Delivered at Casual Connect Europe 2016 This talk outlines feature requirements and strategies to develop an active user base around competitive titles early in the life cycle. You learn about simple tools to engage early adopters and foster player liquidity even with low concurrent user numbers and budgets, as well as the decision making process of selecting the right multiplayer features to develop, and picking smart parameters for your PVP game mode.

1. HOW TO GET STARTED IN ESPORTS FOR
COMPETITIVE MOBILE & INDIE GAMES

2. OUR EVENTSOUR PARTNERS OUR REACH
10+ global stadium events
100,000s+ paying attendance
100,000+ visitors
per trade show
60 MM monthly viewers
ESL is the largest
premium content creator
125+ million social media impressions per year
12,000 hours of live ESL broadcasts
• World’s largest esports company
• Global footprint with offices in nine countries
• $15 MM in prize money awarded
ABOUT ESL
89M eSports enthusiasts worldwide, by 2017 that will be 145M
32M eSports viewers in North America alone, 71.5M Globally• eSports advertising will grow to $300 MM by 2018
• 16 - 34 year olds (Millennial) | 95% male
• Internet is their #1 source of fun & entertainment
THE MARKET
ESPORTS AND ESL

3. PLAY IS COMPETITIVE
• ESL provides structure to emerging sports (= games)
• Competition scales with audience growth
• Regular broadcasts add engaging entertainment layer
• Star players emerge, creating aspirational incentives
• Retention and engagement mechanism for games

4. COMPETITIVE GAMES
• Gameplay focus is synchronous PVP
• Online
• Gameplay mechanics with clear skill curve (easy to learn, hard to
master)
• Very often free-to-play
• Attractive to watch
• Player motivation driven by aspiration (achievement, winning, skill
improvement)

5. DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
• Game Modes
• XonX
• Win Conditions & Draws
• Symmetry

6. CORE FEATURES
MATCHMAKING
• Matching players from a queue
• Skill-based at some point
• Some form of incentive system
CUSTOM LOBBIES
• Make it possible for people to select all match participants
• Allow settings to be made, and have result screens with player names
ANTI-CHEAT
• Especially PC games need to be tamper-proof
• Store as much telemetric data as possible on the server side

7. • Scheduled Events
• Play with Devs
• Tournaments
• Matchmaking time slots
STAGE 1 – EARLY ALPHA
RETAIN EARLY ADOPTERS
Family & Friends or very limited Alpha

8. HOW TO ORGANIZE
• One main channel for communication (reddit?)
• Social channels for support
• Constant communication / feedback loop with players
• Address concerns
• Immediately handle disputes
• Doodles / Strawpoll for scheduling
• DIY tournament systems

9. BEST PRACTICES
• Start with one day per week, expand on demand
• Combat toxicity early on
• Weekly feedback threads (solicit actively)
• Implement organizational feedback
• Stream if possible (spec mode, or at least dev matches)
• Only small prizes (toxicity / legal issues)

10. • Core focus: Player liquidity in Matchmaking
• Simple point or rank system helps a lot
• Add skill matching component
• In-game rewards (random drops if possible)
• Tournaments as additional retention system for best players
and content provision
• Influencer tournaments / play dates
STAGE 2 – CLOSED BETA
BUILD TO 24/7 ACTIVITY
Alpha to Closed Beta

11. BEST PRACTICES
• Closely monitor matchmaking KPIs
• Match quality
• Waiting times
• Actively promote emerging streamers, teams & players, the
backbone of your future competitive community
• Tournament rules & dispute handling

12. • Activate Party functionality for matchmaking
• Building up a competitive scene for the top 10%-20% of
hardcore players
• Weekly cash tournaments
• Official Broadcasts
• If budget allows, take competition finals offline
• If matchmaking stable, possible to add additional XonX / game
modes
STAGE 3 – OPEN BETA
GROW A SPORT
Open Beta to Release

13. SUMMARY
RETAIN EARLY ADOPTERS
Family & Friends, Alpha
BUILD TO 24/7 ACTIVITY
Alpha to Closed Beta
GROW A SPORT
Open Beta to Release
• Smart choices in game design, feature
selection and competitive mode
• Scale activity offering over time
• Constant, active communication with
players
• Focus on player liquidity in matchmaking
• Incentivize competitive play
• Love your influencers
• Lay groundwork for competitive structure
• Increase content frequency
• Add more gameplay options as player base
grows
Benefits:
-Powerful engagement & retention tool
-Provides content for activation
-Foundation for long lifecycle of game

14. THANK YOU!
David Hiltscher
VP Gaming Communities
E: d.hiltscher@eslgaming.com
T: twitter.com/affentod
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