Panel: Healthy Growth Tactics for Esports

so now it's that time now is that time we about to bring everybody in so this right here is the panel where we're going to be talking about healthy growth tactics for esports all right so first up the panel moderator my dude then we got the one and only brad diamond gotta spin the chain on that diamond you know what i'm saying that's how we shine out here you already know what it is minnesota rock in the building next up i hopefully i don't butcher this name but lilius or ilious package i'm gonna let him save his name i'm sorry i don't want to mess his name up so we're gonna save him for last so he can say his old name much love to you don't resolve spike glory in the building that's what

i'm talking about spike let's get it hero capital you know what i'm saying then we got ignit bravovich bravofish you gotta say it like that monaco esports in the building and did last but not least we got eggs exola so without further ado let's bring the team in one love and god bless let's get it popping ah wow listen i'm going to have to get you to do that on every meeting i have every day um so uh i get a proper introduction to my team uh right it is 5 p.m here in sunny uk on a friday and we are the last session of the day of the whole of pocket connect six now i'm not sure we can be confident that all of the audience are actually sober uh but we do know they are listening and they and we do know that they are waiting for this panel and i know that they won't despite so why are we all here great question uh

well my esteemed team today will cover this subject which is the healthy growth tactics for esports we're going to look at this from two perspectives so we're gonna look at it from the perspective of a developer and what they should be thinking about we know that that's a big chunk of the audience that are listening in today and we're also gonna do this from kind of an introspective perspective introspective perspective that was pretty good uh and in terms of how the stakeholders within esports uh can have healthy growth so i'm talking about the tournament organizers the teams the players and the media companies so first like to welcome my guests and i'm going to give them an opportunity to introduce themselves so i'm going to start off with uh my friend someone i've known for many many years uh spike from hero capital spike would you give us a little a little intro to you yup thanks for having me on your panel mark i'm spike laurie i've been in esports and games now for about 10 years um i currently am venture director at hero capital we're 100 million euros series a and b venture capital fund investing in game studios games

technology esports streaming and digital sports uh fantastic uh berkeley would you like to go next sure thanks for having me hey it's berkeley against vp of marketing over here at xola our our aim is uh to democratize access uh to commerce tools and marketing vehicles for the global video game industry um we've recently launched uh esports solution to help you know platform partners really engage scale localize and monetize their experiences uh with with game developers uh around the world so i'm excited to be here thanks berkeley uh ignac monaco gg tell us a little bit about yourself yeah thank you very much so uh i'm in esports industry for let's say i mean more than 20 years but with a big post so from 2000 to 2004 i was a professional gamer even earning some money on this uh back in the days uh from 2013 i work in profession in the industry i was working on the creation

of one of media holding including tv channel and running different tournaments and events since 2019 roughly i'm working i'm running the operations which we call under the monaco gg and we have several flagship projects so we have the passport the gg this is a gamer id project which is working close with um for now most with federations uh we also have um and we also one of the flagship projects of this let's say season was african sports series it was a continental competition covering more than 16 countries with educational and uh and say it in the competition competitive programs thank you thank you are going to illias resolve hi yes so my name is elias pashfar i'm the founder and ceo of resolve esports we're a competitive esports organization based in the uk uh we compete currently only in league of legends but we do have four teams within league of legends including a female roster and a student roster as well um we also provide community coaching

and we've done that for about five or six years uh giving free coaching and advice on things like in-game knowledge mental health and physical health nutrition that sort of stuff um having a holistic view on development and performance uh within esports uh and we've been doing that to the general public for about six years now as well and we're pushing on uh thank you last member i have today is brett from vision one uh minnesota rocker which is now course is uh part of minnesota vikings uh welcome brett thanks good to be here yeah like you said uh brett diamond ceo of version one in minnesota rocker we're a competitive esports org we have uh minnesota rocker in the call of duty league and valerant and rocket league teams under the version one brand pretty new esports org in the grand scheme of things i've been around since the summer of 2019. that is uh thank you very much and thank you for doing uh a job that i always fear but whenever running a panel trying to do anybody justice by introducing introducing them uh well or even uh

saying their name properly so um thank you myself mark reed managing director of heaven media uh heavy media has been in the sports and gaming space for 15 years now um my team of uh just under 100 now uh spread across europe north america australia new zealand and apj helps pretty much a lot uh i was gonna say most of the uh big brands in in gaming do a lot of their marketing across social influencers uh digital events uh pr and so on uh i'm gonna start us off uh with the question as promised to really help the developer developer community that are listening today uh with relation to esports so i think we know i think they know that esports is not just one thing one sport in isolation it's made up of multiple disciplines i think they know that um the list of what games make up esports has definitely evolved and is definitely evolving if i go back if i go back 10 years uh you know the the three the three

stall warts for which are still very much prevalent prevalent today you go to your counter-strike and your league of legends they're still there um but there are there's so many more the scene is has evolved substantially with overwatch with uh uh rainbow six siege valor and uh fortnite and so forth and i am sticking to those truly competitive games so the question is really how much has that changed uh and and why who would like to go first well i can start because actually it's very interesting uh to to give a bit more line and to draw the line which which is also interesting i'm not sure how it's uh from your end how do you see the esports but um with my work i work a lot with federations and uh that i'm engaged very very deeply into federations estonian and monarch federation and is estonian federation where where working with the olympic committee uh national olympic committee in terms

