Esports Growth by Revolutions

Few people actually discuss the topic in public but I have this idea that the main driver for esports growth is games. In this article, I’ll focus on a pattern that could be observed for Counter-Strike and League of Legends, the 2 games with the biggest viewerships on Twitch in 2016.

In late 1999, I opened a gaming center in downtown Paris together with friends. I had already chosen esports as a carreer path — what a fool — and Starcraft was our game of choice. We had other friends the same age, 18 to 20, who liked Quake more and we had mutual respect for each other.

Quake and Starcraft then stood at the forefront of what we already called esports, yet they didn’t make most of our business at the gaming center.

From the very beginning, our place was filled with kids in their early teens, screaming and yelling all day-long as they were playing a new FPS game. This new game was worthy of nothing according to Quake players around us.

Yes, the new game was immensely popular, way more than Starcraft and Quake combined… but it was “a game of no skill, slow-paced and in which one could hide behind crates at any time”. It was, according to the established esports crowd “a shitty game for people who didn’t really know how to appreciate quality multiplayer games”.

That game was Counter-Strike.

Ten years later, almost exactly, a new game by a new company came to the world. And the reactions were very much the same: while the game was extremely popular as a multiplayer online competitive game, more than ever before, and heavily supported by the younger geeky crowd, “old” esports people didn’t see it this way.

The game, and its legitimacy as an esports platform, fueled many useless online debates. Many esports “specialists” tried to demonstrate this new game had nothing going for itself. Some even went as far as saying it was bad, dangerous for esports…

That game was League of Legends.

There are many similarities in these 2 stories:

• both games are fully online multiplayer competitive games
• both games recorded instant, never-seen-before success at launch among young players who didn’t know esports before
• both games expanded the frontiers of esports to a new wider crowd
• both games got rejected heavily by those already in place in esports: pro gamers, tournament organizers, media
• years and years after release, both games have been the most watched on Twitch in 2015 and 2016, and can be considered the most succesful esports platforms in the world (alongside DotA 2)

A few months back I got introduced to a talk by some guy named Idriss Aberkane. While the man has controversies surrounding him, there’s no denying how interesting some of the ideas he’s been sharing in his talks, mostly in French unfortunately, are. I already wrote a post about him on this blog.

One of the ideas he’s been sharing is about revolutions and how they can be characterized. Every revolution, he says, goes through 3 steps in terms of how it is perceived by the majority of the people:

• step 1 — ridiculous
• step 2 — dangerous
• step 3 — obvious

These 3 steps look a lot like what Counter-Strike and League of Legends went through when they first got introduced to the public, for their first few years.

Indeed Counter-Strike and League of Legends revolutionized the esports culture. And this pattern, of a new game played by many while being ridiculed and hated by the people already in place, is likely to happen again. It might very well be happening right now actually.

Since Counter-Strike and then League of Legends, it had been a long time since I hadn’t seen the revolutionary pattern at work in esports again.

Then Clash Royale came out.

If you read this blog often or know me from Twitter or even irl, you know how much I enjoy Supercell’s latest game. I enjoy it as a gamer who loves strategy games, but I also enjoy it as an esports professional looking for the next opportunity, wondering about what game to grow the esports scene with.

Clash Royale has already gotten so popular with many young gamers who never heard about esports before. Viewership numbers on Youtube, live and VOD, are stellar. On Twitch, the phenomenon is less developed but CR still beat Vainglory’s all-time viewership in a matter of weeks. Armies of teenagers, but also grown ups like me and maybe you too, enjoy Clash Royale. In the long run, this game could have more potential than League of Legends viewership-wise.

And yet, most esports professionals and so-called specialists have been downplaying it: “it’s not a real game”, “you can’t be serious with a mobile game”, “there’s no skill involved”, “it’s a game for kids” is the kind of things you’ll hear.

This combination of a new ultra popular game among young players and passionate hating by older ones has to be one of the biggest hints Clash Royale is something very special for gaming in general and esports in particular.

As for myself, the only interesting question: “How high will it go?”