eSports can help validate and legitimize a game early, but competitive features should not be rushed and need extensive testing. While tournaments can provide high-level feedback, resources are limited, so the focus should be on building a fun core game first before emphasizing competitive play. Players ultimately decide if a game becomes an eSport, not developers.

1. eSports as a critical part of your development toolkit

2. Developer Validation
Public Validation (Legitimization)
Development resource restrictions
Marketing  Population
eSports = Competitive Play
Why build eSports early?

3. We built “automated” competitive features too early
Greatly helped save our dev time
Need to keep momentum after the initial push
You can’t build an eSports game
What did we learn?

4. Al Yang
Design lead – Shards of War
Bigpoint GmbH – Hamburg
Competitive fighting games
The Team
44 inc. QA exc. support (marketing, etc.)
Part of a large established company
Most have previous dev experience
Industry reputation for P2W
About us

5. • Proving your game is successful in a focused area
• What can you validate?
• Mechanics
• Balance
• Visual Appeal
• Competitive Aspect
Validation

6. • What does success look like?
• “Fun”
• Retention
• Community Activity
• Retention
• Early ( 1 – 7 day )
• Late ( 30 day + )
Validation

7. • Early Retention (1-7 day)
• Visuals
• Mechanics
• In-game
• Progression (early pacing, etc.)
Early Retention

8. • Success Points
• Game Entry
• Tech
• Stability
• Launcher Churn (~70%)
• Etc.
Early Retention

9. • Late Game Retention (30 day +)
• Balance
• Competitive Play
• Progression Loop
Late Retention

10. • Success Points
• Sticky Progression
• Community Activity
• Content creation
• Discussion
• “True Game” CCU
Late Retention

11. Starts during development and never ends
Understand that there are different layers of validation
Each has an important but different takeaway
How to Test Validation?

12. Theoretical
Initial
Casual
Core
Competitive
Layers of Validation

13. • Internal Team Testing
• In Development
• Alpha builds
• Playtests
• Team Tournament Series
Theoretical

14. • Takeaways
• “Is it fun to us?”
• Do we move ahead?
• 1st turn back point
• Throw stuff away
• Save time/frustration
• Coherent Vision
• What is the endgame
• Does the team have confidence
• Defining a “good player”
Theoretical

15. • Dangers
• Direct Stake in Project
• Maybe not fans of genre
• Convince them of the vision
• What exactly is high level play?
• Unstable test times
• Fast iterations – no time to settle
Theoretical

16. • Company Wide Testing
• Alpha builds
• Shardbreaker 1 & 2
Initial

17. • Takeaways
• “Is it fun to other people?”
• Without a direct stake
• Is the core solid
• First gauge of interest
• Outside strategies
Initial

18. • Dangers
• Some emotional attachment
• Company/friends/family
• Resist business oriented decisions
• Focus on FUN
• Irregular tests
• Skewed initial “Wow” moments
Initial

19. • External Focus Testing
• Polished alpha/beta builds
Casual

20. • Takeaways
• “Is it fun to our target group?”
• Connection to genre
• Core fine tuning and final validation
• If not, what went wrong?
• 2nd turn back point
• Fresh look with no stake
• Pose as one of your testers*
• Get unfiltered feedback
• Can only do this so often / unknown
• *at your own risk!
Casual

21. • Dangers
• Needs to come early in dev
• Very short hands on time
• Initial “Wow” factor
• Focus on temp visuals over mechanics
• Closed environment
• Tester expectations
• Not enough tests
Casual

22. • Live Environment Data
• Closed/Open Beta
• Leaderboards
• Ranked Games
• Community Cup
• 300% initial CCU upsurge
• Lowered every time
Core

23. • Takeaways
• “Is it actually fun to our target group?”
• Retention validation
• Early retention
• First look at funnel points
• First true “data driven” feedback
Core

24. • Dangers
• Good for lower level play
• Very vocal group
• What is the actual feedback?
• Quality of traffic/player pool
• Matchmaking!!!
• Players = better results
Core

25. • Takeaways
• “This is our core target group”
• Core fine tuning
• Higher level play
• Good “hidden balance” feedback
• Spreadsheet balance
• i.e. Range vs Damage?
Core - Streamers

26. • Dangers
• Extremely passionate/vocal
• Extremely narrow focus
• Rarely good onboarding feedback
Core - Streamers

27. • Controlled Environment Data
• Closed/Open Beta
• Go4 Cup Series
• Invitational
• Battle of the Shards
• Gamescom 2015
Competitive

28. • Takeaways
• “What can our core target group really do”
• Highest level play and balance
• Shows what is possible
• Aspirational Audience effect
• Streaming – “Wow” moments
• Validation for Developers
• Right choices were made
Competitive

29. • Dangers
• Extremely passionate/vocal
• Delicate low/high level balance
• Expensive
• Players have a stake in the game
Competitive

30. • Make the game legitimate in the eyes of serious players
• Remember!
• eSports is a high level retention feature
• Everything leading up to it should be an engagement feature
Legitimization

31. • Partnership with ESL
• Shards of War = Unknown entity
• Legitimization by association
• Dota 2 ESL ONE
• Tournament Infrastructure
Legitimization

32. • Do we need another MOBA?
• If top level players don’t want to play then what about casuals
Legitimization

33. • Winning by a known player increases this legitimization
• Rising Thunder
• Socal Regionals – Fchamp
• Shards of War
• Gamescom – Team Epsilon
Legitimization

34. • Alternative Marketing
• 220% + in CCU
• 550% + as a trending topic
• Didn’t keep up…
• -320% next month
• Must keep momentum
Legitimization

