BaseTradeTV is an english-speaking webTV that you can find on Twitch.tv and which is mostly dedicated to StarCraft II. Recently you have probably watched one of their streaming sessions since they have been casting almost every tournaments that were going on. You have also probably followed one of the tournaments they have organized : 32 Boys One Cup, Who's the Best European or EU8 there's more.

We have met his founder and main caster Graham « Rifkin » Rogers to understand a bit more how this webTV was born and what are their goals. In this pre-BlizzCon time, wee have also discussed a lot about StarCraft II future and also about its esport scene.

You can follow BaseTradeTV on Twitter, Facebook, or just watch them on Twitch.tv or Youtube. You can also follow Rifkin directly on Twitter.

It is also possible to subscribe to their Twitch.tv channel or to simply donate here, if you like what they are doing.

Below the interview and its timeline, you can read a transcription.

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[M] Corto : Hello everybody !

For those of you who currently try to keep up with every StarCraft II tournaments, you must have noticed that most of them can be followed on the Twitch.tv channel BaseTradeTV : IEM qualifiers, Against the odds, Olimoleague, 32 boys One Cup, Who’s the best European, Go4SC2 and I could continue like that for some time…

Simultaneously, this channel is probably most of the time when it’s on air at the top in terms of viewership among other StarCraft II channels. So such success has for sure something to do with the charisma of its main caster and founder Graham Rogers that you probably know under the nickname Rifkin.

To come back with him on the history of BasetradeTV and discuss about its future and probably many other StarCraft II related questions, it is my pleasure to have him with me today.

So hello Rifkin !

Rifkin : Hello !

And thank you a lot for accepting this interview.

Rifkin : Thank you for having me.

So, from what I understood, BasetradeTV was created early in 2012 after you left ZEEK TV, another organization for whom you used to cast, and that you left to start your own project.

After two years, BasetradeTV is probably one of the most viewed StarCraft II channel on Twitch.tv if not the most, if we exclude big tournaments channels like ESL, Dreamhack and Redbull. My first question is very simple : according to you, what have been and still are the key points for such success ?

Rifkin : Oh Boy... I want to say me first, right ah ah ! I guess that part of it is dedication, I think it has to be the number one thing. It is the fact that even when we had like only twenty people watching our stream, we still kept at it. Every week we would be there for Zotac cup, we’d be there for the Go4sc2. It was a matter of just keeping to it, I mean, every single week. For the last two years we have covered various weekly cups. And I really tribute a good ninety percents of our "success" to dedication.

OK. That’s probably it.

I would have also said maybe “the rhythm”. Because when we watch your stream, there’s really a lot of rhythm, I mean the breaks are really short, you are always talking, there is really a very good rhythm during your stream. I was also wondering if sometimes you watch your replays to see how it looks like and to see what you could maybe improve in your streams ? Or you don’t do it ?

Rifkin : Yes, I do it a lot and I got to tell you I think that just like every other human being on the planet, I hate listening to my own voice. It makes it incredibly difficult to go through hours of footage. But what you guys have to understand, is whenever you see a video cut up on Youtube, it is not because there is really sick timestamps someone else made, it’s because for the last year and a half, in fact up until two weeks ago I was the only one who’d cut off our VODs so I had to go through and watch each video, fully through so I cut it at the start and at the finish.

And there is a lot of thing you pick up on when you hear yourself. I think number one is a lot of the repeated words. I know for example that one of my vices is that I say “granted” way too much. But you know, I look back on it and it used to be every third word out of my mouth was “like” : you know “like this, like that, like ...” and after some time I manage to kinda cut that out of my dialogs, so I mean... Yeah I kinda go back and listen to what I am saying and what I can improve on.

OK. And is it easy to work on yourself ?

Rifkin : No. No.

Because you have to pay attention to everything you say and during a game it must be quite hard.

Rifkin : Well not only that. But I am an incredibly stubborn person.

