After an eight month hiatus, djWHEAT is back at the helm of his variety gaming show, Epileptic Gaming. The fourth episode of his new esport discussion show, Live on Three, airs tomorrow at 7pm EST. Visit djWHEAT.tv to watch previous and upcoming episodes of EG and LO3.

Epileptic Gaming is back after over half a year on ice, but now you have your new esport show "Live on 3" to accompany it. What's the concept behind these two shows?

Let's start with Epileptic Gaming. Epileptic Gaming began back in January 2003, it was basically my outlet to talk about video games. It covers all aspects of gaming including consoles, arcades and PC.

I guess when it started I never expected it to live for over 6 years, but it's gone through an awesome evolution and to date we've created over 400 episodes. What's great about Epileptic Gaming is that it really is a no BS approach to gaming. It's gamers talking about gaming the same way you would sit around and argue and discuss with your buddies. I think that's been the big draw to Epileptic Gaming and why it's been able to live for so long.

As for "Live On Three", it's the eSports show I always wanted to do.

When the CGS closed, I realized that I was no longer handcuffed to any particular league or organization. I felt like it was finally the appropriate time to begin my own show about pro-gaming and one that wasn't going to be biased. I personally believe that pro-gaming is in a fragile state right now and I feel like we need a voice and opinion out there that's not going to sugar coat things... we need truth... we need answers. That's the main focus of LO3: to educate and "expose" pro-gaming, how it works and how we, as a community, can help make it great again.

Why is it when someone speaks as openly as you do on your shows, they tend to provoke hostility from organisations? Why are people so infuriated by criticism?

In general, I think pro-gaming organizations have been holding the truth from the community for quite some time. In most cases, the criticism is actually just a reflection of facts. I think most of the pro-gaming organizations have put themselves in a situation where, by not talking to the people who ultimately support these organizations, they aren't trusted. By keeping the community and those around it in the dark they've left themselves wide open to speculation and criticism.

That's one of the things I personally want to change about pro-gaming. I think many companies may learn that by taking a hit or two, they can do themselves a favor. Improve on things they've done poorly in the past, listen to the community that they are supposedly servicing, etc.

So it's pretty much a double edged sword. They don't want to open up communication to the community, so in turn, the community opens fire on them. We live on the internet, if organizations don't want to fill in the blanks for us then the internet (community) will do it. Which ultimately ends up hurting them even more.

On your show you've said, "For too long, esports has been out of the hands of the community." Could you elaborate on that?

There are 10 major tournaments this year, tons of online competitions, coverage sites are broadcasting games almost on a nightly basis. This is the era of esports that I grew up in. During this time, the community was THE most important aspect of the quickly growing industry of pro-gaming.

During this time there were a lot of people who spend their own time, energy, and resources on making pro-gaming shine in a glorious light, while at the same time trying to figure out an acceptable means to make money off it. This continued to flourish and expand through 2004. I believe it was 2005 when things began to change. More money was being dumped into pro-gaming, but it wasn't necessarily going to the right places.

Additionally, it was around this time that the community began to almost be the closest enemy to pro-gaming. Take for instance the CPL World Tour. While some will view that as the most worthless year in esports ever, many didn't see that Angel was simply trying to put his product in front of many more eyeballs. He was trying to grow esports for the better.

Organizations have almost been scared of the entities that they are trying to service. Would you want to disclose everything to a community that you KNOW is going to rip you apart? Esports was taken out of the hands of the community, as a result of the community, however, it's within our power to take it back, but it's not going to happen by being a bunch of negative Nancy's.

I guess I equate it to. "Wow I really like this store. I'm going to walk in and take a giant shit right on their floor!"

That's what a majority of the community is doing these days.

So why do you think the community is so venomous towards these organisations, what has gotten their ire up?

I will defend the community here and say that we've not been treated the way we should have been treated.

The community pretty much built the pro-gaming audience from the ground up. Sure it took some great organizations who had the drive, motivation, and desire to provide us tournaments to build the community around, but as more organizations came in and as problems began to surface, the community quickly changed gears.

Here's a good example...

How many organizations have tainted themselves by having a team not get paid? Or some other money-like problem? A shitload. This has obviously had a negative impact on the community, however, has anyone from the community ever taken the time to actually understand HOW or WHY this could happen? Probably not, because quite frankly it's easier to just say, "Assholes don't pay".

This is where organizations and the community are to blame. Organizations choose not to publicly talk about things like "teams not getting paid" and the community doesn't know any better than to publicly speculate about those things.

I really don't know where this hatred, misunderstanding, and flat out disrespect has come from and I'm not saying it effects every community, but it certainly exists in every community. There are more bad apples than good right now.

When a salary goes missing often times it has to do with sponsors either being late or just not delivering, is it possible that teams just simply do not want to bite the hand that feeds them? Don't we need the sponsors more than they need us?

