Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Jonathan Strickland, and I'm here to introduce
Speaker 1: a playlist of ten episodes of my podcast tech Stuff
Speaker 1: that are all about entertainment and entertainment related fields, from
Speaker 1: video games to television series, two films to internet videos
Speaker 1: from yesteryear. So I hope you guys enjoy these episodes.
Speaker 1: You can go to the tech Stuff podcast page and
Speaker 1: subscribe to listen to all sorts of episodes about tech
Speaker 1: from all realms, and hopefully this will provide a little
Speaker 1: bit of entertainment, a little bit of education, and probably
Speaker 1: more than a few puns, because that's kind of how
Speaker 1: I roll. Enjoy this playlist. Welcome to tex Stuff, a
Speaker 1: production from my Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive
Speaker 1: producer with iHeart Radio and a love of all things tech,
Speaker 1: and we are now going to view the history of
Speaker 1: e sports in this classic episode. I hope you guys
Speaker 1: enjoy it. E sports is something that has definitely gained
Speaker 1: a lot of popularity and a small amount of respect
Speaker 1: among uh outer circles. I think we're still got a
Speaker 1: long way to go before people accept e sports as
Speaker 1: being as valid as any other sport, but certainly the
Speaker 1: fans treat it like, you know, like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a big, big deal. So let's take a listen. Today
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk specifically about the realm of professional gaming
Speaker 1: and professional gaming leagues, as well as how I tracking
Speaker 1: technology is integrated into that world these days. So think
Speaker 1: of this as the conclusion of that that loosely serialized
Speaker 1: series of episodes. And then after this one, our next
Speaker 1: episode will probably be about something completely unrelated. So if
Speaker 1: you are uh satisfied, satiated, let us say, with video
Speaker 1: game content, fear not, we will cover something different in
Speaker 1: our next episode. If you love video game content, fear not.
Speaker 1: Eventually I'll get back to it. It'll happen because it
Speaker 1: plays a big role in tech. Now let's talk about
Speaker 1: e sports. I've covered related topics, including some way back
Speaker 1: in the old days of tech stuff, when Chris Palette
Speaker 1: and I used to shout our podcast from the top
Speaker 1: of a building in Buckhead in Atlanta, and the only
Speaker 1: way you could hear it was if you were in
Speaker 1: the general neighborhood. There is a classic episode titled Can
Speaker 1: You Make a Living Playing Games? And that original episode
Speaker 1: came out on July two thousand eleven. Holy cow, guys,
Speaker 1: I've been doing this show a long time. The answer,
Speaker 1: by the way, is yes, you can make money playing
Speaker 1: video games if you're good enough. We're gonna talk a
Speaker 1: bit today about the industry around competitive professional video game players,
Speaker 1: better known as e sports. I'll have a chance to
Speaker 1: chat with Robert o'caleny, VP of E sports products over
Speaker 1: at Turner Sports, and later on I'll also chat with
Speaker 1: Brian Desaias and David Chen of alien Ware to talk
Speaker 1: about the use of eye tracking tech and E sports
Speaker 1: and how it can enhance the experience. We've got a
Speaker 1: lot of wonderful folks who gave over their time and
Speaker 1: their expertise to help make this episode happen. So big.
Speaker 1: Thanks to all of them, and I can't wait for
Speaker 1: you guys to hear what they have to say, because
Speaker 1: they're really fascinating people. But before we dive into that,
Speaker 1: it's always fun, at least for me anyway, to talk
Speaker 1: about the history of whatever the subject is at hand.
Speaker 1: So how old do you think E sports to be.
Speaker 1: Do you think it rose up in the nineties, like
Speaker 1: maybe the late nineties over in South Korea, or maybe
Speaker 1: you would go back to like the nineteen eighties, when
Speaker 1: people like Billy Mitchell established world up record high scores
Speaker 1: and arcade games like pac Man. Well, depending upon your
Speaker 1: definition of e sports, the real birth of the industry
Speaker 1: dates back to nineteen seventy two. That's when students at
Speaker 1: Stanford University pitted their lead gaming skills and a tournament
Speaker 1: of Space War. Now Steve Russell had led a small
Speaker 1: group of designers way back in nineteen sixty two to
Speaker 1: create Space War, which was one of the first examples
Speaker 1: of a computer game to use a dynamic display. Now,
Speaker 1: ever since we've had computers, people have been trying to
Speaker 1: figure out ways to make those computers do stuff that
Speaker 1: they weren't intended to do, like play games. The original
Speaker 1: computers weren't meant to do that. But you get enough
Speaker 1: people who are mathematically gifted together and they start thinking
Speaker 1: about the potential for math to do practically anything. Eventually
Speaker 1: they're gonna start creating programs that play games, including things
Speaker 1: like Tic Tac Toe. But it wasn't until the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties that people were looking at the potential of creating
Speaker 1: displays for computers. Otherwise you were getting readouts that were
Speaker 1: either on paper or sometimes just a bank of lights
Speaker 1: would light up a specific way, and that's how you
Speaker 1: knew what the output was of whatever your input was.
Speaker 1: So Space War was one of these early, early, early
Speaker 1: examples of a game that uses such a dynamic display.
Speaker 1: Players would control one of two spaceships. There was one
Speaker 1: called the needle and one called the wedge, and they
Speaker 1: were called that because obviously of their their shapes, and
Speaker 1: these spaceships could fly around in a two dimensional plane,
Speaker 1: so you can fly along that x, y axis, but
Speaker 1: not the z There was no third dimension to this,
Speaker 1: and it looked like a little space field and you
Speaker 1: were technically you are flying around the gravity well of
Speaker 1: a star so there was this gravitational effect that came
Speaker 1: into play with the game, and your whole goal was
Speaker 1: to destroy the other starship. So it was a player
Speaker 1: versus player game that came out in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: and by came out, I mean it was developed for
Speaker 1: a what at that time amounted to a supercomputer, and
Speaker 1: if you also happen to have a supercomputer and you
Speaker 1: could get a copy of the code, you could install
Speaker 1: and play that game yourself, not even installed, run the game,
Speaker 1: it's not really even installation because we're not talking about
Speaker 1: a hard disk at this point. By nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: several engineering and computer science schools had a version of
Speaker 1: this game, and then the tournament was born. The grand
Speaker 1: prize for this tournament back in nineteen seventy two was
Speaker 1: a whole year's subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. The tournament
Speaker 1: itself took place in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, so
Speaker 1: one of the most important events to ever take place
Speaker 1: in that ail in the history of mankind as far
Speaker 1: as I'm concerned. Stewart Brand, who at the time was
Speaker 1: a writer and editor for Rolling Stone, was the organizer
Speaker 1: for this event. His peace and Rolling Stone equated the
Speaker 1: players with athletes in traditional sports, so from the very
Speaker 1: beginning there were parallels. Though at the time the treatment
Speaker 1: might have been a touch tongue in cheek, maybe a
Speaker 1: little playful satirical, but the version that the students were
Speaker 1: playing of Space War was slightly altered from the one
Speaker 1: that debuted back in nineteen sixty two. There was a
Speaker 1: programmer named Ralph Goren who added in a couple of
Speaker 1: elements to the game to make it more competitive and interesting.
Speaker 1: He added in the capacity for ships to suffer partial
Speaker 1: damage before being destroyed, so you can take more than
Speaker 1: one hit. And he also threw in some space minds,
Speaker 1: so some obstacles that you could deploy within the game
Speaker 1: field and maybe your opponent would fly into them and
Speaker 1: destroy himself, and that would just make the game more
Speaker 1: interesting to play and watch. By the way, Ralph Gordon
Speaker 1: would later go on to create the world's first spell checker.
Speaker 1: So when you hear about some of these people who
Speaker 1: were involved in this tournament, a lot of them went
Speaker 1: on to do some very important things in the realm
Speaker 1: of technology and computer science. Now, the winner of that
Speaker 1: first tournament was a guy named Bruce baum Guard, and
Speaker 1: baum Guard would go on to work at the Internet Archive,
Speaker 1: and later on he would become the head of operations
Speaker 1: at Cool c U I L. And you may owe
Speaker 1: my drugs not remember what Cool is? Things changing so
Speaker 1: scory nowadays and people quick to forget it. Cool was
Speaker 1: one of those companies that when it launched, got a
Speaker 1: lot of people poking fun at it for its name,
Speaker 1: that c U I L being spelled cool. It was
Speaker 1: a short lived search engine. It did not last very long.
