joking but you understand the point) ? How to deal with it and create some convincing storylines ?

I really do think there’s too much content out there. Events need to work with each other to manage that, but realistically there’s not enough common ground to do things. One of the problems is that in order to sell out a stadium, you need to guarantee the presence of the very best teams. You do that by way of invitations. That means that not only do major events happen often, but it’s very often the same teams competing in them. This makes it even worse from this perspective, since all top events are like groundhog day with a similar format and a similar lineup.

We are guilty of it as well, but it’s not realistic to avoid invitations altogether in a world where everyone does it. In the long run we want to run meaningful LAN qualifiers for our events to make sure we produce more teams that come up and challenge the top dogs. I think a mixture of invitations and very strong LAN qualifiers is the right format for events.

When it comes to creating convincing stories, it’s a question of tournament organizers working with each other, which is obviously very challenging!

Spodek Arena, Oracle Arena, MSG. eSports is taking place in the most prestigious convention centers in the world. hastr0, CEO of EnVyUs told he’d like to build his own stadium dedicated to his team. Would it be for you a future component of eSports ? Would it be possible to have Home/Away games into the different stadiums ? The acquisitions of eSports teams by sports franchises could have open this path ?

No, I don’t think that in the near future it would be. Producing live broadcasts is a very expensive thing and what you are suggesting means that a number of teams would pay dozens of people every week or every two weeks to run a live broadcast out of their studio. I don’t think it’s viable without crowds that are consistently very large every week. I don’t think esports is there yet.

If you also take into account that different games are popular in different regions, and that games still tend to lose fan bases over time, building a very expensive location in one spot is a risk. Having said that, this is esports. It’s difficult to know things for sure without trying them. It might be that I’m just a douche bag with a limited horizon!

Where would you ever dream of hosting an event ?

I have to say that some of the very best esports I’ve ever been to as a spectator were in France. My first global event in Poitiers at ESWC in 2003 left a massive impression on me, but also ESWC in 2005, the Blizzard WWI in 2008 and a couple of other events. Good events and good memories! I would like to run a major stadium event in Paris to see if I can do as well, or better. Stars need to align well for this one to happen.

ESL France built his own studios in Paris to produce and broadcast its own content. Their partnership with Vivendi can lead to events into the most prestigious halls in France. Can you tell us more about this ? Can you confirm there will finally be IEM events on the French soil ?

We had a very successful IEM Challenger event at Paris Games Week a few weeks back, which was a positive sign for the future. France is talked about before every IEM season. That’s all that I can say. 

You’ve been a famous journalist. What’s your opinion about creating content about eSports ? Is there any lack of retrospective content in an environment where most people is kind of new and isn’t aware of the good old glories ?

Journalism as a whole is seeing a lot of challenges globally. It does not matter if you are the first to write a story. Someone with a very big Twitter account will still share what happened an hour later and no one visits your site. Breaking news no longer has the same value. Today the value is in being very relevant and interesting more than actually providing people with information. Providing good commentary is important more than ever. You can get news anywhere.

CS:GO and League of Legends are the IEM’s principal battle horses. Do you think they can last for a long time (5/10 years) or that some games will ultimately finish to overthrow them ? If so, do you have any games or kind of games in mind ?

5 year is almost half of IEM’s history. It’s very hard to predict such things, but we’ve entered an age where games are able to last a long time and keep growing, where in the past they would get smaller and less popular with time. It’s very different to what it used to be. But I am not your charlatan that will promise you a prediction of where the industry will be. I think anyone that tells you he or she is confident that esports will look like XYZ in 5 years is full of merde!

Last question, where is Uszat ? We miss him so much !

It has become a lot of work to execute Uszat well enough for it to remain fresh and original. It’s time that I don’t have these days, but I would love to bring the asshole back!