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A strong trend in the gaming industry is interconnecting video games even more closely with sports, and this phenomenon is about to explode in popularity, according to James Dean, CEO of ESL UK. With ESL being one of the largest independent esports tournament operators in the world and an Intel partner, James as the head of the UK office has an inside view of developments in the industry. He sees this phenomenon as coming about in two ways: the creation of a hybrid model of video gaming applied to a physical sport and the gamification of traditional sports like F1.
James gave the immersive three-on-three game HADO as an example. “This is basically a game of dodgeball where you physically stand in a court, you put on the headset, and you can see your surroundings, but it overlays an energy ball in one hand and a shield in the other.” The balls and shield are for attack and defence with the objective being to hit the other players, who can all backflip and dodge to avoid being hit. It is now played in 38 countries and James thinks it signifies the dawn of a new genre – VR where the players are not tethered to a space. “We saw that [tethering] with VR esport and Oculus, but with cloud computing and 5G we can untether and run around doing the same thing.”
He then explained that one way a sport like tennis could be gamified is by essentially placing it in the metaverse, with the racket and balls being tracked in VR. The player could take on the persona of a grand slam player like Roger Federer, aiming to serve above a minimum speed, with extra points for getting the ball in the red zone or having an extremely fast and agile opponent. “Suddenly, it has become a video game, but it is still tennis. There’s still the idea of hitting a ball as fast as possible but you’re levelling up. The youth really want to interact and absolutely maximise that immersion.”
James and his team at ESL went a step further and created a project for the UK government, an Audience of the Future demonstrator called Weavr.tv, based around new ways audiences could interact with gaming entertainment.
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He and his team designed a VR watching experience with VIP touches. It allows users to go into their own VIP room with their friends as well as an influencer of their choice. Aiming to fully recreate the social experience of watching gaming with friends, during the breaks, they can play games like Jenga or games sponsored by commercial partners. James said that this type of experience would be created by building on “an AI-driven narrative, personalisation, content and statistics” resulting in a metaverse version of sports and esports viewership.
“With AI and machine learning we can deliver a unique experience to every single fan with a particular chain of narrative and an experience that continues to adapt to their interests,” James said.
These moves towards the comprehensive virtualisation of gaming participation and spectating are no surprise as gaming has been moving in this direction for some time now. ESL was founded in the early 2000s as a community of gamers in Germany who wanted to come together and play competitively in a LAN environment. James set up the UK office in 2012 and it was between that year and 2015 that ESL made a big push to get its tournaments online and create more online content. It was also during this period that Twitch was attracting incredible numbers of new users and rounds of investment, and when broadband became mainstream. The Twitch audiences provided ESL with a way of monetising the tournaments, while broadband made the competitions more accessible.
James said: “Holding online tournaments using modem dial-ups was not very practical. And Twitch really did focus those masses of online communities into one space, which then presented a really strong commercial proposition from an entertainment angle.” When the pandemic lockdowns hit in early 2020, ESL saw another increase in viewership and participation as players and viewers of in-person competitions were unable to attend and turned to esports operating remotely.
Though one might think that all things ESL could be entirely remote, in-person events have an important role to play in esports and ESL is still hosting them for three main reasons. The first is that as social creatures, we need human contact. Even seemingly insignificant interactions can have a great effect on our mood and wellbeing. Also, with so many people contributing to and participating in the tournaments, it is beneficial to have a physical space for the finale where opponents can actually ‘face off’. The second is that in-person events help to maintain the integrity of the competitions. The ESL officials can ensure that there is a level playing field for all participants with the same equipment and latencies for everyone involved. Essentially making sure that no one has an unfair advantage as fairness is paramount when prize money runs into the millions. And finally, the financial aspect cannot be forgotten. An IRL event can generate a lot of revenue through ticket sales and sponsorship.
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So even though there is ever greater digitisation and virtualisation, ESL is still keeping a foot in the IRL world. But that is not to say that the virtualised environments cannot be improved. The next step is to make the metaverse and digital spaces feel less robotic to those who use them. The physical ESL studio has essentially been moved to the cloud, giving many more people the opportunity to participate in events and broadcasts. But James and his team want to replicate the games and the style in the studio environment and are doing so by using AI-powered green screens and motion capture technologies. “The technology is absolutely incredible where it’s getting to, thanks to compute power in the cloud and on local systems that are basically very expensive graphics cards and processors.”

A strong trend in the gaming industry is interconnecting video games even more closely with sports, and this phenomenon is about to explode in popularity, according to James Dean, CEO of ESL UK.

Esports to get more physical? Viewpoint from James Dean, ESL UK