LOS ANGELES – Hector Rodriguez was always good at playing video games, but never good enough to go pro. That didn’t stop him from becoming immersed in the world of eSports. He’s the team owner and CEO of Optic Gaming, one of the top Call of Duty teams in the world today.
“My daily duties include everything from being a sales person — pitching my team to everybody that I come across, to house nanny — I make sure that everything at the team house is well taken care of,” said Rodriguez. “I’m a baby sitter of sorts for all my players, making sure they’re taking the best opportunity that they can and creating all the content they possibly can.”
Gaming Houses, which have been the norm in countries like Korea for years, have taken off in the U.S.
“Before we started the Gaming House we were already on our way to having a pretty solid success story,” said Rodriguez. “We’re very proud of what we accomplished. The house just gave us an opportunity to continue to grow our brand and continue to grow off of each other. When you have like-minded individuals working together on the same thing every single day, that obviously helps a lot.”
Rodriguez was in Los Angeles recently for the 2014 Call of Duty Championship, where Optic Gaming came in third place and pocketed $120,000.
“Activision and Xbox have stepped up big time for Call of Duty,” said Rodriguez. “We understand that we’re still a small percentage of the big picture when it comes to Call of Duty, but it’s growing so fast that I’m really glad that they’re taking the time to put up events like this. The explosion that we’ve seen in the last couple of years has been amazing. We’ve been a huge part of the growth done organically, which is most important for us. But overall I’m very pleased with the way they’ve been supporting us.”
Right across the street from the LA Live tent that hosted the COD Championship this year is the Staples Center, which Riot Games sold out last year for the League of Legends Championship Series World Championship. This year ESL One is hosting a Dota 2 event in a German World Cup soccer stadium and Gfinity is holding a competition at a London Olympics venue.
“Numbers don’t lie, and when we’re already beating NASCAR and the Rose Bowl online viewership, that as loud as anything else can,” said Rodriguez. “Actions often speak louder than words. We’re here. We’re not playing around. And the viewership is as rabid as any other sport out there, so it’s only a matter of time before it crosses over to real mainstream media.”
With huge numbers like 70 million people watching eSports in 2013 and over $25 million in prizes handed out across the major games, traditional sponsors like Coke, Dr. Pepper, Red Bull and American Express have entered the space.
“The brands that are getting involved this early are the ones that are going to benefit the most,” said Rodriguez. “They’re not going to be seen by gamers as only being involved in eSports because it’s now big and they’re just trying to sell as much product as possible. Coke supporting the League of Legends tournaments for amateurs is very important because they are now going to be that brand that was organically trying to help grow the scene of League of Legends and eSports. Let’s say when Call of Duty becomes as big as League of Legends and we start selling out stadiums and at that point somebody that said no to Call of Duty early on was not willing to play ball, you’re going to be a little bit more reserved as to whether they’re only here to sell product rather than really supporting and growing eSports.”
To date, eSports has thrived on the PC with free-to-play games like League of Legends, World of Tanks, Dota 2 and StarCraft II. Activision turned a corner with the launch of Call of Duty Black Ops II last year, which saw developer Treyarch incorporate eSports into the development process.
“The major influx in viewership for PC gamers is the fact that the developers are really backing them to the fullest extent,” said Rodriguez. “Activision has been doing a very good job of putting on the Championship event and that’s a small start. But when they start promoting it on the Log In screen the way that Riot or Blizzard has done, it’s a lot easier for fans that aren’t necessarily competitive fans to have easy access to watch when they come to an event. As much as you are a fan of Call of Duty, you’re always going to be curious to see how big of a difference there is from the top one percent to your personal level of skill.”
PCs dominate just from the sheer size of the audience, but the advent of livestreaming on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 has also opened up new opportunities for the growth of Call of Duty and other eSports games on next gen platforms.
“Anything that works organically is always going to be the best case scenario because you’re not forcing it onto anybody,” said Rodriguez. “Both PS4 and, to be honest, especially Xbox, has really stepped up. I’ve always been an Xbox fan boy so them showing the support that they have just makes me that much more passionate for the brand and for Xbox as a company.”
Given the exponential growth eSports has enjoyed since the explosion of livestreaming companies like Twitch, predicting just where eSports will be in even five years is tough. Everyone expects continued growth, and the Internet has become the de facto medium for delivering eSports to the masses. But Rodriguez would like to see pro gaming evolve into a television event.
“I would like to see it on television because getting a little mainstream coverage is never a bad thing,” said Rodriguez, who already saw MLG get some integration on ESPN. “I believe it was in 2010 when we saw ESPN feature the Top 10 Plays of the Week for Halo. At that time the audience was still small for competitive gaming, but now that it is where we are today, something like that would get a lot more traction. It’d be nice to see the average person be like, ‘My kid plays this game and now it’s being featured on TV. Maybe there’s something there and there’s nothing really wrong with video games.”
Rodriguez has been able to make a career in eSports, showing that there’s plenty right with gaming – even for entrepreneurs who don’t have the chops to compete against the top 1% of gamers.
Published: Apr 14, 2014 03:24 pm