Interview With:
Sebastian Sjoberg – PolygonRevue
About Sebastian: The pursuit of combining passion with learning and online business continues to be the leading motto behind PolygonRevue and GGvision. Sebastian Sjoberg is 27 years of age and has lived in Britain, Sweden and elsewhere and currently studies Mobile Application Development at a place known as Hyper Island. For him, electronic sports are above all awesome – but also the most interesting online platform for trying out new things.
Nationality: Swedish
Sebastian Sjoberg is a Shout-Caster on YouTube that goes under the ID of PolygonReVue and leads the production company called GGvisionTV that mainly revolves around professional Starcraft 2. He has also been a co-host of the online talkshow GGRated together with Jonathan Janevski and Roger 'xHydrax' Mendes.
Getting to Know Sebastian Sjoberg.
Hello Sebastian thank you for taking the time to do an interview with me. To start off could you give a brief introduction to you who are and what you do for those who are not familiar with what you do in the Starcraft 2 Community?
Hello Michael, it's a pleasure to do an interview with you. I am, to be brief, on my way out of my mid-twenties and living in Sweden after having spent quite a few years in London, UK. Right now I'm studying Mobile Applications development at a school called Hyper Island.
In the Starcraft community I have been active since long before The Sequel was released, mainly focusing on doing interviews with progamers and known characters from the scene. Since a couple of months back I have entered the world of casting (commentating professional matches and uploading such videos to Youtube). With that material I try to offer a unique spin on a familiar concept, infusing it with a lot of extra ingredients and fluff – as I believe that such things enhance the viewer experience and make it more fun to watch. In this I work closely with Teamliquidpro.com and their players.
Since the release of Starcraft 2 Beta, there have been many many shout-casters come out through YouTube and other video platforms such as yourself, Day[9], HuskyStarcraft, HDStarcraft, and BlizzShouter (Crota). What made you get into shout-casting and hosting web shows?
If anything, I wish that I'd had the foresight to start casting at the release of the Beta and not a year later. Above all, it's great thing and Starcraft 2 at its very best. Nowadays it's getting increasingly difficult to fight over the viewers' attention as there is so much good and easily accessible content out there.
The reason I do it is the same as why I started my Starcraft: Brood War blog back in 2008. I love this game, and I love providing additional content around it for others to enjoy. Viewer comments and appreciation are my rewards, and the sole act of watching epic Starcraft 2 unfold and talking about it. It's awesome, simple as that.
However, I have always had an entrepreneurial vision in mind behind my work with Starcraft and that is still very much there. When I first started my original website I knew nothing about coding or writing for the web. Nor did I have any prior knowledge about video rendering or recording gameplay footage. Starcraft has forced me to learn a thousand new things, and that has taken me to where I am today. GGvisionTV is a spearhead production company that tries out new things, new technologies in the name of fun and SC2 (and soon, Diablo 3....). This is then transferred onto other areas where the experiences and learnings can be applied to other, more commercial, fields. In a roundabout way, that's how Starcraft 2 pays my bills and that's pretty awesome, too.
You are a Co-Host on a show called GG-Rated can you give us a quick description about who your other Co-Hosts are and perhaps what the show is all about?
GG-Rated has been dismantled, I am sad to say. This interview is the first time I talk about this officially, and as such this is an exclusive announcement.
Me, Jonathan Janevski (founder of the show) and fellow caster Roger 'xHydrax' Mendes were for over half a year meeting every Monday of every week to talk about Starcraft 2 and its professional scene. It was great fun and we had some truly SC2-famous guests on the show and many loyal viewers. We never had the huge breakthrough in the scene that we were always aiming for and in the end the show fell victim to fatigue, as is a common fate among internet collaborations. GG-Rated was a strong concept, but in this subculture that is Starcraft 2 it's still all about getting your name out there through the right channels and it's safe to say we did not manage to convince the right people in the right places that we were worth tuning in to. Simply doing it for the fun of it, despite the small crowd, was not enough in the end.