Speaker 1: It had really long entries, so when you did a search,
Speaker 1: you would get the results with very long descriptors of
Speaker 1: what those search results were, plus a thumbnail that would
Speaker 1: appear next to every search result. But it just didn't
Speaker 1: catch on. It ended up shutting down in September. But
Speaker 1: while cool would come and go, video game tournaments were
Speaker 1: really here to stay, and whether they were informal or
Speaker 1: they were big twodus, they continued largely beneath the notice
Speaker 1: of the general public. The introduction of the personal computer
Speaker 1: and various gaming systems in the nineteen eighties helped a
Speaker 1: little bits, as as did the rise of the arcade,
Speaker 1: but by and large video game competitions remain confined to
Speaker 1: a niche audience. In the late ninet nineties, gaming had
Speaker 1: reached a new level, largely because personal computers were much
Speaker 1: more common, and this would be the early days of
Speaker 1: the high powered graphics processing units or GPUs, those dedicated
Speaker 1: graphics cards, which were the devices that were actually giving
Speaker 1: computers the horsepower needed to run games that had three
Speaker 1: dimensional graphics, so stuff like Quake, and in fact, one
Speaker 1: of the earliest tournaments of this time was a Quake competition.
Speaker 1: It was held in nineteen and the organization holding It
Speaker 1: was read Annihilation. It drew two thousand participants, and the
Speaker 1: prize was a doozy. If you won, you got to
Speaker 1: go home with a Ferrari that once belonged to John Carmack.
Speaker 1: He was one of the lead developers of Quake. On
Speaker 1: June seven, Angel Manuals founded the cyber Athlete Professional League
Speaker 1: or the CPL. This was a group that organized various
Speaker 1: tournaments and pioneered the field of e sports professional tournaments.
Speaker 1: It operated out of the United States until two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: when the company nearly dissolved due to an overcrowded scene,
Speaker 1: got acquired and then sort of relaunched in China. But
Speaker 1: in just a decade we saw that the environment had
Speaker 1: changed from a curiosity into a pretty big industry. This
Speaker 1: cyber Athlete Professional League went from being the only game
Speaker 1: in town pun intended to being a a fish in
Speaker 1: a very large pond that was growing completely beyond what
Speaker 1: it originally was. Now. Early on, the emphasis in these
Speaker 1: tournaments was on first person shooter games games like Quake.
Speaker 1: Then sports titles also became popular in tournament play. Then
Speaker 1: you might get things like fighting games. They've popped up
Speaker 1: a little bit later and then real time strategy genre
Speaker 1: games joined the ranks, and that's when the game StarCraft
Speaker 1: brood War rose to prominence in the tournament scene. While
Speaker 1: tournaments were still largely a niche interest in the United
Speaker 1: States and other parts of the world, they had become
Speaker 1: incredibly popular, and one of those regions was South Korea.
Speaker 1: South Korea has two big game channels, on game Net
Speaker 1: and NBC Game, both of which created leagues of professional
Speaker 1: StarCraft players who would compete against each other for prizes.
Speaker 1: The kind tree takes professional gaming extremely seriously. In fact,
Speaker 1: when a scandal broke out in that some StarCraft players
Speaker 1: were purposefully throwing games as part of a gambling scheme,
Speaker 1: the government levied harsh punishments against the accused players, all
Speaker 1: of whom were banned for life from professional StarCraft competition.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, the World Cyber Games and Electronics Sports
Speaker 1: World Cup both launched, and they gave professional gaming a
Speaker 1: bigger spotlight. Two years later, the Major League Gaming Professional
Speaker 1: Game League launched, and since then professional video game leagues
Speaker 1: have been picking up speed. We've also seen other types
Speaker 1: of games into this realm, including MOBA's things like Dota
Speaker 1: Too and Smite, and League of Legends. Those have become
Speaker 1: enormously popular in the professional gaming league scene. In recent years,
Speaker 1: we've also seen a big push coming from major broadcasters
Speaker 1: to elevate professional video game tournaments. I had a chance
Speaker 1: to speak with Robert Ocellini, who overseas e League at
Speaker 1: Turner to talk about it now. Robert, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on text stuff. I want to
Speaker 1: kind of get an idea about how eligue came about
Speaker 1: and uh, and and sort of get an idea of
Speaker 1: how it's evolved and and what you have seen so
Speaker 1: far in that space. Because while the sports I think, uh,
Speaker 1: it's something that more and more people are are aware of,
Speaker 1: it's still sort of an emerging kind of form of
Speaker 1: entertainment for a large part of the mainstream audience. I
Speaker 1: think that's changing, especially among younger demographics. I think they're
Speaker 1: far more aware, especially now that we're seeing video games
Speaker 1: being used as a form just the playing of video
Speaker 1: games being used as a form of entertainment throughout lots
Speaker 1: of different platforms. But tell me specifically about eligue, sure, so, Uh.
Speaker 1: Eleague was first announced about two years ago. Um, it
Speaker 1: actually wasn't called elague at the time. We didn't have
Speaker 1: a name it UM, but we were working on it,
Speaker 1: I would say for probably six months or so before
Speaker 1: that September two thousand fifteen announcement UM. And really it
Speaker 1: came from the sort of interest came from the very
Speaker 1: senior levels of Turner. So Kevin Reiley, who is the
Speaker 1: head of TBS and tn T, came to the company
Speaker 1: with a lot of contacts and gaming UM and you
Speaker 1: know he's in l A and E sports has really
Speaker 1: taken off in Los Angeles, and so he came in
Speaker 1: with a lot of interest in the sports. And then
Speaker 1: from the Turner Sports side, you know, Lenny Daniels and
Speaker 1: David Levy UM had had a lot of interest in
Speaker 1: the space. They saw, you know, they kept hearing that
Speaker 1: this space was developing. They kind of saw what was happening.
Speaker 1: And actually at first UM at of time, I was
Speaker 1: working on the NBA's digital products here. I did seven
Speaker 1: seasons working on the NBA mobile apps and over the
Speaker 1: top apps and NBA League pass UM and for a
Speaker 1: little while as a part time job, I was actually
Speaker 1: going to meetings and working on this, and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of my background is more in digital product, but
Speaker 1: I'm a lifelong gamer and very interested in competitive gaming
Speaker 1: and was actually the GM of competitive World of Warcraft guild.
Speaker 1: Um So I kind of had my own long history
Speaker 1: with with gaming and e sports on the fan side
Speaker 1: and on the playing side. UM so I kind of
Speaker 1: was able to bring that to the table. UM as
Speaker 1: we looked into this, and then I think probably around
Speaker 1: uh beginning of July July, we sort of decided what
Speaker 1: direction we're going to go in, and at that time
Speaker 1: they decided that if I wanted to work on this
Speaker 1: full time, they give me that opportunity. And I really
Speaker 1: haven't looked back, um, nor have nor has the company.
Speaker 1: Um uh. So, you know, we we did this deal
Speaker 1: with i MG Iligue as a joint venture with w
Speaker 1: M E i MG, and we started meeting with teams.
Speaker 1: We actually had a big team summit in September because
Speaker 1: we were really the first big media brand to enter
Speaker 1: into this e sports space and we wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that we were entering it with reverence, um with
Speaker 1: you know, an eye towards authenticity. And then of course,
Speaker 1: you know, we'd already decided at that point that we're
Speaker 1: going to work with counter Strike um that we were
Speaker 1: talking to and getting feedback from the counter Strike community. UM.
Speaker 1: About two months later we came up with a name
Speaker 1: and logo and all of that stuff and launched our website.
Speaker 1: And then in January of two thousand sixteen, we did
Speaker 1: our very first tournament UM the Road to Vegas, and
Speaker 1: that was essentially sort of an open qualifier for one
Speaker 1: of the scots in our inaugural season. Later in UM,
Speaker 1: we really started the league and league play in earnest
Speaker 1: in May of sixteen UM with our first counter Strike season.
Speaker 1: We followed that up later in sixteen we had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to do the Overwatch Open. We were like the
Speaker 1: first big Overwatch tournament UM, and then we did a
Speaker 1: second season of counter Strike. Around that time frame, we
Speaker 1: were also awarded the first counter Strike Major of SEEN
Speaker 1: UM and we did that in January. And then in
Speaker 1: in SEEN we've we've branched out a little bit and
Speaker 1: have done some stuff with street Fighter. We did a
Speaker 1: series a docuseries around UH the International, which is the
Speaker 1: big DODA World Championship. And then finally right now we're
Speaker 1: running are what is essentially our third Counterstrike season of
Speaker 1: the Premier UM and you know that's where Group D
Speaker 1: starts tonight, uh, and then the finals the week of
Speaker 1: October ten. So you know, it's been, uh, it's been
Speaker 1: kind of a wild ride. We went from from you
Speaker 1: know nothing and no organization to a thriving business with
Speaker 1: a lot of employees and uh, you know, have done
Speaker 1: a lot of tournaments at this point. Um, I think
Speaker 1: you know, the only other thing I'll add that I
Speaker 1: shouldn't have bloss over is the amazing studio that we
Speaker 1: built downstairs that's built for sports, whether that game is
Speaker 1: one v one or six P six. We have built
Speaker 1: the studio in a way that, um, it can it
Speaker 1: can easily support any game that we want to do.
Speaker 1: And then of course we've got all of the you
Speaker 1: know other stuff you would want, practice space for the players,
Speaker 1: a player lounge, first class green room for our talent um,
Speaker 1: and then all the tech that you would need to
Speaker 1: to support doing something like a counter strike tournament, which
Speaker 1: is a pretty big undertaking right where every tiny little
Speaker 1: technical detail can end up uh having an influence on
Speaker 1: actual gameplay. It is really important as well pointing out
Speaker 1: to my listeners here that by going this route, by
Speaker 1: having the tournament where you've got the system set up
Speaker 1: where you know, you're going to have a really good
Speaker 1: approach to running these games. It also means everyone's on
Speaker 1: equal footing. It doesn't mean that, you know, you're not
Speaker 1: worried about one who's souped up their game engine so
Speaker 1: or their game system so much that they're going to
Speaker 1: have an unfair advantage over anyone else. It really does
Speaker 1: bring it down to skill and in the case of
Speaker 1: games like Counterstrike, really good team communication and team uh cooperation.
Speaker 1: I'm really fascinated by this, And since you've had experience
Speaker 1: working in a realm that was UH that was focused
Speaker 1: on traditional sports, something that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people can can kind of get their mind around for
Speaker 1: For people who haven't made that that step from the
Speaker 1: idea of well, a professional sport where you're playing physically
Speaker 1: in a on a cord or on a field or
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. That's one thing. But professional video
Speaker 1: game playing, how is that something that you How can
Speaker 1: you consider that person an athlete? Well, you've seen both worlds.
Speaker 1: What's your kind of response to that sort of uh,
Speaker 1: like think we wants asking questions or if they're just
Speaker 1: expressing skepticism that someone could be an athlete playing video
Speaker 1: games by the way, I'm totally on the board of
Speaker 1: professional video games players are on a level that is far, far,
Speaker 1: far beyond the capabilities of the average person. Sure, I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: I think that that skepticism is a natural a natural thing, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think with with physical sports, it's very easy
Speaker 1: to tell that I cannot jump as high off the
Speaker 1: ground as Lebron James, right. Um, But me sitting in
Speaker 1: front of a computer, it doesn't look optically any different
Speaker 1: than ol of Meister or Faker or any of these
Speaker 1: sort of top tier esports players. But I will tell
Speaker 1: you that, Um, from a talent perspective, from a commitment perspective,
Speaker 1: these gentlemen are no and women are no different than
Speaker 1: professional athletes and traditional stick and ball sports. They are
Speaker 1: a cut above and you know, you if you were
Speaker 1: to put an average or even above average sort of
Speaker 1: casual video game athlete up against these guys, they would
Speaker 1: just get completely and utterly wrecked. You know. I think
Speaker 1: that one of the interesting things that we've done here
Speaker 1: at Turner this year is we had an employee tournament
Speaker 1: for street Fighters. So we did we did this uh
Speaker 1: six week street Fighter season where we had the best
Speaker 1: street fighter players in the world come to our campus
Speaker 1: and play, and then UM, a couple of weeks after
Speaker 1: that tournament was over, we had an internal tournament that
Speaker 1: culminated with the finals that was played in the very
Speaker 1: same studio where our street Fighter tournament was hosted. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, shirt Off Turners a pretty big company.
Speaker 1: They're some really good street Fighter players here. But talking
Speaker 1: to the sort of experts that we have on staff,
Speaker 1: the guy who won the tournament would be like the
Speaker 1: tenth best player at a local Atlanta semi professional tournament.
Speaker 1: And the guy who would win that tournament wouldn't even
Speaker 1: be in the top hundred in the world. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a there's a big difference between the two
Speaker 1: d and fifty guys who play counterstrike sort of at
Speaker 1: the top level professionally and the seven or eight million
Speaker 1: people who play it on a daily basis. UM. So
Speaker 1: you know, I'm in definitely you can tell I'm in
Speaker 1: the camp of this is no different than the other sports.
Speaker 1: There's a scarcity of of talent and then the ability
Speaker 1: to sort of focus that The commitment that it requires
Speaker 1: to play these games at a top level UM is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I guess the last point i'd make on that is, Um,
Speaker 1: it's also really hard to stay on top. And you
Speaker 1: know there's one team currently that you know, last year
Speaker 1: one i think five tournaments uh during the regular tournament season,
Speaker 1: and this year made it to the finals of the Major.
Speaker 1: But we've seen them slowly declined. The name of the
Speaker 1: team as Burtis Pro and we love them. They won
Speaker 1: our first season, UM, but we've seen them slowly decline
Speaker 1: and they actually didn't make it to the playoffs of
Speaker 1: our current tournament. And I think that that shows like
Speaker 1: just how tight it is at the very top, right,
Speaker 1: Like even just kind of in six months, a team
Speaker 1: can go from being virtually unbeatable over a three or
Speaker 1: four month time period to not even making it to
Speaker 1: the late stages of any tournaments. There's that very top level.
Speaker 1: Is it is the top of the pyramid in every way,
Speaker 1: shape or form. Now in your experience of overseeing these
Speaker 1: things being part of the the E League, UH, does
Speaker 1: it feel like when there's a tournament going, when you
Speaker 1: have these people at this these very elite levels of
Speaker 1: performance competing against each other. Isn't a similar kind of
Speaker 1: of atmosphere of excitement to watch people at that level
Speaker 1: play similar to what you might see in a traditional
Speaker 1: sporting arena. I think, you know, I think, for so
Speaker 1: there are differences there that I would call out right
Speaker 1: so um for some tournaments and and I'm not alluding
Speaker 1: to ours, almost all of the competition except for the finals,
Speaker 1: is played over the internet, right, and so you know
Speaker 1: the spectator experience there is on Twitch and on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and you know that the chat experience is like a
Speaker 1: proxy for the arena, if that makes sense, almost like
Speaker 1: a virtual proxy, I would say, though, at the very
Speaker 1: top level, if you were to were to attend like
Speaker 1: our finals at the Fox Theater in Atlanta for the Major,
Speaker 1: or an e s L one in New York, or
Speaker 1: the finals of a dream Hack, they have all of
Speaker 1: the same trappings and crowd engagement that you know a
Speaker 1: professional Atlanta sports team has. And you know, I go,
Speaker 1: I'm a season ticket holder for our our new MLS team,
Speaker 1: which probably has about as good fan engagement as you
Speaker 1: could possibly have, and it feels the same to me
Speaker 1: as the really Rabbit fans for the finals of our
Speaker 1: Major or the finals the Dota to International. I went
Speaker 1: to that this summer too, at Key Arena, which is
Speaker 1: where the Sonics used to play in Seattle, so even
Speaker 1: the same buildings in some case, although I will also
Speaker 1: say those buildings can sometimes not be the best venues
Speaker 1: for watching the sports because you're trying to watch on
Speaker 1: the screen and watch kind of what's going on stage.
Speaker 1: But what's going on on stage a lot of the
Speaker 1: time is some guys in headsets yelling to each other, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the more interesting thing is the combination of what they're
Speaker 1: doing with what's happening on the screen. Right. Similar to
Speaker 1: what we've seen with various platforms where people are setting
Speaker 1: up webcams to capture their their footage of how they
Speaker 1: react while they're playing games, I imagine something similar is
Speaker 1: useful in this kind of realm. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about the advances and technology that are
Speaker 1: making it easier and more enjoyable to watch gaming as
Speaker 1: a professional sport. But first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. In a previous episode, I spoke
Speaker 1: with Oscar Warner over at Toby Tech about eye tracking technology,
Speaker 1: and we talked a bit about how it could be
Speaker 1: used in professional gaming, but to get a more thorough
Speaker 1: perspective on it, I had a conversation with Brian Dazais
Speaker 1: and David Chen of alien Ware about how it's transforming
Speaker 1: e sports. Yeah. So, um, one of the things that
Speaker 1: aileen Ware is always doing right, We're always trying to
Speaker 1: look for the next innovative thing. What's going to help gamers,
Speaker 1: whether they're professional or just you know, folks that just
Speaker 1: want to have fun playing games. How can they have
Speaker 1: more fun and how can they get better at their games?
