Carmac's World

Thoughts on the new IEM with StarCraft II

In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve announced the new season of the Intel Extreme Masters. And with it, some significant changes to how our StarCraft II tournaments are going to run.

For those of you unaware of the changes, here’s a quick rundown:

IEM stops will have 24 players: 16 will qualify online and 8 will come from an open tournament on Day 1.

We are very proud of the fact that you need to qualify for every Intel Extreme Masters tournament and that we don’t do invitations. We’ve given a chance to great many players and some of them have made a mark in StarCraft II (Feast went through five qualifiers to get to our Kiev event and went on to take 4th place at our World Championship event).

This philosophy of ours got a lot of people complaining about the lineup of players attending our events. I find those complaints offensive to the players that won spots at our events.

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How a good business model makes a good esport game

StarCraft II will die as a professional esport due to an in-built, genetic flaw.  Same as all esports before it.  League of Legends might be the first game not to.

The game’s longevity lies in how well it manages to replace its leavers with fresh blood. I consider a game dead (or dying) when it ceases to deliver new champions and when more people leave the scene than enter it.

One would think that the life span of an esports title depends mainly the quality of its gameplay.  That is not the case.  At least as important, if not more so, is the business model behind the game.

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