of them recognizing the esports and uh probably you have seen yesterday i think this was the news that ioc has launched the pilot project uh of uh bringing esports uh games to the olympics and for i think for past five years there was a lot of talks is olympics and esports what it would be and at some point of time i would see has like stated there will be no violent games and we push more uh the national sports federation to digitalize their sports so i would say that this there is a there is this line which becomes more and more uh broad and and it even splits a bit the industry i think and it goes the traditional esports like counter strike dota league of legends they're in one area then you have this uh sport simulation with um what's interesting about these types of sports is that there is a more difficult level of let's say of ip ownership because you have teams federations etc it makes it more complicated right and it completely different uh gaming experience and then probably

you know that i mean i'm sure you know that these types of games they might have much less audience but they still very much play they're not that interesting to watch but it's very interesting to play so basically this is this line which which is there and which makes it very interesting i think from yes i think i would i would split the history of esports until yesterday and what will happen next because it might really go in different directions like olympic type of esports and uh the esports type of esports or let's say traditional style of esports definitely one view now uh berkeley can i come to you uh obviously xola gets to see a lot of the those new games that are already in that production phase are already in that development phase and as such do you start seeing uh games companies talk and think about esports and truly balance competitive play versus the kind of not so balanced competitive play that we've seen from from all the other uh games that have kind of tried and always wanted to compete in esports but never made it

yeah it's an interesting conversation because we were very early in with game developers um and still everything from concept to you know betas and working with them to launch their game um the successful ones don't build a game to make it an esport some of that happens and it comes together with the competitive nature of it you're building the community you're building the audience and then there's that natural progression that kind of happens into it um you know fortnite didn't develop becoming an esport but it next thing you know we're doing the fortnite world cup in new york city and arthur ash which was an incredible experience to to be there at um and how that goes their developers are there to make games that are engaging for fun for the community when it becomes a competitive opportunity and a very collaborative environment where you can team up you can squat up and have those opportunities that's where the opportunity happens to become an esport and it will see you see the growth i

mean what's one of the big things i think the ioc situation is huge um you know the scale in globalization um and democratization of esports around the world is the big change like it's this is why you're gonna see you have people saying you know it's been a top five entertainment property in the next five years going up against the likes of you know the nba mls nfl it's because of that scale and reach that it's going to have um spike do you mind if i challenge berkeley on on that was was um was valerant made to be an esport it quickly became one it very quickly became one um i think they designed it to be an esport well they that that was a great that's a great question and a great case study because you come for you know right as it you know obviously has one of the number one number two depending on who you talk to esports on the planet um and they're like let's do it again

let's find another way how to do it again i think that's a unique situation the riots of the world have a unique opportunity to be able to do that if you are a single game publisher developer or even only have a few and you don't have the bench and the strength that riot does um it can be a little it can be a little challenging and yet valve failed with artifact um spike i think we need to dig into this some more because if you think about it the games that are esports games of today most of them were by accident right or they they weren't they they were mods and we'll come to that later but um [Music] um burke you mentioned fortnite i mean we we helped launch fortnight when it first came out it was not the fortnight we know today it was single player it was um there was no competitive element at all uh they just saw what pubg was doing press pause spent four months rejigging the game and and went that way i mean that's

that's not by design right spike so what is it when and you're looking at this now right from uh hero capital perspective is it possible is it just this kind of mystical misnomer that people can't make uh esports games unless it's by accident uh look i think that um we've all we've all caught up we've all caught ourselves up a little bit in definitions my favorite definition of esports is that it's the natural evolution of multiplayer gaming um for a development studio for them to make a game that can be an esport by the most narrow of definitions which is you know uh players in polyester jerseys in a stadium in cologne or in canavitza playing for millions of dollars of money that's possible but ultimately the developer needs to focus on a few things firstly the game needs to be fun secondly the game needs to be fair i have all the um make sure it's a balanced playing field that can allow competitive play to flourish and to

organically materialize and lastly it needs to have the tools to support that things like good matchmaking things like custom lobbies things that you would you'd be surprised that you aren't taken for granted in 2021 the numbers of competitive games that are great that launch today without things like custom lobbies or decent matchmaking or spectator tools the mind boggles why anyone would do that because all those things need to happen the game needs to be fun it needs to be fair and you'd have the right tools for it to become an esport by its very narrow dogmatic definition but unless those things are addressed by developers they will only ever make a fun competitive game and they won't transcend into the starcraft so this kind of strikes the world it is amazing how it it's it's obvious to see when you pick apart where the success has been and then what's not adopted but i'm going to bring elias and brett into this because you guys don't care right i mean the game what game succeeds

