 What's up, everybody? I'm the Mangus. You are awesome, and welcome to this discussion about eSports. I've got a couple gentlemen here to help me out today, starting with Mr. Fancy Pants, a last-minute substitution. How you doing, Fancy? I'm great. How are you? Good, good, good. Just tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit of background. Great. So, I'm the producer at Project Samina, and on this topic, I have been a competitive gamer for, oh, God, close to 20 years now. And I was a former tournament organizer and community moderator for our local fighting game community scene. All right, Owen. And also joining us from Strange Matter Studios, the guys that are making fault is Ryan Red. Hello, everybody. Nice to be here. Thank you again, Mangus. As you guys might know, I'm the community manager for Strange Matter Studios. I also will be the eSports and organizer for all of the eSports events. I'm basically the main organizer for all of that. And I do a couple of the little things here and there, but mainly I'm the community manager for now. Right on, right on. So, before we get any further, I, of course, have my own background to display. You know, I always throw a little bit of background up behind us while we're talking, just to have something pretty to look at. But I don't have anything for Gigantic, so I contacted a fail-co-punch from Project Samina, and she was gracious enough to allow me to use some of her content, so that'll be spliced in throughout. If you want to check her out, I will link her YouTube channel in the video description below. So, let's get on with this. Let's talk about eSports and their effect on these projects, and how they could affect these projects. eSports is, it's been growing like 30% year by year. I pulled a couple numbers here. So, it's expected by 2020 that it'll be 557 million people that are watching eSports in like billions of hours, almost a billion dollars in revenue by 2020. Last, in 2018, it was 906 million, I believe. So, it's a huge thing. It's something that a lot of people are trying to get into, but what I kind of wanted to discuss is, do you guys think that it is necessary for these new games to have an eSports scene to survive, or is it just kind of a nice-to-have thing? Ryan, what are your thoughts? I mean, a lot of people might look at it as something that's just nice to have, but with how eSports is today, like you just said, the growth is insane, the revenue that they all receive is insane. I mean, look at League of Legends. They had over 100 million people tuned in to the World Championships, and I believe the Super Bowl is only about 90 million. So, it kind of tells me. Yeah, I think it was about 94, 95 million, which is kind of insane when you look at it like that. I mean, anybody can be a champion in eSports. It's something that's just amazing, and it just keeps growing. And because of that growth and the fact that that's kind of the current mindset for a lot of people with it being everywhere, I believe that it is definitely a good thing for games to get into, or these games that are worthy of a comp scene. Otherwise, you just kind of get sort of a stale, slow scene, which isn't the most enjoyable thing. I won't name any games, but yeah, I believe it's something that's very important. It's also incredibly hype, which just gets spread by everybody. Some background audio. Yeah, where that's where I live. Okay, all right. Yeah, it's definitely something, I think, that's crucial. In today's scene, anyway, obviously a long time ago, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But with the growth that we've been seeing, I mean, just why wouldn't you? If you had the product, why wouldn't you? Now, Fancy, what's your guys' stance on eSports? Our stance is that, okay, so there's like eSports and there's competitive and I could draw a distinction there from like eSports as the tournament spectacle that focuses on ad revenue as it's like primary means of income and then there are competitive scenes that are about communities getting together and playing the game to get better at it. And in an ideal world, those two go hand in hand. And I think that that's what you've been talking about, Ryan, with a product that is worthy of having an eSports scene. As a fighting game player, I think that a competitive scene is absolutely vital because without, in a competitive game, without a scene, community, whatever you want to call it, of people who are trying to improve for the sake of enjoying the game and pushing each other to get better. The game, no matter how deep and complex it is, will get stale because people aren't pushing themselves to get better. And in terms of the eSports tournament sports advertising spectacle, I think that once you reach a certain threshold of player base, it's absolutely necessary, but I think that there are a lot of cases where it can do more harm than good to try and force a game into that spotlight. Yeah, I can understand that for sure. I think you have to get it established first. You have to have some sort of competitive base in the game and it needs to have your band phase and it has to have some sort of ranked mode because that's a big part of eSports is the band phase and that's, you know, there are players out there that are known specifically for their pick band strategies. So I think that needs to be part of a game before you can even think about moving on to any kind of eSports. I mean, that's just my opinion. I'm no expert on the subject at all. That's why I got you guys here. What do you guys think, Ryan? I completely agree. I mean, that's part of the thing that makes it viable. You need to be at a place where your game essentially doesn't have any... I'm trying to think of the best way to word it. Essentially, if there's too many cheeses, for instance, and you're able to easily cheese and it's basically just who knows the better cheese. So essentially it needs to be properly balanced and as you said, picking bands is essential