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How esports grew up: An oral history
With its arena-filling events and six-figure salaries, the esports industry has come a long way since the early days of competitive gaming.
The first video game tournament took place in 1972 — a Spacewar! bracket hosted by Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory — but it took far longer for game developers to realize the potential value of competitive gaming as both a product and marketing channel. For decades, competitive gamers languished on the sidelines, dodging developers’ cease-and-desist letters and playing primarily for passion, not prizes. The word “esports” didn’t exist until 2000, when Korean minister of culture, sports and tourism Park Jie-won combined the words “electronic” and “sports” to coin the term.
Fast forward to the present, and advertisers are pumping millions of dollars into the esports industry in a bid to reach gaming consumers. Game developers have spent years developing structured competitive leagues such as the Overwatch League and League of Legends Championship Series, understanding that esports fandom is a driver of casual gaming activity. By and large, this rising tide has lifted most esports-company boats — but that doesn’t mean the expansion of esports hasn’t had its fair share of growing pains.
Here’s the story of esports’ evolution from the grassroots days to today’s corporate landscape, in the words of esports-industry experts and OGs.
Before game developers and non-endemic brands embraced esports, the pioneers of competitive gaming largely existed on the margins, relying on passion and volunteer work to keep tournaments running.
Mike Sepso, CEO of Vindex and co-founder of Major League Gaming: Some of the people I met for the first time in the corporate suite said, “I knew your name because I saw it on a cease-and-desist letter.” That’s how I’d characterize the difference. When esports really started, whether it was ESL [Electronic Sports League] or MLG [Major League Gaming], it was kind of people trying to do something that they wanted to participate in and institutionalize and commercialize, but none of us had ever worked in the video game industry before. So our expectations for how things should work were very different from the way that the studios and publishers thought of it. Keep in mind, early ESL and MLG events didn’t even have spectator passes, because nobody came to watch — it was just a tournament to play in.
Daniel Lee, tokenomics designer at Heroic Journey, former League of Legends general manager at Counter Logic Gaming, and a former top-100-ranked Super Smash Bros. Melee player: From a cultural standpoint, it was just about the love of the game. I think part of the nice thing of being really early into a space, where it’s not really high stakes, is that you can kind of just do whatever you want. We’d go to majors and have, like, 16 people in a hotel room. Sitting really packed behind a CRT [television] to see a player play, whereas there’s projectors now. We were all bootstrapping it; we didn’t really have much corporate interest.
Rod Breslau, pioneering esports journalist and consultant: It was all self-sufficient; that’s how everybody did stuff. There were some paid gigs, but you really did it for the love of the game — which was Quake, back then. Then GotFrag was created in North America, which was the main hub for Counter-Strike, then grew out to cover other games. That was really the first time in the West that you could get paid for esports journalism.
Jason Baker, managing director of Do Not Peek Entertainment: The early days were really built around you and your buddies traveling to an event, filling up the car full of your own personal computer equipment, and going to a LAN and playing at an event. It would be the bring-your-own-computer section of a LAN. It was like, “hey, everybody, we’re going to have a Return to Castle Wolfenstein tournament.” Sign-ups were on this bulletin board, or whatever, and you’d play this little thing. And you didn’t go there to play this game, but, “all right, I’ll play this.”
The early esports scene was glaringly white and male — though it still boasted its fair share of women, such as Heather Garozzo, who was a top-level Counter-Strike player before becoming an esports executive. But these days, it’s clear that misconceptions about the esports scene being a monolith are no longer true. Women and players of color abound in esports these days, and brands have responded by stepping up their marketing spend to reach the gaming audience.
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Heather Garozzo, vp of community and events at Dignitas: I always regret the fact that a lot of people say, “women aren’t as good as men,” or “women can’t compete in the top leagues.” I was in the top league, but no one really remembers that, because social media and streaming weren’t as big. Certainly, there are simply more women playing, there’s no doubt about that. It’s become more culturally accepted to be a gamer. I had a chat with my 10-year-old niece the other day; all of her friends are playing Valorant. And because there are more women in the spotlight, you feel more confident. Over the years, going to different events as an observer and having young women come up to me and start crying and hugging me — I didn’t really know how to react.
Sepso: There’s definitely more gender parity now. In the early days, in the Counter-Strike and Halo worlds, there were not a lot of women. Now, across the board, gaming is sort of non-gender-specific as an activity, so I think the fan bases are much more equitable.
Baker: The majority was always white teens, usually 16 through their early 20s — and I would still say that’s the majority. But there was lots of stuff in Texas and lots of groups coming from Southern California. You had lots of Latinos, lots of women at the events, either volunteering or helping run communities or just being players on teams. So I would say that women have always been part of the scene, and when people act like they don’t belong, that just seems so weird to me.
