John "TotalBiscuit" Bain © Cameron Baird / Red Bull Content Pool

John “TotalBiscuit” Bain is rarely afraid to share his opinions about gaming. It’s his biting, brutally honest wit that has helped this games critic/eSports manager/caster amass a large following amongst gamers – with nearly 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube and 30 million views on Twitch . But even though he proudly owns the nickname the Cynical Brit, Total Biscuit says he’s optimistic about the direction of professional StarCraft. Red Bull eSports spoke with him to get his take on the WCS and what it holds for 2014.

What’s your take on the state of pro StarCraft coming into next year?

Well, we’re going into 2014 with a positive attitude. We’ve had a lot of uncertainty in 2013. The phrase dead game keeps coming up, sometimes ironically, sometimes not. It seems like Blizzard has taken a stance of a little more humility because they really did run in like a bull in a china shop. They said we’re going to turn the scene into this, where before the scene was organically growing.

Some of the results were positive. Winning players got a lot of money. Our players had the opportunity to play in WCS America and earn usually about $2,000 per season, some of them earning more like $7,500, which is fantastic in addition to their salary. They can really build up support for their financial future as a pro player, which is important because it’s a short life span for many of them. That helped out a lot, but there was a lot of uncertainty otherwise. WCS viewership wasn’t as high as predicted, especially in America. That did damage and the perception is that the scene was weakened as a result in some respects.

But now in 2014, we see a Blizzard that accepts some of the mistakes they made and are making a genuine effort to resolve them and are saying ‘Look, we don’t want to dominate the scene even if it looks like we did in 2013. We want to help it, we want to support it. We want to take a step back, and still be heavily involved but we’re going to give it the space that it needs and we’re going to try to be a positive influence without completely taking it over.’

Are there specific changes Blizzard has instituted that you really like?

The idea of a wild card qualifier. It involves every player that wants to participate having a minimum master rank in the server they wish to play in the regional and they have to have won 200 games. I don’t think people understand how big of a thing this is because it means players have to dedicate serious time to the ladder of the region they want to play in, which means in turn that the people playing on that ladder get to play against higher quality opponents.

The ladder for Europe and America is the most important training tool. It’s even vastly important in Korea where you have full team house environment. Most players play most of their games on the ladders and use them to refine their builds and do a surgical type of practice. When you take some of those players who are clearly on a different tier of play than foreign players, and you get to practice against them – previously the only opportunity to really do that was a big tournament – to turn up at Dreamhack and get whooped in the group stage by a Korean player and say ‘Well, I learned something today,’ but that’s not much a confidence booster now is it?

The opportunity for an American player to run into a top Korean player in practice, it elevates everybody. They get better. This could be huge for the competitive scene of the foreign scene if Korean players do choose to take part of the wild card events.

Is it positive that the WCS will award more points to outside tournaments like Red Bull Battle Grounds?

Yeah, I think Blizzard should be supporting third party tournaments and attributing WCS points is part of that. It’s something they did do in 2013 but it seemed limited to the tip top tier. They have three tiers right now, which means, in theory, even an online only tournament can be a WCS event. You’ve got to be a potent online tournament and a $10,000 prize pool and meet certain conditions, but the fact that you can do that is a huge deal, because it attracts better players. As much as you can say, if you have enough money you can attract anyone, that’s not necessarily true. Players have limited time and especially if travel is involved, they have to think very carefully about the events they want to attend.

Having WCS points is a big draw, and it’s also why Jaedong was at so many tournaments last year, he needed those WCS points because he switched regions midseason, which very few players did. I think if you do that, you open the door for more third-party support.

If you were in charge of the WCS, what’s one change you’d make?

I’d wipe the board of the WCS and start afresh with more regional competition. I’d provide more potential for competition in Korea because it has the biggest talent pool therefore it needs the most tournaments to allow that talent to develop naturally. I’d give proper regional support and I’d really work on building the storylines and reputations of foreign players because right now aside from a few players that got popular early on and became a staple, only the players who had breakthrough success really were able to earn a fan base, like Scarlett.

She showed she could beat Korean players and was a top tier foreign player and as a result, she gained a fanbase. There’s not many opportunities for foreign players to do that and it becomes a Catch-22, you need that success to get popularity, but how do you get that success without the support you need to get there. I realize that’s unfeasible without a large amount of money and would take a long time—it would take years to build that kind of support. It doesn’t happen overnight.

Does SoS have what it takes to sustain his run into next year?

I think his decision making is the smartest from any Protoss I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t really transition from builds as much as he fluidly adapts to the situation right then and there. And when he pushes out, his push never really stops, he’s always active on the map, and he doesn’t really like to go back to his base. He doesn’t say, well, this doesn’t work I’ll transition into something else.

He does so in a natural way that uses everything that he has, and doesn’t throw his army away to build a new one. I think that’s a skill that never really goes away. It’s not because he’s doing gimmicky builds, he’s just a better player. His dominance means he’ll probably be a staple for a long time. There’s a risk that his builds will be very strictly analyzed by KeSPA coaches and teams and his dominance will be affected by that. But I think he’ll be a top tier player for a very long time.