Hey MaRs! Though innumerable professional gamers and managers know you through oodles of tournaments on GG platform, the public has yet to know what a Martian is. Would you like to introduce yourself a bit?

Hello everyone from the earth. My Name is Zhou Weicheng aka GG.MaRs. I am 22 years old. I am Chinese and currently stay in Singapore. I joined GGC at the very beginning back in 2005.

I take care of the product deployment and quality assurance at GG. I am also the overall content supervisor within the GG site and the head admin of forum moderators. Furthermore I organize forum events and host various tournaments.

How did GG come across your life?

I met Nobrac in 2004 in a LAN event. We kept in touch with each other till one day he sent me some files and wanted to try Warcraft III with me. That was 0.1 version of GG Client which only had some very basic functions. However the latency was fantastic and I just felt like playing on LAN. I was overwhelmed and later tried it with some of my friends in China. The speed was much faster than any other tools I had used to play Warcraft. I was impressed and I really thought that this could be revolutionary to gaming industry and millions of gamers. Then I joined the team and began to work with Nobrac and ZoyOo.

There are over three and a half million registered users at GG, according to the stats in your forum. GG platform established itself as the most popular multi-gaming platform in the world in only one or two years. How do you manage to go this far?

"By Gamers, For Gamers" has been the spirit of GG-Game since the very first day we started. We are still following the spirit now and it is part of the GG-Game culture. We do things on gamers’ points of view. We see and know the things gamers need, and realise it on GG Client. There are a lot of obstacles along the way such as users speaking different mother tongues, staying in different time zones etc., but we managed to overcome most of them. I wouldn’t say it is a success now since we actually have just started. There are still loads of challenges ahead.

Map hack is one of the worst damn things since the birth of gaming. Players have been complaining about this over years. Neither Blizzard nor other gaming platforms can keep map hack from them, whereas GG platform claims that it withdraws most existing map hacking software’s. How do you achieve that?

We have a practical anti hack mechanism to keep games safe. GG Client checks the programs running while users are playing games. Some people may comment it as “process check” but it is actually not that simple. It checks a lot of things such as name, caption, handler and a lot more things. Once maphack or any forbidden software is detected running, the client will automatically close the maphack software and ban the account of the maphack user immediately. All maphacking information is recorded and can be checked on http://www.gg-game.com/other/info/hackinfo.php. Maphacking and Anti-Maphacking is like Virus and Anti Virus. Every month we ban at least 10 new found maphacks. Right now I can safely say that all the mainstream maphacks are blocked on GGC. The remaining maphack softwares are private ones, meaning only very few people know and use. Once a hack becomes public or more people use it, we will notice it and ban it. So if we sum it up, over 99.5% of the hackers are away from GGClient.

We endeavour to provide the purest place for gamers. More than 100,000 accounts are banned because of maphacking. We check hacking sites and forums regularly to find new hack tools. We are very strict to hacking issue, which is also a reason why most people won’t risk opening maphack on GGClient. Their friends, clan, reputation, exp etc. are all on the account. Nobody wants to lose it.

You and many DotA fans may know the KingSurf drama at MYM Prime Defending 9. As one of the top flights in the world, they were initially banned from the tournament due to “map hacking”. What surprise me most is that it happened while they played at GG platform. What do you think about this incident? Have you doubted they would be able to use map hacking software via GG platform?

Well it is hard to conclude. I watched the replay and the evidence and I thought there was high possibility that Mikebz used map hack. However, when I read the explanation from Naz on DotA-Allstars.com, I realized that it could possibly happen because of the latency issue considering it was an Asia vs. Europe game. I did not think too much about whether maphack could be used via GGClient. If it really happens then it happens, there is nothing to cover or hide it. You can hardly exclude every possibility in the world, especially GGClient is famous nowadays and many hackers are trying to do funny things on GGClient (plus hackers are genius in programming xD). In the end it was proved that evidence was not enough and Ks was unbanned from the tournament. In general as I explained previously, it is safe enough now to play games on GGClient.

Map hacking software’s are developing every day just like computer virus. How do you keep pace with it?

We are actively improving the system to lower down the rate of hacking software which passes through GGClient. Generally we are working on the following 2 directions.

First of all we keep updating the current anti maphack system. We have a group of specialists to monitor the gaming virus. We have moderators in each region to report us with new popular hacks in regular basis. Also a lot of GGC long time users will send us new maphacks. They are very passionate and they simply want fair games. We are also considering setting up awards to encourage users to report hacks.

Besides this, we are also working on a new anti hack mechanism which blocks every process that is trying to hack or inject Warcraft data. We have not yet released it since we haven't gone through enough testing, so there might be some unknown issues. This might also block some useful software’s such as key changer or HP viewer so we need to be very cautious about the new mechanism. We will release the new mechanism in either GGC 2.3 or 2.4 version. By then the anti maphacking on GGClient will be even better, the blocking rate of maphacking software will be very close to 100%.

I wanted to tell everyone that, please don’t try your luck. A certain maphack might be working today but tomorrow people who use it will get banned.

Apart from fighting against map hacking softwares, how do you improve the general platform performance? Many gamers have been complaining the various bugs they encounter when they use GG platform, despite of numerous updates.

We do have to apologize that the update has been too frequent recently. Most of the updates are about adding rooms. Good news is that users don’t need to bother with frequent GGC updates anymore since the approaching GGC 2.3. Rooms will be added dynamically so people won’t notice the update. There will also be optional updates. Users can skip the update and log in GGClient to play games. This will be useful to café users.

Besides updates, we have improved networking protocol in 2.3 version. In some countries where internet connection is not good (e.g. China), we have introduced new mechanism so users can enjoy better speed when connecting to each other.
Aside from that, there will be new protocol to make games run smoother and faster.

