 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, the show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Katharine Norr. Today we're talking about the book of eSports with me today is William Collis, author and eSports team, Oxygen co-founder. Welcome William. Hi. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast or the show. It's a pleasure to be here and excited to talk about the book and sort of what I've done in eSports and share, share hopefully some useful, useful knowledge with the viewers and listeners. So William, what's so exciting about eSports for people who are not really that familiar with it? Oh, oh my gosh, I mean eSports are what's not exciting about it. I mean, there's so much to love about the space. I mean, so first of all, you know, I think there's, there's the pragmatic and there's the sort of aspirational, the pragmatic like you should care because eSports is just a humongous industry. You know, if you include the publisher revenues in this thing, it's about a $27 billion industry that didn't exist, you know, even or didn't really exist in a form this big in this advanced even, you know, 10 years ago, right? So you have, you know, this massive new market opportunity that some of the biggest and most leading companies in the world like Facebook, Google, Microsoft are all investing in. So from a pragmatic perspective is someone just be interested about like what's happening in the world today and maybe business opportunities or personal opportunities. It's huge, right? And it's important. And then from a more aspirational perspective, you know, I personally believe this is sort of the future of sports and maybe even the future of human competition, right? As we increasingly, as our lives become more and more digitized, as technology plays a bigger role in every moment of every day, I think we're more open to ideas of digital skill being as valuable and maybe even more valuable than traditional physical skill. And I think certainly when you think of all the benefits of these sports and all the ways it might level the playing field, you know, I think it certainly at least has a very prominent place in the future of human competition. If not, like I said, the future of the whole thing. So there's tons of reasons to care about the space. Before we move on too long, I want to show you the trailer of the book of eSports. I don't know how anyone could not get excited about that. Pretty fun trailer, right? What led you to write a book about eSports? Oh, man. Well, you know, so I should say, I mean, I've been involved in the space for a while now, you know, in almost an entrepreneur capacity. So I, I, you know, was coming and going in my background. So I went a couple, man, a long time ago and I went to Harvard Business School, leaving that I got involved in the entertainment space by working at Hasbro. And as a result of seeing what was happening at Hasbro and toy in the interactive properties they had there, I really, you know, saw that there was an explosion of interest in competitive gaming. And at the same time, I've been like a super hardcore lifelong gamer. I mean, I've been playing, you know, since the original gold cartridge Zelda on Nintendo. And so it's a massive area of personal interest for me. And so when I saw just how big and what I thought might happen to space, I knew I had to get involved. And so I started by raising venture capital. Actually, for my first company, Gamer Sensei, that was a coaching platform, we raised about six million for that. And that really kind of got me going in the space as sort of an owner operator. And so today, I actually sold Gamer Sensei today, I'm more involved in something called Oxygen, which is a protein land center chain and data analytics company. There's a lot of cool stuff there. But as a result of having some of the success, I was actually asked to teach at Becker College, which is very well known if you're in game design, it's one of the top schools in the world for sort of game design. And they were putting together an eSports course and they said, Hey, we don't really know anyone who can teach this. Do you want to give it a shot? And I harbor fantasies of being a college professor. Like, I think it's like my dream to sort of retire to some beautiful, like small seaside town in the liberal arts world and talk about philosophy old as I said, sure, like, I'll do it. It can be fun. And I jumped in and I realized I had made a terrible, terrible mistake because I assumed there would be all of these great things written about eSports to leverage and assign, you know, just like you would do a comics fiction course or a media studies course, there's lots of great and there was nothing like there was nothing. And so as a result of building this course from back for Becker and then subsequently other courses and ultimately helping them to design what became, I believe, the first accredited major in the US for eSports, I found myself basically writing a book and I thought, well, I should just write a book. And so that ended up becoming the book of eSports. It is not a textbook. I should say it's very much a general interest in nonfiction work. It's a really fun read. I didn't want to write something that would be like boring or painful, but it grew out of me just realizing there was very little on space and wanting something that actually set some ground rules and was useful to lead a classroom discussion or catalyze interested people in learning more about gaming. Now, will you use the book as the textbook for your class? Yeah, absolutely. So and we've had a phenomenal, you know, the book hasn't launched yet, but thank you so much on the trailer. We've had