OK, I see... There is also something really nice during your stream which is the production. I think many people have already raised this point in forums and manny people are talking about it. All the people love your maps intros for example. And I was wondering wether also this aspect of the stream, you still have ideas on how to improve it. If you could do anything you want, what would you change or what would you improve in terms of production ?

Rifkin : Right now actually it is an easy question to answer. I need a better computer so things always run smooth. Those you guys who our introductions have probably also noticed that time to time they also lag a little bit. And that’s because my computer can’t quite keep up with the milion things going on to produce them.

I don’t have a studio, I don’t have a guy sitting next to me on deck, you know, doing the production for me. I have to do all these things at once while trying to cast. But as far as what I could do like creatively maybe change it up, I try things and sometimes things fail. A little while ago I was trying actually to implement this sort of almost anime style speed lines like on the side, like more dynamics action. Kinda like the first blood but more like medivac boosting away suddenly it feels more epic.

It failed. OK. It sucks. Write off the list and keep trying. I don’t have anything in mind right now that’s like the next big hit. But I am always trying to shake it up wether it is for the format of tournaments or production. I think that’s one of the key things too. Like trying something new, not getting stale. Don’t get stuck with what you think works.

Another aspect of your stream. You are also rarely casting alone. Most of the time you cast with ZombieGrub who is a very nice female caster but recently we have also heard you with Fenner, a british Zerg player and I think sometimes ago I have heard you casting with Namshar. How do you choose your cocaster and how do you feel or know that things are working well with them ?

Rifkin : Oh Jesus... You know I never really had to think about that. Here’s the thing. Let’s rewind time a little bit back before ZombieGrub was around right. PengWin from myInsanity was someone I would cast with frequently. Massa who has now moved on to HearthStone, very popular over there, he was somebody, who was maybe not so popular in StarCraft II but I was enjoying casting with him.

So I kinda realize early on we were never gonna have somebody like Day[9] or iNcontroL be like a co-caster. So it just came down to people I could find that had good personalities, could speak clearly was always like the number one thing and still is. Because let’s be honest, if your job is talking the last thing you want to do is being talking like this [mumbling]... So as far as how I picked people I got to be honest, I don’t know, it just always seemed like a coincidence thing. It sounds so silly to say that but Namshar came along to me one day and I was like : "Well I am short on person for this cast, let’s give him a shot" like I had nobody else at the time and he had asked that was just got to be like the perfect coincidence.

There’s a lot of people who ask to cast on a frequent basis and the problem is, and I really hate doing this, I listen to their VODs and I will tell them no because I do want the opportunity to maybe give them a chance one time but a lot of the times nine out of ten people who message me you know they’ve cast one replay and they want to come on BaseTradeTV and as much as I would love to give everybody a shot "Who is the next big caster" tape thing it is at this point nowhere this is our brand, this is our thing it is not open casting course it is not open mike night you know.

It is really hard because I do receive a lot of people who ask to come cast but seriously most of the time it is out of the people I have already been friend with or cast with before. Like Fenner. For example you brought him up. I had filled in for somebody in an australian tournament about a year and a half ago and Fenner happened to be there so that’s how I meet Fenner. And I know he could talk I know he could cast so I had no problem wherever working with him again that sort of thing so lots of this is coincidence I have to say.

OK. And do you think it brings something to cast with professional or semi-professional players like Fenner or Namshar ?

Rifkin : I think it depends. I have learnt this with casting with a lot of different players. Some are very hyped about the game. And some can get excited with you about it. Some are very analytical and very stoic. So it really varies like on a person to person basis but I find in general if somebody else enjoys the game that they are watching I think I’ll enjoy casting it with them.

OK, I see. And apart from casters, are there any other people working for BaseTradeTV currently ?

Rifkin : Man, I get asked this a lot. I think people think BaseTradeTV is some like big organization... [laughs]

No, I really don’t know actually !

Rifkin : That’s a couple of people with no lives working out of their basement you know... No... [laughs] The people who are definitely involved behind the scenes are mods actually for the channel. There is a couple of them like Partouf who help out a lot. Jackass is somebody who has been helping out cuting VODs recently.

