3 things businesses can learn from Esports

As the mother of an active boy who enjoys playing team sports such as rugby and football, the pandemic-induced suspension of junior training and league games for the best part of last year has naturally concerned me.?

Before this, I loved seeing my son’s team spirit develop as he was training weekly and playing competitive matches on weekends. He has compensated since by spending more time online: instead of playing rugby outdoors with his mates, playing competitive games online in his bedroom… with his mates.

I must confess, up to then I was somewhat prejudiced towards online gaming but having observed his behaviour and character development since, and analysed the role competitive online gaming played in this, I discovered that it had many benefits in terms of soft skills development. Meanwhile, many of my colleagues took part in a charity Esports tournament, so I decided to follow them on their journey through the Call of Duty Modern Warfare league, watching and hearing them play over Twitch - which confirmed the observations I made from my son’s experience.?

I caught up with one of them, Stewart Duncan, who is Chief Data Officer at Superscript. Stewart is a well educated, well spoken gentleman. He is also an avid gamer and has been since childhood. Stewart has had a successful career to date as a Tech and Data Science leader, and believes that gaming played a part in this, as well as helping him develop essential soft skills.

So what can competitive online gamers teach businesses?

Electronic sports: The global alternative sport

Esports and competitive multiplayer online gaming aren’t exactly the same thing. The former is a professional form of online gaming requiring intensive training like any other sport, with staged competitive events involving large sponsorship deals and prizes, and attracting large viewing audiences; the latter is performed by amateur gamers, with the players from within a team and tournament based in multiple locations.?

All Esports are multiplayer games, but not all multiplayer games turn into an Esport, because a game needs certain characteristics and the support from a professional organisation to become an Esport. For simplicity, I refer to Esports for both forms of competitive online gaming.

Esports has seen a meteoric rise and is on its way to becoming the most watched sport in the world. It is an inclusive sport that does not require players to be either physically gifted or to have to develop certain physical attributes to perform. Another aspect of Esports, is that it’s not location-based: it has no borders. Teams don’t have to have allegiance to a city or nation and to train on specific grounds, they can have a multi-location make-up with players domestically or internationally distributed.

Lesson 1: You can run a business effectively with a distributed workforce.

While a key difference with physical sports is the digitally native nature of Esports enabling distributed play, there are many commonalities between physical sports and Esports, in terms of team dynamics, tactics and communication skills required. As a fan of rugby as a sport, I see multiplayer online gaming as an alternative or complement to physical team sports, but still put huge value in the latter (which I will write about in a future article).

‘I played a lot of team sports (in real life!) and I found that elements transitioned well to multiplayer games such as Battlefield, which prioritise team work, communication and tactics.’ (Stewart)

A fluid approach to teamwork

Unlike the way teams tend to operate in a traditional business environment, Esport teams don’t necessarily have a squad leader. Some may have a captain, but the style of leadership wouldn’t be that of an authoritarian, hierarchical leader making all the decisions.

In Esports, every player has an important role, which often the team figures out as the game progresses. Because in Esports, the environment and competition constantly evolves: there isn’t one initial game plan that you can follow through; players need to be able to adapt and make decisions as play develops. Essentially, it is about following the flow, not following orders from a squad leader.

Broadly there are 3 main roles in multiplayer gaming:?

• Shot Callers (decisive and vocal, may not be team captains, they navigates the play and their teammates),
• Playmakers (technically skilled, offensive players, who execute plays designed to put their team in a position to score), and?
• Flex/Support players (versatile players that can take multiple roles based on the flow of the game and help set playmakers for success).

Lesson 2: Let your team members figure out how to work together to best perform.

'In Battlefield for example, players play different classes: Medics who can revive teammates or recon who can move quickly around the map and share intel on opponents.' (Stewart)

Soft skills are a must-have to succeed

Soft skills are defined as ‘personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people’. They include teamwork but also communication, problem-solving, decisiveness, accountability, adaptability, perseverance, resilience and the ability to perform under pressure.

Nowadays, to perform in the workplace, individuals need more than hard, technical skills. With the rise of automation, soft skills will become more and more important - because they cannot be performed by machines.??

To win, Esports teams need good technical skills (such as accuracy) but also team cohesion: collaboration and teamwork, effective communications, creativity, risk-taking and problem-solving under pressure.?

As Stewart explains, in Esports, communicating effectively and using the strengths of your different teammates is critical to success. Knowing what each team member can bring is very important and having awareness to support others’ weaknesses makes all the difference. Situational awareness (being able to read what’s happening) and rapid prioritisation are also necessary. And it’s important to know how to make yourself heard when you know something important about the opposition that could put your team ahead.

Lesson 3: Place value on soft skills beyond pure technical capability, and support your teams in developing these skills.

It’s important though, to recognise that not all soft skills are equally developed through multiplayer online gaming.

'I don’t want to overdo the analogy. Esports perhaps don’t do much for critical skills like empathy and coaching, which are important qualities to practice.' (Stewart)

It’s also worth noting that not all games are equally suited at fostering certain types of behaviours.

'I’m a big fan of the Battlefield series of games, because they tend to reward a more cooperative, slightly slower and more tactical form of gameplay. In a similar way, games like Rainbow Six Siege also have major tactical elements. They tend to get frenetic though!' (Stewart)

So, businesses have much to learn from Esports gamers

If, like me, you used to worry about the negative impact online gaming has on young people, think again.?

When played in a multiplayer, competitive set up, online gaming (or Esports) offers much that businesses, and even schools, should get inspiration from: learning and working in a digitised, distributed world; a flexible approach to running teams, and the development of critical soft skills to succeed as a team.

As with any sport though, the beauty of Esports is that individuals can also learn about themselves; this may be learning that they are more of a risk-taker than they thought they were; or that they have more self-confidence than they thought they had.

'I realised that, for me, the value of gaming is less about the competitive or leadership aspect and more about the cultural, artistic side. Which was interesting to learn about myself.' (Stewart)

A word of caution:??

While multiplayer online gaming has many benefits to young people, we should not lose sight of the risk of addiction caused by the direct dopamine impact of the gameplay; which argues for playing in moderation (hence my son's time on the Xbox remains restricted).

When video gaming becomes an addiction, it can lead to mental health and behavioural issues; gaming disorders include social anxiety, and increased irritability. But this is an entirely different topic and debate, probably one for another article...

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Mai Fenton is Chief Marketing Officer at Superscript, a London-based Series A tech scale-up that provides flexible, customisable business insurance for small businesses by monthly subscription.

Stewart Duncan is Chief Data officer at Superscript. With a background in Economics, Computer Science and Politics, Stewart went on to develop a successful career in Business Intelligence and Data Science across a range of industries including gaming, ecommerce and fintech before joining Superscript.

One of Stewart’s earliest memories was of his father bringing home an old 286 PC when he was a youngster. He couldn’t figure out what it was for until his older brother loaded up a copy of Police Quest - when it suddenly all clicked. A few years later, Stewart started to programme games with a friend, and his interest in Computer Science was born. In Stewart’s own words: ‘In a sense, gaming opened the door to my future career’.