The upcoming H1Z1 Pro League is looking to transform the battle royale genre, unveiling this week its set where contests will be shown on Facebook. To accommodate 75 players, the league created what could be the largest esports stage in the history of esports, with each player provided with their own set of equipment needed for competition at Caesars Entertainment Studio in Las Vegas. Tickets are available now exclusively on Tixr with the first match kicking off on April 21.
Mobile esports company Skillz announced that it has doubled its revenue run-rate to $200 million and grew revenue over 125% from the first quarter of 2017 to the first quarter of 2018. The company currently hosts over one million tournaments a day, with the average Skillz player spending 63 minutes per day on the platform. “We invented mobile eSports in 2012 at a time when the term eSports was virtually unknown even in the PC world,” says Andrew Paradise, CEO and founder of Skillz. “Today, eSports are a multi-billion dollar industry and mobile is the tip of the spear.”
TBS serves up a champion tomorrow night, as ELEAGUE wraps up its TEKKEN 7 run by recapping the best moments from the final matches of its unique team-based event. The ep runs at 11p and will take viewers through the tournament’s final match, with $100,000 in prize money on the line as Team Jeannail “Cuddle_Core” Carter takes on Team Ricky “Pokchop” Walker Jr. on the ELEAGUE stage.
IGN saw a season two renewal of Expert Mode on Facebook Watch, which placed a 10-episode order for the series. Filmed at IGN’s North American studios and on location around the globe, Expert Mode dives into the most popular video games in the world, featuring industry luminaries and never-before-told insights into the development process.
Kings Guard Gaming announced that three-time cover player, broadcaster and Sacramento Kings minority owner Shaquille O’Neal has been named General Manager of the team where he will “provide valuable basketball counsel as the team assembles its roster and evaluates the 102 players available in the upcoming draft.” “I’m looking forward to my role with Kings Guard,” said O’Neal. “Just like I dominated the hardwood, music industry, showbiz, nicknames and broadcasting, I plan to help build the most dominant 2K franchise in history.”
Meanwhile, Philadelphia 76ers Gaming Club named Michael Lai as General Manager and Ian Hillman as Assistant General Manager. Lai was a Data Scientist for the Philadelphia 76ers Analytics and Strategy Department while Hillman had been Director of Strategy within Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment.
G2 Esports made moves to establish its long-term future, announcing a move to Berlin as its central hub in addition to a partnership with Twitch. The team notes that “We are convinced that this is the right time for us to increase our focus in the Western World as a whole, especially considering the great efforts Riot Games are doing in elevating the LCS to become the ultimate league,” and that it would be ceasing operation with all its Spanish teams. The Twitch deal will see G2 Esports make it the only live-streaming platform that will cover all G2 Esports teams and players with unique G2 Esports content to be live premiered via Twitch Premieres.
Overwatch League’s London Spitfire named Susie “lilsusie” Kim as the team’s General Manager. She joins the team after an esports career that has seen her work as on-stage talent across StarCraft and League of Legends before moving to help Twitch establish presence in the South Korean market.
The worldwide digital video games market grew 6% year-over-year in February to $9.1 billion, according to Superdata. While the Social and Pay-to-Play PC segment shrank 1% and 8%, respectively, the Premium PC segment swelled 33%, and Console markets increased 34% year-over-year. Mobile grew at 4% and Free-to-play PC shrank slightly at 4%.
Organizers of the Game Developers Conference announced that this year’s event drew its biggest turn-out ever, with 28,000 hitting the show. “True to its name, the Game Developers Conference is an event for everyone in the games industry, from the aspiring game makers in the indie showcases, to the legendary creators in the classic games postmortems, and everyone in-between,” said GDC GM Katie Stern. “It also helps spotlight the best games of the year, the most promising indie teams, the most advanced technology, and the most pressing social issues as reflected by the industry as a whole.
Nintendo laid out its plans for PAX East 2018, running April 5-8 in Boston, serving up demos of Switch titles that include: Dark Souls Remastered, Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and more at its booth. Visitors to the booth will also get the chance to compete in four-on-four Splatoon 2 matches, mini-game challenges in Super Mario Odyssey, and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze speed runs, among other activities.
The Webby Awards are adding Games to its lineup of categories, serving up nine general offerings that include: Action, Best Multiplayer/Competitive Game, Family & Kids, Public Service & Activism, Puzzle, Social Impact, Sports, Strategy/Simulation, and World & Trivia. In addition, the lineup will also feature eight features categories. Fans can vote through April 19, with winners announced on April 24. Among the titles in the Games category were: Hearthstone, Overwatch, Star Wars: Jedi Challenges, MLB Home Run Derby VR, Eclipse, INSIDE, The Long Dark, and Heads Up!
