Before discussing eS/acc, I would like to shed some light on the competitive culture of humans. A mindset that drives people more than anything else, to engage - to game the system - to thrive within any ecosystem.

This write-up is an interpretation of an idea that inspired me and Aditya to build Turf Gaming, guided by a few niche values that align with the curve of eS/acc.

Let's start with laying the foundation!

The core of the value of competition is not just about winning something, it's much more than that - It's the trajectory of growth [ relative as well as self ].

Understanding the essence of competitive growth is realizing that it often makes things more significant and more challenging than they need to be.

That’s what makes it beautiful, leading to the formation of a highly engaging community where everyone shares the same mental model for cracking the code and achieving the goal of defeating others.

In a world where people derive their sense of happiness and progress from achieving something, the future will leap forward in terms of how competitive cults are formed, with a vision of competitive targets and the thought process of being the best.

Did I just mention how sports cults are made? A common vision towards being the best in the city - state - country - world.

• Dopamine Fixes - Sense of Competitive Values:

  Deep down every human being is competitive, everyone gets a sense of satisfaction when they achieve something others haven't. Even if you aren't at the top, the journey of progressing your way through your peers gives anyone a sense of growth and hence dopamine!

• Cultural Tangibility - Sense of Community:

  One of the best things during my journey as a sportsman ( Table Tennis ) was the community we had around the city where we had common interests to achieve street cred around that game. We have spot-on similar interests ( the Game ) which bound us as a network that is amplifying the whole cult with competitions in place within them.

• Economic Dynamics - Incentives throughout the process:
  Incentives and being able to earn throughout the process result in the long-term sustainability of any culture. With multiple folks in the race, there are always only a few winners. One of the crucial factors for making it sustainable is bringing economic incentives from multiple fronts which supports the growth of every individual and gives them the edge to continue what they are doing.

• Opportunist mindset Cultivation:
  Competitions are directly linked with credibility for a particular human/gamer specifically to be the best in the city, or to be the best in the state. This culture cultivates a mindset that triggers practice and hence engagement. And this makes people more talented and creates opportunities for them.
  
  Whenever this happens, people capitalize on the talent / the game to bring value and economic structure into the ecosystem.

• Definition of Growth
  One word – Network effect!

  Growth in the competitive landscape creates a virtuous cycle of engagement, capitalization, and gamification of the economic value earned by companies and participants in the system.

  More games enter the cycle → more opportunities for gamers → higher odds of winning → more ways to capitalize on the system → value creation and consumption.

  This is similar to how, with the advent of the Olympics, a massive training market emerged, equipment markets thrived, and a lot of value was generated within the system.

Everyone is bullish on the idea that gaming is overtaking the entertainment industry, surpassing movies and music combined. To some extent, this is true, but there’s more to it. The competitive gaming ecosystem is highly unorganized and fragmented, with major players like ESL Gaming and Challengermode dominating the scene. However, they also serve as bottlenecks, limiting the industry’s ability to scale.

The organized portion of the market constitutes only 20% of the entire competitive gaming space, while the rest is barely served. Meanwhile, the localized market remains untapped by the major players, despite having a larger audience and bigger aspirations. If approached strategically, this market has the potential to bring immense value to the competitive gaming ecosystem.

Sadly, even after games are virtual, the competitive gaming ecosystem is localized. Because of the lack of only ONE thing " TRUST ".

We need a "trust layer" to connect the eSports guilds across the world to the games that want to tap into localized demographics through competitions
- without paying hefty amounts to Big Guns
- through a permissionless system
- with trust being the core of the system enabling them to fearlessly invest

That's what will serve as the ultimate growth hack for the gaming industry → eS/acc

eS/acc is an ideal curve projecting the growth dynamics of the gaming industry through competition.

It’s a philosophical movement that advocates for a specific niche of competitive gaming as the growth hack for the gaming industry. The goal is to enable and equip games with a democratized stack in terms of technology and distribution, allowing any game to scale across borders and tap into a world where value can be created for both gamers and the games.

PS: Inspired by e/acc.

To get into the depth of this, the understanding of the present games and gamers needs to be full-proof.

• Digging into the Games' perspective first, where the games need to focus on 2 things primarily :
  
  1. Innovation in gameplay
  2. Competitive Culture
  
  Most games fail to do this parallelly and only focus on Innovation, development, and marketing focused on user acquisition.
  
  Whereas, the best games in the ecosystem ( widely adopted ) are the ones that have curated the competitive element strongly.
  
  Let it be CS2, PUBG, Valorant, LOL, Dota2. Each of these games has successfully curated that effect where even localized communities see opportunities and host competitions for only these games, which initially got amplified by ESL Gaming and many other big guns.
  
  Most of the new games that are not built by top-tier publishers/developers don't get the edge to execute the competitive edge.

• Now focusing on the Gamers' perspective, It's a community play where the guilds only have access to facilitating the tournaments for big games and the gamers find this to be the mode of social engagement with peers and earn prize-pool.
  
  For the new games coming into the ecosystem, even if the guild leaders want to bring competitions for them - game developers across different demographics cannot trust random 3rd parties with their money for the Prize pool.

• Talking about the network dynamics of the space, resulting in a pure problem of trust -- where a lot of companies solving for the same genre think the problem is of automation. That's creating the void in the system and room to grow 100x from here.

  This has cultivated a gap-in-collaboration between an effective value exchange between the guild-leaders ( gamers ) and Games.

  Understanding the scenarios suggests that if we can work for an inherent trust for the collaboration between the localized competitive gaming market and Games, this will curate the next level of network effect enhancing the scope of engagement for a lot of games in the market.

Strategically speaking, to achieve this - we need to work towards several overarching goals that are dependent:

• Standardizing the competitive gaming industry and establishing global benchmarks ( GOLD Standards ) to ensure any game is competition-ready.

• Building Trustless systems to enable effective collaboration between the Games <> Gamers <> Competitive guilds cross-borders.

• Democratized Distribution Networks! The gaming industry is powered by distribution networks operating globally, segmented by the use cases they serve and the access they have to gamers. These distribution networks must be built for effective, interoperable operations with trustless value exchange, enabling shared distribution with rightful stakes, shared revenue, and a global network.

• Globalized Data and Reputation stack bringing fragmented stats together under one roof.

• A cohesive system for Viewership Engagement needs to be served which will tap into a 10x bigger market driving more value and traction to the games worldwide.

We at Turf Gaming are destined to route the entropy towards the curve that can bring engagement & economic boost to the gaming industry serving through the eSports / competitive gaming culture, maximizing the value creation and giving scope to different actors to capitalize on the opportunity.

Our vision is to create a network state where collaboration is permissionless - trustless - and democratized so that it's never a barrier for a game to distribute globally.

On a side note: