[dippa]

An interview with the Baller - Derek "Dox" Reball

Most of you guys know that I have a regular column on eSports with games.on.net, and for my most recent column I borrowed Derek "Dox" Reball for an interview on a side of eSports that we don't see often - running events.

After all, Dox is the man to talk to about these things - the guy has been running events since Brood War and until recently was the administrative equivalent of God for Southeast Asia. Since his new job doesn't afford him the opportunity to lend his administrative talents to our scene - for now, at least - I thought it'd be a wise move to pick his brain for a little.

GON: What was the first big lesson or mistake you made as an administrator?

Derek: There was an Australian qualifier for the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational back in 2004. Due to time restrictions, we only had 1 day to run the entire event, with players scheduled to fly back out at 7:00PM. So I made a decision to run groups, followed by a best-of-one single elimination bracket. Andrew “mOOnGLaDe” Pender went 6-0 in his group, whilst the rest of the people who made it to the next stage of the tournament went 4-2 or 3-3 at best.

In the first round of the Single Elimination Bracket, GLaDe got really unlucky against Bryan “SiZeMaTTeRs” Murphy – losing his entire army and hero in a bad creep jack. Because of this, an unknown player by the name of “SouLJaH” ended up taking out the tournament, and it left a really bad taste in the collective mouth of the community for a long time.

Funnily enough,SouLJaH went on to eliminate Wizard – one of the reigning champions from North America in the first round of the global finals before he was eventually knocked out of the tournament. But that was the day that I learned a very valuable lesson – never compromise the integrity of the event in order to meet a deadline.

You can read the rest of the very long interview over at games.on.net.

However, there's also a little surprise for all of you. Because Derek was kind enough to share so much of his wisdom, in a few days I'll be posting an unabridged version of the interview here on SC2SEA so that all of his thoughts can be enjoyed in full. Show your love for eSports and stop by games.on.net first though =D

(Also, you can follow my Twitter for more news and bits and pieces about eSports and stuff at @thedippaeffect!)

[Nv.GTR]

Good old Hui Doc Pham.

[TAXanT]

Nice article, great read!

[Norksman]

Still waiting for the full version!

[dippa]

The Unedited Baller - Derek "Dox" Reball

Derek "Dox" Reball gave me a gracious amount of time and knowledge when I interviewed him for games.on.net last week, and as I promised, here is the full force of the dragon's wisdom.

At 4000 words plus, it's a hefty read but it's also an important one, laced with lessons and experiences dating as far back as 1999. There's a lot of stuff in the unedited version that you guys wouldn't have seen, simply because it had to be cut down to a more manageable size - but that's what this thread's for.

Again, I'd like to thank Dox for taking the time to answer my questions, and you, dear reader, for doing your bit to support eSports (on the media side of things anyway). Note that the grammar/spelling in this is as is because it's too bloody big, so cut me (but more importantly Derek) a little bit of slack, and enjoy! (Edit: I've also been awake for 28 hours straight at the time of posting, so be gentle -_-)

Could you introduce yourself for those who don't know you, and just give a little background into what kind of gamer you are and for how long you've been gaming?

My name is Derek Reball, I'm just shy of 28 years old, currently based in Brisbane, QLD. I'm somewhat of an eclectic gamer, often found bouncing back and forth between 10 different games across 6 different genres on 5 different platforms. (For example, in the last week I've played: StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty (RTS - PC), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (FPS - XBox), Final Fantasy 3 (RPG - Phone), Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale Beta (Fighting - PS3 & Vita), DOTA 2 (MOBA - PC), Tales of Graces f (RPG - PS3), Diablo 3 (RPG - PC), StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm Beta (RTS - PC), Borderlands 2 (FPS - PC), Goldeneye 007: Reloaded (FPS, PS3), Darksiders 2 (RPG - XBox), The Legend of Zelda - Skyward Sword (RPG - Wii) and plenty of others. I've been gaming for as long as I can remember - some of my earliest childhood memories include playing Frogger, Q-Bert & Pitfall on Atari, along with spending 3 hours waiting for an 8-bit fireworks display to load via the old Amstrad tape drive. There was a Celeco in there somewhere too. But the Commodore 64 and Amiga were seriously trendy. Shout out to anyone who played the original Cannon Fodder, Troddlers, PP Hammer, Boulderdash, Rainbow Islands, Lemmings and X-Out games!! Classics.

