Superstar Fireside Chat: A Virtual Fireside Chat with Agora & MPL PG Connects Digital #2

so I'm gonna be hosting this morning's talks I will be kicking off with the folks from Agora and also MPL games talking about you know how kind of things like eSports and the processes of communicating with each other as players and as as audiences will affect gameplay but I'm also going to try and hit make sure that we keep on track with things like making sure you know who our sponsors are it's incredibly important that you know we pay attention to the guys who make this very event possible so our diamond sponsor a gourd IO obviously one of the first speakers and they've been incredible to make it possible to make this event happen we have our platinum sponsors we have unity we have Microsoft game stack we have

apps flyer we have Facebook and our gold sponsors include a plumbing we credits new taku and game analytics so we'll also be tweeting all day so if you want to use the hashtag hash pgc digital to share your thoughts that would be great there's also a disco channel that if you found that yet hopefully you have that will allow you to continue conversation with the speakers to network with other attendees and just to see what's good Wow okay and just to see what else is happening in the event we've also got meet to match I'm sure like myself you've got tons of meetings so you know make sure you make the most of that it's it really the heart and soul of an event like this is the opportunity to catch up with people and meet them and talk to them about your business and the opportunities that you can both you know you can all share so that basically sums things up so if you have any questions along the way then please feel free to

use the Q&A button Q&A button will allow you to share with the speakers and the panelists and myself what questions you have and we'll try to answer those as we go along as well as that you can chat so the chat search section allows you to talk and make comments as we go along so hopefully that will all make sense so as I said our first talk is going to kick off with the superstar session a vote to a fireside chat with Agora and MPL games I think we've got Ranganath from Agora with us and I think we've also got sigh from MPL games is going to come and join us oh no something's sighs not quite here yet so hopefully he'll there he'll join us shortly so oh he is here sorry so hopefully we'll get those guys to come up onto screen any second and but as I say you know is an important session for us to learn about what we're

doing in games and how we're helping each other improve the processes and opportunities in this wonderful industry of ours and so hey guys and I say I might bring up how you doing trust you're doing well you're both on mute at the moment by the way no worries no worries and how's things for you Hey let's go good thank you how are you not too bad so I'm gonna pop from sneezing in the middle of my intro don't worry you guys go ahead and tell her talk about what you guys are doing awesome hey say thank you so much for taking the time to be with us here today I appreciate that one of the first questions most probably has been asked a million times but let me ask this again what led to the creation and founding of MPL right so firstly thank you so much for inviting inviting me here so quickly

very quickly give a short intro to myself and what I do and then question so once I and one of the founders of we are competitive eSports platform based out of India and we started in 2018 and the whole idea here was that people could come and play any game in competitive tournaments with users across India and hopefully the worlds who in these tournaments they can compete in this tournaments to go on mana right are our journey is built for about when we launch the app in September 2018 roughly about 20 months and since then we've been very fortunate we've seen some incredible growth and alongside partners like you know our whole idea behind MBA was raised you know we believe that in the next five six years gaming is probably going to be a skill

that people will monetize and monetize well and you've already seen that with streaming etc on platforms like twitch where people actually are making people actually are earning money on a daily basis and making gaming a livelihood we believe that over the course of the next four five years like physical sports you will also see eSports athletes emerge and you'll also see professional gamers emerge who will make gaming a way of earning a living and we believe that you know we are at a point where we have the great opportunity to build a platform that enables users across the world to compete on in these games using the mobile phone and the reason why we chose mobile is I think it's it's obvious to everyone right PC and console are obviously great platforms and most of the FIR most of the frontier gaming happens on that but you know if you want if you want to ensure that everyone in

the world has access to your and I think which actually kind of leads me to the next question which is you mentioned about eSports and how eSports is helping people actually make a living so in this context what do you think is the eSport scenario in India and what impact can we have to global audiences right right see I think one of the most important things is that I strongly believe and and I think most work most people in the world in the next 2-3 years will also strongly believe that the market cap of eSports in the next seven eight years after the next seven eight years is going to be larger than the combined market cap of all physical sports industries combined and there's a reason

for this there's enough this is this reason for this right today rumba if I were to ask you let's go player being a footballer let's go play a game cricket right we have to come come over to a place pick you up you know go get go get go get a cricket bat all and football and find a bunch of people and then go to a ground then play and the beauty of eSports on the other hand you know access to any in the world because if I G I think connectivity is going to be something that almost everyone in the world is even India itself for an example right that's what

