The Millenium website released an interview with Hylis during the Paris Games Week. Unfortunately this interview is in French while it has really good contents. So we decided to translate it and share it, as he talks about Maniaplanet new features that will soon be able for all the users. We did not write and translate the interview exactly the same way Hylis would have wrote it, so we apologise for that. We just wrote the real important parts the most neutral way we could.

Can you talk about the evolution of ShootMania and eSport?
Evolution is the key word of ShootMania at that moment.This is a baby that learn how to walk. But it is already a ESWC game, it will come to Las Vegas at IPL. So, it really evolves fast, so fast that I try to break a little bit. We want to improve the game, the game menu, matchmaking features, tournaments features, official tournaments, official teams.
We work on that to grow the eSport bigger and bigger. It reminds me when I was asking advises to the Millenium captain, what was a good idea, what wasn't. We are thinking about that every day, by being here and take notes, so as to evolve faster.

What's your feeling about the evolution of ShootMania? Is it for you a success, are you optimistic?
Today, we are communicating in France, we had a lot of players. And we can see that people stay a long time in the game. And it is a good news because the game is still in beta, and some things can be a problem for casual or new players. For example the game menu is not that clear, we have no matchmaking system, but people still stay. But we have working on that, on the beta 2. And I am very happy of the beginning of this one, the basic foundations are here and stable and i am proud and confident about them. We have good foundation to build big things. But if the game would have to be released tomorrow, I would not be happy, because the list of things I want to do is very long. But I am happy with the shape the game have, the basis and the players that are playing in it.

There are new Features that soon will come. Team creations for example?
For us, eSport is for everybody. Everyone can spectate a good game or participate to a tournament. And it is with that way of thinking that we will build all our new features. Casual players will be able to play the ingame ladder, people will be able to launch a cup as soon as they are enough in a server. People will admin tournaments ingame with a team ranking.
There will be points, we will know that Millenium team is ranked 4 for example, that it is a french team, and when they will play against opponents, we will know that this is a match between the world 4, and the English first teams. French fans will know that and will say " M has to win!". We try to make the eSport looks like real sport. We work on that since 3 months, and we are really happy that Shootmania can go ahead like he does.

Can you detail us the team and cup making feature?
About teams, there will be what we call the "club link", it permits people to say "I belong to that club". For example, about Millenium : it will refer to all the website information, all the M information, and the M identity. This identity is really important because it is your belonging. For us, it is really important. We will have the sponsors information, the streamers, the rankings, the TV's, the news, the calendar, the results. Well, it will help the club to live. And these features can be brought to external content. ESL will be able to bring ingame their competitions, same for ESWC, O'gaming, Millenium.
You will be able to create your own cup with your rules, your schedule and your settings. Then players go ingame, click on the cup and they can play. All will be reported and used, like the results. What is important is the registering restrictions, you will make a cup for only France or only Paris, only top players or only casual, so as everybody could find a reason to participate. It is easier to create and administrate high level tournaments than casual tournaments. To help and change that, we need open source tools that users can easily handle.

And about cashprizes, will it be possible to make ingame tournaments with real cash?
We will try to make the planets really interesting to buy space in game, advertisements. But with this system, that will not be the cashprize which will be the more interesting, but the things around. Players, casters, tournament organisers, and sponsors... We try to build a great balance between all the eSports element, from the most experienced ones to the most casual. In the eSport ecosystem, there are more than 20 professions. And when we take all of them and try to make the great eSport equation, we find something.
We try to make an eSport fed by all the things we see, we learn with SC2, CS:GO. 3v3 comes from CS, 1v3 comes from the fact that we want the action to be clear, Shootmania comes from Quake.

Can you talk about Map editor evolution?
Blocks imports came few months ago, we gave it to users. It opens infinite possibilities, but it shall not be chaos. So we created it through titles. So people will be able to choose if they want to be surprised or not, by downloading these titles. Surprising users is really important for us, without Chaos, like competition too! This is the same.