The largest national esports event held in Japan, “RAGE 2019 Winter powered by SHARP” is the collaborative product of Avex Entertainment, CyberZ, and the TV Asahi Corporation.
Held for its second time, the competition chooses different categories of games for much of its lineup, making for a diverse and fresh menu of esport viewing goodness. This year’s winter games offered a free-of-charge viewing stage for Shadowverse, TEPPEN, Granblue Fantasy Versus, and Gurui, as well as a special payed-viewing space for the Monster Strike pro tour competition. Rage has shown growth as a competition through its contents and sponsorship, partnering up with some of the top domestic electronic companies making liquid crystal TVs, smartphones and more, while bringing SHARP on board as its main sponsor.
Playing against the pros,
and women-only leagues.
A look into
RAGE’s esport experience:
value and spatial design.
As esports has reaches its period of growth here in Japan, we sat down with the event’s organizer to see what the rage — pun intended — was all about.
“Even RAGE has come to be an event chosen by major corporations. For instance, SHARP has become the top sponsor of our 2019 Winter games, and the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks even entered RAGE Shadowverse Pro League as a team. Based on how steadily esports is growing in Japan, I believe we’ll soon see the kind of population or market that will rival the rest of Asia. We don’t want to miss this chance, and RAGE plans to plow forward in developing the esports scene here even further after 2020 so as not to fall behind other Asian countries like China and Korea where esports is booming.”
The first thing that stands out when entering the arena at Makuhari Messe is the eye-popping array of stages that fill the massive space and their diverse flamboyant backdrops. Thanks to the well-designed floor plan, traversing the venue is a breeze and viewers can easily follow the time table to catch whatever sport they wish. Live coverage and commentary is provided for the pro tournaments relaying the details and focal points of each game, instilling the audience with swelling excitement. This offers even first time viewers an in-depth dive into the inner workings of the pro’s fine plays happening either live or on screen.
Besides exciting battles between professionals, the Shadowverse stage which stood right next to the venue entrance, boasted three other competitive contents; the four-person team flight (round robin) tournament using SHARP’s newest AQUOS model smart phone, the pro vs. challenger battles with a chance to win in-game virtual items and special limited goods, as well as a woman-only battle “Shadowverse Queen’s Cup 2019 Winter.” This provided the average game player plenty of ways to be a part of the esport action, as opposed to only observing.
It was easy to notice the organizers’ hopes of creating an event for all, not only professionals, to enjoy, the way that conventional sports do.
Flashy stage direction and visuals has always been another signature element of RAGE and this time was no different. You would even think you were at a WWF or UFC match the way smoke plumes engulfed the competitors as they entered the stage for TEPPEN, a card battle game featuring many popular Capcom characters from games like Street Fighter, Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry and more.
Up close and
personal battles.
Tactics, moves,
and the excitement
they make.
Making your way to towards the back of the venue, you come upon the booth of the main sponsor SHARP.
With tables and chairs and even monitors relaying live footage of the games, the space was perfect for visitors to come and rest. SHARP’s new smartphone models, the AQUOS sense3, the AQUOS sense3 plus, and the AQUOS zero2 were also on display for people to pick up and try out. In order to convey just how light the AQUOS zero2 is, one corner of the booth invited visitors to compare the weight of the latest model with a whopping 240HZ display to their own phone. Creating an area to relax such as this and offering more to visitors than games, SHARP’s sponsorship not only helps expand the scope of RAGE as an event, but helps connect a multitude of users through the medium that is esports.
At the far end of the venue was the payed-viewing stage for the Monster Strike Pro Tournament 2019-2020. Visitors enjoyed displays of the uniforms of participating pro athletes as they entered the arena to find heated battles unfolding between the veteran gamers, using all kinds of methods including microphones to coerce, divert and contain their opponents. The audience was just as heated, with some showing up with balloons to cheer on their favorites. This type of synergetic display of increasing excitement created by such in-your-face competition is one of the signature characteristics that makes esports so fun.
Without a doubt, the most awaited match of the day was the grand finals of the popular RAGE favorite, the Shadowverse World Grand Prix 2019.
Shadowverse is an online battle card game where the player’s “leader” utilizes their deck consisting of eight classes of cards to defeat their opponent. With unlimited possibilities of how the game can unfold, victory depends on the user’s ability to read and react to their opponent’s cards in a highly strategic, so-called “evolved chess”-like match of wits. This championship used what is known as the “BO5 Rule,” a tournament style format using three different decks. The winner is the first to win three out of a total of five battles. Players are no longer allowed to use the deck they won a battle with, forcing them to use all three decks they have prepared. Not only must they master the art of deck preparation, a strategy for surviving a possible five matches in total is imperative.
Besides the general live coverage and commentary, past champions Kyoma, the leader of the pro team Levanga Sapporo, and Nono, winner of RAGE shadowverse Rebirth of Glory, were invited as special guest commentators to cover the eight-person tournament.
The focal point and most interesting aspect of Shadowverse is the battle of brains that it demands. Players must be in constant forecast of the other’s flow of moves, staying steps ahead of one another in order to take the title. Athletes man a station of either blue or red and battle one at a time, choosing what they think to be the either the best attack or counter attack. You can feel the electricity run through the crowd, the voltage increasing with each play. The fact that the whole game can change in a single move is what makes this unpredictable sport so attractive.
The two players to make it to the final battle were Sawa-chan a.k.a. “100% Positive,” and Magnet a.k.a. “Charge Naïve.” A playback of Nono’s victorious moment at RAGE Shadowverse “Rebirth of Glory” the previous year was shown on screen before the final match, instilling the arena with vigor and excitement. The two master gamers showed a next level read of each other’s barrage of attacks, with Sawa-chan coming out victorious in a straight win thanks to his fine-tuned deck building skills. Beating out nearly 6,000 gamers, Sawa-chan received 4,000,000 yen in prize money and a new AQUOS zero as he posed triumphantly on stage bathed in cheers and praise.
The ever expanding esports
market in Japan.
The future of RAGE:
balancing competitiveness
and entertainment.
We talked with Sawa-chan shortly after his win to ask him about the decisive factor that lead to his win, as well as his thoughts about RAGE.
“Up until the competition,” said Sawa-chan, “I just put all I had into practicing every night. All I did was play Shadowverse. I think this win was thanks to the fact that each of my decks matched the environment of each of the three battles. RAGE is what everyone aims for, kinda like the national finals for a school’s sport club. I’m just ecstatic I was able to win here. I really love this competition and I’d love to be able to keep playing at large venues like this.”
Thanks to the hype created by players and audience alike, the esports market in Japan has grown 13 fold from last year in 2018, reaching 4.81 billion yen with forecasts of reaching 9.94 billion in 2022. As for epsorts fans, the current fan base population of 3,830,000 is said to increase to 7,860,000 by the same year(※). We caught up with RAGE organizer one more time to see how they felt after this year’s success. Source：https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000005308.000007006.html
“I wasn’t expecting to see such a response in the comment section of OPENREC.tv regarding SHARP coming on board as our top sponsor. I’ve also noticed the peak in interest amongst other media companies outside the gaming realm regarding the same thing. We plan on seeing what else can be done strategy wise to increase the number of viewers and visitors for the next RAGE and we’re also thinking of taking a more world-wide approach for 2020.”
What makes sports viewing so engaging? It’s a product of three things: matches that make your palms sweat, the passion and excitement in the cheers of the fans, and the multitude of measures made by directors to engage viewers. The esports industry now is all the rage, and it is only fitting that RAGE, with its beautiful balance of competitiveness and entertainment, be the stage that delivers and spreads the excitement of the game to the masses.
