With the first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive challenging League of Legends as the most watched competitive eSport title, there appears to be huge scope to develop Star Wars: Battlefront to be a massive eSport box office draw. There are a diverse group of games that have made the transition to becoming super successful eSports games, but generally, there are a few criteria that although not guaranteeing success, certainly make it more feasible. Here’s our breakdown of why Battlefront is (or should be) destined to become an eSports hit.
Community
The first thing you need is a strong community and no one will doubt that Star Wars has a massive community of fans. The release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has ensured that a new generation of fans have been added and the community has increased dramatically. Although not every fan is a gamer, a good percentage have obviously been drawn to a game that enables you to join the Galactic Empire or the Rebel Alliance and engage in epic battles – and there is a large community of fans of the game desperate for more content.
Business Will
With professional eSports teams now becoming more and more like regular sports stars with sponsorship, endorsements and fame there is now a large amount of financial clout within the eSports scene. Leading online casino 888poker has been responsive in signing-up Flow eSports to become part of the action and form a partnership with some of the best Hearthstone players in the world. Online poker and Hearthstone do have a connection as both are strategy-based card games, but this is also a step towards making eSports more popular for live bets, just like football or basketball. Star Wars has always been quick to generate commercial partners and there would certainly be interest from 888poker and others in having the crème de la crème of eSport Battlefront players as part of their lineup.
Uncomplicated
Games don’t need to be as simplistic as Rocket League to gain traction as an eSport success. They just need to pull in a large audience the game needs to be simple to understand. There’s a reason why football is the most popular sport in the world: it’s so easy to understand and the same should be true of the best eSport titles. The objectives of Star Wars: Battlefront are very easy to understand, with capturing and recapturing enemy command posts one of the most basic gameplay structures that everyone will be more than familiar with.
…But Retaining A level of complexity
With command posts, spawn points and reinforcement tickets there’s plenty going on in a game of Battlefront and although the shooting is fairly forgiving, there’s defiantly a requirement to have a good level of dexterity and strategy to win the contest. It’s a good balance that is required, as if a game is too revolved around developing advanced skills, those without the time to cultivate super-human agility can find themselves as cannon fodder and will lose interest in the game. Battlefront has that balance and while it will be great to see the pros go mano a mano in the eSports arena, the game should always remain accessible and enjoyable to the casual gamer.
