CyberGamer interview – Jeremy Klaosen

Our ongoing quest into the local game culture scene continues from our first article where we discussed the competitive gaming scene in New Zealand. Game Culture recently caught up with Jeremy Klaosen, one of the co-founders of one of the biggest competitive gaming leagues (eSports) in Australasia called CyberGamer.

If you ever wanted to know what goes on behind the scenes of a competitive gaming league, how they work and what organisations like CyberGamer can do for you as a gamer, check it out:

GC: Could you please introduce yourself for our readers? What is your website all about and what do you do specifically?

JK: My name is Jeremy Klaosen, and I’m one of the two founders of CyberGamer (www.cybergamer.com.au) – the biggest competitive eSports site in Australia.  We provide a community-base where gamers across Oceania can come together to talk on our forums and compete in our leagues.

I supervise the day-to-day running of the website as well as manage its backend development, while James Burroughs – CyberGamer’s other co-founder – oversees its visual / graphic design.

GC: How did your website get started and how long has it been in operation?

JK: James and I were avid video gamers throughout high-school, and we realized that the Australia / New Zealand gaming community didn’t have the central community-hub that it needed. So, we decided to make it ourselves. CyberGamer is designed and run from the ground up by gamers, for gamers. That’s what gives us our edge over other gaming sites.

It took us three months to design and develop CyberGamer, which we launched on April 9^th, 2007. Since then, the site has gone through countless facelifts, improvements, and updates.

GC: You run competitive events for gamers. What sort of events do you run and how do you organise these events?

JK: We manage a wide range of games across both PC and Xbox 360, and have dozens of ladders and leagues – many with over 100 active teams. We cater for all types of gamer: social teams compete in our “Open” ladders for fun, while more serious and competitive teams play in our “Main” and “Invite” leagues for prizes and titles.

Our unique ladder-software allows teams to schedule and administer their matches with ease, and lets our much appreciated game-admins moderate any disputes or issues that arise.

GC: What was the main motivation for creating CyberGamer?

JK: We wanted to develop and grow competitive Australian / New Zealand eSports, and eventually give Oceanic teams the recognition they deserve on the international scene.

GC: Are there any particular games that CyberGamer focuses on more than others?

JK: When we released the site, we primarily supported Call of Duty 2 – the premiere First Person Shooter at the time, and the main game that James and I ourselves played.  We now support many different games across a diverse range of genres, from ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’ and ‘Left 4 Dead’, to ‘Defense of the Ancients’ and ‘Heroes of Newerth’. First person shooters still lay claim to the majority of our user-base, as they’re extremely popular and well suited for competition, but ‘Starcraft 2’ should see CyberGamer’s Real Time Strategy community grow significantly.

GC: How difficult is it to organise 34,000+ members? How many staff members do you have helping out with the competitions?

JK: We have literally hundreds of staff, who you can find at http://www.cybergamer.com.au/staff/ Almost all of these are volunteers who give back to the community by moderating their particular game’s section on the website, refereeing official matches, and resolving match disputes.

Of special mention are Riley “RJ Aus” James who manages the entire Xbox 360 section and Richard “Talnoy” Lawes who not only administrates Cybergamer’s large Battlefield community, but also helps out the business side of the website by interfacing with our various corporate partners and sponsors.

GC: What do you get out of running CyberGamer on a personal level?

JK: It’s extremely gratifying to see the website continue to grow so rapidly, and to know that our hard work is paying off.

GC: How do you feel about the competitive gaming community as a whole? Do you think gamers get enough support? Why or why not?

JK: The community itself is great, but I certainly don’t think that online gamers receive the support they need and deserve from most game developers. A lot of new games seem rushed, improperly tested, and in some cases are even incomplete – they are almost never suitable to be played competitively out-of-the-box.

Most of the time, the competitive community relies on user-created open-source “mods” to make the game competitively playable.  Unfortunately, there is only so much that community coders can do, and we’re often left waiting months and months (sometimes permanently) for the developers to step in and make typically quite simple fixes.

GC: If someone was interested in getting involved with your community, how could they do that? Do you advertise your website anywhere or get support from anyone?

JK: Amazingly, we’ve been able to rely entirely on word of mouth to grow our member base – we don’t advertise at all. The overall running costs of CyberGamer are covered by the adverts on the website, and by generous sponsors like AMD/ATi.

If someone is interested in getting involved with the community they can sign up on the website and send me a Private Message from: http://www.cybergamer.com.au/profile/1/

GC: There doesn’t seem to be many competitive gaming leagues in Australasia. Why do you think that is?

JK: Australia will always be somewhat limited by a fairly small and dispersed population. Our main problem, however, is that we’re so isolated from the rest of the world that technological constraints prevent us from participating in American, European, and Asian competitions. The same problem applies to LAN events: it’s simply too expensive for overseas teams to fly here for a LAN event, and vice versa. Once (if) the infrastructure exists to facilitate truly international online events, competitive gaming in Australasia will explode.

GC: Have you met any famous gamers since you’ve been involved with CyberGamer? If so, who?

JK: I’ve met THE Raureka – a famous Call of Duty player from Sydney, known for his seemingly random style of play.  I haven’t met any other players famous on the international scene, but I have met plenty of top Australian players/teams.

GC: If you could give one piece of advice to any gamers out there thinking of getting into competitive gaming, what would it be?

JK: Sign up at www.cybergamer.com.au, post in our Recruitment Forums and join a team on one of our Open ladders!