Statistics, dates

g4tv.com did an interview with incontrol about the NASL. It's up on the g4tv thread, but there was a LOT of important information in that interview that isn't anywhere else on TL yet, so I'm going to compile it here.$400,000 over three seasons ($100k for season one, $100k for season two, $200k for season three)Inc, Gretorp, Diggity, others who haven't been confirmed yet.Starts on April 5th, ends sometime in July. 25 games per week, 5 games per night (approx 3 hours per night).Nine weeks of group play, then a 16 man LAN in southern California.Anyone can apply (including Koreans), as long as they are on a gaming team (not sure if the team has to meet some set level of sponsorship/notoriety) and they commit to go to the July LAN held in California. Incontrol stated that perhaps there will be a cap on Koreans at five max, but this isn't set in stone. There is a cap on the number of players from each team, set at five. EG and Liquid, in other words, can have no more than five players in the event.There will also be an open tournament that anyone can enter to determine who advances to one of the spots in the final sixteen.

Each team player will be put in a different division, so no one will hit a member of their team in their division so there will be no HuK vs. Ret in divisional play.

Professionalism and backstory

Every player will be required to turn in a profile including a picture and answers to some questions. Creating backstory is a top priority for the people running the NASL.

...every player is supposed to be backed by a $250 refundable fee. Essentially what it is, is every time they're rude or they're late or any kind of unforeseeable problems occur they'll be penalized $25 or $50 and that comes out of the refundable fee of course. But most people, hopefully all, will be completely and immaculately fine and will get that $250 back. But the idea is to make them accountable.

We're already sold on three seasons. The money has been budgeted and secured. There's no like, “well gosh, if season one does really well then season two will be fine.” It's completely secure for three seasons. It's all insured and backed by Blizzard, that kind of stuff. And the idea again is that we laid down the infrastructure, it grows, gets easier as we go, and then if it's a profitable venture we can continue on for four, five, six seasons and beyond.

Tell us about the stream quality.



Sure, that's something we're very proud of. Obviously when you do something like this that's broadcast online, we're selling high octane competition with the best players, but that doesn't mean anything if it doesn't reach the viewers. So we're taking every precaution necessary. We've definitely put together the most comprehensive machines to render and record and stream the activity. But we're also using fiber optics internet and then we're actually partnered with Justin.tv and they are working with us side by side. So there's a lot on the line for Justin.tv. But you know what? They're getting more involved with eSports as well and they're excited for the opportunity to show, as far as they're concerned and as far as we're concerned the best streaming organization there is.

ESPORTS

The owner of Coaching, Russ, he is the mastermind. This is his baby. He partnered with a USC law school graduate named Duncan who's kind of an eSports newbie, he saw a nice business venture and he's excited and learning more about eSports and they backed it and created it.

We're already sold on three seasons. The money has been budgeted and secured. There's no like, “well gosh, if season one does really well then season two will be fine.” It's completely secure for three seasons. It's all insured and backed by Blizzard, that kind of stuff. And the idea again is that we laid down the infrastructure, it grows, gets easier as we go, and then if it's a profitable venture we can continue on for four, five, six seasons and beyond.

But it's definitely a grass roots effort in the sense that we're not hiring out, we're not getting crews to come in here. We're definitely getting trained by professionals but I mean it's gonna be run by Andre (Gretorp) and myself, Russ, Duncan, and the varying people surrounding GosuCoaching and our friends that kind of came together and helped put this together.

Is there a place in the studio for spectators?



motbob's summary: yes, but not too many.

Are you going to be offering a premium stream?



Yes. There's going to be a free low quality stream that will be made available to everybody... And then there will be a premium channel which is going to be behind a pay wall but made very very cheap. A whole season we're looking at maybe $20 to $25.

What other things are the premium members going to get? Is it going to be like GOM where they get VODs?



Yeah pretty much exactly like that. You'll get a season pass and then access to the high quality VODs. We're talking about creating additional content as well like giving them access to replays but then we thought that was kind of silly because it only takes one person to get a replay and then the whole internet has the replay.

Is your plan for broadcasting to be online only or are you going to try for television?



We want the sky to be the limit but we're definitely not shooting for TV and then falling back on stream. The safe bet is streaming, that's what we know we can do so that's what we're doing now.

And then it's kind of the same faces for those that follow this stuff. Xeris is his handle, Duran Parsi, he's the Fnatic team manager. He's the guy that heads up the Coaching league and if you ask anyone StarCraft related he is the premiere organizer for events. So it's no big shock that when it came too putting together the biggest league outside of South Korea, and perhaps even within South Korea, that he was one of the first guy's locked down.

How is this going to interact with MLG? Are you going to schedule around MLG? Competing with MLG? How's that going to work?



I've actually been in contact with MLG for months now trying to figure out when they're holding events and how we can not steps on toes that way and they've been very cooperative. Actually we just had a phone call two days ago where, much to my appreciation, they've going to release kind of their full schedule as far as they see it so that we can allow players to participate in everything.

On February 22 2011 10:06 iNcontroL wrote:

The voting is a fun way to get involved and support your favorite players. It helps but by no means WHAT SO EVER decides who gets selected.



Please stop looking for ways to make this a bad thing.