Vainglory has an even better chance at mass e-sports adoption now.
Super Evil Megacorp hires Taewon Yun to oversee the move of its mobile MOBA to Japan and Korea this week. Yun previously worked at Wargaming, Blizzard, Red 5, and Electronics Arts, overseeing hit online titles such as World of Tanks and World of Warcraft. He will use his 18 years of experience as an Asia-focused exec to head Super Evil Megacorp’s Asia Pacific region, giving the company reach into the $19 billion Asian digital games market. Vainglory is the first major effort in mobile touch-based MOBA games, and with some help could be a major player in the thriving Asian e-sports scene.
Yun will set up an office in Singapore as the head of Asia Pacific for San Mateo, Calif.-based Super Evil Megacorp, where he will hire on new talent and establish new partnerships for Vainglory. He’ll also use it as a base to expand the mobile online battle game’s reach into the multibillion dollar Asian e-sports industry, where League of Legends and Starcraft 2 are among the most popular games played.
E-sports potential
Vainglory just launched in Japan and Korea earlier this year, so it has a long way to go to reach the levels of popularity that Blizzard’s Starcraft or Riot’s League of Legends sees in the region. But news spreads fast over the highly social community of more than 70 million e-sports viewers worldwide. Given the genre’s boundless popularity overseas, Vainglory could find itself faring much better than it has in the West. Early results are promising — App Annie currently shows this mobile MOBA climbing the iOS ranking charts in South Korea.
The explosive growth of mobile gaming in Asia makes could further support the title’s eastern expansion. While it started with Japan and Korea in March, Super Evil Megacorp is also looking at other Asian territories, such as the rapidly expanding and mobile game hungry Southeast Asia region. As gamers transition from PC gaming to mobile, Vainglory is in a key position as one of the only games in the genre available for mobile devices. And the timing is perfect — Super Evil Megacorp is gearing up to launch Vainglory on Android soon.
Having honed in on the gameplay elements that has made Riot’s League of Legends so popular on PC worldwide, and now making moves towards supporting competitive play on mobile devices, Yun and Super Evil Megacorp are uniquely positioned to get in on e-sports growth in a new way.