CYNOPSISeSPORTS & GAMING
06.23.16 It’s Thursday, June 23, 2016, and this is your weekly early morning eSports & Gaming brief.
Tencent’s stake in the video game industry continues to swell with the China company forking over $8.6 billion to reel in of “Clash of Clans” developer Supercell from Japan’s Softbank. Analysts applauded the move with some calling it a bargain for the mobile developer for an 84% share in the highest earning mobile games company on the planet, According to Newzoo, combined revenues from both companies totaled $11.1 billion in 2015 to make up 12% of all game revenues generated globally last year while China remained an elusive, though growing, market. So what does this mean for the gaming behemoth? Newzoo reports that Tencent will now grab 13% of this year’s $99.6 billion global games market.
“This was clearly not a surprise, said DFC Intelligence CEO David Cole via Gamasutra. “Tencent was clearly in the market and we mainly see it as a way for Tencent to expand into North America and Europe. Tencent has struggles to grow outside of Asia and Supercell is the leading provider of high-end mobile games in Western markets. That question is, did Tencent purchase Supercell at its peak?”
ESL One Frankfurt saw an audience of 7.3 million tuning in online last weekend. The company reports that Twitter and Facebook logged high level activity throughout the tournament: drawing 7,918,746 organic impressions were logged on Twitter with 463,613 total engagements tracked. The ESL Facebook pages, which featured live videos with behind-the-scenes footage, garnered 23,503,353 total impressions with over 1.6 million video views. Main interaction drivers were content created around the festival elements available throughout the event. Online, over 18.9 million sessions were created across the weekend with an average concurrent viewership of 93,391. Viewers through Twitch, HitBox, Azubu and HuomaoTV consumed a total of 4,418,772 hours of eSports content, with peak concurrent viewership hitting 651,142.
Formula E announced plans to rev up eSports into its repertoire, with the racing body announcing plans to live ‘Race-Off’ events for fans, described as virtual races between drivers and fans at FE races with a console-based fan eSports championship. Company execs consider eSports to be “a huge opportunity and we want to be the first ones fully immersed in that,” according to Reuters.
New updates for theScore eSports, which announced upgrades to its mobile app that offer live scoring coverage for Call of Duty, Hearthstone and StarCraft II tournaments. The app now includes real-time news and scoring coverage from tournaments and the addition of ‘Spoiler Mode’ so fans can mute notifications and hide scores if they want to watch games later on a delay. "This reaffirms our commitment to giving eSports fans the very best way to follow live scores, news and video coverage from their favorite teams and games," said Michael Gerbone, Vice President, Product for theScore eSports.
The UK and Ireland are set to get a 24-hour eSports channel with heavyweights Sky and ITV partnering with Ginx TV to launch GINX eSports TV. ITV and Sky expected to take minority stakes in the business to support its growth, according to the platform. The channel will rebrand from Ginx TV and offer fans major eSports tournaments from around the world with complimentary programming. Outside the UK & Ireland, GINX eSports TV will be distributed to an additional 23 million households, making it the largest eSports TV channel in the world, reaching 37 million homes.
Elsewhere, Machinima is teaming up with AMC Networks International Iberia to launch a gaming, eSports and fandom-focused SVOD channel in Spain and Portugal this fall. The platform will be distributed via pay-TV operators, smart TVs and on iOS and Android apps. Programming on the new SVOD slate will include originals, such as Street Fighter: Resurrection, eSports reality show Training Camp, The Bacca Chronicles and the upcoming Transformers: The Combiner Wars.
The quest is over! Join us today to hear from Activision Blizzard, ESL, Twitch, Facebook, Optic Gaming, NiP, Echo Fox, PepsiCo, Turtle Beach, Quest, Yahoo, Machinima, eGames, ELeague, Nielsen, and so much more. They’ll all be at the Cynopsis eSports Conference at three sixty in NYC. Details can be found here.
The International e-Sports Federation continued plans in a move be recognized by International Olympic Committee with the establishment of an Athletes Commission, one of the core criteria in the IOC recognition process. The IeSF will “work together with e-Sports athletes and implement necessary procedures one-by-one for the Athletes Commission to function in the proper manner” with the commission voicing the eSports athlete’s rights, interests, and welfare starting the 45 member nations of IeSF, encouraging athletes to register for all game titles.
On the talent front, ESL announced that, this weekend’s Guild Wars 2 battles at ESL Studios in Burbank will be flanked by a broadcast team that consists of Joe “Storm” Nowasell, Christian “Heurix” Thomasser, Daniel “Jebro” Littleton, Hans “Supcutie” Onsum, and James “Kaelaris” Carrol. Fans can tune in 1:30a on Saturday on the Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel.
The finals for the Esports Championship Series from June 24-26 will see the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive battles get commentary and analysis from James Bardolph, Daniel Kapadia, Matt Trivett, Henry Greer, Robin Johansson, Janko Paunovic, Tomi Kovanen and with from Scott Smith and Sue Lee on FACEIT’s official Twitch channel.
