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At the end of August, Hi-Rez Studios made a surprise announcement: the launch of a Paladins league alongside the World Esports Association, featuring ten of its member teams.

On top of this, Facebook would be the only third-party platform to broadcast matches from the competition. To learn more about the Paladins Premier League itself and its planned longterm payload, The Esports Observer spoke to Hi-Rez’s Co-founder & COO: Todd Harris.

When was the Paladins Premier League conceived, and why did you decide to launch it now?

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”The Hi-Rez culture is community driven vs. top-down, and it’s to work most closely with the endemic organisations…”[/perfectpullquote]

One important principle for us in making competitive games is getting feedback from competitive players as early as possible. With Paladins, we have been supporting competitive play really since the game first went to early access on Steam over a year ago. We’ve done that mainly through community tournaments and also through hosting a few pretty marquee events. We’ve done some Dreamhack tournaments, and we had some competition at our own Hi-Rez Expo last January. So we feel that based on our learning from SMITE, having players at the game at the highest level of competition, that is great feedback for our balance team around champion design, items, and cards.

Even though it’s early, there’s professional talent now emerging that’s clearly at a higher calibre. Secondly, we have esports organisations with strong interest getting involved in Paladins, particularly these organisations from WESA. With both those two things being present, we have the ingredients to kick off the league.

How did you work with the teams that were already present in the Paladins esports scene, to gauge their interest in this kind of competition?

So there’s a few different stakeholders. There’s the players, the team owners, and really what we heard from the players is they just wanted stability in the scene. Like most aspiring esports players, they’re mainly doing it out of passion, but if the economics can allow them to do their passion, and make a living, that tends to be the first ask from the players.

The second principle was for the new team organisations – we wanted them to share in the upside, economically, if the League thrived. So those drove the idea that players would have some minimum salary, and that teams would participate in any revenue generated from the league. From a financial standpoint, we felt that was going to make everybody satisfied with the arrangement. If we succeed, we all succeed together.

Before the announcement dropped, none of the WESA members had Paladins rosters. What kind of conversations did you have to make them see the potential of Paladins esports?

Well I think there’s a couple of considerations. First, the potential of the game itself. I think clearly there’s a lot of excitement around the team shooter genre, and Paladins has a few mechanic differences that we think make it appealing to competitive players and spectators. Some of those specifics are the fact that you don’t change your champion mid-match, which tends to be easier for spectators to follow the action. The fact there’s counters in the game through cards and items means there’s a significant amount of strategy that goes into the gameplay, including picking and banning ahead of the game.

The last point is the entire ecosystem. Is it a sustainable bet? Or, at least a bet worth taking, from a financial standpoint? The economics that are offered may also help make it attracted to the other alternatives they’re looking at.

When the League was announced, Ken Hershman said “Hi-Rez has a track record of supporting endemic esports organisations and players.” Some people saw this as a subtle dig against the Overwatch League and the way it’s dealt with endemic esports organisations.

Do you see your league as the more endemic-focused league?

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”If we can advocate on behalf our Paladins users and esports viewers, and influence the Facebook roadmap with new functionality…the whole esports industry will benefit.”[/perfectpullquote]

I see our league as being very friendly to the endemics, yes. Ultimately, I hope that the various different esports leagues are successful, because it will lift the entire industry. So, different models are being put forward by different organisations, based on their culture. The Hi-Rez culture is community driven vs. top-down, and it’s to work most closely with the endemic organisations that have helped build the space for the past ten or fifteen years.

The Facebook exclusivity deal caught many people by surprise. Can you take us through the process of how Facebook and Hi-Rez came to this agreement?

From a Hi-Rez perspective, we definitely see this partnership as more than just an exclusive media deal. We work with multiple platforms, think about the different communities they bring, and the advantages they offer. Ahead of the PPL, we noticed a very large number of Paladins players interacting on Facebook without any support or involvement from us. There was an organic Facebook group that was bigger in size than our Reddit group – and we’d never posted there once. That was a bit of an ‘aha!’ moment for us. Most of the people in that group were talking about competitive play…there was also a lot of memes being posted to be fair.

A lot of people were asking how to join a team, talking about what role play – front-line, support, that sort of thing. Based on that appetite, we began this experiment called the Paladins Global Series, which is a grassroots global tournament series. With just a little bit of structure, and prizing, this competitive appetite on the platform existed. In the first month of creating a new group for the PGS, it grew from zero to 30,000 members.

We’ve worked with many other platforms in the space as early adopters, since we’re both a publisher and a league in driving great functionality into those platforms. We’re excited to be in that position with this new platform that’s making a big move into the space. If we can advocate on behalf our Paladins users and esports viewers, and influence the Facebook roadmap with new functionality, we think that Paladins will benefit, and the whole esports industry will benefit.

Can you describe the process of working with WESA? How were you able to convince them to make this their second sanctioned esports league?

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”Five years ago, we were starting esports, there was no organisation like WESA, so we had to take a complete hands-on approach…”[/perfectpullquote]

I think it starts with just shared goals to professionalise esports. That includes some raising of minimum treatment of teams and players. So historically, the game publishers have had all the power since they own the IP, and we’ve always had an interest in balancing publisher interests with helping to protect the interests of players and teams. Five years ago, we were starting esports, there was no organisation like WESA, so we had to take a complete hands-on approach in order to accomplish that. But now, WESA has similar goals, and so it was pretty straightforward to come to a shared vision around this.

To what extent with WESA and Hi-Rez be sharing out the organisation of this league?

At least for the first year, Hi-Rez will be the tournament organiser, and WESA is acting in that advisory capacity – with respect to things like rules, player contracts, transfer regulations, many of the nitty gritty operation details. We have the experience of running the SMITE Pro League, WESA has the experience from Counter-Strike Pro League, and we’re putting together our heads to come up with a best approach for PPL year one. The idea would be we continue to refine those things.

How will teams be added into the League? Will non-WESA members be able to qualify?

It will not be exclusive to WESA. We’re going to continue to use them in an advisory role, but both of us feel that we don’t want to make it exclusive to WESA member teams. Again, post HRX, we’re just going to have to look and see. The two factors will be both the performance of the League, and the number of exceptional players in the scene. If both of those things are at a point where we want to add teams, then we’d have an application process for those teams to join.

Outside of the Facebook deal, what are the planned sources of revenue?

Downloadable content, ticket sales when it comes to live events – although we don’t expect that to be all that material, at least in year one. Then, sponsorship, where we don’t have anything to announce, but again having a lot of conversations on that front.

What do you have planned for the Super Regional Offline event, where all ten NA and EU teams will meet up?

So the first NA and EU event in the Fall will be in Atlanta. By having it here where we’re based, one it lets our development team be very close to the competition, since everyone’s very interested in it, and they can participate. Two, from a practical standpoint, it lets our production team collect the necessary assets to help make the strongest production possible, both for that LAN, and leading up to Worlds.

Paladins is still in early access. How will you tie the esports scene into the game’s eventual release?

It will definitely tie into the esports plans. At this point, that’s all I can say. But with SMITE, we tend to make more radical changes associated with the esports yearly season, and the three splits with smaller changes. That’s the same rhythm that we’re moving to.