Play The Gamer - Article

Play The Gamer
By Richard "DrGonzo" Lewis

You don’t need to be Bob Dylan to know that the times they are a changing and those of us passionate about e-sports have seen and felt those changes of late. While the gaming industry continues to thrive with many companies remaining profitable throughout a global recession and Hollywood calling as they try and find the next thing they can mine for inspiration, e-sports remains a marginalised curiosity, an introverted cousin within an extended family. The change had to come at some point and in truth would have been better had it come sooner but we are a stubborn and proud bunch, resistant to change and insistent on adhering to traditions.

A bright future for e-sports hangs in the balance, it isn’t something that can be guaranteed just by hard work and passion alone. If those were the only successful ingredients required it would have been over the top a long, long time ago. The truth is, despite it only being a fledgling industry in itself, a lot has changed since the days when it was born and attitudes and ideas have not been updated accordingly. As the various scenes have isolated themselves into unique sub-cultures, so much so that there’s no guarantee that even those following different e-sports disciplines can understand or even respect one another, the view of the big picture is obscured. How can competitive gaming have a future when, perhaps unwittingly, it can exclude outsiders and newcomers from the offset?

It is a question that a few have asked and even fewer have been able to answer with anything meaningful, the collision of differing opinions from the profiteers and the purists never seeming to find any common ground. Yet, there is a new development on the horizon that hopes to change all this established fact and reinvent the way that the wider public thinks of and approaches competitive gaming – Play The Gamer.

The brainchild of Dave Brannan, a marketing professional who has worked on several major projects including the launch of Channel 5, Play The Gamer is about creating a platform for players of all levels to come together and compete in person. With games now pretty much including online multiplayer modes as standard, the internet is the preferred arena for settling the matter of who is better. Play The Gamer aims to take such competition from the home and put it in public venues, allowing players to meet, compete and win prizes at local venues.

It might not sound like such an amazing leap forward to seasoned e-sports veterans who are familiar with the LAN calendar, yet those are mostly large scale events that come around infrequently. Where Play The Gamer differs is that it aims to bring regional players together on a weekly basis in local venues that already cater for hosting people, ranging from internet cafes and sports clubs to pubs and bars, and make the competition part of the ambience. To the more casual gamers it will likely open their eyes to the much broader picture, that there is a lot more to competitive gaming than simply being the king of your living room.

This model certainly proved successful with Dave’s other venture, the UK’s first national poker league, which is under the monicker “Poker In The Pub”. Online poker was something of a phenomenon, spreading like wildfire and hooking people into a game that few had seen outside of Westerns. Despite the game’s popularity, outside of casinos or the home there wasn’t an alternative to playing with like minded enthusiasts in person. Poker In The Pub changed that and enabled people to experience what was missing from the online alternative.

Now it’s the turn of competitive gaming and the model is near identical to the one that proved successful for the poker league. Venues that have already signed up host the events will run a weekly night for the league games to take place. Players pay £1 per week for the duration of the competition, 100% of which goes into their regional prize pool. The winners of these local events will then be invited to regional finals to compete against other winners and then eventually the best will be able to attend a national event for the big prize. The aim is to give away no less than £30,000 in the first season. The potential for growth is obviously there and the success of the competition will come down to the support not only of participating players but also the wider gaming community itself.

Of course, having some solid sponsors on board isn’t going to do any harm either. The Play The Gamer project has attracted some big names not normally associated with gaming to come out in support of a community that certainly could use the backing. Many will know Kick Energy from their sponsoring of a World Rally Championship team and other League 1 partners include GAME and Steel Series, though watch this space for League 2 partner/sponsor announcements.

The first season will be exclusive to consoles picking up some of the best-selling and well known titles in the form of FIFA 10, Modern Warfare 2 and Need For Speed Shift. However, to keep each season fresh and interesting those behind it have pledged to change one game each season, adopting different titles from different disciplines. This means that there will be opportunities for all types of gamers to get involved as the league expands and therefore it makes sense to support the venture regardless of the personal choice of game or community that people most feel affiliated with.

This is where you come into it all. If you’re reading this you are already an experienced competitive gamer and probably have invested a significant amount of time into one particular title above others. As such it would be easy to wonder just how important this is to you, especially if your game of choice isn’t on the list. However Play the Gamer does have the potential to lift the veil on the competitive gaming scene that has been in the shadows for some time, so much so that the mainstream media primarily only mention it for its novelty value rather than a genuine appreciation for what it consists of.

A conversation with Dave reveals him to be enthusiastic at the prospect of getting it up and running and what that could mean for gaming:

“What I wanted most of all” he told me “was to reconnect the community. It’s all about online these days, competing against people you might never meet, no real human element to it. I’m old school. I like to go out and have a crack, an old fashioned good night. I don’t see that as much now and I don’t see it within the gaming community. What we want is the gaming community to actually meet each other.”

There’ll be plenty of opportunity to do that if things go according to plan. Setting themselves tough targets, Play The Gamer wants to have between 250 – 500 venues across Britain by the end of this year and they won’t rule out expanding further once the foundations have been laid and cemented in place. There will also be plenty of opportunity to fine tune the rules and regulations, how to balance the interaction between the novices and the seasoned professionals. They welcome the idea of community feedback as they want to do it correctly and they want the balance that has been sorely missing from other similar ventures.

The one thing that Dave was keen to stress was that they want people to get involved and help flesh out the ideas.

“We’re not saying we know it all. In terms of the model we know what works and we think we know what gaming would benefit from, but when it comes to delivering to gamers we want the players themselves to have a huge input in what we do. After all, the project is for them first and foremost.”

It was also clear that the ethos behind it was about rewarding competitive players in the same way that other types of gamer, such as poker players, were getting. It’s clear that the prizes are guaranteed and will be paid out at the competition itself, no reliance on freebies and no prolonged delays for the fruits of a players labour. The other key component of course is allowing players to develop, to get better by competing against other players, which in turn will provide a sustainability for the e-sports scene by widening the talent pool and opening people’s eyes to the prospect of other competitions. In short, it could be the bridge between the bedroom gamer and the next big name.

The last word should go to one Mr. Brannan who has high hopes for the future,

“It’s clear that the industry needs to come out from behind the curtain, start to mature and to attract new sponsors. This is a way to do that and a way that is inclusive of everyone. We understand we’re not going to get everything right to begin with, we understand not everyone is going to be happy at first but we’re not going anywhere until we get it right. That’s going to take everyone’s involvement. What we say to gamers is come out and support your industry, talk to us and be honest with both your praise and criticism, but let’s make this work.”