Speaker 1: In I just make it as in most of it
Speaker 1: as possible. UM. So you know, as as we launch
Speaker 1: and look at new technologies, UM, one of the things
Speaker 1: that was coming down the pike several years ago, UM
Speaker 1: is eye tracking. Now, historically you've thought of eye tracking
Speaker 1: or you know, eye tracking mainly for some cool stuff
Speaker 1: like trying to maybe log into a computer or something
Speaker 1: like that, kind of like facial recognition. UM. But as
Speaker 1: the technologies evolved, as it's gotten smaller, been able to
Speaker 1: put into laptops and things like that. UM. It really
Speaker 1: there's a lot of innovative ways to the things we
Speaker 1: could do. As you're just tracing with the ice looking
Speaker 1: and so what we started working with Toby on is
Speaker 1: how can we adopt that and tie that into something
Speaker 1: meaningful for gamers. And at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've seen and known that gamers are always looking
Speaker 1: for an advantage. So I'll give you an example. You know,
Speaker 1: and most most gamers will at some point, if they're
Speaker 1: really into a game, right, they're gonna go to YouTube
Speaker 1: or they're gonna go onto Twitch, and they're gonna try
Speaker 1: and get better at their game. They're gonna look at
Speaker 1: tips and tricks. And you know, I'm maybe doing it today. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm heavily invested in pub g and um it seems
Speaker 1: like every other day, every day, I'm trying to see,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to get some tips and tricks
Speaker 1: and get better at it because I'm not very good, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: But you know I dive in there anyway. I completely completely,
Speaker 1: but it's too much fun to avoid. So but but
Speaker 1: kind of that that nature and just wanting to get better, UM,
Speaker 1: and I tracking prove as we're thinking about how leverage
Speaker 1: this provided a real, a real way to track how
Speaker 1: the best players in the world as a specific game
Speaker 1: or any game that they're playing. Where are they looking?
Speaker 1: You know, gaming is so much about where you're looking,
Speaker 1: where you're paying attention where your focus is. And I
Speaker 1: tracking really enabled really the world and we'll talk some
Speaker 1: definitely about this, but enabled gamers to see where the
Speaker 1: best players in the world are looking at any point
Speaker 1: in time. So are they looking at the mini map,
Speaker 1: are they looking down the corridor, They're looking down the hallway? Um,
Speaker 1: right before you know, they fragged somebody or they get
Speaker 1: tragged or whatever it might be happening in the match.
Speaker 1: So we saw this real opportunity, this real thing that
Speaker 1: gamers are looking to do, and that's get better and
Speaker 1: this technology that really allows a new level of data
Speaker 1: capture and you turn that into some analytics and you
Speaker 1: can actually put out, um, some pretty interesting information. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of at the very beginning conceptually, when we're
Speaker 1: just you know, sitting around with you know, our internal
Speaker 1: product group teams, are internal marketing teams talking to e
Speaker 1: sports organizations, um, and you know, our third party partners
Speaker 1: like Toby talking about whether the priorities that we have
Speaker 1: coming up. You know, this isn't just a something we
Speaker 1: spoke about six months ago. This is year in the
Speaker 1: making of understanding what gamers are looking for and working
Speaker 1: with these technology partners. So that's kind of out it
Speaker 1: all started and UM and and and David if you
Speaker 1: have UM you obviously played an Intel part for us
Speaker 1: here and getting this technology rolled out with UH, with
Speaker 1: with Turner and the league. So, UM, there's anything you
Speaker 1: want to add on on where this started? Police feel free? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would you say, And it's your point earlier A
Speaker 1: lot of this technology and research into this technology as
Speaker 1: part of gaming even beyond gaming has been around for
Speaker 1: a couple of years now, and it hasn't really been
Speaker 1: until now, until the technology has become uh, you know,
Speaker 1: smaller and more nimble, that it's you know, hitting this
Speaker 1: more consumer level focus. But I'm sure in the past
Speaker 1: they've been using eye tracking to look at how people
Speaker 1: respond to add online, you know, when they do keep
Speaker 1: mapping on websites and where people respond UM. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't until I think a couple of years ago, probably
Speaker 1: two or two years ago, that one of our partners,
Speaker 1: t liquid UM they had done some research of their
Speaker 1: own with I believe it was the Mayo Research Clinic
Speaker 1: over in California, UM and they had work with a
Speaker 1: UH I believe the professor there who was researching kind
Speaker 1: of eye tracking as part of video gaming. The level
Speaker 1: of cognition and just the uh, you know, research level
Speaker 1: analytics between some of the oldest veteran players versus you know,
Speaker 1: young hot starts who are coming out, you know, sixteen
Speaker 1: seventeen and dominating the scene. UM. And the research that
Speaker 1: he saw and some of these teams are really startling
Speaker 1: as far as you know, veterans being able to still
Speaker 1: keep the edge ahead through their experience and just how
Speaker 1: quick their eyes are and being able to you know,
Speaker 1: cycle between icons from you know, a hundred different characters
Speaker 1: and they have a lot more in their memory banks
Speaker 1: to pull from and react from than a lot of
Speaker 1: younger players. UM. And again at that time, you know
Speaker 1: that research is probably being done on a ten to
Speaker 1: twelve thousand dollar piece of equipment that was tracking your
Speaker 1: eyes and it was cumbersome, and now we're seeing it
Speaker 1: to the point where again it's able to be up
Speaker 1: into a laptop and it's something that you know, pretty
Speaker 1: much a lot of consumers and teams UM have at
Speaker 1: their immediate disposal. UM. And what I'm bringing the back
Speaker 1: home between liquid you know, as more and more teams
Speaker 1: are growing in the space, and as more and more
Speaker 1: traditional sports teams are also getting involved in the sports,
Speaker 1: there's this growing desire to understand again the dynamics of
Speaker 1: the athleticism or the cognition and skill of the traditional
Speaker 1: athlete versus an e sports athletes. And I think we're
Speaker 1: barely scratching the surface of what that means today. UM
Speaker 1: And as more and more other technology catches up, I
Speaker 1: think we all dream of finding other big in cycul
Speaker 1: ways that the sports can provide a level of biometric data,
Speaker 1: um to allow us to appreciate, you know, what's the
Speaker 1: best you well uh and also how you know, average
Speaker 1: Joe's like you and I can strive to uh chase
Speaker 1: after some of that greatness in certain categories. It's definitely
Speaker 1: very very exciting. That's so cool and and and you know, I,
Speaker 1: I too am chasing after that elusive chicken dinner over
Speaker 1: at pub g and it it remains just outside my grasp.
Speaker 1: So being able to see how not just not just
Speaker 1: how well someone plays, but how they go about playing
Speaker 1: that way, there is something really enticing about that, the
Speaker 1: not just you know, when we watch professional sports, typically
Speaker 1: we can see great, great displays of athleticism, but you know,
Speaker 1: people are not machines. We can break things down and
Speaker 1: use slow motion and various camera angles to kind of
Speaker 1: analyze the basics. But to me, the fact that we're
Speaker 1: talking about a digital realm and then being able to
Speaker 1: track our physical motions and map that to the actions
Speaker 1: of a digital realm, it does seem like this is
Speaker 1: uh much more conducive to breaking things down into quantifiable
Speaker 1: aspects to really talk about, Well, you know, this person
Speaker 1: is checking their mini map more frequently than someone who
Speaker 1: is not a professional gamer. That's a really interesting stat
Speaker 1: and could really inform people how to play the game
Speaker 1: at a slightly higher level than what they were doing before.
Speaker 1: Knowing of course that it's not a magic substitute for
Speaker 1: the hours of practice, as you know, countless hours of
Speaker 1: practice for some of these professional gamers who will sit
Speaker 1: down for eight or ten hours and play a game
Speaker 1: and that's largely how they got as good as they are,
Speaker 1: but then also a tool for them to look at afterward.
Speaker 1: Maybe they've played in a tournament, maybe they played really
Speaker 1: well and they want to see what what they were
Speaker 1: doing and remember to really hone in on those particular
Speaker 1: types of of of strategies and future tournaments, or they
Speaker 1: didn't do so well and maybe they want to see
Speaker 1: what the differences between their performance and someone else's. I
Speaker 1: also like the idea of this from if we're looking
Speaker 1: beyond the sports, which we'll get back to in a second.
