To be more precise: is it a viable career path if relocating to South Korea is not an option?

A little less than ten years ago, I was a hardcore StarCraft player with the dream that one day some people (not me, people that could play it for real) would be able to play it for a living: they would be profesionnal gamers with heavy practice regimens and big tournaments to attend.

While I was dreaming at this, trying to do stuff in France to somehow make it happen, a friend was turning it all into a reality. ElkY had become the #1 French player in StarCraft, then the #1 European player, before he went to South Korea, where the pro gaming phenomenon was exploding, for a couple tournaments.

At the end of 2001, he left for one of these never to come back: there he was in Korea for good, living the pro gamer’s life, practicing every day all day and playing on national TV several times a week for leagues such as Ongamenet’s Starleague.

A few months after he got there, he told me: “you know, it’s not like Europe is six months behind, more like ten years.” That was kind of tough to hear. It was true we were way behind, but ten years?…

Well, almost ten years have passed and StarCraft 2 just came out so, are we now ready to catch up on to South Korea?

I went to Electronic Sports League‘s David “affentod” Hiltscher to get an enlightened answer. Based off of Köln, Germany, ESL is the biggest competitive gaming organization in the West and David is their head of communities.

>> Read David Hiltscher’s interview

Last week at Gamescom I was wandering around the Torchlight II booth when I came across someone who looked like he worked there.

And so he did. After he kindly answered my questions, not without expressing his frustration at having to show the game behind curtains (thank you German age restriction laws), he introduced himself as Max Schaefer, CEO of Runic Games. There I was talking to Torchlight’s daddy himself. So I asked for an interview, I had to.

He said yes!

I’m very happy that we’ll be talking to Max here on the blog. Runic’s Action-RPG title has been one of the most popular PC games this past year, making it the only indie title in Gamocracy’s top 10.

If you’re interested in Torchlight and you have a question (or two) for Mr Schaefer, please put it here in the comments. If it’s good, it could make it to the interview. I’ll also ask the top raters for the game specifically.