Looking ahead at what's next for esports

[Music] welcome everybody to the the eSports panel I'm looking ahead what's next for eSports and I'm Peter we've got a pretty sort of like big panel today not just sort of like the number of people but also sort of like the the caliber of the companies that they represent and sort of like what they have already have like achieved in eSports so I provide a short introduction in a minute but some this panel is really about like looking ahead what is next for eSports and I mean we're only in January so I think what we'll probably do first is ask to

pen a little bit about what have been the most significant developments last year and then so if like ask them on their views of what do they think the rest of 2019 and Beyond will bring for eSports and and especially what that will mean for game developers more generally so I think this is a very good opportunity to to get some insights from people who have met different roles and different perspectives in East Britain that that can be very very valuable and it's a panel I will probably get some views or some discussions but most of all it's an opportunity for you guys to to ask questions I six people here very very knowledgeable in eSports and use that opportunity to to ask them whatever you'd like to ask him if it's about eSports I would say and so on the panel today I let me start and provided a little bit of an instruction but first

of all and I start with Nikita and and the reason why I should start with Nikita is if you are representing a company that's made a game that's not just doing terribly well but also manages to get you a used cardboard cow in the room yes it does I mean that's when you have a ride for new stuff like into eSports Oh Nikita he's we've gained insights the company behind console boom who've been doing very very well in the mobile space and and you probably have seen Nikita at previous pocket Kinect so we went to his earlier talk then we have Malta Malta part from bit crafts I who are pretty big in eSports but it's a company that maybe not everyone knows because their investors and sort of like very very sort of like

skilled investors I would say in the eSports base with various different fingers in lots of eSport PI's and before that north of us with MTG and the company that owns amongst others ESL and Dreamhack so a very sort of like well-established background in the esports face and then david johnson i'm who's started sort of like in the stone Age's which in game years is about 30 years ago we things like Nintendo's and 8-bit computers and we moved on from Nintendo to a company called affinity which has been pretty active in organizing tournaments but as in every sort of like fast-moving business between the time I asked someone to join the panel and they actually show up they all of a sudden work for a different company in this case at eSports and David will tell you a bit more about that in a few minutes I am then next

person I'd like to introduce is Sergio burgers he is with LVP which I guess might be a company that not everyone here knows LPP is Spanish for like the legal videogame professionals or professional video game eSports players he's co-founder of that company and they minutes to sort of like get acquired by media Pro which is a very large Spanish media conglomerate who are very good at sports rights management and so their that taken their view on eSports is also coming from that angle and I think that can provide some very good insights from the sports rights management point of view and then some Sandara you probably know him as a founder and and so five previous attendee of poker players and other claims conferences or p2 games he's known for with Asia if I pronounced that

correctly and one of the portfolio companies or eSports arms is peppered op GG online free to enter not free to play cash tournament organizer or platform and then we have James Dean from ESL and well if you don't know ESL and you're here to ask about eSports not entirely sure whether this is the correct venue I mean that's the company that sort of quick eSports on the map and I don't think it needs sort of much more introduction so what I would like to do is ask each of their were asked a number of the panelists for like what did they consider to be sort of one of the main sort of like determining events in in eSports in 2018 and after that I think it's it's time to sort of like get the crystal ball out and and look what's

ahead for the rest of the year so a multi if you want to sort of like start off if if you would have to describe what for you was so like the main thing in eSport in 2018 what would that be Hey hey everyone thanks for having me great being on the panel with you guys I think the I mean there's eSports is so much happening yeah it's almost like in a generation in other sports so it's always hard to pick kind of this single one most important thing what meets what struck me the most is really that 18 was kind of the pivotal year where eSports got pushed into a mainstream and I kind of had this little test if I would have run kind of any high street almost globally and talked to a mom like an ordinary man on the street and say hey what do you think eSports is one and a half years ago she would have looked at me very strangely it's like okay I don't know what he's talking about if I did

this in you know MIT of 2018 almost any month he's like oh this is one night and my entire home is is solely poisoned by the same and and so that is a big big big massive change to me and almost within numbers I think you know it was more like a hundred million kind of new players joined eSports at least on that type of game which I think much pushed it to an entire new level sorry okay I mean it's rain that internet cow a little bit passionately Tirpitz oh yeah Nikita vomited and I what do you think other than these kind of things what was fuse of like the key thing for us as some developer of course so the most important thing was that from our point of view last year Mondial eSports