Amazon Game Studios confirmed that it had pulled back from its debut hero brawler Breakaway, posting on Reddit that: “Since our last announcement, we have worked to implement community feedback and iterate on Breakaway’s core gameplay. While we have developed many ideas and made a lot of progress, we are also setting a very high bar for ourselves. In spite of our efforts, we didn’t achieve the breakthrough that made the game what we all hoped it could be. After a lot of soul searching, the team decided to focus on new ideas. As a result, Breakaway is no longer in active development.”
POWER PLAYERS – Tim Ebner, Supercell
With the unveiling of the Clash Royale League, Supercell officially upped the ante on mobile esports, bringing in top teams from around the world to the “world’s largest mobile esports competition.” After offering players the chance to be signed by one of the elite pro squads via an in-game event called the Clash Royale League Challenge, just under 7,000 players from 113 different countries made it to the next round. Teams will create their rosters and prepare to compete for their spot in the World Finals event that will take place later this year, as well as their share of the $1 Million. Cynopsis asked Tim Ebner, who oversees esports at Supercell, about the league.
Ebner on leveraging esports: We’re just getting started, but we’ve already learned so much about what esports means to our mobile player base.
- First is the power of participation. This year we introduced the Clash Royale League (CRL) Challenge, which gave all players the opportunity to compete for a chance to be signed by one of the world’s most prestigious esports teams. The in-game event lasted 6 days and 25 million players entered, which is a staggering number for a single competition. Of those, only 6,700 players were able to complete the in-game challenge, which required reaching 20 wins before getting knocked out by three losses.
- Second is the truly global nature of our fans. Those 6,700 players that completed the CRL challenge come from 113 different countries. China produced the most, followed closely by Japan, the United States, Mexico, Brazil and Spain. This shows high engagement across distinct gaming cultures in Asia, North America, Latin America and Europe. Similarly, our large events have had high viewership in many different countries.
- Third is the importance of mobile. Our players are mobile gamers, and they watch our content on mobile devices. The majority of our views and watch time are occurring on phones and tablets. This means we’ll be experimenting with ways to make esports content even more fun to watch on mobile.
On the league format: Clash Royale launched as a single player game, but we noticed early on that team organizations formed naturally and most skilled players that won tournaments were affiliated with teams. Teams offer a lot of value to players, from coaching and training, to travel assistance for tournaments and events and more. The League format formalizes this organic behavior and gives players a structured schedule for competing at the highest level. The stability and resources that teams offer the best players helps them become even stronger competitors, which in turns makes the esports content even more engaging for viewers. The enthusiasm we’ve seen for the CRL from these elite esports organizations, many of which are backed by large, global sports franchises, speaks to the potential of the league, and our shared goal of growing a healthy esports ecosystem while offering as many players as possible a path to high-level competition.
On team selection: Serving our players in the long run is always our top priority. With that in mind, we focused on teams that treat their players well, create quality content for their audiences, and are representative of our global player base. While many of the teams in the CRL are long-established, multi-team organizations, it was very important to us to include some Clash Royale endemic teams that have long been a part of the community, including Nova, Team Queso and Tribe Gaming. In fact the CEO of Team Queso, Alvaro845, and the CEO of Tribe Gaming (Chief Pat) are two of the largest influencers for our games, each with millions of subscribers on YouTube, so they have a long history with Clash Royale and high credibility in the community.
On the Clash Royale League Challenge: The massive turnout of 25 million players shows us that our players want to be a part of the competition, not just watch it. We’re also seeing how global our esports fan base is, even in parts of the world that are still new to esports.
On success: Our measure of success is always player and viewer satisfaction. In a practical sense, that means growing our viewership over last year, so we’ll be experimenting with different forms of content specifically for our mobile audience. And we hope to enjoy many intense, entertaining matches along the way!
Christina Alejandre, GM of ELEAGUE & VP of Esports at Turner Sports, is departing the organization in a mutual decision between herself and the company. Alejandre tweeted that “I loved my time with ELEAGUE and want to thank my amazing colleagues, our fans and the esports community. I’m proud of what we accomplished over these last few years and am looking forward to my next adventure.” A replacement has not been named, although company sources say that they remain strongly committed to ELEAGUE and esports.
IGN Entertainment announced the hires of Tina Amini and Neeta Sreekanth in its San Francisco and Los Angeles locations. Amini joins to lead the games content team as Games Editorial Manager at the company’s San Francisco Headquarters, while Sreekanth joins as the Director, Social Content & Strategy at IGN’s entertainment-focused Los Angeles studio.
Sports data company Sportradar and its head of esports James Watson are parting ways following an internal investigation, according to Legal Sports Report, Sportradar issued a statement on Tuesday about the investigation and indicated to Legal Sports Report that only small amounts of money were wagered on matches. The company indicated that Watson had bet on esports, in violation of company policy, but found no reason to believe that the company’s integrity or services were compromised.
