Gwent will soon host the first World Masters - the main tournament for the discipline. On its eve, we decided to talk about the path that led the game to this tournament. And this is what we will discuss today.

Before writing this news, we talked with Vladimir Tortsov, GWENT PR & Marketing Lead. His answers to our questions will be available within the article as well.

The Gwent competitive system as a whole does not differ much from some existing variations. The best players get the spots in the World Cup. Their ranking is matched through special points, known as “Crown Points.” One can get these points in two ways only: by getting into the 200 best players at the end of the season or by participating in the official and licensed Gwent tournaments.

In our article, we'll touch upon the second case here – the tournaments. Since the start of the game's path to the World Masters, a total of 13 Open and Challenger championships have passed.

The fourth largest tournament in the Challenger series has shown the biggest result in terms of the peak viewers. Its maximum mark has reached 51 thousand people. This, of course, without the participation of Chinese viewers.

In terms of average viewers, the third competition of Challenger level was the best. This indicator of the tournament has amounted to 35 thousand people. What is noteworthy, is that the next competition was only 1 thousand 108 people short of overcoming this mark.

If one looks exclusively at the Open series, then in this case the fourth competition will again be the most popular one – only this time holding the first spot both by peak and average viewers.

We asked Vladimir about the results of the first season of the competitive card game system from CD Projekt RED:

“It is too early to summarize the final results of the first season of GWENT Masters – since the grand finale is yet to come. In general, I like the competitive format of GWENT; it has some things to be fixed before the future seasons, but in overall it suits the game well. We can definitely say that the first season was too dragged out – due to fundamental changes in the game itself (the "Homecoming" project), the esports schedule had to be adapted.”

It is worth noting the organizer's policy regarding the official broadcasts. The company fell short from providing these for all the popular languages there are, which is why some players have to be content with the community streams alone – instead of the actual professional broadcasts.

We asked Vladimir Tortsov why this happened:

“Although our main focus is on English broadcasting of tournaments, we always try to organize streams in other languages when it is both possible and sensible. For previous tournaments of the Challenger series, we organized official broadcasts in Russian. For Challenger 5, it was decided not to do this, instead giving an opportunity for the informal, amateur streamers to prove themselves. However, this does not mean that there will be no more official Russian-language broadcasts – every time, after each tournament, we analyze the audience’s views and responses in order to plan our future streams in the best way possible. ”

Overall, looking at the picture as a whole, we can safely say that the game was the at the peak of its popularity in 2018. It was last year that its most viewed events came. After that, the results were on a decline.

Ahead of us is the first season's finale. The main tournament of the discipline will finally allow us to find out who is the most powerful Gwent player. We will definitely summarize the competition and tell you about it in our blog. Also, if you are interested in detailed information on the competition, be sure to write your questions to our official mail.