As for competitive gaming, I didn't really make a splash in Brood War. I was a one-base gimmick player who relied on micro to win. I remember at the WCGC in 2000, L!MP, Iori and Starhunter were standing behind me, watching me play a ZvP against RaZoR. "Who the hell micro's Zerglings?" they said, laughing as I was getting the upper hand against his Zealots. (For the record, he still thrashed me later in that game.) These days, everyone does it. But back then, that was my thing. When WarCraft 3 launched, I hit it pretty hard. The slower pace, the emphasis on micro and creativity really allowed me to shine as a competitor player. I didn't win many tournaments, but it felt good to be able to stand with those who did. Although I've played a lot of competitive titles over the years (WCG Australia Finalist for Unreal Tournament 2003 & Dead or Alive Ultimate), Real-Time Strategy is still my one true passion.

You originally started running tournaments for Warcraft 3, a scene that was dedicated but much smaller compared to other games such as Counter-Strike and the fighting game communities. Was there a lot of resources or other admins that you could learn from when you started out?

Actually I just kinda jumped on board the whole eSports movement while it was still establishing itself (in Australia) in 1999. The phrase "eSports" didn't even exist back then - we just called it competitive gaming. I sat in on some Brood War tournaments (no prizes, just bragging rights) at The Bunker and took mental notes. From there, it lead to running the Brood War side of WCG for a few years, and everything since then has been a snowballing series of learnings. Back then, it was an educational experience for everyone. Players didn't understand the concept of a bracket, and terms like "Double Elimination" and "Round Robin" meant nothing to them. All they cared about was playing the game. More often than not, players would disregard the bracket and spontaneously start playing their own King of the Hill style matches instead. Between 1999 and 2002 we saw an enormous cultural shift in Australia where people just started to "get it." Everyone saw this shining beacon of opportunity where they could play games and be recognised as the best. There wasn't a lot of prizes going around at the time, and money was almost non-existent. It was just simply about being the best at something they loved. There was a serious lack of people willing to run the events, unless they saw an opportunity for profit.

There wasn't really anyone I could learn from back then, it was just this kind of clunky road where I'd stumble through an event without a clue what I was doing, and by the end of it, one of the players would approach me with a good idea to implement for next time. For example - Flipping the Double Elimination Bracket upside down in round 2. Back then, the closest thing we had to an automated online bracket was "BracketMaker.com" (still exists today) so we typically did everything on pen and paper, in the assumed absence of an internet connection. Later on someone suggested having a more diverse, structured array of maps. And then vetoes. And I continued to grow as an adminisrator based on the feedback of participants. 12 years later, I found myself still taking in the suggestions of players from the ACL Gold Coast & Sydney events. No system is ever perfect, and there will always be room for improvement.

What was the first big lesson or mistake you made as an administrator?

Oh man, I'm never gonna live this one down. It's actually documented in detail somewhere on the 2bh clan forums by "Mooz", better known these days as FXOBoSs. Essentially there was an Australian qualifier for the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational back in 2004. Due to time restrictions, we only had 1 day to run the entire event, with players scheduled to fly back out at 7:00PM later that day. So I made a decision to run Group Stages, followed by a BEST OF ONE Single Elimination bracket. Andrew "mOOnGLaDe" Pender went 6-0 in his group, whilst the rest of the people who made it to the next stage of the tournament went 4-2 or 3-3 at best. In the first round of the Single Elimination Bracket, GLaDe got really unlucky against Bryan "SiZeMaTTeRs" Murphy - losing his entire army and hero in a bad creep jack. Because of this, an unknown player by the name of "SouLJaH" ended up taking out the tournament, and it left a really bad taste in the collective mouth of the community for a long time. Funnily enough, SouLJaH went on to eliminate "Wizard" - one of the reigning champions from North America in the first round of the global finals before he was eventually knocked out of the tournament. But that was the day that I learned a very valuable lesson.

Never compromise the integrity of the event in order to meet a deadline. If you have to postpone the match and play them online at a later date, or run the event until 2:00AM, do it. People might complain for a day or two about an event running overtime, but people will never forget the time a rightful champion was robbed of his victory because the tournament director made a bad call.

Time management is always a factor that seems to plague events all over the world. How do you cope - what can you do to minimise delays and what tricks or strategies do you have for making up for lost time?

Funnily enough, most time delays are completely out of my hands. I mean, over the years I've developed a solid routine where I can practically run an event in my sleep. (Seriously, I've had people tell me I've been talking in my sleep about brackets and maps and all sorts of stuff.) So ultimately, once you have that routine down, you know what to expect and you can prepare a lot of it in advance. A few things I've learned over the years:

- If you want the event to start at 11:00AM, tell the players it starts at 10:00AM. Gamers in generally have very poor time management skills, so more often than not, you'll have a few stragglers running late.