As the growth of eSports prompts questions about how to deal with issues such as gambling, Natus Advisers and Eilers & Krejcik Gaming released a study about the potential market in the space, projecting that 15 million people will be placing a bet on eSports in four years. The report, via Kotaku, sees the value of those bets hitting around $29.8 billion.
Vivendi continues to shore up its stakes in gaming publishers, this week upping its ownership of Ubisoft Entertainment to 20.1%, up from 17.7%. In a regulatory filing, Vivendi added that it intends to continue buying more, but added that it doesn’t plan to make a move to take control of the company for the next six months. "Vivendi continues to hope for the establishment of a fruitful collaboration with Ubisoft," the company said in the statement. Last month, of course, Vivendi took control of Gameloft.
Who emerged victorious at E3? Social media analysis company Synthesio says that PlayStation was the most-talked about brand during the show, per GamesBeat. Overall, 29.87% of tweets mentioned the company, while 19.58% discussed Microsoft. Bethesda drummed of 15.47% of the conversation, followed by Nintendo at 14.33%. MCVUK reports that Xbox was the most-engaged-with brand, according to ListenFirst data, based on the total amount of responses to social media posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, with 842,000 replies. PlayStation took second with 689,000 followed by Nintendo at 377,000 and Ubisoft took 373,000 responses.
Activision’s upcoming Ghostbusters game will offer buyers a special bundle. The company announced that the game will not only feature its own standalone story taking place after the events of the new film, and, for $64.99, fans will be able to get the movie as well. The ‘Ghostbusters Ultimate Bundle’ offers up a new video game, a DLC featuring four classic suits and a bonus trap, a code for a digital copy of the new Ghostbusters movie and two special dashboard themes, one based on the movie and another inspired by the game.
The Virtual Reality Developers Conference unveiled dates and location for its second go-around for the two-day event. The conference takes place from Nov. 2-3 in the Park Central Hotel in San Francisco and will expand to cover virtual and augmented reality in games, entertainment, brand experience, and a wide range of innovative use cases. "Now that VR platforms have hit the market, virtual experiences that entertain, inform, and provide entirely new ways to engage are increasingly in demand," explained Meggan Scavio, General Manager, VRDC and GDC. "We’re thrilled to provide the highest quality content for VR developers, while exploring innovative applications for the technology across entertainment, healthcare, journalism, travel, manufacturing, retail, live events, real estate, training, and so much more."
Sony is settling a six-year class-action lawsuit over its removal of the Linux installation option on the PlayStation 3. Ars Technica reports that the company (pending court approval) will fork over payouts of up to $55 per affected owner, covering consumers who purchased an original PS3 between November 1, 2006 and April 1, 2010 who can show that they used the feature to install an alternative operating system on their original PS3 consoles.
Activision is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Crash Bandicoot series in October when the character takes a guest-starring role in Skylanders Imaginators, followed by a collection of remastered classic Crash Bandicoot games in 2017 – Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot: Warped for PlayStation 4.
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NIELSEN GAMES PRESENTATION: WHO IS THE ESPORTS FAN?
Outlets looking to cheat their Twitch numbers via bot followers are now seeing a legal pushback as Twitch announced plans to sue seven of the biggest sellers of online viewbot services. In a post, Twitch explains that “these services have created a very real problem that has damaging effects across our entire community” due to “the perception of higher viewership and social activity will put them on the fast-track to success or Twitch partnership.”
Gameloft is launching an international advertising campaign with YouTube stars to push smartphone brand, Honor. YouTubers from the USA, Russia, France and Germany will compete as part of #TeamHonor or #TeamGameloft in the Gameloft racing app game, Asphalt 8 with YouTubers inviting audiences to download and play the game to have a chance at winning a Honor 5X of their own. “We’re thrilled to collaborate once again with Honor, a pioneering brand in terms of technology and community involvement,” states Ludovic Blondel, Vice President Business Development at Gameloft. “Thanks to this partnership, we’ve been able to offer Honor and both our communities a fun and unique experience in a successful game that has been downloaded over 200 million times.”
Facebook has reportedly reeled in Stephen “Snoopeh” Ellis as the company’s new eSports strategic partnerships manager, according to TechCrunch. He will now looks to recruit top game developers and players to bring streaming content to the platform.
Research intelligence group Leger unveiled new research about the tied between “Let’s Play” (LP) videos and eSports. According to the study, nearly three in five U.S. adults with children (61%) have had at least one person in their household watch a clip involving a video game being played by another person. The report also showed gamers vary in age, with more than a quarter of the gaming community being 50 years of age or older. According to the Leger research, the eSports viewer profile in the US shows that, among those households with someone who has already watched a LP video, interest in eSports hits 55%. “The Leger data, combined with the viewership data, supports that the gaming community continues to be an entrenched one,” said Lance Henik. “Once you connect the dots between family gaming to Let’s Play watchers to e-sports watchers, one can see e-sports as not just ‘a thing’ but it could be the next Big Thing.”
