Gaming
esports
Rainbow Six Siege’s 2020 Plans for Beating Counter-Strike
There’s a sleeping giant poised to enter Siege’s competitive scene in 2020 that’ll take the shooter closer to fragging Counter-Strike’s dominance.
As I write this article, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) sits at number one on the player-tracking website Steam Charts with 266,839 current players, while Rainbow Six Siege sits at number four with 65,618. This isn’t an uncommon placement scenario; Siege plays second fiddle to CSGO. After all, with 200,000 fewer players, that’s surely the end of the story: CSGO wins and Siege loses.
But it’s not. It wasn’t so long ago that Siege wasn’t even in the top 10 on Steam Charts. It’s crept up the ranks since then. More importantly, Steam Charts only takes into account the Siege player base who are playing through Steam, and not those fragging via Uplay.
Considering developer Ubisoft Montreal recently celebrated a milestone of 50 million players, it’s clear that, unlike a lot of live-service games (including many released after Siege), this shooter is on the up and up. Part of that is how developer Ubisoft Montreal manages the simple things.
Community transparency. An ongoing monetisation strategy that’s focused on cosmetics instead of gameplay. Free map releases. And new playable Operators that can feasibly be unlocked with in-game currency for those who regularly play.
Then, of course, there’s the exciting competitive scene that continues to expand and attract the attention of hundreds of thousands of viewers around the world. It helps, too, that Ubisoft tends to sagely plan free weekends – or, most recently, a free week – before, after or during these big-stage events. Aspiration is a powerful motivator, and a big reason why esports continues to grow.
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One Giant Leap
But while Siege’s player base and competitive scene has been on a steady rise since the launch of the game and the birth of its esports component, there’s a good chance that rise will become a whole lot meteoric next year.
“We want to go to different regions,” says recently appointed Rainbow Six Esports Director Wei Yue. “We want to go to different countries and really connect and engage with the local communities.”
When pressed about whether these new countries to receive an esports focus would include China, Yue had this to say.
“I’d love to talk about that, but I think it’s a bit too early. We’re currently actually in the process of revamping our esports system for the years to come. And China especially is a big focus point for us. But it's not just China. It’s also other regions, emerging markets, some countries that we haven’t been looking at that much. They will be pivotal in 2020 and beyond.”
The introduction of a Chinese region for the Pro League alone has fascinating implications. Currently, Siege’s Pro League regions are separated into Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and North America.
The introduction of China means there’s an easy argument for an Asian region, which might feasibly include Japan and South Korea. That alone would mean that South-East Asia could join a separated Oceanic league, but Yue’s mention of other regions and emerging markets means this could very well be the tip of the iceberg.
With 50 million players at the moment, an investment in China and other regions could be the push that Siege needs to hit critical mass. Considering Ubisoft Montreal has made a pledge to support Siege for years, and with both Microsoft and Sony revealing preliminary details of their next consoles, this means there must be plans for a next-gen revamp of the game.
In terms of the timeline, Siege’s original December 2015 release date means Ubisoft Montreal is currently making mid-life investments in a 10-year, 100-operator commitment whose pool will hit 50 later this month with the release of Operation Ember Rise.
Even though that operator pool pales in comparison to the playable heroes of MOBAs like Dota 2 and League of Legends, Ubisoft Montreal has already introduced operator bans. This, in turn, has led to the expansion of operator choices around particular roles, most notably intel-gathering, denial and hard breaching.
And make no mistake, Ubisoft Montreal sees Siege as a MOBA/shooter, in that order. “We do see Rainbow Six Siege as a MOBA tactical game more so than a first-person shooter,” says Yue. This is particularly important for viewers. For newcomers, Siege scans like a shooter, and the high lethality makes it easy to follow the basics of what’s going on, just like CSGO.
“We do see Rainbow Six Siege as a MOBA tactical game more so than a first-person shooter.”
