Getting the Most Out of Scrimmages

Today, PlayVS is excited to provide teams with more ways to play, any time, from anywhere. We just rolled out one of our most requested features in our 2+ years of existence: scrimmages. Schedule a time and date you want your team to play, or browse a list of other teams’ proposed times. Once two teams agree to a date and time? Boom. You’re scrimmaging. It’s a simple feature, but an essential one to leveling up a program team-by-team and player-by-player. To help our schools get the most out of the feature, we came up with some specific uses.

Level The Playing Field

Skill gaps are a reality of esports. A team of world-beaters stomping a team of beginners is an equally poor experience regardless of which side you’re on. Scrimmages give coaches and teams the ability to control for those skill differences. You’ll ensure everybody involved has a better experience when you pair your best against their best and your beginners against their beginners. It’s a great way to take the sting out of a crushing loss, or to challenge a top-flight team. Regardless of where your team falls, fair matches ensure they’ll be challenged enough to improve regardless of skill level.

Don’t Just Concept a Strategy — Try it Out

The differences between a random public match and competitive one are often vast. When your coordinated team implements a strategy against a team of randoms who aren’t talking to one another, you won’t truly test the effectiveness of that strategy. Scrimmages provide your players with a venue to experiment with tactics in a matchday-equivalent competitive environment. There’s no better way to prepare your team.

Foster Rivalries

Have a rival high school who you haven’t gotten the chance to play in season? Have you secretly believed you could take on the reigning state champions? Is there one school you regularly end up battling in competitive, heated matches? If the answer to any of those questions is ‘yes’, then scrimmages are your chance to cook up a rivalry at the date and time of your convenience. If you answered ‘no’, then don’t you think it’s time your esports program had a rival?

Fundraising

Need a boost in funding for next season? Or do you have your eyes on some of those HyperX headsets you see all the streamers using? Either way, scrimmages provide an excellent avenue for fundraising. Coordinate a scrimmage with a school and use that match as a live event, sell tickets, stream it on your preferred streaming platform, and split the profits with your opponents. Play a match, get your school excited about esports, and raise some money all at the same time.

These are just a few of the many, many uses for our new Scrimmage feature. We’ve worked hard to provide this tool to our users and we can’t wait to see all of the cool things you do with it. So, schedule a scrimmage and level up your players and your program in a competitive environment. And be on the lookout for events around scrimmages as we expand these capabilities in the coming months.