How Can eSports Develop Compelling Stories From The Ground Up?

In March, Blizzard hosted its highly successful foray into college eSports with Heroes of the Dorm, it’s own take on the March Madness tournament. Now, the massive company is continuing to pull out all stops to make sure its the providing the best possible platform for pro eSports with the Heroes of the Storm Global Championship — a league created from the ground up to celebrate and build stars and history around their game.

We discussed the challenges of building and maintaining a young and growing e-league, as well as what the future holds for eSports with Blizzard’s Sam Braithwaite.

What are some of the challenges keeping the audience engaged to some iteration of the game that may have introduced say, six months ago while adding new characters and new maps?

I think what you’re bringing up isn’t an issue, but actually one of the things that make eSports and HoTS awesome. Something Heroes has that other games don’t have is new battlegrounds. I think it keeps it fresh. It keeps it exciting. It makes it really fun to watch because I think as a viewer, most people are already playing the game, so say you’re a fan, and you really like this specific battleground or you like this specific character, watching it played on a professional level is something that I think you look forward to.

In my opinion, I think that constant game development, changing things, adding in new features, only benefits that long-term stability of the game.

You are putting forth a new effort to show every level of the sport — either the map rotation or showing the stats of a team and how a certain map is played. That’s really great for the hardcores, but how can new fans overcome that barrier of entry?

Absolutely, yeah. I think when we look at stats and using stats on our website or broadcasts, you’re right that it’s there to service those hardcore users. It’s our job to make sure we have a feature set that one: services everybody, and then two: also services the hardcore fans additional things. I think stats are the best example of something a casual viewer or new user might not be incredibly interested in, but something that the hardcore fans definitely digest.

When we were developing the website, one of the things that we did is we actually went to the community, we went to our professional players, we went to teams and we said: “what are the priorities for you guys for a website?” “What are the things that you think are the absolute minimum?” “What are you guys getting from other websites that you aren’t getting from our site?” “What do you wish that you could find?” “What would you consider a one stop shop for everything Heroes eSports?” The three things that we really narrowed it down to was schedule, standings, and stats. If we were able to surface those three things that we would be servicing our entire fan base. Everything else on top of that is really for those hardcore users.

We have a couple of new things that we’re going to be rolling out in the website this year. We have team profiles coming out. We have player profiles coming out that we’re really excited about. Then, as we look to improve the broadcast, and integrate stats, we’re going to be using those too, like I said, service the hardcore users, but we’re also looking at what are things that we can use to make that barrier of entry a little easier. I think that comes with storytelling. It comes with using statistics to tell a story about a player, rather than just showing a number on the screen.

Being able to talk about a player’s progress from the start of a season to the end of the season. Where he was last year compared to where he is this year. How he ranks against everybody else in the league. Those are stats, but they’re stats that are used to build up a personality or build up a story, and I think that those are the ones that you need to leverage for those new fans.

There was that Murky championship run about two years ago at Blizzcon that blew everyone away. To what level are you embracing your own history to tell the story for Heroes of the Storm and to bring in the casual fans.

Those were definitely exciting times. I think one of the things that we’re trying to do is with HGC, we’re kind of looking at it as a clean slate. This is the start of Heroes eSports as an official Blizzard-run circuit. HGC is going to be around for a long time, and the history in those moments are what happens this year. We do look back, at say, Blizzcon and last year in terms of what happened and the stories that are there from a personality basis. With the actual foundation, the building and the structuring of the league, we really use this year as the kick-off year for Heroes eSports.

This comparison may not mean much to you, but you would say that this is the year that the AFC and the NFC merged to become the NFL in a way? Do those old replays not really mean as much to you, to tell the story?

No. They’re definitely impactful. They’re definitely there to tell a story. It’s just hard to put context around them when there wasn’t a support structure to build around it. Even when there was the other two leagues before they merged to become the NFL, there was a structure, there was a rhyme and a reason to all those things that they were doing. When we look at the history of Heroes of the Storm, you know last year we did have the Heroes Global Championship, Heroes Global Circuit, and we were able to have several world championships.

There’s a lot of great stories there. Me in particular, being new to Blizzard, and joining just last year, being able to attend that Summer championship and witness that huge upset that we saw when Murky won it. It’s something that will always go down in History.

We very much use what’s happened in the past as a way to tell stories moving forward. Looking at our commentators, especially, they’re the ones that really have the insights. They were there across all of those games and all of those matches, and they tell that story on the broadcast. We definitely have to reference that to the Spring championship that they won. The Murky play, like you said, at Blizzcon by Cloud Nine. That is something that will always be in the history books. For us, we are right now, focused on creating new history.

Yes, we love the stories of the past, and we think that they helped shape HGC into what it is now. We really are focused on this year and continuing to learn and grow in the HGC.

In telling these stories, are you hoping for a standout star or just generally a standout team to bring in more casual fans, and can that happen? What is Blizzard doing to curate the next generation of stars?

Building up superstars is one of the main goals of the HGC. Everything that we’ve been doing has been centered around that. One of the things that I think was really exciting and cool that we did was we flew out all the teams at the beginning of the year that qualified for HGC, and we had a summit where we brought them out for two days. We did a keynote about HGC, the rules, how it affects them, how the league operates, anything and everything that they need to know about the actual league.

Not only that, we also had PR and media specialist come out to teach these guys how you actually utilize this league and the regular broadcasts to build your own brand, how do you use this opportunity to grow your social media presence. We partnered up with Twitch, and we had Twitch come out to teach all these guys how do you stream, how do you kickstart your own channel, how do you build your own brand on twitch, what are the tips and tricks that they’ve learned. We’ve also partnered up with Twitch to be able to regularly feature our pro players over the course of the year.

