Recently, former owner of GotFrag, Trevor 'Midway' Schmidt, took on the role as the head of National ESL. National ESL is the new platform of which the ESL will be operating from in North America. Cameron got the opportunity to sit down and do a feature interview with Trevor. The interview discusses Starcraft II and its place in American ESL operations, Counter-Strike, the past and more!

Hello, how are you, what have you been up to in the years between GotFrag and ESL?

Well, I’ve moved from New York back to the Pacific Northwest, Washington State to be exact. I drove 3,000 miles across the USA which was a quite a trip. I also got married to my wonderful wife in April of this year and we didn’t really start dating until after I left MLG, so I have been more focused on personal stuff than business.

How closely were you following the E-Sports scene when you weren't in the limelight for the past while?

Obviously I have kept track of all the players and big news. I’m not in the day to day operations like I once was with GotFrag, but you know the people and it’s important to keep track of them. It was more than a job for me with GotFrag and those friends are still important to me.

Now you have taken the job as the head of ESL North America, otherwise known as National ESL. Is this a full time position for you like GotFrag was, or do you still have another job outside of this?

I’m working full time on National ESL. We are trying to build a league for the American audience that will fill the gap CAL left. Our focus won’t be as much on Counter-Strike as CAL was though. We wanted to bring in a new market and help to build the community in other ways. Starcraft 2 really has been the best place to do that so far and we have the 16 best SC2 players facing off in our Group Stage matches September 4th-5th. The community is very excited about that and we are happy it turned out so well. 

Now that you are back, a lot has changed, in your perspective what has changed the most since the GotFrag days til now?

There are a lot more established businesses and more companies that have weathered the financial crisis so they are more economically stable. This could be a very big building block for the future of eSports. Also I think the key aspect that has changed is that people are starting to realize that eSports isn’t one game. For a long time people believed that one game would make it. Everyone was pushing in different areas such a MLG with Halo, CPL/CAL with CS, others with Quake and so on. Now it seems everyone including the different teams is embracing the idea that you need to be well around with lots of different games included to be able to survive downturns in the economy or changes in the eSports scene.

Most people would agree that North America is quite behind in terms of E-Sports development. How do you intend on helping bring NA back to a suitable level?

I don’t think it’s so much behind as it is just not well promoted. GotFrag used to be the pillar of promotion in the USA and that was removed, so there is nothing to help promote how successful teams are right now. The fact that coL and EG are still operating at the levels they are without GotFrag shows a lot to their resiliency. On top of that, companies like ESEA are even stronger than they were a few years ago. It’s easy to say the USA is down because they aren’t winning top events, but in reality there just haven’t been as many big events in the USA to win, so it’s harder for those teams to visit Europe and harder for European players to compete here in the US. You also have to take into account that the USA has really spread out its games. Unlike Europe, the USA is very heavy into Console gaming and a lot of our young players are focused on games like Madden, Halo, SF4 etc. Those games are becoming much more interesting for eSports.

Starcraft II is obviously on everyone's minds these days, how big a role do you think it will play in the 'revival' of the North American scene?

I think any league needs a core game to be a success. A game that people can really gravitate towards and help center a league. MLG has Halo, CPL had CS, ESL does CS now. Once you have that core game, then you can build out into other games and start offering more to the community. For us at National ESL, our role is really to develop the North American community for Starcraft 2. If we can build it up, it will help all gamers and support the RTS scene. The original SC didn’t have much staying power in the USA from a competitive point of view and got swept under by Quake and CS, even though the game itself took off in Korea and other places. That later translated into WC3 in Europe. We never really saw as much RTS following in the USA as in other places, but our goal with SC2 is to change that and really build a lasting community in North America.

Coming from a mainly FPS background yourself, does having such a large title in SC2 make things harder on you? How are you handling learning an entirely new scene, as well as running everything else with Quake Live and Counter-Strike?

When GotFrag was first created, we spent all of our time teaching the CS players to make themselves available to the fans. We rewarded the teams that played at the correct times with publicity and we pushed the scorebots and HLTVs while promoting the demos of matches. At the end of the day we were basically acting as the league for CAL and overseeing their operations. This is the same experience we have with SC2. We are trying to build schedules and fan following while developing casters and audiences for the up and coming players. While the games are different yes, the experience and work is very similar. For me personally, I have always been a pretty big strategy fan so it’s not a hard leap and I enjoy working with the players.

North America doesn't really seem to have a media outlet like it once did in GotFrag, how big a role does having a 'go to' media outlet play when running such large events in North America? Obviously you can advertise on EU/Asian websites, but in North America there doesn't seem to be a large outlet to go to for E-Sports news anymore.

