Selvom Esports stadig er en meget lukrativ forretning i dag, ser veteranen i spilindustrien og grundlægger/CEO for Convergence of 4 Dimensions LLC, Andrew Prell, et stort problem med, hvordan det håndteres. På CES talte vi med Prell om, hvordan hans vision for Esports kunne omdefinere fremtiden.
"We're changing it from the current 25-year-old model that I would say is like the NFL," forklarede Prell. "Where, as we speak today, neither of us can imagine us making the Super Bowl next year. So why would you teach that to the 3.8 billion game players out there? What we want to do is change it more to the mindset that the World Series of Poker taught poker players. Not only can you make their tournament, you could possibly win their tournament."
Hans plan? Skab et fuldt cross-reality-spil, der tillader titusindvis eller endda hundredtusindvis af brugere at konkurrere i turneringer på ethvert tidspunkt, med potentiale til at fylde stadioner op. "I mean, you had a concert inside of a video game with 12.8 million participants," sagde Prell med henvisning til Travis Scott-koncerten i Fortnite. "So that's internet scale. So what we're going to do is what we're calling a cross-reality team tournament. Stadium scale."
Prell selv har en lang historie med videospil, virtual reality og multiplayer-titler. "In 92, I created Wolfenstein VR from the source code of Wolfenstein 3D from John Carmack of id Software," forklarede han. "Then I decided, hey, this needs to be multiplayer. It didn't matter that there wasn't any multiplayer games. I had to come up with blind device communication theory to make it multiplayer, and I created CyberTech."
Derfra gik han videre til at arbejde med folkene bag et mindre kendt spil kaldet Doom, skaberne af den originale Xbox og flere. Du kan se Prells fulde historie og hvordan han håber at omdefinere Esports i vores fulde interview nedenfor:
