ZomponieZ!: A Text Based Adventure Game - I Designed and Published

"Develop for Esports!" 

Introduction from Master's Thesis:

       In 2020, esports have never been at greater heights in terms of global audience awareness, pro athlete compensation, and adoption rate into mainstream media. Interestingly, as prominent as esports have become, now almost cresting one billion dollars in total annual revenues, there has been relatively little development of esports software infrastructure into the games themselves. Many players, playing online, are not just playing to have fun and unlock intriguing experience point-related rewards, yet are also playing to attain greatness and not just to achieve it, yet be properly recognized for it, in both their own eyes, their friend’s eyes, and the public’s eyes. 

       Making “pro plays” and defining what they are in each game is paramount in today’s adrenaline filled digital landscape of esport. “That was so pro bro” is a kind of common idiom class heard in gamer circles, yet are the games themselves doing a thorough enough job communicating this ever important data in hopes of gaining and retaining more of an audience share? Challenges, many technical, loom when conveying positive play information within the game itself before, during, and after matches. This trait of greatness can be a very vague term in the realm of competitive online matches as tracking how a player performs over time is borderline shockingly light on features in many of the most popular esport titles such as Overwatch, Halo, Battlefield, and Call of Duty. The popular “Tracker Network” does exist and does a wonderful job of displaying data over time, yet only to a certain extent and not in the actual game itself. For example, seeing K/D in a shooter game month to month is not easily searchable, yet can be an extremely telling stat for many players and potential clubs looking to offer financial benefits to players. A simple way to make and run “clubs” in esports is becoming a necessary feature, see Rocket League being one of the first movers on this. For example, if a player wanted to understand an idea of how well she or he is performing within her or his respective state, that kind of technology does not exist in almost all online games. 

       To catch up to the growth of modern day competitive players, game developers will need to work deep within their game engine and programming architecture to realize innovative features that will meet the desires of both competitive players and players just looking to proactively improve over time. Simple additions such as “current win streak” and kill/death ratio for the day as potential parts of the user interface could very well go a long way adding more meaning into each of the games themselves. For players to enjoy the greatest sense of ever fun “flow”, critical performance history information that they are already looking up will become in-game need to know. 

Published Poster Presentation of Master's Thesis!