become a part of this mainstream and this place these ports are so fun we could see that these ports not be so [Music] accessible game so super easy to play [Music] games that don't require any you know special equipment any expensive stuff just you know just mobile play so the next step is probably says go or something else but I mean everybody will

start plating about that's the last year I would say and maybe for research and I from your perspective like which is probably also a little bit more from like the tournament a media angle what what was for you sort of like the key thing that you saw in the market in 2018 I think a couple of things has been like the pouring of a lot of money into the ecosystem mostly because of the development of the franchise or sell the franchise leaks and that's been like all around all the time but there's I would say with Nikita I think that the the biggest trend that has gone a bit like you know like ignored it's like the real beginning of mobile it sports at least from our point of view as LTP it

definitely works I mean it's the first time that we've had games with numbers that would directly compete that are comparable with the big jacquard now it's like League of Legends I mentioned mostly clash Royale but also other games like for Firefox something when you talk about mobile is you say so if you see sort of like games competing with League of Legends and when you think League of Legends you think okay that can fill stadia with people and it's got millions of viewers online me we're sort of like in the mobile space do you sort of like I mean mobile if use of like painter spectrum you'll see sort of like competitive gameplay on mobile and it starts to transition a little bit north of like a sporty but where for a company like media pro LVP becomes mobile so black eSports for us it's a

matter of audience and in the most important thing for a Content company is how many people will be watching this kinda related after how many people is playing I don't know not completely or necessarily the same people playing are the same people watching but for us in order to like to invest in a new in a new game or in a new competition it has to be the potential to gather a massive audience and in this case with trash for you we were very early adopters very early like organizing a regular league one year before supercell actually started so but we were very bullish about the game and it delivered so because we knew that we that there was a huge potential audience that were eager for more casual more accessible competitive experience

okay so for the the more casual experience I mean maybe some how do you see that sort of luck filtered through to so like where it becomes sort of like accessible for mobile game developers this some of these games are really really huge there'll be smaller games that will be competitive have eSports elements but do you see what do you see happening there I think so if you think about if you think about the traditional PC eSports came they are not simple games they're fairly complicated and complex games but obviously over time people bought into it people adapted them you know they just grew on them to the extent that a lot of bugs in the old eSports games were considered features and you know they were now export strategies I think with mobile obviously you're appealing to a fairly different audience that you're appealing to an audience that is used to a more simpler experience and you're talking about

vainglory which was a complex mobile game that came out a few years ago tried a lot to get a competitive scene going i had a moderate level of success but never really the same there was also the classroom for example and and it boil down to you know clashes just ease of access and accessibility and I I don't think it's an eSports question but more of a game design and a game game development direction on how said well how come together you want to make it I think the more important aspect especially in mobile for play is how do you make it even for everybody mobile figure play you know everything you can pay real money and get an advantage and that can completely spoil eSports from the experience because if it's not fair then people won't consider it as traditional sports so I think more and more we might see special game modes in in mobile game experiences where no matter what your individual level is you know in in the main progression you're probably going to have like a fixed /

finite level in which you're competing with everybody else either scaled up or scaled down to a certain level fair yeah okay and so I think a few things that are sort of like pretty pretty clear and most of you have sawfly picked up on that I mean yes mainstream I mean certainly like PC desktop eSport was pretty pretty sort of like getting mainstream already it's even more soda case and mobile definitely becoming a much more supply key important part of it and so if we sort like start to look ahead and that's what this panel is about and then maybe it James if you could sort like give some insights on this where do you sort of like see these developments sort of like going what direction do you think we're heading and and and how does that affect what you guys are doing at ESL I think if I was to pick one and

certainly if we lead off from what's happened last year as we all know eSports is an extremely disruptive industry problem or the most disruptive industries in the world right now and we're changing a lot of models in the same way and I think what's well we're certainly observing is that the intellectual property that's behind the whole of eSports as an industry is really finding its place we're talking about the game developers was talking about the tournament operators and we're talking about the brands behind that and of course we're talking about the sports ip's who also looking at this space so we've seen EPL and reona would premier league and fifa olympic games starting to look at the space and and many motor sports etc so I think for me it's how the commercial model starts amateur and we're seeing some very interesting aspects if we look at a game it will buy in day one in theory right Nikki you're