and then you're going to be looking at uh whether it's a play for your organization not get behind it can you monetize it and all those kind of things how much does the game itself the new ones that are coming along how much do you look to get on the back of it uh earlier or is that actually the secret sauce getting in there early spying those next ones so you can make sure the teams are trained behind it um which one of you guys would like to go first if i may um so i i do believe that for any sports organization it's quite important to get in there early i think if you look at the natural progression of the esports scene and esports leagues a lot of them are going into a franchise direction and i think it's very very important to get in there early and build that fan base and you know make a case for yourself to be one of the organizations to be chosen for that franchise system whether it be in call of duty or league of legends um or another game you've seen that the systems always begin with non-franchise leagues where you can promote and relegate and if you can manage as an organization to get there early and get to the top level as soon as possible then you become a prime candidate for

something like a franchising or at least getting a good deal of it because it is quite expensive um but i do want to say um on on both berkeley and spike's point i think there's a lot of merit and what berkeley was saying in a sense that it is very difficult now for a game developer to create an esport intentionally and make it come in uh just because of the sheer amount of games and the amount of esports there are out there there's a lot of variety especially the past three or four years there have been so many new esports popping up many of them not succeeding or you know getting to the level that they were expected to um prior to you know to them releasing but i think spike's point is is correct you know valerian i believe was intended to be an esport and i think what riot did was one they had the quality to create things like custom lobbies and create a good system to make sure that the game was a good quality system and you know the whole anti-cheat system as well was quite a prevalent thing that they spoke about but the other thing is with the actual style of their game you know a mix of fps and abilities i think that was a there was a gap for that in esports um a lot of people when valorem first

came out described it as a mix between cs go and overwatch and you know since i i believe it came out at the time where i believe it was project a or project x um riot built a lot of hype around it and and i think they marketed it correctly um for a lot of league of legends players who might not even be fps players but also cs go players to come over and have a look at the space and they released the product and it was good and there was certainly a gap for what riot created which is valerian um whether that can happen again i'm gonna say yes because i think you know we don't know until it happens but it's going to be extremely hard for a game developer to you know break into the market and create a tier 1 esports game intentionally um at the moment because of how saturated the market is is it is it and i want to come to bret on this but but elias are you saying that it's tough because it takes this big machine like a riot are you saying it's tough um to actually do it from i want this to be an esports because if you look like psyonix did with rocket league it's not like they

had you know a thousand developers and every tall and dollars at their disposal and yet they still made a fantastic game that fits these sports children well i think it's a bit of both i think first of all you got to make a game that's fun you got to make a game that people want to play and if it's if you create a game that's the same as other games out there yeah it's behind in the development because it's been out for a lesser or smaller period of time what incentive do people have to play it well i think the other thing is riot created a brilliant game of league of legends people wanted to see what they could do if they moved into other genres or other spaces and i think as well as that riot did really well with the marketing you know they they got people they got influences to play on twitch uh twitch has been growing immensely in the past few years they were doing the drops and you know everyone was watching the gameplay waiting and just waiting to play it um and i i think right i have the the resources to get some of the best developers to make sure that the game is gonna be good and make sure it's gonna be you know made correctly good quality and and you know release in a timely manner as well um

so i think it's it's a mix of riots resources and the fact that it's right and their reputation with league of legends but also the fact that they managed to find a niche that i i think was missing there was a gap there and they managed to fill it i think if someone else came out with a game now um which was a mixture of you know fps and abilities in a similar way that balor did it people wouldn't want to play it because valerian exists let's remind ourselves still early days um brett got to come to you um what what's what's your thoughts how much you paying attention what's coming off or you've got enough to handle with the games that are there already yeah you know i'll we think about it in different ways depending on which title it is and the circumstances right and elias made a great point that at the end of the day the first question is is it a solid core product and is it going to be a fun game to play will that generate interest in the short term in the long term in some ways it so look at the three leagues and teams that we have currently because the calculation for each of those is very different with minnesota rocker and call of duty league

that's a franchise league there's a significant franchise fee that we're paying um and so the the outlook there is very long term and it's about where will that game that game ip and the league ultimately be not just in 2020 or 2021 but in 2030 in 2040 does it will it is it a is it an ip that can stand the test of time truly when you're thinking about paying a significant franchise fee um rocket league has developed you know this very organic huge audience from esports perspective we're extremely excited to be in rocket league like the to me the the growth trajectory of that is you know that it's it's it can be incredible right it's already the viewership is already sky high and it's a very easy game to understand as people have talked about with valon right riot clearly had something specific in mind when they designed it and with us getting involved in valorant we're looking at it it's really us

having faith and riot and what they've built with league of legends and where they can take valorent long term uh now at the same time valerian were in the first year of it to the point that others made a calculation was does this does this make sense for us to jump in in year one of this new game or sort of call it your you know sort of your one depending on how you look at the past year but that was definitely something that we thought a lot about um at the same time there's not a franchise fee attached to it yet i honestly don't know where in you know where in riot's calculation that comes in but the day they come to us and say you know okay now there's a franchise involved then there's a different calculation for the next steps for us as as an esports organization so we look at it very differently depending on all those different factors as well as you know a lot of other considerations that go into it okay um thanks brett uh uh make some really good points there now i'm gonna bring us back to this i'm in the i'm in the shoes of a developer i think i've got an e-sport game um what what do i need to do to establish

