Mentioned in this article Teams: SK Gaming Games: Vainglory

Super Evil Megacorp, and its smash hit Vainglory, had a major breakthrough this week with the arrival of Team SoloMid onto its pro scene. The game, which simplifies MOBA elements into a mobile-sized package, has taken off and proven popular as an esports and streaming title, receiving over 20 million stream views in 2015.

We sat down with Kristian Segerstrale, COO and Executive Director of Vainglory, to talk about the business of making an esport for the touchscreen.

Kristian, thanks for agreeing to this interview. Could you please give a little background on the company. Any big projects before Vainglory? What led to the creation of a mobile esport?

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]We didn’t try to “create” an esport.[/perfectpullquote]

Vainglory is Super Evil Megacorp’s first game. The founders of the company, and everyone that works here, are gamers above all else, and have strong backgrounds working at companies like Riot, Blizzard and Rockstar Games, amongst others. Our mission as a company is to create core gaming experiences for the new generation of gamers, who play primarily on touch screen devices. With Vainglory, we set out to bring that visceral MOBA experience that had until then only been accessible on PC, to touch screen devices. We didn’t try to “create” an esport and we don’t actually even believe that’s possible. We just wanted to make a great game that respects core gamers and that we hoped the community would enjoy playing competitively.

The Vainglory esports community grew organically and rapidly, stemming from the fan-created Vaingloryleague before the game had even globally launched. Once we saw how much fans loved to watch each other’s matches at PAX South last year, we rapidly released Vainglory’s spectator mode both for touch screens and desktops. Since then, the scene has exploded with growing esports tournaments across the globe, with a total prize pool of over $350,000 in the last 6 months alone and that looks to grow quite rapidly in the next 6-12 months.

How is Vainglory currently received?

In a short year, we’ve become by far the most popular touch screen MOBA and biggest mobile esport with over 20M stream views in 2015, so it’s going well so far! We’ve also had a whole host of professional teams playing Vainglory, with Team Secret, SK Gaming, TSM, and G2 all having recently acquired winning Vainglory teams and more announcements to come. We’re also excited by being the fastest growing touch screen game on Twitch in 2015 and receiving the GSMA Award for best mobile game of 2015.

We feel it’s still early days, however, and we’re learning a lot. We’ve finished our first 3 month season with Autumn 2015 season, and are through our Winter 2016 season. One of the most exciting things recently has been to see the new leagues springing up in South America, Southeast Asia, Japan, China and Korea, showing the rapid growth and global reach of Vainglory. We’ve also really appreciated all the advice from teams, tournament organizers and broadcasters alike on how to best evolve the competitive scene. We also still feel we have a lot of work to do to make sure we are better at teaching new players to play Vainglory, to ensure that it’s more rewarding whether you win or lose, as well as constantly adding content and refining balancing to ensure the highest level strategies in the game evolve in an interesting direction!

But for now we’re super excited about the Winter Championships in EU and NA next week and look forward to the launch of Spring Season on March 30 with exciting new features, content and competitive announcements!

@AlphaFerg eSports will grow on all platforms. There are ~7-800M gaming PCs vs 3Bn touch screens. One day that will make a big difference! — kristian segerstrale (@ksegerstrale) March 11, 2016

Mobile gaming is massive, but creating a competitive multiplayer game on a mobile platform has significant problems as opposed to putting it on PC (like internet access, controls, etc). How has Super Evil Megacorp overcome those problems?

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]We actually saw developing for touch devices as an advantage, rather than a hinderance.[/perfectpullquote]

That’s an interesting way to look at it, but we actually saw developing for touch devices as an advantage, rather than a hinderance. We did take our time, however, and even created our own EVIL engine to make sure the performance, graphics and animations lost no quality. Everyone on the team is pretty experienced in delivering highest level competitive game play, and we designed Vainglory specifically for touchscreen devices, rather than porting a PC game. Players will notice right away that the map, heroes, and especially the controls, work really well and—once you get used to them—are actually more fun and accessible than some people find PC controls. Touchscreen technology has come a long way, and it’s really exciting to be able to bring a game like this to such a large and more mainstream audience, since just about everyone has a mobile device in their pockets. And as a bonus you can have a lan party anywhere with friends—Vainglory plays very well both over WiFi and LTE!

