Developer Supercell is no stranger to making great mobile games that thrive in the esports scene. Now, its smash-hit Brawl Stars will have its own World Championship in South Korea with a $250,000 prize pool. The competition will take place from November 15-17 in Busan, South Korea at the BEXCO Auditorium as part of the gaming festival G-Star.
Eight international teams will qualify for the competition online through various competitions. The quarterfinals will take place November 15, and the semifinals and finals will be on November 16.
Supercell’s community manager Ryan Lighton stated in a release about the event, “Even though the game launched globally only nine months ago, we want to match our players’ enthusiasm and bring them the event they’ve been asking for in Korea, the birthplace of esports.”
Brawl Stars joins two other popular games by the developer in the esports scene, with Clash Royale ready to push off with their $1 million annual Clash Royale League, and Clash of Clans will have its World Championship event at ESL One Hamburg in Germany in October. Supercell has so far been aggressive in its push for its mobile games to have an esports presence, and so far, the effort appears to be paying off.
Check out the Grand Finals event for the 2017 Clash Royale World Championship. The venue was packed, and the competition was fantastic.
For the unfamiliar, Brawl Stars is a new entry to mobile gaming. Released this past year, the game is a a 3v3 top-down shooter. In many ways, the layout is similar to Clash Royale, though players are in complete control of their characters, rather than having cards that create units that act according to their AI.
Unlike both of the Clash games, the 3v3 action here is entirely team based towards different objectives depending on the randomly selected game mode. While Supercell has not yet revealed how this championship would work, one assumes that the modes may be predetermined beforehand to allow for strategy, better casting, and avoiding repetition of a mode.
Some new modes are more geared towards casual play, and it would not be a surprise to see them removed from the competitive scene. Two of the newer game modes are Lone Star and Takedown. Each new mode brings the focus to individual play rather than teamwork, with Lone Star working as a free-for-all Bounty. Takedown meanwhile requires the boss robot to be damaged. The player who does the most damage to the robot boss by the end of the match is declared the winner. Obviously, neither would work for the team-based competition we are expecting to see.
It is great to see Supercell pushing for its games to have a greater esports presence. We certainly hope the first World Championship goes well for the developer and players alike.
Source: esportsobserver.com