This guy has made my life so much easier. Flamga, he doesn’t really do a lot of StarCraft stuff any more but he still helps me do the maps intros each season. So there has been a couple of people who are kinda around but for the most part it is ZombieGrub and myself.

OK, I see.

You gave an interview earlier this year to eSportsMax where you were saying that you are trying to make streaming your full time job. So I was wondering wether you have already succeeded and if not, what is still missing ?

Rifkin : I think I am pretty OK with it right now. The income we make which I am not gonna give number out...

No, no, that’s not the point.

Rifkin : Well as I’ve just said the income I make is enough that I can live comfortably. Am I objectively rich ? No but I can live happily at the moment so...

The question was more to know if it is possible to live from streaming right now and you just answered.

Rifkin : I think yes if done correctly, but it’s not something that will come over night.

It took you about two years to reach this point or ?

Rifkin : Yeah, about that.

As I was also saying in my introduction, you are currently streaming a lot.

Rifkin : No... [laughs]

I remember hearing you saying, during a live, that you live on the West Coast. Which means that sometimes you have to wake up at 5am or earlier to cast tournaments…

Rifkin : Oh sir ! It is not sometimes. It is always ! And it is usually 3am or 5am.

I didn’t know the precise numbers, so 3am OK, wow, my God… And also on the same day you end up streaming quite late in the evening and I guess on top of that you have many things to do to organize your schedule, prepare the VODs and everything else… So I was wondering how you manage to do that in a day where there’s only 24 hours ? And do you manage to sleep sometimes ?

Rifkin : Sleep, I have heard of that. Can you buy that on eBay ? So here is the rundown ever for me. This month in particular has been crazy. There is never been an instance, where I have been casting... Like I have cast for like 14 hours before that is nothing new. But there is never been an instance where I have been doing it for a month straight. And that’s almost pretty much been the case.

I think 237 hours streams this month or something like that. It is maybe not the craziest amount but it is the fact that that was all concurrent. There was no real breaks in between. So for me it has pretty much been wake up, cast, sleep, wake up, eat, cast again and again. It has been a real hassle because for the 32 Boys One Cup I had to work with 32 players. To make sure I could schedule things that works for them. Plus run Qualifiers.

I had help on the side, here and there, and I definitely won’t have been able to go through this month without this couple of people contributing but I don’t have time for anything which sucks. Like the second you see me off air maybe I will play a game or two of Heroes of the Storm, catch up on emails and I go right to sleep. And I mean it is pretty much insane.

But is it something exciting or you don’t want to do that for months ?

Rifkin : I went into this month with ZombieGrub, we had a big chat about this. We could have just casted like normal or we could try to run our own league. 32 Boys One Cup. And we came to the conclusion that this would gonna be insanely hard to do, it was gonna be incredibly difficult but let’s challenge ourselves to do, let’s see if we can do the insane hours.

And I think through combination with viewership, the reception we have got from the viewers who have been enjoying it was absolutely worth while. Would I ever do it again ? Probably not though...

32 Boys One Cup is not the only tournament that you have organized recently because you have also organized the “EU8 there’s more”, the “Who’s the best European”. And as far as I remember BaseTradeTV in the beginning was mainly organizing showmatches and part of them were funded by the community so things have changed a little bit and I was wondering if you are happy with the way the tournaments you have organized recently have been going ?

Rifkin : I am very happy with them. But I just want to point out we still do the showmatches as well. We recently did Harstem vs ForGG and Kane vs Kas and it is not like we have forgotten our roots. You bring up the other tournaments too which I find interesting. There is a point I want to make about this : because your audience is French I am sure they’ll love this. I love working with Europeans more than any other region of the world right now. A lot of the North Americans are kind of kids.

They are just by their high school or college, very limited by time. Koreans are so hardcore that they got very extreme practice regiment and they can always play at any time. But I take somebody like say Dayshi or Lilbow, I give them a time and a date. They are there. I don’t even have to worry about it. It is just nice knowing that they can play on both of our schedules. So for the EU8 and Who’s the best European and stuff like that was so easy and so wonderful, like a vacation when it comes to tournament scheduling. Because the European players are so easy to work with.