What is the basic esports strategy for Vainglory? Are you trying to compete with other esports in terms of attracting pro players and teams? What about in terms of attracting an audience?

We actually didn’t have an esports strategy going into Vainglory’s launch—we were entirely focused on creating a game that respected core game players and competitive play in general. We did notice pretty quickly, however, that the community was responding very well to the real-time competitive aspect to it and there was rapid organic growth. We don’t think a company can “make” an eSport. Either a game is worthy of competitive play or it isn’t, but the community really has to decide. Home-grown teams and leagues started popping up all over the world, and even before Vainglory had launched globally there were a number of community organizations that were running competitions with prize pools.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]We don’t think a company can “make” an eSport. Either a game is worthy of competitive play or it isn’t.[/perfectpullquote]

The rapid growth of the competitive community also attracted OGN to acquire the esports licence for the game in Korea, and has since run hugely successful tournaments out of Seoul. We’ve also worked with Red Bull, ESL, Twitch, NVidia, Amazon, and others to help support the competitive scene around the world. It’s been super exciting to see the growth of high-production value live events and competitions and how the fan base has grown in such a short time.

Have you encountered any unexpected obstacles or benefits in developing Vainglory into an esport because it’s a mobile game?

Like we mentioned before, being a touchscreen game is a huge opportunity for Vainglory. There are 3 billion touchscreen devices in the world compared to 700-800 million gaming PCs. The potential reach is huge, and the barrier to entry is basically non-existent, because all a player needs is Wifi. Vainglory’s spectator client also makes the game incredibly visceral even just to watch, with its free roaming camera and 4K capabilities.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Some of the best players in the world play on a screen as small as an iPhone 5s.[/perfectpullquote]

Touch screens are also advantageous for esports because Vainglory players are not hidden behind PC screens or in a separate box—the players are right there in front of the audience. You can see the facial expressions and the team work in a different way, allowing for a far more intimate feel in competitions. Also, since the competitors are playing on exactly the same device as you have in your pocket or backpack right then and there, the experience is more relatable than the $5,000 gaming PC that may not reflect what you have at home.

There have for sure also been interesting challenges to overcome. We thought originally that people with small screen phones would not be able to play the game well for example. As it turns out some of the best players in the world play on a screen as small as an iPhone 5s—although personally we still prefer larger screens like the iPhone 6 or 6+ or even tablets. Another interesting challenge has been the perception that mobile gaming is for casual games only, something which has been very rapidly changing as more core gamers have caught onto following the Vainglory esports circuit.

What would you say is your largest obstacle right now in furthering Vainglory as an esport?

We’d love to see touchscreen esports grow overall. We want to see the teams become sustainable and be able to find sponsors, see growth, etc. We also want to be able to continue to partner with the right people and will continue to be selective about who we work with, because for us it’s important to see this space grow long-term.

What’s in the future for Vainglory? Long-term plans? Other games for Super Evil Megacorp?

Right now we’re fully focused on Vainglory and on making it even better for our players and community. Every day at 5pm, the whole company stops what they’re doing and plays through a few matches! We also want to expand our events even more, globally. Right now we’re running seasonal qualifiers and tournaments across North America, Europe, South America, Southeast Asia, and the Vainglory International Premiere League in Korea, and Rage in Japan.

Any last words for our readers?

As PC gamers ourselves, we understand any scepticism out there. But we’d really encourage you to just download the game and check it out—search for “Vainglory” on the App Store or on Google Play. If you play PC mobas chances are you’ll have quite a good time.

And check out the upcoming Winter Season Champinships this weekend—see details here: Winter Season Championships Mar 11-13 for NA at the Redbull eSports stadium, and March 18-20 in the GFinity arena in London—or just tune in at https://twitch.tv/vainglorygame!