They search for esports talent in an extraordinary way. “There is no fairer system”

What does esportsLAB do? What are you guys doing?

Robert Pieñkowski: I am responsible for product development related to Counter Strike game and everything related to it. Application development, component development, management of the web application development process. We deliver this work to the teams. Our product is currently aimed largely at esports teams. Its purpose is to support their development – analysis of the opponent, searching for talents, monitoring players. We want to influence every aspect of the team that may be relevant and which they were not always aware of.

Maciej Skorko: He deals with the implementation of analytical concepts, invented by Robert. Our goal is to come to the essence of the players’ individual level of play, so that they can be objectively compared. We also try to build their personal profile, describing their mental abilities and mental characteristics. These are very important things and we are basically the first to introduce this way of looking at the players’ level of play to the world of esports. We are convinced that this will be the future of discipline. We add to this the level of knowledge about the game, which is very important. We check how the players understand the high level of the game and how they are able to find themselves in the team thanks to it.

So your role at Dr Pepper Academy is to help you choose players based on objective data?

MS: Yes, we use one of the three products that we currently offer, that is, supporting the selection processes. In addition, we have “Player development” and what we call “Pregame preparation”, which is a set of information that allows us to understand the tendencies in the opposing team and use them on the server.

RP: We use a similar set, proposing to the teams players for their squad, if they are looking for a replacement.

How does your participation in the process of selecting players look like? Do you only provide data?

MS: Our role is primarily to enable us to make the best possible decision. We’re doing one thing that makes this whole event possible.

RP: We have over 3,000 players from three countries (Poland, Finland, Sweden) and two coaches for each country plus one dedicated to the female part of the project.

MS: It’s easy to calculate that each of them would have to see 500 players to decide if they have the quality they are looking for. It is physically impossible. By using objective information, we shorten their path to understand who these players are. If one of them draws attention to themselves, the coaches will want to gather even more information that will allow them to finally make a good decision.

RP: We show our coaches in the most simplified way possible, in the form of four records – one with shooting skills and three relating to adapting to the role of entry fragger, sniper and support. Of course it depends on what is happening on the server. We later display this data to Dr Pepper Academy coaches to assist in their selection process.

How, compared to other such projects, the activities of esportsLAB make Dr Pepper Academy unique?

MS: For good reason, we operate on the level of cause, not effect. The result here are statistics, ie the number of eliminations, assists, etc. We, on the other hand, look at such behavior of players and observe indicators that depend only on themselves. They make it possible to explain the end result to a better degree and can perceive someone’s performance at a high level, even though the end result is not as positive as you would expect it to be. You can play a very good match, but your opponent won’t let you do more. We are able to see such situations, and they avoid attention wherever someone is looking only at ADR (Average Injuries – Ed.) Or the number of eliminations. We deliver data separate from the team factor. This is particularly important in such open selection processes.

RP: From the player’s perspective, there is no fairer evaluation system. If you feel that you are good and the fact that you know how to play was underrated or your good game was lost because of playing with weaker teammates, we can find you. This can also be a key value in cooperation with us.

Esports LAB Promotional material

You can also provide data that is invisible to the naked eye, such as in-game response time, right?

MS: That’s too, but we also provide information about mistakes made by players. With careful observation, you can see them. However, it will take you a long time, a minimum of an hour for a single player, and we are able to achieve these effects in a few seconds. This is a fundamental difference. On the one hand, perceiving what cannot be perceived and measuring it with a very high precision, and on the other hand, perceiving what is observable by a human, but impossible due to the scale at which he would have to operate.

Do you already have the first conclusions after observing the players at Dr Pepper Academy?

MS: From the technical point of view, I can say that I am very glad that we have proved ourselves on this level. We have processed tens of thousands of matches, we are already operating on a very large scale. We are able to deal with large amounts of data and deliver them to the customer quickly.

