Natus Vincere CEO talks about The International 2 (with Eng subs)

Today we’ll speak about The International.
The world’s second largest eSports tournament has finished.
For our team the result was on one hand good,
on another it wasn’t so good.
As some people wrote in the internet,
iG has won the tournament
and Na`Vi – the fame.
I agree with this statement as well.
But let’s make a revision of what happened
on this tournament and how it differs from the 1st one.
Let’s start from disadvantages.
As there’s always another side of the coin.
I think that the 1st minus of this tournament
was its tournament system.
First of all it would be better
if the simple Olympic system was used.
There’s no use in re-inventing the wheel
as there’re ready solutions in all professional kinds of sport.
Group-group-single; group-group-double.
But it was bad idea to make double at once,
like losers and winners.
The losers Best of 1 is very unpredictable.
People can play only 1 game
and it can’t show their skills.
If Valve wanted to produce the maximum real result
without any free ride (the Best of 1 already supposes it)
they could simply go with the elimination format.
Making a group of 8 teams and divide it into 2 brackets
is also impossible to understand.
I think that this is a great minus of this tournament
and if Valve change it for the next one it will be a great advantage.
The second disadvantage, I think that it is the players’ waiting.
It’s great that they are taken to and from the office,
but the main problem is that they have to wait for their games
for a really long time.
Let’s take Darer for example, they came at 8 am,
and it means that they woke up at 7 am.
Their game was at 9 pm and that means they were up
for 14 hours without a chance to leave the venue and so on.
I think that it’s really difficult restriction
and it’s better to give the gamers more freedom.
To take them to the place at least 2 hours before
the match or take them to the venue but also give them possibilities
to go to the hotel, have some rest or take a nap
as players should have some rest, they aren’t robots.
One more disadvantage of the 1st and 2nd Internationals
is that this tournament is much better than any other tournaments
and I don’t know how the team which played on the International
would play on any other championship.
I don’t know how Na`Vi will play
and where will they take the motivation for their matches
It’s the aspect of Slavic mentality as well.
The Chinese and European players will find the motivation,
but as for the Slavic gamers, I have some doubts.
As for the disadvantages, I think that’s all.
Let’s discuss the positive moments,
I’ve got the whole list of them.
Let’s start from the organization.
I think it was really great and I’d like to thank the Valve staff
which was engaged in the tournament organization
which were in charge of our team, Christine, Phil and his family,
my greetings to you, we love you and thank you for everything!
We felt very comfortable and cozy there
and that was one of the best tournaments
which I have ever been to.
The 2nd pro is spectators and the venue opportunities.
It was much more entertaining than the 1st International.
It was really incredible, the emotions, the cheers
and the hall itself, everything was filled
with a great mood and everyone shared it
including players and viewers.
In addition the viewers were able to watch the game
from the gaming client for the 1st time.
I also watched it, it was very convenient
and I hope this will become a good tradition
for people to follow their team via game client as well.
It was a great advantage for spectators.
The 3rd is the teams’ bonuses.
You should notice that Blizzart and Riot
who claim that they develop eSports,
on one hand, yes, they do something,
but they do it just to promote their games
and thus to earn money for themselves.
What have these 2 companies made
for eSports development?
For teams’ and tournaments’ development as well?
As for me, I don’t know.
Well, yes, they organize tournaments
and pay prizemoney but we are talking about the development itself.
Valve is the 1st company which gave chance
directly to the teams to earn money during the tournament.
The teams could sell their pennants and get some royalty.
The pennant was sold for 1$ and, according to the contract,
25 cent was the team’s share,
which is really good for it.
Valve also supports tournaments which
work on the same systems but with tickets
for in-game clients which you can watch.
I think Valve is unique company for eSports
as nobody else has done as much as this company.
I wish them all the best.
Let’s continue.
The location - place where everything was held.
This is USA and everybody likes this place.
It is great concert hall with enormous size.
It was really dramatic and I remember few tournaments
held in such halls, like the tournaments
in Kiev cinema hall etc, but compared to this one,
to its facilities for the media, spectators and teams
that was the best place I’ve ever seen.
The 5th advantage is the coverage.
Guys, CBS, Forbes and some other major media
were reporting about this tournament.
This can tell us about the status of this event.
Talking about the advantage of this tournament coverage,
it was really huge with the qualitative content supply.
There were approximately 12 English commentators,
as only v1lat could go from the Russian ones.
Can you imagine the number of people
on this planet who shared the information
from the tournament?
I think it’s really cool and the coverage from the 2nd tournament
was much better than from the 1st one.
I think about taking care of players.
Everyday we had a clear schedule,
what to do and where to go,
what to watch and which places to visit.
There was lots of food with a free access to it
in Valve office of many kinds, just everything what you want:
American food, healthy and unhealthy in amount you want.
Everything. The same was in Benaroya Hall as well,
where the players lounge was.
There we could watch the games,
hang out, smoke in the special place.
All the stuff that Valve made for us,
nobody has done and we’ll se how long
will other developers realize how much they’ve done
and how they should carry on to succeed.
I’d like to speak on further plans besides the International.
Certainly it should be in the all continents league format
with eliminations, regional and qualification matches
for the best teams to come to the tournament.
without invitations. I mean that only iG should get in as the winner
and the rest teams should pass the selection.
I’d like to speak on the next tournaments on DOTA 2
that is waiting for us after TI with prize money and so on.
I think that this year before the official release of the game
we shouldn’t wait for them, except for Valve as usually.
I hope that the game will be released in the nearest future
and we’ll be able to try in the released game format
instead of the beta-one.
Only after its release we’ll be able to estimate
the number of prize championships and other tournament that we’ll play.
I think that the beta-version of DOTA 2 is paid the most attention
than all of the rest betas combined.
In comparison to StarCraft 2 and CS: Global Offensive,
Dota 2 has all chances to become
the eSports title number #1 in the world.
It was me, Alexander Kochanovskyy. Bye!