For those who stick around, the MOBA-like wealth of operators offers a greater depth of strategy that starts to make Siege comparable to games like Dota 2 and LOL. In its current form and based on its new-content trajectory (or lack thereof), this is an area where CSGO cannot compete with Siege: no unique classes or operators limits its overall depth. On top of this, Ubisoft Montreal is keenly aware that this depth still has to scan for greenish viewers, albeit not at the expense of the competitive viewing experience.
“This is something that we’re really going to focus on going to 2020, but for us, viewability is a very important factor to esports,” says recent hire NCSA Senior Esports Director Che Chou. “Viewability is important and we want to keep it as accessible as possible. When I say ‘viewability’, that is a combination of the casters being able to tell that story in real-time. There are probably different ways that we can help present the information that can make the ramp less steep.
“Those are things that we’re thinking about in terms of: how do we improve our broadcasts? How do we improve our graphics packages, et cetera, on top of casting to make the moment to moment viewability easier and, and the ramp less steep for our viewers? [But] part of esports is that you’re not dumbing down the content. People want to watch the highest level of play in the game. At some point, if you stick with it, you’ll get it.
“If you don’t play League of Legends at first, it could be hard to follow the action, but over time you’ll get it from watching it over and over again. So for us, it’s about striking that balance. We do want to make it as accessible as possible without making the content frustrating or dumbed down for our most passionate and hardcore fans.”
Chou also teases that Ubisoft Montreal has impending North American expansion plans for Siege. “When you look at some other North American esports out there such as [LoL's League Championship Series], there’s a desire to see Rainbow Six get to that sort of size and prestige. We are looking at ways to continue to invest in Rainbow Six in North America to level up everything we’re doing.”
Top Guns
Ubisoft’s investment in Siege’s esports can already be seen in application. The revenue-sharing Pilot Program that was introduced last year and has now been expanded to 16 teams. “A lot of the feedback we received from the teams was to make it more sustainable for them,” says Yue. “That’s what we’re trying to do. We want to get the teams more involved. We want them to invest more into their players, take care of the players to build a sustainable ecosystem.”
The next step for the aspirational meta game that is Siege’s relationship with its fan base and its competitive scene is the introduction of a numbered Champions rank, which is a step above the already-hard-to-reach Diamond tier. “There’s not a tonne of people who can attain that Diamond rank,” says Artwork Presentation Director Alexander Karpazis. “It’s super difficult, but if you do, then we find that players stop playing the ranked playlists as eagerly as they had before.
“So by providing them something else that they can attain that they can compare themselves with, it becomes super interesting for people who are watching. They can watch their favourite streamers and see where they rank globally. They can watch pro players and see how they compare. It also provides an avenue for the regular player, if they’re good enough, to hang out with the rest of these players. It’s super rewarding to see that kind of minute detail of where you stack compared to everybody else.”
This step will lead to the kind of gun measuring on a per platform, per region basis. Couple this with the soon-to-be-included Unranked playlist – which sits between the more pub-player-friendly Casual and the intimidating Ranked – and Ubisoft Montreal’s logic is clear: create an obvious and defined pathway from Siege newbie through to Champions' you-should-join-an-esports-team potential. There’s also a clear push to disincentivise more skilled players from sharking in Casual playlist waters.
Creating pathways to pro is one thing, but Siege still has a long way to go globally if it hopes to foster the kind of international challengers that CSGO currently enjoys. At the top end of the spectrum, players are calling for more LAN tournaments to help hone skills on the world stage and offer additional pathways to the Six Invitational, Siege’s equivalent of the World Cup.
“Not everyone shows everything that they have to offer [in a scrim]. Sometimes it’s just a bad day for a team, or they’re scrimming for the sake of scrimming. It really is a case of you need to run more tournaments so people are playing for something and showing up,” explains Jayden “Dizzle” Saunders, coach for Fnatic. "The Americans, with [the US Nationals], are getting those sorts of things. Europe's doing DreamHacks. They’re always held in the northern hemisphere. For us, it becomes very much a value equation whether we attend them or not. And it becomes a very, very expensive scenario if we do.”