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave that behind, but I like
Speaker 1: this idea also from a game designer standpoint, the idea
Speaker 1: of getting more information about what your players see as
Speaker 1: important in your game means that game designers can actually
Speaker 1: use that information to make more effective games down the
Speaker 1: line um and beyond that. If you if you think
Speaker 1: about this technology reaching a point where it becomes more
Speaker 1: of a kind of a a standard piece of tech
Speaker 1: that gets rolled out into laptops in the future or
Speaker 1: computers in general in the future, you could see this
Speaker 1: being incorporated into games themselves, where it's not just analysis,
Speaker 1: but it becomes an element of gameplay. Like I think
Speaker 1: of a game, perhaps like l A Noir, where part
Speaker 1: of that game involves the player watching a virtual characters
Speaker 1: action as you're interrogating the character, and that in turn
Speaker 1: informs you as to whether or not that character is
Speaker 1: telling the truth they're telling a lie. Will imagine eye
Speaker 1: tracking technology where the character appears to be aware of
Speaker 1: where you are looking, and then that adds a whole
Speaker 1: new game element. So to me, the eye tracking technology
Speaker 1: in the gaming world, I mean, as you say, we're
Speaker 1: at the very beginning of it. Even if you just
Speaker 1: and I don't mean to to to uh make this
Speaker 1: sound less than what it is, but even if you
Speaker 1: are restricting that attention to eat sports, there are so
Speaker 1: many incredible potential applications for this technology. And it's really
Speaker 1: exciting to be in these fairly early days talking about
Speaker 1: where we're going right now. Um so getting back to
Speaker 1: eat sports and getting back into that realm. Can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the relationships that have formed
Speaker 1: now that uh, you guys are really kind of uh
Speaker 1: getting more involved with incorporating eye tracking tech analogy and
Speaker 1: the pro gaming realm. I want to hear more about this, uh,
Speaker 1: this this relationship and how that has developed over time. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you make some some great points, Jonathan. I think you know,
Speaker 1: as we as we think about where we are, we
Speaker 1: are very much um just that at the beginning point
Speaker 1: of showcasing this kind of technology and I attracting technology
Speaker 1: um to the world, right And I'll definitely jump into
Speaker 1: the partners and talk about the partners and what we've
Speaker 1: done um, but you you have made some really interesting
Speaker 1: comments about where is you know, who can get the
Speaker 1: most benefit out of UH technologies like this, like eye
Speaker 1: tracking and and that kind of thing. And there's obviously
Speaker 1: some very clear benefits for professional players and for amateurs
Speaker 1: that are trying to become professional, right, just this no
Speaker 1: of getting better learning from the pros that are out there,
Speaker 1: just like traditional sports. But one of the other parts
Speaker 1: that really intrigued us here as we're trying to trying
Speaker 1: to roll out this kind of technology is for the
Speaker 1: for just the viewer, um, for the fan. One of
Speaker 1: the things that has not kind of cut up with
Speaker 1: traditional sports is the viewing experience and the commentating. A
Speaker 1: lot of the commentating in the past for the sports
Speaker 1: has been around, you know, the commentator explaining what's going on,
Speaker 1: but verbally there really wasn't a visual visual cues or
Speaker 1: visual explanations of what's happening in the match. You know.
Speaker 1: Obviously with NFL or NBA there's a lot of analytic
Speaker 1: things and things that happened through the broadcast, I think
Speaker 1: of teleprompters and and things like that. Well, it really
Speaker 1: wasn't that for e sports. And so as we were
Speaker 1: introducing the technology and figuring out how can we bring
Speaker 1: this and how what should we be doing, and we
Speaker 1: really wanted to make that viewing experience better for you know,
Speaker 1: the hundreds of millions of gaming fans that are watching
Speaker 1: these sports globally. And then we have to decide, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: how who can who shares our values, who can who
Speaker 1: will work with us to to bring this technology to
Speaker 1: the forefront. And you know, earlier this year in January,
Speaker 1: UM we announced the partnership and we've been working very
Speaker 1: closely with UM, with Turner and with Elige around all
Speaker 1: the all the tournaments that they're running. And UM actually
Speaker 1: just here in September for the first time UM partnership
Speaker 1: between US, Toby and an Eleague. UM we rolled out
Speaker 1: the the getting Technical segment on the Eligue broadcast and
Speaker 1: really being able to to showcase the fans and to
Speaker 1: the viewers this ideas technology that's being captured to the
Speaker 1: tracking software at Tracking Software. So UM from a partnership side,
Speaker 1: it has been it was it was very important to
Speaker 1: us to select partners and work with partners that shared
Speaker 1: quite honestly our vision of making this better for for
Speaker 1: the viewer because we know professionals are going to continue
Speaker 1: to innovate and get better where at the forefront working
Speaker 1: with them on separate uh, separate programs. Amateurs are always
Speaker 1: going to look to get better because they want they
Speaker 1: they want so badly to become a professional. But there's
Speaker 1: a ton of people I just enjoy the sports because
Speaker 1: of what it is, and how can we make it
Speaker 1: better for them? So, um, David all hands over to
Speaker 1: you because you again, I would love for you to
Speaker 1: chime in and talk to uh just a relationship we
Speaker 1: have with Turner and E League and how all that
Speaker 1: came together. Yes, absolutely, and I feel like get bowed
Speaker 1: back down to a point of trying to be a
Speaker 1: good steward as far as a leader in the industry
Speaker 1: on behalf of the sports and really just making it
Speaker 1: a bit easier for viewers overall to get more out
Speaker 1: of the viewing experience, whether their season veterans who have
Speaker 1: been watching the games for a long time, or something
Speaker 1: maybe new to the game as well. We've seen the
Speaker 1: studies who knew you that say a lot of sports
Speaker 1: viewers don't even play the games that they watch. So
Speaker 1: if we're trying to help the sports grow in the
Speaker 1: Western world. That's likely going to be introducing the sports
Speaker 1: to people who are very new to the game, maybe
Speaker 1: your family, maybe your friends who put that um So,
Speaker 1: when it came to working with Eligue, I think it
Speaker 1: was no brainer for us to start off with counter Strikes.
Speaker 1: When you look at the landscape of the sports titles
Speaker 1: out there, you can look at your League of Legends,
Speaker 1: your Dodas and your mobios out there, it does have
Speaker 1: a rather high learning curve for people who may not
Speaker 1: be yet familiar with the title. UM So, definitely we
Speaker 1: look at a game like counter Strike, there's really nothing
Speaker 1: to us understand about, you know, don't be on the
Speaker 1: wrong point and end of the gun. Um and so
Speaker 1: I think being able to find a game that immediately
Speaker 1: resonates it and can be digested by a larger audience
Speaker 1: helps us. Uh. Not only again brings to a wider audience,
Speaker 1: but then when you factor in the first person perspective
Speaker 1: and what eye tracking can really bring in from a
Speaker 1: synergy perspective there, it really made a lot of sense
Speaker 1: to find the white partner like easy to have a
Speaker 1: right tournament, where again counter Strikes with their bread and
Speaker 1: butter for the better part of two years now. Um.
Speaker 1: They housted the Major in January to overwhelming success. UM,
Speaker 1: and they're willing to continue to try and see how
Speaker 1: they can push the limits of counter Strike even further
Speaker 1: and further as you look towards the future. But it
Speaker 1: really boils down to what ways can we have this
Speaker 1: experience be more digestible to a huge gaming audience out there.
Speaker 1: So for eye tracking and counter strike, where was the
Speaker 1: player looking, what were the context of you know, how
Speaker 1: they made the decision that they did, um, And we've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of assignment from it. We've seen a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of assignment from the fans. They've been really
Speaker 1: uh receptive of the I cracking uh clips. They've been
Speaker 1: telling us how they want to see you know, other players,
Speaker 1: specific players get put under the microscope. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: they would love to be able to get a better
Speaker 1: clear breakdown of exactly how they pulled off the ace
Speaker 1: that they did. We're seeing a lot of really good
Speaker 1: reception from the commentators as well. So when we look
Speaker 1: at the league, uh, the you know enders U and
Speaker 1: a lot of the guys who are providing kind of
Speaker 1: the color uh you know playing by play commentary have
Speaker 1: been excited to be able to talk, you know, a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the nuances of for example, how
Speaker 1: an in game leader on the team may index more
Speaker 1: between the mini map and looking at the economy of
Speaker 1: the team and the other four players who are more
Speaker 1: of the you know, damage doers and the um you know,
Speaker 1: the meet and guns of the team are just more
Speaker 1: focused on playing UM and so I think it really
Speaker 1: opens up a way to present the game again, to
Speaker 1: know why a variety of people, and it helps us
Speaker 1: as a brand find meaningful ways to continue the game
Speaker 1: back to the community rather than you know, just business
Speaker 1: as usual logo branding and culsorship rights and things like that. Fascinating,
Speaker 1: I think. I also find it really interesting that that
Speaker 1: counter Strike is the sort of the go to game.
Speaker 1: It makes perfect sense. But I recently did a multi
Speaker 1: part series on the history of Valve, and so my
Speaker 1: listeners now know that counter Strike that's a game that
Speaker 1: originally was you know, a modification. Uh, it was a
Speaker 1: mod of Half Life that came out thousand that It's
Speaker 1: gone through a couple of different variations, the source version
Speaker 1: of it coming out a few years ago, I believe
Speaker 1: it was And to see that that game is still
Speaker 1: so so such a big part of E sports. It is,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. It requires people to have very strong
Speaker 1: skill sets as well as be very good team players
Speaker 1: if you want to have a strong counter strike team,
Speaker 1: and I can definitely see where that value comes in.
