1337mag Interviews Nazgul
March 02 2015
![[image loading]](jpg/0227_1337victor.jpg)
In the first issue of 1337 Digital Esports Magazine they sat down with Victor "Nazgul" Goossens the co-owner and founder of Team Liquid sit down and talk with him about the team organization's present and past.
![[image loading]](jpg/0227_1337cover.jpg)
"Although Team Liquid has aggressively expanded into other games in the past few months, StarCraft is obviously still close to Goossens’ heart. He purses his lips on the subject on the subject of its longevity. To him, the current state of the game is both a mix of an eventuality and a non-issue to his overall enjoyment.
“Whenever someone retires, people feel sad about it,” he says. “Here’s the thing, StarCraft blew up and you ended up with 200 professionals in Korea in a scene that probably couldn’t even support 50, then you added 200 more from KeSPA – no shit people are gonna’ retire.”
Goossens continues: “There’s a completely disproportionate amount of StarCraft professionals relative to the size of the scene that exists. Look at tennis professionals. There are way more StarCraft professionals than there are tennis ones out there, that’s ridiculous.”
“I spoke to Twitch.tv recently and they mentioned StarCraft’s viewership hasn’t gone down at all. Individual streamers, on a day-to-day basis, are obviously not as interesting as they used to be. But when it comes to major tournaments like DreamHack and IEM, stream numbers are similar to before. Tournaments have stayed stable for StarCraft, but when you look around and see games like Dota, Counter-Strike, and League doing so well, you can get the feeling that the scene is in a decline. But that actually isn’t the case."
“Whenever someone retires, people feel sad about it,” he says. “Here’s the thing, StarCraft blew up and you ended up with 200 professionals in Korea in a scene that probably couldn’t even support 50, then you added 200 more from KeSPA – no shit people are gonna’ retire.”
Goossens continues: “There’s a completely disproportionate amount of StarCraft professionals relative to the size of the scene that exists. Look at tennis professionals. There are way more StarCraft professionals than there are tennis ones out there, that’s ridiculous.”
“I spoke to Twitch.tv recently and they mentioned StarCraft’s viewership hasn’t gone down at all. Individual streamers, on a day-to-day basis, are obviously not as interesting as they used to be. But when it comes to major tournaments like DreamHack and IEM, stream numbers are similar to before. Tournaments have stayed stable for StarCraft, but when you look around and see games like Dota, Counter-Strike, and League doing so well, you can get the feeling that the scene is in a decline. But that actually isn’t the case."
Photo Credit: 1337
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