TobiWan: «I have been addicted to English panel shows for a long time. I thought that making my own one would be really cool.»

Let’s start with this Major. The Swiss format is something new for Dota 2. What is your opinion about it?

It’s new for Dota but not new for Bucharest. I actually like the Swiss format. It’s a lot better than having things that have happened at ESL One Katowice. Like one team has a bad day and then they find themselves knocked straight away. You have three matches before the elimination. Obviously, there is a negative reaction when no one plays bo3 and can be eliminated and when you have to take care of eight teams before you get to the playoffs. It’s sort of a downside of the format. You can have a really bad matchup. It’s a luck of the draw. But I feel it’s better for spectators. Because you go one game at a time, everyone can follow and understand that these guys win, these guys lose, this one will be eliminated, this one moves on. I find this a lot more clear for the audience and spectators.

At this event, you don’t have typical analysts in the group stage. There are only casters. What has happened?

This is a different stuff that we are trying to do here. We obviously still have good analysts. We have Brax, TrantPax. It’s more casting pairs. Now, it’s a skeleton crew at the group stage but we will have two extra guys flying in for the main event. It’s a different approach to it. You look at it as a downgrade, compared to other tournaments. But there can be different changes, different budgets as well. As long as there more money is going to the prize pool and less to the production, this probably what you see.

Only top 8 teams will earn money. What do think about that?

I am still okay with that. Like if you make it to the playoffs, you will make the cash. There is so much money going throughout Dota. You have Majors and Minors. If you have bad results, you will not go the Major and the main event. This is just the way it is. There is always another tournament coming shortly after and you have to fight hard to get into it. So I don’t think that the whole debate about the top 8 getting money is important when we have more than three Majors in a year.

What do you expect from the tournament? Do you have any favorite team?

I like the underdog story that is going on right now. I think VG.J have been playing really good. I would like to see what will happen when they start playing bo3s. Because of their position right now, they should get all the way through. I like that TNC is performing well. At this point, this can be said about Mineski too. I think they are really capable of doing more than they are currently doing. We have guys that are playing in the mid area - Team Liquid, Team Secret, Newbee, and VP. These are top guys but we will see as far as points go. You always expect a lot more from them. Right now you can’t consider them to be idle. Because it’s a bo1 format.

You tried to make your own gaming show. How did you come up with an idea to do something like that?

I have been addicted to English panel shows for a long time. I thought that making my own one would be really cool. I have been tossing similar concepts. It will be really cool if English TV actually does these cool concepts, which would be a lot more interesting to the gaming community in general. And at the same time I started working with BestMeta, so everything came together.

The pre-season of your show ends up, will we see the first season?

We will work out when the money comes first. It finishes in April. So if we raise money, it will mean that we run the best meta. And if not, we will find another way to make it happen.

What do you think about the retiring talents? Merlini, for example. Do you think about retiring?

I have kinda shared my thoughts about that publicly before. It makes sense because Merlini is looking for the future. Because casting is a very demanding thing if doing it full-time. Especially if you are in a tier1, you are traveling all the time. I am the best example. You have a home but you spend five or four months on the road, you can’t even go back for a day. A life on the road is a very job orientated one. And if you are looking to build a family, to have a more stable future, to have weekends - these are kind of things that you sacrifice even if you don’t want to.

Are you planning to stay in Dota for a long time?

I am planning to stay in gaming for a long time. As far as Dota grows, we will see how the things run. I think there have been a lot of decisions, which have shortened the life of Dota. I know a lot of people that are looking for other things to do. Like me in person, I will be casting a couple of PUBG events this year. Any caster can cast different games. Like I casted Call of Duty and a bunch of other games before I entered Dota. Dota 2 just became my full-time job. It’s a natural progression for games. A game’s life is from 8 to 10 years. So a good caster has always to be prepared for changes.

You have mentioned PUBG. When, do you think, will PUBG become an esports ready?

PUBG is in its very early days. Battle Royal was really developed when it was inside Arma. Now, a bunch of developers makes their own games and direct copies. There are going to be a lot more competition in the genre. I don’t think that someone really understands now how the genre can be competitive. Fortnite is spooky as far. PUBG has a lot of bugs and issues. They try to make a more polished engine but they have essential problems like server lags. This needs to be resolved. And not only this, even the competitive mode. We have always had these talks in Dota about chances and how they affects. For example, miss chances, crit chances and all kind of that. You want to have all these chances when circles appear, when drops are different. They need to find the way to make this thing competitive, so the players don’t be killed by the random all the time. Removing the circles, not having teams under pressure is not the way, for me, to change that. You will never find an answer until you start playing at competitive leveland getting more data. So I think BlueHole actually understand what they want to do with that.