35. • Besides CCU, reflected mostly in Social Media among players
• Increase in user created content
• Youtube videos had ~300% increase
• Kickstart virality factor
• But keep up the pace!
Legitimization

36. • Bigpoint has a Pay 2 Win reputation (Browser game history)
• Pre-Gamescom Press
• “…this is Bigpoint so P2W garbage…”
• Post-Gamescom Press
• “…pleasantly surprised at the game...”
Legitimization

37. Time and Resource Restrictions
*Screenshot of actual development in progress

38. • Short Development Time
• 6 - 9 months
• Lack of development resources, design, testing
• ~30 team members
• We had no playtesters for initial development
• Internal tests
• Focus groups
• Launched beta EARLY
Time and Resource Restrictions

39. • 1 Designer + Collaboration
• 1 month initial design
• 200 MH
• 1 month balance/testing
• 10 x 160 = 1600 MH
• ~1800 MH
• Just for initial balance
• We are a small studio for this type of game
Time calcuation for balance

40. • You will never launch even close to balanced/bug free
• Goal is “Fun to play” and “Not obviously broken”
Launch a FUN feature

41. • 3000 Players x 1 Game (18 min)
• 900 MH  2 Games > 1 month fulltime test
• Situations your team cannot fathom
• People usually have fixed playstyles/thought patterns
• Playerbase > Your Team
Playersource high level balance

42. • Good Communication!
• Weekly Streams – Direct / Spreads news down
• Forums
• Fast Turnaround
• Players must feel like you are listening
Playersource high level balance

43. • Sentinel Items
• Items that change a character’s abilities in a major way
• Gameplay diversity / Hidden balancing mechanic
• First two weeks
• Release without the items, watch the analytics
• Goal is no more than a 60% win rate in a ELO bracket (4 for us)
• Then rebalance and release items
• Patch missing gameplay
• Patch missing balance
• 2 week balance/content cycle
Balance Goals

44. • Your developers will almost never be better than players
• High level feedback
• Go4 Cup – weekly prize
• Constant player aspiration
Using Tournaments to Balance

45. • Watch highest level play to catch broken gameplay
• We incentivize high level play right away (€ € €)
• Observed closely by dev team
• Moderated and compressed timeframe
• €350 each week – completely worth it
Using Tournaments to Balance

46. • 70% Win Rate
• Seen Previously (Vox) / No tournaments yet
• Saved us ~ 2-3 months of balance testing
Nemesis ROI

47. • Players have their own mindset
• High level players help to expose “hidden” strategies
Tournament Videos

48. • Leaderboards
• Early access feature to promote competitive play
• One region had $ and physical prizes so we had to extend the
offer everywhere to keep it fair
Leaderboards

49. • Beta feature – Percursor to Ranked
• Rushed - Lot of bugs and loopholes (1 month dev time)
• $ brought out the worst in people / cheating /queue dodging
• Everyone was in same queue (no hiding)
Leaderboards

50. • Hurt high level players way more than it helped
• Player satisfaction dropped by ~22%
• No huge overall affect on CCU
• Pushed out before it was ready
Leaderboards

51. • Automated competitive features need way more attention
• When the cat is away…
• “Speed Camera” effect
Leaderboards

52. • Split queues (opt-in)
• If under time constraints…fight for this feature…and label
• Alpha/Beta tags hugely affect player perceptions
• “It’s still in beta so…”
• Low CCUs up waiting times and makes the game look dead
Leaderboards

53. • Keep any sort of “top place prizes” out of your testing
• Participation prizes OK
• Make sure you’re ready
• Worse to do this wrong than at all
• Stability is not an option
Leaderboards

54. • YES!
• Our best return on investment
• Validation
• Balance
• Weekly online tournaments
• Smaller team
• PR turnaround for the company
• Purchasing street cred…
Would we do this again?

55. • But…
• Too early for some items
• Leaderboards
• Wasted momentum from events
• ROI not good enough on live tournament
• PR could have been covered by presser demos
• We tried too hard to legitimize ourselves…
Would we do this again?

56. • You can build for eSports but can’t just build a eSports title
• Just build a fun game
• Competitive
• Obvious skill
eSports

57. Obvious Skill – Evo Moment 37

58. • You can build for eSports but can’t just build a eSports title
• Just build a fun game
• Competitive
• Obvious skill
• Fighting Games – Combos/Life (Footsies)
• Mobas – Skillshots/CS (Map Awareness)
• Puzzle – Chains (Setup)
• Racing – Drift/Turns (Control)
• Etc.
eSports

59. • Your players decide if the game is eSports or not
• Mechanics have to fit the game perception
• Maximize validation/legitimization and build for your players
• Do not rush automated competitive features
• Make sure the game is stable
eSports

60. Thank you for your time!
Al Yang
a.yang@bigpoint.net
Twitter - @QQBert

61. Bigpoint GmbH
Alexanderstraße 5
10178 Berlin
Germany
Bigpoint Inc.
Bigpoint Inc.
795 Folsom St. 1st floor
San Franciso
CA 94107, United States
Bigpoint S.à.r.l. and Co, SCS
EBBC D
6 D route de Trèves
L-2633 Senningerberg
Bigpoint GmbH
Al, Yang
Lead Game Designer
Shards of War
a.yang@bigpoint.net
@QQBert
Drehbahn 47-48
20354 Hamburg
Germany
Tel +49 40.88 14 13 - 0
Fax +49 40.88 14 13 - 11
info@bigpoint.net
www.bigpoint.net
Contact us
Bigpoint International Services Limited
1 Villa Zimmermann
Ta’Xbiex Terrace
XBX 1035 Ta’Xbiex
Malta