The Biggest Esports Successes are Cheap Multiplayer Entertainment for the Masses (Part 2 of 2)
Mobile esports will grow larger — in aggregate — globally than all other esports by 2025
Before continuing, please read Part I here, which shares unique insights into the mass adoption of online multiplayer PC gaming in South Korea that led to the 2000s StarCraft esports craze shown below and where this article draws historic parallels from.
TL;DR Summary
- Smartphone gaming is the new cheap multiplayer entertainment of this decade: Greater SEA is showing us how much of a craze mobile esports has become where 90% of mobile gamers there play or compete in mobile esports — we’re seeing mass adoption rates across many fast growing countries
- Strong Social Fabric: mobile gaming’s culture of social engagement is growing and showing strong engagement not only online but also offline — facilitating frequent in-person interactions like PC Bangs have done for an entire gamer generation
- Mobile Esports will be grow larger than all other esports in global aggregate by 2025 — the West will continue to struggle with mobile esports until legacy Western gaming companies start to truly ‘get’ mobile and 2020 will begin to alter negative Western perceptions of core multiplayer mobile gaming
Smartphone gaming is the cheap multiplayer entertainment of this decade
PC Bangs across China, Korea, SEA, LATAM, etc. ushered in a whole new generation of esports enthusiasts due to how it made online multiplayer PC gaming so cheap and accessible— all thanks to Korea pioneering PC Bangs that birthed StarCraft esports.
PC Bangs and free-to-play PC games like League of Legends were the cheap multiplayer entertainment of 1999–2014. Today, smartphones are the cheap multiplayer entertainment of 2015–2025.
Technology Catalyst — the impact of 4G LTE smartphone gaming on PC Bangs and Console Ownership
5"+ smartphones and 4G LTE worldwide deployment ushered in a golden era of smartphone gaming that disrupted the entire gaming industry — especially with the recent PC ports of the world’s most popular multiplayer action games and genres to mobile.
By 2011 mobile game market revenues out grew PC and console markets.
The same time mobile gaming was growing during 2010 and 2011, we saw the number of Korean PC Bangs declining sharply.
This is due to the increasing popularity of smartphone gaming — by 2018 in Korea, mobile gaming was the most popular gaming platform at 88.3% and the second-most popular platform was internet games at 59.6%.
PC Bangs in Korea — known for its low barriers to entry for PC gaming — was disrupted by mobile gaming, an even lower barrier to entry for online multiplayer gaming.
Console ownership % of internet users tell a similar story
When the previous generation of consoles hit the market around 2000–2005, the iPhone, which launched in 2007, was yet to be released. The PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 launched before smartphone gaming existed and the 2000s were a golden age for console gaming — the PS2 is still the best selling console of all time.
The Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo Wii just didn’t have to compete in the same way for the free time of a gamer like their successors did against smartphone gaming.
The 2010s was the global shift to smartphone gaming. History has shown us that the platform shift happens in the beginning of the decade then later in the decade is when it peaks due to massive adoption.
2015–2025 will be smartphone multiplayer gaming’s golden decade of massive adoption rates and it’s starting to create a new kind of esports craze that is rivaling the popularity of StarCraft esports in Korea.
In Greater Southeast Asia, 90% of mobile gamers play esports games or compete in esports.
In fast growing regions such as Southeast Asia, South Asia, to LATAM, hundreds of millions of youth are growing up loving mobile gaming first before PC or console gaming.
This is a high engagement of a % of not just total smartphone users but total population too. Southeast Asia and Chinese Taipei together have a total population of 679M, so 180M mobile esports gamers is 27% of the total population — or 1 in 4 people.
To compare to Korea’s StarCraft esports craze, it took 7 years (1999–2006) for there to be 10M Korea esports fans out of Korea’s total population of 49M — or 1 in 5 Koreans.
Strong engagement from % total country population funnels down to strong engagement at the esports level
In Southeast Asia, a high percentage of young males watch esports tournaments.
This is reflected in other data points where Southeast Asia’s percentage of internet users (2018 data) who recently watched an esports tournament leads the pack globally.
