Interview with the organizer of The Chongqing Major

Interview with a Project Manager SLTV

It became known that StarLadder and ImbaTV will be hosting the Dota 2 Major in the winter season. We talked with Vladyslav Udovenko, the SLTV project manager, about the preparations for , the intricacies of the tournament organizers and the features of the current Dota Pro Circuit system. Enjoy the read!

— Firstly, tell us a little about yourself: how long have you been working in the esports industry and what exactly do you do in SLTV? What projects have you been involved in?

Vladyslav Udovenko

“I started working in esports in 2011: I wrote news for cyberarena.tv. In 2012, I became Dota-2-Department’s community manager for StarLadder and worked for about 8 months. In the spring of 2013, I started working for WePlay, organized the first two seasons of Dota 2 with Anton “Warlock” Tokarev. At the end of 2013, I moved to Game Show, where I spent almost two years and was responsible for everything related to esports. In May 2015, the opportunity to go to work for StarLadder appeared - and I gladly returned. The first projects for me were tournaments and broadcasts in Hearthstone, but over time, the ranks of our Dota-2-department were sharply reduced and I had to get involved in Dota 2 tournaments. At the same time, I continued to work with games from Blizzard. In the end, over the past 3 years, I participated in organizing in all of our Hearthstone tournaments, the last 5 LAN tournaments in Dota 2, the Western Clash in HotS and the World of Warcraft Arena European Championship”.

— Share your thoughts about the new system, in which the Minor is conjugated with the Major. Why is it better or worse than it was in the last year?

— I do not see any problem in the conjugation of the minor with major, but I also do not see problems in the system of the last year. The most important and, as for me, the best adjustment this year is the quantity. 10 tournaments per year are quite enough, and now at least it’s not necessary to hold 4 qualifiers in one week. The pairing, in its turn, made the minors a bit more interesting, as the winner passes to Major.

— And if one tournament organizer held both events, how effective/inefficient would it be?

— The efficiency would be the absence of problems with visas for the team that wins a minor. In addition, in this case, the team that wins the minor would not need to fly from Europe to Asia (and so it will be with at least two first minors). I see two complications with this solution:

1) In this case, the DPC tournaments this year would have held only 5 organizations.
2) Theoretically it is quite possible to hold a tournament for 3 weeks straight, but in fact, it is incredibly difficult for people who organize it or work within the scene. If you carry out a minor and a major based on that schedule, closer to the final of the major the quality of the broadcast and the work of talents is likely to become noticeably lower.

— Last year, StarLadder had no majors, unlike, for example, DreamLeague. Why we did not see a StarLadder Major?

— We had a misunderstanding with Valve about the period for submitting applications for Major and Minor tournaments. At the moment when we sent our proposal, there were 5 free weeks left and we were offered to host three minors. We didn’t want to be left out without any DPC tournaments, so we agreed and we do not regret.

— Was Major your goal for the season 2018/2019? How did you prepare for one of the largest DPC events to go to you?

— Of course, we really wanted to host Dota-2-Major. Preparation began with the minors last season: we tried to do as good as possible. In addition, we restructured our offer quite heavily and tried to put as many details as possible in each aspect: the broadcast, the venue, the place of residence for the players and staff, the stage and so on.

— Recently there was a conversation that the benefit from DPC tournaments is not so high. How do you comment on that? Is it, for this reason, organizers, for example, ESL, without any hesitation, host ordinary commercial events?

— I think it all depends on the business model of the company. Speaking specifically about media rights, each company has 2 ways: to sell the rights exclusively for a large amount, or to try to negotiate with all platforms, but for smaller amounts. Probably, it is more profitable for ESL to sell everything exclusively to Facebook and therefore this year they decided to stay away from DPC tournaments.

— Why the choice fell on China for this major, and not, for example, Kiev, where the studio is based? What criteria do you take into account?

— We offered Valve three countries to choose from, they chose China. We do not see any problems in holding tournaments in China from an organizational point of view, and therefore we have submitted China as one of the options.

— The tournament will be held in China with the support of ImbaTV. Who will act as a contractor? One of the companies, both or will you be outsourcing? And what is the reason?

— We have been working with ImbaTV since January 2016, and in fact, this is a joint work. We have already divided the areas of responsibility of the tournament, and now each of the companies is preparing its own part of the job.

— You already have a solid experience in holding tournaments: TechLabs, DreamHack Moscow and others. You know what to pay attention to. What is the number one priority? What, in essence, will you be responsible for The Chongqing Major?

— In fact, everything is quite simple: we need reliable contractors for building the stage, good computers, two Internet service providers, a correct schedule (taking into account potential delays) and everything must be done by a large team of people so that a single person is not responsible for everything.

At the moment I am coordinating the preparation processes within StarLadder and communication with ImbaTV. At the major, I will most likely try to pay more attention to the Russian and English broadcasts and work with the teams.

— In China, there were not the best production tournaments. For example, The Shanghai Major. What are you doing to prevent those mistakes?

— I think the problem of The Shanghai Major was the inexperience of the organizers and poor preparation for the tournament. We have been involved in this tournament for about a month now and are trying to think through all the potential problems and ways to solve them.

— You intend to bring all the talents. Why is it such a key factor for you?

— We did not manage to organize a major tournament in the CIS, so I want to squeeze the most out of the current situation for the Russian-speaking audience - to make a full-fledged broadcast from the venue.

— The resources of the studio SLTV in terms of talents are currently limited. Will you involve commentators and analysts from the side? Is there a chance of cooperation with Maincast, RuHub or players (as a surprise)?

— Of course, we will not be able to cover all the qualifiers and the finals with 4 people. For the qualifiers and finals, we will definitely attract additional commentators and analysts. Most likely, the full list of talents for qualifiers will be made public next week.

— Aside from that, will the studio manage on its own or will you attract freelancers, volunteers? What's the general process of forming staff members for LAN events?

— During the preparation of the tournament, you begin to understand what you plan to do there and who will be suited for it. After that, you look at whether there are people you need within the company, and if not, then you are looking for a person for a specific task for a certain period of time. At The Chongqing Major, the majority of staff will be StarLadder and ImbaTV staff.

— There are tournaments that can be called traditional, but there are events like DreamLeague or The Summit with memes and a varied show program. Which way will you go? Share your thoughts.

— At the moment, we have not yet decided what kind of setting the tournament should be broadcasted. Most likely, this will be a serious broadcast, which we will slightly dilute with humor and a variety of videos.

— StarLadder has two Minors ahead. Can we expect for one of them to be in Kiev, or is it too early to talk about it?

— At the moment, we are considering several options for the Minors, but most likely, at least one of them will be held in Kiev.