"Destiny I"

Hi. My name is Steven Bonnell II, more well known in the Starcraft community as "Destiny". For the first time in my life I've decided that I want to host a tournament, combining the best people I can invite from America, Europe and Korea with the top 8 warriors from the North American ladder.

The first (and hopefully not the last...) tournament I host will be known as "Destiny I".

Funding goals/distribution

My budget for this tournament is $5,000.

• $200 will go towards the Korean/English bilingual admin I have chosen. He'll be responsible for doing vetos/setting up games and doing post game/post group interviews, if we decide to do them.
• $200 will go towards art work from the artist. This includes branding/logo, slides between games, and overlays for in game.
• $600 will go towards casters. I will be paying each invited caster $100 for casting 1 day, meaning I will need 6 different casters for the tournament. If I'm not able to find 6, I'll repeat some casters. So far I've confirmed Incontrol, ToD, Nathanias and Minigun as casters.
• $500 goes towards Indiegogo fees for fundraising.
• $4000 will go towards the prize pool. The distribution will be as follows: 1st place $1,600, 2nd place $800, 3rd-4th place $400, 5th-8th place $200.
• Extra money raised from the Indiegogo will be put towards future tournaments (Destiny II).

Tournament Format

• You must be playing on an account who's name reflects the person playing it (no barcodes!)
• You must be the only person laddering on the account.
• You can't hack, cheat, boost, trade wins or commit any other obviously silly shenanigans.
• The qualification period for the ladder will end on Sunday, August 3rd, 23:59 EST. At that point I will take the top 8, non-barcoded accounts and invite them to the tournament.

The other 8 players will be invited in. I'll announce the invites as I confirm them.

The tournament will function as follows: the 8 people drafted from the ladder and the 8 invitees will be shuffled into 4 groups of 4 with 2 people from each category being in each group. Each of the groups will play 6 matches (plus a possible sudden death match, if needed) to determine who moves on. Once the 8 group stage survivors have been determined, they will feed into an 8 player bracket where bo5's will be played for quarter finals, then bo7's for semi-finals and a bo9 for the grind final to determine the winner. There will be no 3rd-4th place match.

The group matches will take place one group per day, starting on August 5th and ending on August 8th. The quarter final bracket will start on August 9th, with the semi-finals and grand finals being played on Sunday, August 10th.

All games will start at 10 AM EST (okay time for Americans, perfect time for Europeans, okay time for Koreans) and will probably carry on until about 2-3PM EST, though we'll try to move as briskly as possible.

Future goals

If this tournament is successful, I'd like to take what I learn from this and carry it forward into another tournament. Future tournaments may have more interesting or fun themes, but for now I'd like to keep things basic and just display amazing games with great casters and top-tier players.

Following this tournament I'll provide a detailed write-up of viewership stats and how much money I was able to generate via sponsorships/ad revenue/etc...in a similar fashion to Totalbiscuit's Shoutcraft "post-mortem" reports to give people a better idea about how the procurement and expenditure of said funding works in tournaments like these.

Can't donate?

If you're not able to contribute financially, there are still ways you can help! There are plenty of great resources available in both your school and online that will assist you in searching for a place of employment so you can collect and subsequently donate your first paycheck to me.

In lieu of that, you can follow me on twitter for updates @steven_bonnell. I'll have updates posted on my website in the coming few days as well.