As a head admin of such a multi-gaming platform, you must have your unique point of view towards some mainstream games. What do you think about the games like CS1.6 and WC3 which have been dominating the scene for several years, and some new games like CoD4 and DotA which seem to have great potential?

CS1.6 and WC3 are still currently the hottest games all over the world. Especially in China there are more and more tournaments going on for WC3. I can say that WC3 is still growing. If Blizzard or gaming organizations can come out with some new balanced maps, it could be more interesting. If you know about Starcraft in Korea, map is updating in every OSL/MSL season, which is a main factor to keep the game exciting and popular up till now.

DotA shouldn’t be considered as new as it has been there for a couple of years. It became popular last year. Look at the total number of GGClient users, the majority are playing DotA. There are more and more DotA tournaments now, plus the author IceFrog keeps making balancing updates. The ceiling for the DotA gamers is nowhere in sight. I am pretty sure the potential of DotA has yet to be wholly explored. It will be even better if there are more translated versions for DotA, as a lot of people do not understand English.

COD4 is marked as “The next generation of FPS games”. It has won a lot of gaming awards already. I noticed that SK-Gaming started COD4 squad recently. I tried it a few weeks back. It is really a cool game. We will see if it can surpass the height of Counter Strike. Good news is that COD4 will be supported in GGC 2.3 release, which will be around March 11.

Another potential game will be Red Alert 3. I was a Red Alert 95 fan and I am looking forward to seeing the game.

In spite of being so popular, the prize money for most DotA tournaments are pretty low compared to other mainstream games such as CS1.6 and WC3. What do you think is the major obstacle for DotA to succeeding professionally wise?

I think one major problem for DotA is that, there are too few offline tournaments. DotA is not one of the official games in major LAN tournaments like WCG. ESWC 2008 showed a good sign to include DotA, and WCG Asia features DotA as official game. Now various organizations started to organize more and more online tournaments too. Although prize money maybe low for now, the scene will get better as more tournaments come out.

The second problem is that major esports media does not take DotA seriously enough, at least not on the level with Warcraft and CS. There are millions of fish in the sea and I don’t see any reason why not go for it. If esports media can put more attention on DotA, they will get more traffic as well. This is good for both media itself and the DotA scene.

Third problem is also a problem for many esports games. There is no real industrial chain for now. For example if a professional player retires, what is he going to do next? In Korea the industry is mature. A player can choose to be coach, team organizer, TV shout caster etc. However, it is really hard to get another esports related job in other places when a professional gamer hangs his gears. In the current esports industrial chain, a lot of parts are not making money.

Players are not well paid, most professional clubs are still losing money, esports journalists have a relatively low income, most gaming events are struggling to survive, video broadcasting companies are burning money from investors, game developing companies would rather make MMOG games simply because they can earn more money. If we see the success of gaming in Korea, we can see that there are giants such as MBC, Samsung coming in with government support. The industry is already fully commercialized and every parts of the chain are earning money. It is tough for esports now in the early stage but I do believe there will be bright future. If we look back 2 years ago, we will be amazed how fast esports is growing.

What about the highly anticipated or maybe even overheated SC2? Everyone, no matter what game they are playing at the moment, is talking about this game. What if the game fails to such high expectation? What kind of influence will it blow to the gaming community in your opinion?

I personally believe that SC2 will be a great game like most gamers. I have been a Starcraft fan since 2000. Well if it fails it could be a disaster. More new balanced games are needed to bolster the gaming scene, or at least update of mods, maps etc. Gamers might switch to MMOG games if SC2 turn out to be a failure, though the chance is very low.

GG have hosted various tournaments in the recent years, from RaceWar series of WC3 to ADC’07 and ENADC of DotA. What can we expect from GG this year regarding to future tournaments?

We have started DreamCup in China for Warcraft this year. It is a weekly tournament similar to inCup. It is running the sixth week of the second season. A lot of professions participated with lots of skilled unknown gamers. It is broadcasted by GGTV and video streamed by NeoTV every Saturday. Both players and the community had a lot of fun and we can see some new faces who have great potential. Oh, talking about Race War, see you all in Race War 2008 later this month ^^

For DotA, we have already started Europe North America DotA Championship and Asia DotA Championship season 2. You can expect to see South America DotA Championship and probably Oceania DotA Championship. If we have enough resource, to host a World Masters consists of top teams from the four tournaments I mentioned above would be interesting. There is also a plan for Asia DotA Nations but that will not happen in near future.

Besides Warcraft and DotA, we will definitely host tournaments for COD4 too. It could be follow the DreamCup system. When the maps and balance are good enough, we will start working on it.

Last but not least, Starcraft II for sure, if it is going to be released this year :)

So you have a great gaming platform, a cool broadcasting media aka GGTV and you have the experience of hosting tournaments from the past. Given all these conditions, do you have any intention of transforming from a pure gaming platform company to an event organizer like ESL?

This is a good question. For the tournaments organized by GG-Game, it is a win-win situation for everyone since pro teams/players get prize, fans can enjoy the shows through GGTV, replay and our broadcasting partner, and GGC becomes more and more popular thanks to big tournaments. At this stage, tournaments are considered as marketing projects to raise awareness of the brand and to harmonize the relationship between the community and GGC. We haven’t really considered about transforming to an event organizer yet, since we don’t have better resource compare to event organizers like ESL. Some organizations have been around for over 10 years and GGC is only 2 years old. Also we could possibly lose our close partner such as ESL if we become competitors :D So far the main target of hosting tournaments is for the branding of GG-Game.

The plan for GGClient is to expand it as entertainment software not just for competitive gaming. Imagine you can also play such games as blackjack or chess, that will be great! Our mission is to change the way people use internet for entertainment :)