for sure. It's something that's in pretty much all of the big MOBAs anyway. So I'm getting a bunch of DMs at the same time and I'm trying to talk, so I'll pass it off to Mr. Fancy-Pence here. Yeah, I personally, I completely agree. I've heard arguments for a game should try to be so perfectly balanced that bands are not necessary because avenues to beat whatever strategy are presenting themselves should always be available. And I think that that's great in a perfect world. And as soon as someone shows me a game that is so balanced that that's not necessary in a team setting, I'll believe that it's possible. Yeah, I don't think that'll ever happen. Yeah. Personally, I think it adds a lot of depth of strategy and it allows for in the deep tournament meta where you're playing 20 games over a couple of days against a series of opponents. You can have a guy who's just on a hot streak with a certain character and tournaments aren't about who's best, it's just about who's best that day. And so if you can identify when the opposing team has a star support that's just making all the plays or a star carry whatever position game structure you have, you know, if you have somebody that is just really driving on a certain character, being able to ban them out is a really it's an important, it's an important level of the tournament strategy in addition to the larger strategy because you can play against not only characters but against people and that's what ultimately pro metas are. It's just whichever characters the pros feel most like they're going to win on. I think one of the sort of the hidden benefits of esports and having a good esports scene and having something for everybody to watch is games no longer come with like the little booklets, you know, like when we were kids, you know, your little booklet explained everything that that's not a thing anymore. There's lots of stuff to learn that you have to learn by either just experiencing it or watching other people play or learning it during the game. And if I think the best way to do that is to watch other people do it, for example, in Paragon, I played with people like that had been playing for like a year in Paragon and didn't know that you could take Gideon's portal. Like that's like a basic thing that just people just didn't know. So by the way, I think that's a great idea. You guys should do that as like a founder's pack offer a little booklet. But yeah, that I think that education aspect is there, you know, learning, you know, times for camp sponnings and I guess for gigantic like the best way to place your summons or where you know what to summon, where and when and that's a lot of information that can be gained just by watching professional play. There is a downside to it as well though is you get players that will watch these professional players that are practiced and coordinated and have these strats that work really well for them. We'll come into a quick match game with people that they've never met before in their life and expect everyone to execute that professional strategy perfectly. So there is a little bit of toxicity. So there's education and toxicity present. If when you do introduce esports to to the game fancy any thoughts on that? I I really like what you had to say about. Having a having a visible competitive scene helping get people into a game. One of the one of the ways that I got back into competitive well got back into MOBAs after not playing for years was I started watching pro Dota games and following with the commentary that came along with it and I think having somebody who is practiced at delivering what is happening in the game and why it works is really valuable for getting people who don't understand the depth of the game to start getting excited about it. And when you get people who don't play a game excited about a game. That's what's going to get them to try it out. Yeah, very true. Ryan any thoughts I've always believed that like content like that is all part of the community and something I love so much like when you for instance during the holiday when I got to come online and type fault into twitch and just see all of these people streaming it and giving out information is just an amazing feeling and it's why we have for information gathering for the people who don't really know much about fault. We have our partners on twitch YouTube and mixer and they kind of they they're really helpful people who produce a lot of content whether it just be hype content or actual informational videos. But we are very community forward and we want to be able to give everybody as much information as we can. That booklet idea is still ringing around in the back of my head. You just get a little you know tutorial book. That'd be great. I miss the days of single player gaming. I mean there's still some of them that are doing pretty good. But I mean eSports and online gaming in general is just kind of taken over. Yeah. Now there are some negative aspects to it. Such as people devoting so much time to the game that it's a detriment to their health. You know Carbontonal syndrome you have examples of people that play the game until they die like people died playing World of Warcraft trying to get world firsts and stuff like that. Do you think it's the responsibility of the studio or the company to step in and try and take measures like maybe put information out there you know warning against that sort of thing you know tell telling people to maybe take a step back for a while and you're you're not going to become a competitive player overnight you know just take it easy. You guys think that you have there there's any responsibility either either legally or morally there Ryan. Legally I couldn't say for sure but I feel like I definitely know that there's been scientific cases of gaming addiction that have been pretty detrimental to some people's early lives and that's when you're doing most of your growing and when you're just sitting in a chair hunched over for all