CraveOnline: What is Pro Gam3r 's connection to mygameroom?
Abe Zarran: Mygameroom is our parent company, they produce software for game and LAN intergration and they decided to put a magazine together and I’m buddies with one of their programmers, and I’ve been in publishing for the last eight years, and they said, “Hey why don’t you come down and do some consulting with us because we’re putting a magazine together”. So they flew me down to Curacao and I explained what it entailed to put together a magazine and all that stuff, and I was like what’s the subject matter that you guys are going to cover, and they said ,”Professional gaming.” And I was like, “Are you kidding me?” He was like yeah that’s the stuff we always talk about over the phone, so I ask him if they have an editor and if I could get the job. They said yeah, so I left my job and decided to go work for Pro Gam3r and I’m trying to live my dream and my passion through Pro Gam3r.
CraveOnline: What is the SLANT system?
Abe Zarran: The SLANT system is produced by mygameroom. I’m not really the best person to tell you, but I’ll tell you as much as I know. The SLANT system is a web based statistics engine. What it does is it manages tournaments in LAN scenarios, like for example we ran QuakeCon this year, and what it does is it calls info up on a web interface, set up on a local LAN, the player goes to the tournament, registers, and what the system does is it quickly sets up all the brackets, if you’re the player it will tell you what time your matches are at, when you get to your match time you log in with your name and password, and if you have to vote on maps, then the SLANT system handles that as well. It sets up all the rackets with the maps and the times, pretty much automating and streamlining what a LAN event or LAN tournament would be.
CraveOnline: Was the QuakeCon this year the first time you guys used the system?
QuakeCon is one of the largest LAN events in the country.
Abe Zarran: It was the first time we tested it on a big system I think there were what? 150 machines? Anywhere from ten to twenty matches going at one time. There were a lot of glitches that popped up, because there’s no way to test a large scale system unless you have a large scale to run it on. So testing it on 16 machines isn’t the same as turning it around on 160 machines, so it was a great test run for us, the tournament staff were initially having issues, bugs were popping up, but our programmers where there on site and they fixed all the bugs really quick, by the end of the tournament the staff was very impressed by hopw easily the matches ran, they ran on time, and the players were just happy to not have to keep all the scores by hand, no matches being set up by hand on pen and paper, you didn’t have to go to the tournament staff to get all your scores down, it was finally nice to have something automated. There are lots of people developing software for [this], we were just the first to have it ready to go. So, we’re trying to beat other companies to the punch when it comes to the SLANT system.
CraveOnline: How important is that system to the legitimacy of eGaming?
Abe Zarran: I don’t know if it’s a matter of legitimacy, honestly, the company is just passionate about gaming, and it was a bunch of programmers who got together and said, “Hey let’s make this software.” So they started off with the frag arcade website which was the initial basis for the software, the site really didn’t go very far, because other sites like X-Fire are out there, and lots of other gaming sites so we just another site in the bunch, but what was cool about our site was that you could watch statistics of your match live, lie if you buddy can’t watch online, he can go on the website and see that so and so just beat so and so on this map, and he’s shooting this percentage and the match is still ongoing. Which again is what the SLANT system does, when you’re at a tournament, for example during the third round you can go online and watch live web statistics like, “Oh my God Toxic just fragged someone with a shotgun for the fifth time on this map.” It’s a matter of trying to get information live that you don’t have. Ideally we wanted to have the SLANT system statistics for the shout casting guys (the in-game play by play men) so imagine the shout casting guys are watching the matches, and they have another screen of just all the stats being generated by the console, why? Because it gives them more of a an ability to broadcast as opposed to having the generic, “Oh this guy has been playing really well for the past year, now it will have more of an NFL official sports feel, because you’ll have info on things going live at the moment. That’s what we were trying to do.
CraveOnline: With television exposure, a magazine, and websites, what needs to be the catalyst for this event to really rise in exposure and popularity?
Abe Zarran: Um, the US is the last place to catch on right now, the scenes in Asia and Europe are insanely huge, players in Europe make a living competing, and in Asia as well, I mean a perfect example I was at the WGC in Orlando (Florida) at the US finals and I was talking to The Mob Godfather who had just got back from a team competition of World of Warcraft in China, just to give you an example of how big these scenes are overseas. He’s like I went to a restroom, I’m standing at the urinal and I turn around and there are sixty five Asian kids with umbrellas, baseball hats, t-shirts, and markers all saying, “ “Godfather!!! Godfather!!! sign”. So they chase this guy out of the bathroom and he’s not even a player, so you can imagine the scale of the popularity that these players have in other countries. But, here in the US we have the CPL, we have the MLG, and we have my personal favorite the CGS right now, and it’s bringing back a level of gaming here to the masses in the states. That’s what we’re focusing on in the publication and we’re including the already established leagues like the ESL, the ESWCL out of Germany, and out of Europe. We’re covering the Starcraft league and all the rankings for Korea, and China and we’re really looking into more obscure stuff like covering the EVO tournaments which are the coin-op fighting game tournaments, which are really big but based on such a small community. We’re just trying to support anything that is competitive.