The Hootsuite chart above pulls data from 2018 (reported by GlobalWebIndex Q1 2019). Which doesn’t fully take into account the rapid growth of mobile esports in 2019. For example, Free Fire is insanely popular in the Americas (LATAM and Mexico) — their inaugural esports World Cup and World Series just kicked off in 2019.
The Free Fire World Series — not Fortnite or League of Legends — was the most popular esports tournament in 2019 averaging 1.2M viewers (excluding China)
The Free Fire World Series 1.2M average viewers was accomplished during a 6 hour long broadcast vs Fortnite World Cup’s 20 hours and LOL World Championships 136 hours. However, a 61% ratio average viewers to peak (1.23M/2.01M) over 6 hours is still very promising for the future of Free Fire mobile esports — it shows how engaged a large % of peak audience is to watch others compete on smartphones for 6 hours straight.
Social media engagement in mobile esports is also high
PUBG Mobile is insanely popular in India with 15M+ daily players and a thriving esports scene. Naman “MortaL” Mathur, the star mobile esports player of Team SouL has grown to ~1.1M Instagram in about 1 years time.
He has an incredible engagement rate of 22.09% with over 1M+ followers (based on 30 posts in Dec 2019).
If you compare 22%+ engagement to top PC esports pros such as Jake “Stewie2k” Yip of CS:GO (363k followers) or Søren “bjergsen” Bjerg of League of Legends (358k followers), MortaL’s engagement blows them away. Most PC esports superstars, like Jake and Søren, have Instagram engagement rates that hover around 10% with the top engagement reaching ~15%. Anything above 6% engagement is considered very high in the Instagram influencer business.
What explains such strong engagement numbers from average viewership to social media? As I shared in my talk at the World Cyber Games 2019 Esports Conference to explain why so many more females play and watch mobile esports in China, a lot has to do with mobile’s social gaming culture.
Since smartphone gaming has become a more significant part of their social lives it’s a big part of youth social identity.
And mobile esports pro players are basically like rockstars in countries like China:
It’s similar to what PC Bangs did to help create Korean social gaming culture back in the 1999s
In Mark J.P. Wolf’s book, Video Games Around the World, he explains how Korean PC Bangs created a new form of indigenous youth video game culture special to Korea that allowed young gamers to engage in social interactions by “shouting and playing games” frequently together:
This was what I experienced living in South Korea 1999–2003 and traveling to Japan and US often. The social behaviors and gaming culture differences were vastly different when I visited Japan to the US — I felt like all these Japanese to American console gamers were just totally missing out on cool PC Bang social gaming experiences.
In fast growing gaming markets, smartphone multiplayer gaming is facilitating frequent, positive in-person social interactions that PC Bangs have done.
The Developing Social Fabric of Mobile Esports
In textiles, fabric is a network of interlacing/interloping of threads. So when it comes to a community, each member is a thread and the “social fabric” is how those members interact — like threads weaving together.
A strong social fabric means the weave is tight — members have frequent and strong, positive interactions with each other. A weak social fabric means the weave is looser, more likely to tear or fray — interactions between members are weak.
When it comes to the growth of mobile multiplayer gaming and esports — it looks like a very strong social fabric is forming.
46% of Indian PUBG Mobile players use in-game voice chat to discuss game tactics but also non-game topics at length.
Compared to PC and Console — you won’t see this kind of high % in-game voice chat engagement. This is why the mobile gaming community has a reputation for being much less toxic compared to PC/Console gaming.
There are probably many thousands of mobile esports tournaments (online and offline) running weekly in China, SEA, LATAM, etc. The offline, in-person, ones and the frequency of them are noteworthy.
In the Philippines for example, micro-tournaments happen where mobile esports gamers compete against each other in quick pick-up tournaments to see who’s the best in their cul-de-sac. And in China, mobile esports tournaments are being run in malls.
In-person social interactions — like how PC Bangs facilitated in the 1999s — is the same culture of social engagement mobile gaming is thriving from.
