The past decade has seen the esports market grow from strength to strength with a few major titles taking the lion share of the market, as esports has started to expand into the mobile gaming market and some even back into the console market too, there’s a clear blueprint for how esports games succeed and how some fall by the wayside.

This post will take a look at the features that make esports exciting, the features that stand out against less competitive games, and how future developers can follow a recipe for success in the esports market.

Skill floor vs skill ceiling – When it comes to creating a competitive game, there are two major factors that determine how the experience will be for new players and professional players alike. A low skill floor makes the game extremely accessible for new players, giving them the opportunity to put in the time to learn the game mechanics without needing in-depth knowledge. A great example of this can be found in titles like Valorant and Counter-Strike, the core is simple, two teams of five with a clear objective to attack or defend a point on the map.

The skill ceiling is the upper limit of what players are capable of in a game, in-depth knowledge of the macro and meta game, and the ability to make difficult mechanics look easy. It’s what makes professional players so exciting to watch when betting on esports for example, as they’re able to push the skill ceiling so high. In the same examples of Valorant and Counter-Strike, the ceiling is shown with things like aim, movement, and knowledge of utility usage in the map.

Viewer experience – Much like the skill floor and skill ceiling, a game that’s easy to follow and easy to watch without much knowledge of the game is a fantastic way to find esports success. Games like Rocket League which is essentially soccer with rocket powered cars is extremely easy to understand as the game replicates a traditional sporting title in the esports space, but the opposite can also be true with esports titles that were once extremely popular like Starcraft 2 – whilst the game found esports success, players needed quite in-depth knowledge to follow along, and ultimately the inaccessibility for new players to fully grasp what’s happening on screen hurt the game in the long run.

Alternative interests go a long way – Whilst all of the big esports games thrive in their own market, they’re all also well known for thriving in an alternative market too. League of Legends has alternative game modes like ARAM and TFT that bring a huge audience combined and help to create a successful environment for a game by providing something different. For games like Counter-Strike, the cosmetic and skins market is enormous launching trading platforms and investing interest too, and in many ways has become bigger than the game itself.

These alternative interests are a great way to bring in a larger audience who may not directly follow the esports title, but still help to provide something that allows for the esports title to grow.

Most of the biggest esports titles have managed to follow a similar blueprint and have all managed to find similar success in that same way, and with that any esports title will have a great path to follow in order to succeed with games like Valorant having already shown that following this blueprint can lead to huge success in a very short time.