Meant to be used during gameplay to help gamers conquer each match, PentaKill is the only game companion app with second screen technology that enables players to scan the game screen and receive real-time strategy back immediately. With experts forecasting the future of videogames to be a multi-screen experience, Ken Hanson, co-founder of Twin Engine Labs, discusses how his app can help gamers become better at League of Legends in this exclusive interview.
How have you seen League of Legends grow since you started working on this project?
Since we've only been working on the app for two months, I think what we've honestly seen is the supporting community growing around League of Legends. What I mean by this is that we see many developers, designers, artists, and hackers springing up all around a great company to help Riot succeed.
Riot reached out to us to find out how they could help with the PentaKill app and to also talk through some of their ideas surrounding third party policy. We talked quite a bit about sci-fi features that could happen if our companies, talent and resources combined in a third party relationship. We keep each other updated about our developments, and are careful not to tread on each other’s progress. When the time comes for Riot to announce their third party policies, we'll be there to implement them into our app.
Where did the idea for this app come from?
We all fell in love with the game at a company LAN party and being app makers, we saw a need to have a tool to help ease the initial learning curve. We've never made an app for ourselves, so I did a quick design prototype and our Lead Engineers took off running with it. Once we had solid progress, it became an overnight success for us and is one of our favorite things to work on after hours.
How will this app help pro gamers?
For pro gamers, I think they'll find the counter-pick and counter mechanic Screen Analyzer to be the most helpful. You simply point our app's camera at the screen and it will tell you who the current meta's counter picks are for the scanned champions. During the loading screen, you can then scan the champions again to find out what items and mechanics counter them in a very current way. Our data is fresh and crowd-driven using LoLCounter.com's data.
This is really where the well-designed encyclopedia companion comes into play. We have everything from ability videos to raw numbers and cool downs of every champ, and we have them updating the same day that LoL Wikia (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/) has updates. While picks and bans are for a bit more advanced user, I still think the loading Screen Analyzer will help new players pick the right items to counter their lane opponents as well. The Screen Analyzer is really a great feature that everyone can use.
How have you seen multi-screen gaming evolve with the advent of tablets?
We see tablets as complementary to the next generation of gaming. This will hold especially true for developers, as it enables us to expand and create apps to offer gamers the ability to interact with and expand the console and PC gaming experience. The portable nature of tablets is also appealing to current console and desktop PC users. They will be able to move their game out of the limited confines of their TV or monitor and transport their game through the cloud.
How vital do you see multi-screen being moving forward?
The future of gaming is multi-screen. Gamers do not just want to view their computer or television and be limited to a mouse or controller to feel connected with the game. Apps will enable gamers to interact with the game on a closer level. They will be able to view vantage points on their tablets that are unavailable on the TV screen or monitor and uncover clues and tricks via guidebooks with real-time information. Game developers should pay close attention to how this market develops or risk being left behind.
Microsoft has already released the SDK to developers, giving us tools to integrate the new technology into games and apps. The endless possibilities for developing apps to interface with SmartGlass are overwhelming. With the right tools, games can be designed to fully integrate with a tablet--a baseball game could display relevant player statistics according to the actions on the screen, for example.
How deep can people dive into stats for League of Legends with this app?
We currently provide the basic cheat sheet to quickly assess your champions. You'll be able to view Abilities, their cool downs, videos of the abilities, the champion base statistics, lore, and skins available for the champion. The focus isn't so much to deep dive into stats on your phone, our app is really meant to be a lightning fast reference that is well designed so that you can get back to your game.
How do you see the stats on this app expanding as time goes on?
We're already talking with some other very large statistic websites and discussing ways we can integrate. Being able to augment our app with real time statistics will make our Screen Analyzer and future features extremely powerful.
As a business, I think the pro gaming focus is hands down one of the largest reasons for LoL's growth (aside from Riot being an incredible company). It really legitimizes this new sport that wasn't ever even close to the main stream. What’s great is that we're seeing these tournaments start spreading to the very casual gamers and become a huge part of their lives. While Counter Strike used to be a great game, the pro gaming circuits that it created were very niche and hyper focused. LoL's tournaments are reaching a huge audience and that audience is getting more mainstream every day. I can't wait to watch the tournament myself, and I know that millions of other fans will be doing the same.
