The Story Mob released its newest insights into the world of esports with the release of “Beautiful Weirdos: Telling the Stories of Esports Heroes.” Below, Nicola Piggott, co-founder at The Story Mob, broke out key takeaways of the new guide to esports storytelling.
Every good sports story starts with passion – and with a human at the center of it all.
When it comes to the newest sport of them all – a sport played with keyboards and controllers instead of cleats – we believe that we have the opportunity to completely rewrite the rulebook when it comes to how those stories are told. At The Story Mob, we spend a lot of time thinking about how we can tell stories truly worthy of esports champions – what we learn from traditional sports and what we need to rip up and start again.
For those millions of gladiators who roam digital battlefields every day to discover themselves and prove their worth, we owe them nothing less. Here’s our key learnings:
Esports pros can fit the sports archetypes….
From the hero to the underdog, esports players fit the age-old narratives just as closely and can tell universal stories of struggle and sacrifice.
If you’ve taking a friend who’s never played a game in their life, to an esports event, there’s one surefire way to get them cheering along with the crowd, and it’s not teaching them their barons from their minions. Everyone understands a human story – and esports pros train harder, sacrifice more and play with more precision than almost any sportsman in the world.
…But if we confine them to the traditional playbook, we’re ignoring what’s so unique about them.
Just like digital sports created new innovation in online streaming technology, it’s also brought a new breed of star – a multi-dimensional, quirky, highly relatable superstar that appeals directly to a target audience that has felt wholly unseen and unrepresented in mainstream culture.
Whether it’s Cloud9’s Sneaky and his gender-bending cosplay, or pros from different ecosystems sharing their struggles of anxiety and trolling their rivals online, this is an entirely new breed of hero.
Esports pros have the ability to be a whole new breed of sportsmen, connecting with and reflecting their fan audience more than any other group in history.
This level of celebrity is unprecedented. These sportsmen not only connect directly with the biggest digital audience in history – they are spearheading a cultural movement that show them to the world as heroes and dreamers, not losers or underacheivers.
As esports becomes more and more embraced by the mainstream (and traditional sports increasingly reaches out to learn how to hang on to a young audience), it’s vital that we hang on to what made us so powerful. We must allow our esports superstars to be exactly who they are – in all of their multi-dimensional, weird and beautiful glory.
For more information, check out The Story Mob’s full piece, “Beautiful Weirdos: Telling the Stories of Esports Heroes” here: www.thestorymob.com/beautiful-weirdos
