Superstar Session: Levelling the Playing Field: Mobile Esports Driving Diversity PGCD#2

and we'll be kicking it off momentarily with our superstar session from 10 cent and makes a pub G and they'll be coming along to speak about leveling the playing field mobile eSports and driving diversity and I know that in the in the attendees somewhere we've got James oh we've got yeah we've got James from 10 cent who's gonna be coming and speaking with us so yeah we'll invite James up to the stage momentarily to give us a really fascinating talk from everything that 10 cent and and the pub G brand is doing across the eSports playing field and how they're helping to drive diversity which is a really great thing especially right now in the world

that we're in so yeah really great I think we've got James coming in now I believe James is gonna be joined by Ken as well oh wow James really interesting way to start the day this the new protection hi Jay how is it how are things doing on their your and what what time is it where you are here good to hear is a nice day on your end it's a it's a bit of a cloudy morning my end but hopefully you know you're doing well and excited to help kick off our show it's a really great to have a superstar session such as yourselves and I'm really looking forward to seeing this

talk okay I'm not opposed to that but pop t-mobile issue footer and pop team about eSports is your poster it's also one thing I'd like to correct age if 10 Center didn't develop Topsy Topsy is there public cooperation and me just a mobile of course yeah that's what a man I meant the pudgy mobile gamer connects right so no confusion in many areas like in India many people call for t-mobile just as a pop so that definitely because I mean you guys obviously must work with the team over at Blue Hole as well you know because you've got the license for that for their mobile game which is really great and it's so you know it's really exciting to learn more about podgy mobile and the work the 10 cents doing yep fantastic well I'll leave you to it then and I'll be here in the background if you need anything but yeah where you going looking forward to this okay great so that means that okay I think it's

ready so nice to meet you everyone I'm James young and I will talk about the repeating the playing field mobile responsive driving diversity it justiça introduce it I'm James young and director charge Apopka via mobile global eSports intense and games so today I direct talk about 50 mobile eSports and how mobile is sports diversify global eSports industry so yeah she is a big one in 2018 when he started up to mobile eSports we used this our motto mobile art is put maybe other mobile is put came they didn't need to make this very mobile specializes moto because they don't need to but 4c was different maybe you know the pop CP she started the eSports to one year ahead of us and they made a tremendous success so that we need to make some differentiation

otherwise audience may not have a good region to watch us so we thought very deeply long time and many conversation in meetings so that we found three key concepts at the mobility anywhere accessibility with anyone and lifestyle in anytime this is a 2008 mobile eSports we believed and so far to all is in sports event and phone on to behold we try to deliver this unique advantages to all our audiences and this in the numbers in 2019 let's say year of the mobile sports made significant success I can say so we were the 1.7 million net including Indian qualification and more than a thousand eight hundred thousand players join the prom 169 countries actually a decent number is very impressive to me myself because I'm Korean I watch it 1988 Seoul Olympics at that time I remember total number of

countries go into all in Peaks over the 160 so now even this is put to event can bring more number of a country than Olympics this is amazing for me and last year we had 56 million I want to watch it maybe you don't have a clear idea how much big this each I can say it's just 10 times bigger than 2018 we made so that I can say overall we are doing locate cross and yeah honorably we are nominating to each coach game of the year in Corydon joystick award and also other words so while it's very honorable because we were the first native a mobile game dominated English East put words and due to this big success and big support from company we could increase our total project for this year to five million yesterday this is the two times bigger than 2019 and this is

50 mobile global is put ecosystem in eSports you can see is putting two different perspective one is marketing perspective in this perspective event itself or how many people watch it will be improved but on the other hand if you see the eSports edge of product and this is also having their own ecosystem own lifestyle then this structure is critical in front why because this 3d structure ecosystem will give you the accumulated players audiences and make this to be real business so 2019 to the 18 we studied temple championship for amateur players you know so we studied top T Mobile started in the MSC for infrared search and everybody and last year we study the p.m. show for t-mobile Club often Oh Pro and semi-pro teams there is there are many regions and he's here so we

finally study the protein-protein good already the top of the ecosystem so p.m. here it is studied in five countries in Southeast Asia or so South Asia America's total stable region 5 oh yeah some regions and PM she'll also increase improved a lot easier last year we just about the PM show in seven regions and this year we increase to 15 regions so this year poppy I'm sure more than 42,000 team to applied so it's quite also growing test and actually also we that impacted by coronavirus originally this pro league to provide the best competitive integrity we wanted to hold this all off right but the audience will be the audience but due to the corona by situation we need to change our PMP from offline to online even though we built all the stages and now we are actually

