David Ting of IPL: "My goal is to run 4 major events a year with a lot of qualifiers"

On Wednesday last, I got the chance to talk to General Manager, eSports and VP of R&D at IGN, Mr David Ting. We talk about all things IPL for their upcoming event in Vegas. I'd like to thank Mr Ting for taking the time out of his busy day to do this interview, and for all the work he has done for eSports as a whole.

This is a the dialogue from a skype call I had with Mr Ting, enjoy!


How did you get working with IGN and IPL?

Mr Ting: I joined IGN after I left yahoo, I always loved video games so there is no better place to work than IGN when it comes to video games, and IPL is something I founded within IGN. I used to run engineering with them, and about the end of 2 years ago, at the end of 2010 I fell in love with Starcraft 2 and played a lot of it, and saw how video growth was explosive on Youtube. I wrote up a business plan and submitted it to our CEO. I then got his support, to create this division inside IGN.

That was really smart, I’m really impressed.

Mr Ting: Yeah it’s really an unbelievable trip because if you look at it, most of us were working on it as a volunteer basis at this time last year, and from then till now, having a huge event in Las Vegas it just definitely feels like a dream to me.

Was there much opposition to this, or was it quite easy flowing?

Mr Ting: There is definitely a lot of struggle, like any struggle starting any business, so it’s a lot of hard work from everybody myself included within the group to get it to this point. Most of us work extremely long hours, this is not a strange thing for anybody working in eSports, it’s really a hard job but it’s quite fulfilling so I think everyone’s really excited with the progress we’ve seen and I think the fans are just excellent and having their support is something we always shoot for, hearing the positive comments as well as the criticisms it really helps drive us to improve or product.

(I struggle to produce a sentence, with shock over the sheer amount of work done)

Mr Ting: (Laughs)

People in the business know how it is to be behind the scene, so I think being a fan you’re a little bit spoilt, you don’t know how much hard work it is.

Yeah, yeah definitely.

Mr Ting: For people like us it’s a labour of love because you really love what you are creating, you are putting your full time and focus on making it great.

Last year with IPL3, you went to Atlantic City, is there a reason why Vegas was chosen?

Mr Ting: There was a huge reason behind it, the biggest issue we had at IPL3 was the age restriction, so we worked extremely hard to get a good venue in Vegas and this is why we didn’t have an event for the first 3 months of the year was just to really try to lockdown this partnership. There is no age restriction for our events in Vegas and that really opened the door for anybody who enjoyed eSports to come in and watch the games.

Will gambling be allowed? Like, gambling on the matches?

Mr Ting: I think that is something that we don’t endorse at the moment but it is something that I will not rule out for the future. If you look at any traditional sport like soccer, hockey, basketball there is a gambling element associated with it. One of the reasons why I picked casinos is I want it to be a major sport, and when I measure myself, I don’t measure myself against MLG, I measure myself against NFL.

The key here is that I wanted to spread the love here to a more mainstream audience, and if you want that you have to have that element (gambling) involved. I do see it in the future as something I’m working towards but I have to do it very carefully to ensure that the games are played with the clean competitive atmosphere that it has today, and not let the money taint it. I think the pro leagues like UEFA as well as NFL, they do a fantastic job in doing that, and I think this is where we need to evolve, IPL, I’m just speaking for myself, but this is where we need to evolve as a league in order to get to that state. 

 

 The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas

You said that your main competitor would be NFL and such, but NFL have TV contracts, would IPL ever go towards mainstream cable?

Mr Ting: Yeah, absolutely that’s something I’m shooting for as well and if we look at it there is a lot of people who made the mistake by going TV first in the past in eSports. That’s why they went under because of the cost structure associated with it. So, we know our limits, we know we are an internet first business, but at a certain time when it matures enough and it has enough popularity I would love to work with a TV station and have them pay for some of the content creation cost and raise the production value that we see today.

So, the seed has been laid for that and we believe that, if everything is growing the same way it is now, within a year or two we’ll be at a stage where you won’t be surprised if a few league have TV contracts outside of Korea.

So GSL were partnered with MLG, was there much persuasion to go into business with them or did they come to you?

Mr Ting: So let me give you the history of this, a lot of people expect there is a lot of conspiracies behind the scene, but I’ll say that you’ll be disappointed if you think that’s the case.

The reality of it is that Mr. Chae visited us at IPL3, he was part of the crowd that was there, he saw the potential in our league, I spent a lot of time with him, developed a good friendship and we talked about potentials of working together. So, at that point I told Mr. Chae is that “IPL still has a less than a year history at this time and having the opportunity of working with GSL is something amazing, so you’re welcome to work with any partner you would like and I’m not going to ask for anything exclusive.”