changed in India right the past three four years yep the one two things have changed in India quite dramatically is that everybody is got a handheld device which is your mobile phone most importantly everyone's got an internet connection thanks to thanks what gos done in the country and third and the most important thing I think is that India is probably got the most advanced payments infrastructure in the world right people can be a great be conveniently small amounts of monies why are their bank comes directly using UPI and that these three things coming together right what what's happened is that there is no barriers anymore right even if a user is sitting in some small village in India the user can very actively participate in these competitions to give us to give you a couple of examples right in fact the last month we hosted a chess tournament with in fact with the support of government of the southern part and we have about 25,000 in 20 to 25,000

people compete in this Parliament from across India just sponsored by the and we had users coming in from all parts of the country we had this teaser was about 67 years old right our youngest user was about you know I think a 19 years old so it's across across the across the spectrum coming and participating in these in these games now that is impossible now if you were to hold a physical chess tournament the largest physical chess tournament probably has about six to seven thousand people that's it that's all so you have to go through so many headaches right and that's the beauty of what eSports does and that's the beauty of what Internet did in every industry that it went to internet with the same for commerce it did it did the same for entertainment and now eventually for digital sports

right I mean India especially I think why this is we have young users what I mean is very unique there are countries sixty-five percent of a country's population is under the age of 35 or 37 like and that number is only going to get younger as the next two decades go right that means that a large part of this population wants to be recognized they want to be known for what they are good at and then fee-only really want to be heard on you know in all of the they want to be known more digitally than in the real world right people are more bothered about their Instagram profiles or how many followers they burn if talk then you know how many friends they have for a different day but that's the fact and that is a fact right so so we so we believe that you

know competitive eSports you know actually create way for some of these folks to actually gain recognition and use their skills not only in India for that matter but the world right it is impossible today for someone to imagine it that they would be a champion in say Aki or champion and save cricket if they are coming from a small village without going through 50 100 thousand hurdles but but in the future with sports I I believe and all I also believe that at the last Asian Games one of the games there was an eSports yeah so that that's very interesting I was not aware of that yeah yeah yeah so in fact it's great that you mentioned that in fact the key things is that last time around it was

basically a showcase event it was it was but the next next station games it's actually going to be a full-blown medal event last time also the medals were cable and in fact the Indian won a bronze in fact I think I would be surprised if eSports is included in Olympics even before pitching given the kind of following and given the kind of participation yeah that's possible now yeah I know you being you been in existence like you said for about 20 months and 20 months is depending on which what perspective you have it's either a very short period or it's a long period but what's changed is from the time you started about 20 months ago to in terms of platform or the offerings that you have the best things are

usually the most impressive things right and we started with those four games today we got about 60 plus games on the platform and it's no longer core games like cool we've got in fact we recently last month launched a really really top class you know indigenous first-person shooter game in India or Ruiz in fact in fact the rookies got launched on MPL even before they got launched on the pistol right and as the platform Ybor what we've now started seeing is that from those four simple games that we went to we now have multiple third-party developers who are now publishing their games on the platform and are making significant amount of money and see yourself of your money and and what I

see going what I see changing in the platform is that from the first phase where we started with simple games we now have a full you know full bouquet of games ranging all the way from it code to hardcore to even casual you also have fantasy and the biggest tradition that we've made to the platform in the last one is the addition of content right these players usually become because they usually top the leaderboards or the end up winning he started enabling ways in which these users can actually create content for the followers in the app right and that's been one of the biggest changes over the last three to six months and in fact we started with something as simple as audio and now we are going to livestream and hopefully eventually I think that is the biggest journey that I think would be the single most important

evolutions that we need to make and we are in the process of making that will be a big kitchen so glad you mentioned about live video and audio so have a couple of questions around that the first one being that have your users or how have your users taken to that switch and the follow-up to that is what kind of what kind of decision-making process or criteria did you go through while trying to select a platform that could support live voice and video right so first and foremost like I said you know we started with the simple you know this was not a big strategy when dr. right first you know we stock we are whole thing was like you know we wanted to just understand whether people will be interested in creating content it was just a thought and and we started you know we started with audio right and we started with audio I think it's September last year and the reason why

