In the first final cup of the new Pokémon eSports, the team around the German ‘Ghatlue’ took victory after several comebacks. How is Nintendo’s first eSports attempt doing?
It’s a young eSport to watch in the making. Over the weekend, Nintendo hosted the first final tournament of the Pokémon UNITE Championship Series.
Over 500 players in 100 teams competed in the February Cup. This is precisely the current appeal of the tournament series: anyone can participate. In the end, there were individual really strong players in the top 4. However, it is remarkable that even the best teams make a surprising number of mistakes.
Significantly shorter broadcast
UNITE is a refreshing approach for a MOBA: Although 5vs5 is played like in LoL and Dota 2, abilities of the Pokémon and tactical possibilities on the map are limited. The main goal is to score points in zones, a circumstance that led to curious strategies in the finals, more on that later.
A round in Unite lasts exactly 10 minutes, and the matches are correspondingly short and action-packed.
Nintendo and partner Tencent took an unusual approach to broadcasting the tournament: They only showed the finals of the double elimination bracket, which are each decided in a best of 3. No tough 7-10 hour broadcast, as usual from FIFA or LoL, but only four hours. However, with interruptions and delays. According to player reports, the tournament of the best 16 probably ran for a total of eight hours.
For the cast, Nintendo was able to engage ‘Spragels’, one of the better-known YouTubers on the scene, and the casting team did a good job overall and summarised the events with some expertise.
Random Gaming wins over Yerman Burger Flippers
In the Championship Series, a total of 1 million US dollars in prize money is at stake, but the teams initially only receive points in the qualifying cups. These then qualify them for the next higher round. We have summarised all the details of the somewhat convoluted system here.
The team “Random Gaming”, which also includes a German, prevailed on Saturday. The 20-year-old ‘Ghatlue’ plays “Jungle”, i.e. in the central part of the map.
For Random Gaming, it was the story of several comebacks, as they were first sent to the lower bracket by their eventual final opponents “Yerman Burger Flippers” in a 2-0 defeat. They were then already behind in the final, but fought back with three consecutive wins.
Yerman Burger Flippers won one more game, but lost clearly in the last round after Random Gaming had corrected mistakes from the preliminary round.
Nintendo has some catching up to do
Both teams played the same line-ups except for minor changes at one position. Unlike what we are used to in UNITE, the teams were not concerned with gaining the advantage in team battles, but solely with giving up points. This even led to curious avoidance of fights. Often the action was on a knife’s edge with close rounds right to the end.
Exciting for the spectators, but from a tactical point of view Nintendo still has some catching up to do. Not only can both teams send the exact same Pokémon into battle, there are also no bans. Logically, this also makes a forced change of strategy impossible and the Pokémon that are currently too strong are played permanently.
So there is still a lot under construction in the UNITE Series. Unlike FIFA, the casters were very clear on several occasions about paid content in Pokémon UNITE, and aggressively promoted these “skins” as unnecessary.
The lack of strategy changes stood in the way of variety. It was almost as if the teams had said to themselves: “We have to play this composition again, otherwise we don’t stand a chance”. And then it ultimately comes down to individual performance, not so much a team performance.
The excitement and the feeling that there are still players like you and me fighting for the points in the final, however, makes the young eSport Pokémon UNITE well worth watching.