- Save yourself time in advance by preparing all of the resources you need the night before. If you require the participants to fill out a registration form, create one in excel or google docs and allow them to enter their own details. Provide them with examples so they know exactly what is expected of them. Make the bracket page early, and include as much info on it as possible, so all you need to do is enter the names the next day.

- When gathering details of participants, be sure to grab their phone number. People often wander away during events because although you might have a very specific schedule in mind, they might decide to go and grab a snack or take a cigarette break between matches - leaving you stressed & stranded whilst inevitably causing delays.

- Keep a database of this information! Don't just get rid of their phone numbers and e-mail addresses once the event is over. Save it for next time. Don't just plan for now, but for the future.

- Be sure to send participants reminders prior to the event. If you just let them sign up on a forum or a registration page, chances are, they're going to forget. I personally only allow players to register for an event via e-mail, which allows me to communicate directly with them 1 week, 1 day and 1 hour before the event goes live. It also makes life easy if any changes occur to the format/schedule.

- When e-mailing players, use the BCC function. Don't just copy/paste all of their e-mails into the address bar. It's really unprofessional, and if one of their accounts is compromised, you may very well be responsible for spreading spam and other malicious content between them all. It's also respectful of their privacy. Who knows? Maybe a sore loser will decide to dig up the e-mail address of his opponent and get nasty.

- Always do a test run the night before. You'd be surprised how many times I've announced the commencement of an event and left out something really important, like the maps or who is being seeded. Just create a dummy bracket, enter in the registrations and play it through from start to finish with some predicted results. No-one needs to see it, but it's always fun to go back and take a look at the bracket the next day and see how close your predictions were to the end result.

- This one is my least favourite, but unfortunately it comes with the territory. You need to find a way to be firm (but polite) with the players. In a close-knit community like ours, everyone is a friend. And sometimes you feel like a jerk when you tell them to stop socialising and start their match. Or even worse - when you tell a guy who is devastated about losing a match to pack up his gear and vacate the computer so the next player can get ready. If you let players stand around mingling and occupying computers to their own leisure, events will never, ever finish on time.

- Never be afraid to admit your mistakes. You will make them, but it's how you remedy them in future that really matters.

Many tournament organisers often have to put their hand in their own pocket to make balance budgets at the end of the day. How frequently have you had to spend your own dollars to cover costs, and what are the best ways to make an event as budget-neutral as possible?

Well, eSports (in Australia, at least) has always been about volunteers and charity. Whether it's flights, accommodation or venue hire, it always comes from the pocket of the volunteer who has agreed to run the show. The only exceptions in nearly 13 years are last years Battle.net Invitational in Sydney (I was given a room to share with RedArchon) and WCS Australia/Oceania, where my flights and accommodation were paid for. Much love to Blizzard.

Every other event to date has been an acceptable loss for me, with the biggest one being my own (online) event last year - Dox Cup #2 - where I put $2,000 of my own money into the prize pool. The best (and only way, without the aid of sponsors) to recover those costs are entry fees. People may complain about them (because most competitive gamers are poor uni students, after all!), but it's a necessary compromise in order to keep these events afloat. Even then, I know that events like ACL are far from turning a profit. The entry fees barely cover the prize pool, let-alone the venue hire, equipment hire and various other associated costs. It's a sad fact of life that I often choose to ignore. When you really look deep within the scene and realise how many peoples' wallets are bleeding, it kinda takes some of the magic out of it.

When it comes to events hosted at internet cafes, it's another story entirely. There is this misconception that internet cafes lose money because the entry fee is often less than what they would make if their computers were occupied by regular paying customers. But the truth is, many people who are eliminated early in the tournament don't spend the rest of the day at the venue. They'll pack up and leave, vacating that computer for someone else to use. (Not to mention there's no guarantee that an internet cafe will be completely full for an entire 8 hour block anyway.) And the real kicker is the drinks. These venues purchase drinks and snacks at a wholesale price, and when a tournament is running, most people don't have time to leave the venue and grab some food. So they'll turn over up to $4 per drink, per person, multiple times throughout the day. Rest assured, tournaments are very lucrative for internet cafes, especially when they offer products from sponsors as prizes instead of cash. So if you're looking to break even (or even profit) from a tournament - internet cafes are your best bet. In my experience with venues like Elysium in Brisbane and iBisQ in Melbourne (recently re-opened in their new location!), they're always happy to offer a significantly discounted rate when it comes to venue hire.

A lot of gamers come to an event and they'll see the games and complain or praise the setup but they never really experience the exhaustion and time that goes into making it all happen. How much effort and man-power does it take to get a major venue, such as the Roundhouse at the University of New South Wales or the Mooney Valley Racecourse, ready for an event?

