This weekend, the biggest tournament circuit for Hearthstone, the Dreamhack Grand Prix, returns to Jönköping and Dreamhack Summer once more. Offering a $25,000 prize pool, it has attracted many of the world’s best players, who will are competing in the 200 man field.

Historically, it has not been common to host Hearthstone LAN tournaments for hundreds of players, something Dreamhack revolutionised with their Grand Prix circuit. The swiss format, popularized for big tournaments in hearthstone by Dreamhack, has proven to be fantastic for competitive integrity. It has become very popular amongst pro players for rewarding consistency over a bigger number of games than your average tournament. But while the gameplay side of things has proven to be top-tier with swiss, problems have surfaced with broadcasting swiss tournaments. With every match being played simultaneously, it has become impossible to broadcast all games on the official tournament streams. While this may not seem like a problem to some, it is concerning that a much lower amount of players will get their chance to showcase themselves in the spotlight the stream means.

To get a feeling for what players think about this issue, we asked two Hearthstone players, both former competitors at Dreamhack events, what they have to say about the matter at hand:

Kasper “teroz” Kamateros:

“The Swiss format leads to players who are already in the limelight getting even more publicity, leaving more unknown players in the shadows. In many tournaments, unknown players can go undefeated during huge parts of the Swiss stage without ever being broadcasted, since the organisers choose more well-known players, sometimes with a lower amount of wins than the unknown player. “

Tore “Jungelbror” Jungebro:

“There are a number of problems with the current broadcasts of swiss tournaments. First of all, the low amount of broadcasted matches may lead to many fans not getting to see their favorite player on stream. It also heavily reduces the viewer’s feeling for the format and the tournament when they only get to view a few games out of the many that take place every swiss round. “

The million dollar question is, how could we solve this problem? At Znipe.tv, we have broadcasted Counter Strike tournaments in our multi-perspective video player since 2016, and we are now looking into how our personalised streaming solution could be applied to Hearthstone. The open source code for what happens in Hearthstone matches (which is what decktracker programs and their likes use to showcase information) gives us huge possibilities to incorporate the information with the Znipe player. Using the accessible information, we could not only have a player where the viewer could choose from any ongoing match in the Swiss tournament. We could also have the player showcase information of interest such as cards drawn, cards remaining in the deck and possibilities for hidden cards such as secrets. These changes would heavily improve the viewer experience by giving them the chance to follow swiss tournaments in a way never previously possible. Getting to choose which matches to follow, while also having the opportunity to view multiple matches at once, would for the first time ever give the viewer an experience that comes close to replicating the feeling of being at an actual swiss-tournament.

Adam Peleback, writer at Znipe.TV