This 7th edition of the “Coulisses de l’eSport” is dedicated to Michal “Carmac” Blicharz, Pro Gaming department head of Turtle Entertainement, the Electronic Sport League (ESL) society and event planner such as the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM), the Starcraft II World Championship Series (WCS) or also the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS).
Before joining the ESL in 2009, he was revealed on the international eSport world by his journalist skills, by winning two years in a row the eSport Awards of the best reporter (2007 and 2008). He was first noticed for his straight talk as his harsh critics regarding Angel Munoz, the CPL founder.
But it’s his humor which allowed him to goes from the darkness to the light, more particularly through offbeat interviews of professional players where he pretended to be a clumsy and incompetent reporter under the alias “Uszat” or “Sasha Tsapaev”.
He has an atypical career, graduated with an English MSc and judo referee, Carmac is definitely a hard worker and a true eSport passionate.
Profile
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Name: Michal "Carmac" Blicharz Home: Kielce, Poland Born: September 16th, 1980 Studies: Master Arts, English
eSports activities: - Director Pro Gaming Turtle Environment GmbH (since may 2011) - Product Manager of Intel Extreme Masters (2009-2011) - Chief Editor, Video Producer for SK Gaming (2008) - eSports Journalist for GGL (2005-2007) - Head Admin for XS/ESReality.com (2000-2004) Links : - Facebook : MBCarmac - Twitter :@mbCARMAC |
Credit: HLTV.org |
Biography
From the dojo to the cybercafé
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Credit: sports.cn |
Michal Blicharz was born on September 16th 1980 at Kielce in Poland from a Russian mother and a Polish father. He spent his childhood and teenage time in the city, around 200 000 inhabitants, half way from Cracow and Warsaw.
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His mother was teaching russian at middle school and his dad the judo. Very early in his life he was fluent in both russian and polish, and the practiced judo. Carmac is black belt, he managed to get in the national top 3, and it has been over a decade since he is referee in the tatami.
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EIn 1990 the political change in Poland (ie: Lech Wałęsa, the charismatic leader of Solidarność is elected as the Republic President) is the beginning of the decrease of the communism and russian influence. His mother is started to have problems to find russian teaching classes. Michal’s parents while still working, opened a shoes shop to keep paying all their bills. Seeing them working like that, Carmac kept a deep respect for his parents since this time.
Michal is the youngest of 3 children. He has an older sister who is diplomat at the Polish Embassy in Moscow, and his other sister is a professional judoka, he is very proud of her since she was champion of Poland several times. He has good memories of his childhood. Since he did not own a consol, he spent a lot of time outside playing with his friends to soccer and judo. At school everything went fine until he turned 14.
At middle school things were a little bit complicated since he recognizes himself as lazy. His teenage hood was quite rough. Far from testing his limits as most of the young people of his age, he continued his judo practices seriously and withdraws into himself, which leaded him to have an almost antisocial behavior. He was studying until he got his English MSc.
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Amiga 5000 Clone |
He got his first computer when he was 18 years old. It was an AMIGA 5000 that he father brought back from Germany for his older sister studies. Among his favorite games, Cannon Fodder is one the best. However the internet connection was not working very well. So he started to go to cybercafés which were at the time quite popular. Acting at the opposite of the geek cliché, it’s thanks to the cybercafé that Carmac successes to open himself to the world. |
The first game he really played at a high level was Quake II. After a quick passage on Quake III, he really started to love eSport on Unreal Tournament. As a good player, he became quickly the captain and then team manager. His experience as an official referee and competition organizer of judo allowed him to make quickly clear and understandable rules for all in order to organize eSports tournaments; that’s how the “GL HF” was replacing the “Hajime” at the beginning of a game.
A pioneer of eSport journalism
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At the beginning of the 2000, Carmac is launching into eSport journalism with no hidden thought, just by a pure passion for eSport, and to share his opinion with others. At the time, XSReality.com, the ancestor of ESReality.com was one of the most known and successful website dedicated to eSport. That’s where he did his first steps as journalist. |
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I don’t know how, but I got the login and password of one of the administrator of XSReality.com website.
So I started to make plans to write regularly articles on his account and signing them with my own name to be known.
I did not have any intention to make money and even less to live thanks to it. I just wanted to write about gaming and share my opinion.
Carmac became little by little one of the most known writer of the website ESReality.com. He made several interviews of players and he is a reporter of several events. Known for his straight talk, he is one of the first and one of the rare actors of the eSport world to outspoken and hardly criticize Angel Munoz, the founder of the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL). This crushing critic of politic and CPL system, particularly the seeding problems will give him an image of an honest journalist, which seduces the eSport community. Carmac saw at this time his fame increase like hell.
| He is then approach by the leaders of the Global Gaming League (GGL) who offered him to work for them for the amount of $500; which is a huge amount for him at this time, as much as his father didn’t believe him and suspected him to win this money at the bet. |
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The idea of creating a news website came in at the end of 2004 when the GGL hired Marcus "djWHEAT" Graham to be the shoutcaster and the star presenter of the events as well as the chief coverage (both audio and video) department and named me at the head of the written coverage department.
