Gaming veteran Kent Wakeford has recently joined the board of directors of mobile esports company Skillz, after having experience with mobile game developer Kabam, and Gamereactor took the opportunity to ask Kent about mobile esports as a whole, and whether or not there's untapped potential in this market.
"Mobile can compete with other esports, but requires gameplay designed with the mobile device in mind," he explained. "Games that are designed specifically for the mobile experience can do extremely well - just look at Clash Royale. Over 2 billion people have mobile phones, which allows for incredible audience reach. In addition, mobile is the leading way for fans to watch streaming content, share with friends, and engage socially with eSports communities. I expect to see another mobile break-out hit game come to market within the next 12-18 months."
"There is absolutely untapped potential in mobile esports, namely in the 2.6 billion gamers who don't have access to a fun, fair and competitive gaming infrastructure," Skillz CEO Andrew Paradise added. "We can draw an important comparison here between eSports and offline sports like basketball. There are only 450 people in the NBA, but 450 million people who play basketball worldwide. All of these people call themselves basketball players, but the same hasn't been true for esports players of varying skill levels."
"Players want an arena in which they themselves can compete against one another and become esports athletes - and Skillz proves that this isn't just speculation. In the past year alone, the Skillz user base has grown by more than 32 percent to 12 million users. The daily number of minutes an average Skillz player competes on the platform has also increased from 50 minutes to 61 minutes. For comparison, people spend 40 minutes a day on YouTube and 35 minutes a day on Facebook. The desire and the market are there, and with our competitive multiplayer platform that's available to anyone with a mobile device, Skillz is tapping into that potential."
How far do you think mobile esports can go?