a phenomenal level of interest in the book of eSports across universities because there isn't sort of really something that has frameworks or structures for discussions. And one of the big contributions I hope I made with the book, in addition to writing something that's fun to read, is it actually put some structure around the eSports space. It has explanations for why things got so quick, so big, excuse me, it has explanations for why things got so big so quickly. It has explanations for why some games succeed and others fail and, you know, things like that. And that was sort of missing from the space. And so as a result, yeah, it's definitely, I think there's about two dozen colleges at this point now that are going to use the book in some capacity in the U.S. And that's a pretty strong adoption for something that is coming out in the next few days. So we're pretty excited. Well, you know, when we talk about getting so big so quickly, what, why don't you tell us, you know, how big eSports has gotten and what that means for our society? Yeah, I mean, it's really big. I mean, some might say it's even gotten too big, too fast, but, you know, that's not for debate. But so just go some numbers that I like. So I already shared the fancy top line number, $27 billion. Now, again, that number includes the publisher revenues, so the actual people who are making the eSports games. That's the vast majority of revenues in the space today, but still a humongous industry. And then to put that in perspective, the biggest eSport last year, I would define as Fortnite. And that did about $1.9 billion in revenues in that single title alone. So just a huge, huge industry, right? Then within it, but again, it's not just an industry of people playing games. There's actually a sport that's built up around this. So you can have pro teams. You can buy franchise slots and leagues, right? And those things are valuable, too. A top pro team gets valuations between three to $400 million today. And if you compare that to a traditional sports team that might be valued, say, in the $2 to $5 billion range, people think there's still a lot of growth still on eSports teams. If you look at the cost of franchising, if you want to buy into the Overwatch League or Call of Duty League or things like that, you're talking between $25 to $50 million, just for the rights to compete in a game. And that's not to mention player bases or viewership, where top games will literally have 100 million plus monthly active players. I mean, so these are just huge communities. So scale-wise, it's just insane. I mean, the mind boggles at how big it is. And again, sort of like no one was really talking about this 10 years ago. And eSports didn't come out of nowhere. There were factors, there were trends. This is steady growth. But it's definitely true that recently the space is catalyzed in a big way. Now, your book really describes what it is and the history. And what I think part of the value of the book is that for those people who want to get into this space as advertisers or in some other means that this book can provide that background. Is that true? Yeah, I mean, that would be my hope, right? I think the book in my mind had sort of three audiences, right? And I mean, hopefully you guys can read it, dear viewers, and tell me if you think it's met those, the audience I hope to reach. But one is, I did want some sort of like, I would call it the general interest business reader. I wanted somebody who'd seen these numbers, who kept on seeing it pop up on Jim Kramer's Mad Money or in the Wall Street Journal and say to themselves, what's going on? I wanted a book that would answer questions in a way that a business owner or a business, somebody involved that could actually make decisions or have some knowledge around. That was one more. Another market I really wanted was parents, right? I wanted people who had their kids playing these games all the time. And maybe even saying I wanted to go pro or the child saying I wanted to vote my life in video games or I want to make a career here. And I wanted to explain to that audience, there is something here. There's a business on this other side and there are real paths you can have and you can be successful in esports without just being really good at games. There's actually a whole industry underneath this. So I wanted to kind of illuminate that. And then the third audience is for gamers themselves. And look, this book is by no means a strategy guide for League of Legends, right? It doesn't give you tips on how to play games better. But I do hope for people who love games like myself, it illuminates the view of the space. It creates a wider perspective. It puts companies like Activision Blizzard or Riot Games or Valve that you might love anyway. It puts them in a new light because it explains how they came into being and where they're going. And hopefully the book reaches and in some ways speaks to all of those different readers. Terrific. And what's your game of choice? Oh my God, I'm gonna be judged for this if I say so. My favorite esport of all time is not a very popular esport. It's Heroes of the Storm, which is actually touched in the book as the esport that lost, right? Because if you know anything, if you know something about esports, you know one of the biggest genres is called a MOBA or a massive online battle arena. And within that genre, there are two pretty clear winners. There's League of Legends, which I'm sure many viewers will have heard of. And Dota, which often frequently makes the press as the highest priced esport. In fact, it was in the news today, I think, because the invitational pricing just crossed 30 million and the