The central idea of the project was to show potential employees and employers how useful gaming skills can be as an indicator of a good functioning employee. To show that the intrinsic motivation that someone has to game, can translate to intrinsic motivation for a job. This idea is rather revolutionary, but also comes with a few challenges.
Our challenges:
How can we translate gaming skills to job skills?
For which jobs would gaming skills be useful?
How would we convince gamers that their gaming skills can be used for more than gaming?
How can we convince employers that gaming skills are a good indicator for the proficiency of a future employee?
The four city trip
The first challenge was to find locations in Nijmegen, Groningen, Eindhoven and Den Haag where a gaming tournament could be held and a livestream could be produced. Our solution was to use our network and work together with existing Student Esports Associations. This gave us access to the key persons in the local universities with which we could find a suitable location on campus. It also provided us with the first team and some volunteers to help with the event.
Tournament
For the tournaments we needed to provide 30 gaming setups, 60 players per location and a tournament format, ruleset and admin to run it. Once again we used our network to get a good deal on the rent of 30 high-end gaming setups from Lenovo. Since we’re also active in multiple gaming communities and have a great relationship with esports team Dynasty, we reached the top Valorant players in the Benelux in no time.
Only a small challenge was left: how can we make 60 people play on thirty setups, guarantee them to play two matches and not have them have too long of a break in between? Our experienced admins found the solution (three round swiss into single elim playoffs for those of you who want to know) and made sure the players had a great day.
Livestream
High quality tournament play is important for the livestream, but not as important as good quality equipment, crew and talent. Since 2016 we have livestreamed pretty much every competitive game in existence and thus Valorant was no problem. We brought our studio equipment to the location, made sure everything worked and brought great casters and a host to provide entertainment.
Final thoughts
For the NAVO Esports Cup we provided the full package: from branding and social media presence to event organization and livestream. Combined with the appearance of some incredible special guests like the Dutch Minister of Defence, it was a tough but awesome project for us to work on. We did what we set out to do: create a great experience for young gamers offline and online and inform them about NATO in the meanwhile.
Cases.
(2016-25©)
