Facebook Gaming Adds Tournament Feature

Reputed social networking site, Facebook, is once again taking a step forwards in the gaming industry by introducing a new feature to its existing live-streaming platform: Facebook Gaming. Recent events revolving around the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people into lockdowns. In times like these, gaming has proven to be an excellent method of killing time indoors, consequently leading to a boom in the esports industry worldwide. To capitalize on such an occasion Facebook decided to launch its new Tournaments feature.

This feature will allow users to create and organize virtual tournaments in a variety of formats:

1. Single elimination - A bracket in which every match results in an elimination 

2. Double elimination - Eliminated participants get an extra shot to win the tournament 

3. Round robin - Every participant competes with every other participant 

These tournaments will be available in as singles or even team tournaments. Other formats including Swiss will be added sooner than later. 

Organizations and individuals are permitted to make their own competitive gaming events utilizing Facebook's library of video games. This feature supports casual competitions or even high-end esports competitive scenario. It's additionally incorporated with Facebook Gaming itself, which implies that content creators can have fan competitions and stream them simultaneously. Another useful feature is the integration of fundraising tools providing the ability to creators to raise money for a cause.

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How to create a tournament?

Creating tournaments is as easy as it sounds. It involves heading over to https://www.facebook.com/gaming/tournaments, filling out a form about the details of the tournament, choosing the privacy of the tournament and voila. The tournament will commence on the opted date.

In an interview with Games beat Mina Abouseif, head engineer of Facebook Gaming, outlined that: 

“We noticed that there were many tournament organizers that were using Facebook events and Facebook pages and Facebook groups to try to get the word out. They were running tournaments, but the landscape was very fragmented. A tournament organizer would need to use several tools, whether it’s setting up a bracket or whether it’s communicating with participants.”

Although Facebook Tournaments is still an early access release, it will be available to everyone and the final version will be deployed after gaining feedback on the current version and applying those changes to the final product.

Since the origin of Facebook, it has featured numerous games, directing users to well-known titles. Facebook expanded its interest in gaming in 2016 after analyzing the rise in the gaming industry and a need for diversification. The platform has, since, undergone several name changes, upgrades, and evolutions, the latest in the form of the new Tournaments.

The main takeaway here is that other streaming platforms don’t have the tournaments feature, especially one that openly accessible, built into their platforms and it is only a matter of time to find out if they will develop a similar feature for their massive fan-base.

Images courtesy of Facebook Gaming