As the esports audience widened, esports organizations gradually pivoted their rosters from a hardcore focus on competition to a mix of competitive gamers, content creators and influencers. To those who have been in the industry for more than a few years, the word “esports” specifically describes high-level professional competition, often in one of the major franchised leagues — but to most non-endemic brand marketers, it’s a catch-all term for a range of entry points into the gaming community. These days, competing is not necessarily the easiest way to become a gaming influencer.
Garozzo: It’s not necessarily a bad thing, because when you look at the organizations that are the most successful, like 100 Thieves, they’re a lifestyle brand, in a sense, and their [competitive] players are in very little content because they simply don’t have the time. It’s incredibly demanding to be a professional player and stay on the top. So the creators give you a little more flexibility.
Sepso: The creator economy, in the gaming space, clearly grew out of esports. All of the first generation of people who were big creators — you know, Hector with OpTic, Nadeshot, Ninja. Those guys were all esports scene people. Maybe not the best competitors, but they moved quickly into making YouTube videos about gaming, and started in the esports scene. Now, most of the big esports teams have the biggest gaming creators in their portfolio too.
Lee: These days, the responsibility that you have as a top player to know more is substantially higher, and the amount of tech skill you need is substantially higher. The amount of time it takes, the amount of effort to keep up with everybody — substantially higher. Competition is a relative skill, right? You’re graded roughly by the skill level of your peers. And because there are so many more people playing, you just need to spend more time to be ahead of everybody else.
Jason Lake, CEO of Complexity: Competition will always be Complexity’s north star, but diversification is becoming increasingly more important in esports. Rather than sitting back with a dusty brand, we’re constantly exploring how we can push the envelope. Coming up to our 20-year anniversary, we’re continuing to expand the Complexity legacy with creators like TimTheTatman and Cloakzy.
As the industry continues to grow, esports companies are beginning to cast a wider net in search of funding — and coming under increasing scrutiny from both fans and investors alike. Some esports fans have been critical of esports companies that have received investments or sponsorships from crypto companies and entities such as the Saudi Arabian government.
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Garozzo: Years ago, you either had a buddy whose parents had a lot of money, and they funded it, or you found some individual sponsors, and then that went directly to the players. Obviously, there are a lot of VCs that are invested, so it’s not like the money [these days] is going directly from the sponsors into the players’ pockets. But I know there’s a lot of rich people making bets on esports, and that’s exciting. It can be scary, too, but more money is generally a good thing.
Jordan Fragen, journalist at Esports Insider: It’s a bit of a false premise to say that dark money or blood money is a new thing to esports. There’s always been very shady people involved in esports. I think Moscow 5 is probably the best example of this, where they got busted by the FBI for stealing peoples’ credit cards; it was just a money laundering scheme. But I think what’s changing is the amount and scale. Right now, obviously, the Saudis have sort of create a monopoly in esports with their ownership of FACEIT, of ESL and DreamHack. When you have all of the major tournament organizers, who are quote-unquote independent, being owned by the PIF, it creates a different tone and tenor to the industry.
Baker: ESL and Blast, they all take some very questionable money. But the 2007-2008 Counter-Strike stuff definitely had lots of questionable money, and even early Counter-Strike had lots of really interesting, questionable gambling money. So I would say it hasn’t changed, in that way — it’s always been like that. There’s the desire to have competitive gaming, but it’s not always easy to recoup your costs. So you’ve got to have people that are willing to take that risk. And sometimes, it’s ventures of, I wouldn’t say shady companies, but of questionable companies, some of them.
The post How esports grew up: An oral history appeared first on Digiday.
‘A whole new universe’: How Fortnite fits into Dragon Ball Z’s extended renaissance
Fortnite continues to be a testing ground for some of the most immersive digital stunts for marketers.
Just ask the marketers behind the English language premiere of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. To drum up support for the latest installment in the popular film franchise, Toei Animation turned to Epic Games’ Fortnite for a crossover that fans of both franchises have dreamed about for years. The end result, however, arguably defies even those lofty expectations.
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Sure, there were the usual cosmetic features that have come to define partnerships like this. Players could appear as the anime’s most popular characters, for example. Usually, that’s where partnerships stop: the characters look like they’re meant to, but don’t behave as they should. That’s not the case with this latest brand integration, which ran from August 18th to the 30th.
Players could fly around the Fortnite arena on the “Nimbus Cloud” used by the anime’s main character Goku. They also got to use his signature move — the “Kamehameha” — as a weapon against other players. Both moves could be combined together for those players who wanted to recreate the epic, fast-paced fights from the anime. If players completed specific challenges related to the anime, rewards could be unlocked.
The companies looked forward to the universe creating a “new segment of fans,” said Toei Animation director of global marketing Lisa Yamatoya, who added, “it was very important to us that we showcase some of the most iconic elements from the franchise, which included the Kamehameha.”
It’s all meant to add up to a level of interactivity designed to be so immersive that players forget it’s a promotion for a new film — a difficult task for any brand looking to get its IP in front of a hungry new audience. The exact financial agreement between the companies is not clear.