making money but ultimately eSports is going to be an incremental revenue for any potential IP and that is what really is working itself out so once that audience and that engaged player base is starting to hit a tipping point I think the most notable thing is we're seeing very large non-endemic rounds come into the space and really uplift that in many many respects and it's not just about the money obviously the money is nice woman is helping support the entire ecosystem but ultimately what it's doing is driving the entire industry forward because it allows us to tell more stories create more content get more mainstream media it and in fact it's like a you know it's a viral aspect of the industry and that way and if we look in recent times it really is the non-endemic brands that are driving forward those big changes and that we're means we can

take things to the next level so it won't be long I'm sure that guns of Boone will be attracting some big brands to get behind the game and the audience that they're delivering for example we're certainly seeing it in the PC titles but I'm sure it'll come more so with with the mobile titles and in fact just last weekend we were at BT sport studios running the mobile mass there's our series with clash Royale so seeing that effect you've got a massive telco in the UK a huge professional TV broadcasting studios with a nice ball game inside it and running a tournament and I think that's really exciting so you'll see a lot more of that this year okay and talking about tournaments and and and sort of like the league and ownership and sort of business models maybe David and Sarah can elaborate a little bit on that like are there sort of things that have proven definitely

not to work and examples of all things where it didn't go that well and probably will be done differently or tried differently and be curious about that but either one of you because I was actually keeping the track of the future as such and to some extent you start looking back at what hasn't worked it's all part of a learning process and I thought some really good things and being parochial here in the UK was when ESL one came to the UK and Birmingham as a real big major event for that and then also we face it when you see us going major to London two of those things I mean the UK is far behind to summer so far behind he's got so much opportunity in eSports and that's why I think the future is were sort of looking at and I look at the fact was 2.6 probably by now 2.7 billion people in the world

to play games and you probably said you probably think probably most of them play on mobile I was a real negative person on mobile as far as opportunity for eSports until 12 months ago and I got introduced to guns boom and now I know huge fan so almost like I felt like I was a key to the sort of rock concert and you know but that to me opens up huge opportunities because combination is with these sports it's quite broken' email and so many females play mobile games etc that they don't consider themselves gamers so it gives us opportunity to go out there and the other one is really good this year and as a sign was mercedes-benz buying sixty seventy percent of SK gaming now that is

really quite a major I think StepStone where and endemic brand is buying into eSports not just promotion and I start questioning them when is an endemic wane sorry not into everywhere become endemic and it's starting to merge and that I think such an exciting thing is that eSports is starting to become ubiquitous walking down the street talking to parents they know about it now and this is why it's so exciting with these sports and we always talk about in these sports that and these sports you use like seven doggies just moving so quickly and it's just so many opportunity when you start talking about tournaments I mean there's so many people getting into it that's the issue though there's Sony people see the money and getting into eSports and wanting to run tournaments and they're not all successful and then sometimes leaves a bad taste in sponsors males players mouths teams mouths wants a mouth because they don't get paid and someone runs off of the money because there's people coming who don't understand the

culture don't understand the systems and the way things work and understand that this should be as a community that drives it not just money so I got off the track of beer it's a penny we'd like to get your insights and that's what happens when you know you've got a fossil on here yeah anything you'd like to add to that I'll do everything differently but talking about eSports I mean about tournaments in particular and kind of related to my eSports but I would never again like effort you know title if the publisher does not have like a very clear strategy because what the world that can happen to you is that the they

don't have a strategy and then suddenly they have one or they change from one to the other constantly and these skips I mean basically making your life miserable so title publisher has things very clear how then because from my experience and probably Nikita can correct as both but what fascinates me about that comment is the fact that games by their own right and I'm not game developer but from what I understand they very much depend on the data of the playing habits of their game so if eSports is endemically part of the game from the start because it's been designed with creating eSports content in mind and tournaments if there's a particular success or non-success around a particular way in these four

strategies being run then how do they adapt to a new strategy if it's not working or do they just have to include the tournament operator well that's a very good question I don't think that I I don't think that it's necessary that they include tournament operators although I think it would be for some of them a very good idea because what happens is that publishers are actually entered the eSports scene relatively recently I mean it's not like eSports is gone like for 20 years okay like ESL but the publishers really really entered the market like about what some of them two or three years ago Riot Games marry early not that but and most of them are playing the game by ear

so they don't really they have most of the time the same misconceptions but the current that sorry that the the general audience that the general media and this makes them like trying to copy previous success stories and sometimes they don't work for their game so I don't think that even they you know necessarily include tournament organizers but they should be very open to have discussions with different stakeholders including tournament organizers and to try to get to know the ecosystem a much better than they that they do have I answered the question [Laughter] you mentioned an ecosystem and lactose smells a little bit about that because I mean you are investing in eSports but I think well maybe not everyone here knows

