Interview with Mineski.Kenchi, the silent hero of Esports in South East Asia

Kenchi Yap is the vice president of Mineski International Inc., and in this interview he shares to us the story of Mineski's development, some insights to hosting events, and a little peak into what we can expect to see in MPGL Selangor 2015.

Can you tell us the story about how Mineski was developed?

Back then, Mineski was just a Dota team from the Philippines formed and led by Ronald Robins , we have known each other through online skrimming where during those times I was still a competitive Dota player in a team called MkvL. The first time I met with Ronald was back in ACG 2008, where me and him competed in one team, after that we had formed a friendship as tight as brothers, after some time I was invited by his brother Rick to spend the holidays in Manila . When I reached Manila they brought me to all the cybercafes around the metro and eventually to their first owned cybercafe which is Mineski grounds which for me made me feel that Philippines was a good chance for me start a business in the cybercafe industry due the market and technology gap between Malaysia and Philippines that time. That's how Mineski infinity started.

Why did you choose to develop in Philippines but not in Malaysia?

To best honest, that time, I saw that the Philippine market was much bigger and better business-wise. And about the technology gap I said earlier, first is the internet is expensive and unstable, like if you compare the home package and business package side by side, the difference is surprisingly huge. And 2nd in Philippines back then was still running on hard disks per PC, maintenance was a pain in the ass compared to what we were using in Malaysia where we ran our Cybercafes on a diskless system meaning all client operating system boot from a single server giving us less headaches on the maintenance side.

How did Mineski go about these issues?

Well for one, they had to provide their customers with a premium experience so at that cost, they had to pay the price (maintenance cost and Internet cost).

How did you go from the cyber cafe business to starting your own event team? Most cyber cafes have their own event teams but not many can organize large scale events with a lot of staff.

At first, I was pretty sure the idea of making a cybercafe sprouted out when Ronald and his team did not have a decent enough environment for gaming and practice. It came to a point when the Mineski Dota team was dominating the Philippine scene which although Ronald was part of, thought that this was bad for the development of the Philippine E-sports scene. At one point, all Dota tournaments barred them from joining tournaments because they were the guaranteed champs as so everyone thought. He decided to make Mineski Events Team with his friends and teammates. Weird as it may sound, the tournament marshals were the Mineski players, this encouraged more amateur teams to join because the team they feared the most were not participants.

MET has developed since then, they now host bigger events due to their passion towards what they do, without the people inside MET like Marlon Marcelo, the director of events for MET, we could not have reached what we are today. Because of this passion and dedication, the sponsors saw our hard work, thus their unyielding support towards our cost, we are and always thankful to them.

Does having an event team help in increasing the profit of your cyber cafe’s business? How?

Making events is not really for making profit, in fact most of our events are considered a loss on our part because normally we don't charge for PC rental and registration fee, meaning that's a whole day profit-less in the cybercafe to give way to a smooth operating event. For us, it was more on the branding for the cybercafe and for the development of the E-sports scene.

Recently, MET received some publicity by salvaging Major All Stars. How did MET end up helping the organizers? Did they reach out to you or did you offer your help to them?

I offered them for help and they accepted it.

What did the organizer do wrong? Could you tell us what your team did and how they fixed the issues in such a short time frame?

I don't want to comment about what they did wrong, I just want to help the growth of this young E-sports industry.

Considering that without you guys the tournament could possibly not be able to go on, there did not seem to be a lot of acknowledgement on the work MET put in to help. If I am not mistaken, it was MasterRamen from e-sukan who announced it rather than the organizers. What do you think about the lack of acknowledgement they have given you be it at the event or on social media?

Due to the sponsor conflict, out of respect, we were ok with not given credit or acknowledgment to the help we had given them.

Assuming that this is an event you organize, how would you make it better for the live viewers?

I would have probably gotten advice from the more experienced companies like the one they hired (BeyondTheSummit) who are very experienced on live streams and events as well. I guess it would all boil down to proper planning and contingency plans in case of complications.

This in my opinion is the base of a successful event.

Do you think the entrance tickets for the live event of Major All Stars were overpriced?

A little expensive, if the price is lower I guess more attendees will more affordable to buy the ticket and go see their idol teams or players.



Selangor Cyber Games media launch. GosuGamers among one of the partners for MPGL.

You have recently opened your Malaysian events team and you are even bringing over your annual Dota 2 event, MPGL, to Malaysia. Why have you decided to do that?

Actually we didn't open Malaysian events team we still work as one team. As for MPGL, we have brought it to Malaysia this year because actually, right from the start, the plan is to bring this event all over the SEA countries . Our goal is making SEA the hub of E-sports not just in Asia but for the whole world just like during the Dota 1 era where teams all over the globe would fly over to compete in SMM, during that time the most prestigious Dota tournament then, somewhat the TI of Dota 1. It will take lots of work but we are optimistic.

Do you think the Filipino fans will miss the event or do you have something else planned that they can be even more excited about?

The Filipino fans will always be very supportive to their country's team most especially during international events, we will be having a live stream coverage of the event by MineskiTV so I think it should be ok. As for the event side I can just say something big will happen soon in the Philippines which I guarantee will fill up a whole stadium with people.

So tell us a little about what you have planned for the upcoming Selangor Cyber Games where MPGL will be held.

Basically, we have gathered the top 11 teams in SEA via regional qualifiers. We will be flying them here in Malaysia to compete. We will be having special production value as well like the classic team intros we have been doing for the past years, we will be having interviews and many more thrills and spills. Furthermore, we want MPGL to be the training ground for SEA teams, this MPGL SEA Grand Finals will hopefully be a warm up for the teams most especially the qualifiers for TI are happening soon.

MPGL has always been known for its crude and funny activities in between games. Do you think the tournament will be able to draw that amount of crowd like in the Philippines and more importantly, participation? Pinoy fans are very very passionate people.

We will do our best to continue this event tradition, if it was one of the reasons why MPGL was known for in the past then we will still do so. But honestly this was all due to Eri Neeman, the talented host/comedian we had for these past MPGL, we are working ways to get him to come to Malaysia and bring the fun along. Hopefully his and our schedule will sync well, we'll see what we can do.

Your tournament will also be clashing with Red Bull Battle Grounds and also a tournament in Thailand. Do you think that will affect the viewer rate of your broadcast?

From the past years I can say is the SEA fans are one of the most supportive fans in the world, the other tournaments like what you mentioned earlier may affect the viewer rate but I am very sure there will be a lot of solid SEA Dota supporters watching during our tournament days, the surprises that MPGL will be having will probably be another factor the fans will be looking forward to, plus we are also expecting lots and we mean lots of foot traffic that day on our on-site event.

What will you do to make it even more attractive for the online viewers? Will you be bringing in any celebrities?

We will be bringing in talents from GosuStudio, I trust what they are capable of doing. We also have special team presentations, that's another thing the viewers can look up to.

Thanks so much for your time, Kenchi. We're really looking forward to MPGL!

My pleasure, thanks for the interview! Hope you all can make it to the on-site event.





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