myself in the the the space and the pitfalls now i really feel like spike you picked up on some of that before in terms of some of the the makeup of that game the matchmaking element uh the um your uh the the ability for strong maps uh so many different other elements um to to go into a game um what what do you think a key now of um of that a game developer should be should be thinking of um in yeah well i think we've we've all said it a lot i think it's well actually i'm going to say something different i'm going to go back to what i said about the fairness about are you building a game that is genuinely fair that both players competing against each other have an equal chance of success based on skill and there's not there's a great saying an old british saying the medium is the message and mobile games one of the reasons that

i think you know there's been some great competitive mobile games clash royale i think is one but the very way that mobile games monetize free to play mobile games monetize through typically progression and we see that with with clash royale um it unevens it unevens the scales if two players go and play counter-strike against each other nobody's all has you know plus five damage or nobody is able to acquire you know an m4 and another player stuck with the p90 right whatever it is it's like whereas in a lot of games where there's a progression mechanic designed to the game typically free-to-play games on mobile you have that there's that sort of push and pull where the game design is going one way with progression and it's it's taking you away from the fairness or the compet the pure competitiveness of the game and so i think does game developers need to be very honest with themselves and very open and say what is the design for this game how

does it work how is it fair um if they want it to be a an esport um and i think the jury's out on whether clash royale is a you know in many respects clash royale ticks the boxes and there's a fantastic game great fun but i think anyone going into that knows in order to be competitive you must spend x amount of money a month to stay competitive now is that truly competitive yes yeah and that and that's always been the the problem with game development is it's they've always wanted to look to something that you you can get that you want to uh strive for that's going to give you something in the game that's going to give you an unfair advantage and as soon as that happens that's competitive balance play out of the window right um if i come to berkeley obviously this is well and truly your wheelhouse right so you know those those elements that are going to go into a game uh there's a lot of choice there but i can't remember who said it earlier but it's amazing how many games get within

a month of launch and you know somebody's forgot about a matchmaking or a bot system to be able to because what if the servers are empty or all these different um uh systems that a lot of the kind of live ops and so forth uh uh that that are needed take care of and that uh or is or as am i looking in too retrospective and and people are better now well i mean developers are always you know you're trying to push and go as fast as you can um and you have you know 2020 changed a lot of that stuff and the the process is that everybody goes through all the way through to qa when you're getting the game out the door um and those are important things it's got to be simple it's going to be fair it's got to be um competitive in that nature and you got organizations you got big organizations one of the things i think riot's really good at is they have the game development side and they have the esports site and they work together and they work together to create an amazing experience

not everybody has that opportunity not everybody has that capital that has that reach in that game play already the ones that don't you should look you know evaluate it make sure we have a fun environment um and then partner with somebody look at people like face it look at nerd street look at 368 look at different people like that that are putting on these tournaments in maybe a smaller capacity now face eight in the crew has grown tremendously over the last two years um putting on tournaments and they're all online um from those sessions as well and it's not in arenas that's not the model it's it's online tournament game play um and you see players progress in their ranking in their um trying to move up the leaderboard and some of them do flip and go over to esports organizations and becoming into the tier one but look at it find the right partner is what we always we would recommend to be able to help you go through that game developers really good

at creating something amazing let them stay focused on that and then partner with somebody so that can help you figure out the next iteration and if you're teetering on the whole do i become an esport or not that's a great way to do it smartly and efficiently yeah of course it comes back to what we're saying earlier that that's if you uh know what good question clever questions to ask right so i'm going to stick with you for a second because there was this one thing that i i've got to make when it comes to from a developer perspective when we look at the top three games i know that we're now into a universe of five ten esports qualifying uh balance games and whatever but if we look at the top three still dota council strike league of legends none of those games forget being designed for esports they weren't even designed by the people that released them they're all mods so um is that just like some crazy phenomenon is that it was that just like this one thing that happened in like the 90s early 2000s where did that come from

uh or or is it like this forgotten cheat that actually you can create some of the best games in the world just by letting your community uh uh make the zombie mode as opposed to you wanting to have it as a dlc do you know what i mean right yeah and that's where it create i've always believed that esports is part of the the the drive to build a community around your game you have to listen to your players you have to listen to that and then the those guys evolved and all three of them evolved based on what the feedback was in the because they truly listened and it grew into something incredible um in it you know um it wasn't you know a flash and a pan experience it was it's something legit they found the insight and they listened to everybody and they built it up and is are we going to see that again we can um you know are we going to is it only just going to be the vulva model going forward i i think you can

have both okay and you're going to have some mods continuing you're going to have some folks that are going to create another another one uh just like riot did um uh uh uh earlier anything to add on uh on that one when we look at kind of where games came from from mods and whether that can happen again or those days gone well yeah if you allow me i have some couple of things to share with what i'm thinking about well first of all we need to understand that creating an esports game is not always successfully created in the game for the game publisher so uh and this is probably why the modes actually skyrocketed because no one was actually caring to make money there they just made some fun things and if you take uh if you take the games which are created lots of games are competitive games right uh and they're cash machines but they're not esports and the publishers doesn't really care if it becomes esports because they don't earn money on this and for for the cert for the most of publishers

