Name: Angel Munoz
Age: 40
Location: Dallas, Texas
Country: USA
Occupation: President and founder of the CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League)
Introduction
During the Grand Finals of the Cyberathlete Professional League World Tour I had the privilege and honour of interviewing who I think is the godfather of eSports. Angel Munoz is responsible for handing out millions of dollars of prize money to gamers and has brought eSports to another level. I met up with Angel during the qualifier matches at the web2zone in New York and asked him some questions.
Hi Angel!
Hi!
Let’s start of shall we? I’ve always wanted to know: what was your intention when founding the CPL?
I have never been asked what my intention was when founding the CPL. We launched the CPL back in 1994, I was an investment banker and a friend of mine gave me a copy of doom. I was immediately hooked and knew that gaming would be the next big thing. I launched a website, one where gamers could meet each other and to that day that website is still up and running.
I wanted to be open minded and we had the idea to hire gamers to play in our league. We provided gamers with a salary of 500 dollars and called it the cyberathlectic team. We immediately felt the scepticism of the gamers about the way we did this and noticed this wasn’t how we should handle it. In 1997 the CPL became a league.
It had some difficulties along the way, gaming wasn’t big at that time. Europe was even ahead of the USA at that time with several top gamers and even tournaments. Companies were suspicious and didn’t want to invest much money into gaming.
As President of the CPL, what does your daily schedule look like?
Hectical!!!
I live two different lives to maintain, one online and one offline so I don’t get much sleep. In the past couple of days I think I’ve had a 4, maybe 5 hour daily average. Running the CPL is a lot of multi-tasking. I don’t only run the CPL but the company behind the CPL has several other investments or projects that need to be run so I run from board meeting to sponsor meeting, respond to some of my emails or reply to people on the forums.
People don’t know how much work is involved, I invite you to spend a week at my house before a major event to see what it all involves, you wouldn’t believe how much work goes into running a company as the CPL.
Did you have any difficulties when organising the World Tour?
As you might know we’ve actually encountered quite a few problems during this World Tour with several stops. Some people might say to me I’ve failed but for me the word failure doesn’t exist. For me this entire World Tour has been one huge learning experience. We had to negotiate with governments, tournament organisers, sponsors, players and we all learned a lot from that. You can never fail if you do your best, you can only learn from difficulties.
The CPL is getting bigger every year. Did you foresee it becoming as big as it is nowadays?
I always knew gaming would be big, but I never thought I’d be a part of it. It’s amazing to see how the grand finals will be broadcasted live on MTV and even on Times Square itself. People that never even heard of gaming will walk past the big ad boards on times square and see something they have never seen in their life.
There are lots of teams who are aching to go to the CPL, what suggestions would you give them?
Practise, enjoy the game and compete in tournaments. I’ll give you this piece of information that I haven’t told anyone in any interview before. 2006 is going to be the year of eSports. If you were amazed at what 2005 had to offer then 2006 will blow you away. We have established a very good relationship with MTV and depending on the viewer numbers they get for the grand finals they will cover the entire 2006 tour. This year we saw the largest amount of press ever attending an eSports event topped of by 340 million viewers watching the MTV coverage worldwide. 2006 will bring more of this and will go bigger and better then ever. The Summer event has announced a huge cash prize for Quake4 so practise, sign up and compete!
Painkiller, the main game of the CPL World Tour has been dominated by fnatic player Sander “Vo0” Kaasjager. What do you think of his dominance in Painkiller and his performances during the World Tour?
For me it was great to see Sander dominate the scene and become so good at the game. The players have really shown what a cyberathlete should be like and how to become one.
Do you consider Sander or any of the other top players true athletes?
I would call the cyberathletes, not athletes. Athlete is a word that will probably not be accepted by the mainstream society. In my eyes they are athletes but I can imagine most people will have problems with that idea. That is why we decided to name it cyberathlete, using the word athlete might be pushing it.
Can you give us a little more information on the 2006 tour?
No! Hehe. I cannot release any information about it now. We have made the mistake of announcing things too early in the past and we will not make that same mistake twice. More details will be announced during CPL winter and all details will follow shortly after that. All I can say is 2006 will be big and will have less tour stops that will be much bigger, some kind of mega events, with more smaller events or qualifiers next to the big events.
With the success of the Dutch players nowadays (vo0 in PK, lauke in UT, Grubby in WC3) would there be any chance of having a World Tour 2006 Stop in the Benelux?
I honestly don’t know yet, Northern Europe has been a huge supporter of the CPL. Even before we were giving away huge amounts of prize money we saw European players travelling across the ocean to compete in the CPL. We will look into all options.
What will the CPL World Tour in 2006 be like? Can we expect more Events with public access and side entertainment (Blender, concerts, MTV etc.)?
All main events should will be huge and we are planning a lot of side activities. MTV will be present every stop and they will make the coverage of the events and we will make every single stop a must for gamers, stay tuned!
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