OK, that’s good to know ! But there is one little thing about the 32 boys One Cup tournament which is that you had to postpone the end of it because of schedule. And this is actually something which is not very uncommon among the StarCraft II scene. And I wanted to ask the question wether you think there should be more coordination on the way tournaments schedule are set and if there is a need of an organization or somebody putting rules to it.

Rifkin : Well. We were fortunate enough cause I have contacts with a lot of other tournaments organizers. We knew kinda there was gonna be a bad time. Cause we knew MSI Beat It would come up, they didn’t announce it the date or the casters but I knew who would be involved. I know that players had to go ahead of time.

So even from day one of this, we kinda knew we might not be able to finish this on the 30th like we wanted to. I am not sure what you mean by your question but I do wish for other organizers like it always feel difficult to get times and dates from people for events. So if you are not fortunate enough to know everybody, how are you supposed to schedule a safe tournament right ?

Yeah, that’s my point. Don’t you think that at some point there should be an organization or even Blizzard that could help you, casters, to set up your schedule. Like to know that if you take this date it will be free for you and nobody could organize something on the same day. You see what I mean ?

Rifkin : I think it would be a wonderful, wonderful thing to have happened. But it never will. And a good majority of the reason why is simply ego. A lot of these tournaments and I am not gonna name any ‘cause I am not trying to say that one is better than another, anything like this. But talking with theirs organizers, they kinda "No we are just gonna do it on this date anyway ‘cause we don’t care, we know we are the best".

Or you know that sort of attitude. So that’s why you get a lot of these clashes where dates are set… Or sometimes at the other end of the spectrum where there is some sponsorship requirement. Like I think TotalBiscuit mentioned for his tournament, he knew it was not the ideal time but it was supposed to time up with a promotional thing for SanDisk in China. So sometimes it is not just as simple as people forgetting to write their date down.

There is so much more that go into it. But I do wish, that would be like my utopia, where you’d actually know what was going on ahead of time...

In 2013 a lot of people have been complaining about the way WCS have been organized. This year it was better. I think everybody agrees on that. Do you think it could still be improved, the way WCS and other tournaments are organized. And if yes, what would you change ?

Rifkin : This is a hard question because I know some stuff I can’t talk about.

If you don’t want to say it that’s OK.

Rifkin : Well OK. I'll answer the second after that though. As far as improving I really wish WCS didn’t hug the spotlight so much. ‘Cause the way it breaks down is basically with the amount of promotion, Blizzard, the players involved, the Price pool, like grasps your tournament. BaseTradeTV will never be able to compete with WCS on like a grant scale. So it really limits when WCS zone what we can do.

We know that basically Mondays through Thursdays don’t even bother trying. Unless you are gonna do it at like, you know, 3am [laughs]. ‘Cause you know that’s the WCS zone, outside of that there is no point trying to schedule tournaments during those hours. And that’s important for Blizzard to make sure that they are the main show. And it is better now than it was before because I think four days a week is better than seven.

But it still very difficult to organize things if you are new to the scene, maybe you’re a brand new sponsor or a company that wants to get into StarCraft. It is hard to do that because Blizzard at the moment hugs so much of the limelight so to speak.

And I also wanted to know about your plans for the future of BaseTradeTV. Do you have any ideas ? For example I was wondering whether you ever thought about streaming other games as well. I guess there is still a lot to do with StarCraft II but have you ever considered casting other games as well ?

Rifkin : Yeah, I think just like everybody else we have considered escape plans, should something ever happen to StarCraft II. And we just waited out and say “You know what, if StarCraft II is probably gonna go down, we don’t have quite a lot of interest to do much else." Like we stream Heroes of the Storm on the side, we have some fun nights with subs doing this, that, the other or like steam games, Sonic racing…

And it is not about viewer numbers or anything like that. I don’t have that same level of interest. I litteraly, even if I had ten times the viewers and I’d make twice the money, like I still could sit down and cast League of Legends for the amount of time I’ve cast StarCraft this month. I just don’t have the interest for it. So as far as like plans for the future, I am hoping the best for Legacy of the Void. I am always looking to be a Twitch streamer no matter what.