uh the esports well it's a marketing tool and it's i'm not sure if uh publishers are really earning money a lot on esports they probably just use it as a marketing instrument and for example uh i was i was consulting one company which was creating the game they really wanted first to go to esports but at some point of time i understood okay what does it mean for you to go to esports you can do you can do community tournaments for fun purposes and for position of users sure uh but do you want to go and to compete with the cs go for the viewership well you can do but what is the reason and why you will do this because most probably you will not earn money there so this is i think this is a very big big question exactly this is a question about uh the pay to win model and uh the fully fair model right yeah and sorry before bringing again but there is a division between different types of games and you have fifa and you know that in fifa uh electronic arts is pushing you actually to have a community tournaments infusion using the full ultimate mode where

actually you need kind of to be it's more of a pay-to-win uh model where you need to know yeah they actually this is like actually their strategy so if you get a license you can like this otherwise so basically yeah for me the question is does the publisher need to go to esports and if he does what is the purpose for him and uh i really liked uh once on one one of the panels i've heard i've heard the phrase from one of the top managers of axiomatic who are the investors into lots of things including the teams in the games and the logic said like okay for us esports is a competitive gaming with the audience and you may call every type of game or even pay to win sort of well it's competitive game right you enjoy you have fun and it becomes esports when you have the audience when you have the people who are fans who have the jerseys etc and to be this level of esports you need definitely to have you you supposedly need to have the fair model

not necessarily because i gave example fifa uh but but i mean in truth the community is the one that rejects it right if it's if it's not uh balanced and and that's what kills that game right if uh if we get onto that one i'm sorry to cut across you i just want to see um brett if you've got anything to add on that yeah you know there were a few great points made so i'll share some thoughts but mark feel free to feel free to keep me on track or uh if there's something specific you want my take on but you know it it's certainly interesting and one of the points that um ignat made is like if you look at call of duty for example last year's game modern warfare incredibly commercially successful the best-selling call of duty in years there were certain features in the game that the pro that the pro player community found complaints with but that a casual player paying to buy the game probably isn't noticing and so that's the balance that every developer is obviously finding um and it's obviously different in again back to franchise leagues versus non-franchise

leagues like us as a team we pay we pay nothing to you know to riot or psionics and epic for for being in those leagues so we have no expectation that like when we call that somebody answers the phone and listens to us right like we're helping promote their game we you know we think we're adding value to the scene certainly uh but it's a very different perspective when when you're in a franchised league and you're paying a franchise fee but at the end of the day you know that's the you know that's the balance that the whole industry has to strike and ultimately as an organization you want to work with publishers that that have a track record and have a vision for how they're going to strike that balance again one of the reasons that we and other orgs are excited about valorant um given riot riot's success with league of legends okay thanks uh thanks brett no i'm going to crow um i i i'm going to try and come up with enough time for us to cover a couple of things but the one i want to just talk about is cross play so cross play is something that as a developer that is absolutely key in terms of monetizing your game as far and wide as possible

um but of course can that possibly lend itself to uh to an esports game where you've got your aim assist for controllers and you've got your latency and you've got whatever else i mean spike let me come to you first because i know that you know a bit about that is it is it a misnomer can it can it not be is that just technology evolving what's the current view on that i don't know i think the jury's out on that i think um you know top level of competition is always going to be on one one console i think in the call of duty league at one point you know they were i think it was i think was sponsored by playstation xbox can't remember but they were running on pc pc playstation controllers up on the on the thing right because we know that it's just not as competitive even with the aim assist but you know it just doesn't it just it just doesn't doesn't doesn't translate some games are going to work really well on controller like rocket league some games going to work really well on pc and keyboard some games gonna work

better on mobile um i think it's great that cross-platform exists it allows friends to play with each other across different mediums but i think we're a little way off from a truly kind of competitive and open the competition okay yeah i mean that that's they people are charged with that nobody's coming to you going i just want my game to exist on one platform right no nobody does that right so but in the whole scheme of things uh if we take away because spike's absolutely right i almost didn't think about it when i asked the question but you know in a arena environment at the top pinnacle level of a cloud nine versus fnatic then of course you're in control of that hardware but when you start getting down from everything from grassroots to even just mid-tier localized regional leagues you know nowadays those games can be played across multiple ones is it just whatever works best my mouse click is going to give you a get me a headshot before your funny little controller gets it yeah it's an interesting conversation and it's something fortnite dealt with with the world cup because you had

controller versus pc in the same lobby in the same event going in it and all the pc guys dominated um going into it even with aim assist fortnight's defense they've made a few mistakes in the competitive scene yeah it's right it's and they're learning and they're gonna they're gonna evolve on that and then but then you look at pub g pub g mobile huge in india huge in southeast asia enormous numbers truly on a on a phone and then you got pubg based on a pc and a lan in a you know squared off situation i think one of the challenges we're going to see as we go forward and we really saw you know in 2020 is it's not necessarily cross-platform but it's the technology it's you know 5g it's high-speed internet in like leveling that playing field on a global basis because it's not level it's not even latency becoming the bigger the bigger issue than it is uh anything else no i'm um i would say that can i stick with you for a second on the uh regional nuances