I do miss the GG-Rated crew and hope to work with them again in the future. Shoutouts to Iceman and xHydrax, yo!
On top of your YouTube Channel and Web Shows, you also work in Collaboration with Team Liquid Pro on a show called GGVision Gladiators could you tell us a little bit of the show?
The GGvision Liquid Colosseum is a direct collaboration between me and my company and Teamliquidpro.com, which is a very different thing from the main community site Teamliquid.net. It's the result of my networking throughout the years with progamers and leading minds in the scene, and after meeting the team leader Victor 'Nazgul' Goossens at Dreamhack Summer earlier this year we came to an agreement.
The Liquid Colosseum videos are based on exclusive replays that fans and viewers otherwise would never have seen. The Liquid progamers collect all of their replay files for internal sharing and practice, and hence there is A LOT of truly entertaining games of professional Starcraft 2 rusting away in closed archives. I approached Liquid about giving me access to these so that I could cast the material and then having it featured on their site. It is meant to be something in between the common casual Youtube cast and the high-profile tournaments out there, giving fans of particular Liquid progamers a chance to see their favorites in new and exciting settings.
So far I have had the privilege to invite HayprO and Jinro to the Liquid Colosseum, where they have taken the roles of GGvision Gladiators – facing six different foes on as many days. I have created a narrative around these series where progamers are called into an arena to fight for glory and love for the game, and even though this is just 'fluff' to enhance a series of non-chronological games it has so far been well received by viewers.
The GGvision Liquid Colosseum is a step in a new direction when it comes to casting Starcraft 2. The days are gone when simple straight up play-by-play commentary does the trick, as a caster you have to add something more. I'm striving to create something akin to the original Starcraft: Brood War scene that was entirely based on the tournaments held on Korean TV. There it was the gloss, the context and the continuity that made it extra awesome. I remember those days, and try to work towards that in Starcraft 2.
PolygonReVue is your ID, what is the story behind this name?
PolygonReVue is a name that means nothing, but is suggestive of everything – at least something digital. Nowadays I refer people to my Youtube channel, www.ggvision.tv, rather than my website but the name in itself was chosen based on how it could mean different things. In the future I will reveal projects that delve into other areas than Starcraft 2 and then I won't cursing myself because my channel is called 'SebStarcraft'.
Having said that, I like GGvision more ;)
There are many aspiring casters out there; even I am considering perhaps starting as a hobby. Is there any advice you could give to these people on shout-casting?
I strongly recommend everyone out there to try casting if they're thinking about it. It's a wonderful way of learning so much, and to get out of your comfort zone. You need to acquire certain technical skills, you will need to develop a tough skin that can hold against the trolls, and you have be a good communicator. All of these things, casting Starcraft 2 can teach you.
At this point in time, you will not receive many viewers by walking in other casters' footsteps though. If you want people to watch your stuff, you need to break new ground. I recommend that you go crazy, and think of new ways of doing something otherwise familiar. The pioneer days of Starcraft 2 are over, every obvious surface has already been built upon. To make it today you will have to go beyond the main tracks and explore new areas. I can't imagine anything more exciting, so go for it!
Also, work with others from day one – it's the best way to learn and grow, and to have fun doing it.
Getting to Know Sebastian Sjobergs Opinion on Starcraft 2 and E-Sports
Starcraft 2 is quite a new game and since its release we have seen a plethora of major tournaments being run (NASL, GSL, GSTL, IPL, IEM, Dream Hack), many people have said that the hype of Starcraft 2 is starting to calm down, do you think that having so many tournaments is ultimately good for E-Sports? Would the plethora of tournaments cause spectators to lose interest in watching as they are provided with so much content to watch?
I agree with those who say that there is too much tournament content out there today, as viewers are overwhelmed and instead become fatigued. Maybe the numbers continue to grow, but as for myself I've come to miss out on a lot of excellent Starcraft 2 lately – simply because I don't have the time or the energy to keep track of everything. As a sole Youtube caster it's also increasingly difficult to get a slice of the total audience, and it would be easier to work around that if the tournament scene was more regulated.
