Interview with Rasmus Sigsgaard       
Sunday, 08 April 2001 : enmity 
      
This is an interview with Rasmus Sigsgaard, the community coordinator of Network League. The NWL is hosting a Quake 3 online tournament, with a prize pool of $20,000 at LAN finals in London, England. I asked Rasmus a few questions about the upcoming competition.

[enmity] What convinced you that Quake 3 was the best game to use for this major online tournament?

[Rasmus] At the time of deciding between games, Quake3 (Q3) was the most played game, and by far the easiest to integrate with our system since Q3 is open source.

[enmity] What maps will be used for these duels? How will NWL's custom map, "Colosseum," be integrated into this tournament?

[Rasmus] This has not been decided finally yet. We are still in the process of choosing maps, and are working with top Q3 players in Denmark and elsewhere to find out which ones to use. Our Colosseum map is in the process of being reworked, and may still be one of the maps played in the tournament.

[enmity] Is there any number limit on the competitors able to sign up?

[Rasmus] No. The system has been built to be able to cope with as many users as there can possibly be. So give us your best shot :)

[enmity] In what kind of format will the Quake 3 1v1 tournament be run?

[Rasmus] It is going to be an online tournament, which will be divided in to four "regions". These can be regarded as open tournaments, as in e.g. tennis (US Open). This means that you are free to choose which "regions" you wish to sign up in, but to get the best games we recommend that people sign up where they are geographically closest to. But all information about the tournament will be released in the comming week.

[enmity] How will the players for the LAN finals be determined? Will there be representatives from every country, region, or continent? Is there a known number of finalists to be flown to London, England?

[Rasmus] As it is now, there will be one finalist from each "region" which will play against eachother in the finals in London.

[enmity] Is there any word on when this tournament will begin?

[Rasmus] It will be possible to play on www.networkleague.com in the end of april, and there will then be a "warm-up" period lasting some time until the tournament begins.

[enmity] I read about Network League having unique technology to organize and execute the online competitions. Is this software to be personally used by the gamers, and if so when will it become available?

[Rasmus] Yes, it will be used by all gamers on Networkleague. Our technology is completely webbased, which means that when you sign up on Networkleague you will automatically get our client software, which is java based, and this will then facilitate the communication with the Networkleague engine. All the tedious tasks such as, finding an opponent, finding a server, setting up the server, starting and ending the match, reporting results etc. are automated, so that the gamers can spend time on the one thing that makes them do this, and that is playing the game.

[enmity] Thank you very much for your time and answers.

[Rasmus] You're very welcome. Nice questions =] Please feel free to return if you have any further questions. Please note that we will have a new press release tomorrow (8. of april) where a lot of your questions will be addressed in detail.