CraveOnline: Can you elaborate on how OMGWTFCFG.com works, and how gamers will utilize the service?
Abe Zarran: It is a place to store your gamer configurations, and anywhere in the world you go you can access them, download them really quickly and install them. It’s really a tool for gamers that travel, but don’t want to keep a USB drive or something like that and you can just upload your configs (short for configurations), share you configs, our hopes and aspirations are that pro’s will use it, so when they go to the tournament registration machines, the staffs will be able to just download the configurations for him right there.
CraveOnline: Is Pro Gam3r the first publication of its kind?
Issue 2 of Pro Gam3r magazine. Nice huh?
Abe Zarran: It is the second one in the United States, there are two or three publications in Germany, they’re pretty big, and there are a few in Asia which I can’t understand how to read them so I can’t even tell you what their about, but the first publication of its kind was eSports magazine which was put out by dot frag before they were bought out by the MLG (Major League Gaming), they unfortunately had bad results, they went right to newsstands, and the US market- - no, kids aren’t ready to go to Barnes and Noble to buy it off the newsstand, plus the publishing market here in the US, if you don’t sell it on the stands then you have to refund a percentage to the retailer. The Europe market is ready, and that’s what we’re going for, we’re actually in the works getting on newsstands in Holland and Germany, London and the UK, and mainland Europe. The Asian market, until we can find more Asian writers, and more people that are entrenched in that scene, then we’re probably not going to go in that direction. I think the US is direct to mail primarily, just go to ProGam3r.com, spelled with a three, subscribe and we’ll send it right to your house.
CraveOnline: Will the magazine eventually become a barometer for the strength of the market, or the success of the genre?
Abe Zarran: I’m sure as a byproduct we’ll be able to gauge where the market is going through our publication, who wants to advertise, who and where our subscription base is coming from, but honestly that isn’t our intention, and like I said that may just be a byproduct. What we’re trying to use the magazine as is a vehicle to put forward the sport, and the leagues, specifically the leagues and the players, if you look at our magazine right now, we have entire articles dedicated to the players, because they have fans, believe it or not, and these fans want to know what their players are eating and drinking, just like if you were following Michael Jordan, people wanted to know what underwear he wore, I wore Haines because he wore Haines. We’re trying to reproduce that with our magazine, creating a very professional Sports Illustrated like feel, which isn’t really readily available online for gaming, you get a lot of Blogs, you get a lot of opinion pieces, and you get a lot of recaps of matches, so and so beat so and so five to two, and that’s about it. So, what we’re trying to do is come to these events, and I’m having the writers get right in there and go to the losers of matches first, and I’m like, “Ask the losers why their losing, ask them what they could have done differently to win, and then finally go to the winners and see what strategy they employed .” We’re trying to find intriguing articles and a journalistic perspective to gaming.
CraveOnline: Sounds like you guys are on the right track.
Abe Zarran: We’re trying, and honestly we’re getting a real good response from players, I mean the players were excited, I think they expected to pick up the magazine and get the run of the mill news stories that their getting online, on (dot frag) not on ESR, ESR is more of an community forum, but like frag, and crossfire.ne, and here we come in and we’re doing more in depth journalistic style articles. They really appreciate that we know where their coming from, I mean a lot of our writers are players, we just lost a writer, she got drafted for the CGS in London, she’s the number to DoA player for Europe right now. She was our main writer, our head writer is a former Quake 4 player, he was notorious in the Quake 4 scene for a while, and I mean his roommate is Fatality for God ’s sake, so all his buddies are top players. We get in there, we know the players, we talk to them very frankly, and we just try to support them and try to push the movement forward.
CraveOnline: How does it feel being the voice of the entire movement?
Abe Zarran: I’m a little awe struck still, this is my third event, I mean I’ve gone to a few events to meet players but honestly I’m a fan, before I’m an editor, before I’m a writer I’m a fan. Honest and truly, like I said I worked for wine and spirits magazine for eight years and they told me about this gaming magazine and I was biting at the chomps to do it. So I go out to these events and I meet these players, and I was awe struck, I couldn’t talk to them just like if you were a fan of any pro athlete, or rock star, I would shy away and I didn’t know what to do, but it’s an honor to try and be the spokes person and I say try because no one has said I am, or we are, so uh, to try and push this sport in a journalistic manner, and trying to bring to light what these kids are capable of.
CraveOnline: We want to know for our last question what your pick for game of the year might be.
Abe Zarran: I’ve been keeping track of only competitive games, if they’re not in competition, then I’m not looking at them. It’s only recently that I purchased Twilight Princess, to play on the way over on my Nintendo DS. But honestly I love Gears of War, for the PC specifically, God bless (the developer who brought it over from the X-Box console), it was just an innovative game, it wasn’t first person, but it was four player co-op and four player pvp, third person perspective, and I went into it very jaded because I’m an FPS player, after playing for two or three hours, not only did I stop complaining about having to use the controller, but I loved the game because it felt very natural, it was something you fell not and got used to very easily, and that’s what the games need more, the learning curb should be very short, and the game should be very entertaining and Gears of War definitely delivered.