total hasn't even been set yet. So, and those games have really locked up and are considered massive tier one esports and huge successes and teams in those spaces are worth hundreds of millions. Heroes of the Storm was created by Activision Blizzard, which is arguably one of the largest and most important games publishers in the space today. And it did not succeed. It had its esports scene killed and it's kind of a lesson about the difficulty of addressing entrenched competitors in the space. And actually for me, it was formative in writing the book because I think it's a very good game and it didn't do very well, right? Or at least it didn't succeed like it should have. And that was probably part of my quest in, you know, the book has this framework I've mentioned that predicts the success of games. And part of the question I wanted to answer when I was investigating that myself is, why do good games fail, right? Why, because then I'm sure listeners who play games will have a favorite that they think didn't make it or was underappreciated. And one of the things I hope the book addresses is it shows it's more than game quality that drives success. There's a lot of business and market factors that have to work as well behind the title. Do you have a nickname, an esports nickname? You know, it's a great question. I have an industry nickname. People call me the professor because they say I'm somewhat academic. So, you know, I have a podcast I do with my close friend and investor, Paul DeWalibi. That's the nickname I go in there. I wish I could say I had a cool gamer name, but it's just the professor, which is pretty boring, but I like it, so. No, I think that's a fantastic gamer name. And so being the professor, I'm thinking that if I attended one of your classes, that I would have so much fun. I hope you would. No. So, in your classes, is there anything interactive or do you play any games as part of your assignments? You know, like, this is, I think, one of the challenges with studying esports, right, is if you're doing it in a classroom setting, most of the students are there because they like games, right? Let's be honest, like, just like if you're gonna take comics as fiction course, you probably like to read comics, or at least have read a few, right? Most people, and by the way, this is just true in general, about 50% of college-age students, boys and girls play games, right? So it's just generally true of college audiences, but it's particularly true of students that opt in or self-select into an esports class. So, you know, yeah, you definitely wanna do assignments that are fun and you try to incorporate the games where you can, but the students are playing them anyway. That, in my experience, isn't the important thing to get kids or students to do. The important thing to do in the type of interactivity I try to encourage in the classroom is choice and agency, because the reality is so much of the esports ecosystem is still forming. And there are so many big puzzles unsolved, right? Like, there are real questions still today about what business models will work, where will the value capture lie between publishers, teams, ornament operators, you know, gaming distribution platforms, they're real fundamental questions. And so I like to try to give my students interactivity through agency, and through that, that's usually like a semester-long project. So the favorite thing I do is there's actually a class I teach where they basically run their own team. And every, and it's a fake team, you know, but they get to pick the games it's in, they start with a set amount of money, it's imaginary money. But then every class, there's a problem. And the class is all about how do they choose for their team to fix that problem? And of course, the problems are selected to teach you about the industry, like the power of franchising, the risks of publisher, you know, publisher leverage, et cetera. But that's what I like to do. Sure, and is there any, are there any changes that you're seeing with COVID-19 and eSports? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. So it's difficult because, you know, I think a lot of times gaming and eSports gets presented in the news media right now is like, it's almost the panacea to COVID because so much of it can take place online and the industry is boomed. If you look at the player numbers for these games, some of them are up 60%. You know, and games companies are posting, I think Ubisoft just yesterday, one of the big games companies post, I think like their record breaking, you know, Q2 revenues. And it's definitely because people are stuck at home and playing games more. So part of the industry has done very well. That being said, it's by no means been good for the industry because a lot of the major tournaments, events, competitions, you know, all of that stuff, just like it would shut down for traditional industries, it shut down for traditional sports, it shut down for eSports as well. I think the difference is because eSports is virtual, it's a, or has a virtual component, it's able to adapt. So, you know, a good example I'll give is my protein oxygen is in the Rainbow Six Siege League, which is one of the, you know, most popular first-person shooters. And that league is set up in Las Vegas and there's supposed to be lots of in-person production in Las Vegas. We can't really do that because of COVID, but we're still able to have the tournaments in games because people can play online. So it's been a hiccup, right? It's been a challenge. It's maybe caused us to rethink how we do some things, but fundamentally we're still able to compete in a way that, for example, Major League Baseball wasn't until