Hi lepolac, could you introduce yourself and your role in the world of Counter-Strike’s LANs?

Hi, my name’s Jonathan, I’m a programmer living in London and I’ve been administrating a number of CS tournaments for the last 15 years.

How did you end up becoming head-admin for the ESWC?

I began organizing LANs in 2001, and joined the association “ping” as vice-president in 2004. I co-founded the “French Masters of Video Games” in 2009 and managed its competition hub until 2012. I did various jobs during events, but CS was always one of my specialities. I participated in my first ESWC in 2005 as a spectator, then as a CS referee for the first time in 2006. I can’t really say how I ended up being head-admin. One year, in 2011 I think, the Oxent team decided to entrust me with it.

As head-admin, what’s the size of your team? How do you organize your work? Does everyone have a specific task assigned and you are the one supervising everything?

It depends on the size of the tournament. We always try to have one person per match. The planning defines the number of matches happening at the same time, so it also defines the number of admins we need.

I’ve had small teams of 5 or 6 people, and others with 50 people assigned to 8 different games during the Masters finals. I try to delegate work but it’s not always easy, sometimes I can’t really let it go.

Do you have a similar team and co-admins every year, or do you have to deal with new people each time?

There are a lot of shifts depending on people’s availabilities and will, but some come back every year and that’s the most important. I have a co-admin with whom I’ve been working for years and I trust him a hundred percent. Managing a tournament is a team work, and couldn’t do anything alone.

Next to VeryGames and behind the Poles of ESC Gaming during the ESWC 2012.

Let’s get to the heart of the matter about your role as an admin. What’s your program, from the pre-event preparation to the day of the event?

Pre-event, I generally focus on the rules, the plannings, the seedings and a few technical preparations.

Once everything starts, I pace up and down into the area, going from match to match to see how things are doing. I check the overall scores, deal with possible issues from the server or the GOTV, sometimes communicate with casters on-site or remotely, and anticipate the back-and-forth moves from the matches on stage.

During a really big tournament, I actually rarely feel at peace. I always have the time on my mind, it’s a race against the clock. Even when everything is going well, I’m always thinking about disaster scenarios.The key is to accept that no matter what we do, problems will always occur anyway.

Then let’s imagine a problem actually occurs (a PC stops working, the connexion starts being unstable…). Concretely, how do you deal with it? Are there specific steps, a “problem solving” standard pattern?

When a problem occurs, I try to assess it with 3 criteria : scope (is it isolated or affecting several matches?), impact on the planning, and impact on the reputation. Depending on these, I choose my priorities and switch to panic mode if necessary :)

Then we can distinguish two categories of problems: technical or human. In the end, we always manage to find problems we never had before, but I think that trying to apply the solution that worked before might help.

The ESWC has been going for some time now, and evolved quite a lot. From your point of view, did it have any impact on your work? Did you get more things to manage, more people to supervise? In the end, as we often like to say, was it “better before” ?

It’s hard to tell. I never begin a tournament thinking it’s going to be easy, and I probably never will. The part involving CS itself may have become easier, the game is really stable, a lot of things are now managed by the game itself compared to before, and we have tools becoming more and more powerful. But there are more things to manage besides the game now, like the coordination with the casters in the tournament area or elsewhere, or retrieving logs and demos for other websites like HLTV.org. Internet also became essential.

Players also became more professional, most of them are paid, and playing became their job. Do you feel a difference when you meet them after this development?

Players are a lot easier to manage than before. They take place more quickly, are a lot more used to being on-stage, and can deal with the constraints this kind of show can have. They also tend to complain less than before, even if they became more demanding (which is quite normal).

Being interviewed during the ESWC PGW 2015

In 2015, the ESWC got relocated in Montreal, a choice actively debated. From your point of view, how was this change? Did it have any impact on your way of doing things, your organisation, compared to a “classic” edition in Paris?

It’s never easy to organise an event in another country. We have to get in touch with local partners and we can’t necessarily control everything, so we have to adapt. Sometimes it’s hard to be taken into account because everyone has its own experience and way of doing things.

With Oxent being bought by Webedia, the ESWC is going to change. There will be for example regular editions and a kind of “circuit”, something like the DreamHack tournaments. Is  it going to change anything for you?

I don’t know yet, we’ll see what the future brings, I’m not worried about it :)

You’re a regular participant of the ESWC. Have you already been contacted by other organisations to manage other competitions? Have you ever felt yourself you wanted to try other things?

I used to work for the WCG. But the ESWC might have jinxed me, because all the other international events I was supposed to work for in France got cancelled (GeeX, Red Dot…). I’ve been contacted by other organisations, but I only have a few days off, and my work takes a lot of my time, so I’m not going after every tournament. Sometimes it itches me to work on other events, but reality sets in all too quickly.

If I wanted to contribute more, I’d have to do it full-time and go from one tournament to another, like some people do.

What’s the worst thing you ever encountered during a LAN? A situation when nothing’s working, problems come one after another, delay keeps increasing…

I’ve had some really difficult moments. A whole PC park that’s not working less than an hour before the beginning of the tournament, interruption of Internet access, DDoS, crappy Valve updates… I think that the most difficult thing is when you manage to overcome a series of problems, as you finally feel like things are doing better, another wave of problems starts occurring. In the end, everything depends on your mindset. The key is to never give way, to deal with every problem one by one and keep repeating yourself you’re going to pull through it.

On the contrary, what’s your best memory as an admin, a moment when you were really proud of what you were doing?

There are several of it. Being part of the staff during the ESWC 2006 and 2007, that were such prestigious tournaments, ahead of their time. Launching the first season of the Masters and managing to participate in the finals. Escorting the French teams during DreamHack Summer 2010. Travelling to Korea for the WCG 2011. Managing to finish, not without difficulty, the ESWC Montreal. Laughing moments with other members of the staff with endless motivation. Generally speaking, this feeling of witnessing and contributing to something unique, that’s what I call a great adventure.

The ESWC 2006, at Paris-Bercy Palais omnisport   

How has your position evolved? Volunteer, employed, has it changed over time, with eSport becoming more and more important?

I began as a volunteer, and I am now freelance.

In the end, you are what we call a “shadow worker” : your work allows tournaments to take place, but you’re almost never put in the spotlight. Does this lack of exposition and recognition bother you sometimes?

That’s a really good question, and honestly I’m still not sure. Everyone like to be recognized for what they do and have their own ego, but on the other hand, the less famous, the more at peace you are.