[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 ^.^)

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