A competitive League of Legends platform. Hosted on Twitch.

TL;DR

I have a passion for eSports. Before I began my education in game development, I dreamed of opening a competitive training center for parents to send their kids to learn to play eSports well, and respectfully. The workings of the academy would be akin to private golf lessons. I began this journey by hosting live League of Legends tournaments on my Twitch channel and providing in-depth gameplay analysis which players used to improve their game. The channel evolved over time with new series’ that further tested players skills, and new methods of communicating my gameplay analysis to the players. The stream was professional, proper, and always focused on educating and entertaining the players. Even my mom watched. Every day. I closed Styl Labs with ~1,000 hrs broadcasted, and over 17,000 views. I carry this dream on now with my passion for data-driven tools for players and designers.

The Tournament Series

Weekly opt-in tournaments, driven by an 8 week schedule,
finalized with a bracketed championship.

Each weekend, opt-in tournaments were held for the community. A tournament season lasted 8 weeks, and with the ultimate weekend came a single-elimination bracketed tournament featuring the top ranked teams. Statistics on each team were tracked throughout the season, with ranks based on performance, as well as participation. This meant that the team who played in the most subsequent, opt-in, tournament series’ would be seeded with the teams with the highest win ratios. This method succeeded in creating exciting experiences between teams formed of popular community players, like CIA, and pre-determined teams of high-skill ‘studs’, like AMAM.

Analysis

Providing visuals to assist players and viewers in understanding the meta.

Visual aids were provided to players online and during the show to communicate relationships between gameplay characteristics. Most notable of these aids was the ‘Styl Stats’ Radar Chart which aggregated my own personal ratings of multiple fields of characteristics of League of Legends Champions and displayed the comparison of those averages. This chart was updated during the ‘Champion Selection and Draft’ phase of a match, and provided information for teams to use to drive their decision making both immediately, and in future matches. The charts successfully identified team-composition trends among high and low performing teams.

Styl Stats were driven by an Excel spreadsheet which contained in-depth statistics on each character, and their viability within the current meta-game. The ratings were populated and weighted by me, then exposed to the community for criticism and feedback. Whenever a new character was released, or an existing character was changed, I would make a point to inform the community of the statistic changes, and the reasoning behind them - often times to a live audience.

The ‘Barebones’ Drill

Competitive Training Series

Twice a week, the most dedicated members of the community joined me to use time-scored drills to test their mechanical efficiency and general feel for champions. Players could also practice on their own and track their progress using spreadsheets provided on the website. Created with Microsoft Excel.

This series also had a competitive side. Players challenged their friends (and me) to one-on-one duels designed to prove who had truly mastered their champions. Top drills and duels were reviewed and analyzed on-stream, and the best run of each episode would be uploaded and featured on the Draft Labs YouTube page.

The drill is named ‘Barebones’ because the player must race through the map using only their champion’s basic statistics. No bonuses.

In the still to the left, you can see the ratings and characteristics of the current champion (Talon), as well as a list of the player’s previous run stats and scores.

Brand Identity

Creating an environment that even my mom can enjoy

The ‘Styl Labs’ brand stood to provide a professional and competitive learning environment for players of all ages. There was no swearing, and explicit behavior policies were repeated regularly. A significant portion of Styl Labs viewers and players were between the ages of 14 and 19, and skill levels varied from brand new League of Legends players to skilled veterans of the game and other eSports. A culture of constructive criticism and mentorship between competing teams quickly surfaced, allowing me (as a commentator) to provide the highest quality, and most straight-forward feedback to players without worry of any assumption of bad faith. I am incredibly thankful to the community for allowing me that freedom.

Over the course of a year, I spent an estimated 1,000 hours live, and garnered over 17,000 views. However, those numbers are not the most impressive of the stream’s statistics. While a popular streamer of the time would have thousands of viewers every day, they would typically average mere minutes of view duration. Styl Labs maintained a strong 1.5 hour average view duration. As a show would last about 3 hours daily, this means that even though the viewer count may not have been sky-high, the engagement and commitment of the average viewer was.