Critical Force & Mobile Esports: Now & Next PG Connects Digital #2

so we're going to invite at this point a belly packer up to the stage who's gonna be talking about critical force and mobile eSports now our next so I think we've got coming in now hi how are you I'm fine thanks I don't have any background I'm silly so it didn't work [Laughter]

since we're already two minutes past when the torment start I think I'll leave you two as always I say to everyone throw your in-ear questions into the Q&A we'll be back at the end to do a little bit of question and answer if we've got time yeah yeah so my topic is crystal force and mobile eSports now next so first some some some background about me so I'm Billy but appear I mean I'm from Finland I have a zero entrepreneur since 1994 I have been co-founding six different companies so far I have been also working at the local university in Kyani and I actually found it came development curriculum here 2005 then I

also joined supercell 2011 I looked at one year and then I started 2012 critical force and I'm acting CEO at the moment so eight years making great more power so the games about to become funny so we know about 50 people and most of our our developers are hardcore PC gamers even we are making mobile games but we are making hard called shooter games and especially first-person shooter games and we are I also put some effort in mobile eSports lately we have two offices main office Callen Finland and we have also office in Helsinki with 12 people at the moment yeah so when we started we got pretty so

this startup competition award 2015 actually and and and in 2016 we were chosen as a Finnish game developer of the year and we are a good company with Ravi and sue person who won this award early yeah so our game is critical ops so it's a competitive multiplayer first-person shooter game on mobile and it's not pay to win game so it's fair to play games so people or players cannot pay and win so they cannot buy any any strength or more power and so on so it's really aimed for competitive playing we

have gathered so far over 80 million downloads and mostly almost without any paid user acquisition and paid marketing so game has been viral and of course there has been efforts that we have good community management we happy working with influencers and and so on and of course he's boss so the game has about half a million daily active users at the moment and and around 5 million monthly active users and I'll show you a short game paid gameplay trailer hopefully you can see and hear it

yeah I have to stop selling the slide and soon be there slide first I try to impeding and but it didn't work well okay and stop sharing this screen and again sharing the presentations great

good hopefully everything was went fine so we started he spoke sports activities actually already in 2016 so nobody believed that people play competitively mobile games and and actually this siaps fighting was our very first tournament and and it was three versus three tournament and and we got about 160 teams applying in this tournament and we chose 64 teams and then we had also some others 2006 honestly in 2016 I had a presentation in Pocket Chemical X in Helsinki 2016 and there I told that our goal is to make Rick critical ops the most popular eSports FPS game on

mobile devices in the world that was a pretty emphasis and this is goal and and actually we were the second game making more bodies was very glory was the first one and and we had many many tournaments during 2017-2018 with different kind of partners different kind of prize pools and so on and we have also many organised the critical up teens there around the world mostly in Europe USA and South America Brazil especially and we also built a spectator client for PC that those who are casting so casters could stream the tournament's using PC

equipment with better graphics quality and more information about the game itself and the teams and and so on and we also had the very first critical upslide tournament in June 2018 it was arranged together Amazon as a mobile masters in Seattle and and that was a like greatest Kregel ops even so far so prize pool was 50 million 50 50 thousand you were still yes and then we realized that eSport is quite expensive we have spent quite a lot of money so far and we really didn't realize that you see

dreaming return of investment back so we didn't have any kind of analytics how much he spots effects in the amount of players and the downloads and so on so we scaled the big expenses down and kind of reported the whole eSports thing so we were starting to concentrate more on the grassroots level in the end of 2018 until the end of last year so we partnered with puddle fire we are commonly the tournament's they started it and those commonly tournaments were targeted to competitive critical ops players and also the amateur teams so when we started in 2018 there were 15 community tournaments last year we had already on