Yes we do. You're absolutely right. WE NEED THE SPONSORS. Which is why it is so important that the community reflects a positive aspect of esports instead of a negative one. Do you think Pizza Hut is going to be eager to sponsor an event when they go to a team website and see some member who posted that "he was going to rape your mom with an AWP and by the way your last tournament sucked so bad I've had better LAN's in my basement." People make comments and say things with no regard and probably don't realize that they are just slowly hacking away at the activity that they supposedly love so much.

It's not a game people.

At the same time, why would a sponsor come in if there was no community. From that perspective it's not so much the sponsor that needs us, but perhaps it's the tournament who is getting the sponsor, or the team who's trying to find a sponsor, that needs the community to step up and be a positive aspect of our activity... instead of dead 4chan weight.

So in many respects, we need each other, but it's a two way street. Do you think that tournaments like to throw big events for their community when all they get is hate and disrespect in return? No... and eventually that could bite esports in the ass.

Is it possible that organisations stopped exploring alternate revenue streams once the initial source of money, sponsors, was tapped? Now everyone has taken to running the sponsor support method into the ground without ever having developed anything tangible to make money from, thus putting teams in this precarious position?

Yes it's part of the problem. What do we have of value to sell? Well for one thing, our gamers. Gamers are starting to figure out how to sort of market themselves. There is definitely worth in that. A good example is skateboarding. They started where we started, but ultimately, they make a lot of revenue from selling skateboard stuff: boards, trucks, wheels, videos, etc. Now do we have this same thing to offer? Yes and No. Not every gamer can have a mouse or a keyboard that is their own, and I'm not even sure there is a market for that.

Has every single revenue solution been explored? No way. In fact, I think we've been stuck in the same cycle for 5 years now and it's going to take some "OUT OF THE BOX" thinking for that to change. Additionally, we need more lifestyle sponsors. We know that Intel, NVIDIA, etc are always going to be there, but it won't be until Pepsi, Ford, etc hop on that we'll actually see some of these financial issues resolved.

Aren't there barriers stopping esports from becoming as accessible as skateboarding though? When you watch Tony Hawk on a half pipe, you're able to understand that instantly, he's on wheels and he's going really fast and you know that you couldn't do that just from looking. Doesn't the fact that esports is played on a virtual battlefield with 3d representations of players make it fundamentally unsuitable for mass market?

I don't believe that bullshit. People relate to playing games more than they can relate to Tony Hawk on a half-pipe... end of story. While it may not have been 100% accessible in the past, look at what consoles have done to the gaming market in terms of firing up the competitive spirit.

We might be in a "re-learning" phase, and I do believe that PC gamers can relate to the PC side of pro-gaming much more than the console folk can. Sorry to say this guys, I look at MLG in the US, which is almost exclusively console, and they are doing fantastic. They aren't having these problems that people claim are effecting pro-gaming's ability to "BREAKOUT" to the masses. Additionally, and this is something I'm so damn adamant about. WHERE IS THE EDUCATION? Players wanna make money? Why don't you figure out how to make some training or educational videos and offer them up to people who want to learn how to play the game.

We as a community (or even as businesses) have done pretty much JACK SHIT to educate people outside of our industry on just what exactly is going on. Why can't I watch a video on how to understand StarCraft? Why can't I see videos on learning the basics of Quake, or Counter-Strike? What if those resources were available? Suddenly you're openly accepting new people to a fairly closed community. Want a free business idea from djWHEAT? There you go... that's a completely untouched market right now.

I think if we provided the education (be it from players, tournaments, teams, etc) that it would not only expose pro-gaming more, but would give people the proper resources to understand it. Onne thing is for sure though, people understand Player 1 vs. Player 2, they just might not understand the macro of it, and that's not that difficult for people to learn.

So, Can esports ever infiltrate mainstream society in Europe or America to the point where televised events do as well as they do in South Korea? If so, what has to happen to facilitate it?

Yes, it can, but how? That's a bit more difficult. Let's talk South Korea for a second. What's their game? Starcraft is their game. Somehow, this game has been able to captivate not only a thrilling line-up of professional players, but also the culture and the audience. Starcraft was the stepping stone for Korea that eventually opened up almost every option for pro-gaming. In fact, only in Korea could you watch a Diablo 2 Hardcore 1v1, where two players ran through a dungeon to try to collect the most loot and whoever did was the winner. Why was that on TV? Cause of Starcraft... So it's my feeling that both Europe and North America need to find their "Starcraft".

I think Europe is further along than North America, and I don't live in Europe so I can't speak on the cultural aspect of gaming, but in the United States I think the key is "Fighting Games", but only second to "console gaming". I know that might be a big blow to PC pro-gaming to hear that... but as I mentioned, I think the US needs to find a relation to a game and build from there.

Dead or Alive was by far the most successful game on CGS. Why? Cause for some reason, no matter who you put it in front of, they seemed to really enjoy it. So I think the future for North America is fighting games.

If you can get one particular form of gaming accepted, it's only a matter of time before you begin adding to it.

The second half of eSKlusive with djWHEAT, focusing on his thoughts surrounding the Championship Gaming Series, will be posted tomorrow. Don't forget to check out Live on Three tomorrow at 7pm EST (1am CET) at djWHEAT.tv.