[dippa]

Kristoffer "TargA" Marthinsen, who is currently 5th in his NASL group after recording wins against Jinro and Sheth from Team Liquid, was kind enough to sit down with me for an interview, where he talked about his pro-gaming career, the Ministry of Win, moving from Norway, balance and the state of the Australian scene.

GON: It's unfortunate that Australians don't get as many opportunities as European or North American players to get accustomed to major tournaments like IEM or MLG. You attended IEM Kiev itself, finishing 3rd in your group after beating the well-known HasuObs and taking a game off Korean legend MMA.

How different is it playing at a major international tournament from something like ACL - and is there anything local organisers can do to bridge the gap?

TargA: Everything is different, the skill level is much higher at international tournaments, there’s more people watching the streams and the live audience is bigger too, but the biggest factor in all of this is the prize pool. If local organizers want a bigger audience, more publicity and higher skill level, they have to raise the prize pool in order to attract foreigners. And if they do so they need to accommodate the players better, help them out as much as possible so they have a good stay and want to return. They should also create more hype around the events, right now they are announcing "venue/prize pool", instead they should create hype and storylines. "We have the best player in SEA coming, can someone stop him,” and so on.

You can read the rest of the interview over at Australian gaming portal games.on.net, which features a regular eSports column written every Sunday by yours truly!

(And if you could go to the GON page and comment how much you liked the interview, that'd help a great deal in getting more SC2 related content as well. Thanks ^.^)

Quick Comments

	Dox:
	Mr_Zain:
	Eddie:
	syfChadMann:

[Dox]

Totally agree, wonderful insight TargA!

This is what I tried to push with events like Dox Cup #2 but unfortunately it takes so much time that I just don't have.

[Champi]

Loved the shoutout to the TA DOTA 2 team.

good read. ty targa

[Rockstar]

I have to disagree with this a bit..

First of all we're pretty much the most remote country in the world.. Americans, Koreans, Europeans, and pretty much the rest of the world have to pay very high travel costs just to get here. Once they're here, the cost of accommodation and basic living expenses was high even before the Australian dollar was so strong. On top of all that, they have far better options to spend their money on than a tournament tens of thousands of miles away from their home. Any amount of prize money that could possibly be scrounged together would barely cover their bills. The icing on the cake is the 200 ping latency that the average Australian connection gets to "our" server.'

Anyway, it would be nice to get these players here and the only truly feasible idea I can think of is if established teams "Contracted" one or 2 of these pros for a team league and used them while they were here to help train your team... Obviously your team would have to cover the costs of entry/flights and give them a place to stay while they were here... In return they would use a lot of their time while here helping your team overall with tips, strategies, pointing out weaknesses etc. etc. etc.

As for just getting them to turn up for an Australian sized prize pool, I mean we have enough trouble getting players from Perth, South Australia or even the less remote regions in our own country to show up... Why would Koreans, Americans or Europeans bother?

[Eddie]

Nice article, good read

[ROOT`iaguz]

Good interview TargA.

[deL]

I opened the thread and looked into that picture. By the time I pulled myself away and scrolled down to the article I realised it had been 2 hours.

[2ezy]

Watched his games against White-Ra on games spot, I was very impressed.

Good article as well, good to see Aussies up there.

[inFeZa]

Hard to hype when you're banned.