CONTEXT
About the company
Gamers Club is a Brazilian company founded in 2015 that operates in the gaming industry, with a special focus on esports and competitive games.
Recognized for its commitment to enhancing the gaming experience and developing a community in competitive gaming, the company offers a platform that allows players to connect, compete and improve their skills in titles such as Counter-Strike, League of Legends, VALORANT, among others.
THE CHALLENGE
Game #2
Until mid-2019, the company focused only on the Counter-Strike audience, and depending on just one external product was a risk for the business. Thinking about mitigating it, the company took the direction of expanding the market to other audiences.
The game chosen to be the first in this expansion was League of Legends, a PC title popular worldwide and with a large audience in Brazil.
Riot Games, the game's developer, focused most of its efforts on structuring the scenario with teams that were already well established. However, there was no well-defined path for amateur teams to reach this level, and this where Gamers Club could act.
After discovery efforts together with designers, we decided to build a platform with the aim of organizing championships for this audience, thus
PO & PM
My main attributions
Market analysis and strategy definition
Product discovery in collaboration with designers
Definition of requirements in collaboration with the squad;
Documentation and prioritization of requirements in JIRA;
Management of product launch plans;
Manage internal communications with stakeholders
MVP
Minimum Viable Product
To allow the registration of new users;
To enable the creation of teams and inviting friends to participate;
To enable the creation of championships in a backoffice;
To display the championships in accordance with the visual identity defined by the designers;
To allow teams to register for available championships;
To enable the execution of the championship in stages (Registration, In progress, Completed);
To automate match processing using the Riot Games API
LAUNCH
Brasil Game Show
In approximately 4 months of development, the company had a new product in hand that could be tested with users in a great upcoming opportunity.
In October 2019, Gamers Club was present with a stand at the BGS Games Fair, setting up a structure with approximately 30 computers so that visitors could register for championships that would take place within the fair itself, experiencing the experience of a professional gamer for one day.
It was a unique opportunity, with thousands of people visiting the stand and more than 300 participating in the experience. We took the moment to observe how users interacted with the product in the form of shadowing, find out more here.
We also interviewed more than 20 people in a deeper conversation that ranged from profiling these people to understanding their expectations for the product. In the 3 days of the event, we collected countless insights, bugs and needs that were then iterated.
NEW OPPORTUNITY
Riot Games announces a new game
VALORANT was announced in March 2020. Given the developer's history of investment in competitive League of Legends, it would be an interesting market to study.
From the beginning, the platform's design was designed so that it could scale to more games in a short time. However, some new business rules were The new business rules to be implemented were:
Game-specific business rules;
Visual identity in accordance with VALORANT aesthetics;
Display details in user profiles for more than one game;
The possibility of running championships without automation.
LEARNINGS
01: Design System
We started the development with little styling of the elements. This path accelerated the first deliveries, but it was invariably a design debt assumed from the beginning. I believe that a more viable path than this would be to implement a minimal Design System prepared to be iterated at the beginning of the development of any product. The value of this lies in the consistency of the product front, the quality of deliveries and the team's speed of iteration.
02: Prioritization
Including match processing automation in an MVP did not prove to be as effective: we anticipated a scalability problem that did not materialize. This requirement could have been postponed until a time when the situation really started to become an operational mishap, building things that don’t scale;
03: Smaller Teams
At the beginning of development, our meetings were extensive, alignments became complex, relationships were distant and I had difficulty generating definitions at the pace that the team demanded while keeping other areas of the company aligned on the direction of the product. I believe that a team with up to 8 people is ideal to maintain a healthy pace of development.
04: Time To Market
Launching at the right time opened the right doors. Exclusive partnerships that were fundamental to the success of the product could only be achieved by giving up preciousness in deliveries.