41 GENIUS INTERVIEW Sabina Hemmi
We can see every single input that a player has in a match. We gather billions of data points for a single Dota 2 (Defence of the Ancients) match. Then there’s a million Dota 2 matches in a day. There have been billions of Dota 2 matches over the lifetime of the game. The initial data gathering of it is a lot easier. But a lot of the adoption, interpretation and digestion of the data, I don’t know if that’s different from traditional sports. What’s unique about esports is that because the data collection is so much more accessible, normal players can see it. If you played a pick-up game of basketball with your friends in the park, you wouldn’t expect a month later to be able to see all the data, the scoring details, from that game. But in esports we can do that. On the surface we’re looking for game insights and reporting things, but in the long-term I hope that we’re preserving history and, on an individual level, we’re preserving your memories. I have this great memory of the international WoW tournament one year,
SABINA HEMMI: We will look at other vendors, but I think because we’re a data company, we’re a little wary of vendors that don’t reveal how they get their information. There are a lot of aspects to esports data, and it’s very much still the Wild, Wild West. There’s not necessarily a warranty on how good data is, how well it was cleaned. A lot of the companies that are currently trying to sell or market themselves for the esports data are really focused on getting the biggest number they can, because that helps get them business. They’re incentivised to inflate numbers, rather than to use authentic numbers. For now, it makes sense for us to use internal tools and create things ourselves. In the long-term, I hope that space gets cleaned up. I’m not opposed to considering other options or maybe we’ll have our own option where we can share some of that data with the industry. FEED: Esports and gaming have not been great about diversity and the participation of females. What has been your experience as a female gamer and entrepreneur in the gaming space? SABINA HEMMI: There aren’t very many female entrepreneurs, right? I think at times it’s been lonely, but when I look at where we are today versus ten years ago or 20 years ago, when I started being active in
and a pro game went really long, over an hour and a half. After a while, everyone was asking, “How long is this game going to go on?” I was sitting in the stadium, watching people go to my website, asking questions like “What is the longest pro game ever?” But we also have a personal records page for every player so everybody was asking, “How does this compare to my personal longest match ever? Is it longer than this?” I could see them discussing the match with their friends: “Do you remember how we used this strategy, and it went on forever?” People can see the place where all those hours put into a game can get distilled down. They can revisit the individual memories that they had when playing. Everybody has fond memories, and being able to revisit them in an easily digestible way is a gift that you don’t always get in traditional sports. FEED: Do you work with any other tech vendors or have you developed all your data technology internally?
IT TAKES THICK SKIN, IT TAKES A LOT OF TOLERANCE AND PATIENCE TO BE AWOMAN IN ESPORTS
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