Speaker 1: I remember distinctly when I attended a C E S
Speaker 1: many years ago. UH. One of the the companies there,
Speaker 1: one of the the computer companies. We're hosting Ubisoft's team
Speaker 1: at the time, the frag Dolls, who were professional gamers,
Speaker 1: and the frag Dolls were taking on all comers, and
Speaker 1: so people would step up, they'd form a team of four,
Speaker 1: and then three of the frag Dolls would just decimate them.
Speaker 1: And it happened over and over and over again, and
Speaker 1: it was exciting to watch. But it would have been
Speaker 1: so much more interesting to actually see how they played
Speaker 1: together as a team, beyond just knowing that they're coordinating
Speaker 1: much better, that they have a good knowledge of the maps,
Speaker 1: being able to see where they're looking, and how frequently
Speaker 1: they're looking around. Do they stare at one place for
Speaker 1: any given time, where are they just constantly scanning? Uh,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff would have been really interesting to see.
Speaker 1: So I find this really exciting. And as you point out,
Speaker 1: it also by giving more information. By informing the audience,
Speaker 1: you spend less time, uh, trying to familiarize yourself with
Speaker 1: the way the game is working. It becomes much more
Speaker 1: apparent early on if you're able to see what other
Speaker 1: people are looking at, and I think it removes that barrier. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think it also really illustrates how professional gamers are.
Speaker 1: Are you know, just incredibly good at what they do
Speaker 1: beyond raking up high scores, because I think still among
Speaker 1: certain populations at least, the idea of professional gaming is
Speaker 1: somewhat scoffed at. Whereas you know, we accept professional sports
Speaker 1: pretty easily. That's been part of our culture for for
Speaker 1: decades and that is pretty easy for folks to go
Speaker 1: along with. I think before anyone gets a chance to
Speaker 1: really see what pro e sports is all about, they
Speaker 1: have an initial reaction of like, well, that's a game
Speaker 1: that's not a sport. And it's not until you're able
Speaker 1: to really kind of break it down in this way
Speaker 1: and say, no, take a look at this. These these
Speaker 1: are men and women who are doing things at a
Speaker 1: level far beyond what the average person is capable of doing.
Speaker 1: It is similar, if not, if not identical to what
Speaker 1: you see in the actual physical sports realm. So I
Speaker 1: like that aspect of it as well. It gives you
Speaker 1: that extra I guess ammunition is the right way to
Speaker 1: put it when you are talking about the sports and
Speaker 1: trying to explain to someone how it really is a
Speaker 1: level of performance beyond what the average person tends to
Speaker 1: be able to do. Uh. Through this partnership, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've you've seen some really interesting stuff. Are there any
Speaker 1: particular uh stories or particular revelations that you have encountered
Speaker 1: as a result of this eye tracking technology being part
Speaker 1: of this experience. Yeah, I mean I would definitely say
Speaker 1: the just the little of nuanced gameplay between these counterslike
Speaker 1: players is insane. I mean we talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: these guys being able to be at the top of
Speaker 1: their games. I mean, these are the guys who absolutely
Speaker 1: can tell the difference between you know, two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty hurt versus a hundred and forty two hurts. There's
Speaker 1: jokes out there about how these human I feel and
Speaker 1: see you know thirty fps. That is completely not true
Speaker 1: at all. Um. You know the counter start guys who
Speaker 1: within the league and a lot of these guys here
Speaker 1: are just very um uh, their their senses are extreme.
Speaker 1: You know, when you also could have some of these
Speaker 1: guys play. There's a player like j d M on
Speaker 1: Team Liquid who means back, you know, three or four
Speaker 1: ft behind it here, the distance between his eyes to
Speaker 1: the screen is wildly different from you know, another player
Speaker 1: who may be near seven inches away. Um. We found
Speaker 1: that can be interesting in the studio setting when it
Speaker 1: comes to calibrating the eye tracking units for the various
Speaker 1: players and making sure that the way that they compete
Speaker 1: is how they're being calibrated at the time. But I
Speaker 1: think just at a very high level, um, people, once
Speaker 1: we slow down the game and once we get to
Speaker 1: replays and all the technologies finally as caught up to
Speaker 1: be able to subtily break down the nuances of how
Speaker 1: quick they are in terms of milliseconds and hundreds of milliseconds,
Speaker 1: we're gonna quickly see just you know, the difference between
Speaker 1: the top one percent of players and invest of us
Speaker 1: out there. And uh, that'shing to be very exciting to see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and you know something else that stood out to
Speaker 1: me here with with the initial raud and it's kind
Speaker 1: of the first the first time the getting technical SIGMENTA
Speaker 1: started to run on the league coverage has been the reaction. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I mentioned part of the reason that we're
Speaker 1: doing this is we want to improve the viewership experience,
Speaker 1: you know, selfishly for us as gamers and fans, because
Speaker 1: we're watching these things ourselves and we want to be
Speaker 1: able to us better viewing experience. Like if you look
Speaker 1: at the feedback you know, just on on Facebook, comments
Speaker 1: on what you see happening on Twitch on the Elite broadcast,
Speaker 1: like the comments from fans is it's really encouraging around this.
Speaker 1: They appreciate this technology, They appreciate being able to get
Speaker 1: a better glint at how these professionals are performing real
Speaker 1: time something we've never seen before. So you know, as
Speaker 1: we as we roll on new new innovations and technologies,
Speaker 1: we do obviously a ton of work, and we're working
Speaker 1: with and talking with our fans and our customers and
Speaker 1: just gamers overall too um to make sure we're delivering
Speaker 1: what they want. Ultimately alien where is trying to over
Speaker 1: that ultimate gaming experience. We feel this place right into that,
Speaker 1: but it's always and it's always reassuring one when we
Speaker 1: go down a path and we work with partners UM
Speaker 1: and roll out new technologies and new features and so
Speaker 1: on to see that. See the fan reaction is UM
Speaker 1: is a positive, is coming back positive and that to
Speaker 1: me has definitely said out of have and seen anything
Speaker 1: negative around the technology, just a lot of appreciation from
Speaker 1: from the game of community. Well, I love that. There
Speaker 1: is what we do want to add in the fan feedback.
Speaker 1: People have been clamoring about what a anti cheating tool
Speaker 1: that may wind up being. UM. It's curious to see
Speaker 1: because what if one day they you know, we all
Speaker 1: had monitors that always tracked our eyes and you can
Speaker 1: never disable that UM that that would be a very
Speaker 1: interesting future. When we come back, we'll chat a bit
Speaker 1: more with Robert from Turner about how they took a
Speaker 1: challenge of taking the tech created by Toby and alien
Speaker 1: Ware and they found a way to incorporate it into
Speaker 1: e sports broadcasts. But first let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. So that kind of leads us
Speaker 1: naturally into a discussion about the challenges of presenting e
Speaker 1: sports to an audience in a way where they can
Speaker 1: really appreciate what's going on, and that that ties into
Speaker 1: this topic of the eye tracking technology. We know that
Speaker 1: Toby Tech was the company to start working on the
Speaker 1: actual hardware and the basic software, and we had Dell
Speaker 1: and alien Ware that we're working on the various uh
Speaker 1: consumer products that incorporate that technology. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to actually implementing it in a way that makes sense
Speaker 1: both from an administrative perspective, where you guys are trying
Speaker 1: to find ways of adding value to the presentation, and
Speaker 1: from a consumer perspective or from an audience perspective where
Speaker 1: they can appreciate even more the capabilities of these elite
Speaker 1: players because they're getting kind of insight into what's happening.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about that implementation and
Speaker 1: what that experience was, Like, sure, yeah, and UM, you
Speaker 1: know what I would say is it was birthed out
Speaker 1: of actually a very casual conversation between David Chen and
Speaker 1: I David Chen from Dell and I um at our
Speaker 1: major actually and that was in January. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I had seen a demo of some behind the scenes
Speaker 1: software that a League of Legends team was using to
Speaker 1: improve their performance with eye tracking and thought, wow, this
Speaker 1: is a really interesting, Um, how do we democratize that like,
Speaker 1: how do we bring that to the audience watching the
Speaker 1: game instead of making it like a back off its
Speaker 1: tool that a team is using to try and optimize
Speaker 1: its performance. And you know there are challenges for sure, right.
Speaker 1: So in March, UM I went to Austin and we
Speaker 1: we had a meeting, and in that meeting Toby actually
Speaker 1: brought their ideas on how it could work. UM. But
Speaker 1: you know, to be candid, UH, they hadn't ever run
Speaker 1: a competitive gaming event, and as you alluded to earlier,
Speaker 1: you know, competitive integrity is extremely important to us, extremely
Speaker 1: important to the players, and so we have to be
Speaker 1: very careful about what we do in the studio and
Speaker 1: how we produce things. And as a result, UM, it
Speaker 1: is certainly not as simple to do something like this
Speaker 1: eye tracking as one would think it would be. UM.