The lack of international LAN tournaments for ANZ teams outside of the APAC region means teams like Fnatic have fewer chances to pit local mettle vs foreign meta. Fnatic was bundled out in the group stages at the recent Raleigh Major, and In-Game Leader Etienne “Magnet” Rousseau reflected on why this tournament was seemingly tougher than the greater success his team has found at the Six Invitational.
“In ANZ and APAC, we get exposed to lower-level strategy compared to like EU, North American and LATAM,” says Magnet. “There were definitely a few rounds in the tournament where we’ve just droned out their defence and we’re like, ‘What are we going to do?’ We’ve never seen it before. We don’t practise against it. So a lot of it’s making these strategies to attack on the fly which, a lot of the time, isn’t the best option. But that’s Siege, and you have to do it sometimes.”
This preparation is particularly important for Siege given the complexity of the gameplay mechanics. Unlike CSGO, whose meta is based on comparatively less complex systems that are infrequently changed – and when they are, not in drastic ways – Ubisoft Montreal actively disrupts existing meta trends multiple times a year. New operators are released quarterly, and existing operators are also reworked in ways that often have big implications for future metas.
What's the Meta You
The introduction of attacker Amaru, who has a new-to-Siege grappling hook movement system that works vertically (up only) and horizontally, offers something entirely new for the meta. Still, while new meta options are likely planned, Ubisoft Montreal hasn’t foregone its focus on meta disruption. “I wouldn’t say that we’re moving away from [meta disruption], but it’s adding new aspects of the game that we want to explore as well,” says Yue. “We come up with new patches every three months and there’s new content so that reshuffles the meta game as well. We are looking very closely at how pro players are playing, then we take that information feedback back to our teams and see how we can develop it further.”
This is important to ensure new operators are tempting picks as they release. As an example of how not to do it, the timing of Warden’s release in last season’s Operation Phantom Sight feels like Ubisoft Montreal missed a trick. The flash-resistant, seeing-through-smoke defender would have been right at home during the popularity of the Ying-Blitz-Glaz meta, but they’re less popular attacking operators on the Pro League scene these days.
There’s a better chance that this kind of behind-the-meta mix-up can be avoided in the future, given how closely Siege’s esports and development teams are. “In Montreal, the esports team there is embedded directly into the development team,” says Yue. “I think that’s pretty unique. But we definitely talk a lot about the future and the directions we want to go. We talk on a daily or at least weekly basis. Esports is a big focus for us.
“We are getting a lot of feedback from esports [teams] to develop the game further. The map reworks are based on feedback with pro teams. A lot of the operators we are developing are based on play styles that we see in the Pro League. We get a lot of new ideas because pro players really take the gameplay to the next level and that gives us new ideas and new incentives to create new operators as well.”
A big part of the global appeal of Siege is how Ubisoft Montreal chooses the fictional Counter Terrorist Units (CTU). While ultimately a cosmetic backstory, Siege’s operator descriptions have expanded from a few sentences at launch to full-fledged biographies. This came about as a request from the community, but it’s also paid off dividends in countries like Japan, which was seen as a market that wouldn’t have much of an interest in Siege. Now they have internationally renowned Six Invitational semi-finalists Nora-Rengo.
Because of runaway-success phenomenon like this, the CTU countries are carefully curated internally at Ubisoft Montreal, with a tactical emphasis on regions where they want more interest sparked. Yue hinted that this will play into the nationalities of upcoming operators as Siege targets China and other emerging markets in 2020.
Ubisoft’s recent hires for esports director roles shows the publisher is serious about Siege’s competitive viability moving forward. Up until this point, it’s felt like Siege has been riding a trend of organic interest sparked by word of mouth, big-ticket tournaments, in-game events, and free weekends.
For 2020 and beyond, Ubisoft is poised to puts its money where its mouth is and stands ready to invest in Siege’s competitive scene in a way that, years from now, should pay off when Siege has dethroned CSGO as the go-to competitive shooter.
