The incoming Nintendo shooter, “Splatoon”, is designed with competition in mind.
We all know Esport is nowadays driven by a few chosen games : League Of Legends, DotA, Counter Strike, Hearthstone, Call of Duty, Street Fighter and such. Those major disciplines are followed by a pack of underdogs : Smite, Super Smash Bros, EA Sports games, World of Tanks etc.
But their numerous Esport compliant games with a little, but active community. We recently saw a huge “Arma 3” match and Nintendo is driving it’s newest IP “Splatoon” as a friendly, but highly competitive shooter.
As a tournament organizer, should focus your ressources on popular and known games, or give their chance to new one ?
We support the later, for 5 reasons :
1. Easier to get to the community and publisher
Getting support from a game community or publisher may be a hard task, as everyone are close to harrass them for some attention, support or money. New or minor but promising games are on the other begging for attention and events. Getting to them will then a much easier process.
2. Money
Working on a new game can also bring great opportunities, as the game publisher will have some budget to spend on adds (media) and special operations (you). Bring a well thought pitch deck and your “new game” tournament won’t take ressources aways from your “main games” tournaments. It may even earn you some money.
3. Variety
If your tournament boasts several games, it’s always a good thing throw heavy contenders and rookie in the mix. Variety is an underrated value in Esport tournaments and Olympics are a great example of how major and minor disciplines benefit each other – and ultimately, benefit the event awareness.
4. Room for innovation
Well established games often rhymes with conservative tournaments. Groupstages to simple/double elimination playoffs are the staple in Esport tournaments, with few alternative structures. Some games like Heartstone, have their own format but again (i.e “Conquest”), but it’s still hard to chose another path. Fresh games are the perfect playground for fresh tournament structures and scoring system. Grab the opportunity !
5. “Small risk / hi reward” bet
Trying to support a new game may be seen as a risk and in a way, it is. It’s up to you to limit that risky part of the bet. Don’t invest in money prize (or let the publisher / sponsor take care of this), invite a limited amount of participants and try to squeeze the logistics requirement into manageable volume by your admin team.
As Toornament already support more than 70 Esport disciplines, we hope you’ll request us to support more !
