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Should Esports be less NFL, and more Poker? We chat with Andrew Prell of Convergence of 4 Dimensions at CES to find out.
"Hello everyone, I'm Alex, I'm here at CES, I'm here with Andrew.
Now, Andrew, thank you so much for setting up the time, first of all, and second of all, I think it was really funny how we met, because you just sort of said, have I seen anything cool yet at CES?
First day, looking out into the expo, and I was like, well, not yet."
"And then you told me something very cool, and I'd like you to sort of explain what that very cool thing is, because I think especially at Gamereactor, you know, we're all about gaming, and you seem to have an idea that could revolutionize esports, as you told me."
"Yes, so we are reimagining esports.
We're changing it from the current 25-year-old model that I would say is like the NFL, where, as we speak today, neither of us can imagine us making the Super Bowl next year."
"So why would you teach that to the 3.8 billion game players out there?
What we want to do is change it more to the mindset that the World Series of Poker taught poker players.
Not only can you make their tournament, you could possibly win their tournament."
"We want everybody thinking that way about an esports tournament.
We also think that they have not figured out yet internet scale, the scale of modern-day video games.
I mean, you had a concert inside of a video game with 12.8 million participants."
"So that's internet scale.
So what we're going to do is what we're calling a cross-reality team tournament.
Stadium scale.
Five-member teams."
"65,000 teams per match.
Okay, so that's 325,000 players per match.
This will be player-driven instead of sponsor-driven.
So we can do the whole thing without sponsor dollars."
"Now, we will bring in sponsors, but that will be after the fact.
So we get to control our destiny.
The game players get to control their destiny.
And that's pretty much the way it's working."
"We want a level playing field, which means nobody gets to practice in the game prior to the qualifying events.
So in that sense, then, how do you manage that sort of scale?
Because as you say to me, 65,000 teams, that's a lot of players."
"How do you get with making sure that that is as engaging to view on a sort of smaller level as it is on the wider scale of seeing that amount of play happen?
That's an interesting mystery to be lived.
So in that, we have just, like this morning, I responded to a really nice email from a very big streaming group."
"We'll leave it at that.
That understands gaming.
And we're in discussions of not only every player being able to stream what they're doing, but then a commentator layer so they can jump between players' streams while they're commentating built into the system for that."
"So organizing how a commentator would leverage the platform is a unique thing.
But organizing players, it's a game.
You jump in, we pull the trigger to go, and you go until you can't go anymore.
Esports, though, as you say, it's got like decades now of being established in a certain way."
"And people, if I know gamers, despite them always wanting something new, they're often as well quite resistant to new things.
What's going to bring them on board to this in comparison to traditional esports streaming?
I haven't had any of that pushback until your question."
"Which is a good question.
You're doing your job well.
But I was talking to Zen Gaming.
You know Zen Gaming?
Yes."
"And talking to them, they were feeling it out and whatnot.
He was like, all right, can I watch my buddy get in there?
And then two months later, what I learned off of watching him, can then I do a qualifier and get in?
I'm like, no, because the qualifiers go back to back to back to back."
"We want in a 16-match bracket, we can pull those qualifiers off in two to three days.
So you've got to get back to back to back, get into the qualifiers to learn.
Because once you get past the qualifying round, you can buy into as many qualifiers as we have."
"But once you get past the qualifying round, it's single a limb.
So you need as much practice as possible beforehand.
And nobody's going to be playing the game prior to day one of the qualifiers.
Very, very interesting."
"You probably hear a bit of applause in the background.
That's not just because we're doing such a great job on camera.
That's because you're at a very exciting event right now, which I believe I can talk about, which is a pitch to a possible television show in America, Shark Tank."
"How does it feel to be pitching that?
And what other sort of responses have you had to this idea that you've got?
Well, pitching here to Shark Tank is phenomenal.
It would be great for a marketing coup for anybody to get on Shark Tank."
"Shark Tank is cool.
But the response that I've gotten from everybody, I mean, we have talked here at CES to the biggest companies here.
And the response has been overwhelming."
"Why hasn't somebody done this before?
That's genius.
You should do video game tournaments at Internet scale.
Why aren't they doing it?
And it's because nobody has."
"Once we show the way, I'm sure everybody's going to want it.
But the one thing about this is it is totally different.
So we have to build the game for the tournament.
And then next year, we have to throw in enough wrenches that it's a completely new game for the tournament."
"Actually, you're going to say next year, sorry.
First year would be July of 2028.
Or between July of 2028 and July of 2029, we have been offered Arlington Stadium so far."
"We are working with a very large movie chain to do qualifiers in your local town.
