SEOUL, South Korea, Sept. 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bigpicture, established in 2015 and leading the e-sports market in Korea, has opened the Game Coach Academy in Seoul. Bigpicture has been running gaming coaches which is a sports education business, GCL which is an e-sports content business, and an e-sports team Element Mystic. Which these services, Bigpicture is able to process game education off line which used to be on line. Currently, the game coach academy is teaching various games such as the League of Legends and Overwatch.
GameCoach Academy in Seoul, Korea (PRNewsfoto/Bigpicture Interactive Co., Ltd.)
In early June, the Game Coach Academy was officially accredited by the Seoul Southern Education Support Agency. According to the Game Coach, this is the first time that an education institute has been accredited for the purpose of training games (e-sports).
There are about 100 students who are getting trained currently, and Bigpicture says, "the Game Coach started with the idea that people want to learn games but there's no where they can learn."
"There are many avoided cases because game institutions are in the dark side and that is why we wanted to bring the academy to the bright side," said the purpose of the establishment of the academy.
The Game Coach also runs an academy team in addition to the classes for hobbies and for office workers those who simply want to increase their game skills. Academy team is operated with several different classes and team A which is the top class is with group of people who want to become pro gamers.
There are Yoon, Heewon coach who used to be a coach for Starcraft2, League of Legends and several other events and 'Lev' Jeong, Chunghuck coach who used to be in Rhinos Gaming as instructors and coaching staffs.
- Established a virtuous circle system through e-sports team
Bigpicture, runs a team of professional teams, Element Mystic and Academy along with the Game Coach Academy to help Academy students become pro gamers. In fact, there is 'Fate' Ko, Panseung player from Immortals professional game team of the North America. He is currently ranked #1 in Overwatch in America.
Bigpicture says, "The reason we made the team is to let players grow faster and send them outside. It's a selling club concept, the goal is to export rookie players to the market rather than getting a transfer fee. We hope to export players within a year and the new people will fill in vacancies. We hope that the e-sports industry ecosystem will become healthier as talented people becomes more abundant and more active in the market. We think that the academy, the team, and the fans will be all satisfied when I look at the overall picture", explained the Academy's purpose.
The tuition fees from the students are the main income source of the institute, however, the Game Coach Academy team does not accept anybody - if a student comes alone, he or she must be accompanied by their parents.
Bigpicture said, "We let the parents know that we have a selection procedure. We only verify ability of aspirants".
Bigpicture said they hired a professional College consultant to give advice on future career and university admissions to students who would like to enroll based on their school records for this purpose.
You need to understand the ultimate goal of the Game Coach, the "virtuous circle system" in order to understand why the Game Coach Academy is being particular on students.
The Game Coach Academy wants to produce professional gamers through the institution and wants them to come back to work on lecturers and e-sports work.
Retirement means not only the end of a player's career but also a career break for professional gamers.
Professional players has been rated as good in playing games from their teens and spent most of their 20s as a professional player, the best way to continue their career was to become a director, coach or run a personal broadcast TV through Twitch TV. There are some people who live a second life with special efforts, however there are also a lot of people who cannot find new career paths and still wandering. This is because there is a poor system for retirees.
Bigpicture says "our goal is to create an environment where Acedemy team players can debut and grow rather than just a learning. And when they retire, they can come back to us and make them to develop younger generation players. We plan to suggest this to 'Fate' Ko Panseung who is from our Academy."
- "We will become a problem solver in e-sports market"
Even though Bigpicture has a good plan for careers after the retirement of professional gamers, there is a limit to the number of people who can accommodate themselves. The Game Coach is looking at overseas markets to solve these problems.
Bigpicture said, "We cannot accommodate all of retirees, so we have to expand our market overseas. We are having conversations with e-sports coaching companies from North America and China. We aim to build a union with them. We would like to grow our balance by using our infrastructure in markets where e-sports have not yet developed such as India, Hong Kong and Eastern Europe. We think that market will get bigger in that way."
Bigpicture was fully aware of the problems caused by overseas expansion. Bigpicture said, "Coaching staffs and players have been going to overseas frequently, however they are only sent there without more help than just sending them there so there are a lot of cases where they are dismissed by one sided dismissal. Negative feelings and perceptions on e-sports will increase if this continues. There is a plan that the Game Coach Academy wants to take on the role of an agency and protect them. It is meaningless just to send them abroad. We should be able to take responsibility until henceforth. "
Recently, the European League of Legend professional team Unicorns of love and Overwatch professional game laser kittenz have stayed at the Game Coach Academy for field training. The field training of overseas teams is also one of the business items of the Game Coach Academy, however they focus more on establishing a close relationship with overseas game teams - this is done in order to build the foundations for overseas development as mentioned above.
Bigpicture predicted that it would take about a year to draw the sketch of the Game Coach Academy's plan. They will take step by step approach instead rushing. Bigpicture said "So far, it is flowing as planned without squealing," they are looking at their future positively. The '95% re-entry rate' indicator supported the positive attitude of Bigpicture.
Bigpicture thinks that "e-sports training system is close to the system from traditional sports. We analyze the failure factors of the past education providers and continue to worry about how to effectively teach to go straight," he said.
"Game Coach Academy wants to be a problem solver for the e-sports market, and we want to prove that people can live well in the world with one of the talents of games," he said with their aspiration.
Bigpicture was founded in 2015 and attracted investment from DEV Discovery, LLC (Delaware LLC), a New York venture capital that year. In 2016, it attracted investment from Mirae Asset, Hanvit Investments, and Seoul Investment Partners, Korea's largest investment companies. In addition, they signed a strategic partnership with Dojo Madness, a global e-sports company on September 1st, 2017.
Link for Academy: http://gamecoachacademy.com
Link for video contents (KOR): https://www.youtube.com/c/GCTVGameCoachTV
Link for video contents (ENG): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_HT7pB67aJFkE-H4C_RbUw
Contacts
Bigpicture Interactive Co., Ltd.
Kwangjun Song
+82-10-3479-5432 (Mobile)
song@bigpi.co
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