The South by Southwest (SXSW) Music, Film and Interactive Festival is in full swing, and on Friday, a special panel interrogates the place of pay-to-play products within the burgeoning eSports industry.
Gambling.
There’s something about it that turns a sporting event from peanuts to Brazil nuts. Scratch that. It doesn’t even have to be a sporting event. When I was gambling, I would offer odds on which raindrop would reach the end of the windowpane first.
Competition + Invested Interest = Excitement.
It’s the reason everyone is getting all worked up about the growth of video games. We’ve all played Battleships. Some have played Battleships for money. I can tell you that the latter creates a chemical reaction in your body akin to eating a full tub of Rum & Raisin ice cream while getting a foot rub.
The eSports industry is booming. The gambling industry is latching on to that sonic sound. Smart people with gamble in their bones have begun to create platforms allowing people to bet on the outcome of these video games. People like Battlefy’s Jason Xu, Matthew Pierce of Versus and the crack outfit at Unikrn to name a few.
On Friday, the likes of Xu and Pierce will be speaking at the 23rd Annual SXSW Music, Film and Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. The event began 11 March and remains opens until 20 March. The interest of this article is the event scheduled for 12:30 pm on Friday in the Austin Convention Center entitled: Place Your Bets: eSports and Pay-to-Play Gaming.
The session will run for an hour and will feature Xu, Pierce and a wealth of talent from this burgeoning industry. Questions that the panel hopes to address include:
• Is real money gambling a good idea?
• How do you work with developers and publishers?
• How do you attract players?
• How do you make it legal?
• How do you make it global?
Meet The Panel
Jamison Selby is the man behind the successful interactive poker show The Real Deal at the Venetian. Phil Hellmuth and Daniel Negreanu played a part in the show at the time. Selby is now in charge of the games team at b Spot – a mobile gaming community allowing people to play for real money.
Jason Xu is a former professional Starcraft and Counter-Strike gamer, and the CEO of Battlefy, an online entity that hosts eSports tournaments. Matthew Pierce is an entrepreneur and game designer who created the digital media company Versus, a platform that allows video game developers and publishers to create real money tournaments on the web.
Sarah Chambless is a lawyer with the digital media division of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in Los Angeles. Chambless’s practice focuses on tech startups and she regularly surfaces around America as a lecturer or speaker.
The three of them will be trying to answer those questions. You can catch the event live in person, or via Steam and Twitch.
Other sessions on that date include:
• eSports: Investment and sponsorship will be HUGE
• Speaking Socially: Voice Chat in Gaming.
• Sucked Into the Story: Virtual Reality and News
• VR Porn: Future is Upon Us, What’s Next?
I am tempted to fly out just for the VR porn. Although my other half has already confirmed that VR sex with an AI program is officially cheating.
For more information on the SXSW Music, Film and Interactive Festival then click here.
