Last week-end was played the first ever Western Unified Tournament in Vainglory, with teams from both Europe and North America competing for the honor of being the first champion, and their fair share of the $60.000 Cash Prize.
In case you missed it, all the results can be found on Toornament:
We’ve been working hand in hand with Super Evil Megacorp from the get go, in their attempt at making their game a huge esports title, and it’s time to take a look back at the long way already made, and what’s still to do.
First things first, please introduce yourself and your company
Hello! My name is Heini Vesander, and I am the Executive Producer for esports at Super Evil Megacorp. Super Evil is a game studio based in San Mateo, California. We build soulful, beautiful core gaming experiences for the next generation of gamers on touch screens.
Could you present your game Vainglory?
Heini: “Sure thing! Vainglory is a MOBA for mobile, and the world’s #1 mobile esport. We launched the game in July 2015, after an early release phase, and we’re excited about how enthusiastic our community is! Vainglory is a full-on MOBA for iOS and Android. Players play on a team of 3 against another team of 3 and the goal is to destroy the Vain crystal in the opponent’s home base. The game is about outplaying your opponents real-time using powerful heroes and perfecting team coordination. The game is free to play and download – and there’s no timers or energy mechanics. So players can play as much as they want.”
Vainglory is a mobile game, built with Esports in mind, what is your take on Esports on mobile?
Heini: “Vainglory was built with the aim to build a deep, meaningful player experience on mobile. A game that’s community-driven and fun to play with friends. We built Vainglory ground up for mobile, without trying to casualize the MOBA genre – nor make a direct port from another platform. In doing so, we built a game that is competitive and fun to watch. We dreamt that the game would become an esport, but honestly, the community surprised us by organizing competitive tournaments way before we even said “esports”. Based on feedback from the community, we added a spectator mode and later a built a spectator client that runs on a mac to empower esports.”
The Western Unified Championship stage, in London – ©ESL UK
“And so, we believe in the potential of mobile esports. Especially if you look at the numbers – 700 million PCs out there, and 3 billion smartphones. Some day soon, mobile esports will become big. Weather the leading title will be Vainglory or something else remains to be seen. We’re super excited about the growth of our competitive scene, and we’ve welcomed amazing teams like Fnatic, Cloud9, Echo Fox, TSM and G2 esport. We’ve also seen homegrown teams like Hammers and Gansktars succeed. It’s still early days for mobile esports and we’re very excited about the near future.”
The Western Unified Championship Trophy, lifted by the winners, 
Cloud9 – ©ESL UK
How did you discover Toornament?
Heini: “The very first Vainglory community tournaments were run by VGL (vaingloryleague.com), and they were using the Toornament platform. It proved to work really well. What we really like is how easy the tournament brackets are to share on social media and especially on websites. VGL inspired us to use Toornament for our Vainglory8 broadcasts!”
What are the features you use most on Toornament?
Heini: “What’s really great with Toornament is how easy it is to organize and handle big tournaments. It’s also very easy to share access to the many people involved. The platform’s simple design works both for desktop and mobile, and the app is an easy way for teams to follow the status of the tournament.”
What feature would you like to see added to Toornament?
Heini: “Our first wish is a feature that allows us to schedule multiple matches and series to specific dates and times. Currently, each match needs to be reported manually, which makes the process complicated and slow when the brackets are big. Our second wish is an improved way for teams to report their scores and screenshots of end-of-match.”
We’d like to thank Super Evil Megacorp for their trust in our platform, and especially Heini Vesander for having taken the time to answer our questions. As for his wishes, one has already been almost fulfilled, with our Scheduling Tool that allows organizers to batch edit their match schedules on a single page, and many more things possible thanks to our API.
We will keep improving the experience of our users, organizers and participants alike, and we take into account and study every feedback that’s made to us!