Post-Rampage Interview with Garena
Garena Philippines’ Rampage is the biggest League of Legends (LoL) event in the country. The one-day event was a treat for Philippine LoL players as they gathered to witness the best teams in the country battle for supremacy in the finals of the Pro Gaming Series (PGS). Cosplayers brought their favorite LoL champions to life during the Cosplay Clash, as well as collected freebies and got the chance to interact with their fellow players. This year’s Rampage was also made special with the appearance of personalities such as Jobert “Kuya Jobert” Austria and the Philippines’ Cosplay Queen herself, Alodia Gosiengfiao.
Such an action packed event would probably leave Philippine League players wondering what Garena will have in store for them in the future so we, at eSports Inquirer, held a short interview with them to find out.
Nath: Hi! I’m Nath from eSports Inquirer. To start this interview off, what could you say about the event so far?
Garena: So far, so good. The crowd is pretty good right now. At first, we expected the event to be like last year’s where it was chill and the hall wasn’t so packed. But as you can see, if you’ve been inside the event area, it’s really full at the moment and the crowd seems to be having a pretty good time.
Nath: Yeah, it’s good that the attendees appear to be enjoying themselves. So this is Rampage’s 4th year. How does this year’s event differ from that of previous years?
Garena: We really invested in the interests of the players. The committee decided to choose ideas that would make the event more interactive for the people attending. We really hand-picked a lot of things, an example is the cosplayers wherein the judges went over them before they were allowed to go up the stage. Even the booths inside the event were hand picked. The committee made sure that the booths were nice and had a gimmick that could attract people to approach them so that the event would become more interactive.
Nath: It’s nice that Garena thought of ways to make the event better through making it more interactive for the people attending. Moving on, this is the Philippines’ biggest League of Legends event of the year, and this is also the pinnacle of competition among the Philippine pro teams because the PGS finals are also held here. So after this, what’s next? What can we expect from Garena in the future?
Garena: This is where we start really investing in the interests of the players in order to make future events more interactive for them. Based on what we see clicks with the community, we can gauge what the players like and from there that information to prepare to make future events better. So hopefully we’ll have more events in the future that would be more like mini-Rampages.
Nath: That sounds interesting! Can we expect an event like that later in the year?
Garena: We probably won’t be hosting an event like that this year, so players would most likely have to wait until next year.
Nath: Well, we’ll look forward to those. So how about next year’s Rampage? Do you have any plans in store for that already?
Garena: We can’t disclose too much information at the moment, but we’ll try to make more themed events like the one we have this year where we got DJ Sona to play music for the crowd. So next year, we aren’t sure yet what theme we’ll be going for yet but hopefully the community will like it.
DJ Sona pumping up the crowd at Rampage 2015
Nath: Let’s talk about eSports now. As you know, we don’t have a representative for the Season 5 World Championships this year. What are Garena’s plans in terms of eSports? How will they help further develop the competitive scene in the country?
Garena: Well to start, we changed the format of the PGS in order to make it more competitive. Similar to what can be seen here today, we’re using a gauntlet-style format. This time, the team that ranks highest will be much closer to the finals and teams ranked lower will have to win more games in order to reach the finals. Also, we’re trying to give the players more incentives to win in comparison to before. We could say it’s successful because teams are showing initiative to become more competitive since we see them hiring coaches and even analysts to help them improve.
Nath: Well something I’ve noticed in the competitive scene here is that we see the same players at the top almost every year. Does Garena have any plans to cultivate new talent from the challenger scene? Any plans to motivate them to be more competitive and try to qualify for PGS and GPL?
Garena: Yeah, we can also see that it’s the same familiar faces at the top such as with the case of the Imperium Pro Team and Mineski.Globe. However, part of being competitive is our format of having relegation. The team that places 8th in the group stage is automatically removed from the league and the top team from the challenger scene will automatically qualify for PGS. Then the 6th and 7th place teams will battle it out in the promotional tournament to see if they still qualify for next split. Last time, we had Acclaim eSports and Team Infuzed qualify for the PGS and they even managed to re-qualify for the next split. From this, we can see that the level of game play among the players is starting to even out.
Nath: That’s good. Besides that, what do you think we lack in order to have better results internationally and what are Garena’s plans in order to help our representatives stand a better chance against foreign teams, and hopefully qualify for next season’s World Championships?
Garena: What we do now is maintain close contact with our regional partners. So for example, our representatives in GPL are given accounts in League of Legends Korea to have a more competitive practice environment. Also, we give them the opportunity to organize scrims against other teams in the SEA region to help them improve faster.
That about wraps it up. Considering the success of Rampage 2015, Philippine LoL’s infrastructure is steadily improving and we can expect a more competitive local scene as well as better events from Garena.
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