re:Think Games — May 18, 20 Esports Industry Observations

I think one of the greatest sources of confusion around esports is what games count as esports? I look at this from a very specific angle. I am thinking about this from the angle of an organization trying to implement a program and grow a community. Not a private business like a Local Area Network (LAN) store trying to provide a private service. From what I am seeing working with Parks and Recreation departments, K-12 Schools, Community Organizations like Boys and Girls clubs, and Universities, I think we can lump these competitive games into three categories.

1. Games that are designed to be esports and are not “objectionable”
2. Games that are esports and have something about them that is objectionable.
3. Competitive games that are not really designed to be esports games.

What is the difference between these games?

Category 1 Games

Games designed to be esports titles typically have the following attributes.

1. These games have a huge following. Having a large following will make it easier for you to build a community.
2. There are professionals playing these games. People who can earn a living playing a game creates an aspirational component to a game. Fans and players have something to aspire to.
3. The game is the game. They are not simulating anything else. There is no real-world counterpart to compare the game against.
4. The developers work constantly to remove, overcome, or polish out “glitches”, behaviors that give players unfair advantages that come from exploiting an unintended behavior.
5. On the other hand, these games support rich, emergent behaviors that come from deep gameplay design. “Lab Rats”, people who study the games, can often discover new strategies within the existing game mechanics.
6. The game provides tools for spectators. It is possible to stream the game with someone else watching (not playing)
7. Category 1 games, in general, are culturally sensitive and manage to avoid political hot buttons making them easier and more socially acceptable to implement into a program that any organization that serves the public can get behind.

Category 2 Games

Games that fall into this category can have a range of problems that make them hard for agencies to adopt.

1. They are viewed as “violent”. It is nearly impossible to bring any kind of gun on campus, even a video game gun. Games that feature shooting, especially realistic shooting are problematic. Fantasy violence, however, such as Overwatch or Fortnite has found some acceptance, but there are still challenges.
2. The game might meet all the necessary criteria, but the community culture is racist, misogynistic, and in general dysfunctionally competitive. No organization wants to be put in the position of defending a culture like this and adopting games that have this atmosphere in their competitive cultures often removes them from consideration when implementing a program.
3. The games are okay, but the audience is too small. I think of games like Splatoon 2, or Smite even is beginning to lose some traction due to shrinking audience size. (Smite is of course designed to be an esports game so the comparison is not completely fair)

Category 3 Games

These games are the hardest because they definitely have some competitive elements, but they often make it very difficult to actually implement competitive online play. They also encompass some of the biggest and most understandable franchises in video games. Yes, I’m talking about the “sports” games, but even a few evergreen titles that are enormously popular are hard to implement as esports.

The challenge with nearly every single sports games are:

1. They have no spectator mode, making it difficult, to nearly impossible for commentators to join a match and broadcast.
2. The games have a “real world” counterpart, something to compare it to. This creates problems for the players. Players that seek out a sports game because they love the sport are often frustrated when a “glitch” in the game, allows someone to gain a competitive advantage that would never happen in real life. For example, they can exploit the computer opponents (non-player characters (NPC) or artificial intelligence (AI)) to gain an advantage. One example in a hockey game I saw recently was to put a player-controlled character behind the net and “wobble” in such a way that the goalies (computer-controlled) freak out, making it easier for the player to score. A real-life goalie would never lose their composure because someone was behind the net.
3. The online mode in these games do not support the many edge cases that competitive games require, or do not handle them gracefully. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, for example, one of the most popular games of all time, allows players to start a race without someone in the lobby, leaving a player out of the competition. This is clearly a problem.
4. Developer priorities are not on making the most competitive game possible. Known problems are not resolved with new releases or patches. Simply keeping up with professional roster changes, accurate motion capture, and player likeness is no small feat. Making video games is extraordinarily difficult, and trying to follow a real sport that has its own rapid rate of change is insanely difficult. So this is not meant to bash on anyone, but more a reality that developers have priorities and staying true to the license is almost always the right call. This, unfortunately, can put online competitive play lower on the development totem pole, but this can hurt the competitive nature of the games.
5. I am tempted to add Game Length here, but that is a touchy one. We definitely see more popularity with games that have shorter play cycles, but League of Legends famously runs extremely long, and it is one of the top esports titles in the world.

Using these criteria it is possible to turn virtually any game with an online component into an entertaining and fun competition, but you have to make adjustments for each Category.