

Interview with John Teymoorian

Do you want to introduce yourself?

My name is John Teymoorian, I’m the Product Manager of Heroes of the Storm esports at Blizzard entertainment.



What does a Product Manager do?

A Product Manager is focused on growing the program, ensuring it's is on track from a strategic standpoint given the objectives that we have. What we’re trying to do is create the most epic, entertaining experiences around Heroes of the Storm esports. So making sure that we’re listening to the community, making sure we are taking care of the players, and producing the highest quality broadcast that we can.

One of the newest things to the HGC Broadcasts has been twitch drops. It’s something that had been very popular the times they’ve been activated. In the future could we see this for regular season HGC play?

Twitch drops is a brand new thing, and is something we are still evaluating. We are really happy with how it performed so we brought them back for the Western and Eastern Clash. We’re just basically at the stage where we’re seeing how it performs and then we’ll consider what to do next. We’re always listening to what people say in the community and how people are reacting to it.



Yeah it’s completely different loot/reward structure to how Overwatch does it so I can see how you’d want to evaluate that.

Yeah, if you see it’s pretty robust. It’s like a two-pronged program. We are guaranteeing rewards then we have these additional line of rewards and then we have unlocked accounts where you could have every hero. It’s pretty cool right? We’re just trying things out. Our team is always looking to grow, improve, and push the envelope a little bit to see how things pan out.

Another part of the broadcast we want to ask about is HGC cheer. What are your thoughts on HGC cheer and in the future, and some of the confusion about the player’s split?

I think it’s communicated on, at least we have in the past. But it’s basically the same thing we had in the past where half of the proceeds go straight to the team.



Every team is set up differently. Sometimes the designated owner is the org they are playing for and sometimes it’s one of the players specifically so every team is structured different.

One of the big topics this year have been the rosters, and how after the roster change period teams are going to major events like the Mid-Season Brawl with a roster they know they won’t be playing with after.

Yeah, for sure that’s definitely a big piece of feedback. The reason why it was the way it was it’s because we wanted to be at Dreamhack Summer, and because of the way it was scheduled there was no time after that. The way we ran our schedule is we had Dreamhack Summer and about a week later we had to start. And that’s just because the timing of everything. We are already talking about what we’ll do next year to alleviate those concerns, that’s something that going into the year we knew that we at Blizzard would need to communicate early. All the teams knew in advance and it’s something we’re working on.



Yeah, it can definitely be awkward seeing players competing at the highest level, knowing they won’t be on that team a week after.



Yeah for sure. I completely understand. The reason why that happened is primarily because of scheduling of when the physical event is happening, and that we need to make sure that players have enough time to do changes and the players have time to find a new home. We could shorten the window but it wouldn’t give the players or teams enough notice to do changes. If you notice how long that takes, imagine one day you’re told that you’re not in a team anymore, then you go and scrim with another team and it takes a week at least, that’s why. Our end goal is making sure the players are taken care of, no one left being taken out to dry and that teams are able to fill in their rosters appropriately.



Going into that he ownership rules changed this year and we had a few situations such as Roll20 and Gale force that caused some confusion. Are there any changes coming to the ownership system to stop those issues and be more transparent to the fans about what’s happening?

I think having some transparency is reasonable, we’re getting feedback from the orgs and the players directly and we’re considering changes, but I think there are things that are always going to be internal business. There will always be things that won’t be public information.

Yeah it’s been interesting seeing everything that happened with some of the teams.

Yeah it was but it’s like, private matters, Some of that information will never go to the public because it’s not appropriate to share publicly. Most of that stuff, what we do what HCG does and how we weight or how we react to a situation, it’s stuff that we share. But what the orgs or the players do that’s not ours to share that’s on them to share, if they want to. But as far as it relates to the HGC and how we’re ruling on it that’s always stuff that we’re going to share, but what’s happening internally that’s up to the orgs.



Lately in HGC, theres been some discussion of “optimal conditions”, related to internet connection and servers. Is there any plans in the future for a localized HGC?