I think it’s very sad. When the ownership group sold to MLG, there was an expectation that GotFrag would be used as their arm to compete with CGS. As everyone knows, CGS went under, so the desire and need to do that really fell apart for MLG. I think MLG did a good job in finding value from GotFrag in using it to help build up WoW through acquisitions like the one for MMO-Champion which they recently sold to Curse for a profit. This created massive viewer numbers on their WoW streams at their events. ESEA is currently trying to achieve something similar with ESEA News, but their league is lacking a bit of the glamour American Counter-Strike had back in the days.
For now, we are working a lot with Team Liquid which has a huge American community for Starcraft 2, even though it was mostly focused on the original Broodwar and the Korean scene before. But still, a major American eSports website that unites all games and gamers is missing at this point. Given that the two Counter-Strike scenes are pretty split up due to the CGS, it might come from a totally different game or community.

What are your expectations for this year’s event in New York City, what do you hope this event achieves being at a Comicon style event?

With the top 8 players/teams from the Americas being there, I expect a great competition. The SC2 quality of players is top notch; it’s really the foundation of a new eSport. The important matchup of coL and EG should be there, assuming both qualify in the Group Stage in the coming weeks. Finally our QL event is basically a ‘Who is who’ of top players with czm, Lost Cause and ch0atic all trying to qualify last night. We have rapha and other top QL players already qualified, so the Group Stage there should be amazing. I’m confident it will be the best players possible to represent the Americas at the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship. I can’t predict who will win, but I only recommend to tune in via ESL TV or pay us a visit if you are in the New York area.

Obviously we still have the same big names in North American E-Sports with coL, EG, Jax, Jason Lake, etc, and of course Torbull and the ESEA. Did you stay in contact with these guys throughout your time off from E-Sports at all? How is it now coming back to the scene and they are all still here, but their positions have changed a fair bit-ie, Jax working with Jason Lake-?

I don’t have the day to day communication I once did, but everyone is always interested in what each other is up to of course. We are all friends when it comes to “the big names” as you put it. We each have our own projects and companies but at the end of the day there is a common interest in building eSports. I have spoken to Craig (Torbull) a few times in the past month and we were working on schedules the other day between ESEA and ESL, wanting to avoid conflicts. Jason Lake and I did an interview series where we ask each other questions, it was pretty interesting and posted on both ESL’s website and coL’s website. At the end of the day we respect each other’s ability to do what’s right for eSports. We may not always agree on how, but we all know that each of us is focused on making American eSports better.

Are you already looking ahead to next year’s events and tournaments here in North America, can you give us a little sneak peak possibly?

Well long term planning is always a big part of a league. If you aren’t looking ahead then it’s hard to get anywhere. With that said, our primary goal is building that core game of SC2. We just announced our SC2 league for the USA that will take place after IEM American Championship; the league is called Premier Division with tiers of competition levels below it. It will take place over the rest of the 2010 year. Here are the details: http://www.nationalesl.com/us/sc2/news/132798/
2011 should be interesting and we are looking hard at what will help grow the community and develop eSports more in North America. How that will look like depends on a lot of factors and we still have a few months to nail them down.

What do you think needs to happen over the next year or two to set NA E-Sports back on the correct path, aside from the work you are doing with the ESL?

A lot of that depends on the games. The American audience loves action and team games so I think CS will need to reemerge or a new team game will need to develop to help build the PC scene beyond what I feel is the emergence of RTS with SC2. As for the Console market, they are really dependant on Halo unless a new game comes along. So for the North American scene the real challenge is the large split in Console and PC gaming. I’m not sure if this divide will ever be fixed, but if it could, the eSports scene would benefit greatly and probably create a game and audience that would blow the rest of the world away. There have already been some attempts with a game like Shadowrun which was well done for PC and Console, but didn’t quite have the right stuff to go massive. Other groups have talked about making that one eSport game but honestly it might be just a unicorn. The actually realization of this cross platform game would be a key to making eSports massive in North America, which would of course benefit everyone worldwide with the dollars the American economy could invest.

If I am not mistaken, you signed a non-compete with MLG, forcing you to not work for any other media outlet or league. Did you think you wouldn't be back to E-Sports, or did you just take this time off for vacation and to plan a comeback?

