Take: "A game like Hearthstone can be accepted as eSport even if it's not 100% one"



Dennis "Take" Gehlen (front) with Oleksey "White-Ra" Krupnyk of StarCraft fame. Photo: Fragster.de

In the last days of February, Hearthstone fans got a treat. Long-time tournament organizer Dennis “Take” Gehlen, known for his HomeStory and TeamStory Cups for StarCraft 2, announced a $15,000 Hearthstone tournament. Out of nowhere, big names like Savjz, Gnimsh, Artosis, StrifeCro and four others were going to Krefeld, Germany for then the highest-paying HS event to date. Even the legendary WarCraft 3 player Lucifer was revealed to be a competitor.

Although the invitees were already well-known and well-televised, the five-digit prize pool of SSC was enough to draw their attention. At that point in Hearthstone’s development, only ESGN’s Fight Night dared offer such meaty cheques, being the yardstick by which both “fame” and “skill” were measured. Although SeatStory Cup did not expand outside the already familiar Fight Night roster (Lucifer being the sole exception) everything else about it – the format, the live broadcast, the money and the people behind it – made it the first Hearthstone tournament of magnitude larger than a weekly tournament.

For Hearthstone fans unfamiliar to Starcraft 2, SeatStory was mostly about watching their favorite players and getting acquainted with the uniqueness of Gehlen’s events. For eSports writers and veterans, however, the tournament meant something else. Given that no other major organizer had picked up Hearthstone, seeing Take go in that direction was exciting to say the least. A tournament organizer of great renown, Gehlen has the reputation of innovator and perfectionist, someone who has set high standards for broadcasting and hosting events. The SeatStory Cup venture was easily a milestone in this young and developing game. It tried to discover whether something developed for the casual user could be brought up to new levels and developed as a proper eSport.

According to Take himself, the decision to venture into Hearthstone wasn’t a hard one: it was a Blizzard game and one popular within the StarCraft 2 community, but as far as tournaments went it was pretty much a blank sheet of paper.

“ We wanted to try something new and we were thinking about one or two new games to cover with TaKeTV. Since Hearthstone is also a Blizzard game and one a lot of SC2 players enjoy we wanted to give it a try. On top of that we were one of the very first having HS tournaments live and also the community is pretty big. ”

Although Hearthstone’s in-game infrastructure is broadcaster-unfriendly at best and streaming a live match is quite the challenge, Gehlen says their studio set-up made it all possible. Equipped to capture multiple screens and audio channels at the same time, Gehlen's dedicated crew mixed and switched, and brought the event to viewers all over the globe.

I ask Gehlen why the tournament was invite-only, going for names which were already known for their Fight Night appearances. Wouldn’t a mix of invites and qualifiers make for more complete tournament experience? Surely giving young, unknown players the chance to compete against the stars of today is a worthwhile venture. According to Take, organizing the tournament happened in a short time frame with responsibility towards sponsors so inviting players with reputations was the only way to go.



“ For other tournaments in the future we would consider to run some qualifiers but in this case where we had a kickoff and NEEDforSEAT was presenting their new chair, we wanted to have the guarantee that all the players would show up. That’s why we went for people who are already known in the scene: to get decent numbers and also a cool show. It’s always tough with the time, and we also had to wait to get a confirmation from Blizzard to be allowed to have an offline tournament which meant we couldn’t have qualifiers. ”



Players like Savjz, Artosis, Ek0p, Monk and StrifeCro were brought to Krefeld for SeatStory Cup

The topic takes a turn and goes into a direction that personally interests me the most – was SSC Hearthstone a one-time thing only? Having followed HomeStory Cup since its creation and familiar with its importance to the StarCraft 2 competitive scene, I’m hopeful that Hearthstone will grow into an independent circuit and become an inseparable cogwheel of the tournament environment. At the same time, I dread a future where Blizzard’s card game is nothing more than a metrics-boosting tool and a dressing to the main meal of “serious eSports”.

I don’t receive a definitive answer but this is to some extent expected. Hearthstone is new and unexplored as an eSport. It wasn’t developed as one and is being carried mostly by enthusiasts’ efforts and a handful of tournament organizers. The community is growing but the game isn’t and the meta is getting stale. Sponsors are still evaluating Hearthstone’s potential and are naturally reserved towards rushing into an undeveloped scene. Even though stream numbers are on a healthy level, having tournaments lay almost exclusively on their shoulders is risky.



“ As long as we have to do everything offline and cover it well, it has a higher cost for us and we need to pay that cost somehow. I am sure we can handle that if the people are interested, as we can then sell cool tournaments to sponsors or even have the chance to compensate more stuff with subscriptions on Twitch or donations, even though we never actively promote for the latter. We offer tournaments just for subscribers, subscriber games, replay packs, etc., but most important is that the people help to push the product itself to give us the chance to present more and cooler content. ”

The clock shows my time with Gehlen is almost running out and I take this opportunity to bring back the thread of Hearthstone as a full-blooded eSports. Knowing Gehlen for being a former WarCraft 3 professional and someone entwined with StarCraft – inarguably one of the prime eSports of all time – I eagerly await his take on if Hearthstone can go in this direction. I bring up thing like the competitive success of Magic: The Gathering, the RNG element and class balance to give Gehlen some food for thought.



“ Well, I am actually not sure if Hearthstone can grow into a full-blooded eSport. Without a doubt there is competition and a lot of people enjoy watching it and like the personalities in it. It’s important what kind of understanding people have of eSports but in my opinion a game can be accepted as an eSport even if it doesn’t meet some eSports criteria 100%. It’s a nice and also fun game and I think it can still develop but don’t forget that you will always see less emotion in HS than SC2 or CS or whatever at least most of the time. […] Balance is actually important in my opinion! As for RNG, this kind of stuff gives people something to discuss, but I think if we look a little wider and see through the eyes of the “casuals” they would not complain so much about it. It’s always tough since we guys are the hardcore guys. ”

We already know what's next for Dennis' crew. The TakeTV Hearthstone Invitational has just been announced and will be the next chapter in Take's Hearthstone adventures. With other big tournaments like DreamHack Bucharest on the horizon and with IEM also having tried out the game, the future looks bright for Blizzard's card game.