um we've spent so much time talking about a uh a what's a game esports game big small everything else but might depend on what continent you're on right so if we look at crossfire in china you mentioned pubg mobile in india free fire both in india and certainly in china enormous overwatch has its various different patches of success but not in others like do you see that being actually something that people should think about more in terms of where they can be successful maybe the nuances of the market that that play to uh to the strengths of the game yeah it's in it it becomes that technology and so you when you're trying to scout players you're trying to do different things in where you're going to invest like you've got teams that might be based you know headquarters in the united states but they're investing in asia to fund their team like you're going to see situations like that from a regional perspective um based on gameplay based on technology that's available resources that have there

um and you know when everything kind of closed off in this last year it made a big um kind of has versus have not situation unfortunately from a regional basis and that's something that we're all having to look at and evaluate and now that we're getting post-vaccine type situations and things opening back up schools opening back up universities having that opportunity as well it's regional is going to be something that that we're going to have to consider and evaluate okay i'm going to take that i'm going to come to brett and i'm going to i'm going to have it i'm going to leave with a very challenging one bret are you is your business a north american esports organization or a global esports uh there and what do you think about that question because it is loaded right because when you look at how the the team is financed uh as in not from your backers but in terms of sponsorship in terms of that whilst players can come from all of the world is your focus game type play and everything is it

is it north american uh is it is it truly global you you're on your private jet every week to different events when we can get back traveling and uh and doesn't matter where the game is uh strong about you you're playing it around the world is that question on april 23rd 2021 or uh ah such a great response okay no okay because you're being such a smart ass i want an answer for today and i want an answer for five years time because it's a really good response and i i you put me back on the spots come on today yeah and in five years time minnesota vikings so as as a as a new org you know we look at we want to make sure we're taking the steps today to build the foundation for success and that started for us in minnesota we're based in minnesota our first team minnesota rocker is in a regionalized franchise league the two teams that we've expanded to

since then in ballerin and rocket league under version one are we view those as national brands version one is not a minnesota-centric brand we have national aspirations and international aspirations for the version one brand uh we don't want to get ahead of our skis so if i'm answering the question for 2021 you know it's a it's it's a north american focus but starting to look ahead at what the opportunities would be to expand internationally and if we're talking a few years from now my hope is certainly that we found those right opportunities in other markets whether their extensions of the games were in now as referenced by others but you know call of duty mobile incredibly successful in international markets that's something we're thinking about how do we play in the call of duty mobile space under under the rocker brand as well as is that our gateway into other international markets and then beyond that you know the sky's the limit right like we're looking at you know any potential international market and thinking what what would make sense for us as an organization and where is there

potentially you know where where is the roi in terms of the amount of energy resources capital human capital that would take to get into a certain market um and what we could expect uh if we entered it and getting an understanding of those scenes right like we don't understand the international scene at this today as much as we need to to make those moves but getting that understanding is the first step well you heard it here five years time beijing vikings here we come um right do we have time for some questions or are we out do we overstay our welcome what did we do here that i'll be lit mark yo so first off i want to congratulate y'all on a crazy crazy panel mark you that dude i love the way you handled it son it was fire heavy media in the building love all of y'all so um here's the question that i have i got two questions and then um from there we go uh wrap it up right so the first question i have for you is this and i and i would love to get everyone's take on this so there's a game coming out it's called

the esports boxing club i'm not sure if y'all seen this yet but the game is built to be an esport it's in the actual name the title of the game now boxing is something that everybody can understand like we know what boxing is so from your expertise and your in in your position in the industry how would you take a game like that to the top because one of the things that i've never seen or i don't see is the level of the level of investment that we see in games like like you know call of duty or cs go league of legends dota and all this other stuff you don't see that when it comes to the fighting game community or something like that this game right here i think can be that game that breaks the mold so how would y'all handle that based off your respective positions in the industry right 30 seconds everybody um uh berkeley you go first come on boxing esports esports

boxing wow um i think it could be fun i i think it could be very interesting um going into it i mean you're gonna have to learn stuff from street fighter smash and all those guys from back in the day learn from the lessons what they had and then you're gonna have to get the investment to to make it to make a boom okay okay yes elias come on you're boxing yeah so um i'd see it first let's see how the scene progresses um how the competitive scene progresses um i'd want to know if it's fun i'd want to know if it's not non-repetitive because obviously a lot of games come out and they get a lot of hype and then you know they start to fall off a little bit i'd want to see big influences playing it i'd want to see as a smaller organization we'd want to see other big organizations go into it first so that we could draw off their reach as well if we end up playing against them um we want to see how how the scene progresses first and then we make a decision of that spike come on uh you're in i know you're in i'm afraid i'm uh i'm not so confident

