Barcraft Zürich
Where - Authentic English Pub called the “Oliver Twist” in Zürich.
How much - Once a month.
Running since - Facebook page in October, first event November.
Attending - Core of about 50 while in total about 100 every event.
Contact - Facebook
Tell us about yourself.
Hey I’m Vinz, 26 years old, got a Bachelor in engineering and my Masters in Bio-Med engineering. I’ve always been into gaming, and got involved with following SC2. I do play occasionally but I hate losing and my private life doesn’t leave much time for gaming.
How did you start?
I had a gamer friend while studying and we were talking a lot about Day9 and games. We thought how cool would it be to get involved with eSports and contribute to the scene. He said we should hold a barcraft, a concept I’ve never heard about. I started reading about it and I saw the live feed from barcraft Montreal on the MLG stream. I saw how successful the whole thing is and thought that it’s just amazing. I wanted to see if it’ll be possible to actually do one and it went from there.
Tell me about planning the first event.
Basically I just started a facebook page and made forum posts on the Battle.Net forums and some Swiss community forums to see if people would be interesting in doing this and help organize. I also asked around about finding a bar in Zürich. I wasn’t quite sure how many people to expect or what the response will be. I thought we’d do an organizers meet up in a bar and see how we’ll go about doing this. About 7 or 8 people showed up and I didn’t actually know any one of them. While studying I didn’t really have time for gaming at all so I wasn’t part of the community, I just wanted to get people to help me out. That night we decided we’re going to do it. We tried to split responsibilities between people, some were going to work on a homepage, some should try and get a place to do it in and the like. No one knew each other, but we were all on the same page, eSports lovers, and wanting to do a barcraft.
So what was your responsibility?
I needed to find a place to have the event in. I pretty much knew Oliver Twist and I thought it would be the perfect place and we really need to get it. We were looking around for locations that offer to hold events specifically. Got in touch with 2 Irish pubs, one was Oliver Twist. We set up meetings with both bars and pretty much got both of them on board. The first place didn’t really mind having the event but it seems like they weren’t really into it. At Oliver Twist we talked to them about how gaming is becoming such a spectator sports, and explained about barcrafts and eSports and how there’s very high level tournaments. The manager thought it was all really cool and that’s how we got a place. It was 2 weeks after we’ve met that we secured a location.
How’d you advertise?
So we pretty much spammed every gaming forum we could find. The community in Switzerland is kinda small, it consists of little groups of people as far as I know so we did everything to get to everyone. We even had multiple accounts on forums just to bump threads and get to people. One of our guys had access to google ads, I think it was a voucher or something like that, so he posted an add and when people look for starcraft related things or barcrafts they could see the ad for our event. That’s pretty much how we promoted the first event.
We had no money for fliers or posters, there wasn’t that much time anyways. From the time we got the location there were 2 weeks left before the first event - MLG Providence. We tried our best on social networks, facebook, twitter, reddit, and we managed to reach a lot of people. About 80-100 people showed up for the first event with 2 weeks notice.
So how was the first event?
The first event was challenging, we weren’t that prepared. The pub is very low tech, the location wasn’t as good as we had hoped. The way we were feeding the signal to the TVs was analog, we had to find correct cables and connect to the system there. The internet wasn’t good enough for streaming but we were lucky one of the guys on our team, by coincidence, lives next to the bar, so he let us use his WiFi and we got it into the bar.
About the people, the place was packed, it was crazy. For people who showed up it was a great get together and a good way to meet new people. Watching the games was kind of in the background, just being in the bar and the social interaction was more interesting. There are two types of people who come to barcraft events, people who come to primarily watch the game, and people who come to socialize and drink some beer. In our case the Zürich barcraft is the latter, socializing outweighs spectating.
Do you charge at the entrance? How do you deal with money and special things for the events?