In 2005 the GGL hired Bruce Haring, a reporter who worked for newspaper as USA Todat and wrote some books, as a chief redactor of our news website. Since then the quality of the website content has improved a lot. Bruce asks for solid reports and doesn’t leave anything without control.
In this strong team, Carmac will develop an original style of which only GGL has the secret by writing about taboo subjects until then such as the player income or the money made by the eSport industry like the article entitled « Money!!! The GGL Professional Gaming Survey » (2005) in which they tried to count, dollar by dollar, and with a lot of humor:
- $2: the amount received by the CS player Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel for each sound card Fatal1ty sold
- $2,600,000: estimated budget of the Korean team SK Telecom T1 on Brood War.
So that’s how GGL is going to be one of the first website to step out of the model of classical eSport websites, by offering more than just a simple and sad report of information of updates of games scores. Carmac is imposing his way of writing, subtle mix of dirty jokes and serious investigations on subjects which have been not really explored before. The website becomes little by little a reference in the eSport world.
djWHEAT & Carmac (Credit: GGL.com)
Far from explaining morale to the competitor website, often owned by team (such as Team Liquid or Millenium), Carmac completely stays clear about the difficulties of being an impartial journalist today, with an indisputable ethic in the eSport world.
In a perfect world, the clans would be so popular that they won’t have to give news from the whole world. If you look at the website of the biggest soccer clubs, they generate a huge traffic by doing only coverage on their own team, not on soccer in general. You will never go onto Lyon website to know the scores of the English Premiership, right?
An awesome actor
In 2008, he has been recruited by the German team SK Gaming as chief editor, video producer for SK Gaming. He spent one year in this structure where he confessed he was actually a creator of original contents alone, more than a head redactor. Here again you can find the Carmac’s touch.
Indeed, in the series of interviews 1on1, he proposes very intimates interviews with professional gamers in which he addresses with them all the subjects except their eSport career. In the video below, Carmac is interviewing the French player Yoan “ToD” Merlo who was part of the WarCraft III roster of the German team Mousesports.
1on1 Interview of ToD by Carmac (link to the video)
In another hand, he also proposes a series of offbeat interviews of professional gamers where he played the Uszat character, a reporter with a very approximate English and an almost complete un-knowledge of the game, those interviews are like the ones made by Raphaël Mezrahi [ie: Raphaël Mezrahi is a French humorist]. In the video below, Carmac is interviewing Machine, the US Zerg SC2 pro-gamer of the Evil Genuises team, by acting like if it was IdrA!
"Troll" Interview of Machine by Carmac aka Uszat (link to the video)
That’s how Carmac became one of the most big names of the eSport journalism. He, moreover, won two years in a row the eSport Award of the best journalist in 2007 for GGL.com and in 2008 for sk-gaming.com.
Mister ESL
After only one year in SK, Carmac is again moving and joined the ESL staff to be the head of Product of the IEM. He proposed to change the competition by exporting the event on all the continents with the unmissable meeting of Cologne, but also the IEM in China, at Sao Paolo in Brazil, at NYC in the USA. From HotshotGG to Bomber, with Feast and duckdeok, we cannot count the number of players that Carmac carried on his shoulders!
Carmac & Feast during IEM Sao Paulo (Crdit: ESL)
The ESL is also one of the first eSport event companies to be provided with a studio to follow the competitions such as the Go4SC2 or the shooting of their own shows like the RotterdaM University. For the second season of the Europe WCS, the studio has been extended. For the second group phase, the games were played from the studio in front of an audience. Here again, Carmac is doing everything since he was not only managing from the backstage, but also doing the show during the break and at the end of the games.
Credit: ESL
The success is again here and he rose through the ranks in the society since in May 2011 he was appointed head of the Pro Gaming department of Turtle Entertainment.
Carmac & ESL Poland staff (Credit : ESL)
From now on he is coordinating the ESL competitions as the IEM but also the WCS and the LCS. He is so leaving his journalist work for the manager and planner for events.
Carmac & Artosis during WCS Season 2 2013 Finals (Credit: Helena Kristiansson / esportsphoto.com)
When we ask him the role he prefers between the journalist and the manager, and that we also wanted to know if he is afraid that the success will get to his head, here are his answers:
Success is when you ask yourself the question : "Could I have done better?" If the answer is "no", that's success. And on most days, I'm not successful.
By getting over this new step in his eSport career, Carmac is now a major actor of this international eSport stage such as Robert Ohlen, the DreamHack boss or also of Sundance DiGiovanni, the big chief of the MLG. The strength of Carmac is that he’s a king who does not take him seriously!
Carmac during Gamescom 2007 (Credit: BeeemIt / readmore.de)
Trivia
- He is fluent in four languages: polish, russian, english and german.
- He is black belt of judo and also a national referee.
- He is a supporter of Liverpool soccer team.
- He is the sosie of the Ukranian SC2 player, Dmytro “DIMAGA” Filipchuk.
Carmac & DIMAGA
Thanks a lot to Clara for the translation.