I just don’t know wether I will be doing tournaments if StarCraft II goes down. But that’s nothing definitive it is just kinda up in the air where we at right now. ‘Cause we are so gung-ho on StarCraft it is really hard to be like "You know what, let’s just put our foot onto HearthStone over here a little bit you know".

I see. This is also one question that in the other interview people already asked you : have you been approached to cast some offline event already ?

Rifkin : No. There was a small incidence where I almost got to cast something for IEM Toronto. And actually I was a bit salty about that because we had submitted this request and I was hoping we could do it : we had asked to cast one game. One game. We do it for free. Don’t pay us or anything, we are going to be there anyway if we aren’t blast.

We never heard back and it was a little bit sad. But the coolest thing happened when we were at Toronto where ReDeYe, he actually came to find us, we didn’t come to him. He basically said "We would have loved to have you cast but the timing just wasn’t good and we didn’t have the budget and by the time we got things sorted the event had already begun. But you know keep at it maybe in the future”.

I am not taking that just like a business offer but it is nice to know that the consideration is there. So technically no, we have never been approached to cast anything offline to date but I would absolutely love to if I could.

And do you have a particular event that you would love to cast if you had the chance.

Rifkin : Are we talking about reasonable here or...

No, no, anything !

Rifkin : To be honest, a Dreamhack would probably be more like... I wish more than anything that we could cast. I think that would be really cool, even as a community caster, like on side of Dreamhack would be awesome. Like people who know me know that I have never been shooting for the main stage and I have always been way happier with BaseTradeTV than say casting on a WCS channel.

So like my dream scenario would be like if somehow we could community cast on BaseTradeTV live at a Dreamhack I think would be really cool. But again, that’s the fantasy answer right ?

Yeah, but it is good to know. And now I also wanted to ask you a few questions about what you think about the StarCraft II scene. A lot of people are saying that the European and American scene are suffering from the participation of too many good Korean players to their tournaments but at the same time players are saying the playing more regularly against Koreans has allowed the level of the two scenes to improve. How do you think one can solve this complicated equation ?

Rifkin : Oh, it is a complicated one because you don’t want somebody who is too overbearing you don’t see a chance to ever take the king down so to speak but it is interesting ‘cause I have interacted, I think it is safe to say that I have been interacting with pretty much every player at some point. And the point of views I got from them are quite varieting. It is the player that seem to be at the top, the best foreigner that are like “bring on the Koreans”, right. “I want a challenge”.

Even if I know I am gonna lose I still want to go down fighting. And it is every one else who kind of just, I don’t want to say… I don’t want to offend anybody here but it’s like the people who seem less dedicated who don’t try to make this their profession but more like a very dedicated hobby seem to have most of the problems with the Koreans. I really think that the Korean involvement is good. I think the problem is though the Korean involvement isn’t enough as weird as it is to say.

One of the biggest and most common complaint, is like even though you have all these Koreans living in Europe, most of them still don’t play on the European ladder. So that chance to improve, that chance to square off againt HyuN, MMA and MC. You know if they were more available, twice as much, maybe we’d see a better scene. But because they probably as well go to the Korean server, it is a lot harder actually to fight them, improve the skill and all these other things.

So as far as improvement goes, I think that more Korean involvement in a correct way is the way to go. Blizzard is going in the way of region locking right now which I am personnally not a fan of because the way I see it and this is going to be quite blunt here. OK we are going to have North American foreigners die in the semi-final instead of the round of 16. You know it doesn’t solve the problem it just put a banded on it.