just a few days ago. And what is it like to be an owner of a team? It's really fun. I don't know. I mean, it's like, you know, I mean, it's unfortunately a real business, you know? Like, I mean, there really is, you know, like anything you do in the space, you're in it to make, you know, it's a for-profit enterprise, you're in it to make money, right? You're believing that you can take victories and performance and monetize the talent that you have through sponsorships and pricing and all sorts of things, you know, better than the competition, right? So it's definitely a business. It's weird because, you know, as much as you get into teams because you love games and you want kind of the thrill of seeing your own squads compete, it's harder because I find I enjoy competitions less now because I know that there's business outcomes riding on it. But, you know, in many ways, it's not, you know, I imagine for a more casual view, it's not that different from running a traditional sports team, right? Like you still have housing and logistics for players, you still sign contracts, you still negotiate with agents, you still try to balance roster compositions, right? You still do all of the things that you would do to assemble an NBA team or a baseball team. You're just doing it for video games instead of, you know, soccer. And when you're talking, oh, okay. Let me see what our viewer asked, okay? Recently, internet personality Joe Rogan said that gaming is a useless skill. How can we get rid of this negative connotation of gamers? What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, the good news is, and I don't know if this is necessary, but like, I think, like, well, first of all, we should address is gaming a useless skill? And I'm not quite sure. I think some of his words were taken a little out of context, but it's like gaming isn't useless, just like reading a book isn't useless or watching a movie isn't useless, right? Like, you know, there's real value. First of all, I'm a utilitarian. So there's real value just generated from the pleasure of something brings you, right? Like it's not a waste of time to read a book if you enjoyed a book. And games certainly bring joy to literally billions, I mean, not even hundreds of millions, billions of people around the globe. But the bigger thing, and I truly believe this is, you know, like we don't say basketball is a waste of time. We don't say baseball is a waste of time, but it's somewhat arbitrary. Like why should it be a meaningful skill that you can shoot a ball through a net or swing a stick at a ball moving really fast, right? Like we assign value to those things as a society for a lot of different reasons, but largely because we've just chosen to assign value to it. And I would argue why can't we assign those value to digital things, particularly when our society is digitizing. But I would say the good news the viewer had asked, you know, how do we reform the stereotype? I think it's being reformed just from the mainstream element of gaming. You know, you can imagine when movies first came out or television first came out, you know, people worried about it. And there's still a stigma associated with people who watch too much TV or too many movies, but by and large, it's just so normalized. You're not surprised to hear somebody watch his movies. Everybody watches movies. That's where we're heading with gaming. Sure. And what about the parent who their child plays a lot of video games and they talk about in the child's potential for getting a scholarship to college or making gaming a career? Yeah, yeah. You know, and this is tricky. I would actually talk about this a little bit in the book. There's almost a chapter for parents in the book, which talks about one pro gamer's experience, you know, and helping them get into college as well as there's actually a chapter about ecology sports. But the bottom line is, look, you can believe it or not, you can get full ride scholarships today to very good schools by being good at games because many schools have launched varsity e-sports programs, right? So literally just like you can go to play Div1 football, you can go to play top tier e-sports. So there really is a market for this in higher education. The other thing I'd say is, look, these games, they're not just about getting good at clicking and aiming with a mouse. They teach you things like teamwork, leadership, decision making. So there's real meaningful, you know, human talent that's being cultivated in these titles, not just sort of like, you know, keyboard and mouse skills. That's certainly a part of it, but it's more than that. So, you know, to a parent who has their kid playing a lot of games and might want to do something with it, like anything else, you have to be careful the kid's not doing it too, too much, right? But there's real opportunities at the end of the rainbow here. Still new, the space is still growing, but it's growing very quickly. And it's definitely something like, I'm a father, I have two kids at home. It's definitely something I'm excited, like I'm excited to share gaming with my kids, just like I think my parents were excited to share their favorite movies with me. And the last show that I had, I interviewed Major General Frank Mooth about esports and army and army recruiting and what skills that are used in esports like eye-hand coordination, teamwork, quick thinking, that those, how those translate into, you know, military operation. And, you know, it's kind of interesting because I think of those skills would also translate well into ordinary, you know, non-military business. Would you agree? Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I actually, I don't know General Mooth well, but I've had the pleasure of speaking with him as well. I mean, it's incredible to see the US military so invested in the space. And, you know, I think it shows you that the military takes it seriously. That's just another proof point for how far gaming has come. In terms of if the military sees skills development in esports, do those same skills apply for business? Yeah, absolutely, right? I mean, look, at the end of the day, if you're playing League of Legends and you have to wrangle four of your friends together every night, you have to coordinate their hero decisions, you have to synchronize their movements on the map, you have to make split second calls that are tough, razor-line calls, convince people to follow your lead, right? Rally your team's sparrits when they've taken a big loss, but it's time for the next game. Like all those are meaningful things, not to mention the fact that you're executing them all digitally online. So you're doing them through communication mediums and tools like Zoom, right? Which I think are probably more relevant than ever to the corporate world today. Okay, and so can you tell me a little bit more about your founding of Oxygen and Gamer Sensei? Yeah, yeah, so they're different companies. So I mean, Gamer Sensei is, maybe I'll do that one first, I'll go on chronological order. So with Gamer Sensei, that was, you know, basically, I am not a very good gamer. Like to be really honest with you, I love games, I'm not very good. And I had a personal experience, which I think is a good way for people to find businesses to start. I had a personal experience, which is I wanted somebody who was better to teach me, and I thought just like you could get a tennis coach or a basketball coach or a piano teacher, I thought I will go get a gaming coach. These must exist. And believe it or not, back when Gamer Sensei was getting formed, they really didn't. There were a couple of message boards and things, but there was no proper business where I could log in, select a game and get matched and recommended with people who would be good for my skill level and my abilities. And so that led to the formation of Gamer Sensei, you know, the capital raises around that. And ultimately, I think a really successful business that's still around today and doing very, very well. I mean, you can visit it right now if you want to get a coach. If you're a League of Legends guy and you want to play, you can get a coach on that website. Oxygen is a little bit different because Oxygen is, I think, glad of me being a little bit more of a sophisticated entrepreneur and recognizing that you can build complementary business verticals at the same time. So Oxygen started as a, or Oxygen started my path into Oxygen, I should say, started with a business I had called Genji, which did data analytics for publishers. So it worked with a lot of the big publishers to do analysis and talent rankings for the games. And it also had a protein component that we actually used like a laboratory for our data analytics. And because data analytics were good, the publishers kept hiring us, the team kept doing well, and we had opportunities for expansion. And ultimately those expansions came from a series of mergers and acquisitions that we did that positioned us to have a very large protein which got rebranded to Oxygen, hence why we call it Oxygen today. The data analytics business, which is still there is Genji, and a chain of land centers throughout the American Northeast called Helix, which is in locations that viewers might know. Like if you go to Patriot Place, where the Patriots play, the football team, our land center is there. We've built that to be like the marquee location for Massachusetts in conjunction with the traditional sports team. And that business is very diversified, right? It has a retail component in terms of the centers. It has an analytics component for B2B sales and it has the team for B2C. But all of these things work together and I can talk about why if people are interested, but ultimately it's a little bit more of a sophisticated business that I think a second timer and more experienced entrepreneur can do because you say you want diversity, you want choice. You wanna be able to flex into some things that work and like lean a little away from things that aren't working right now but come back to them when they're ready to go and sell. Yeah, but most viewers would know oxygen for our pro team because we're very strong in Hearthstone, Rainbow Six Siege and Rocket League. Probably in the top three teams in the world for all those games. Okay, and we wanna end by just telling people how they can get your book and when it's gonna be released. Yeah, so the book releases next Tuesday, August 4th. It's really easy to find. You can get it on amazon.com. It is available everywhere, right? So it's on Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, all the other indie books, all the other independent retailers you might want, but I recommend going to amazon.com, typing in Book of Esports, looking for that cover and my shining face, I guess. I don't know, you'll see my author photo somewhere. Yeah, and seriously, I mean, look, I worked really hard on this. I think I have some experience in the space. I don't think there's anything like it in terms of an overview and a structure and really helping share my passion for gaming with a more general audience. So please check it out. It's definitely worth a read. Fantastic, and I pre-ordered it and I hope all of our audience will. And William, thank you for joining us today. And in two weeks, my guest will be Esports attorney, AJ Jameel, we'll see you then.