And Mr. Chae really loved that attitude, we had a very open conversation, worked out the economics of how we worked together how we both benefit and we’re well underway creating a contract together. So that was way before MLG and GSL fell out, that was still when they were doing the player exchange program, so I was fully expecting only one final at IPL not both of them, like what we have in 2012.

So the conversation went better and better at Blizzcon, and I had a lot of calls after that and we really like working with each other and he asked if I’m interested in doing two finals, I said “yeah, the more the merrier!” So that’s the history. You know, I find our working style very similar, we treat each other the way we want ourselves to be treated. It’s very open always, we share our challenges with each other and we’re both very cooperative and respectful of the other side and that’s why I think we have a good start of a great and long term relationship.

Is there any chance that you would have the Code S or Code A finals at future IPLs?

Mr Ting: Yeah, I think that’s a possibility, really it comes down to scheduling and venues, at the current time what we are talking about is depending on scheduling it could be a GSL code S final, or it could be another GSTL final. It really comes down to the ability of the venue on our side, which is IPL’s side. GSL is being a great partner and they will work with us to make sure the scheduling works.

You said scheduling on your side, so would IPL go towards having seasonal events.

Mr Ting: Absolutely, if you look at all the major leagues have seasonality associated with it, so if you look at our short history. We had our first live event at IPL3, we learned a lot from it. Definitely that put a lot of economic strain on the group and we are still walking out of the shadow of that. IPL4 we’ll be doing a lot better, it’s slightly profitable or just breaking even depending on how we do on ticket sales at the venue. So once it hits break even, which is what I would like to have at IPL4, it is then down to how many events we can fit in a year.

My goal is to run 4 major events a year with a lot of qualifiers, maybe 4 to 6 qualifiers associated with each one of the major events so really increase the frequency up to that point. So you’ll see that for us our seasonality is going to be quarterly and it’s something that we’ll move though fairly quickly, you’ll see a lot of buzz with the additional partners outside of GSL that will be working with us, with either the qualifiers or some of the main events. My style is always that I want to work with people to bring the best possible experience and you’ll see a few different permutations of that.

The tournament layout

Currently there is one leading MOBA in the current scene, that’s League of Legends with it’s massive fanbase and the amount of viewers that it attracts, with DotA2 expanding do you ever see it joining IPL?

Mr Ting: No, I think this is where I actually got a lot of criticism, I was one of the fairly outspoken ones, where I want to do one title in the MOBA scene, it was a hard decision, between Heroes of Newerth, League of Legends as well as Dota2. At that time it was not as clear as a decision as it is today because Dota2 just ran the $1million tournament and it had a lot of buzz. HoN is the de facto eSports choice, I went with League of Legends and I have a great partnership with Riot and I expect to continue that for many years to come.

So, I’m going to stick to one title and I really enjoy working with the Riot folks and I think they got the right business model as well for eSports. Their title is free to play with monotonization built into the game itself, and I believe strongly that I want to put my time on titles that evolve with time versus one that published. That’s a personal preference of mine, I’m not saying I’m only going to except those type of titles, but that’s a stronger business model when we are looking at the big picture.

So, you were saying you prefer to stick with titles that change over time, with Starcrafts expansion(Heart of the Swarm) coming out do you viewers increasing and do you see it as a game that hasn’t fully been published yet?

Mr Ting: I think we are you going to switch over to Heart of the Swarm when it goes to GA, I believe in upgrading and the key here is that we will announce that several months before the change.

I view Starcraft2, Heart of the Swarm versus Wings of liberty as the same title, but if you look at League of Legends, it is happening faster every 2 to 4 weeks there is basically game balance changes and new champions introduced. That’s what I mean by having an evergreen title, that’s really ideal for eSports, I believe that’s the case and that’s what we have with League of Legends.

Would you ever see fighting games coming to IPL?

Mr Ting: Yeah, absolutely that’s the next genre we are on pretty diligently after IPL4. We really want to get long term rights to Capcom titles, Namco, all of the above. So the key here is that I believe that set of titles has such a great spectator experience, it’s a no-brainer that we are showing the fan favourite as well as the main steam favourite overtime, it is so intuitive that when you watch a fighter that you don’t have to explain to people what’s happening on the screen, it’s pretty much just all there.

The graphic is so engaging it makes a lot of sense, there is a lot of depth to it of course but it’s easy to get started and having a title like that would be awesome and we are working very diligently for doing that for IPL5.

What about CS:GO, do you ever see that becoming as big as the ones previous?

Mr Ting: I’m actually very interested, I stopped by the valve office last week, to be frank you know IPL is really new and basically fresh to the FPS scene. So, I don’t have the right to go walking into a franchise room asking for the rights to titles itself. I have high hopes that it is going to be a good title, we are willing to work with Valve to the extent they are willing to work with IGN and IPL. I think there is a lot of interest on both sides to be moving forward, but the key here is there is other titles.

