WHAT’S THE ATTRACTION?
On the other side of the screen, viewers seem just as riveted as players, judging by the number of views for previous competition livestreams.
Watching others perform Excel wizardry appears to be a sport in itself, complete with commentators remarking on players’ moves.
“If you’d have told me 20 years ago that we’d be watching Excel competitions, I’d have thought you were crazy. But it’s fascinating to watch these people who are really good at Excel come up with their own ways to solve problems and solve them very, very quickly. Fascinating in a very nerdy sense,” said Bill Jelen, when he co-hosted the Excel Esports all-star battle online in May this year.
The video of the livestream has racked up almost 740,000 views to date.
“This same kind of logic, these same formulas, can be used to solve everyday business problems. It’s just funnier in the e-sports version where we have some fun things, rather than just try and figure out the next amortisation table,” added Mr Jelen during the livestream.
Several YouTube commenters, upon stumbling onto a video of Excel e-sports, say they have no idea what participants are doing but they can’t look away.
One Twitter user wrote: “This is my Olympics.”
Financial Modeling World Cup’s founder and CEO Andrew Grigolyunovich boils down the “excitement” to a sense of competition first and foremost.
“There is a scoreboard attached to the game task. It’s not just solving some problems in Excel, but scoring points for doing this correctly. The scores change frequently and there is a great feeling of competition between the players. Some matches are very close and only the last (few) seconds decide the winner,” he told CNA over email.
The game’s educational aspect also appeals to “typical” viewers, whom Mr Grigolyunovich figures use Excel “at least to some extent”.
“This means that these people can learn a lot of new tricks – the show is a great demonstration of Excel’s less-known features that could be very powerful if discovered by a user,” he said.
“For example, in our livestreams, the scoreboard is created in Excel – but it looks like a part of the livestream package. Our games help people expand their imagination of Excel’s possible applications.”
And if Mr Grigolyunovich’s own imagination comes true, the live finals would one day be held in a big e-sports arena, such as in Las Vegas, and the winner’s cheque would exceed US$1 million.
The top prize for the individual category in the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge is currently US$10,000.
“I also hope that our competition could serve for talented young analysts from all over the world to get on the radar for the larger companies and that would allow them to work on larger and more interesting projects,” he said.
Upon graduation, Mr Lohanata will have to work in Singapore for three years. While he is currently an artificial intelligence intern, the sky is the limit with his mathematics degree.
“One of the misconceptions I often hear is that having a math degree means you’re going to be a teacher. I mean, a teacher is a very noble profession. But math skills are applicable in most other fields; it can be applied in engineering, in tech companies, finance, research, consulting and even in insurance companies,” he said.
But one career is out of the question. Ironically, he wouldn’t cut it in “mainstream” e-sports.
“During the circuit breaker period in 2020, because we’re just stuck at home, I did try playing some online games for only two weeks. But I really suck at those so I didn’t continue further,” he said.
“I realised I’m very bad at this.”
This content was originally published here.
