Tribe Gaming formed in April 2017 as a mobile-centric esports organization and quickly made a big impact in the space: after acquiring Immortals’ Vainglory squad in September, the team went on to take the World Championship in December.

Now, Tribe hopes to spread that winning mentality to other mobile games.To achieve that end, the organization will be one of the North American teams vying for the crown in the upcoming Clash Royale League. Tribe also recently picked up a team of Fortnite mobile content creators in the hopes of potential competitive fortunes, and there are more moves to come from the young org.

Prior to founding Tribe Gaming, CEO Patrick “Chief Pat” Carney thrived as a mobile content creator himself, amassing 2.5 million YouTube subscribers to date thanks to his own popular Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, and other mobile game-centric videos. Now he sees mobile esports on the verge of taking hold in the West, and believes that Tribe is well-positioned to ride that wave to further glory.

Ahead of the Clash Royale League’s start, The Esports Observer spoke with Chief Pat about Tribe’s origins, the state of mobile esports, and his organization’s next moves.

What drew you to found a competitive gaming organization?

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”I quickly realized that my brand fits into mobile more so than traditional esports.”[/perfectpullquote]

I’ve always been pretty invested into esports. Obviously, with my background – I started my mobile gaming YouTube channel back in 2012, and was one of the very first at the time. I really had a chance to see the scene develop and expand over the years, to the point where in 2014 and 2015, I looked into buying a League of Legends team. After starting up those conversations and talking to the team, I quickly realized that my brand fits into mobile more so than traditional esports. It didn’t quite pair together perfectly.

When mobile esports really started to grow and develop, and we saw the trajectory beginning, I felt like it was a perfect time to hop in and harness my passion for esports – as well as my brand being in mobile – to do something neat. And here we are today with the Clash Royale League.

Mobile esports still isn’t strongly established in the West. Did you feel like it was a risk for you to jump in at that point?

I suppose there was a little bit of a risk. At the time, even if mobile esports fell off the face of the earth three months after I started it, I still had my brand as a mobile gamer, and it made sense with what I was doing to have a team. Over the last year and change, it’s developed pretty rapidly. Specifically, out in China and Asia, the growth has been enormous. It’s exciting to see if and when and how we can transfer some of that growth over to the West.

What do you think it will take for mobile esports to take hold here?

I think mobile esports still fights through the stigmas that I’ve faced as a mobile content creator over the last few years. Like, “Oh, mobile gaming is match-three that you’re playing on your couch,” and that there isn’t that much tact or depth to it.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”I think mobile esports still fights through the stigmas that I’ve faced as a mobile content creator over the last few years.”[/perfectpullquote]

Specifically, for a game like Clash Royale, there’s so much behind it that I feel like it’s more or less a matter of people giving it a chance. Also, what’s really exciting about this league is Supercell’s massive player base. Twenty-five million people entered into this 20-win challenge to have a chance to become a professional player, and even just being able to harness 1% of that would be enormous when it comes to the League. With the structure they’re putting in place, the teams that they’re bringing in, and the investments that they’ve made to make this as big as possible, I’m excited to see what comes of this. It really is the first of its kind in North America.

You were already knee-deep in Clash Royale when this came along. Did your experience help inform your entry into this scene and building this team?

Absolutely. I came into it with a lot more knowledge than other teams who were coming from a non-mobile background. Obviously, I was already present within the community and had known a number of players and organizations at the time. I had a grasp of what was going on. Using that knowledge, we were able to find and set up players who fit with our values. For example, two of our players – Oxelate and JMonte – have been with us since late 2017, and now are continuing through 2018. At the same time, those connections led me to finding our two additional players, as well as our coach.

Already being in the mobile space and having the guys say, “Hey, I saw your Clash of Clans videos four years ago,” is always pretty funny to see. It definitely gives us a leg up when it comes to starting those conversations on mobile, given our prior experience in this space. However, everyone knows about the TSM’s , the Cloud9’s , and CLG’s . Even mobile gamers do, given that many of these guys enjoy PC games, as well. It’s been a lot of fun watching teams develop and getting our roster ready for hopefully a successful season.

What’s your take on Supercell’s esports moves so far?

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]” Supercell… is willing to push the limit and really go against the grain.”[/perfectpullquote]

I think they’ve been really positive. Supercell, more than any developer that I know, is willing to push the limit and really go against the grain. We’ll see with some of the decisions they make for this league, but they’ve really gone all-in so far, bringing in 44 teams from a number of different regions. I’ve definitely been happy with what’s happened so far. I’m curious, as well, for when the League is actually live and we see the broadcast, what everyone’s going to feel about decisions that have been made.

But I couldn’t ask for a better ally than Supercell. Having worked with them for five years as a creator to now working with their esports department, with familiar faces that I’ve seen over the years, I know they’re definitely not going to follow the norm. They’ve killed games in development that other developers would pay hundreds of millions for. When it comes to esports, they’re going push the same boundaries when it comes to creating a unique experience that’s tailored around mobile and unique for their audience.

What’s going to be your measure of success for this first season?

We have really high expectations, not only because of previous games we’ve had a lot of success with – we won the Vainglory championship last year. We’ve had a presence in Clash Royale for a long time, and with that, we’ve had a leg up in terms of establishing and building our team, and knowing what works when it comes to mobile esports and specifically Clash Royale.