and i'm afraid i'm not saying confidence uh i bro same reason my fifa isn't a great esport in my in my opinion um i could watch top tier professional footballers play most nights of the week real football at the very very top level while i watch two people play a simulated game of football same i can watch some of the best you know tyson fury's these incredible characters boxing in in in the staples central these incredible venues with lots of lots on the line i'm just not sure that uh simulated boxing is going to where is going to win me over there i'm afraid ignac you agree uh my opinion is a bit different because i i really believe that this segment has an opportunity to grow but it will be a segment which is already kind of saturated you have an evo uh the series of fighting games which has been recently acquired by sony right so it shows the interest then you also have we play invested 20 or something million to run the independent fighting league so i believe the fighting in itself

whatever it is it hasn't it will have it will have a market share and if you ask me what the market share probably five seven percent of the whole market share of esports might be uh booked there but it's very difficult to get there it's very difficult to make it uh successful and there are a lot of already successful projects and to me the most important the most played i i'm not professional this in this type of uh esports but you have the nfc a ufc and the ufc is popular because you have franchise it's actually real franchise with the other people so you either have this or you have some unique concepts like mortal kombat to win this competition sure oh sorry sorry sorry go ahead well my man brett's going to have to give us your opinion because he's going to set up a team on this you see well i i grew up on uh mike tyson's punch out and and maybe i might have been able to go pro in that i was pretty good so i'm gonna i'm gonna give it a shot i'm gonna give it a shot um no joking aside look i'm not familiar with the fighting game community so i don't have like like a true expert opinion but if you're

if the question part if the question is sort of how does a developer get get orgs to buy in you know if there's a vision of how you're going to reach a fan base and and elias made a great a great point about pulling in influencers but also give orgs some ability to monetize within the game or or assets that they can monetize from a sponsorship perspective and we'll get interested real quick and look at how we can build that together if we're sort of on our own to monetize it we're going to like rather or whatever the title is we'll look at more skeptical and yet plenty of sponsors in boxing plenty of sponsors like jim sharp looking at that uh that gaming crossover look i'm going to give my two pennies worth i'm really sorry number one two reasons two reasons why i need this game okay number one i was awesome on wii boxing okay with those controllers i was great number two i actually do do amateur boxing so for me to get out the sweaty gym and get in front of my pc and do it great um boxing is technique and every esport is about technique so that makes perfect sense for me i just hate the fact that they put

esport in the name i mean talk about set yourself up for failure i mean you know humble it's all about being humble with an esports community but hey who knows if if it plays well that's what the community is going to love thank you so the last question that i have and then we can wrap it up if you get a chance at everybody that's in the chat esports boxing club that's the name of the game it looks real it is coming out i think next year it's crazy did you make it uh no i didn't make it but i'm just telling you it's ever since ea sports left fight night alone there's been a void when it comes to boxing games in the industry and this is the first time we've seen something that's legit right like legit so i would just say that they're teaming yourself up to be their number one influencer yeah for sure i'm excited i'm excited for this fight i'm telling you so the last the last question and then uh then we can wrap this up and i would love to get um everybody's take on it

and then we could close the uh pocket game of conference out the last question is when it comes to uh being a part of the culture of not just esports but gaming and overall entertainment as a whole one of the things that i've always seen about esports that i felt was a problem was a lot of people and organizations forcing their players to be something that they're not to be to either bring cool factor or be media people to bring more attack traction to the brand but that's not who they are they're just good at playing the game and that's it so my question is how do y'all go about strategy wise to grow not just your brand but grow the industry as a whole even outside of gaming so that people in everyday life you'd be on good morning america and they know about minnesota raqqa that's the type of expansion that i'm talking about how would y'all approach that who's going to take this one guys

i'll i'll take first crack on it uh since i got the rocker shot out there and gary v that's my man so i had to throw you out there gary gary so you know so part of it is for so for rocker and call of duty specifically right it's a great example because the investment that any of the franchises in call of duty league have made is on the strength of call of duty as a brand far beyond esports right like where it sits in viewership from an esports perspective you know somewhere middle of the pack but in terms of the number of people that play call of duty particularly um in north america but but other other countries as well it's astronomical so so a lot of what we talk about is how do we strategically do right by the quarry sports fan we never want to do anything that's going to alienate them while also broadening and reaching as broad an audience as possible of the i don't even like to call them casual gamers or casual call of duty players because they're not these are people that are playing call of duty every night for hours but

for whatever reason haven't engaged in the esports product previously so we want to make our product accessible to them and make sure that they don't feel a barrier um that they can understand what they're what they're watching that they can understand how we're communicating and that we're not just using terminology that you know that somebody that's played the game at the competitive level understands we want somebody that's played the game at the casual level to understand what we're talking about um and ultimately you know make it a place that's welcoming for anybody to come and engage with it and you know to to expand further like i'll use a traditional sports analogy right any traditional sport whether it's american football international football whatever you've got a number of people in the stadium that are consuming it for different reasons right like at a vikings game on a sunday you've got somebody that's sitting they sit upper deck because they like to have the bird's eye view and they're keeping their own stats and that's why they're there then there's somebody that might be along for the ride because they're friends with that person or they're there with their buddies and they're they're engaging in it casually

