Teil 1 der Interview-Reihe mit Jos 'Ret' de Kroon

Ret über den eSport heute und damals

Ret on eSports Now and Then

In our three part series with Jos 'ret' de Kroon we started off talking about the developments eSports has gone through. The following two parts of the interview ret will discuss the status of StarCraft II aswell as his own plans looking forward.

Good Old Times

readmore.de: You are an eSports veteran who won several titles in Brood War as well as in StarCraft II. Nowadays you are one of the most well known players in the StarCraft II scene and certainly at the very top in terms of Twitter followers. What is your happiest memory looking back at eSports history pre and post release of StarCraft II?

Jos ' ret ' de Kroon: I think most people who have played videogames growing up, have the best, most nostalgic feelings about their very first game and some of their earlier experiences with gaming. For me it’s the same, so when I think about my time pre StarCraft II I think mostly about StarCraft: Broodwar, which I have very fond memories of. It’s very difficult to pick one specific memory, it’s more of a lifestyle or feeling type of thing when I think back of that time. I was completely immersed into a new world, I sawfor the first time when I watched the Korean leagues. It was amazing. The countless hours spent with others around the world practicing, playing tournaments and preparing for events was awesome – the cherry on the cake being that if you were lucky enough to qualify for WCG – you’d get to meet some of them once a year! My fondest memories are probably of that, meeting people for the first time and just hanging out and having a social life. Back then, I didn’t have much of a social life outside of it all. I was a young nerd experiencing everything for the first time. If I had to pick one single game, it’d be against Lee ' NaDa ' Yoon Yeol at BlizzCon where I took a map but lost the set.

I also have many awesome memories from StarCraft II, too. Even though I had already partaken in many tournaments around the world in SC:BW, SC2 obviously took everything to a new level entirely. My happiest would be the BlizzCon Europe Tournament in 2011 where I destroyed Johan 'NaNiwa' Lucchesi and Marcus 'ThorZaIN' Eklöf to become the champion of Europe in front of an amazing crowd in Warsaw, Poland. It was the first time where I won something on a big stage and nothing can compare to that feeling!

Back in the day did you ever imagine that whole careers could be built on eSports outside of Korea?

I had never really given it much thought when I played Broodwar, I just played because I loved playing. But of course it was pretty obvious this was going to happen at one point or another. (smiles)

Increasing Numbers

The most recent The International broke all records in terms of eSports prize pools and made the winning players into millionaires. What were your first thoughts when hearing about these developments?

Absolute madness! It still feels kind of unrealistic that a tournament would have THAT much prize money. First place got more money than winning wimbledon does in tennis – it’s just unreal. It does show the strenght of the eSports community – who are all connected through the internet – and what exactly that means in terms of finance and what people can do to support something they can really believe in. I think that’s a good thing.

Do you think that the tournament was good for eSports in general?

Of course. I didn’t watch much, but from what I hear and the little that I did see it was an amazing tournament with amazing quality production and a great show. Things like that matter a lot. If the quality of a show and the content is superb, people will automatically be more inclined to take it serious.

The Industry Growing

With sponsors like Red Bull, Coke and American Express being involved in the western eSports scene, the industry is shaping up to compete with more established sports. Do you think that game developers should be the governing body of an industry in that dimension?

I actually think that game developers influence on things is way too high and not a good thing. They have their own agendas entirely. For eSports as a whole to grow and become the best possible – the only agenda that matters is eSports and what exactly that term means. It’s not really related to the question but I’ve grown up with the extreme mechanical and mental demands of StarCraft: Brood War and what got me so into the whole progaming-scene was definately also highly appreciating the physical aspect (keyboard and mouse) of playing that game. So to me, that’s what eSports is.

Right now we see Hearthstone being pushed into esports, and that’s only because of Blizzard’s power. Is this the direction we want to go? I don’t know. It’s a highly popular game, and an enormous ammount of people play it, and therefor watch streams. They are invested into it so it’s popular and generates revenue within its own community. But do games like this have mainstream appeal? If eSports ever wants to go mainstream, it needs to have certain charactaristics that real sports do too, and only very few extremely talented individuals should be able to excell, in my opinion. This can be achieved by things like mechanical aspect of a one vs one game, but also things like teamwork in a MOBA game have no skill ceiling.

Thankfully the scene is big enough to support multiple games. I’m really curious what exactly eSports will mean 15 years from now.

Do you like how Blizzard, Riot and Valve do their job? Do you appreciate their involvement or would you want the scene to be less regulated by certain publishers?

I don’t really have any experience with Riot and Valve so I can’t comment on them. Blizzard has stepped up a lot over the last couple of years, for good and bad (In StarCraft). StarCraft II was a huge learning experience for them, and right now they are doing good work supporting their community and I’m sure they will continue to do so for as long as they are involved with eSports.

Korea

In the end about 70% of The International’s prize pool was won by Chinese teams, which suggests dominance comparable to that of the Koreans in StarCraft II and League of Legends. It is a heated discussion whether Koreans should be allowed to compete in WCS NA and EU. What is your take on that?

I think not region-locking was one of the biggest mistakes ever made. It would’ve made perfect sense, with a grand final at the end of the year top it all off. WCS EU 2012 is probably my favourite tournament of all time.

Instead, now Koreans dominate WCS EU and NA and because they live in EU/NA they also dominate IEM EU/NA Qualifiers and all the online tournaments. If you’re a young guy trying to be a progamer nowadays, you have no means to support yourself untill you are actually on top of the world able to beat these world-class progamers for 100 US-Dollar in an online cup.

There is one thing to be said though for players like Jens 'Snute' Aasgaard or Patrick 'Bunny' Brix and many other Europeans who have gotten a lot better because they were able to play on the ladder with a lot more top-players consistently and are able to somewhat compete. So for them, this was probably a good thing. But for the scene as a whole, I don’t think so.

Being a StarCraft veteran, you are probably concerned about the current state of the scene in Korea. Nowadays do you think we should still look up to Korean standards?

In StarCraft, nothing comes close to the Korean infrastructure. I think that the most amazing thing about Korean eSports is that it’s basically all happening in one city – Seoul. Everywhere else, people are far spread out and it just creates a totally different ecosystem. Having teams play each other on a weekly basis and have everybody there is really cool. But since this question is related to StarCraft specifically obviously there has been some decline there.

The Proleague has tripled in viewers compared to the last season. The finals venue was set outdoors and capable of a big crowd. Do you think that StarCraft II is experiencing a bit of a resurgence within the Korean scene?

It’s hard to tell from all the way over here, but it does seem like it. The proleague finals was amazing, great venue and a great crowd. To top it all off, Lee 'FlaSh' Young Ho won his match and was crowned MVP. So hey – that’s gotta mean something. (smiles)