RP: More esports, I can say that I looked at the players from other countries taking part in the project. I believe that the defense of the title by Poles will be very difficult, because the level of Sweden is exceptionally high. There are players who, by individual parameters, approach the FPL-C players, and there are no such players in Poland. The coaches will have a lot to choose from.

MS: For the coming months we will be watching the leading players of the project. We are interested in creating a solution that would show the player’s developmental trajectory. We are already working on it. This is inspired by a system from the American football league in the US where a system called NextGen Stats was developed. In this system there is a “Prospect Rating” indicator that shows how much time a player needs to reach his top potential. We want to prepare such an indicator for the selection processes in CS: GO this year.

What is the role of projects such as Dr Pepper Academy in this entire esports ecosystem? Maybe this is the future of building teams?

RP: I think that such external organizers took over the role of teams a bit. In more advanced esports countries, the baton will still be on the side of the teams. It is them who should be more interested in finding these players than on an external entity. This is precisely due to a gap in the operation of the e-sports community in Poland. If organizations don’t do it, it’s great that someone else is doing it. It’s nice that someone wants to spend money on it, because it’s a great chance for these players to show off, go to LAN, get a contract and form a team. This is the most needed element. It’s nice if it didn’t end as a one-time adventure on the basis of selecting and winning one tournament, and playing together in the team structure, because that’s what Polish players lack the most. We have a great will to play FACEITs (a match on the FACEIT platform, in which a player plays with friends or random players from one hub – ed.), And not necessarily to form teams. I believe that this is one of the key advantages of this project.

MS: I would risk a statement that this project and similar ones are a kind of a preview of what awaits us. Esport has only recently become professional and has not yet established this amateur testing process at a professional level. This creates two key problems. On the one hand, you have amateurs with potential who want to show themselves terribly, but don’t have how, because this space is ruled by intuition, chance or acquaintances, and not objective judgment. In fact, we are building an essential element of this path on which to implement such ideas. In my opinion, the teams will not do this because there are some examples in the world that show how it happened. In American football, several teams have built a scouting system together. They have decided that doing it yourself is a waste of time and money. They joined forces to create this system. It seems to me that it will not happen soon in esports.

On the other hand, there will probably be more and more options to play semi-pro, form a team and take part in a tournament that doesn’t necessarily lead you to Major (the most important tournament in the world of CS: GO – ed.), But will allow you to win something. , fight for real money and be part of esports in the true sense of the word. Today it is not available, because there are several difficulties associated with creating teams, searching for players at a similar level, supporting the team game from the analytical point of view. These things are only available on a professional level, but I think that thanks to us and projects like this, they will gradually find their way to more and more esports enthusiasts. I think that this base, foundation, and the number of players involved will simply grow. There are no projects which, like this one, are spread over many countries, because no one has the resources. There are no methods. As long as it is not automated and transferred to the quantitative analysis level, it will not be implemented.

Are you doing a job that esports teams should be doing?

RP: No, I don’t think so.

MS: I would say otherwise. What Dr Pepper Academy does is half the work that esports organizations should do. First you define the potential, the player’s ceiling and then you have to try to release him. If you have a player who is promising because he has been noticed at an amateur level, your next task is to put him where he has the greatest potential and see how quickly he develops under these conditions. If you quickly catch a larger increase in skills you care about developing, you can answer the question: “is this someone who will be material for a professional player?” So that’s only half of the job – determining the potential. Next, it is necessary to create a system that will allow us to check whether the potential is high or we are watching the game at the limit of a given player or female player. Our ambition is to take this step also in the near future.

Already on 8.07 from 5.00 p.m. there will be a special broadcast on the Twitch channel (link https://www.twitch.tv/3leaguegg), during which players will be selected who will receive a pass to the next stage of the academy. Additionally, during the discussion panel you will be able to listen to, inter alia, about the methodology created by which the participants of the training phase will be selected (Maciej Skorko’s panel) or about the challenges and future of young players taking part in projects such as Dr Pepper Academy powered by Actina.