This week-end: ESWC Summer 2017

Since its lastest edition of February in Paris, and before the next Paris Games Week, ESWC will hold its Summer Edition, organized for the first time in Bordeaux, France, on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd of July, 2017.
For this special occasion, a lot of things are bound to happen in the 1500m² of the Bordeaux Palais des Congrès. Tournaments, animations, live streams and the likes of it will rhythm the week-end.
See below for the tournaments that will be played during the ESWC Summer:

For the third event in a row the ESWC will host a Clash Royale tournament during the ESWC Summer 2017 from 1st to 2nd July at Bordeaux. This new challenge will gather 32 finalists for a cash prize of 5,000€ split between the top four players. However, to be part of the event players will have to fight their way through qualifiers or to be directly selected.

After having invested in esports last February, FDJ first ever international competition is about to come to an end during the ESWC Summer, with the Finals of the FDJ Masters League on Street Fighter V. 32 european players participated in the qualifiers, and it’s down to 4 finalists for the conclusion on the Main Stage with a $20.000 cash prize to grab!

Invocators, it’s time to bring your troops together for the ESWC Summer Cup with OMEN by HP tournament on League of Legends at Bordeaux. Open to 32 French teams the LAN is aimed at both amateur, streamer and pro teams.

Other notable events contain but do not limit to:

Use Case: Student Gaming Network

From March to May was held in France a huge student Esports competition, organized by the Student Gaming Network. Students from all over the country battled in several games for the title and their name on top of the list.
Now that the tournaments are over, we met with its organizers to learn more about the whole deal.

To start, please introduce yourself and your project

“Hello, I am Pilou, member of the Student Gaming Network, a federation of french student gaming associations.
The association’s goal is to federate students around a common passion: video games. The major event we are organizing for the second year in a row is a national inter-school competition, the Student Gaming League.”

Overwatch finals being played in the School 42

“First on League of Legends, Hearthstone and Counter-Strike:GO, we added Overwatch to the game pool this year. The tournament is mainly played online, with finals organized as offline events. Last year was during an evening in the Paris Meltdown, and this year in the School 42 for a whole week-end.
We are also the instigators of the first European student tournament, in association with our English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian counterparts: the University eSport Masters.”

How did you discover Toornament?

“Since the first edition, we’ve been using Toornament to manage our tournaments, which we discovered a bit by chance while looking for a platform to organize our competitions on.
After testing several of them, we chose Toornament for its simplicity, its very complete environment, its development perspectives and also because it’s Made in France :)”

What features are you using the most on Toornament?

“On the Organizer‘s side, I think we have quite a complete usage of the platform.
We use Toornament for registrations (which are free), for the whole infrastructure and competition management (structure, results, matches…) and to display tournaments’ information to our spectators (thanks to the widgets and schedules). Tournament management being the core of our project, we really feel at home with these aspects of Toornament.

On the Developer‘s side, we only started tinkering with it this year, but wish to keep pushing forward. Toornament’s API is well-documented and we can see a lot of possibilities using it. Today, we indirectly use it with DoxMatch, our partner platform that directly pushes CS:GO results to the platform.

Unfortunately, we do not make the most of the Participant dashboard yet, which has been evolving a lot for a year, especially for Hearthstone. We are thinking about a way to take advantage of it, for us, but mainly for our next participants.”

Can you develop on your tournaments and their formats?

“The general principle for our competition is as follows: 1 game = 1 evening.
In 2017, it amounted for 102 LOL teams on Mondays, 150+ HS players on Tuesdays, 63 CS:GO teams on Wednesdays and 34 OW teams on Thursdays.
Qualifiers went for 4 to 5 weeks after which the 16 or 32 best participants were selected to play the final bracket.

The Student Gaming League format is a very interesting subject because it tremendously evolved between the two editions, and might just change again for the next one.

On first year, we had a pretty complex system made up of pools dispatched into two leagues with promotion-relegation as qualifiers. It was far from ideal for players, because the qualified teams were not always the best ones, and even worse for us admins because this specific format is not natively available on Toornament. Admins suffered a great deal every evening, and we had to change the format.

After the first competition ended, we wanted to know the motivations of our participants, to have our next edition revolve around what they really wanted.
We realized that two kind of participants emerged: the ones here to play for fun because it was a good reason to gather as students to play with an incentive, and the really competitive ones who registered to go the furthest they could in the tournament.”

Counter-Strike:GO Winners

“That’s why this year, we opted for the Swiss System for all of our games. We wanted a format that would guarantee the best teams would qualify, while allowing more “casual” players to enjoy the tournament too, at least for as long as qualifiers would last. The Swiss System ensures a permanent balancing of matches, to have teams of similar skill level play each other. It prevents massive “stomps” after just 2 or 3 matches, which no one enjoys.
We converted the try, since our weekly team participation went through the roof: on LOL, almost 90% of the participating teams went through the whole qualifier, whereas almost 40% of them dropped last year. Those numbers are to put into perspective with the fact that it’s a long tournament (5 to 10 weeks) and free (no financial involvement needed).

For next year, new challenges are waiting, like reducing the time between matches during tournament nights. First feedbacks from our players are very positive on this new organization, and we can’t wait to play with the new Toornament Structure System to be even more creative when will come the time to create our new format, to fulfill our participants’ needs.”

Could you tell us a bit more about your Discord Bot and your use of the Toornament API?

I will let our developer, Ryan, talk to you about it.