Mmm... Brunch...We don’t charge at the entrance. The first event was kinda standard but we had a couple of things. Everyone who signed up on the facebook event page got a 50% discount on a drink. One guy on our team is the president of the swiss eSports federation, it’s a national thing which is part of the international federation founded in South Korea. He had a pool of mouse pads and mice they had for advertising and promotion and he just gave us a share of his equipment to use it for our barcraft so we didn’t need to waste our own money or get a sponsor for those.
We put together this questionnaire, people had to estimate some stuff like how many people say GG before leaving the game in the last MLG event. The closest answer got something like a mouse or mouse pad. We also talked to an energy drink brand in Switzerland - we presented the barcraft idea to them and they supported us with free drinks. At one event we had people imitate SC2 units and the best one would get an energy drink. Sometimes simple things like a marine, but also stuff like Creep or a Hatchery, that was kinda funny.
The coolest thing we had was a special event, it was GSL finals of last season. We had a GSL Brunchcraft. If you wanna watch the finals live you had to do it in the morning, and the bar normally opens only at the evening. They opened it especially for us at 9 in the morning with special discounted English breakfast for half price, and of course energy drinks. The manager loves us, he’s crazy about barcrafts. Since it was Saturday morning we didn’t really expect it to work but it turned out to be our biggest event so far - we got over 100 people. I was helping set things up and got there a little late and was shocked to see people drinking so early in the morning. The first order of the day was 9 beers and a couple of breakfasts at 9 AM. There were so many people the bar ran out of breakfasts. The barkeep thought they had enough but at 11AM there was just nothing left.
What’s your thoughts on expanding and growing?
There's the french speaking part of Switzerland that has been left out of our event. Because of the language barrier the community has been split. Some people got in touch with us and wanted to see if we could do something. We took them on board and gave them input on how to hold events and how they should promote and approach a bar. They did everything on their own, tested the tech, got stuff up and their first event is on the 20th of May in Lausanne.
For this event they partnered with Swiss Gamers Network - a gaming federation that represents eSports to the public. They made flyers and printed posters, got radio interviews with some stations. They are doing very well and the event should be a blast, if facebook attendance is anything to go by - their event is probably going to be much bigger then the events in Zürich so far.
We are very quick on creating ideas we wanna follow on, but I agree with the guy in one of your previous interviews. We should raise some kind of foundation and make sure the event is sustainable. There are a couple of things we wanna try, like matches between barcrafts, it’s an idea we’re working on. We’re also trying to get in contact with other barcraft events, like Vienna and Berlin, to communicate and form this network. Right now it’s more about organization and sustaining this movement, it’s more important than growing. About sponsors, the event in Zürich is too small to attract them, but obviously in the future we want to have more stuff, and maybe tournaments.
Another thing is that we don’t wanna rely on single persons, people should take over and keep it going. A problem very often with barcrafts and everything in eSports is that we rely too much on specific people. If that person’s motivation dies out the whole thing falls apart. I say that since I’m doing a lot of work and I do feel like if I stop then maybe the whole event will stop in Zürich. I want it to get a serious structure and not die out if I step down.
So got any advice from your experience to the community?
You shouldn’t worry too much about being rejected by a bar. I think many people don’t really estimate their chances correctly. If you go to a bar and present eSports in a clear and professional way, how serious eSports became and how big it is - I think many bars will greatly appreciate the chance to host an event.
Thanks Vinz! Anything else you wanna say?
Shoutouts to Vienna, Munich, Berlin and Cologne - looking forward to working with you! We’re actually working on stuff and not going public about it right now. To every barcraft out there - keep it up! Fight against the summer break and don’t lose hope. Football might push us away from bars a little but after the summer we’ll be back in full force!
Run a barcraft event? Leave us a comment with a facebook link and we’ll contact you.
Previously on GosuGamers Barcraft World Tour
Mash Bar, Tel Aviv, Israel
Good Life Bar, Boston Massachusetts, USA
C-base Club, Berlin, Germany
Replugged club followed by Kringers bar, Vienna, Austria
The Corporate Box bar, Auckland, New Zealand
This is a GosuGamers weekly feature by Eyal "KOKOStern" Stern, that is published every Wednesday.
