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Michael van Driel and Milton Fuxborg are the men behind DreamLeague's revival Michael van Driel and Milton Fuxborg are the men behind DreamLeague's revival

The panel for the Season 4 LAN Finals at DreamHack Winter 2015 The panel for the Season 4 LAN Finals at DreamHack Winter 2015

Malystryx: How do you go about choosing talent for the studio work? It seems DreamLeague has a particular taste when it comes to talent. What do you look for in a talent when it comes to DreamLeague's groupstage for example?

Milton: The process is a little different from season to season. But in general we want to have a stable core of talent that will be on for the entire season. And then we try to spice it up with inviting weekly guests. But there are a lot of conversations between me, our producer Dagny and the core group of talent.



We try to not have the same talent every time and we love giving and up and coming talent the chance to do DreamLeague. When it comes to selection, we prefer to invite guests who have great analytic skills but aren’t to afraid to loosen up a bit as our broadcast style is a bit different than most other Dota 2 tournaments.

Alliance were winners of Season 1 back in June 2014 Alliance were winners of Season 1 back in June 2014

Malystryx: Yea different is a good choice of word! When DreamLeague was created the first two seasons were a huge success then there was a bit of a dip in seasons 3 and 4 as you readjusted to the loss of the likes of 2GD. You've slowly built the brand back up over seasons 5 and 6 . Was being a bit crazy a key to getting the league back on track? Many expected DL to die out but it came back stronger over time.

Milton (DL Project Manager): I think DreamLeague was always a bit crazy. When 2GD, Bruno, Draskyl and all the others started out as talent it was quite wild sometimes. It reflected their personalities as well as the essence of what makes DreamHack different to other tournament organizers.



We made a few mistakes here and there as you mention, but since then we learned from those mistakes and just kept going forward trying to minimize that. But I’m sure you are touching on something when you say that ”being a bit crazy” is a part of the reason why we are back in a stronger position.



Mike Van Driel (DreamHack CPO): I would say that throughout the past few years, the transition has also been looking at the Dota 2 space and deciding where we want to focus. When ESL One Frankfurt first kicked off and Arena events became so exciting, alongside TI with ever and ever big prize pools, we really had to decide what should make DreamLeague unique.



We really decided to continue to focus on the “show” and creating something different that would stand out, and if you remember all the way back to the kick off season, there were plenty of online leagues, now DreamLeague is really the only one, and its much more than a simple livestream casters on camera and games being cast.

Bruno was a host of DreamLeague Season 1 alongside 2GD Bruno was a host of DreamLeague Season 1 alongside 2GD

Malystryx: Yes that is something I wanted to ask about actually. When DL was initially formed the league format was quite popular in Dota 2. Then there was a period in 2015 when teams were complaining of having too many matches to play and lots of organisers adopted a playoff system. DreamLeague however has remained a league format, and is now the last remaining league essentially in Dota 2. Why did you decide to keep it as a league and not follow the trend?

Milton (DL Project Manager): I think most tournament organizers these days also run a lot of online qualifiers to populate their events with the best teams. In a way you could say that our online matches is similar, but I never liked it when someone called our league a qualifier. (smiles)



What we wanted to create is a place where Dota fans can go and watch high quality Dota between the best teams in the world on a regular basis. Then we decided to package it with a show and a lot of fun crazy stuff between the games. Having it in our own studio here in Stockholm offers some features that might not be as easy to pull of at a LAN where you have a limited build up period.



Mike Van Driel (DreamHack CPO): To build on that, for DreamHack our objective is to produce a lot of content on a regular basis, we have a lot of events over the year but often we have big “dead” times. For our business structurally it works well to have an ongoing league, and we believe it fits in overall very well to the ecosystem of Dota 2.



During the time period where there was a huge excess of online leagues, this felt in big part due to the skin bundling with tournament tickets, where for some TOs the skins became more important than the tournaments.



Now that things have settled out more, and the majors have also created kind of clear season, we feel both for the dota 2 competitive scene ecosystem of players and viewers, our league is very complimentary.

Malystryx:SO from any season so far what have been your best memories from the studio? How high does the Nahaz rap rank? Does it beat the EE/H4nn1 energy drink? Can you share a few with us, your favourites.

Milton (DL Project Manager): Pretty high. It's hard to pick a moment among so many memories. But I think climbing up from what was our weak seasons to where we are now is what I’m the most proud of at least.



A lot of people interact with us on social media and Reddit etc saying that they really like what we do and that we are their favourite tournament is amazing. But also to have had the chance to meet so many great casters, players and fans in the Dota community is pretty awesome.