or whatever the case is we want to create an environment particularly when we're back to live events that's attractive for all of for anybody whatever their motivation is the hardcore fan who's keeping their own stats and plays six hours a day on their own as well as the somebody that's along for the ride for the social aspects of the cultural aspect so easier said than done right that could be a three-hour panel all on its own strategically that's the way we look at it okay no we need heroes that's that's that's the end point right i mean the fact of the matter is is it's always great they're great media savvy well-trained funny but ultimately we want people that that are heroes we want we want kobe's we want tiger woods uh we want uh just just heroes that have a underdog story that that make us feel good that make us feel like we could become one of them not possibly for me at 45 years old in an esports capacity but you know what i mean right we we need people that we can look up to and aspire to and i think it doesn't

matter if they're going to be great at sitting on a you know a tv show and being able to make people laugh and whatever else and that's just great and that comes naturally again i pick on david beckham i mean if anybody remembers some of the early interviews of him he was awful i mean he was awful but now he can hold his own because that's what a million dollars worth of um uh training gets you but you know i think it's more about giving people to access and actually female gamers is the one that um i think there has never been a sport before um well other than chess the um that is so easily accessible for it to be a balanced thing i you know i'm going to say something really uh um challenging here i don't like female games uh gaming teams okay and i'm really sorry for those that have them but the fact the matter is no but the fact is okay is i have a 12 year old daughter and she could be as good as any other 12 year old um boy so i want him on the same team i want him playing kicking some other guy's ass and and i'm winning because the wonderful thing about gaming

is how much it does not matter about it where you're from who you are anything um and it's and and for me that's what we should be putting up on a pedestal yo i just had to give you a round of applause on that man where's my mic i gotta drop it y'all say that was definitely the mic drop moment so if anybody else want to chime in or what on that quest um i i think on that point i think in an ideal world that is true but i think what we've seen in a lot in esports is that it is a bit of an unbalanced environment for a lot of females because i think what you'll find is a lot of them are treated differently when playing the game and they face challenges which many male players don't necessarily face and so i agree with your point somewhat on female teams but i think the the primary purpose of female teams in many esports is to prepare female players to enter the mix scene and cater to their unique needs based off the behaviors of other people who are making it let's say you know

less easy for them or less accessible um and enable them to transition into you know the wider scene and have every tool they need for success it is i agree i am being an a tad provocative but i do mean it okay i think you're right and we do need that to be that gateway in it because we live in such a world that means that they can't naturally get into it okay and there is a lot of protectionism that needs to be going in there because because unfortunately um when it comes to forums and chats and all this kind of stuff it's awful especially of toxic scenes across any game but certainly the likes of counter-strike and stuff like that so i i there is a bit of tongue-in-cheek but actually we still need that to be the end game yeah okay because there's no reason there's no reason and the more that we go down that road and that becomes de facto that we have that separation we're basically endorsing it and we're basically saying yeah you're not good enough and then who else are we saying about when we don't need to and that's that's all i'm saying you're right i'm sorry to cut you off now you're right i i agree with that too i'm the

kind of person look i'm from the hood you know i'm saying like i'm telling you straight up right now you got skills you got skills you go get it yeah okay who you are so i'll watch you on that i get it i do want to say that i i do completely agree that that needs to be the end goal and there shouldn't be there's no reason for segregation but i i think yes ultimately ultimately the the goal and this is coming back to a point in that hip-hop game and said earlier you know i i think no one is just good at gaming i think everyone has something about them and i think we should be rather than making players or individuals cater to what the organization's needs are i think we should be encouraging them to find out what they're most passionate about and whether that's in esports or not you know bringing out them building their confidence and helping them pursue those goals and dreams that they have and i think that's the ultimate purpose of whether it's an esports team or any team it's to create the best people possible for encouraging them to be themselves 100 so i'm so sorry but i do have to wrap it up y'all i do have to close it out y'all so look i'ma tell y'all right now pocketgamer this whole conference has

been incredible this whole track has been phenomenal i want to give a shout out i personally seriously i want to say thank you to all the panelists yo mark i love you man i'm mean it man you're incredible i love your energy heavy media and i know why it's named that bro i got you yo berkeley yo exola you know what i'm saying shout out to the fam justin and lynn everybody over there yo berkeley god bless you we got a lot to talk about we gonna get it poppin yo lp i'm gonna call you lp you don't say we go through i'm a hip-hop dude so you know you got the lp so lp man i love the way you articulate the your passion in the space and i want to see more of what you got going on too so we got to stay connected god bless you man yo spike is that dude i like i love your hair you don't say it i love your energy bro and i love the fact you got the pop figures in the back yo we out here so you don't say so spike i appreciate you as well and i definitely want to connect with you and i love what you had to say today yo brett pray my

dog you know what i'm saying minnesota out here so the rocker for real i see the passion and i see the power i appreciate all of y'all thank you so much and i don't want to um butcher another name and stuff like that but ignit i'm trying to hopefully i'm saying it right but god bless you man and i appreciate the fact that you're very optimistic in the in the entire space to help it grow as well so on that note y'all we had an all-star cast all day today this is pocket gamer one love and god bless it's the one and only hip hop gamer logitech g on your hot 97 every day that's my word