I think it’s possible, but I think what we have right now in place is for a specific reason. Having everybody pack up and move to an specific place is difficult. There is already people in current NA teams that would not be part of the program if we did that. It’s not the type of life they want to live. The fact that we are online allows us to run as much content as we are running, we have 26 weeks of total league play, that’s a lot of broadcast, that’s a lot of hours. It’s difficult to have 32 teams and have it be a LAN, plus we have all the non-league regions like Thailand, LATAM, ANZ. Having all of them in a LAN means the costs are much higher, it’s much more logistically difficult, plus a lot of these people just don’t want to do that, they don’t want to leave their home or their family. I think right now what we have works, but if it looks like that’s something that the community is more in support of that’s something we could look at.



About the Minor Regions

At Liquid Heroes we have a lot of writers that focus on the Minor Regions, we wanted to ask some questions about those



How successful has the new HGC structure, for example the Intercontinental clash or the Horizon Clash, has been for the minor regions?



I’ve gotten feedback from the operators and the players and it’s been really good. The big thing about that is we want to give them their own chance to really shine, so they have their own event where they can be the centerpiece and they can play in an international event. In the last Intercontinental Clash the ANZ team flew out to Brazil. So now, in the next one, it’s going to be the reverse. It’s an opportunity for the teams to speak with the fans and to have their teams be the centerpiece of the events. It’s been pretty well received. But again this is something that we try based on feedback. We were looking at what the audience were saying about our events and saying “how can we support all of our regions in a way that allows them to shine and allows them to participate in a way that is compelling and makes the community happy?". So we made some changes these year and we’re pretty happy, but we are already looking at feedback and considering things that we could change for 2019.

Is there anything you are thinking about changes to those events in the future?

Yeah there’s a couple of things but I think right now from a holistic standpoint rather than talking specifically about one region or another, I think the main thing for us is to make sure that we’re providing an environment where teams, the players and the organizations that are sponsoring them feel like their time and money are well spent and that they are able to succeed as being part of HGC. So we’re looking at how we structure our overall program to create revenue opportunities for them, more exposure opportunities for them and opportunities for them to engage directly with the fines. That’s really important for us. So for example one of the things that we did, like this is one example. We don’t do a lot of live events in America, so the North American teams don’t get a lot of exposure directly to the local American fans and it was really important for us to a event outside of the HGC finals here. So we’re doing this, we’re selling HGC merch, some of the teams that are participating here were also selling their merch, so fans can not only come here and cheer for them but also support them. These things are additional opportunities for them to engage directly with the fans, create awareness, create a connection, so we’re trying these things to see how they perform. A lot of this stuff has a lot of moving pieces and a lot different ways we can approach it so we get an idea, we say “ok we can execute this” we talk to some of the orgs and they say it’s a good idea so we give it a shot.



Merchandise at the Blizzard Arena

It definitely feels as though Blizzard is listening and responding to more feedback as of late.

Yeah, we look at reddit all the time, we talk with the orgs all the time. All the changes that we made this year are based on feedback that the orgs gave us last year, and we’re making it again this year. So we try not to assume we know what’s best, we’re always open to feedback.



Another question we have, is if we could see minor region regular season play such as the ANZ Premiere league on the launcher? The regions saw a noticeable boost in viewership when they were featured.



Yeah, I think so definitely. I work directly with all the regional managers. It’s definitely a balancing act. Right now we have a lot of HGC content so it’s just trying to balance all the different priorities. But definitely yeah.



It must be difficult balancing all the content between all the various regions of HGC play, along with featured community streamers.

Yeah, HGC is live basically seven days a week in all the different time zones so it’s a give and take type of situation. So in one situation one region might get priority and in another situation another might get it so it’s just that type of thing, they’re all sharing the same space and the same promotional window, We’re also promoting streamers and all types of content in the launcher so it's a lot of different things we have to do, it’s just a balancing act.

One of our reporters wants to know: What are your thoughts on combining the Intercontinental Clash and Horizon Clash into an even bigger event for all the minor regions?

Why do they want that?

I believe the desire here is that their events in HGC are so spread out and smaller that one big event will really shine on all the minor regions.