Exactly. And clearly at the moment, the Korean scene is way better to watch than, at least in my opinion, than the European and the American one. And apart of more involvement of Koreans in these two scenes, do you think there are other thing that one could do ? I don’t know… We could imagine maybe more Team Leagues between Korean teams and European and American ones. How could we make European players compete more often against Koreans in a good way ?

Rifkin : It is really hard to say ‘cause there’s always going to be several problems, right ? The Koreans are not gonna want to to keep playing in Europe ‘cause the latency is so bad and the Europeans hate to go to the Korean ladder because of the same reason. It’s gonna be the guys who have already moved over which you usually see more involvement from I think but at the same time, with the way WCS is going a lot of those guys who moved over may have to just move back. It is also kind of a problem.

I think that one of the thing though that doesn’t get touch, I’d like to bring this up if that’s OK with you, is the culture of gaming is so vastly different and I think it greatly reflects the skill level of each region. Like in Korea, gaming is like not a problem, there are celebrity gamers right ? In Europe, especially Germany I think it is becoming more prevalent, you can kind of see that, you know, through not just StarCraft but all the other games as well. The European scene ought to be better than most of the American ones. I think in North America we are like I don’t know… It feels that only FPS are acceptable over here. Nobody really knows about StarCraft or Twitch.tv.

The culture just isn’t there so it doesn’t force the environment to create something like a team house. To have players meet up at a gaming cafe and play together all day for 12 hours straight. So I really think the culture of the world shifting is gonna have the biggest impact, on skill across any region. But it is also such a wild assumption to make that there is no way to prove wether that will be the case or not. I just personally believe that that’s the thing. Culture acceptance is probably the biggest filter for a lot of these players.

OK. That’s interesting. And on a different subject. BlizzCon is approaching very fast and many people are hoping that Legacy of the Void will be announced there. At the moment, we already told it a little bit earlier in the interview, the StarCraft II audience seems stable but it is not growing any more as it is still growing for other games like League of Legends, HearthStone or Dota 2. Do you think it is mandatory for Blizzard to announce something big concerning StarCraft II at BlizzCon ? Or could they do something else ?

Rifkin : I really hope they do. To be quite frank, I think if we don’t hear any news about Legacy of the Void, that’s pretty much it for StarCraft.

Many people are saying that...

Rifkin : Myself included, I love StarCraft, you know. I just don’t think I could do another four years on Heart of the Swarm, watching players play on Overgrowth, with the same opening over and over you know… Even if it is something as simple as skins. That at least brings hype back to the game. Suddenly you got people who want to do fan art and have their skins accepted as something new.

It engages the community more. But everything for StarCraft II right now is kind of this very prim and proper and very stale environment. So I mean, if they didn’t announce Legacy of the Void, I’d love to see at least something. Like we are finally integrating skins. Or there is going to be better community workshops for the arcade or something like that.

And what about free-to-play for example ?

Rifkin : That is such a hard topic issue. I have never… I love the campaign. I love the cinematics. For me that was StarCraft II. But at the same time, I would still buy that separately. And still play the multiplayer. The arguments that were made that it seems it has to be... Like it just feels that they are trying to make a black and white one camp or the other but I think there is a lot of people who would still do both. It is a hard... It all comes down to Blizzard financial point of view, I guess, but... I think free to play would help, I don’t think it would solve any issue though.

And since we are talking about BlizzCon, I also wanted to ask you about your favorite player for winning the tournament.

Rifkin : Oh man, I hate this question [laughs]. Here is the thing about me. I don’t ever vote with my head so to speak. I am always the guy who goes with their heart even if their player is not likely to win. And sometimes it works. Like in the 32 Boys One Cup, CranK beating Solar. I love Solar to death but as CranK is the underdog I am rooting for CranK. And then CranK comes out first in his group over Solar.

So I mean sometimes you get that to happen. I think likely, like my heart on this one, is leading me toward players like MMA or jjakji. It would be really cool to see soO actually win something but I think personally speaking that Bomber and HyuN have some of the best chances to actually win.

OK. And you’re also a StarCraft II player, as far as I have heard but I guess you don’t have a lot of time to play. Do you still find some time to play regularly ?