of your growing period it's not the best shape for you to be and once you reach adulthood I can have some pretty bad effects on you. So I agree that it's definitely it's not to mention eye strain and everything else. I definitely agree that it's something that people should know about and it's hard to say be warned about but it is something they should be warned about if they are just hurting through the pain not using the washroom not eating because they're just grinding the next match after match. I mean I've been guilty of that myself. I was a big RPG player and I can't tell you how many days I wasted grinding a raid boss with people. Yeah. As far as legally as I said I'm not too sure but I definitely think it is something that should be said whether it be a little in-game thing after you've been grinding for hours on end like some have done in the past. Lots of games kind of tell you once you've saved for like your tenth time in the past like six hours. Maybe you should take a break. Legally I wouldn't know but definitely I think it's something that we should put out there. Is any thoughts. I absolutely agree like you know almost everything is fine in moderation and gaming is no exception and it can be really hard on a person mentally physically emotionally to sink hours and hours and hours into a pastime that isn't necessarily feeding them and the idea that anyone can make it as a pro it's really it's really awesome and it's really great to see people live that dream but I think it's really important for game developers and advertisers to point out the the the people that make it often get there because they have healthy habits and because they have supportive families and they have the opportunity to put that much time into a game with a growth mindset and do what it takes to reach that level of play because it's not easy and your body can only maintain that level of action per minute with your mouse hand for so many years before you kind of slow down and those seconds matter as all the game all the like advertisements for new video cards tell us and yeah I think I'm I think I'm pretty much just going to rephrase what Ryan said at this point so I'm going to say yes I agree that it is morally important for people to be aware of what their games are doing with the rest of their lives I like that you you mentioned advertisers I didn't need to think of that but like are gonna are going to magically designed I could not say that right cans of Mountain Dew I don't think like that always cracks me up that like these loaded up monster energy drinks are marketed so hard to gamers is like if anybody doesn't need a giant can of sugar and carbs it's somebody that's sitting there playing a game for hours you know that's such a weird thing to me I am however going to take a hard left turn on this I don't think I think it's nice if a company does do something to you know warn and take a little bit of responsibility for the health of their audience I don't think that they are morally obligated to do so though I think if somebody dies because they're dehydrated from playing a game for 48 hours then they've probably never had sex and they never will now that's Darwin's way of weeding out those people out we don't need them polluting our gene pool that's that's my stance on that but yeah I hear you shouldn't be something that we need to do you should know yeah you should be you know but you're if you're close to dehydrating to the point of like falling off your chair you shouldn't be grip to your most in keyboard people do it though it's so weird but yeah I think that's pretty much it on the topic of final thoughts Ryan you got any final thoughts is this where I plug my soundcloud go for it basically the only final thoughts really have is I cannot wait until fall really gets to an eSports scene obviously we need to get some balancing out of the way and some other stuff going we might have some little scrim events between past pros but it's definitely something I'm incredibly excited for I cannot wait until we're there and the eSports community starts thriving I'm sitting on the edge of my seat screaming at my screen for somebody to you know land that auto or get that last done but I don't know the community's just been so amazing and overwhelming I'm sure that when eSports comes around it's going to be a great time and I can't wait for it same here man fancy what you said you basically said it perfectly like the project stamina community have been really fantastic our early play tests have been super fun and there are still a lot of mechanics that we're looking forward to adding to those systems and I can't wait to see people building strats and executing them and showing me just how like just how bad I am at this game that I made compared to them because that's that's really what it's all about is like making something that somebody likes so much that they beat you at it yeah you mentioned plugs you can go ahead and plug plug it plug away oh no I was just I was just joking around if you want to plug head on over to play fault dot com check out strange underscore underscore matter on Twitter we have all of our new content popping out all over the place you can see it on YouTube strange matter studios you can join the discord which I might be able to ask man goose to pop link below of course thank you very much sir but yeah that's about all I really have to plug fancy all right you can catch project stamina at project stamina dot com you can find links to all of our social media at the top are the website and on the bottom of the website is a sign up for our mailing list which will have information about our upcoming alpha sent to you at an undisclosed date right on so yeah that's going to wrap it up I really appreciate you guys coming out it's been a been an interesting topic of conversation you guys open my eyes to a couple different things which I always appreciate but for now this is the man who's signing off you guys have a good one man