that that is actually sort of like pretty wide and it's touching things that are not so like directly game or it's a black tournament related and and and how do you see that sort of like trend going and what are you doing with that with bit craft to the extent you can share sure I mean the ecosystem and you know kind of help to flourish it in a certain way and an obviously we talk about the underlying content and I think that game is obviously the key acid in in eSports but for us it's way bigger because this has a big technology opportunity around eSports everything if you think of how you build an eSports game how you run it how you distribute how you watch it how you spectate it and that kind of stuff is this big tech stick from infrastructure the deepest level up to you know kind of you know peripheral technology hardware technology even that needs to be in

place and very nicely in leiden to enable eSports seamlessly and I think the seamlessly is a big one I mean having having like thinking the consumer in mind and like I like to take a deeper look and say okay if you take a consumer what is this cycle this cycle is really you know playing watching spectating and really engaging and then you know going in cycles who are on that and making it super easy for him to do so it's almost impossible right now which i think is a big big area in esports and technology can pick time help to solve for that and there's what we look at a lot in technologies that enable that kind of stuff and and then 30 with eSports now being mainstream becoming and this is the point for me already is becoming cultural forming mainstream culture pop culture which you know all other sports we've seen growing over the last hundreds of years they

kind of defined that little set of cultural products around tribal friends in sports so many points outside of the actual game and also of the technology which is a direct direct to consumer opportunity made the fashion made the nutrition made the treble maybe Hospitality maybe insurance and there's a whole lot of things which really has been tailored to eSports fans and eSports players and we have a very wide peripheral view on that because that raises for tights on many level and enables a great new a great new propositions to come into the and so of kind of the next generation consumers in a very different way with essentially traditional needs in a certain way okay so so that's also so if I can take some time to get questions from the room because the guys are here this is your

chance to ask questions but what I'm hearing is yes there's going to be more growth it's going to grow wider beyond just purely game and watching playing its culture defining if I get reflected term correctly for multi and I think the way we call it is call it the inclusion of non-gamers into the world of eSports and I think that's what we're seeing now as opposed to you know when he is decided organising tournaments when it was just you know hardcore gamers getting entitlements so that's I think safe to say something that's sort of like looking ahead for eSports that's definitely sound like that's what's next and the questions about what is next what does it mean for you as a same developed a source publishers who relates it's like in the game space and raise your hands we'll get you a mic and hopefully get you a sense of an answer

thank you hi my name is Hany and i used to work at super evil so built vainglory esports oh thanks for the call-out actually my question is I think a big learning for us building a mobile eSport was the format of it the eight-hour live broadcast on Twitch it's very not viewer friendly so so the future of the format where do you think it's going well we have a Netflix of eSports or I don't know YouTube eSports specifically like where is that all going because because personally I don't think the 12 hour broadcast make a lot of sense it's really nice actually the eSports is that eSports as well as any sport traditional sport is a show at the first place of any platform of any participant of the ecosystem is to make this show more

spectacular than it is today for example but my kids they ask me consistently like two hours eSports what makes it special for now at least is something completely new something much more dynamic something which is more I would say if it's the current generation better because they play these games they watch it I played it's something ok so and of course our main goal is to make it much as much I mean it's watchable as

possible and in the right direction and of course with all these you know shortened formats which become more and more popular among the youngsters of course we cannot afford to make these you know hours and hours of online shows nobody you know eight hours broadcasts right so that's something I think that's there's some work to be done in that space but I'm sure people are working on that as we speak I was going to use a cricket analogy which might work in this country for a change because you know we start with test formats you know in the five days Long's right and five days people used to sit and watch and then that's not going out of fashion we moved to the one day format eight hours and that's going out of fashion and now we have the t20 which is a three hour format and so