But with recent events in mind, I think that the Nahaz rap is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in esports. Shout out to the professor! The Bruno suit obstacle course is another favourite. James and Shane stopping for a cigarette and some cologne. True brits!







Mike Van Driel (DreamHack CPO): Nahaz and Slacks rapping would be my favourite actually… Other good ones that come to mind for me would probably be hmm, can’t remember which season but I think ODPixel was delivered 100 cheeseburgers, the Back to the Future skit, and also a bit old school when Lumi was cosplaying as KOTL and riding a horse at DreamHack Summer. Pretty high. It's hard to pick a moment among so many memories. But I think climbing up from what was our weak seasons to where we are now is what I’m the most proud of at least.A lot of people interact with us on social media and Reddit etc saying that they really like what we do and that we are their favourite tournament is amazing. But also to have had the chance to meet so many great casters, players and fans in the Dota community is pretty awesome.But with recent events in mind, I think that the Nahaz rap is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in esports. Shout out to the professor! The Bruno suit obstacle course is another favourite. James and Shane stopping for a cigarette and some cologne. True brits!Nahaz and Slacks rapping would be my favourite actually… Other good ones that come to mind for me would probably be hmm, can’t remember which season but I think ODPixel was delivered 100 cheeseburgers, the Back to the Future skit, and also a bit old school when Lumi was cosplaying as KOTL and riding a horse at DreamHack Summer.

Malystryx: Moving onto Season 7. Season 5 was played in the studio, 6 we're back at DreamHack Winter. Now we're having the LAN finals outside of Sweden in the USA. What is going on? Why did you forsake Sweden?

Mike Van Driel (DreamHack CPO):

Malystryx: Will you be bringing the casual style from the dreamleague studio to Atlanta or will it be a more serious affair? How big of an audience are you hoping for?

Milton (DL Project Manager):

Mike Van Driel (DreamHack CPO):

DH Atlanta will be held from the 21st to 23rd July. More information on how to attend DH Atlanta will be held from the 21st to 23rd July. More information on how to attend here

Malystryx: Could or will Season 8 include a third region for example SEA? Or do you plan to expand the NA region to be more than 4 teams? What would be the next step in the DL's evolution? What do you want to happen next.

Mike Van Driel (DreamHack CPO):

With DreamLeague's NA division set to begin later today we caught up with the tournament's Project Manager Michael "milton" Fuxborg and DreamHack's Chief Product Officer Michael Van Driel.Milton has been involved in the project since the very beginning 4 years ago as the producer of the English broadcast but later took over as PM in Season 4 while Mike Van Driel has the monumental task of handling all of DreamHack's esports projects. I spoke to the duo about the past, present and future of the DreamLeague.So this has always actually been an objective to host the finals in additional locations. Geo-expansion for DreamHack has been a big focus for the past 5 or 6 years.We still almost certainly plan to keep one season per year with the finals in Sweden, but we want to reach more fans.The US is a great choice since there seems to be a lack of Dota 2 LANs there outside of TI, between MLG pulling back, ESL One NY moving into CS, we also of course know that a huge portion of our online viewers are Americans.I can also mention that we’re able to and happy to confirm Season 8 will be happening, and the finals will be hosted at DreamHack Winter, so Swedish Dota 2 fans should not despair. (smiles)[intera]I think it’s safe to say that our viewers and visitors in Atlanta will recognize our format from the DreamLeague studio with all the fun toppings still in the mix.As its our first ever event in Atlanta and first time taking Dota outside our Swedish events, its a little bit hard to predict the size of the audience. We’re going to have a huge amount of stuff going on.We’ll have professional Dota 2, Halo, Hearthstone, CS:GO, Smash, SFV5 and two more titles yet to be announced alongside the BYOC LAN, Cosplay, Trading Card Games tournaments and other content so we’re certainly hoping Dota 2 fans show up! If you live nearby tickets can be found at tickets.dreamhack.com.For the time being we expect to do a very similar structure for Season 8 as Season 7. Dota 2 is a little bit unpredictable with regional divisions, a majority NA team can suddenly become EU which makes it a little bit difficult to plan how many divisions we should have and which regions should they be in. Looking beyond into 2018 we are definitely very interested to grow the league further and increase our footprint which would be the next step but we want to make sure we do it in a smart way.We’ve always been very careful within all of our esports to do stuff in a sustainable way so that we can also be thinking about DreamLeague Season 20, so we do not want to go too big too fast. We feel taking the finals to DreamHack Atlanta for this year is already a quite big jump so for this year we will continue to focus on making the project as good as we can, and throughout this year continue to plan and discuss how we can make it bigger than ever.The DreamLeague NA division kicks off tonight