So, with FPS’ I’m going to do the same thing I have done with the MOBA scene, where I pick one title very carefully, and we are going to stick to it and try and do it right. We are talking to other publishers as well, there is a lot of interest from other publishers, so I must make my decision very carefully. It definitely is the franchise with the biggest fanbase, in terms of numbers playing but the spectator experience I’m just not convinced it is the most optimal at the moment, so Im not going to move as fast in a timeline as I will with the fighters as I will with the FPS’.

Halo4’s developers recently said they are building maps with competitive play in mind. Does Halo also fall into that single catagery as well, often Halo is a different game.

Mr Ting: For me, when it comes to FPS’ we are going to pick just one title, and try to get it right, Halo4 is definitely part of that including Call of Duty for example, all of the popular franchises, Battlefield, for me we must involve the right people in the community also the publishers. When we make a decision, a lot of it has to do with the community as well as the publishers and really make the choice on what we view as a winner from a partnership perspective and we make that decision very carefully.

Do you think that all publishers want to be working with eSports companies to further their brand or do you think they want to host their own tournaments?

Mr Ting: So there are publishers who get it, and publishers who don’t get it, so take Riot as one of those examples, they are experiencing phenomenal growth. They see eSports as a tool to help them fuel the growth and help spread their gospel, the popularity of the game to more people. Those publishers are the ones I love to work with I feel the same way. I’m on the other side where that I would love publishers to continue to improve the game and make it better for eSports instead of them publishing a title then they are done.

Also, as a partner we cross-promote one and other, we’ll push Riot and as Riot will push us and grow together through this experience as a journey together. I think that is the best situation for the long hall, but going back where we stand today, I don’t think everybody is on the same page and this is why I say that I want to make decisions carefully because picking the right publishers is a really hard decision.

They could have the best game but they may be very difficult to work with, that could be a possibility and you want to avoid that. Then maybe you have people who have a lesser game but are more willing to work with you, so we may pick a dark horse instead because you want to optimise for the long term not just now.

So, do you think in IPL’s long term plans, ever coming to Europe?

Mr Ting: Yeah, absolutely and if we come to europe most likely we will work with a partner. We already have a UK qualifier we partnered with Multiplay and that was a great experience. So when we work with other countries, you know US is our hometown, so we will do our events in our hometown and when we go outside the united states we are looking for partners and try to do that together so we both run hand in hand.

So, yes I definitely would love the opportunity we had some initial discussions with Dreamhack even, just to get each other and get to know each other grow. Those are really helpful discussions.

What would be on the books with Dreamhack, if there is anything?

Mr Ting: So Dreamhack is definitely a lot larger than IPL given its history and its magnitude given it gets the entire country involved. They is very little that we could offer Dreamhack, so Dreamhack was gracious enough to help cross-promote each others events, so that we won’t step on each other and we help each other grow.

That’s the first step of cooperation, so no money exchanging hand but we both see that multiple organisations can exist together in a good way and move that direction. Great conversation great set of people huge admiration for Dreamhack has accomplished, extremely innovative as a group and we’d love to associate ourselves and help other organisations like that.

What about rumor that WCG have moved away from PC games and moved to mobile games?

Mr Ting: (Laughs) Good luck! All I’m saying is that, that it’s very interesting. I do view that you cannot just abandon your route, your base so quickly unless it’s basically out of desperation, again I’m reading from the outside, it’s just a strange move to me if it is true. So, this is where I just jokingly say good luck, so for me, if I had choices that just doesn’t seem like a sensable move to me, I hope that the rumor is false, but we’ll see.

So if the rumor is true, and the idea of WCG is to have country against country, would we ever see an international IPL world cup kind of style tournament.

Mr Ting: Yeah, absolutely, so speaking of that with IPL5 you will be beginning to see that. So, the way I work is I add features in from event to event so we basically do things “slowly”, but we want to do it right. So up to this point we haven’t really focused a lot of really international flavour into the event. With IPL5 we are going to expand and get multiple countries involved and we’ll have qualifiers with local partners that will be running local qualifiers for us and we’ll be flying those teams or players in really just compete in the states, for me I just really want to see the worlds best competition come in.

The best thing that has happened thus far with IPL is the Stephano story right, Stephano was relatively unknown before IPL3, he won our online qualifier, that basically paid for his trip for him to come to IPL3, and then he won it, leaving many upsets nobody believed he could have took it all. That really sets an example to people around the world could aspire, like “Hey, I’m in Africa right now, and I’m really talented at street fighter in my local arcade, maybe I should try my luck” For me it is about build mechanisms in for that kid with a dream to actually come in and compete at our event.

You should change your motto to “IPL, dream makers.”

Mr Ting: (Laughs) I may actually do that!

Check out IPL4 live from Vegas, April 6th - 8th and more about the IGN Pro League at www.ign.com/ipl

Make sure to follow myself @ImJustVigilante And Mr. Ting @DTing888