We also work regularly with our pro players in the HGC to find ways to surface that, so we have a list of all the HGC players that stream regularly. We feature that in our Battle.net launcher, Blizzard launcher now. We feature them on our social media, and not only that but one of the things that we do that I think is really cool is after the HGC ends, when we’re sitting at 20 to 25,000 viewers, we find one of our HGC players that are streaming, and we coordinate with them before, and we host them afterwards to make sure that we’re dumping all of our viewers on them and giving them the opportunity to grow their own brand.

We’ve also offered up the resources of Blizzard to these guys, so any sponsored team going to HGC 2017 actually has their logos made by us, we gave them the whole legal rights to that to be able to set up their own companies. As people play Heroes of the Storm, and as people follow these guys, if you’re a fan of somebody, and that person is participating in a match, you’re more likely to watch that match so for us we really want these guys to get a large fanbase, and we’re dedicated to helping them grow that.

The reality of eSports is that most pros don’t last beyond their 20s. What is Blizzard doing to make sure that the lifespan of these athletes can last a little bit longer so that way fans can find them and have a rooting interest in these sports?

The creation of HGC was that. When we look at our programs these past couple of years we learned that we did have healthy competitive scenes that were giving away a lot of prize money, but there wasn’t that stability, and one of the things that we noticed was that a lot of the churn of these pro players, the reason why they retire, is because unless you’re on, say, a top one to three teams, you weren’t getting enough recognition or money or sponsorships to actually support being a professional gamer.

One of the things that we did that kind of is the basis of HGC is that every team in the league in North America, Europe, China, and Korea are guaranteed $100,000 whether they’re eighth place or third place. For us, this is us saying here is that stability. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, you have a job, and you are making money from this. We want people to take it seriously. We want them to treat it like a full-time Job.

On top of that, we are also currently exploring several things that we can do in order to increase the longevity of these careers. To give them an opportunity outside of pro gaming for when they do retire whether as a coach, or as an analyst, or even as a caster, as part of HGC.

How difficult is it for you to manage your own expectations when the sport itself, Heroes, is only a few years old, and eSports really is only a few years old, so how are you able to see the forest from the trees and manage your expectations as far as growth is Concerned?

We are very much still in the execution phase. HGC, this is the first year that it’s launched, and we’re barely even through the first couple of weeks here. These past couple of months we have had our heads down and we’ve been grinding it out to make sure that we’re putting on the best show forth. Moving forward, we’ve actually just been able to have the opportunity to take a step back because of this little break that Heroes of the Dorm gives us to really be focusing on what we want to do to continue to grow, what are plans are going to be next year, what are things that we’ve learned in these first weeks, and what changes can we make or tinker with this year to be able to give our pro players and our fans everything that they could help them succeed.

For me, when I really look at success, I look at success across several different metrics. One is: are we providing a service to our fans to be able to give them something to talk about, to watch, that meets that Blizzard quality outside of the actual game? Does our broadcast provide entertainment to our most engaged users?

That is one of the biggest goals is being more than just a game, but being an entertainment platform. Knowing that basically looking at where are numbers were last year compared to numbers this year in terms of how long people are watching our streams, and how many content hours are we creating and how many languages are those localized in. HGC is truly a global league, and so finding a way to push it out to everybody is one the difficult parts of the job.
Is League of Legends, for example, even competition to you?

I mean, we love what League of Legends is doing, and we definitely look to them as a hey you guys have been doing this for a while, you guys have been running a league, what are the key things that we can learn from the, what are the key things that mistakes that they’ve made, successes they’ve had so that we’re able to create our program. I wouldn’t say that they’re necessarily competition because they are servicing their fans, and we’re here servicing our fans. I think we’re both providing a product that does exactly what it’s supposed to do, and we’re very happy with where we’re at.

Lebron James winning in Cleveland wouldn’t matter if they hadn’t lost for the previous 50 years. What will you be able to do, not only to cultivate the winners, and boost up the winners, but make sure that there is a history of not necessarily cutting off the lower tier teams, and making sure that there are enough losers to have an underdog story?

I think the way that we’re trying to do that is just with how we’re actually establishing the league. Before it was really hard to tell those stories of a losing team when a lot of our focus was on a global international competition. When our three major championships happen, there are two teams invited from each region, and that’s where the main focus was of the year. Abandoning that, and moving forward into 2017 with HGC having 8 teams in each region, that right there allows us to establish that history that you’re talking about.

I know that you very much like to talk about the stories, and looking to the past, and I think that the way that you’re able to look to the past and be able to say that Cleveland hasn’t won in the past 50 years is because there was that 50 years of Cleveland participating in the league, and consistently losing.

I think that right now, this is when we’re going to be able to start telling those stories. We haven’t had our first playoffs. We haven’t had our first crucible. We haven’t had our first mid-season brawl. Next year we’re going to be able to talk about that. Not only that, I think we just hit one of those key moments that I’m really excited about which was our Western Clash. Looking back on 2016, the number one team in North America, and the number one team in Europe, never faced off against each other. For somebody that cares a lot about stories, that wasn’t okay.

We wanted to create a program that was able to create and build these rivalries. If you look at eSports right now, no matter what game you look at, there is a huge rivalry between North America and Europe. When we were creating our program, we created the Western Clash and the Eastern Class which is really designed to push those original stories, and be able to tell the tale. When we go to next year, we can say a North American team has never won a Western Clash. These are now thing that we can say, so next year when it finally happens, that story is there. It changes the tone and it helps us build those guys into superstars.

I agree with everything that you’re saying, and that’s what makes sports successful, but the reason why it’s successful is because it has the foundation in order to tell those stories, and that’s what the HGC is. We’re planning on being around for many many years to have many many stories to tell, but it all starts right now.