That’s interesting. This is a perfect example, like if we get feedback from people saying like “yeah this is great” we would consider it and get feedback with the people from minor regions to see what they think. So the thing is every region has its own culture and there are a lot of details involved, like trying to balance what the community is asking for and what makes sense for the pros and the actual teams working on that. It’s totally possible so we’d need to talk with the teams to see what they think of that.



I think the other thing about having a region specific event is you have similar regions coming together so it’s becomes more of a festival. So that’s a potential thing you’re giving up when it becomes this bigger thing, everyone is getting a smaller piece of that pie, a little bit.



It’s kind of the same way we do the Western and Eastern Clash. We have similar cultures because everyone or most people speak in english and most cultures are similar so it makes sense to do that. There's more direct rivalries. But it’s an idea we can look at for sure.

The HGC and it's future

For you personally, and we touched upon this a little bit but the Western Clash and the Blizzard Arena. I’ve been here for Heroes of the Dorm, I’ve been here for Overwatch League, What does it mean to you to have the HGC and the Western Clash here at the Blizzard Arena?



I think it’s amazing. Honestly it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a really long time and I’m just glad to get the North American teams out for the fans. They’ve been historically in Europe every single time that they’re playing so I want to try do more of this, maybe here specifically. So yeah, I want to do more events in NA. It was really important, specially getting the merch out here, we did a bunch of different things we have postcards, we have signing cards. I wanted to create an opportunity for the teams to go out and engage directly with the fans, shake their hands, hand them something that’s personally signed by them, that they could go back and hang on the wall. It was really important. It probably sounds like it’s not that big of a deal but it really was for us, because we’re always elsewhere, so it doesn’t give an US audience the opportunity to come to these events in person.

I can tell you that the north american heroes community is very tight-knit, and it means alot to us to have this event here in NA.



That great! I’m glad that you guys value that a lot. I was hoping that would be the case. It’s cool seeing a lot of people that I see really often turn out here. It’s good for the teams too, they wanna build that connection directly with the fans and this gives them another opportunity for them to do so.



*PR person in the background* Yeah they wanna hear “NA! NA! NA!”



And with that comes an end to my questions. Is there anything else you’d like to add on the state of HGC?

Well, a couple of things. Viewership is way up, we’re up about 20% from last year, plus the in the Mid-Season Brawl we had double the viewership. Twitch drops are working obviously really well, it’s helping, people are watching so it’s working out really well. The cheer program is pretty big. I think we now have a lot of compelling, relevant rewards tied to what is happening in the league if you cheer. If we get the global community total cheers for stage 2 up to 7.5 million bits, then everyone’s going to get a spray and a banner for the clash winning team. Plus we have all the caster emotes, the hero emotes. There’s a lot of really cool stuff we have this year that we didn’t have last year structured in a way that makes more sense to cheer on a more regular basis. This way people have a reason to come back and keep cheering for their favorite teams. The game is doing well. We’re seeing a lot of exciting matches here, we’re seeing a lot of heroes being used, different comps, now we have the third ban in. The game and the HGC is in a really good place.



I think people have a lot to look forward to. The game has a lot of content coming up, there's a lot of reworks, there's a lot planned for the next year too. We want to kinda put on more of a festival feel, we’re working with the game team to make sure that all of our promotions and esports are all coordinated so that we have this celebration of the game. Our fans really are committed and we want to recognize them and make sure they understand we are paying attention to them and provide them the most epic entertaining that we can.

You definitely know HGC is getting epic when Sgt. Hammer is picked or banned in every single game.

Right? It’s crazy right now it’s cool. I’m definitely excited to see how the meta continues to evolve as the game devs continue to make updates to the game and reworks coming. We’ll see some Azmo maybe I don't know it’d be cool. Some Butcher would be cool, don’t quote me on that (laughs) everybody hates when I say that.





@JohnTeymoorian You can follow John Teymoorian on Twitter:



@AzaxGG And Sean “Azax” McFarlan:

At the Western Clash, Liquid Heroes reporter, Sean “Azax” McFarlan , had the opportunity to sit down with John Teymoorian to talk about the Heroes Global Championship and it's future.