Finally we hold the first eSports Yearbook in our hands (after the Post needed nearly two weeks to deliver it) and it looks great and we hope you will like it too. You will find a short overview about the book at Google and currently it is available at Amazon Germany, United Kingdom (should be soon buyable) and Japan. But with the ISBN (978-3839164310) it should be orderable at any book store. Soon the book will be available at Amazon.com and an eBook is in work.

We hope you like the book and we would love to see you holding it in your hands, so please send us your pictures with the eSports Yearbook 2009 and we will upload them to the site. Additional to that you can already think about your articles for the next book and start sending them to us now. Please send us your articles until 30th of November 2010. However you can contact us over contact@esportsyearbook.com.

As I am currently reading a lot about Game Design I stumbled upon an interesting article about the panel of Rob Pardo (Executive Vice President of Game Design at Blizzard Entertainment) at the Game Developers Conference. He was talking about the Game Design of Blizzard. He stated eleven elements, which are essential for a Blizzard game.
Gameplay First: This is an interesting fact as the game has to be fun and fun is hereby the way to direct the gamer into the right way. Additional fun is a great way to increase the long-time motivation for the player.
Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master: The game has to be simple, with simple mechanics and objectives, so everybody can play the game and everybody has an easy entrance to the game. However there has to be more depth to the game than easy learning, in World of Warcraft you see that raiding and arenas are more difficult to master.
What is Fantasy? Rob Pardo was talking about the look of the game, especially the UI in World of Warcraft. This was a failure for Blizzard, as the vast majority of the gamer customized their UI, instead of using the standard interface.
Make Everything Overpowered: I have to admit, I played a Gnome Warrior and tanked some pretty big stuff, and often I did not see the whole model of the enemy. But as Rob Pardo said, this made it extremely special to challenge those enemies and defeat them. Make it overpowered and it is an epic adventure.
Concentrated Coolness: There are only few classes in World of Warcraft, if you compare it to the classes in Warcraft 3, however Blizzard took only the best elements and concentrated them into the few classes in World of Warcraft.
Play, Don’t Tell: That is interesting, as players tend to not read the quest text, but still want to experience the storyline. So Blizzard has to find ways that the quest text is only an enhancement for the story. For example the death knight starting area is a good example for that way.
Make it a Bonus: Players don’t like punishment, however if this effect is changed into a bonus players like it. Rob Pardo stated the Rest System of WoW as an example. In the beginning players are punished for playing too long (drop from 100% xp to 50% xp) and the players hated it, however he changed it into rested players get 200% xp and not-rested players stay at 100%. From the math the same system, but somehow the players loved the change.
Control is King: Blizzard had to sacrifice some cool animations and effects for the game play. Rob Pardo takes for example summon a mount, which appears beneath you in a puff of smoke. However a different animation would be cool, the control for the player would be less.
Tuning it Up: “Tuning is easy to do, hard to do well.” Thus it is important to tune your game for an audience it is necessary to still have hooks and try to know why you are tuning it this way.
Avoid the Grand Reveal: That is something interesting, Blizzard tries to show their stuff early and not until it is finished or perfect. Game developers have to establish an environment where feedback is encouraged and you can fail.
Culture of Polish: Polishing is not only for the team which tries to make a good game. Blizzard also brings in so called strike teams, people from other teams. They test the game as well and give feedback and a fresh perspective.
Definitely an interesting panel and it gave me some interesting insights into Game Design.

In my résumé I have some parts, which wouldn’t exist if I wouldn’t work in the field of gaming. Working as a journalist in gaming, writing on a book about eSports, however, I am still struggling with the fact that I was a leader of a team of people who was one of the best in the game of World of Warcraft, in Germany we were under the Top 20. In review, this was an intensive job with everything from recruiting, guidelines, payment, training and finally leading in a really delicate way. All this in a world, which could change rapidly – in a blink of an eye. In that time I was a CEO of a team of 60 High Potentials, in general this sounds great!   until I say “video-game”. After that argument the HR-person will think, I have less concentration at work, my life-center will be at the video game and I will have a sleeping disorder. This will stamp you in Australia and you probably won’t get the job.

In this article –in spite of all prejudices –  I want to try to show you that a so-called guild-leader of a successful guild has already some tools for leading a team. Every company has to have a vision that fits, the same thing is valid for a guild. This vision contains the general target of guilds, e.g. be the best on the server and the time amount they want to spend to be the best. The best guilds in the world are “working” every day of the week up to six hours a day. However, this length of time is only in case of new content, what you can compare with a new project or a tournament where only the fastest ones get the price and the honor of calling themselves first!  With this vision on mind a great amount of time will the leader be spending on get the right people and this is even harder for a guild-leader than the HR-people, because normally you don’t have a face-to-face interview and nowadays with this background you can change your name easily and (although it is illegal) you can buy a whole character at an auction-house.. But nevertheless after an online-interview and everything, the question arises, does this “worker” fit into the “company”? Especially as these “workers” will also spend a huge amount of leisure time together;  or otherwise you will soon have a formation of  groups; and this is a common reason for failure of a guild and leads to the confrontations which the guild leader has to resolve. For success the players have to be at their best for over six hours and in case of failure, it is often the mistake of some few people. In order to get progress the leader has to find a way of criticizing and not allowing to escalate a possible confrontation of other players. You have to remind, that on some nights the players fight for their target the whole night long and the amount of tries can be easily up to 20, this arises frustration and human mistakes. This is a dangerous situation and demands skills in delicate leadership. In the companies’ world a way to motivate people is the payment and in a changed way this is the same in the guild world; and this compensation  is varying as much as possible and every guild has its own way. However the common currency for the system is the so-called Dragon Kill Point (short: DKP). Players can get points for time, for success, for getting necessary stuff and many more ways and thereby use these points to buy items. It is important to establish a way to motivate the player to work for the guild. Furthermore, the guild leader has to check the finances of the guild. Real finances like costs of web-server or voice-server and in-game finances, and finally, to assure the long-term success of the guild and, if necessary, look for fusion-partners (e.g. summer time is always a difficult time).

Every point listed here can be researched at length  and will be published in future articles. The purpose of this article was to show that a good guild leader has the tools to adapt to a leadership position in a „real“ company and, therefore, my guild-life and of everybody else should be in my and everybody’s résumé as a positive sign for your future employee.

• GameSports Magazin 11/03
• GameSports FM Jiingle
• Konzeptbild Smudo-Interview
• eMAG 01/04
• eMAG 02/04
• eMAG 03/04
• eMAG 04/04
• eMAG 05/04
• eMAG 06/04
• eMAG 07/04
• eMAG 01/05
• Interview bei Giga

Weiteres Material sind vor allem fast 10 Gigabyte an Videos, wie zum Beispiel die World Cyber Games 2004 und ein kompletter Mitschnitt des Spielraums von Ocrana im EPS Finale 2004 gegen Mousesports. Dies wird jedoch noch dauern, da es noch ein wenig bearbeitet werden muss.

Der Vortrag wird auf der Messe Laatzen stattfinden im Übergang Halle 2.2 und Halle 3.2 und wird zwischen 12 Uhr und 13 Uhr in dem Raum 2 stattfinden, hier noch der Link zu dem Programmheft der RolePlay Convention.