Speaker 1: So to kind of walk through the components of how
Speaker 1: it works, UM, you need a computer with an eye
Speaker 1: tracker connected to it, UM that is capturing gays in
Speaker 1: real time. Then you also need a video feed of
Speaker 1: the point of view of the player in real time. UM.
Speaker 1: And the two things like the the eye tracker needs
Speaker 1: to be synchronized for the resolution and aspect ratio that
Speaker 1: the player is running the game at and of course
Speaker 1: then the p o V feed of the gameplay also
Speaker 1: needs to be exactly what the player is looking at,
Speaker 1: so it can't be at a different aspect ratio or
Speaker 1: resolution and have it make perfect sense, right. And then
Speaker 1: you need to take those two things, that the video
Speaker 1: feed of the gays and the actual p o V
Speaker 1: and then use podcast production equipment to merge those two
Speaker 1: things in real time so you're getting an accurate UM
Speaker 1: feed of the two things. Well, in order to do
Speaker 1: all of what I just mentioned, it actually requires two
Speaker 1: computers that the players not even playing on. UM. We
Speaker 1: have one machine that is the dedicated gaze tracker that's
Speaker 1: actually outputting a green screen with the gaze on it.
Speaker 1: So that computer is the tracker itself, is mounted underneath
Speaker 1: the monitor that the player is sitting in front of
Speaker 1: on stage. And then we're using UM this might be
Speaker 1: a little too in the weeds, but we're using uh
Speaker 1: USB Cat six extenders, so we're able to run the
Speaker 1: USB three feet to a server room UM, and then
Speaker 1: the actual computer that the gaze tracking software is running
Speaker 1: on is in this server room hundreds of hundreds of
Speaker 1: feet away from the actual stage. So we can't run
Speaker 1: the games tracking software on the computer that the player
Speaker 1: is playing on because we can't do anything that would
Speaker 1: that could impact competitive integrity. Then for the p o
Speaker 1: V UM, in order to get that p o V
Speaker 1: we cannot take it from the player's computer. So we
Speaker 1: don't ever take a video output from a player's computer
Speaker 1: and feed that into our broadcast infrastructure. Because the output
Speaker 1: from the video card on a player's computer needs to
Speaker 1: go directly to the monitor, there cannot be anything in
Speaker 1: that loop that introduces any latency. So uh and again,
Speaker 1: in order to to maintain competitive integrity, we cannot use
Speaker 1: the computer that the player is playing on to produce
Speaker 1: the p o B foot that we're using to produce
Speaker 1: this content. So instead, I have yet another computer in
Speaker 1: the same server room that is connected to a relay
Speaker 1: game server and is mimicking that player's point of view experience.
Speaker 1: So what we've done is we very carefully keep track
Speaker 1: of what aspect ratio the players running the game at
Speaker 1: on stage, We mimic those settings and all of the
Speaker 1: other settings that that players traditionally use on this secondary computer,
Speaker 1: and then we're um linking it to that player so
Speaker 1: that it shows their p o V the entire game
Speaker 1: and then feeding that into our broadcast infrastructure, and then
Speaker 1: upstream from all of that, there is a broadcast switcher
Speaker 1: that is merging the gays out put with the green
Speaker 1: removed obviously, and that POV footage and feeding that to
Speaker 1: the control room where a producer can watch it in
Speaker 1: real time and decide is this something I want our
Speaker 1: talent to talk about or not talk about? And so
Speaker 1: we're we've now done this for three weeks of this tournament,
Speaker 1: and we're you know, to be honest with you, if
Speaker 1: you had talked to me before the tournament, UM, I
Speaker 1: I was very careful to say, I don't know what
Speaker 1: we're going to get. I don't know what kind of
Speaker 1: insights we're going to get. I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is really going to be like super interesting content or
Speaker 1: just interesting content. Is it going to reveal things or
Speaker 1: not reveal things? Um? All I knew was that we
Speaker 1: had a proof of concept that we could capture this,
Speaker 1: and then we were going to see what we could
Speaker 1: do with it. But I think we're really really pleased
Speaker 1: with how the content has come come together, and the
Speaker 1: fans are just blown away. UM. I think you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a statement about what Turner Sports brings to
Speaker 1: the e sports space where we're trying to you know,
Speaker 1: constantly be additive and constantly be innovative, but not doing
Speaker 1: innovation and additive things for the sake of doing them,
Speaker 1: doing them to enhance the fan engagement and the fan
Speaker 1: viewing experience. Um And with this, you know what I
Speaker 1: would say is there is no nothing analogous to this
Speaker 1: In traditional sports. You can see where a player runs,
Speaker 1: you can see them kick the ball, but you have
Speaker 1: no idea about like what they're looking at in real time,
Speaker 1: or what their intents are, or what they even consider. Right.
Speaker 1: You don't really have any raw data about their thoughts
Speaker 1: in traditional sports except what they tell you, right. But
Speaker 1: with this, this data, that this content, it reveals thought
Speaker 1: process in a way that nothing else in sports or
Speaker 1: e sports does. At this point, you see them look,
Speaker 1: you know, do their mental check what's my health? How
Speaker 1: much ammo? Do I have? You know where where the
Speaker 1: rest of my team on the map? Like you see
Speaker 1: that in real time in the content. We're not we
Speaker 1: haven't gotten to the point where we can really do
Speaker 1: this real time in a play areat Although I want
Speaker 1: to do that at some point. Um, and I'm so
Speaker 1: excited because it's it is really like this super interesting
Speaker 1: combination of biometric technology that is not very invasive and um,
Speaker 1: this sport that is like sort of made out of data,
Speaker 1: and it would be almost impossible to do this for
Speaker 1: tragal sports. Like you know, I I am, I'm very
Speaker 1: fortunate in that I'm I'm a part of the team
Speaker 1: that also does the production for our NBA games, also
Speaker 1: does the production for our MLB games, and so I
Speaker 1: get to hear some of the behind the scenes stuff
Speaker 1: that is considered and talked about. And we certainly don't
Speaker 1: treat E sports any differently than we do those other
Speaker 1: things from a thought process perspective. But you know, as
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in the meetings in the last couple of
Speaker 1: weeks and we're talking about MLB, like I'm actually thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be cool to see like gaze trace as
Speaker 1: a batter's in the batter's box and the pitches come again.
Speaker 1: But like, there is no way to do that but
Speaker 1: be super cool. So so this is like that though,
Speaker 1: this is a step in that direction, right, Um. So
Speaker 1: I mean for me, like I think it's super exciting,
Speaker 1: and I would love to see this sort of like
Speaker 1: intent based data capture. Um, you know, what did he
Speaker 1: really look at? What did he consider? I would love
Speaker 1: to see that in baseball or football or basketball. How
Speaker 1: cool would it be to see the quarterbacks checkdowns in
Speaker 1: real time in football? You know, Um, what did he
Speaker 1: consider before he threw the ball over there? And what
Speaker 1: did he see before he threw that ball? Like, there's
Speaker 1: there's just not anything like this. So so to tack
Speaker 1: back the esports though, um, and the content that we've
Speaker 1: captured so far, you know, I think it's some of
Speaker 1: it is has revealed, Oh that guy does exactly what
Speaker 1: we expected. And then in other cases it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: he spends a lot more time checking the more basic
Speaker 1: things than you would expect. And I think you know,
Speaker 1: with players, other players, like you know, regular stream of
Speaker 1: consciousness like everyday counterstrike players, Um, this is an opportunity
Speaker 1: for them to kind of learn, oh wow, when I
Speaker 1: go around that corner, I don't look at that box.
