This is my third visit to DreamHack. My first time was the Summer Edition in 2010, the second time was the Winter 2010 event and after skipping Summer 2011 we are back in Sweden. As one of the Duh-Events crewmembers behind our The-Party event, my interest was always at the logistics behind an event as this. Since the release of StarCraft 2 and the rise of events like Barcraft I am extra interested in the SC2 tournament.

The big difference with the last time we visited DreamHack is that the finals of the biggest competitions is held in the ice hockey stadium in front of the Elmia halls. With room for 4.000 simultaneous viewers this is a new step in the rise of e-sports. The best thing is that all those seats were sold out in advance, and after visiting the start of the StarCraft 2 finals I can only say:

WOW!!!

The atmosphere at the arena is overwhelming. People are cheering for their favorite players and the casters are further pumping up the audience to complete the picture. Recently we held two Barcraft events in The Netherlands and at those events it was already showing that people really enjoy watching StarCraft, but the experience is driven by the quality of the casters that bring the game to life. Being able to watch the casting, the playing and all the fans is indescribable.

Besides the growth of the e-sport scene, the most noticeable change compared to the past editions is that the multimedia aspect of the event is getting more and more important. The exposure to the outside world was already good, but the amount of streams available for the watchers at home is impressive.
After watching all this I really want to start putting all the exciting new things we saw in the tenth edition of The-Party in Eindhoven!

Herman Ronk

Be Social! Share with your friends!

•