we welcome to the keynesian why we chose Acura as our as we were for audio and the reason why we chose reason why we did audio is because it's the most easiest format of content people don't need to know him they can just they can just plug their headsets on and you know we can just keep talking it's okay convenient way of creating content from September till Daile I was just checking for another reason I was just running numbers of couple days back we hosted north of four point seven million audio shows yeah so so and we thought what was an experiment very clearly blew out of proportions and more often than not we just did for the first few months we didn't know how do we manage this one how do we handle this as a product and how do we create purely good offering around this and now we've been able to do that and not only is the fact that they would four point seven million shows created but till did most

of the people who created these shows actually own a significant amount of money in a week for me issues from their audiences where the tip these shows and and the reason why we chose about a very simply put is that you know as a product company our focus or as you know as a platform our focus is always to ensure that we provide the user with the best we provide the user with the best experience they're the owners of innovation on the content will the owners of innovating on the format is on us but the the onus of ensuring that we have a great plan you know a great technology platform and the onus of ensuring that the seamless nature of the content interaction etc is on a partner right because that I

you get the best of anything with you guys so I know we have about five minutes before we open it up for Q&A so I have one last question for you so if this

budding entrepreneur out there that wants to get into eSports or gaming is there some advice that you would like to share with them some experience or something that they should or should not consider right see I think the most important thing that business around gaming or eSports I think is is you need unlike unlike any other transactional businesses like say flight ticket bookings or e-commerce or food delivery or ride hailing the business of gaming is purely and squarely dependent on the interactive experience that the customer has when using the product whereas for example if you're doing I'll come and I'll come to why I'm saying that right so when you come to hotel you rewrite the product is actually the service of delivery even if we have you eyes on that create but if the food gets delivered in ten minutes you're always pick and choose that that

that product right whereas in gaming and eSports the most important thing that comes down to is the experience of actually using the product and that experience of building that product is not a function of raising a lot of capital so that's the reason why in these businesses I think you can create wonderful businesses even with small sums of money is not even with like 25 30 million 40 million dollars of event I'm talking about food run capital easily get to that profitability and the second thing is the second advice we'll give you is that once you're clear on the value proposition that we were that your customers come to you for you should constantly focus on building what you are good at and always look for partners to you know to get services in which which will enhance the platform and you will need to build those things ero won a lot of people make the mistake of you

know reinventing the wheel a lot the cost of reinventing the wheel in many places is just too high and it's just not worth it you should focus on finding what are the best pieces of technology that are available that can be integrated with your services to provide the best experience in fact near zero compromise experience for your customer and you should just plug that and working with you guys I think that's one of our biggest awesome so with that we open it up for any questions that the audience might have if there are no questions from them then I have a bonus question for you which I'll save till we get to guys I mean I have a question for you and so these sessions these audio sessions that you've got running is so many of them what's the kind of type of content that people are doing how are they engaging using all of you oh you're

dropping out unfortunately or DIYs is it better it is so we also have fantasy sports so talking about the best movies as long as

so for example so a lot of people use these audio rooms to engage their audiences - yeah I think that's kind of okay I think what I find interesting about it is that yes this is a really kind of poignant kind of role in the eSports world I think even those people who aren't necessarily doing eSports there's lots of opportunities to use audio I remember we had struggles when I was a playstation home back in the day because the playstation 3 didn't have voice comms and we were trying to find ways to make that work and and I think it was were things I mean it would be found a way to make it work but it was

it was a bit of a struggle but it feels like a real missed opportunity if you come one of the joys for me about audio is that it doesn't have to interfere with what else is going on in the game and I think that's an aspect that I think game designers need to think about it so how could we apply these kind of tools in ways that actually can make community bonding stronger so I mean do you have any kind of any told tips tricks with people about that I think I think what we'll see a lot happening is that voice voice is also going to become an input mechanism apart from your joystick or apart from the mobile screen I think in the next five six years you will see a lot of games using voice commands like hey you know what and boys can and voice can do wonders or games I think one is that I think that's something that we should look for and I think especially in semi casual or semi Omid core games you should figure out ways in which you could add voice as a way to make people interact more with in

the game and cue them for the boys so they for example small thing that pop G does and does so well is that the moment you enter the lobby everybody is microphone by default is on so that people know that hey there are a bunch of others in the lobby and everybody starts talking so maybe you know out of the hundred people there may be of them might move the microphones but the other twenty keep talk and the advantage of getting that or twenty and that in every single game is that over a period of time that compound and a significant bunch of people are actually talking to one of those finding new people and building and if you can build spatial awareness into that then that can help moderate some of the kind of issues about you know too much noise or maybe new exchange going on here no no that's an issue that can be in it yeah chemical so I mean why the kind of thought on it though is that when obviously there's moderation issues that go with this and how do you deal with that side of things oh I think we've got a static sigh I

