Esports for Indie Developers

[Music] we've been talking a lot about esports so reading everybody was talking how how the eSports viewership is looking like but most of the game that we have heard about so far okay I thought I have this one okay all right so we've been hearing a lot about games such as overwatch and counter-strike and fortnight those triple-a titles so big games big companies but what we haven't heard about is indie games and the performance of indie games in eSports in general so this is something I wanted to talk about so indie games in eSports

right so what I wanted to talk about first is how the indie games were always leading the way of games and generous so starting from doom for example 1993 one of the first FPS games that weren't competitive then we have counter-strike in 2000 I first note actually that came from half-life that became a very sought-after competitive FPS game and finally we have an example of vainglory which is a first Klotz platform mobile type of game so why why eSports and what makes a game what makes a game in eSports so most of the games features these this very simple steps so this learning cool of other games is very simple the games are

easy to start difficult to master they have creative concepts such as hearthstone for example they are mostly attractive to watch that's why most of the eSports scene is built around twitch streamers and then they are moving towards bigger bigger stages very often those games are free to play they offer they are very often based on achievement system you don't have to spend any money you can just keep playing getting better and better and better so indie games are very often free-to-play simply because the developers don't have enough resources to create some very complicated systems so they often decides to go with a very simple concept but they - but they do tend to try to make this concept as creative as they

can so it's easier for an indie developer to create a game that is very simple to master are very simple to start and difficult to master and attract you to watch so let's move forward what I also want to talk about is what makes eSport games there are three very distinct key features of every export game half have to have the first one is competitive gameplay you cannot have eSport game without competitive gameplay or some side of some kind of competitive features the second is tournament technology if your game by itself doesn't have this kind of technology there are numerous different platforms such as skills comm that can provide indie developers with the technology so if you are an indie developer and you don't have this kind of technology you don't need to worry you don't have to spend much on it you

can simply implement it via platforms like skills or ease games which I'm going to talk about later on and the last thing is viewing and spectating technology that can be achieved in two ways so you can have it but it's on your own for example League of Legends has a very well built in spectate key technology but simply twitching sorry streaming the game on twitch is also a viewing technology and can be used to brighten the the audience of your game I want to talk about indie scene Esper because this is the main subject and one of the most notable Indies in Espoo right now is vainglory which is a closed part for closed platform MOBA game rocket League which is very curious title it's a sports game which which is vehicular I think that's the word if not correct me please the Hickel are type of

gameplay and split game I quite recent game released last year it's a simple FPS shooter but it's very fast paced so it's find its way to a competitive eSports scene what I was talking about earlier are indie games in eSports and how a indie developer can get into eSports what I also wanted to talk about is the mobile outside of this because it's a bit easier for developers to create mobile games they can use already existing gameplay mechanics or concept and try to alternate them to to fit their own sort of agenda so when it comes to mobile games what differentiates them from PC or console type of games is for example they do not

require for you to pay a lot of money for Hardware you can play on your phone secondly a vast player base of smartphone users which reaches 3.2 billion users around the world so far smartphone games contribute to 36 of the global markets in the year 2019 alone and it's on the rise and lastly mobile games and eSports are leading a gaming industry and are set to be worth over one hundred eighty nine billion dollars in by the year 2020 2022 sorry so that's that's a lot of money to to gain from it let's move forwards that's kind of got messed up I see some of the big big titles such as pop G or Call of Duty are already transitioning from PC and console games towards mobile we have applications that are based on light so

they are a lighter version of applications so it's easier easier to install don't they don't take much space so we are currently seeing that against us pop G mobile or call of duty mobile they already sort of getting into the eSports scene and with the recent rise of clash Royale as a RTS type of game in eSport as well but some actually I'm showing the fighting should be should be there on the question mark so we can imagine but there are some generous that are still untouched by any kind of developers either indie or all triple-a so twenty games for mobile have you ever seen any eSports mobile fighting game because there is none there is a full potential of creating a fighting game for eSports as an indie developer so

there are many different generous that can still be still because to be explored right previously I mentioned that if you don't have to Torrio technology sorry tournament technology or you're struggling because you're an indie developer and you don't have too much of a budget there are skilled based platforms that can help you out with creating your own games and eventually to gaining your financially dependency to focus more on creating interesting game rather than making sure that your game is performing well enough to to make you financially stable platforms such as skills calm or ease Gamescom they have their own free SDK which they will gladly share with you so you can implement your own games into the platform they will also provide you with valuable feedback considering if your

game is competitive enough what can change how the purse how do you players are viewing what's the retention so all the the important bits that you yourself might not be able to get because of your budget lastly they take care of all the legal issues but you don't have the time or money to care about because there are some things there are some legal matters that you might just not know about and this is the it's their job to know about it and let you know so you don't mess up and don't get into trouble what I also want to talk about is how a skill-based games are performing with cash neighbor tournaments so as you can see there is up to five times d30 returned they may 30 retention for cash

enable players as to compare to players who rather not spend any money at all so it's a very interesting it's a very interesting subject because if you make your game competitive and you implement your tournament system you maybe have some twitch streamers you basically make your game into an eSport and once again become an in sport it's very very often the case that people like to get good at the game and once they get good at the game they would like to make profit out of it so what they can do is they can enter the skills platform pick up your game and they can try to play in tournaments for a price pools for example and those type of players have 5 5 up to 5 times the retention of all the others so these are the ones that will

be coming back to play your game so to summarize it all it's easier than ever for an indie developer to start your journey to creating your very first own game and to going into an eSport industry considering how many devices and tools you have to start creating your games it's it's it's really sorry I kind of flopped my thought there so as I was saying thanks to the skill based platforms developers can focus more on the game themselves rather than spending the time and money thinking about the ways of becoming financially stable or independent so what you can do is you can create your own game you can implement it on those kind of platforms and you don't have to worry about anything else

except for how your game is performing and how much players are how much how much is the retention of the game I think I covered it all to be very honest and we still have some time so if you have any kind of questions I will try to answer them but I can't promise do you guys have questions yes just a second if if a game is being developed and on that slide where you had the list of you know being easy to learn hard to master oh yeah so if maybe it doesn't fulfill all that all those criteria isn't sure like if it's a game that could transition into being an eSport game yeah what kind of things can they do to like test the water before

the features listed a eSport game doesn't have to have it all but most of the games that are considered esports have those kind of things like 70% of them so they are usually easy to start with difficult to master they are usually free to play but they don't have to be so if it's like six out of tens of those points you can check on your list of your indie game are you good to go you don't have to do much and if so if you decide to go with your game to those skill bait platforms they will provide you with valuable feedback - - what can you change to make a game performing better would you look at say how it's performing on Twitch or those kind of platforms kind of first before thinking

to invest in some kind of competitive scene apps would you look at how it's performing on Twitch say you know it's being played by a lot of people then it's more likely that it could transition to an eSport usually the games that do well on Twitch are already considering sports a game doesn't have to have a lot of viewership on Twitch to be considered an eSports or to be a successful one skill based type of games mostly mobile games and as far as I know there aren't too many twitch streamers that are currently streaming on mobiles but the difference is not everybody can acquire a very expensive hardware to play your triple-a titles on pretty much everybody got smart phones or iPhones so

even though so you can play it by yourself rather than watch people play it for you so it doesn't really matter if your game is performing extremely well or extremely poorly on twitch it's it's rather about how many people are playing and how many people are enjoying it do we have any more questions good thank you very much for your attention [Applause] [Music]