However, this is the nature of the beast and these are still the early years. Some tournaments will die, new will crop up, others will merge. Maybe Starcraft 2 will dwindle as well, though I believe it will stay strong for at least the better part of a decade. It should be in the companies' interest to work together, establish seasons during which certain tournaments take place in a way that does not conflict with others etc. Right now what we have is over-saturation, but such a state is never permanent.
In this climate it is nigh impossible to have a strong voice as an individual blogger/caster/community member – there's just too much noise. The first ones to figure out a content module that straddles the current chaos will be the next generation of Huskies and Day[9]s.
Starcraft 2 has really sparked a huge growth in e-Sports, where do you see the e-Sports scene in 2-5 years?
In less than five years, the viewer will have the ultimate power over his or her consumption of content. The producers – lone Youtubers or the GSL – will be the ones fighting over the viewers' attention, the consumer will always have the final say. The ability to choose what to watch, when and how will be a natural right of the individual – made possible by increasingly fast broadband and powerful mobile devices. E-sport will never make on TV, because TV is dying. The internet is where our lives take place, and it's changing rapidly. E-Sports producers, progamers or media companies, will STRUGGLE with this, as it's far from obvious how to effectively monetize this type of content. And how to keep their fickle audience that get bored so easily.
E-Sport will be even more huge in five years, and quite different from now. Starcraft 2 will still be there, but the current landscape will not. The strong point of this game is that it has infinite replayability, rather than being built around the cool, new, flavor of the week-3D engine. The divide between casual gamers and hardcore E-Sport fans will have become more fluent also, as there is no turning back to the time when electronic sports was a hobby for closed elitist circles in the backrooms of the internet. Transparancy FTW!
It is hard to talk about Starcraft without bringing up Koreans. Starcraft 2 has been out just over a year now and we have already seen a clear difference in skill between the Korean Pro-gamers and Foreign Pro-gamers. To you, what is the difference? Why are the Koreans so far ahead? And do you feel the foreigners stand a chance in the future?
Foreigners do stand a chance, now and in the future. The difference between Koreans and The Rest Of Us lie not in blood or Confucian philosophy, it's all about infrastructure. In Korea it has for over a decade been legitimate and more than okay to pursue progaming as a career and give everything that it takes to hone your skills. There are coaches, analysts, dedicated houses and social status there to support the phenomenon. In Europe and North America that is not the case, though we have seen new movements in that direction.
Koreans are better because they can be, people in the so-called West have a lower ceiling of skill as a collective group. It's all about the little things, like whether you're able to call yourself a progamer and being recognized for it or being met with, at best, void curiosity. In that regard, Koreans will always and forever be miles ahead. Luckily, HuK has shown us that it can be done. Others will follow him.
Finally, do you have any shoutouts to anyone you would like to give? Thank you for taking the time to do this interview once again.
Thank you for offering me this opportunity. I'd like to say to all of my fans and viewers that you're all legitimate Superdudes/dudettes, and that you're the reason I do what I do. Again I'd like to give shoutouts to the GG-Rated crew, xHydrax and TheIceman, and to my personal friend and avid viewer – Qke.
As for announcements, GGvisionTV is all about pushing the envelope and doing what's not been done. Other things are boring, and for me Starcraft 2 is all about fun. Beyond the Liquid Colosseum, new things are stirring in the GGvision cauldron, and you can look forward to new cinematographic experiences. Winter is coming....
GG!
-Sebastian Sjoberg
twitter: @polygonrevue
In conclusion to the interview, I would like to thank him for taking the time to have a quick talk with me today and answering my questions. Perhaps we will get another interview in the future. I want to wish him all the best in his future endeavors!! Long live E-Sports.
For those who want to check out his work please go visit his website at www.ggvision.tv!
Finally Follow Him On Twitter! @PolygonRevue
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Michael Chow
Handle: DexVitalitY
Follow me on Twitter @Dexvitality
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