Well, it was a forced break of sorts. When everything first took place with MLG, I didn’t like the idea of the non-compete and really fought against it, but the prospects of MLG supporting PC gaming and the opportunities that seemed to be available like building out GotFrag TV were also hard to ignore. On top of that, GotFrag really was hitting its limit of growth without larger backing. We didn’t really have a league or customer package like CEVO or ESEA and GotFrag Prime sales weren’t very solid. So beyond advertising and GotGear, there wasn’t a lot of revenue for us to use to build the company and increase its ability to do important things like streaming video and broadcast coverage.

You started GotFrag yourself, and made it into the world’s largest E-Sport media outlet for some time, how did that come to be? For those wanting to start their own business in E-Sports, what advice would you give?

I had experience before I started GotFrag. I ran Domain of Games which was about coverage and running a website. So it wasn’t a new project or a new experience. I think that’s a key most people have to understand. You need to get a feel for the company and project you want to do in eSports before you can step out on your own and build something successful. I got recognized because of my work with DoG that there was a chance to build an American media outlet for eSports. If it wasn’t for that time at DoG, I wouldn’t have realized that possibility.

Do you think you can bring the ESL to the same height as what you brought GotFrag, at least in North America?

Building a league similar to the size of CAL is my goal. I don’t think you can compare National ESL with GotFrag as they are two very different projects, but I’m confident that we can build a league that rivals the size of what CAL once was in North America. It will take us a few years, but we can do it.

Counter-Strike has changed a lot over the years, and still manages to be the backbone of North American, and European, E-Sports. Do you think this is a good or bad thing, why?

I think the biggest problem with Counter-Strike is HLTV. I know this sounds terrible as many people believe HLTV is the best thing for CS, but the truth is that HLTV has killed the possibility of making CS *the* eSport game. The reason I say this: the hardcore community sees HLTV as the best way to watch CS. There is really no way to advertise inside of HLTV properly. Compare this to to WoW or SC2 which uses streaming video from in-game and it’s so obvious why these games are more suitable for eSports from this point of view. 20k-30k users watch a WoW stream at MLG events, similar numbers for ESL with SC2. If anyone remembers, CS had those same numbers five years ago at CPL events, but those were on HLTV and not streaming video.
Back when CPL first started, using HLTV was critical in growing the scene because streaming video was so expensive. Now streaming video is a lot cheaper, but yet the CS scene still focuses on HLTV and rightfully so, as it’s a much better product for the hardcore fan. The problem is the revenue stream. Without the potential revenue stream of advertising on streaming video it’s hard to get additional revenue to build CS eSports. So what happens when you put up a CS stream? The audience is divided, 70% or more watch HLTV, the other 30% watch streaming video. You can’t really claim the HLTV viewers in your streaming video numbers, because you can’t advertise to them in the same way. So here’s the problem, roughly 70% of the audience isn’t available to sell advertising to. That’s a huge issue and one that CS may never be able to solve.

What in your opinion makes a game an E-Sport?

Fan base. The larger the audience that will potentially watch the games of top players, the bigger the eSports game. Don’t fool yourself, WoW is the king eSports game right now. With 11 million or more playing, WoW is still the biggest thing in potential for eSports. The game may suck to a lot of people watching, but honestly: beyond people who play, what is the real audience for any sport? There are very few sports at all that draw fans to watch if they don’t play. American and European Football do a pretty decent job, but there are not a lot of people who turn on their TVs who have never played football before and watch a game except for the really big matches. It’s a pretty safe statement to say most people (very large percentage) who watch games (sports) have played them at one point or another.

Why did you return to E-Sports, what makes you love E-Sports enough that you wanted to come back?

Why wouldn’t I love eSports? Lots of people with a passion for the games they play. I love the rabid fan base that cares about the players and enjoys talking about it. I don’t think there is anything with more compelling storylines and drama than eSports.

For those who may be wanting to help out you and the ESL, what advice would you give for them in order to lend a hand?

If it’s regarded North America, then they can speak with me or our other admins in #ESL on Gamesurge. As for the rest of ESL, there are many different options throughout the different partner countries on the ESL.eu website. I think ESL is at a point now where it could make a leap from an eSports league to the FIFA of eSports worldwide. That’s why I want to be a part of this company and I look forward to growing in my role with them over the coming years.

Do you have any shoutouts or comments to the fans?

I appreciate all the support on Team Liquid from those with a history in CS. I know they often brave angry fans to support us at National ESL and we thank them. I would also like to thank our staff at National ESL; John, Kevin, Michal, Steve, Wolf, Harvey and many more. I would also like to give a shoutout to David and Sebastian from ESL in Germany. They are working hard to give us all the support they can in the USA from Europe.