waiting for world week and sooner rather later we can also announce some very interesting information in world lives so please keep eyes on us okay hey so let's talk about the diversity the subject in this speech so you can see some the math and the reasons they're so blue circle is we appreciate spot local they didn't let their Eastern countries for so let me say the PC is culture popular and then green circle means mobile sports are more popular so as you see South Asia South East Asia and South America they are mobile eSports is very popular and it could appeal some all this blue South Korean Korean soccer then this also could recover the world still except Africa and some reason for steer I can say with mobile eSports is supposed to itself is expanding the region's to increase the diversity and actually

mobile the reason mobile in sports is popular it's very same in the region mobile game itself is popular and it may be my personal opinion but in Southeast Asia South Asia and regions where mobile response is very popular there is your nose from PC and console gaming culture so they put them actually they just started playing game except in mobile device so they didn't fit any obstacle to you to mobile to play four games on the contrary in North America and Europe Christian culture came exist since 70s so that playing who came in biggest remit is from the performance devices would be preferable for them so maybe this can be mixing or Maajid at the time passes but I think it'll take a time but still I believe mobile eSports is growing fast and possibly this a bit

quite multi mortgage so that mobile sports can be popular all over the world but I agree either take a time and their daily to once more earlier mobile eSports and PCs portables are very popular and you know the answer China and this is about the diversity in true oaks you know big strong crow all suggesting and located in mostly western region also including China and Korea but so we did this the popular album mobile game Pro also is also also expanding their earlier into their emerging market for example here fnatic one of the biggest European frogs they acquired one team in India and they enjoy big popularity there also faith claim is very big and popular u.s. products and they entered into Southeast Asia we the PMPA from p.m. peer Thailand and not only west to east but their

doors open its kind of situation so tiny our products xqf they are very popular also in China and day ok the one US team and they now they are playing in p.m. / Americas so due to pop the mobile due to this mobile eSports also pro alsa is changing the region's and expanding region increasing diversity and eating at the end and yet steer morbid prologues are conducting me the odds and see whether they can join so this is in progress more and more probes will enjoy diversity with mobile eSports and this is also interesting story diversity in players yes it just mentioned in mobile is foot there the gate is wider more people can join and compete to become even pro players because Koh Pich eSports becoming pro players which is so kind of um can I do that story in the different River but for mobile may be

all over you have a while devices so they are just still chance for it to try at least maybe you can find your own talent by is Trier so get from amateur to pro is quite open and the gap between Pro and amateur I think is it's a smaller narrower than PC is foot so sherry to the exam probate this guy the great kind name is a motor in team soul and tears about he was just no one just to enjoy it playing game but now he's one of the biggest everything in India so feature team store team saw one grocery the tournament to continuously and they getting more and more popular even less here they represent to the India in p.m. geographer find out the embedded in you can see that he selected as a most same favorite players in 2019 and after that

he also did very great things he announced that he would donate he'd applied for to Indian Army and it made him to become a star not only stable edge or respectable celebrity and also we saw food it addition there is a be the one this is a documentary we made for Indian players so he's also one of the players in this documentary also his mother also shown in the documentary and many people studied even expecting his mother a juror so I believe a mobile I suppose it should be more open structure than T she is / - to give a chance to anyone to become a star and if they are good enough and I was true willing to try then there should be open gate and edgy doesn't matter in the eSports ecosystem we have a very clear structure at your campus championship or amateur to p.m. co2 p.m. pier and later world we go a world championship to be

there stop the star and big global celebrity so we have a clear leaded crying these seasons I can say we are providing diversity in players and many ranges there and I believe or not maybe quite many of you even don't know which language it is like Thomas this is Myanmar engage and who do each the local language in Pakistan and Bengali is the language in Bangladesh so the audience of a mobile is puts a more casual than PC sports so for quite many of them mobile is 40 the first time put them to watch is put yourself so to deliver the content in their more friendly and each way we provide the streaming with more than 20 local languages including order written languages here and actually people feel really each other and a recent and she the contents in their local languages for his efforts to sell 18 also we provide the English and Hindi

to Indian audiences and at the beginning the ratio of English to Hindi words just 50/50 but at the time paste is the ratio of Hindi educating higher and higher and this entropy enter South Asia Hindi is occupying more than 85 percent eighty to ninety so that it's much bigger so I believe maybe it's also same to pitch his post but diversity language is very important to have the more audience is familiar to eSports and maybe this is the scene you might expect when you hear personally about the diversity by mobile sports diversity in venues and stages yes because we enjoying the mobility as one country concept album about eSports the left side the photo was the Asia finals in p.m. se 2018 he was really big challenge and I thought oh you want to

try this again because the difficulty is really high we hold this event in one visuals in Thailand so the players played the match in even on the beach or even first id-ff instumental me not dive into the pool and I also swim there together so this is actually showing some kind of each team way over mobile eating in mobile eSports it was really cool and fun but you know we cannot control weather so why are we having this event we are so worried what if it starts raining it rained so yeah difficulties very high a right side is about October finals or p.m. sources and 19 spring split here you can see the players are playing thanks by putting their leg on the table like this and playing like this this is actually the we array about playing game at home OBU so many person made this

