How does age factor into a player's competitive viability? Does SC2 have the same age ceiling that SC1 had?There is some decline in a players speed, so as you get older it becomes harder to compete. But there is some other reason to do with age that I feel is often overlooked, and that is the mental aspect. A regular sports athlete can only train a few hours every day, and usually does not train at all the day of a match. This is not because they don't want to, it's because the human body cannot handle training athletic sports 14 hours a day.

In gaming, however, your body will not give up on you very easily, so to be at the top of the StarCraft: Brood War (and StarCraft II as well, though to a lesser degree) scene, you would have to play 12-14 hours daily. When a player goes through this process day in and day out, he becomes very mentally tired of it when he starts to near the age of 30. Often you would see players quitting when getting older, and this is always referred to as a sign of players becoming worse with age, but I wouldn't underestimate the mental motivation that a player needs to continue playing past a certain age.

Although [older-player dropout] exists in SC2 as well, it is all a bit lessened. Blizzard opted to make SC2 in such a way that the mechanical and precision requirements play a smaller role, allowing the player to focus more on strategy. Although you need a lot of practice for strategies as well, the fact that these mechanics have become less important definitely means that players are able to be at the top without refining them 14 hours a day. This all comes down to SC2 requiring less speed, and thus the age ceiling of professionals will undoubtedly go up.

What does it mean for a player to be a member of Team Liquid? Are they sponsored or paid a salary?I think that because Liquid has such a long history and such a large influence on the non-Korean scene, players often enjoy being on the team more than they would enjoy being on other teams. I try to make sure that the team chemistry is good as well, so that everyone enjoys themselves and likes their teammates. Also, the team has a sponsor, which they use to pay salary, flights, and hotels for the players. How does your partnership with Korean pro team oGs work?We share a house where some of our players live together with some of their players. This elevates the practice level of both teams and helps us in the Korean scene by having a strong partner there, and helping them in return in the foreign scene.

Where (and how) do you think eSports will grow from now on? Do you think StarCraft II has staying power as a spectator sport?If I look at Warcraft III, the previous Blizzard real-time strategy game, it still had $10,000 tournaments being hosted eight years into its existence. It also never had gigantic prize pools like the one the Global StarCraft League is putting up. All signs point towards SC2 staying around for a very long time.