Asia 2016Video Coverage

Hal Bame: The Nemesis of eSports | Casual Connect Video

May 23, 2016 — by David Radd

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Asia 2016Video Coverage

Hal Bame: The Nemesis of eSports | Casual Connect Video

May 23, 2016 — by David Radd

The Nemesis platform experience is the result of extremely hard work and dedication by a lot of…Click To Tweet

With eSports being one of the fastest growing industries in the world, how will business models evolve over time and what will the industry look like in 3-5 years? In this recent session from Casual Connect Asia, panelists brought perspectives from North America, Europe and Asia and discussed the intersection of traditional sports, betting and wagering and video games. Nemesis CEO Hal Bame predicted that the eSports industry is “only going to get bigger because the limitations to getting into eSports is you don’t have to be the best athlete in the world, you don’t have to have thirty years of training behind you but these guys work just as hard.” Hear more insights from Hal and other professionals in the video below.

Hal Bame, CEO of Nemesis
Hal Bame, CEO of Nemesis

Hal Bame has seen the industry change during many years of involvement. These years were spent as Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s Sales and Marketing Manager for Central and Eastern Europe, overseeing the opening of PlayStation’s efforts in Poland. Later, Hal was Vice President, Distributor Territories & Emerging Markets at Codemasters, with major responsibility for expanding the company’s offerings outside of their usual markets in the U.S. and Western Europe.


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With roots firmly in the established AAA gaming industry, Hal is now CEO of Nemesis, an emerging markets focused, casual games platform, where you can compete against players in real-time. The Nemesis platform enables developers to ‘eSportsify’ their games across global markets.

The Nemesis platform is described as a skill-based cross-platform social gaming system. This mobile app for Android lets mobile users compete with each other for prizes and “kudos”. This all happens synchronously against other players in real-time matches. “Myself and my partners believed there was a niche to fill re the ‘casual eSports’ segment and the Nemesis platform experience is the result of extremely hard work and dedication by a lot of passionate people,” said Hal.

Real Time Multiplayer

from discs to digital

Working with emerging markets has given Hal the skills to adapt quickly to what needs to be done to succeed. 20 years worth of experience has taught them to deal with a wide variety of people and cultures which is essential to working across global markets. Hal’s time with the console industry while it was transitioning to a more digital marketplace made them realize that mobile and digital were the future for gaming.

Much of this experience abroad came from Hal’s time at Codemasters. “Besides traveling and meeting people in the gaming business from all over the world, I particularly liked working with Formula 1 (Codemasters held and holds the video game license), as that really allowed me a behind the scenes look at the sport, teams and related business,” Hal detailed.

the emerging nemesis

Black LogoNemesis is still a very nascent gaming platform at the moment, so the user base is just starting to grow. As with any platform starting out, one of the bigger challenges is convincing developers on-board and that the new platform is viable, though Hal notes that the resources needed to integrate with Nemesis are relatively small

“Thus, we try to make the integration process as simple and efficient as possible, and I think our success with signing and bringing on third-party developers proves our success in this regard,” says Hal.

While it’s still starting out, Nemesis is still one of Hal’s biggest accomplishments in his career. “Bringing the Nemesis platform to soft launch was a very very proud moment for myself and the team,” they said. “Also, opening PlayStation Poland office and launching PS3 in dozens of territories around the world.”

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always looking for deals

Hal says that in trying to find new talent, they’re always on the lookout for people with different skillsets than them. They, naturally, want the candidate to be hard working, innovative, and a risk taker. When it comes to the team, Hal wants a hire to be able to grow with other people and also individually.

As for how his employees view them, Hal responded, “Probably that I bring too many deals and opportunities to them – I’ve been trying the ‘less is more’ focused approach in recent months but I can’t help but get excited re new opportunities, partners and markets. I hope they think I’m dedicated and truly care about them and the company’s success…but I learned a long time ago, you can’t control people’s opinions of yourself – but just try to make your actions speak louder than words.”

THE test for VR

Hal says that the company tests throughout the game development process, both their own games and those made by others. It’s been positive so far on the whole, with people responding positively to the synchronous competitive gaming experience.

Nemesis is also testing out some of its games for VR, where Hal sees a lot of attention going right now. “Obviously VR has a lot of excitement, money and resource behind it with the likes of Facebook and Unity,” notes Hal. “But it will take time to go mainstream. We already have some VR alpha versions of our games and Nemesis platform and we’ll continue to develop in this area.”

 

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David Radd

David Radd

David Radd is a staff writer for GameSauce.biz. David loves playing video games about as much as he enjoys writing about them, martial arts and composing his own novels.

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