Bruno on DL:

Fragbite.se's interview with Bruno posted a few hours ago shed light on the DreamLeague saga, explaining plans for the upcoming Phase 2 and 3, the reason behind the infamous missing ticket and the GD Studio's role in turning around the remainder of season 2. "Everyone is a sailor in good weather, but if things get rough, can you do something?" Bruno interview by Fragbite.se
If you prefer to read than watch then the main points are below

DreamLeague Season 1 was a huge success, issueing the first non-TI compendium as well as bringing together a commentary panel full of wit and wisdom. However, the second iteration started without the guidance of the GD Studio and soon ran into issues of all kinds, from scheduling to questionable admin decisions, not to mention the missing ticket to watch the matches through DotaTV.

However, since the GD Studio took over the league it seems to have started sailing over smoother waters. "The first thing was to talk to the players, that was the big concern. Last season we were way more involved." However, Bruno retracted his word choice to call it a take-over. "Take over is a strong word, it was more like lending an extra pair of hands into all of this. They were more relieved (players and managers), and things started going better. Teams that were thinking "we not sure if we want to do this" were more willing to play the league."

The GD Studio's focus however, is not only on DOTA2 and Fragbite.se questioned their focus going forward. "Short term its DreamLeague, we want to make this a great show and the first thing we did after talking to the players and making sure everyone was okay with the situation was we did decide how Phase2 and Phase3 were going to be, not only from the standpoint of the show, which will be increased because we will bring some new people, but also how people are treated," said Bruno. "When you come to a LAN experience as a player its a lot of things you are taking. As a player you're in a foreign city, maybe you're at a hotel in a bed that you don't really like with a schedule that is not your normal schedule, so its normal to be uncomfortable."

The #Ti4euHub. Could we soon see some of these faces again in Phase 2 and 3?

"Our goal was to a) make sure the show is good, the people enjoy it at home and b) the players enjoying being here. How do we do that? We arranged that they will have an area at Inferno Online, they will have perfect practise there and they will have a computer for everyone of them 24/7 as much as they need. THey need privacy as well so we will setup privacy so that each team will have their area and no person can snoop by because it is really important for them to practise and maybe not have other other team watching behind them and just figure out their strats. "

"We figured they were going to be around for a long time as well and maybe they are not playing everyday so the days they have off they will have a bus and a city guide so they could go check a movie, and we will probably give them movie tickets, so they can watch Interstellar or Fury. It's all about having them focused, having food, having mobile phones so they can communicate with us. End of the day they are investing 2 weeks here, and we want those 2 weeks to be the best they can be."

The missing DreamLeague ticketNext on the list was the fact the DreamLeague ticket still has not been released, which drew a heavy sigh from Bruno. "Unfortunately the reason why tickets needed to be submitted in advance, which is something Dreamhack didn't do, is because you have to have all the items ready, and there is a certain amount of work from Valve's side about putting the items in-game. (...) By the time we took over DreamLeague they hadn't started any of this process, and there were two items being developed, a HUD and a Sniper's head by Danidem which are really amazing."

"We tried to talk to Valve and put them in the game, they were like unfortunately there is not enough time to put a ticket WITH the items. Which is really unfortunate because we all know that items are a big reason why people buy the ticket. "

The instruments of the DreamLeague revival

"So we came up with this idea. When you buy a ticket Valve takes a share, prizepool is a piece of it and then the league takes another piece of it. So we decided DreamLeague was not going to take anything at all from the item, everything was going to go to the player prize pool. We want to use this as a way to see this as a way to show it is not just about supporting the DreamLeague, we know that we made mistakes, and there is no way to change that but we can correct that from now on. If you're going to buy a ticket unfortunately without an item, at least you do it knowing that out of 100% of the price of the ticket 50% will got to Valve as it should do, and the other 50% will go entirely to the player's pool."

Discussion then turned to the impact or lack of impact in crowd funding for season two in comparison to season 1. "As long as you have an explanation why that happened then it's completely fine(...)," said Bruno. "There was a lot of work that went into that first season, unfortunately there was not the possibility from Dreamhack side to put the same amount of work into the second season. Part of it is because they are still a small company, in say number of employees, and they do a LOT of events as well. The same September the DreamLeague started it was also Dreamhack Moscow and Dreamhack Stockholm. A bit of an oversight from them not putting enough resources on DreamLeague as they should have."

"When you look and say look we put 10% of the effort that we put last time, and we got less ticket money, well then it is acceptable. The problem comes when you increase the effort then the ticket numbers are lower." In summary Bruno's main point was that if you put less effort in then having less reward is no surprise, and due to circumstances the people involved were not able to commit as much time as in the opening season.

"Do you want more burgers or more Coke?"Bruno also shared his thoughts on bundling items with tickets, and going off the question of the interviewer, said he'd like to see the two seperated. "Personally I think it is kind of weird, and I'm not entirely against but I would like to see if tournament tickets can be seperated from items. (...) A lot of people buy tournament tickets for the items. It is like going to Macdonalds and buy the burger because you want the Coke. What do people want do they want more burgers or do they want more coke? This situation is creating an anomaly where we are seeing a lot of prize pools being very highly increased with a risk that someday that people don't care enough about items or because the in-game economy changes in some way that player prize pools will see a drop and people will be wondering what happened."

DreamLeague Season 3?The Fragbite.se interviewer also dared to ask the question as to whether there will be a season 3, and although Bruno did avoid answering the question directly, he did explain that the recent changes have set them back on course. "The way things went down, DreamLeague and the sponsors are pleased with how the situation was handled, and while everyone's expectation is not as high as they were previously, there is a show of good will and the people involved have the capacity to solve these kind of problems. Everyone is a sailor in good weather but if things get rough can you do something and it is proof that something that started wrong can get better."

This article was written by

Lawrence Phillips, joinDOTA's Editor-in-Chief.Malystryx has been in eSports since 2004 working as eSports Editor for Razer and Editor-in-Chief of SK Gaming in the past. He misses the days of Warcraft3 but makes do with the world of DOTA 2. He was also insane enough to transcript this news at 2am.Location: Bristol, UKFollow him on @MalystryxGDS.