Back in 2004, when I was running the Innovative Home Show WarCraft 3 event for Pantheon eSports (recently re-launched, check out their new site!), we had to fly 8 people down to Melbourne 3 days in advance so that we could lay all the carpet, construct the stage, prepare the network, transport the equipment, test the audio/video, and configure the PC's/peripherals.

And here's the kicker - this was before the era of streaming. We didn't even have to worry about internet connections, stream quality, or any of the other associated nightmares. When I look back at those days, and then look at the efficiency of the ACL/LanSmash team, it leaves me in awe. These guys rock up to the venue 1 day before the event with a team as small as 5 people and make pure magic happen. The combination of sheer technical excellence and manual labour endured by these guys is truly admirable. Competitors will never truly appreciate the amount of effort that goes into the setup until they've been a part of the process. More often than not, these guys are working until midnight (or later), with only a few hours sleep before they need to wake up and kick the event off the next morning. And of course, that's when some of the technical difficulties start creeping out... equipment which was working 12 hours ago is no longer co-operating. Internet is dropping out. Computers are losing power. Screens are refusing to turn on. Microphones have gone missing. But the ability to quickly and efficiently resolve these issues and keep the show running is a true talent. In the WCS Australia/Oceania documentary by The Filming Archon, you can see the crew constructing the booths, stage and rigging 2 days before the event went live. And these people are gamers man, they're not paid professionals. They're just passionate volunteers who do it because they love eSports. It's beautiful.

When you started running events, streaming technology wasn't something that was viable or available in Australia - now it's demanded. How has streaming changed the way you organise and plan for events, and how much time do you have to spend learning before you become proficient enough to manage any problems that could occur on the day?

It's been an ongoing learning experience for me. Back in WarCraft 3, when I was asked to "shoutcast" an event, I'd fire up a TeamSpeak server and commentate what was happening in the game, while people joined in and listened. There was no streaming. There was no video. It was like listening to the Olympics on the radio. Looking back, it sounds so surreal and ridiculous. But it's all we had back then. Nowadays, the fact that I can sit in front of a live crowd of 300 people, with a camera, microphone & screen and commentate what another 7,000 people are watching via a live stream is truly remarkable. I've worked around technology for my entire life, but the magic of live streaming is still really quite amazing to me. When I made the transition to StarCraft 2 during the Wings of Liberty beta, I hosted a few tournaments, but streams weren't a priority. All the emphasis was on obtaining the replays so that viewers could download the matches and watch them later. This is what we used to do in WarCraft 3. I even designed a dedicated replays website, which I never actually launched after I realised technology and gaming culture had surpassed my archaic perceptions. So I've been catching up and educating myself over the last two years and I've reached a comfortable level of knowledge. But when I look at the configurations at events like ACL, WCS Oceania and The International 2 (photos), it blows my mind. The people who operate this equipment are scholars and wizards.

Back "in my day", the important part of the event was the participants. The tournament existed solely for the players. These days however, tournaments are widely regarded as a success or failure based on their viewer count. I don't necessarily like it, but it's a common perception for a reason. The most important reason for this cultural shift - of course - is sponsors. The expectations of sponsors have grown in parallel to the successes of eSports ventures globally, and unlike Samsung in 2004, sponsors are able to put a very real dollar value on the exposure they're capable of receiving in eSports. And with the right amount of promotion, it's a very attractive marketing investment for sponsors these days.

So now that live streaming is priority #1, it puts a LOT more pressure on the technology and people operating the equipment to perform. If your internet is slow or unstable, viewers will quickly tune out. If the broadcasting computer crashes, it's lights out for the event. We see matches being delayed and players being told to wait patiently in their game lobbies as we resolve audio issues on the stream. It almost saddens me that the stars of the show have shifted from the players to the actual broadcast itself, but at the same time I can respect that this is a very necessary step forward for growth. As far as proficiency goes, the "ACL Stream Team" are a world class force to be reckoned with. They may operate on a small scale due to our location, but they are capable of anything. I dream for the day where eSports is truly legitimised to the point where these guys can make a wage from doing what they do. Because seeing what they do for free, with equipment purchased from their own pocket is nothing short of amazing.

Let's talk about the World Championship Series, one of the largest events ever hosted in Australia. What was it like from your side of the stage - how many hours did you have to put in setting everything up, what was the daily schedule like, what problems arose that nobody saw and so on.

