Gaming
esports
The state of play in Singapore
Want to find out how Singapore is doing games-wise and esports-wise? Find out below!
The games industry is doing great if the few years are of any indication. This is even moreso with eSports titles: from your fighting games to your MOBAs, there’s no shortage of news, sponsorships, and annual tournaments out there worldwide.
But what is it really like in Singapore, at least for these titles? Despite the size of the country, Singapore boasts having more spending power than the rest of the Southeast Asian territories. Does that translate to more players per gaming franchise?
The results may surprise you.
General (numbers from Newzoo* and E-Sports Earnings*)
Singapore has a lot of English speakers; 80% among the 5.7M people on the island speak English and are multilingual.
Singapore has 2.8M gamers, with 1.1M of them being paying customers.
A Singaporean’s average expenditure for games is US$189 per year.
The number of active pro eSports players in Singapore: over 100 players
The number of official pro SG eSports teams: over 24 teams
The most played game in SG? You better believe it.
© Valve
DOTA 2
What Is It: Initially a WarCraft III mod, the first Defense Of The Ancients spawned a huge Southeast Asian fanbase and a now-thriving subgenre in the strategy games landscape: the multiplayer online battle arena. The sequel looks better and is the de facto free-to-play multiplayer game in the region.
How’s It Doing? DOTA 2 had a total of 9.6 million players online for the last two weeks. That’s not counting the 94 million worldwide total users the game has. Out of that number, Singapore takes up 0.91% according to third-party Steam stat trackers, which would lead to roughly 87,000 active users at this point in time.
List of Teams Who Played in the Internationals tournament since 2011: Scythe Gaming, Team Zenith
Most Consistent DOTA 2 Player Who Participated in The Internationals: Daryl ‘iceiceice’ Koh
It isn’t played as much, but it’s still top-tier.
© Valve
Counterstrike: Global Offensive
What Is It? A 5v5 online military shooter where terrorists and counter-terrorists duke it out in objective-based missions. A team’s success is dependent on their co-operation, teamwork, and first-person shooting skills.
How’s It Doing? The popular first-person shooter is now at a total player base of 26 million as of this year. Compared to even Malaysia which owns 0.67% of that total (to an estimate of 174,000 active users), Singapore’s player base for CS:GO is so small that it’s lumped under the “Others” category.
LOL is just as colorful as it was 6 years ago.
© Riot Games
League of Legends
What Is It? The yang to DOTA 2’s yin, League of Legends is a MOBA from Riot Games that initially looks like a more colorful and brighter DOTA. Dig a little deeper, and there are more intricacies and newbie-friendly mechanics that this game lets on.
How’s It Doing? This MOBA has over 100 million active players worldwide; this includes numbers from third party licensees like the Southeast Asia-based Garena. However, the actual number of players in Singapore are hard to narrow down due to lack of information from third-party consumers.
Number of major active teams in League of Legends: 6
Whether you attack or defend, there’s fun for all.
© Blizzard Entertainment
Overwatch
What Is It? A multiplayer team-based shooter with a diverse cast ranging from a cowboy with a mechanical arm to a talking gorilla. Did we mention that it’s from the folks who created Diablo and WarCraft? And that it’s pretty-looking and accessible too?
How’s It Doing? Worldwide, it’s doing great since 25 million players registered and are continuously playing the game according to Blizzard. Now if we take into account Singapore’s gamer numbers, we estimate about 5,000 people from the country are registered players. Perhaps there are more than these numbers let on, provided if the recently-announced Singapore tournament season has a great turnout.
This card-chucking juggernaut has new rivals.
© Blizzard Entertainment
Hearthstone
What Is It? An online card game where two players defeat each other with spells and creatures in turn-based fashion. It takes its inspiration from fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering and makes it more streamlined and fast. No more pulling out those physical life counters and markers; Hearthstone’s interface will do the calculating for you.
How’s It Doing? Incredibly well. During its run since 2014, Hearthstone has 50 million registered players worldwide. Taking that into account, we calculated that at least 10,000 Singaporeans are playing the game either on their PCs or on their mobiles. Given the casual and addictive F2P card-collecting-and-arcane-dust-churning nature of the game, there are probably more Hearthstone fans out there on the little red dot.
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