With ShootMania, NADEO is attempting to develop a game that is built for eSport. This gave us the opportunity to debate around a subject that is more and more relevant, the relation between the game and its eSport's future.

Edito made by Jonathan « Jonthekiller » Frentz, my thought are not the Mania-Actu's staff ones, but only mines.

The eSport scene, as we know it since some years now, is evolving in an exponential way, especially thanks to high internet connexion and the constant growth of web-TVs/Streams, on Twitch or Azubu.

The situation we know is a good picture of what the eSport world is, and we can see lots of projects that get built and work well, and manage to be lucrative. But in the other side, there are many projects that will only live a great loss of money.

A "2 ways" evolution

Nowadays, we can clearly see two ways of thought and managing of the eSport, in a global worldwide way.

The first one that is adopted by Blizzard and Riot, is to make it grow by the top of the pyramid (the high level of players) by paying the greatest teams, with some cash-prizes or even salaries, all of this around great competitions (WCS for Blizzard, and LCS for Riot)

The second one, for example the NADEO's one, is to make eSport grow by the bottom, by developing the "amateur" side of this new sport.

I do not blame or promote any of these ways, and both have their own advantages. But in my opinion, the Blizzard/Riot way can only work in a short period of time, and will get exhausted by time itself...

A game editor shall never invest money directly like this, but only be here as a partner. He can however participate to the cash-prize, by being a partner. But in any cases shall he give all the dotations and keep the control on everything. Indeed, the main issue with this kind of tournaments, that are 100% controlled by the editor, is the absence of independence that can be brought by such organisations like ESL, DreamHack and others. And if, one of these days, the editor decide to stop all the founds? For example to focus on their other brand new game? Organisations would have to follow or die.

Further more, finding several partners permit to the editor to get a more solid, independent and stable gain of money.

NADEO's way

The way chose by NADEO, the one I know the best, needs some time to be developed at its best, a lot of time... And in a world were everything evolves really fast and where the main "stockholders" are asking for constant and fast results, the notion of time is not seen as its right way. Wrong!

The main goal of this chosen way is to bring a large audience, where the younger and older can adapt. For example, we can take the fact that there is no blood on their games, we do not kill anyone but eliminate. By betting on this, there are of course some hardcore gamers that would have loved this part of video games and will not play it for that reason, but these choices can not be changed, and this kind of gamers have nothing to do on ManiaPlanet.

This can look trivial, but it remains really important for the future. By making it available for everyone, NADEO gives it the chance to be on television at any hour of the day (and not late in the evening for other kind of violent content)

Even if it can be seen as an utopia, gathering every ages, and every kind of players can make clubs grow, like gaming clubs in every big cities where they fight each other in different kind of tournament depending on their skills...With time and with a lot of collective efforts, this can be doable.

If we want to see professional eSport growing, we have to make the amateur side grow, and get solid foundations.

Get a good spirit

I would like to talk about a thing that will be really important on the eSport, players attitude, behaviour and spirit, but also all the actors of eSport. This sport is not well known from the common people, and if we want it to grow, we need a good image of what our world is made of. And this is up to us to work on it. Everybody has something to do about it, amateurs, pros, tournament admins, game editors...

Video Games are always frowned by the large audience, and seen as a bringer of hate and violence. We have to go through these easy reproaches, and have to work on showing all good sides and values of this sport (communication, coordination, precision, organisation...)

The more the mentality will be saint, the better eSport will be felt by everyone.

Sport and eSport

We can try to compare the sport that we all know with what eSport try to become. The global level of traditional sport took a long time to become as high as it is nowadays. We always talk about soccer or tennis games with our friends. And why not eSport? For me, there are several reasons. First, eSport is really young. We could compare it to a child, between sport. There is a significant gap between both.

We have to let time do the things, and not hurry it! The mentality explained just above, with money (from partners and editors) and all the investment from the "amateur" eSport. The Sport would not be where it is now without the "amateur" side. This permit to everyone to participate to the games they loves to watch, and among them, finding the future best players that will become stars.

Usefulness of cash-prizes

If there is one subject that always rumble all the community, it is this "cash-prize" one.

When the first LAN events came out, best players and teams got some presents and gaming gears as rewards. And more and more cash rewards were asked by all the eSport's actors, and with sometimes as a consequence, the obstruction of pleasure to play.

I regret the indecent exposure of cash-prizes that we can see on StarCraft or League of Legends. Once again, these rewards can be useful in a short period of time, but can be hard to maintain in a long period (IPL suffered from this will to give this kind of great rewards). If there has to be some cash, it has to be done gradually.

These tons of money are sometimes really hard to find, a partner will often prefer to give some gears as a  reward. Indeed, in addition to the fact that it only costs the manufacturing and travelling, the company can show and expose their new gears to gamers, and use it in a marketing way.

By giving money, ok his name will be known, but the marketing impact will be restricted. Then as a result, the money given will be way less than if they would have give some gaming gears.

I do not say that money has to disappear, but we have to regulate it. Obviously, great teams need money, to travel and participate to great tournaments, but we have to find a way that is more balanced and logical. We can rebuild the partnership system, with a participation from the player. We do not have to forget that more than 90% of LAN players will leave the competition with nothing gained.

As a conclusion, I would say that today, eSport can include a lot of actors, and projects to make it grow and evolve. But we will have to be serious and take time to bring some solid projects, to avoid some wrong steps, that we see everyday in this eSport world...

Thanks Aura and Infarctus to help me to write this edito.