ESFI World

“Iron Squid”: do those two words mean anything to you? What if I told you that the Iron Squid is a tournament that features a $25,000 prize pool with a player roster that includes the likes of IdrA, MC, Mvp, Boxer, MMA and Stephano. Caught your attention yet? Seeming to rise out of nowhere, the Iron Squid tournament has been getting attention as of late, holding two online qualifiers that had some huge names in them and seeing ZeNEX_Life and TSL_Symbol emerge triumphant. Topping everything off with a live finals and semi-finals in Paris, France, including fully paid travel and accommodations for the players, the Iron Squid tournament is looking to put itself on the map in a big way.

Curious, I began a quest to discover more about this organization beyond the ironically devoid “About” page on their website. My quest ended with Fredrick “Karou” Gau and Clement “LeLfe” Laparra, the tournament directors for Iron Squid, and we spoke on Skype about themselves, their aspirations for Iron Squid, the players, casters, prize pool, and a bit about the current state of the StarCraft 2 tournament scene.

So to begin, let's hear a bit about yourselves and your team?

Fred Gau: Hello, I'm Frederick "Kaoru" Gau and I'm the Tournament Director for the Iron Squid. The project’s team is around ten people. The project was created by Pomf & Thud's team and some other French SC2 community members like Shiba, LeLfe and I.

So it's you and about ten other people?

Fred Gau: Pomf & Thud's team made the first part of the Iron Squid tournament, they are around eight to ten people, and we (Shiba, LeLfe & I) came in the project about one month later to create and manage the tournament. They (P&T’s team) will mostly work on production and stream that you saw during the first and second qualifiers.

What sets this tournament apart from other tournaments? Is this a bunch of passionate French gamers attempting to put France on the map in terms of professional StarCraft 2?

Fred Gau: Of course we are a bunch of passionate guys who want to break out into the scene, but we are not focusing specifically on the French scene. We have an international focus for the Iron Squid Tournament. Thanks to Khaldor, Apollo & TotalBiscuit this is possible for us.

We want to make a new tournament brand in order to have an alternative to all the other major tournaments like MLG & ESL, and we want to do it in France in order to promote eSports in our country but also promote our know-how in terms of organization. For the moment it’s working pretty well when you look at the list of participants, we did not expect such players in our qualifiers, and we were also surprised at the invitations we sent out. We are really happy about it, because people believe in Iron Squid and our tournament is really hyped by the community, and we haven’t even started our main event!

Clement Laparra: This tournament is also an attempt to wake up the French SC2 scene as it's slowly coming around but we've always been quite behind nations like Germany or Sweden.

Watch the teaser video

Hand-in-hand with such great players is a huge prize pool, which currently stands at a whopping $25,000 with $12,500 going to first place. How did you amass such a huge prize pool? Who are your sponsors?

Fred Gau: The first thing I want to say is that our cash prize is secured, we already have it, and we wouldn’t start this tournament without it. For the second part of the question, we’re still in negotiations because getting the tournament running was far more important than our sponsors. I can't say much about it, but that it will be announced soon. Do not worry about it, we have our own budget for this tournament and it is quite enough to deal with everything.

No doubt $25k is a significant sum, but it's excellent to hear that it's a sure thing. Much like the prize pool, the player list is absolutely incredible. It's common knowledge that Koreans, especially top level Koreans like the ones travelling to this event, do not like to travel abroad. How did you facilitate that and do you feel they are coming simply for the prize pool?

Clement Laparra: You're underestimating how appealing and glamorous a free trip to Paris is!

Fred Gau: I can definitely say that the cash prize is a part of our appeal, but we all know how Korean and other international teams like to have paid travel so we are offering the travel fees for the top four and finals in Paris. That is quite charming because you get to visit Paris for a few days and with a chance to win $12,500 it’s quite nice. With qualifier number one we tried to accommodate the players in terms of server and timezone, the only ones who should have some hard time in the tournament should be the Iron Squid team to give the best service to everyone, viewers and players.

This tournament has emerged out of relative obscurity. Was that an intentional move or were you simply waiting until the date got closer for a huge push in terms of marketing and coverage?

Clement Laparra: We wanted to make two splashes, the first one with the first announcement (tournament as a whole) as the French community really loves anything P&T (Pomf & Thud) do, and the second with the players we announced that helped us put the "seal" on the tournament. When we had the first fourteen invites we knew it would get some attention, but the last four were the cherry on top, and the guarantee that Iron Squid would be a notable name.

Fred Gau: In terms of marketing the name of tournament was made for it, Iron Squid is an unusual name for a StarCraft 2 tournament. The graphics, homepage and the casters create a lot of hype around the tournament and we are really happy to see that people like our work. We will try to promote even more the tournament and some surprises will be announced...at the right time.

Tell us a little about the casting team. You have TotalBiscuit and Apollo but also Pomf & Thud. P&T seem like go-to guys for anything to do with French casting but how did TotalBiscuit and Apollo get involved? You also mentioned Khaldor - will we also see a German stream for the Iron Squid?

