It’s not easy to get started in the sprawling world of e-sport. What if, rather than the game, it was enough to highlight humans? This is the bias of Level Up. This documentary series in three episodes, available Thursday on France TV Slash, looks at the sector in a very accessible way, focusing on the players in the sector.
The first episode of the documentary briefly touches on the public interest in early games in the esports scene – Counter-Strike, Smash Bros, starcraft –, before focusing on the participants in a specific “discipline”. In the 2010s, the field entered a new dimension with League of Legends. In 2020, its publisher Riot Games wants to reproduce this success in another genre, the tactical shooter, and releases Valorant, directly designed for e-sport and its spectators. ” I believe that Valorant is best positioned today to create leagues over the long term,” comments Arthur Perticoz, manager of the e-sport team Karmine Corp. It is this team which is at the heart of the documentary.
The journey of a team
Level Up focuses on the journey of two players. The Belgian “Scream”, originally from the Counter-Strike scene and “Ninou”, a French player. “ Valorant is still known to be the reference scene in terms of women’s e-sport” underlines Léo Lecherbonnier, e-sport journalist. These two players play within Karmine Corp, a team co-founded by French streamer Kameto four years ago. In 2022, she launches into Valorant. The documentary focuses on the journey of this team, widely followed by its fans: episode 2, called “At the Foot of the Wall”, looks back on a complicated 2022-2023 season. This slump is also an opportunity to brush aside some more difficult and rarely discussed subjects, such as the pressure and the risk of burn-out which weighs on e-sport players.
If the documentary is interested in KCorp, it is because this team is very popular. On March 16, one of their tournament matches in Madrid attracted just under a million spectators. “There is a wave of clubs led by influencers,” explains Paul Arrivé, e-sport journalist for The Team, who appears in the documentary. This is important because these are people who already come with a community behind them. »
For the love of the jersey
The last episode focuses on the fan community and KCorp projects. Every year since 2021, fans have been invited to “KCX”, an event with exhibition matches which has successively taken over the Porte Maillot, the Accor Hotel Arena and the Défense Arena. The team even aims to have its own stadium with 3,000 seats in Evry in 2024.
“In a structure, you need the results, you need the audience, you need the infrastructure,” says Gotaga, another streamer who also founded an e-sport team, Gentle Mates, alongside Squeezie and Brawks. Sometimes you can tick all the boxes except the public and certain structures that have been there for years have difficulty having this “love of the jersey” side. As an influencer, we have a fanbase that we can take by the hand and to whom we can introduce e-sport. »
This is also the strength of the documentary Level Up. Even if the whole thing is a little short (an hour and a quarter for the entire series), the narration around the characters and the educational efforts to introduce the world of Valorant are appreciable. And if, after that, you want to become an e-sport spectator, no more doubts about who to support.