This strong social fabric around mobile esports is a big reason why I don’t think these gamers will ditch mobile esports and “upgrade” to PC/Console esports — their social identity revolves around mobile gaming.
The growing social identity around mobile esports culture
In PUBG Mobile, there is something called synergy which are close connections a player has. The screenshot below shows: BFF’s, Buddies, Lovers and Bromance where you get points (rewards) for frequent interactions (playing) with these social connections.
This is why there is usually one dominant mobile esports title for each game genre in a country — the esports game grows into something of a monopoly once it hits critical mass and achieves strong network effects.
For example in mobile battle royale, PUBG Mobile cannot touch Free Fire’s popularity in Brazil and Free Fire cannot touch PUBG Mobile’s dominance in India. It’s not even a contest between these two esports games in countries where they reached strong network effects.
The same for mobile MOBA — Arena of Valor cannot touch Mobile Legends: Bang Bang’s (MLBB) monopoly in Indonesia and MLBB cannot touch Arena of Valor’s stronghold in Thailand.
Along with gaming, anime is a big part of global youth culture — where both are being more integrated together in fun social displays. Below is a user showing off not just their cool outfit, gear, and vehicles, but also multiple very popular anime series they are fans of.
Similar to Korea’s 1999s StarCraft craze, these smartphone gamers have formed their own indigenous video game culture around the mobile esports games they play.
I’ve traveled for esports and observed social gaming behaviors all over China, SEA, Korea, LATAM, Australia, Europe, US, etc. What I saw anecdotally and talking to users is that American gamers seem to play alone more often vs their more social counterparts in fast growing markets — the social identity around gaming seems much stronger in fast growing markets in general.
Below is a breakdown of China mobile esports PeaceKeeper Elite’s audience demographics— it’s 50%+ females and 31.8% are youth born in the 1990s.
While in America, we’re nowhere near such levels. In May 2016, Forbes reported that two-thirds of American gamers prefer to play alone; however, today, thanks to Twitch.tv, esports, massively multiplayer games like Fortnite it’s becoming much more social in the West.
What’s different is the West doesn’t have a Tencent (China) or Garena (SEA), who both have deep esports and mobile social networking backgrounds.
Since the West doesn’t have a Tencent or Garena equivalent, there is a lack of understanding and depth around mobile and social. This impacts the development and execution of the Western mobile esports scene — this isn’t just mobile esports but mobile gaming overall as most legacy publishers in the West are just failing or very slow to adapt to mobile.
But in 2020, there’s hope. Western companies — who are not farming out their mobile development to outside studios — like Super Evil Megacorp (makers of Vainglory) to Grinding Gears Games announcing Path of Exile Mobile and Riot Games announcing Wild Rift.
It’s very exciting to see talented Western developers understand not only Western gaming PC vs mobile culture but the importance of developing mobile in-house. The little details Western developers will think about, design, build, artistic direction, micro-transactions, a full core gaming experience, etc. will more likely resonate with their Western audience and I’m hopeful it will finally change the negative stigma of multiplayer mobile gaming in the West.
Conclusion
Based on smartphones being the cheap multiplayer entertainment paradigm of today, social factors, and future smartphone penetration rates, I predict mobile esports will grow larger in aggregate globally than all other esports by 2025. That’s when smartphone penetration rates reach 95%+ in many markets.
The mobile esports vs PC esports numbers are started to get there already.
- In 2018, League of Legends — the world’s largest esports — achieved a record 99.6M unique viewers.
- The same year, Honor of Kings — the world’s largest mobile esports and 2nd largest esports after League of Legends — set a mobile esports record of 75M unique viewers.
The West will finally start to catch up thanks to key Western developers finally ‘getting it’ when it comes to mobile and these 2020 and beyond Western core multiplayer game releases will change negative perceptions of mobile gaming in the West.
Many more Western esports orgs will enter key mobile esports markets since successfully doing so will grow their total social media following by more than 2–3x.
The beginning of a mobile esports’ golden decade has begun and these videos and pictures below are worth well more than a thousand words.
If you’re an esports org, brand, etc. who’s interested in learning more about mobile esports, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
