If there’s one industry that’s consistently blowing past expectations, it’s competitive gaming. The e-sports market is expected to reach nearly a half-billion dollars this year, and gamers who take part in it are constantly trying to heighten their skills.
Mobalytics is aiming to bring visual analytics to competitive gamers so they can discover their weaknesses and make adjustments for future success. Today, the company is launching a beta of its project out of TechCrunch Disrupt SF‘s Startup Battlefield.
Mobalytics is beginning their grand experiment by targeting and optimizing their analytics engine for League of Legends, an insanely popular online battle title that has tens of millions of monthly active users and a vibrant community of hardcore devotees.
When athletes want to bring their skills in a sport to the next level, they often look to coaching. For people playing League of Legends, that’s really something that’s only available to top competitive gamers. Mobalytics is hoping to serve that need by bringing visual analysis to gamers that they can get quick insights from before and after each match. The company wants to streamline analytics for gamers and put context behind the bodiless numbers that are spit out to users.
The startup’s main bread-and-butter feature is their Gamer Performance Index (GPI). The visual map cues users into disparate areas of their gaming skills depending on the title. In League of Legends, these metrics are fighting, farming, vision, aggression, survivability, teamplay, consistency and versatility.
With the GPI, you can quickly identify your own strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of competitors. On the visual front, the company is also looking to build up a series of icons and badges that players can easily call when checking on the skills of who they’re up next against in a new match.
Mobalytics is aiming their service primarily toward gamers looking to add to their skills and break into the upper echelon of kicking butt. Co-founder Bogdan Su tells me the company isn’t really focusing on the top bracket of gamers right now, because, at those levels, differences in gameplay are much harder to isolate.
The company has plans to expand to other e-sports titles like Overwatch, DOTA 2 and Counter Strike; with nearly 13,000 sign-ups for the beta, it’s clear the interest is there.