Fred Gau: About the casters, we based a lot of our tournament around the casters. We wanted a tournament that any caster would love to cast. We had TB & Apollo in mind for the English cast, so we asked them at the first qualifier of the Iron Squid. We also proposed that they come to another event that Pomf & Thud did at Le Bataclan which was a SC2 showmatch with ThorZaIN, HasuObs, SarenS and MoMaN to show them how we are going to work for something bigger. This event gathered fifteen hundred people at Le Bataclan and more than six thousand viewers on www.ogaming.tv with only a French audience. That was the fist major event in a historical Paris theater and we got very good feedback on it. All these factors made TB & Apollo want to work with us so we have quite a great tournament right now, if everything keeps going right that will be awesome.

Casting team of Pomf & Thud, Total Biscuit & Apollo (Photo: Iron Squid)

Also about Khaldor, we wanted to get a German caster for qualifier number two and he gladly accepted. We are thinking about getting him into Iron Squid but due to technical issues with the homepage, we’re trying to figure out how to do it. Khaldor is a great guy and gave us some promotion in his GSL Casts. We are looking forward to working with him if that is possible for both of us.

Pomf & Thud are the most well-known casters in France and they are going to do this tournament as their first big international tournament. We all hope they will get more fans around the world because their work in France and their WebTV show is quite impressive. Check it out if you want, you will be surprised.

As you've said, you already hosted two qualifiers and looking at the participating players, they were huge events in their own right. What were your viewership numbers for those two events and how do they make you feel about the main event?

Fred Gau: The two qualifiers had two different approaches: the first qualifier wasn’t streamed, but with some great VODs cast live by Pomf & Thud and TB on the next Monday and that was quite convincing in terms of viewers but I honestly do not remember the exact figures. This qualifier had some outstanding players like Polt, BBoongBBoong, Shine and Symbol in the semi-finals and we were very happy to see Koreans participating in our tournament. This tournament was the first real event of the Iron Squid in terms of the main event. We wanted to make it great for the players, even if viewers couldn’t watch it live. After this qualifier we got a lot of feedback about the fact that we did not cast it live, and that was quite frustrating for the viewers because we had a great lineup for this one and nobody could watch it live.

The second qualifier was approached differently. After doing the first qualifier without any problems, we decided to do a live cast in French with Pomf & Thud, and in English with Apollo only, because TotalBiscuit was travelling, and we later added another caster, Khaldor, for the German guys because we all like him and we were looking for his help to bring Iron Squid to the German audience. The second qualifier was insane, we had a lot of top players like Bomber, Polt, KeeN, Moon, and Creator from the Korean scene. But we had also some great names like Socke, NightenD, Sjow, Strelok and SaSe from the foreign scene. We had some impressive games and a very convincing winner, ZeNEX_Life, who won the final 3-0 over MVP_KeeN with an overwhelming style. We are looking forward to seeing Life and Symbol in the main tournament. If I had to talk about figures for the second qualifier it would be around twenty-five thousand between the three streams. We are expecting more views for the main tournament of course, and this time TotalBiscuit will be here with us and that will be even more entertaining for everyone!

TSL_Symbol won the 1st Qualifier in convincing fashion (Photo: Symbol's Twitter)

Just one more question: MLG is charging $20 for the Winter Arena. Obviously with as little exposure as your tournament has it would be somewhat of a silly move, but what is your opinion on this and if Iron Squid gets big enough, is this something you can see yourselves doing in the future?

Clement Laparra: As far as I'm concerned, I like Mr.Garfield's analysis a lot. The freemium option is ok with huge structures like MLG or GSL, but $20 for a weekend is a bit overpriced. There are a lot of great tournaments, and it's somewhat forcing people to choose and most of the viewers won't be willing to put too much money into watching. Regarding Iron Squid, I don't think it's the appropriate timing to even consider the question or even to judge MLG's move. If the tournament runs smoothly and both players and viewers are satisfied, then we will be more free to consider a different business model, but for the upcoming tournament that would be silly.

Fred Gau: I’m in agreement with Fred, in the future Iron Squid might think about a "gold account" for the stream or whatever. For the moment it is not our business model. We are building our model on the value of our own work before thinking of making anyone pay to watch the Iron Squid main tournament or side tournaments.

So as a quick follow-up, we will see more of Iron Squid? How successful will this event have to be to convince you (and your mysterious sponsor) to host another one and what would the timeframe for that be? Monthly? Yearly?

Fred Gau:  We plan to work on two Iron Squid tournaments per year at the moment, and there is no "mysterious sponsor”. We built a budget and we will add some sponsors on it to have enough money to continue creating these events. Also people have to understand that for a team with around fifteen people it is a lot of work to make it possible for two events a year. Plans are plans. Reality is different. All will depend on how Iron Squid will be received all around the world.

Thank you for the interview. Any closing comments?

Fred Gau: We want to thank everyone for believing in Iron Squid, the players and of course the casters who will be casting this tournament live sometime in the next three months. If you have any feedback on this tournament we will gladly answer. Also you can follow us @IronSquidgaming on Twitter and IronSquid on Facebook and online at ironsquid.tv!

The preceding interview was conducted before they had announced the start of the tournament, which is February 29th, 2012.