The Official SMITE Magazine eSports Edition | Page 31

HiRezStew - The Myth, The Man, The President.

S

tewart Chisam (also known as HiRezStew
& schisam) joined Hi-Rez Studios back in
May 2008 and since has helped to develop
both Tribes: Ascend and SMITE. Earlier
this year he became the President of the studio and now
oversees the development and management of said studio.
We got the opportunity to pick Stew’s brain on his
thoughts around the SMITE World Championships
and how eSports has affected its development.
GameOn: Is SMITE the first game that you’ve been
involved with that has a competitive eSports scene?
Stew: While it never took off in the same way that
SMITE has, Tribes: Ascend had a very passionate
competitive eSports scene. It was really because of Tribes
that we attracted both HirezAPC and HirezBart to the
company -- so we learned some very valuable lessons
and found some very good people because of Tribes.
When it was in its early development stages, did you
envision that SMITE would become as large as it was? If
not, when did you realise you were on to something big?
We went live with the early Closed Beta for SMITE
at the very end of May in 2012. There were only like
18 gods, the UI was very unfinished, and a lot of

the art was way below our current standard.
But, right away, the core metrics that we look at in terms
of user engagement and retention were just off the hook.
After the first month of Closed Beta, I remember
making the subject line of my summary email on Beta
performance: “Adonis Blood and Tiger DNA.” For all its
early flaws, the game had serious mo-jo from day one.

“

I remember making
the subject line of my
summary email on Beta
performance: Adonis
Blood and Tiger DNA.

”

Has the eSports scene within SMITE changed
the direction of development at all?
It takes a lot of development effort to properly
support a game as an eSport. There are a lot of things,
like spectator support for example, that are not only
big design challenges, but big technical challenges as
well. And, of course, design-wise you really need to
make sure you are considering not only the average

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