gen-z-phones
SOUTH-EAST ASIA (Bloomberg): Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (best known for playing the Mountain in Game of Thrones) stalked through the arena in a fur-lined kilt and boots, his long beard in a braid, swinging a 35 kilogram hammer.
A blue ice dragon towered above the 2,000 attendees as they filed into the arena. Groups of fans banged thundersticks and waved flags when their teams - mostly Gen Z sitting stone-faced in front of competition-issued smartphones - advanced.
This was the finals of the 2024 PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) Mobile World Championships - one of the most lucrative esports competitions in the world.
In previous years it’s been held in Dubai, Istanbul and Kuala Lumpur - locations where the game has a large following. This year, with the organizers working to push the game into new markets, it took over the back wing of Excel London, a drab conference venue near the old Royal Docks, more often associated with trade shows and university exams.
Attendees watched the action on a big screen, and the event was also broadcast live on YouTube and Facebook.
Sixteen teams gathered from as far as Saudi Arabia, Nepal and South Korea to play the video game - a battle royale in which as many as 100 players amass cars and weapons, and ambush opponents - and compete for a share of US$3 million.
Tencent launched PUBG Mobile in 2018, a smartphone version of a popular Korean PC game, and it quickly became one of the most popular games in Asia. It’s been downloaded more than a billion times.
Sparks flew out from the stage as the announcers confirmed the latest "chicken dinner” of the weekend. Team Spirit, a Serbian team that left Russia at the start of the Ukraine invasion in 2022, had won the most matches on the initial day, with an aggressive approach: stockpiling guns and moving around the map more dynamically than the fifteen other teams they outlasted.
The group of just under 30 players has won enough gaming events to rake in more than $30 million in prize money since they were founded about a decade ago. One of just a few European teams in the competition, they were also one of the oldest with their leader a whopping 27-years old.
Like its counterparts in the US, Europe’s video game industry has seen a succession of consolidation, layoffs and canceled projects since Covid-19 lockdowns were lifted and gamers started going outside again. Burgeoning esports franchises suffered as well.
Assassin’s Creed studio, Ubisoft, announced its decision to shutter free-to-play shooter XDefiant a few days before the PUBG competition began.
The game was the French company’s attempt to expand into the competitive multiplayer genre. Gfinity, a UK events and media company known for hosting events at its London arena, shut down its esports division last year.
Still, the PUBG Mobile competition shows how the industry could evolve. Most esports games are still played on PCs, while most gamers play on mobile - about 84%, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data. The teams at the Excel played out each of their eighteen battles on an Infinix GT 20 Pro, a Chinese-made smartphone that sells for about $300.
Airdropping into the action from a plane, players choose their strategy - head straight for the center or go to the gradually contracting fringes to gear up and pick off other teams. The matches typically last about 20 minutes and players can participate on their own or in teams. Competitors can use the objects and vehicles they find and the relatively well-rendered landscape to their advantage. The game’s flexibility gives players the opportunity to be more creative and strategic and is a major part of its appeal.
In the first five minutes of the third match, Team Spirit needed a shortcut. They’d found a Mirado, a muscle car in the game that resembles a Dodge Mirada, and needed to move. Their solution: Drive it onto a speedboat and travel by sea. After a perilous few minutes trying to keep the coupe from tipping into the water, the team made it to the other side. But their attempt to knock the car off the boat and onto shore with a grenade backfired. The explosion catapulted it into the sea, eliciting gasps and laughter from the crowd watching the game unfold on a large screen positioned behind the teams. The team switched to a much more cumbersome hovercraft, but still managed to win that round.
At its peak, London’s PUBG Mobile competition was watched by almost a million people simultaneously online. The organizers provided commentary in 18 separate languages - ranging from Burmese to Spanish.
For Barney Banks, a clean-cut influencer with 1.7 million TikTok followers, it was a rare chance to work at an esports competition in his home town.
"It would be too easy for them to just hold it in southeast Asia every time,” Banks said. Mobile esports are still predominantly an Asian phenomenon, according to data from industry tracker Esports Charts. In 2024, the company found that English speaking viewership for mobile esports lagged behind Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam among others. "Malaysia’s audience alone outperforms the entire English-speaking viewer base in engagement,” CEO of Esports Charts Artyom Odintsov said.
David Beckham’s team, Guild Esports, was one of the only other European teams competing at the Excel; and they didn’t possess their founder’s flair for winning championships - they placed last. Team Spirit ended the weekend in the middle of the pack. By the end of the second day, their aggressive tactics had backfired, and they’d retreated down to 14th in the standings. They ultimately ended the weekend in eighth, vowing to come back stronger. The winners were Korean team Dplus KIA.
Gaining traction in Europe will take time, said James Yang, the Tencent executive who runs PUBG Mobile’s esports league. "One of the things we’re doing next year is focusing much more on the amateur side because everybody has [a phone],’’ he said. -- ©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
