Kim Phan is Blizzard’s director of eSports operations. She and her team plan everything that makes it go - from licensing local Hearthstone tournaments to the StarCraft global finals at BlizzCon each year. As Blizzard manage more games than ever, with bigger audiences than anyone thought possible until recent years, she’s got a lot going on.
For more on the games themselves, here’s what’s going down in Overwatch patch 1.9.
At IEM Katowice, between making sure two major tournaments didn’t go off the rails, she sat down with us to discuss Blizzard’s place in the industry, how they compare to their competitors and why some tournaments are for watching, and some are just for playing in. First up - how do they even decide what to focus on in the first place?
PCGN: With games in development, for example on Hearthstone, presumably you weren't thinking about it as an eSport at the start?