And then you would come to one city, if it's Dallas or Las Vegas, for the semifinals and finals."
"So as you say, they're sort of building a game around that.
Is this something that's not going to adapt to the more traditional esports sports that people see, like MOBAs and things like that and traditional shooters?
What is going to make this game different, I guess?
It is full cross-reality."
"So the team lead for the semifinals and finals will be the one in the stadium.
Before that, for the qualifiers, that will be the one in the theater.
Then his team will come in off of other devices.
Because he'll be on an augmented reality device, engaging with his augmented reality device to the screens."
"Everybody else will come in off of a digital twin.
They have to locate him and protect him during the battle and keep him going.
And that's pretty much the way this is.
Nothing is like it so far."
"In that sense, then, is this not only going to try and push esports, but also the world of augmented reality and things like that?
Because we've seen a lot of attempts to push that into a real wide scale.
And a few of them have worked, a few of them haven't."
"Is that what this idea is like, balancing the esports and the augmented reality elements?
We want to bring cross-reality, full-blown cross-reality to the mainstream.
Yes, that's one of our goals.
But making this a stadium level event, you're pretty much not going to bring in your gaming rig to 65,000 seats in a stadium."
"So the cell phone just makes sense.
And then having everybody else come in off of their gaming rig also makes sense, because that gives them the full metaverse environment kind of thing to play off of.
So it actually kind of lends itself or builds itself to a cross-reality game."
"Something as well, I hope you don't mind me asking about, is your personal history with gaming as well.
Because I believe you're very well tenured within this environment and within these spheres.
And I was just hoping whether you could talk a little bit more about your personal experience within sort of like classic games and things like that."
"I've been in virtual reality since 1988.
When were you born?
99.
So I've been in virtual reality since 1988.
In 92, I created Wolfenstein VR from the source code of Wolfenstein 3D from John Carmack of id Software."
"Then I decided, hey, this needs to be multiplayer.
It didn't matter that there wasn't any multiplayer games.
I had to come up with blind device communication theory to make it multiplayer, and I created CyberTech.
Told Carmack, because he gave me the source code for Wolfenstein."
"He and Jay Wilber came to my studios in Kentucky.
I couldn't get them out of it for four hours.
They just went to town.
It was fun to watch, actually."
"Then I taught him what I did and how I made it multiplayer, and they went and made a little game called Doom.
Maybe you've heard of it.
Years later, I was working with Frank Ballew, which is one of my partners on this."
"He started at Atari in year one.
He founded the first two industry organizations in video games.
He ran into me back in 94 and pretty much took me under his wing and introduced me to all the players that we're partnering up with now."
"At Agora Interactive, back in roughly 97, 98, we were wrapping 10-way video conferencing around Quake and putting them into arcades.
We had to map out a network schema to make that work, because the loads back then were pretty hefty."
"A gentleman by the name of Kevin Backus and another one by the name of Ted Hasse from Microsoft came to our studios to see what we were doing and how they could possibly support us in the arcade world.
I showed him the network schematic, and Ted asked me if he could take a copy of that."
"I was like, sure.
Then about a year and a half, two years later, they made this little thing called the Xbox using my network schema.
That was their entry into the world."
"I've been in video games, creating video games, and pretty much creating network extravaganzas my entire life.
It's safe to say you know your stuff then.
When people are coming into this, it's coming from a place of years and years and years of know-how and industry inside of knowledge."
"I guess pretty much, yeah.
It's just what I do.
My mind works that way.
It's like, this is the way we need to do this.
You talked a bit about July 2028 and 2029 as potential dates for this."
"When are people going to be able to hear about this more on a wider scale perhaps, and where can they follow to learn more?
As of now, we have a movie that I've put out on the website.
We've come out with a novel on Amazon, which is SYNC, S-Y-N-C, colon, Event 001 of a New Age."
"It is a sci-fi take on it, but it takes you through the whole setup of this kind of an event.
Those are several ways.
The website is cseac.silicanexus.com, S-I-L-I-C-A-N-E-X-U-S.com.
Hopefully, you'll put a link to it."
"There, we'll show you the whole structure.
You can watch the movie if you want to.
You can sign up now and get an early adopter.
Why you would want to sign up now is if you get a team invite code, that kind of becomes part of the structure on advancing."
"Because every match, you have 65,000 teams, 30,000 advance on points, but 2,500 wildcards are there, and you get a wildcard by whoever uses the invite code better.
You get to earn 10% off of bringing your buddies along because this is meant to grow the whole ecosystem very well."
"Perfect. Andrew, that's all I've got for you.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure talking with you, sir.
No worries. Best of luck on Shark Tank as well."
