SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

For those of you who don’t know me, hello my name is Brad. I am the eSports Manager of StarCraft II for the Australian Cyber League (ACL) and for South East Asia’s World Championship Series (WCS) Qualifiers. I’m 23 years old and I’ve been doing this kind of stuff for a few years now. Hopefully I’ll be able to meet you in 2015 and if you ever see me please don’t be afraid to say hello. I love meeting people from the community!

So when I think back to the start of 2014 I think of the exciting announcement that the prestigious World Championship Series was giving South East Asia a direct qualifying process for all three seasons. Not only that we were, and many may not know this, the only qualifying region to receive a cash prize pool before Challenger.

When briefed of this I remember thinking to myself how important this opportunity was to our region. I put a lot of pressure on myself to make sure it ran smoothly and looked and felt like a WCS tournament. The team and I worked extremely hard on creating the official website (wcs2014.aclpro.com.au) and tried to work with as many community figures as possible to create a memorable experience.

I felt like Season 1 of WCS 2014 had mixed responses. The tournament itself ran smoothly with very little issues besides the reoccurring no-show problem our region seems to be plagued with. However in feedback a lot of people felt the qualification process was too restricted and there were too many hoops to jump through. I guess when you put your heart and soul into a project and there’s even a small amount of constructive criticism it’s hard not to take it personally. I remember reading Eddie’s quite large post and feeling like I had failed the community, whether that feeling was accurate or not.

Alas moving into Season 2 of WCS 2014 I made a conscious effort to resolve as many feedback concerns as possible from the previous season. The biggest issue people had was in regards to only accounts on SEA and NA being considered (no KR or EU). This was a decision held firm by Blizzard despite a loud voice from the community – I guess sometimes you have to bite your lip guys! With the experience of Season 1 under my belt I felt like Season 2 ran a lot better and feedback seemed to echo this.

Season 3 was a bit different. Instead of all seeds coming from an online tournament, we decided to split the seeds to one online and one offline. The online component ran smoothly once again and I’m extremely proud of the team I have working with me (admins, casters etc.). The decision to offer the second seed at ACL Sydney was controversial to say the least. While I do agree it offered less opportunities to those unable to travel, if I had the option of doing it again I would have. I’ll go into detail about ACL Sydney in the ACL section of this blog but good lord that was the most stressful two days of my two years at ACL!

Overall my experience of managing WCS for our region in 2014 was one of enjoyment. It kind of filled the void which was left when I had to stop running wT Weekly and Majors. I definitely feel privileged to be in the position I am, working so closely with Blizzard. I’m really excited about 2015 with more flexible registration requirements and a check-in process which should resolve the no-show problem. We’ll also be broadcasting some of the WCS competition live from our studio!

I should probably start this segment disclaiming anything I say in here is my own opinion and doesn’t necessarily reflect the opinions of ACL as a whole. For me ACL in 2014 feels bitter sweet. While ACL Sydney was an event I and I’m sure many others will never forget for hopefully positive reasons, I can’t help but feel sad for Melbourne. This was the first year in my time at ACL where ACL Melbourne was not an event. To put the theories to bed, it wasn’t a desired decision to miss Melbourne – we love Melbourne and it has had our biggest attendance of an ACL, at least for StarCraft. Simple answer is we couldn’t find the time to slot the event in (due to balancing other projects) and be confident in our ability to achieve a certain standard of product we strive to produce each ACL event. Sorry guys!

I won’t talk about the online rounds as they were pretty straight forward. I think it was well received by the community having all the dates for online rounds ahead of time so I’ll try to keep that up. So ACL Brisbane was the first event of the 2014 calendar year. This was a totally different event to prepare and manage compared to what we were used to - much smaller than previous events and only involving two titles. To my surprise the smaller venue worked really well. StarCraft had its own room upstairs (which I quickly labelled the “HotBox”) while Call of Duty battled it out downstairs. From my perspective the preparation and delivery of ACL Brisbane was just as stressful but rewarding as any other ACL event I had done in the past. It possessed its own challenges being a much smaller venue but overall I feel it was a successful event. I don’t think there will ever be a day where there is nothing to improve on for an offline event of ACL scale. I’m really glad the event was well received.

Then came ACL Sydney and boy was this a totally different beast. From the small spaces of The Edge at ACL Brisbane to the huge space at the Australian Technology Park for ACL Sydney. This was the biggest event ACL had ever attempted. Five competitive titles and a Hearthstone free-to-play area along with live streaming and shout-casting. This event was particularly special as it was the first time Blizzard had worked directly with ACL at an offline ACL event. Although we still aren’t near a level of IEM or DreamHack, it was particularly special to me finally being part of a big Australian StarCraft project with significant stage presence.

I knew ACL Sydney was important for a magnitude of reasons and so I put a lot of pressure on myself to deliver a successful event, even more than for the first season of WCS. Did I achieve that? Well I think the stage looked great, the commentary was excellent, the stream looked good for the resources we had available and the tournament itself showed some excellent games. However I will never forget the stress, frustration and disappointment with how open bracket played out. It was like everything that could go wrong did and I can’t hide the fact from anybody who was at the event that I went through almost every emotional state possible in that first day. We had computers, which were all working the night before, decide to stop working. We had a series in the first round of open bracket play a 2 hour game. Not to mention the unfortunate bracket situation, completely unavoidable with the seeding system, resulting in one bracket having significantly more heavy hitters in it than the other.

I know I probably don’t need to say this but.. I’m sorry. I’m especially sorry to all players who had to experience the delays in the open bracket and as a result a delayed start for the group stage. To be honest the fact that we finished the event at the time we did without going past 9pm on the first night was a testament to the ACL team working with me. Literally blood, sweat and tears from me (yes I did shed a tear at one point, I guess I’m human too) and maybe just sweat from my admin team. You all know who you are. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’m just glad the community overall enjoyed ACL Sydney!

So when I look at ACL as a whole I think we as a team learned a lot and also achieved a lot. While we probably won’t look to do an event of ACL Sydney scale in 2015 (in terms of quantity of titles) we definitely want to continue to push ourselves, be it through an ACL event or otherwise, to continue to provide exceptional gaming experiences for Australia and New Zealand. What about 2015? I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.

I loved this project and I am really excited about bringing the new studio to WCS broadcasts in 2015. It was a really happy with how this series went especially with the small timeframe we had to deliver it before the we got caught up with EB Expo, NZ Armageddon and PAX Australia. I’d like to think overall this project was a success and I won’t deny there is an abundance of things to improve on which I will try to implement during the WCS broadcasts. There really is nothing better than producing a show in the same location as the talent. Talking directly with casters through their headsets and being able to utilise our best streaming equipment at the office makes such a difference. The ACL Studio has a lot of potential and 2015 offers a lot of opportunities to utilise it more. Hopefully we can do that with StarCraft II content.

As mentioned above, WCS 2015 is an exciting time (wcs2015.aclpro.com.au). We’re trying something new with Battlefy and we’ll have to wait and see if it works. What’s important though is we’re flexible and are constantly looking at ways to streamline the process. I can’t wait to see our best compete in WCS Premier. With the ACL Studio complete I look forward to using it for more and more content. Who knows how ACL 2015 looks, we’re still finalising plans there but don’t worry – you’ll know as soon as we’re ready to announce something.