'Reflections' with Carmac (part 1)

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

Michal 'Carmac' Blicharz, Managing Director of Pro Gaming at ESL, is the star of the 13th episode of 'Reflections'. This is part one of a two part interview.

Does Carmac still believe Unreal Tournament is the better game than Quake? Does he concede there are advantages to double elimination that single elimination cannot address? Where does he stand, now, on invitation vs. open qualification? Is he against region-locking from an idealogical point of view?

Time line of topics discussed:

• 00:08 Intro
• 00:41 Carmac starting as a journalist.
• 02:29 Characterising his earliest work.
• 03:34 Does he still think Unreal Tournament was the best game? Better than Quake?
• 06:24 What was good about UT and different from Quake?
• 11:01 Would Carmac have been into Quake 3 as much if that was the first game he'd encountered?
• 12:32 GitzZz, the UT champion.
• 14:12 Addressing issues of double vs. single elimination.
• 20:27 Seeding brackets from small data set group stage results.
• 27:49 Qualification systems.
• 33:13 Using invitations to tournaments. How to balance invitation and qualification.
• 34:16 Carmac should be against region-locking if he believes in open qualification, right?
• 40:27 If Western fans really only want to see Western players play, then why aren't they catered to directly?
• 44:41 A political analogy of Polish people going to the UK for work, contrasted against Koreans coming into other regions in SC2.
• 49:09 Creating a true seeding system.