boost design if we call this edge bunker because it looks like a bunker we are either worried whether this may be the wrong conception to audience that oh it spreads it doesn't do not look like a real pro but he was quite a successful even though they are cold they're cheating look way is quite casual or they're very native natural way but look at their eye look at their focus they really show their professionalism and their or a competitive competition was really great so that we really lovely this concept feel to me the ESL together so actually this year we bill to improve the bottom of this stage in Katowice Poland we are supposed to use the venue for PMP America's and world reek but yeah due to the bio situation we couldn't use it so far I still wanted to show you it's really great so so far I

talked about the diversity of nobodies foot brought the region from all players languages and many stage but frankly I do not love to reason that nobody sports and P she's also like a separation frankly I don't think we need to separate directly the you jump rope tennis and table tennis rocket sides are different and tablets also the player area to fight it's a totally different but you do not call table tennis edge mode is small sports or minimal sports they are all great sports so from my perspective whether audience experience player professionalism passion production quality or same never between PC sports and mobile is foot so now even for example we still listen to even read when you say mail that means email right so still we may stay calm mobile a sports fantasy sports but at the time

passage I believe people will call low body sports to say the sports and I believe a mobile response can become actually the main pipeline the mainstream now like this sub stream now and I believe pop t-mobile will head over and we'll push it is hard to become even tier one is foot maybe sooner Aetna later thank you so I have enough time to have a Q&A hey James thank you that was that was brilliant that was really fascinating and I really like your comparison between table tennis and tennis I think that's right no I think that's really good and I think it highlights the fact that there's there's no reason that we need to sort of discriminate between different forms of eSports ultimately as long as people are enjoying it and everyone's getting involved and that's the main thing yeah yeah so yes we do have a few questions if that's all right and I've

got got some here and some of them are a bit similar but I think they're all really interesting so the first one is do you believe that due to the fact that the platform is mobile and sort of more accessible the evolution of players from amateur to pro will be easier and faster on mobile I think so and I truly believe and there's the one test one message I delivered by the player in diversity because first once you become even to become amateur to pro then at least one thing you should do you need to try you need to enter you need to apply and see where you are even you're a great player but if you don't have the device if you have not many chance to op try then you don't know whether you can really try to be controlled then in mobile is for each much easier because you have the device and in many countries and many people everyday don't have songs from PC devices or you don't sit in front of PC

for five or six hours maybe but mobile you always bring almost 89 hours essentially all the time beside you see even you put the mobile when you say why because you're around so it's much easier and it's a much more widest tensest to try so that's reason why vim and much more than 800,000 players our pride for our event and once you be there also interesting singing once you try then you have to learn something by this try yourself so you may not be big you may not be able to become amateur to pro immediately or still you can learn and you can improve and next time you can also become pro so one very impressive attack kind of story I heard the age there's a guy could join the 10 content to be India but even he couldn't pass so he was audience there he just watch it and he was in credit after the he did practice and now he's the one pro member

he'd remember wanting him in India now so that I believe because of their each big accessibility of the mobile device and because there is a paid teacher also open and edge mentioned in PhD sport the gap between Pro and amateur is very big even they are kind of control under the control by the second it's just unbelievable mobile still yes there's a gap but from my possible gave you did not as big as Peachy so there's still there is a bigger chance to become true force to be control and it is usual you should have the pro-league or some kind of with this ecosystem and so far not many mobile games have this kind of structure but I believe there will be more and more games yeah and I think it's also like saying as well like with PC there might be you know someone's watching it live there even there might be a barrier even if it's as much as they've got to go and turn on the PC and all that whereas with the phone they can literally sort of sit right there and be practicing while they're watching and everything yeah we've got some more

questions there gosh there's a there's a few of them here so I'll just pick out some of the really interesting ones and so a lot of people there's a couple of questions in here about the gender balance within mobile eSports and eSports in general and so I'll sort of merge some of the questions together but it's you know basically do you think that mobile eSports will allow a greater gender diversity do you think there the accessibility the platform allows an equal balance of men and women that yes in them yes I mean to you is a higher possibility because as I mentioned the gate is bigger and actually I think maybe me I tell me if we eat around it but somebody who having PC maybe male have a more picture than female or maybe similar but maybe the Polsky okay whatever why my insight also know is it because it's gender diversity

the player said cookie Jennifer for us the pop t-mobile we have a much more racial female in Thailand around the 15% of playing female in Thailand but in India it's almost 5 less it's less than 10% I can I can say so that once you don't play it that you cannot play of right for eSports so that because of this original eprint ratio of their gender or game itself is also affecting eSports itself so that yes Mobile is which can provide a more chance to female is for players but also it depends on the ratio button during game itself yeah yeah no I understand why Sri I mean like you saying it goes far much more deeper than that we need to bring more female players into the experiences because once we have more of a critical mass of different gender balances then obviously that applies to the eSports as well yes

