The Switch may grow Splatoon even more as an esport

Not long ago Nintendo revealed the Splatoon Showdown Series, a small-scale esports tournament that embraced the competitive capabilities of Splatoon, and Splatoon tournament organiser Allen Williams of EndGame TV has talked about the development of the game's competitive scene and what the future could hold.

"What made the original competitive scene so taxing was basically how hard the platform was for planning events," Williams said. "Our first major [online] tournament was Ink or Sink, and because contacting people and playing tourney rules for the first time was so difficult, it ended up taking weeks as an event. We eventually gave up on the tournament."

That wasn't the only issue that faced Splatoon tournament organisers. "For so many players, Splatoon is their first competitive game ever, they had never had to deal with deadlines or connecting to game lobbies quickly".

The lack of a spectator mode isn't ideal either, Williams explained. "We stream from one perspective for a match. The usual is hosting a player from a team's stream during a set and then commentating over it. It is far from the ideal, but currently the only way we have found [to do it]."

As if that wasn't enough, connection issues hampered Splatoon further. "Bad internet players can often get jank kills and game wins off their connection," Williams said. "When someone activates their invincibility ability, 'Bubble,' they can still killed through it by a laggy player."

Discord did wonders for the community, however. "What saved the scene was Discord. The first major tournament series, a bi-monthly event called Splatoon Community League would take an entire day at first. Tournament time is now cut in half and while longer events do happen, they aren't really tolerated. [But] almost as important as tournament planning, being on Discord allowed us to develop an actual community."

Splatoon event SquidStorm Chicago proved very popular as well, reassuring people that people loved Splatoon despite the issues it had, even the issues with the event itself, like needing to connect to Ethernet because of a lack of LAN modes, although efforts by Williams helped solve this. "We had players tell us it was the best event they have been to their whole life. It made me and Eirik, the other LAN manager, tear up. There is such a want for these LANs, players traveled 20 hours for it, and more want to again for a LAN in Seattle this December. Splatoon LANs are something I want the entire community to experience."

The future of Splatoon, then, seems secure in terms of popularity with the fans, and Nintendo has offered support as well. "Nintendo has supported us in their own ways here and there before this," said Williams. "Bill Trinen (Senior Product Marketing Manager of Nintendo of America) retweets a bunch of community events and is all around awesome, and Nintendo itself also tweeted about SquidStorm Chicago." Nintendo have also said that an online tournament series will run every weekend in November, which can only be a good thing.

The Switch is where Splatoon's future as an esport really lies, though, and it's a good sign that it was featured on the trailer. "Honestly, if the Switch gives us spectator mode and servers to fix the lag/latency issues, the community is going to be all over it," Williams said. "I'm honestly afraid of the Switch having more of the interference issues due to its multiple parts [but]This game has had the most amazing group of devs working on it ... [they] constantly patched the game for balance issues and made really smart choices for a whole year after release."

Do you think Splatoon will continue to grow as an esport, or are the issues just too much?