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feature :: gamerthon 2008 - interview with michael corona

Gamerthon 2008 - Interview with Michael Corona

Starks gets to have a sit down with Michael 'Corona' Thien from Anything interactive, the man responsible for overseeing the event.

Introduction | The Final Stats | Interview with Michael Corona | Conclusion

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Michael ‘Corona’ Thien from Anything Interactive: (Starks is bold)

I’m sitting here with Mick Thien from Anything Interactive. Thanks for your time and would you like to give us a quick run-down on what you have to do with Gamerthon:

Well I’m the project manager of Gamerthon I’m responsible for overseeing the event as a whole. I organise logistics, I oversee the staff and I basically organise the execution of the event.

So what benefits do you see Gamerthon bringing to the community?

Well the Gamerthon is basically trying to reach out on to three tiers. First of all, it’s trying to reach out to the public to create public exposure. It’s also to promote a healthy vision of gaming and a healthy lifestyle that is vibrant, exciting and holds a lot of energy activity. And the third is to really concentrate on e-Sports gaming as a competitive market, to really build that into something that can catch up to the rest of the world. Our aim is to promote e-Sports gaming in Australia to make the industry drive.


Michael surveys the event


Fantastic. The preparation of the event is superb. I’ve been to a fair few tournaments in my time and I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Is there a specific model that you used when designing Gamerthon?

We really wanted to create a large scale celebration of gaming that is not only orientated to the general public but also to the hardcore gamer, so the preparation is to bring forward the competitive gaming to the media pit, whereas the function space is an introduction into competitive gaming, and showcase that area.

Competitive gamers tend to have a stereotype of nerds in a dark room. Do you think Gamerthon will help to break these boundaries?

I think it is. I think if the public are able to see the people out there, because we are running Gamerthon at Federation Square in the Australian Center of the Moving Image, so it’s got a lot of public exposure and it’s really going to open a lot of eyes. I feel it is going to expose this clichéd market to a wider audience and hopefully allow competitive gamers to gain acceptance within the community and the public as well.

That’s the real drive behind it. It’s not just for the public either; It’s to help provide confidence to the corporate industry as well so they know there is a market out there, and we’re not just slobs on a couch like the South Park episode (Starks edit - Make love, not World of Warcraft) – We actually get out there and we get active and we’re very passionate about what we’re doing.

The televised nature is something that hasn’t been done before in Australia. Do you see this as being the opportunity to bring competitive gaming into the mainstream?

We’ve been following e-Sports all around the world, in particular Korean e-Sports; A lot of which is televised. In terms of live internet broadcasting, a lot of it is not very apparent around the world. There are a few major events that do so, more recently the Championship Gaming Series. They are really bringing to the next level worldwide. The Gamerthon media pit that we have set up there was inspired by CGs, and we’re trying to tie into that and go along with that theme in order to try to turn gaming from a players perspective in to a spectators perspective so we can turn it into a marketable entertainment medium.


A view from the commentators box – Velicroma and Monkey Kong


Gamerthon is well under way, and with this being the second day, have you had any feedback on it yet?
So far the feedback has been positive. We’ve had a few people ring up and say they’re watching the internet broadcast and they’re saying that’s fantastic. As you can imagine, it’s very rare to be able to see footage like this from an event so the positive feedback is there. We’ve also had some feedback from our sponsors, who are happy with its progress. In particular, ACMI are very pleased, as yesterday we pulled about two to two and a half thousand people off the street.

[Interrupts] That’s huge, because it’s very hard to pull people off the street. I mean, the Guitar Hero III competition is going off.

Yes, it’s going nuts! It’s been very popular, as has the Grand Tourismo 5 tournament; Both of which are free to enter. It’s been quite successful so far and we hope it follows on for the rest of the week.

So what do you have planned for Gamerthon in 2009? What’s in your head?

Well 2008 is more of an event for Australians. We’re hoping in 2009 we can introduce some Asian teams into the mix so we can get some international exposure. And we hope by 2010 we can adopt a World Cyber Games style where we can run an international tournament so we can put Australia on the map with e-Sports gaming. One of the major issues at the moment is Australian teams have to travel overseas which is very expensive for Australian players. In specifics of the competitiveness, it is very hard to get experience overseas travelling becomes an issue so we’re trying to make a competition where the international teams will come to Australia to compete and we basically will create a home ground advantage for Australians.

Mick, thanks very much for the interview, and I look forward to experiencing the rest of Gamerthon 2008!




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