don't know if you want to kind of respond to that no no that's not really it's more kind of a game thing but if you have any sort of views on it was your question around motivation of content yeah so if people are using voice obviously it's a lot harder to moderate I'm presuming that the majority of the kind of to my mind again this is an area I've had to deal with in the past so for me it's all about reporting and making sure you can block people but it's also about creating a climate in your game where people understand what acceptable behavior is and but do you have any other sort of tips in terms of dealing with contamination issues I think probably one of the answers could be AI based moderation but that's going to take time because each language each dialect is so different people use code words at that point and this so

yeah it is it it's always gonna be tricky but I don't think we shoot people should be put off by that issue because so much of it comes from creating a climate of a culture for that game yes probably say I saw you about great sorry sorry just asking about if you had any sort of tricks and tips on the moderation aspects of audio to see the best communities are all the best moderated communities are self yeah and the key is to create strong economics doesn't mean different things and the best ways of doing that is by tying their behavior to this economic incentives or by creating in game in

game system which rates you based on how your shows are yeah and I think actually that's really key and again for those game designers in the room I think that's something that that needs to be considered whenever you have kind of the communication of players or the players you've got to think about the the shadow that that casts and the more the you integrate positive behavior into great outcomes in the game the better the results will be is that fair summary the question here and I mean obviously we've had a really interesting time for eSports in particular in games when we see FIFA well top Premiership players in the UK playing fifa to raise money for the NHS you know this whole idea about competitive eSport going to come more norm are you seeing that in general for you you know and you think it would get to stage where eSports broadcasts becomes mainstream maybe even taking over some

aspects of sport I mean it's not a question of if it's just a question of I think what happened to the unfortunate events with respect to covert is that some of these things you started seeing glimpses of some of these things happening now but I think once things do come back to normal you will see that you know the broadcast of eSports might go down but I think in the next four five years you will see more and more eSport broadcast replace traditional broadcasts because this is just just just the interactivity of the content and just the flexibility that you have for example if there's a physical game happening of football there's only so much that an audience can do but in eSports is so much more that because of those things yeah there avoid the companies but there are suppress my to run teams where you can have the viewing going on you can put overlays of information you can have

voting going on you can have interactions and I think you know when you can look at the way the voice can do that in ways that doesn't interfere with what you see I have a real potential there I also think that insert to some extent says it's already happened if you look at the volume of game video related content it's actually already exceeds the combined volume of Netflix HBO Hulu and most of the video streaming services Blizzard video I think we although each boss has got a huge way to come and I think that there's eSports to me is like this kind of top you know sort of 1% of the ambition the whole idea about game video has become something has become synonymous for anyone under 24 trying to find someone on understanding for watching mainstream broadcast TV is like looking for a ghost they don't listen

bit unfair but you know I'm saying but I think actually this is the we are the premier digital entertainment format and that's going to come out in sports it's gonna come out in expression those screaming influences are a kind of key part of it and when anyone can set up an audio stream in the game talking about what they love and what's important to them and they can generate an audience and a community around that and maybe even a revenue stream around that that can be really empowering now I think that's all the questions we've got at the moment did you have any last-minute thoughts guys I think this has been very insightful as always having a conversation with sigh so thank you again sighs so much for your time right have a great day guys Thanks so yes so thanks to those guys for their

great talk I mean I think for me this isn't just a question of eSports for me this is a question about how do we make sure we create engaging community experiences and look at all of the different tools available to us whether it's from capturing video moments whether it's from actually capturing gameplay from actually capturing the emotions and the conversations around the game either visually or audibly and I think if we can understand the power of that there's a lot of potential and for those of you don't remember there was a thing called every play I was the evangelist for that for unity when unity acquired it and I still think that's a missed opportunity in general this actually thinking about where in your game is the zeitgeist moment and how do you engage with that a number of of games where you have an amazing moment or you could capture in gameplay the face of the person playing the moment of clay and imagine sending that as a bazinga moment to your mate when you've just beaten them at something

that's something that is emotional powerful and it's about building memories and stories with each other and I think as designers as game makers we should be considering that because it's part of the experience you