Twitch’s Chaply: “don’t make a mobile esports title”

Speaking at Pocket Gamer Connects London, Ryan Chaply, Twitch’s esports program manager, has given a talk on Twitch’s approach to esports, suggesting developers "don’t make a mobile esports title."

He’s not saying eager developers can’t make a mobile esports title of course. He’s just suggesting that developers should instead focus all of their efforts on making a good game and think about how competitive play will slot into that, thinking about what the actual goal of a title is instead of merely planning to create an "esport"

Chaply also recommends paying attention to user behaviour during the alpha and beta stages, following competitive players and their behaviour around so that you can learn directly from those playing your game of the best way to grow your title’s popularity.

Chaply also offered some thoughts on how to scale an eSport, suggesting it should start with minimum rewards and only light esport integration to avoid coming on too strong too early, instead spending the early days nurturing the community into natural growth.

Even if you’ve taken all of that into account though, he admits that "we don’t know how the generation who grew up on mobile devices will adapt" suggested that it’s unclear if there will even be a mobile esports market at all.