Games Editor Jude-Emmanuel Nwosu sits down with Rene Bouma, the associate director of the Cork-based eSports organisation WYLDE, to discuss the group’s growth over the past few years, and what it’s like working alongside company co-owner and athletics legend, Usain Bolt.
I sat down with Rene Bouma, Associate Director of the Cork-based eSports organisation WYLDE, Ireland’s largest eSports organisation to discuss the group’s growth over the past few years, as well as what it’s like working alongside company co-owner and athletics legend, Usain Bolt.
Could you tell me about yourself and what you do at WYLDE? Specifically what your role is?
“I'm twenty-eight years old, I was born and raised in the Netherlands. I moved to Ireland, specifically Cork, about three months ago.
I've been working around four years remotely from the Netherlands for a while, in different roles, and currently I've been an eSports manager for almost three years now, and it's a very big bucket of different responsibilities. So, I manage teams that we have. We work with: Rainbow Six Siege, Rocket League, Trackmania, FuseFight, and Valorant and I'm responsible for all the teams and how they function. Next to that we organise a lot of activations in the space here, physically in Cork, that we need expertise on around gaming and software and hardware and all the other things.”
Could you tell me what game has garnered the most success for WYLDE?
“So, success can be based on a metric of, let's say, competitive results. If we use that metric, it would be Rainbow Six Siege, but the success also comes in something else, right? So, you know if you spend a lot of money, you can buy good teams.
If you spend a little money, you buy worse teams. Rainbow Six Siege is our best performing title competitively, but they also gain the most financial investment.
If you would look at it in terms of an investment versus competitiveness, it depends on what you see as successful, right? If we look at, let's say, outreach, two or three years ago, you probably saw some buses going around in Dublin that had two esports players on there with a Virgin Media ad.
So, those players were our FIFA players. Our FIFA players haven't been competitively as successful as our Rainbow Six Siege team, you could say, but domestically in terms of promotion and outreach, they've been more successful than our Rainbow Six Siege team.”
What kind of work does esports coaching entail?
“I used to coach in Rocket League and did it for two or three years. I've coached a team and, I think our highest finish was 8th and 12th in Europe. 8th in a single event, 12th over a larger time span.
And what I learned is that coaching has two facets. You have the technical part of coaching, where you think about how you play the game. And you've got the psychological part of coaching.
The psychological part is something that a lot of starting coaches don't understand or see, or how big of an impact it has. And the longer that I've been in the field, the more the psychological section feels important to me. The reason for that is the game in esports changes so quickly.
If you compare it to football, football changes every few years. They may change the offside rule, or they introduce a technology that makes it so that you can't push each other anymore because the VAR will see it. But in esports, as you know, they patch a game every few months.
And as a coach, you need to be very aware of the impact you have on the young people's lives in the path that they've chosen to try.
And then the whole balance and meta changes. If you're a coach and you don't experience the game that you're coaching in at the same level as your players, it's hard to really understand what's happening, what's going through the head of the players. As a coach in terms of the psychological, that's never changing.
People are always people. Of course, we evolve as well, but in different ways and at a slower pace. And the players will be able to discern what is good and what is bad in the game, as long as you give them the ability to facilitate critical thinking and an open environment where ideas don't get shut down.
If you can create such an environment, then as a coach, you'll be very successful because you need to be very mindful of the young minds that you're working with and the path you set them on. Esports is a very perilous expedition to take if you do not have something to fall back on.
And as a coach, you need to be very aware of the impact you have on the young people's lives in the path that they've chosen to try.”
Could you tell me more about the collaborations that WYLDE has had?
“One of our biggest collaborations has been with Virgin Media, and we've collaborated with them to help them get access to the community and create authenticity. And last year, in October, we hosted a competition called EA Games.
We collaborated with Usain Bolt, the fastest man on the planet. He is co-owner and chief of inspiration in WYLDE and he's incredibly important for the success of our organization.
We rented out The Camden, the biggest sports bar in Europe and filled it with esports. The best talent in Irish Valorant all came together to figure out who the Irish champions are. So that's one of our biggest collaborations.
We collaborated with Puma, the sports apparel brand. I wouldn't call it a collaboration, but some people would potentially. We collaborated with Usain Bolt, the fastest man on the planet. He is co-owner and chief of inspiration in WYLDE and he's incredibly important for the success of our organization.
You might have not seen him that much around as people would think he would but we want to use him for the right moments when it's really big to use him. If we use him for smaller things the impact would just diminish and we wouldn't feel that it was the right way to do it.”
What has been the biggest involvement that Usain Bolt has made when you collaborated with him?
“We've held a competition in Jamaica for FIFA. I think that was a year and a half, two years ago where we held a competition for their national esports around finding the best Jamaican talent when it came to FIFA. That was done in collaboration with Usain Bolt and I think that showcased that on the island of Jamaica, there are so many young and talented players there that would love to do more in gaming and just need to find the right structure to be able to elevate them to more than what they are. I think that was a very big collaboration.
Furthermore, the collaboration with him of course bringing Puma on board was a lot easier with Usain Bolt on board than before. But yeah, I think that FIFA event was pretty special. Sadly, I didn't go myself to Jamaica to be there, but some of us did.”
To stay in the loop with WYLDE and their events, you can follow them on Instagram at @wylde_gg.