1,500 community tournaments and and q1 this year already almost 1/2 thousand tournaments the mostly were 18 tournaments so this year we have been strengthening grassroots even more so they have been critical of sleek revival tournaments and then critical points leak going on and we also launched comedy tournament program last month together - together with Kaiser the community government program provides a way for tournament organizers to receive benefits directly from us and from Kaiser so price pools so many price pools and also gain in game credit price pools promotions for

the tournaments and tournament organizers specific support specific disk or network of the organizers and different got the geyser perks and they are different kind of tiers so the prior to tear them open if it's the tournament organizer will get so with it verified and verified plus yes and I was so short video clip of this guy's a community tournament so stop sharing again this sharing this one

guys are in critical force have officially joined forces to bring critical ops tournaments to the Geiser platform where verified tournament organizers can officially post broadcast and promote their daily events the program is split into three tiers where organizers receive exclusive perks including staff credits event features promotion discord channel access with The Cribs Deb's and tournament prize pool so if you're a member of the critical ops community and want to either host or play with us today then don't miss out download guys are now to compete in tournaments 24/7 from visit critical ops website to learn more about how you can join the community tournament programs game on and play a part together you

okay back the slides yeah so we started this cooperation with Kaiser in March actually and this is quite a new product they have been developing it or right long quite a long time and and and we started with nine different organizers to fit addressed first products and results have been pretty good so far some small manufactured still exist it's working well so we will publicly all open this platform and and comment a tournament possibility very soon and we're also launching the second half of this year

circuit it's official critical of tournaments stem and and it's kind of minor league formats in UAE North America and South America visions and this consisting different seasons every season is four months long and every season has qualifier tournament and and one main tournament monthly so first qualifiers they will get people in the first qualifier 16 teams best teams will get into the main tournament and then eight best from the first name will get automatically the second main tournament and also another eight from the second qualifier and so on until in the fourth

month it will be final a seasonal finals and then season two and so on continuous it's like a continuous tournament program and and these teams who are competing in the main tournament gain points and for best teams with the highest score will be participating this season finals and all the main tourneys have rice balls and and this final tournament will have then much bigger priced building so it will start in the second half of this year so what next so we are constantly improving improving critical herbs as a game as a competitive game game and we also

continue strengthening grassroots level the community tournaments and crack the semi-pro level it is with minor league and probably if everything goes well we are going to lost Pro League later so time for Q and [Music] by the way did you see the video and we did fine on my end obviously sometimes it can be a bit hit and miss with the video through the zoom but that one seemed to work pretty well so at all not at all it's great to get a visual like video insight as well now while we wait for some people to post some questions we always find there it takes people to get a little bit of time to get warmed up and I wanted to ask you something which is based it's something that was

highlighted in our some of our previous talks that we've had throughout the day but I think it's interesting given that you're hosting tournaments in different regions around the world do you find that there's more of a more of an interest a more of an intake of people joining in different regions or is it evenly spread the strongest place in us so North America community is definitely the biggest one but also playerbase in Brazil is huge so it's practical I have a second biggest market and then comes Europe that's really interesting then what do you think has caused near enough all of the speakers we've had earlier today I've been highlighting how Asia is the strongest market for eSports and has always been their strongest markets what do you think you guys have done that's caused some more success in regions such as America and Latin America but by

America I mean the United States and Latin America as you mentioned Brazil yeah so of course because we are wasting company and we have Western mindsets so we are not so familiar with the Asian culture so our key market was from the beginning Western world we have had also what many plays in Southeast Asia especially but we haven't put so much effort in the Asia and one reason is that we made a publishing deal with a Korean company and they are launching critical ops in Asia and they are also then taking care of Asia ok so you are you so you're using partners to reach new regions as well that's that's really interesting in

moving forward do you think you will continue to place a lot of focus on the rest of markets or do you think after the brand grows and as you know eSports grow do you think you will spread that's more worldwide or do you think you'll try and take this area that sort of still in growth so with the critical ops we are definitely concentrating the west only and anything our partner is concentrating in Asia so and then the version they are launching there is evolution of the Asian version so there's a practically two different games yes are not compatible anymore so it's more information marketing taste so you've essentially got two different versions of the same game that tweak to attract different audiences okay well that's Els that's really fascinating and yeah if no one else has

got any questions then I suppose we'll let you get off and head to the to the discord zone yeah any in cases but yeah thank you so much for joining us thanks thanks thank you very much