Well, I can't take credit for the WCS event. Almost everything was completely set up and configured when I arrived. For me, the hours went into running the managing the qualifiers, promoting the events, sharing information throughout gaming networks and social media, all that sort of stuff. More commonly known as, "Hype." To make everyone's life easier, the ACL crew set up some structured discussion boards online, with a (LONG) list of tasks which needed to be completed, who was assigned to each task and it's current progress / ETA. This was everything from purchasing / configuring / testing equipment, to constructing and designing the booths, to arranging flights, communicating with subcontractors, accommodation and transport for the players, to contracting photographers and putting the stream up on the Team Liquid calendar. The vast majority of this work was completed by Nick Vanzetti and the rest of the crew in the Aus Gaming House, along with JB Hewitt and his LanSmash guys.

On game day, I played one of many director roles, whereby I would plan out the event structure from start to finish, budget for time and decide which matches would be on the stage, who would commentate them, and which matches would need to be postponed or played backstage. Then it was a matter of communicating this information to the rest of the team so that the guys managing the overlays could have them prepared in time, along with having the dynamic brackets updated on the ACL site. One of the issues we encountered in real-time was that the caching for the directory containing the brackets images was borked, so viewers couldn't see the updated results no matter how many times they refreshed. So i needed to host the files on my FTP and re-route the files in a snap. On top of this, every single match result was broadcasted across twitter, SC2SEA and TeamLiquid, with upcoming matches being announced in advance. Each replay was retrieved at the end of each day and archived, where I would later sort through them and categorise into a list to be handed over to Blizzard post-event. There was a lot of co-ordination between myself, Linc, Josh, Nicolas and Ash, whereby we would ensure that players were notified of when they were expected to move to the stage, have them in position and ready to rotate, assisted them with setting up their equipment and verifying the noise cancelling, sorting out map vetoes, providing refreshments to the players/commentators and resolving technical difficulties with the PC's. There was so much going on throughout the entire weekend that I unfortunately had to decline the opportunity to be interviewed by numerous journalists. If you look in the background of the Filming Archon documentary player interviews, you can see me hunched over a pair of laptops stressing in every scene, hehe.

Some of the biggest problems that arose were organic ones that you simply can't really resolve. You get one player out of the booth, and the next player in within 5 minutes, but then the guy running the stream needs to quickly run to the bathroom. So we do some giveaways on the stage to kill time. In the meantime, the commentators went outside for a cigarette. The venue security decided they didn't like people smoking near that door, so they locked them out and told them to go around to the other side of the venue. We lose sight of the commentators and we start arranging replacements. I run off to find the other commentators, and tell everyone what the new plan is via walkie-talkie. They update the stream overlays to tell the viewers who is going to be commentating the next series. But then I bump into the original commentators and they're back from their cigarette break, ready to go. But now one of the players is missing because he decided to take a bathroom break. And while all of this is happening, we have 10 frantic people all talking in my headset asking the same question: "What's going on?" It's hectic, but unfortunately these things happen. I can guarantee you they happen at every event. All you can do is try to keep the issues at a minimum and prevent them from snowballing into a nightmare.

One of the scariest parts of the whole event was actually Saturday night - the WCS Australia Grand Final between mOOnGLaDe and PiG. We were running so far beyond schedule that we were at risk of having the venue switch off the power in the middle of the match. We had until midnight to wrap it up and get everyone out of the venue. It was 11:45PM, and game 2 was just about to start. No-one wanted to live with the responsibility of shutting down the event and postponing the finals until the next morning - not with two days of built anticipation and tension. So of all people, they asked me to make a decision. I said "To hell with it, let's play the match and hope GLaDe loses in 10 minutes." It was heartbreaking to actually say, because this harks back to that cultural shift I was talking about earlier, when the players aren't the focal point anymore. The production is priority numero uno. As co-ordinators of the event, we didn't care about the games anymore. We just wanted it to be over so we could dodge a bullet. Thankfully, PiG took the next map with 3 minutes to spare, so Leigh got up on stage, blurted out the quickest, dirtiest congratulations he could, and promptly ushered everyone out of the venue. You wouldn't believe the collective sigh of relief from Blizzard & ACL at that point. Fortunately for us, by the time we reached day 3 (WCS Oceania), we'd dealt with enough issues and endured through enough fatigue that we had become bulletproof. We knocked it out of the park, fueled by the enthusiasm of the crowd, and it will forever remain a keystone of Australian eSports in my memory.

If you want to hear more about eSports as well as other random crap that I like to talk about, you can follow my Twitter at @thedippaeffect!)

[Norksman]

Thanks for posting Dippa! Nice work!

[ToRGreenArchon]

Nicely done but do we get an achievement or something for reading it all

[Baldie]

Dox's first step for his "Real Talk" equivalent :P

Big props to you good sir.. and to Dippa for his stellar contributions to the community too!