I think the same is applying just I suppose is nothing but traditional sports in a new time and I think totally fair you know shorter and shorter I'm gonna predict fifteen minutes is you know an average sweet spot for a match where you can get and get the action that's why for example in sports here again is better position than any other eSports because for example in Gansu boom we have fixed five-minute sessions it doesn't take much time to plate you know you don't have to invest time you don't have money you don't have to invest you know it doesn't cost you are gonna be the mother one observation one perspective I'd like to like to offer when I look at what's happening right now with all the content being produced and there's a lot of money going into content I guess the overall ecosystem has a little bit of a challenge right now because it's not a lot of money flowing

against that this is a big big problem for the industry because we kind of set out in this free to use content is for free internet world where everything is consumed and this is all great and the model is really you know I'll show you the stuff on my platform and I take your data and that's kind of that's kind of a deal that doesn't work I think for us as an industry we gotta really get our heads together and finding some sort of a premium model around it I mean I don't you know things like tables and excluding people but giving them some more value in in the broadcast to actually pay for to make this available model again we've been thinking of thinking of music back in the days when it was dying and it's really bad you see creators not being paid they can make a living it's so important or a cultural thing that was actually dying and then epitope mean taking a step to making a premium again and giving it back to live I think this is this is kind of I'm not

spending the same picture for eSports here but as a tendency I'd like to like to like to make that point we need to find some sort of an airline interest in the interest of being able to produce more content and great storyline that's the other thing is like I think it's all tribal and storyline the storyline kind of defines this empty what to broadcast about because I start I mean there may be a wired in our brain as we write by stories and maybe not yi8 our broadcast that's not how we work and this is not how consumers walk they walk around storylines and like thinking storylines first and you see that small data memes like they make it to the millions and millions of views and the eight hour of broadcast nobody if I can watch this and even like how can it be that this this to second thing makes it to millions whereas you know this great a tall production nobody's actually watching it's it's cancer

but I'm saying this is really because we and then that's a connection between kind of the viewer and his personality in its tribal type of nature to the story and that's kind of hardwired in our brain you know much much more thinking storyline I think this we as an industry you more like you know games people you know that's not necessarily storyline people and I think adding a little bit more storyline and cabinet coming up a lot can I just say mostly plug that well the government has given us four million to do I think for the UK major coop so get that recognition of super bureaucrats parting with hard cash to select support eSports it's hi my name is Jason so I've been in I was started eSports as a player in 2005 so I've seen a lot of the booms and busts

that you guys have talked about question for you guys from the eSports players side that I noticed when I played so it used to be taught 54 like wow and called duty and stuff and got into dota 2 and digital gambling side what I noticed was is it's very much kind of flavor of the week a lot of the times port developers actually push a lot of money into eSports and actually developing news communities and reaching out to you like franchises like cloud 9 and echo fox and a lot of others my question is for you guys because the cost of game engines is coming down more developers are thinking about this multi-platform strategy now which they've never had the ability or access to so you don't have these siloed ecosystems of mobile PC or console anymore what does that mean for you guys essentially on the eSports side because games can be pushed out much more quickly you can have the multi platform and it's really more kind of like what you guys talked about the social it's the story side that's why you have games like fortnight and rocket League they're huge because it's not about the game

anymore it's about the accessibility the on-demand access to the Jen's ears and Millennials and to be able to have that experience with people I think from a tournament side of things the operator side would be really nice because there's countless times we've had to actually run three versions of the same tournament pictures of the each platform but of course I suppose really and the key to kebab Leonce it's a lot better in terms of the gameplay but obviously there's challenges to make sure that it's fair across all the platforms and you don't have a unfair advantage with that human-computer interaction where touchscreen versus a keyboard and mouse I mean I remember a friend of mine had one of those little dangles that allowed you to play on console with a keyboard and mouse and funnily enough he was always so touchy Mobile is extremely popular in India where a lot of my

friends play it back home and so I found out they were competing in tournaments for pub G mobile playing the game on an Android emulator on PC using a keyboard and mouse and that's a little of of passion and intensity I get that people are going to go to me did you just win right yeah so I can say that it's completely impossible to let people play the same game from different devices different kind of platforms because it of course provides some of them with advantages to play the game as a user as a gamer disappointment of the last year for example for me was one of the PlayStation titles a shooter which I thought and try to play and got killed

immediately I got into battle because the guys the same servers please so I think one thing we we noticed they was with Rainbow six specifically and we launched the UK National League Rainbow six on Xbox on the console and by the end of the tournament 80 percent of the players asked if we could then transition to PC so in effect they identified the PC as the as the master master race of that particular game so I think that the device will prevail according to what game it is in my opinion okay well I think we are running out of time I'd like to thank all the panelists for their views and sharing that particularly like to thank game

insightful a wonderful cardboard thing that provides the Internet's I've written very curious what it will bring next year thanks guys before you guys go don't move before you guys go first I think again think for thinking gaming site we called the cow Jarrett rude that's our net new best friend if the name her name is Jack George yeah we would like to show a video before we can start with the influencers track with my colleague Danielle presenting so [Music] [Music] [Music]

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