I can see the growth of a female is put a player in the region even in Southeast Asia even some protein table female players and we are welcome to have more female friends yeah definitely I think we are seeing more and more women getting involved in eSports across the entire world and I think that's been happening for a while so you know I think as that keeps on growing like you say mobile offers even more opportunities to get involved for everyone so here's another one and someone's wondering do you briefly mentioned about mobile eSports being more casual than PC and do you think it's much easier to follow and compare to PC eSports and more encouraging for players in different regions so I think what they're getting is obviously people all around the world but equally as a spectator do you think it's easier to sort of join into the experience as a spectator through mobile gaming audience

experience as well ah truly yes because you bring the device again mobile it obsessively lifestyle you bring mobile anywhere everywhere and interesting thing is yes still people can watch bo-buddies puts on PC but yeah when from our data the ratio over watching our mobile is puts on pitch is less than 10% so major portion more than 80% people watching mobile is watching on mobile it's interesting and but I think that's because it's more like an extra habit they play a mobile game on mobile and because they played this game on mobile so that they know this game and they know how they know also informations through this mobile and they watch it this move on and while watching if they feel oh I want to try this skill then they may just play immediately so that everything is happening in one device so I think it's definitely this will have a

better way and even though you wanna watch work what if we are out of the some Oh piece of home then still you will bring mobile so that you may not miss easily our eSports event so that yes it also is spending more and they feel why we have a huge amount of audiences and we are actually getting bigger and bigger yeah yeah I think that's a really interesting point and another question which I think's like again also really interesting is so in in regions such as South America Mobile is more popular than PC and console because of the cost of games so do you think mobile eSports will give actually new career opportunities to regions where opportunities are rare as the person says just like what football did for a lot of Brazilians do you think eSports can offer people in new regions a lot more opportunities and this is really interesting question because it we actually dreamed it and the best example is India over before our eSports India it's almost a unknown is put

culture and now our biggest extreme traffic is from India so India we build from scratch nothing through this program and even the people overnight is enjoying and some just the players are becoming the appropriators and become cancers and coaches so the yes we are making couriers and also for practical for some country maybe 100,000 Westerner it'd be but it may not be oh my god but in some reason TC shoes so that even they merely want to invest their nocturnal life time to really get their private room so that the meaning of the price is a quite a different region by region so that for us is kind of five million also we have dysentery pimple South Asia we have a two hundred thousand will start practical this is much more meaningful maybe than other regions to get it so that yes we are making more couriers and edge is consistently growing not only player

your protein also organizer and also the tester talent and also promotion a lot of industries are going and moving together so yes I think we are doing that yeah I think that's really great and actually before I sneak in one final question us cuz I am I'm really looking forward to seeing your like the stadium that you guys have built it's a shame we can't see it right now but I'm looking forward to seeing it when we can all check it out and but yeah I wanted to sneak in one last question because I think it's really important especially for those who are thinking about getting involved in this is you know sometimes people misunderstand mobile gaming and the free-to-play model is kind of like made to win and that sometimes skill doesn't matter it's just about how much money you've got so how are you guys at $0.10 how do you ensure that it's the most skilled players that rise to the top and the most dedicated an the richest that's very impressive generated is put yourself because I think I don't

or games you can go for his foot frankly speaking because in sports any spot where the in sports or sports fairness should be kept so as you just mentioned play to him I don't think if this games you really depending on it felt pay to in them it's really hard to become is put or they need to make a new mode to to eSports or pop t-mobile important I really appreciate because there's no catering or our payment is on the appearance or to show there's nothing radio do you hear me you cannot increase any or tribute by payment so that every project fair where you play your ear all day so that debts actually one very important criteria to start in sports yeah and like say that also ensures that anyone who's wanting to start feels like they've got a chance to make it pro at the same time and to to be good because all it is is about skill and practice and commitment yes and why watching our eSports actually

you can see all players wearing gorgeous outfit and that's not because they purchase it but every we provide because I believe eSports also needs a soccer game so maybe wanna be yeah you think is is fun to to promote this New Yorkers yeah exactly so it's it's about ways of monetizing the experience without that affecting the the experience of the players as well right fantastic well unfortunately we're out of time I think I could have gone on forever with the questions but that was absolutely fascinating talk I really mean that it was really interesting thank you so much for joining us but you know it was a brilliant superstar session and just a great way to open our eSports track so thank you so much and I think you're doing some really great work so I'm excited to see how things progress with the tournaments and see how the stadium is you too bye