Speaker 1: I start over there and sort of optimize their game too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also I also like how you know, you you
Speaker 1: had this incredible challenge of being able to like all
Speaker 1: the pieces were there, but in order for them to
Speaker 1: actually work, you had to go to these enormous considerations
Speaker 1: so that you did not affect the performance of any
Speaker 1: player's machine, because clearly, uh, it would be the same
Speaker 1: as if you were to uh to mess with uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a professional athlete in a traditional sport, if
Speaker 1: they were to mess with their equipment, it would be
Speaker 1: almost like sabotage. So you're you know, you're talking about
Speaker 1: like the not wanting to put any kind of load
Speaker 1: on a graphics processing unit that is meant to run
Speaker 1: the game on the player's machine. I would say that
Speaker 1: that's sort of analogous to what you were saying with
Speaker 1: professional sports in the in the physical realm, the idea
Speaker 1: that we can't really do that eye tracking technique with
Speaker 1: traditional sports largely because it would require us to outfit
Speaker 1: professional players with additional equipment that would then in turn
Speaker 1: affect their performance. Thus you end up you end up
Speaker 1: with the classic quantum physics issue of anything you observe,
Speaker 1: you are affecting, right. So, so it's it's interesting that
Speaker 1: you know, you had to find that work around and
Speaker 1: the professional sports arena for for pro video gamers, and
Speaker 1: I think once you do consider that in the realm
Speaker 1: of the physical sports as well. Even if you're not
Speaker 1: familiar with professional video game sports or e leagues or
Speaker 1: anything of those that nature, you start to say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: now I'm getting it. Now I'm getting it. I see.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, if if I walked up and
Speaker 1: I realized that the bat that I want to use
Speaker 1: is nowhere to be found, and I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: use a different bat and it's one that's of a
Speaker 1: slightly different weight, and I'm not it's enough when you're
Speaker 1: talking about at that elite level of performance that it
Speaker 1: makes a measurable difference. So, Uh, I'm glad that we
Speaker 1: were able to have this conversation and and kind of
Speaker 1: get that perspective, because I think it does. It's very
Speaker 1: enlightening to people who are unfamiliar with the subject. Uh.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you have witnessed in your time
Speaker 1: with the league that stands out as one of those
Speaker 1: really special moments, whether it was in a tournament or
Speaker 1: maybe it was maybe it was when you were when
Speaker 1: you saw this this eye tracking technology all kind of
Speaker 1: come together. But anything that kind of is particularly special
Speaker 1: in your mind. I mean, from my personal experience to
Speaker 1: kind of attack back to personal. There's kind of three
Speaker 1: moments for me, um to to take a question that
Speaker 1: asks for one and to answer with three. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the first was the finals of our first tournament and
Speaker 1: we were we released game Command, which I have not mentioned,
Speaker 1: but it's a mosaic player, so like a user directed
Speaker 1: experience where uh end users can choose to watch any
Speaker 1: of the ten players who are playing in real time
Speaker 1: or actually watch all ten. UM. Releasing that out into
Speaker 1: the wild and seeing the fan feedback on it, because
Speaker 1: there was literally nothing like it in the in the
Speaker 1: world at that point. UM, and there there actually still
Speaker 1: isn't like there's still nothing where you can watch all
Speaker 1: ten players at the same time, um in one UI.
Speaker 1: But UM, that was the first, you know. The second
Speaker 1: was I've talked about the Major in January a few
Speaker 1: times already, but there was a moment during the finals
Speaker 1: where we crested a million concurrent viewers on Twitch, not
Speaker 1: just breaking the all time Twitch record, but shattering it
Speaker 1: by almost three hundred thousand viewers, and you know, setting
Speaker 1: the sort of bar for competitive e sports as far
Speaker 1: as viewership counts go. And then the third, honestly is
Speaker 1: this eye tracker stuff. Um, it's always interesting to start
Speaker 1: with the theory in I mean, I guess in March.
Speaker 1: We started with a theory and go to proof of
Speaker 1: concept in June and then be sitting at a desk
Speaker 1: with white knuckles in September hoping that that vision and
Speaker 1: all of the workarounds and hard work come together. And
Speaker 1: then to see the fans react so positively. I mean, really,
Speaker 1: that's what it's about, right. It's not about me or
Speaker 1: building a cool thing, as much as I love building
Speaker 1: cool things and that's kind of what I've made my
Speaker 1: living doing. Um, you know what's important is that other
Speaker 1: people are getting some value out of that, and no
Speaker 1: other people are more important than the like fans uh
Speaker 1: in the scene. So um to see that and then
Speaker 1: to see what they do with it, right like they've
Speaker 1: they've taken it and turned it into memes and jokes
Speaker 1: and everything like to me, that means it's been accepted,
Speaker 1: right like at the highest level. When they start making
Speaker 1: Reddit threads about joking about past tournaments with eye tracking
Speaker 1: turned on, then to me, that means we've we've done
Speaker 1: something new. Like those three moments for me are the
Speaker 1: are the three most special among many many special moments
Speaker 1: that the last three years, those are those are great stories.
Speaker 1: And I love that this trend has been picking up
Speaker 1: steam for the last not to use a valve joke,
Speaker 1: but it's been picking up steam for the past few years,
Speaker 1: and seeing not just the the professional video game sports
Speaker 1: industry really coming into its own in the United States.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it's been a big deal in other
Speaker 1: places as well. It started really in the US, but
Speaker 1: I would say that it kind of blossomed in South
Speaker 1: Korea and then as now finding more acceptance in the
Speaker 1: United States, which which is great. But we're also seeing
Speaker 1: uh people turning into kind of an entertainment figure through
Speaker 1: their video game playing and reaching audiences that way. Clearly
Speaker 1: there is a a uh interested invested audience they get,
Speaker 1: they get really attached to certain players and certain titles. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's exciting, and I'm glad that we're kind of like
Speaker 1: right at the point where I think it's going to explode,
Speaker 1: like it's already. I guess you could argue hitting a
Speaker 1: million concurrent twitch viewers all at once, that's kind of
Speaker 1: an explosion all in of itself. But seeing this, this
Speaker 1: this cusp of acceptance is really exciting to me because
Speaker 1: I've been following professional game aiming for a while in
Speaker 1: its various formats, whether it was through UH league, you know,
Speaker 1: tournament league play, or whether it was a group of
Speaker 1: sponsored players who were there to help represent a particular
Speaker 1: game developer, anything like that. I've been following that stuff
Speaker 1: for years and seeing it now get to a point
Speaker 1: where there's there's a real awareness and celebration of it
Speaker 1: is exciting to me. I love games. I love playing games.
Speaker 1: I am awful at them, but I still enjoy it. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were talking before we started recording about the games
Speaker 1: that that we would stream, and I believe you mentioned
Speaker 1: a very popular M m O RPG that you occasionally
Speaker 1: would play. Yeah, I'm not afraid to break out World
Speaker 1: of Warcraft on occasion. That's fair among other games. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I my go to SO I I used to
Speaker 1: UH so people can know interest a full disclosure. I
Speaker 1: the game I'm most known for streaming, because I don't
Speaker 1: do it very frequently is Minecraft, because I would hold
Speaker 1: a marathon session of Minecraft as part of a charity
Speaker 1: event every year, and I would play twenty four hours
Speaker 1: straight of Minecraft and then for whatever when people would
Speaker 1: make donations at whatever level they would donate, I would
Speaker 1: build a monument in Minecraft out of materials that were, uh,
Speaker 1: comparatively difficult to find. So the more you donated, the
Speaker 1: more rare the material had to be in order for
Speaker 1: me to make a monument significant for that donation. And
Speaker 1: I it was not creative mode. It was you know,
Speaker 1: regular mode, turned on all the enemies everything, and um,
Speaker 1: let me tell you somewhere around our number sixteen, things
Speaker 1: get special. But uh, but yeah, I I have a
Speaker 1: love of this as well. So I cannot wait to
Speaker 1: check out the the E League play. I cannot wait.
Speaker 1: I plan to actually be at the finals, so I
Speaker 1: cannot wait to see that in person. And uh, where
Speaker 1: can people go to experience this? I mean Elite dot
Speaker 1: com is is the one stop shop for everything you'd
Speaker 1: want when we're live. That will point you to all
Speaker 1: the different viewing experiences that we have and it'll give
Speaker 1: you schedule information anything else you would want. Excellent, Robert,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and I hope we get a chance to talk again
Speaker 1: in the future. Awesome. Thanks for having me on. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate the conversation. Clearly there's a healthy audience out
Speaker 1: there for professional gaming, from entertainment personalities to tournament players,
Speaker 1: and it will be really interesting to see how the
Speaker 1: industry evolves from here. Could we one day see video
Speaker 1: games take a place with traditional sports and something as
Speaker 1: celebrated as the Olympics, or will there always be at
Speaker 1: least some level of stigma in place that will prevent
Speaker 1: that from ever happening. And doesn't really matter as long
Speaker 1: as people are having a good time playing or watching games.
Speaker 1: I can say this. I am in my early forties
Speaker 1: and I watch a lot of let's play style videos
Speaker 1: and live streams. I enjoy watching people play games. I'm
Speaker 1: dazzled by the skills of pro level gamers, and I
Speaker 1: find myself thoroughly entertained by certain personalities when they interact
Speaker 1: with each other while playing together. Cough achievement Hunter cough.
Speaker 1: I think there's plenty of room for growth in that
Speaker 1: realm of entertainment. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode
Speaker 1: about the history of the sports. If you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuffs, reach out to
Speaker 1: me on Twitter or on Facebook to handle I use
Speaker 1: it both as Text Stuff H s W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. Two