Epic Games doesn’t charge brands directly for this type of partnership. The company takes a chunk of the revenue share split, meaning the deal will still be massively profitable on Epic’s end.
“This is sort of like advertising but it doesn’t feel like advertising at all. It feels like you’re part of a story,” said Hon-Ming Gianotti, who works as a junior strategist at the marketing agency Media.Monks. “It’s showing us what it’s like to interact with a brand.”
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The approach seems to have worked. The film made over $30.8 million in 10 days at the box office in the U.S., putting it in the top five anime releases of all time.
Right now, Epic Games has more tools at its disposal than independent creators using Fortnite Creative. Building options in Fortnite Creative are growing, but they currently pale in comparison to what is offered by branded experiences in the main battle royale mode.
“The main game right now is designed for top-level partnerships and big brands. They are matching what Fortnite is in terms of size,” said Anne-Margot Rodde, who consults on major brand activations in the metaverse and Fortnite Creative for the Trailer Park Group, a marketing agency that works with major game studios and publishers.
While Fortnite’s battle royale mode is currently the main draw for both players and advertisers, that could change within the next 10 years. Indeed, partnerships like Dragon Ball Super are as much about promoting the brand in question as they are about promoting Fortnite. Each time a new brand activation happens within the battle royale mode, including the recent Destiny 2 characters and NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes, thousands of videos of those characters pop up over social media. Videos of the Kamehahameha created a cultural touch point only hours after the collaboration launched.
Naturally, Epic has become assertive over how these partnerships are realized and the developer has inadvertently established a reputation as being difficult to work with. It can be incredibly picky over what companies it chooses to partner with despite the variety of brands of all types, shapes and sizes that have tried to reach its unique market. An appearance within Fortnite battle royale can be an opportunity to help any brand get in front of one of the biggest audiences in gaming.
“The stakes are high,” said Lewis Smithingham, svp of innovation at Media.Monks. “It’s not about creating popups. It’s about creating theme parks. If you come in with a poser way then people are going to do horrible things with your brand.”
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How a DTC orthotics brand is advertising to people ‘while they’re walking’ to get in front of them ‘when they feel foot pain’
Fulton, a direct-to-consumer orthotics brand, is aiming to educate younger consumers and boost brand awareness with ads on trash cans, fliers with pull tabs posted throughout New York City.
The guerilla-marketing efforts, which are in addition to the traditional digital and social ads that up-and-coming DTC brands lean on, are meant to help the one-year-old brand stand out to younger consumers who may not think about a need for orthotics.
The trash can ads and fliers posted throughout the city don’t pitch the Fulton brand directly. Instead, they’re meant to get people thinking about why they’re in pain while walking with messages like, “cool shoes but they’re killing you” and ask consumers to visit shoessuck.com, which then redirects to the brand’s website.
“We want to be advertising to people [where they will see it] while they’re walking because that’s when they feel the foot pain,” said Libie Motchan, co-founder of Fulton, adding that the brand is aiming to educate consumers on the need for arch support as well as boost brand awareness with the effort. “We’re still so young. We’re learning about our customers, learning about the pain points of customers.”
With the addition of the trash can ads OOH advertising represents roughly 15-20% of the brand’s ad budget this month. Previously posting fliers would represent around 5% of the brand’s monthly ad budget. The majority of the ad budget — Fulton spends roughly $35,000 per month on advertising — is dedicated to Facebook and Instagram as well as Google, noted Motchan. The brand also has a presence on TikTok, but it is leaning on organic content there.
“We do the traditional paid social, paid search,” said Motchan. “We’re also very much building out SEO and blog content. There’s a lack of information around the importance of arch support. [We hope to] become a modern hub of accessible information to explain why arch support is more important.”
Aside from educating consumers about the necessity of arch support and the potential relief from back pain by using said support, Fulton is also looking to stand out and appeal to consumers seeking a more sustainable orthotics brand as it is made of cork rather than gels and foams of other brands.
“We want to bring new people into the category,” said Motchan, adding that half of the company’s customers have never worn insoles and that insole marketing typically focuses on specific demographics like athletes, hikers and older folks. “There’s an opportunity to make an insole for everyone to wear everyday.”
Boosting brand awareness with a mass approach can be difficult and expensive for brands today. “For direct-to-consumer brands in today’s market with really expensive digital marketing costs you need to be tailored and targeted,” said Eunice Shin, head of DTC for brand consultancy Prophet. “Rather than trying to boil the ocean, having a more refined marketing approach is better to go after them.”
The brand has started to focus on specific communities, per Motchan, as she combs Reddit forums where people post about foot pain, back pain and knee pain. Motchan uses an automated tool to send messages on Reddit to different communities of people who are on their feet all day – Starbucks baristas, USPS workers, Trader Joe’s employees – who are seeking a solution for a pain point online.
“I’ve seen people recommending Fulton to people without me doing it,” said Motchan of reading the Reddit forums on foot pain. “That’s the most validating thing.”
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