Ryan: “In the Student Gaming Network, we wanted to drastically improve the players’ experience by experimenting with small features to make the difference.
First of all, our tools were using Toornament for three steps during our tournament nights:

  • The Check-in
  • Match announcement to players
  • Results gathering”

Participants checking-in, and the SGL Bot listing the absent ones

“We created a special Check-in, because we wanted our admins to be able to make Captains’ change and manual Check-ins and more importantly, our participants had to Check-in from Discord.
As for match announcements, the idea was to allow players to have their next matches displayed in Discord, with notifications. We had to settle down for a simple command that would allow them to display their next match.
Moreover, results gathering was a huge plus, Toornament doing it automatically for most of our games, we only had to take care of Hearthstone and Overwatch ourselves.

All of these tools were developed during the competition, with very little time and few tests performed.”

What feature would you like to see in Toornament?

“A better Check-in feature would be good, with more flexibility, mostly automatic but with manual input from an admin possible in case it’s needed.
This year, we encountered a limit with disqualified participants. This is an important subject, and we’d like a real “Drop” feature to cut a participant out of a tournament after it has started, to avoid bye matches.”

We would like to thank the SGL Organizers for the time they took to answer our questions, and congratulate them for their massive work and successful tournaments.
Congratulations to the winners and all their opponents too!
See you next year for new exciting tournaments and even more awesome organization!

New streaming provider: Mixer

A new streaming service is now supported by Toornament: Mixer.
Mixer is a Microsoft next-gen streaming service that offers viewers real-time influence and participation in live game streams.
Real-time and interactivity are the cornerstones of this new service, and you can start broadcasting from XBox One or Windows 10 in a few clicks, without having to install any extra software.

When selecting the streams for your tournament, you can now add a Mixer URL and attach the stream to the matches of your tournament. That will display the stream directly on the Public and Match pages for spectators to see.
The process is detailed HERE.

E3 2017 – What’s new for Esports?

This year was the 23rd edition of the E3, also known as Electronics Entertainment Expo, in Los Angeles.
Many announcements have been made, but we are going to focus on what may be important for Esports world-wide.

So let’s see, in chronological order, what conferences have unveiled for Esports:

The first conference of this year’s Expo was Electronic Arts’. They fired announcements like a machine-gun, with some new titles and a lot of famous licenses sequels. Among those, the sports games had the place of honor, with Fifa 18, Madden 18 and NBA Live 18. The first one is already a well-established esports game, and NBA is going to become a huge actor in the landscape really soon, so who knows what the future has in store for Madden and other sports games?
They also announced some new content for Battlefield 1, with a new game mode, clearly competition-oriented, with smaller teams and lively maps. Story to be continued…

Microsoft hit hard this year, with a new console ready to hit the stores. The Xbox One X (or Project Scorpio) is about to become the most powerful console ever. What we know is that it features full retro-compatibility with previous consoles (games & accessories), and no doubt Microsoft will bet on it to be their new go-to platform for esports.
On games, two epic licenses with esports potential will see sequels this year: Forza 7 and Dragon Ball FighterZ.
The conference was also the occasion to bring up the updates to come for PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS (that will be available on the Xbox One X), and a newcomer in the Arena-Survival genre: The Darwin Project.

If you need to remember only one thing from the Bethesda’s conference, it’s the resurgence of Quake esports. After having been one of the first ever esports titles, Quake is back with the recently released Quake Champions to reclaim its throne in the First Person Shooter category.
The competition will crown Quake World Champions, and $1,000,000 is up for grabs between Duel (1v1) and Sacrifice (4v4) game modes.

Just as usual, Devolver Digital went against the flow and offered a true WTF experience during their conference. Not much potential for Esports in their announcements, but a title which could feature a true competitive side: Serious Sam Bogus Detour, a top-down 2D shooter with (Team) Deathmatch and other PVP modes, available this summer.

Ok, this is no Esports, but i can’t not mention it… Beyond Good & Evil 2 is nigh!
Ubisoft also announced the next edition of Just Dance, which will probably see its World Cup start soon!
Skulls & Bones has been unveiled, featuring tactical naval battles, playable in solo or 5-players teams, and with a strong emphasis on competitiveness to become a legendary pirate!
They also decided to encroach on Cardgame’s territory, with a South Park game, very soberly titled Phone Destroyer, with cards from the South Park universe and a real-time multiplayer mode, so Wait’n See!

Sony made a point of honor giving space to Virtual Reality during the conference with many titles designed for VR, or existing titles becoming compatible with the PSVR.
On games’ side, the next Call of Duty opus, CoD WWII was displayed with a very dynamic trailer. The next Pro League will be played without jetpack or futuristic weapon, but with historic weapons and flamethrowers…
To be noted also, GT Sport, next opus of the legendary Gran Turismo series, with a beta soon available in Europe and UK!

On Nintendo’s side, a lot of big announcements for sequels to the legendary licenses of the brand. Mario, Kirby, Yoshi, Pikachu, Samus Aran or Link, no one was left behind.
But several titles are leaning towards Esports, with Splatoon 2, Arms and Poken Tournament, which see tournaments every day on their E3 stage!
Moreover, the release of Rocket League on the Switch, with a full cross-platform support, means that you should be able to compete in the next Championship Series from your Nintendo console!

Finally, outside of conferences was announced the Injustice 2 Pro Circuit, with ELEAGUE returning to fighting games after their Street Fighter V Invitational to host the $250.000 World Championship in October.
Supercell also revealed their new game with a Youtubers’ tournament: Brawl Stars (already available on iOS) , an arena shooter, definitely competitive, with 12 different brawlers, several game modes and maps.

The end of the year will definitely be exciting for all esports fans, and 2018 is bound to be even better!