We definitely want to win it all, and only one team can win it all, but we want to put our best foot forward and make sure that we don’t leave anything on the table when it comes to this. We want our players to be 100%, and from the organization, we want to make sure we have them surrounded by the best support staff. With those things in place, the talent and personalities we’ve brought together have a very high chance of getting us to where we want to be, which is getting to the World Championship and hopefully having another success.

Let’s talk about other mobile esports. In Vainglory, your team won the 3v3 championship and expanded to 5v5. Now it seems like that scene is slow to start back up. What’s your take on where things are going there?

Over the last few months, it’s been pretty quiet in the space for Vainglory. For the last couple of years, Super Evil Megacorp has handled esports themselves internally. Now, in partnership with ESP Gaming , they’ve offloaded a lot of that for ESP to handle, and with that and a number of complications, we’ve sort of waited for that to come to fruition. They’ve finally started the Vainglory Premier League for ESP last week. We’re excited about that. There should be a number of events for the remainder of the year, and hopefully we’ll see a live event or two.

Additionally, I’m really excited about Vainglory‘s addition to WESG . We’re going to have a live event from November 16-18, where the winning team is going to qualify to compete in China for a pretty substantial prize pool. I know WESG’s prize pool last year was $5.5 million, and if Vainglory can get a cut of that, that’d be great. While Vainglory‘s esports path this year isn’t so traditional, it’s still exciting to see what happens with the two separate systems going on.

We actually did just announce a Fortnite mobile team recently, which is the first ever of its kind. We announced a team of four players: Evo, Ducky, J7, and Frisky. These guys not only are competitive studs in Fortnite mobile, but these guys as content creators are getting thousands and thousands of concurrents, and they’re starting to play duos with some of the biggest names out there, like Dakotaz from TSM.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”We’re very optimistic about Fortnite‘s future on mobile.”[/perfectpullquote]

We’re very optimistic about Fortnite‘s future on mobile and being early movers to the space. There are other esports titles that we’re getting in on the grassroots level, and we’re seeing how we can push those forward, as well. In general, mobile is moving very fast right now in the competitive realm, and it’s exciting to see what’s going to rise to the top. The Clash Royale League, without a doubt, is the biggest investment so far into mobile in the West, and I’m excited for our first match on August 22.

Do you expect that Fortnite mobile will have a strong esports presence, or is it just worth it for you to have content creators even if doesn’t?

We definitely were excited with these guys. If Fortnite competitive doesn’t pan out, we’re excited with these guys strictly for content creation. If you look at TSM, they signed three or four big creators, and eventually that parlayed into having some sort of competitive team. We sort of see the same thing happening within Fortnite mobile. As of right now, Epic hasn’t revealed any plans when it comes to the mobile space. However, given Epic’s background and when it comes to having Fortnite as an all-inclusive game, you’ll see that Fortnite mobile doesn’t have a separate category on Twitch – because they view it all as one Fortnite.

I’m pretty excited to see not only mobile develop but also Fortnite esports develop in general. They’re definitely throwing a lot of darts on the board, and I’m sure mobile is going to be one of those darts. We’ll be well positioned when it happens to take advantage of that. But for now, our priority is working on building these guys as content creators, not only with the amazing stuff they’re doing so far but also using my background as an influencer and our organization’s resources.

What about Arena of Valor? Do you see Tribe making a play in that space?

We’ve looked into Arena of Valor extensively. We’re great friends with the people over at Tencent , both with PUBG Mobile and Arena of Valor. It’s a really exciting game. I think it’s absolutely beautiful, and we’re definitely intrigued with the possibilities of entering the space. They are just wrapping up their competitive season, it seems like, with the World Cup. I believe there’s another event that’s happening in either Korea or China right now. I know Immortals is playing there, and we’re going to reconsider going into the next upcoming season.

We’ll see the roadmap that Tencent has laid out before making our decision, but it is a game that we’re intrigued by. I’m very intrigued by MOBAs in general. I know there’s been a lot of cross-platform when it comes to battle royale games; I’m wondering if we’ll see some MOBAs go cross-platform to mobile as well. I think MOBAs are in an interesting space on mobile.

What is Tribe’s path forward in esports?

We’ve had a really exciting last two weeks. We signed our first title sponsor. We have our very first team house that we’ve moved into. We’ve expanded into a new game with Fortnite mobile. We have two other projects that are wrapping up right now that I’m excited about, and we’re getting a lot of good, big moves out of the way as we prepare for the rest of the year.

On my end, we’re going to continue to support our competitive scenes. Obviously, our Vainglory team holds that championship belt against the rest of the world. We’re definitely a fierce competitor in Clash Royale, and we’ve got a top-tier Fortnite mobile team and other teams to be announced. Additionally, we’re going to work hard to not only build our individual players’ brands through content creation, but the team’s brand as well.

After this storm has calmed down from what we’ve been working on, we’re really going to refocus on what we have going on at Tribe as far as our brand goes and content goes. We’re looking to scale aggressively over the next year to be where we want to be. Right now, for mobile, we’re positioned very well – and as mobile grows, we want to make sure that we’re the leading team in the mobile space. I feel like we’re pretty well set up there. There’s still a lot of work to get done, but I’m excited about our path so far. As mobile esports matures, Tribe’s only going to mature as well. Hopefully we’ll be major players in the space.

(Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)