Activision Blizzard’s Skylanders is coming to Netflix via has the animated comedy-adventure series Skylanders Academy. The two-season, 26-episode partnership will focus on the adventures of the Skylanders with characters voiced by the likes of Justin Long, Ashley Tisdale, Jonathan Banks and Norm MacDonald, along with performances from The Diamond Minecart, Susan Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, Bobcat Goldthwait, Chris Diamantopoulos, Jonny Rees, Harland Williams, and Richard Horvitz.
The Halo franchise locked in new global licensed partners with merchandise set to include:
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Nintendo UK named Nicolas Wegnez as its new general manager, replacing Simon Kemp.
Rovio executive Peter Vesterbacka is departing the company, per Develop, noting that he will remain a shareholder and collaborate with Rovio chairman Kaj Hed to launch start-up companies as an entrepreneur.
Vice Media named Austin Walker, who served as news editor at CBS Interactive’s Giant Bomb, to oversee its upcoming vertical dedicated to video game news and culture.
Wired Productions added Alasdair Hibberd to the role of Product Manager for the We Sing franchise. He previously held the position of European Account Manager for Frontier Silicon, a leading B2B provider of audio solutions in the broadcast and connected audio space.
No pre-rendering here. The E3 reveal trailer for Insomniac’s upcoming Spider-Man game that wowed E3 pundits showcased in-engine footage, in real-time, according to the company. The newest franchise showcasing Marvel’s action hero will be made an open world title a “completely original story and universe.” Click here for the trailer.
ON THIS DAY in 1991: Sonic the Hedgehog is released for the Sega Genesis.
Trivia: Mark Hamill has won multiple gaming awards for his work portraying what character in the Batman universe? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company and city.)
Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: What is the name of the world where the League of Legends is located? Answer: Runeterra. Kudos: Danny Araque-Freelancer/NY; Glen Ross/DC; Joey Olson/Manhattan Beach; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA; Chris Athens-Maxus/LA.
Later — Chris
Chris Pursell for Cynopsis | eSports @VegasandVine
06.23.16
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Create compelling and competitive layouts appropriate for an Online Multiplayer game.
Senior Level Designer
Hi-Rez Studios
Alpharetta GA
https://jobs.lever.co/hirezstudios
Create artwork for both reference use by the Art team, and for promotional and marketing purposes.
Senior Concept Artist
Hi-Rez Studios
Alpharetta GA
https://jobs.lever.co/hirezstudios
Responsible for an individual project in close relationship with the studio manager, studio technical director, and producer, ensuring projects are delivered on time.
Lead Programmer
Gameloft
New Orleans LA
http://www.gameloft.com/corporate/jobs/apply/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
Responsible for conceptualization and design: architecture, lighting and graphics.
3D Artist
Gameloft
New Orleans LA
http://www.gameloft.com/corporate/jobs/apply/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
Key contributor to the development of technology of cutting edge, 3d rendering technology within the constraints of the target system and performance characteristics of the game engine.
Senior Graphics Programmer
Bend Studio
Bend OR
http://bendstudio.com/careers/
Working directly with designers to solve layout and usability issues.
Senior Staff UI Artist
Bend Studio
Bend OR
http://bendstudio.com/careers/
Have the ability to take a creative brief and turn out a high quality video from the provided direction.
Creative Service Manager – Games
Perfect World Entertainment
Redwood City CA
https://www.linkedin.com/company/perfect-world-entertainment-inc.?trk=job_view_topcard_company_name
Conduct peer reviews, provide guidance, suggest and implement best practices and techniques.
Senior Web Services Developers
Curse Inc.
Irvine CA
http://www.curseinc.com/careers
Lead a team of cloud service developers and provide architectural oversight and guidance in furthering our cloud-based platform.
Senior of Cloud Services
Curse Inc.
Irvine CA
http://www.curseinc.com/careers
Ensure analytics are defined and properly integrated to measure target metrics.
Producer
Reality Squared Games
San Mateo CA
https://www.linkedin.com/company/reality-squared-games?trk=job_view_topcard_company_name
Evaluates designs quickly and creates original high-quality 2D work.
Senior Experience Designer
Zynga
San Diego CA
https://www.zynga.com/careers
Deliver data driven strategies to inform slate based on customer segmentation, demographics and market forecasts.
Senior Director, Product Marketing
Zynga
San Francisco CA
https://www.zynga.com/careers
Analyze acquisition funnels to maximize user retention and minimize user churn.
Senior Producer Product and E-Commerce
Perfect World Entertainment
San Francisco CA
https://www.linkedin.com/company/perfect-world-entertainment-inc.?trk=job_view_topcard_company_name
Add enhancements to Android Open Source Project for Gaming, such as support for game controllers, network and audio subsystems.
Senior Systems Software Engineer – OS
Razer
San Francisco CA
http://careers.razerzone.com/
Responsible for the product conceptualization process for licensed and unlicensed console gaming peripherals.
Director of Product Development, Console Peripherals
Razer
San Francisco CA
http://careers.razerzone.com/
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