Rifkin : Yeah. I actually start playing some 2v2 with Winter and then we did 3v3 with desRow. And I start doing some more 2v2 with players like CranK and have fun with that. That’s what I have been streaming mostly. I still do some 1v1 ladder from time to time but the thing is like once upon a time I used to be Master. That’s when I had time to play and we weren’t casting much.

Then we started casting a bunch and people who watch my stream, they will see, ok I play a little bit cheesy, in fairness [laughs], but still I win the majority of the games I play. So the thing is I don’t have time to grind out a thousand bonus points in the ladder. I really wish I did. But I feel that my rank on ladder really isn’t gonna affect me as a caster so I don’t really care or prioritize it. So I play for fun, I enjoy it. Sometimes I stream it, sometimes I don’t. But I definitely find time to play like every week.

And as a player what new features or units you would like to see in Legacy of the Void ?

Rifkin : Anything with active skills. So I have never been a big fan of things like swarmhosts but I love marines : you have to steam to actually activate them to be good you know. Ghosts with EMP like these really cool skills that you have to control. I am a Terran player if that is not obvious [laughs]. I like the cool aspect... I don’t think every unit in the game needs a non-active skill but I’d like to see more.

Because it feels that they made everything so passive, and just like OK your Swarm Hosts auto-attack, every one else just A+Move, you know that sort of mentality. I would love to see more thing where you could be more micro-intensive where we’d see players like in Europe Starbuck, constantly utilizing things like burrow in the early game. I want stuff like that to be more viable and I think the game would be a hundred time cooler.

And what about the new map pool that has been announced. There is a lot of old famous maps. Are you excited about it or you think it is a false good idea ?

Rifkin : Here is the problem : as a player I don’t have any opinion. ‘Cause I will be the player who plays cheesy on every maps. You know proxy racks, all that stuff right ? But as a caster I am really not excited about it. Because most of these maps are maps I have casted a bunch in the past. I am still not passed them.

I mean Overgrowth is gonna go away and in a year from now I will still gonna be complaining about Overgrowth being the only map that anyone picked. So to see things like Cloud Kingdom pop up is just kinda like for me... Ah [disgusted]... But there are some cool ones. They brought back Xel'Naga Caverns and such there is gonna be really cheesy games for sure, but at the same time because they anticipate, “oh TvP, the Protoss is gonna blink every time”, well all of a sudden the Terran starts blindly building for blink and actually that changes the game style, the gameplay entirely.

So there is different metagames for these maps. In that aspect I am a little excited. Because there is gonna be a lot of like pre-mind-gaming, pre-guessing, like “OK, I am blindly gonna counter blink here”. So it could lead to some interesting new strategies but I think for the most part I am just waiting for the next map pool to be honest.

And what would you like to see in this next map pool ?

Rifkin : Not maps like Foxtrot labs. I actually really, even though any non-Terran player will hate me for saying this, I really liked maps like Dead Wing. They brought back the aspect of suddenly Terran players can use Tanks again. Like maybe it’s in a cheeesy way sometimes. But there’s actually good strategical ways to use Tanks.

It is weird to consider that one map could suddenly revive what was a more or less a dead unit, but it would be cooler and I don’t know how but if they could somehow do this, make it more viable for other races to start using units better. Maybe a little cliff, where Infestors could neuro-parasite something or I don’t know. I am not a map designer, I don’t know what is needed but I know what I would love to see and it is more viability for units that has been kinda become forgotten.

Very nice. So that’s it for my questions. So I will thank you, a lot for accepting this interview and I don’t know if you want to say one last word before we say good bye, well you are free to do it.

Rifkin : Well thank you for having me, again this is I think my second interview ever, I am not really used to these things so I hope I did OK. If you guys don’t know about our casting I guess stop by twitch.tv/basetradetv sometime, even if you don’t speak english you can always mute the stream, we got good quality ! I think that’s about it.

Thank you a lot and I don’t know, see you next time !

Rifkin : Thanks for having me.