Carmac explains new IEM format

With the announcement of the IEM season 6 format last week, we spoke with Michal "Carmac" Blicharz from ESL, to get a better understanding of the format change.

The format changed drastically when ESL announced the layout for the sixth season of the Intel Extreme Masters, Michal "Carmac" Blicharz explains why these changes came about:

"We're always looking for evolution in our leagues and other products, not only to make them better but also to follow the evolution of esports. Two main reasons, though:

a) We have noticed that the idea of a closed continental-only tournament does not work for Counter-Strike 1.6 any more outside of Europe.  The North American and Asian tournaments are not as interesting to follow as they used to be.

b) On the current landscape of Counter-Strike, teams do not have many opportunities to play in events anymore.  In every previous season any given team had two events they were not able to attend because they were closed continental events.  Now every event is open.

That means more opportunities for the teams to show up at good events and more enjoyment for the fans."

A vital piece of the puzzle being removed for season six would be the continental championships, which included an online season and the LAN finals, but Blicharz fends off any of our concerns about the field of teams participating being narrowed down, based on these changes:

"What I think most people are worried about is that we would run our Global Challenges like in the past, based on invitations. That will not be the case. You will need to qualify online for every Global Challenge. Slots for teams from different regions will be given away based on where the Global Challenge is taking place - there will be always a minimum of 50% of teams coming from the host continent.

So think of every Global Challenge as a good old Continental Championship with several participants coming from other continents (who also need to qualify)."

To qualify for the season six Global Challenges, teams will still have to take care of travel and accommodation, but the future should change that, Blicharz explains:

"Every team that qualifies to a Global Challenge is guaranteed to win $2,000. But there will come a day when attending all Intel Extreme Masters events is free."

He commented further on the qualifying process:

"Qualification for the European Global Challenge event will be very similar to the online stages of the European Championship. That's all I can say at the moment."

The first Global Challenge has already been announced and will take place in Cologne during gamescom. It will however not feature Counter-Strike and there is a reason behind this decision:

"eStars is taking place at the same time as the Cologne Global Challenge - it's hurtful for esports to double-book the same weekends when you could avoid it. For the same reason we decided not to go to ChinaJoy but to another event in Asia instead, because there was a conflict with MLG Anaheim."

Asked about when we can expect the announcement for the first Counter-Strike Global Challenge, Blicharz kept us tense to find out:

"Most certainly before gamescom. That's all I can say about it right now."

The first Global Challenge, which will take place at gamescom, will take place August 17-21 in Cologne, Germany. Stay tuned to find out more about the IEM season six, as we will be sure to updated you once more information has been released.