Mecha Break is already a hit in Asia: can it break through in the west?

When entering Mecha Break Executive Producer Kris Kwok’s office in Zhuhai, China, the first thing to notice is that every inch of the walls is made of glass display cases containing huge and very carefully built Gundam models. 

“If you can think of a mecha entertainment product, video games, movies, anime, I can guarantee you that I’ve seen it and tried it,” he told Esports Insider in an interview.

We spoke to Chris at a pivotal moment in his game’s development cycle: the second day of Mecha Break’s very first invitational tournament, an event designed to showcase the potential of the mecha based game he and his team spent the last eight years developing.

The main objective was not only to impress viewers but to make a lasting impression on both the heads of many important esport organizations from around the world and the representatives of the local Chinese government. 

“This tournament is going to inform our esports strategy a lot” Kwok continued. “Our main objective is to reach a wide audience and create a fertile base for new talent, as well as a path to pro, but we need to develop interest.” 

Mecha Break got off to a very good start: the beta that just ended briefly overtook Marvel Rivals in terms of concurrent players on Steam, reached 3.5m unique users and the feedback on the game’s six versus six battles between giant robots was incredibly positive. It’s also very fun to watch not only for the seasoned mech veteran, but also for those who enjoy high octane action. 

There’s a lot of flying missiles, dashing around at supersonic speeds, energy shields getting smashed and storming bullets from massive machine guns, all set in a post-apocalyptic and well-designed environment. The game modes feel very familiar as well, taking inspiration from Overwatch 2 and other popular hero shooters that rely on team-based mechanics.

The developer of the game is Amazing Seasun Games, a subdivision of Kingsoft (China’s Microsoft) famous for its MMO JX Online 3, which has reached 200m players. The ‘Pre-launch Global Invitational,’ hosted in the 9-building wide company campus in Zhuhai, saw teams from China, Japan and the United States compete in a double elimination bracket with the Japanese team Anubis bring home the trophy and the bragging rights.

The American teams couldn’t make it out of the loser bracket of the competition, but for a very good reason: their presence was mainly a promotional initiative to introduce Mecha Break to the North and South American audience. Team Liquid, for example, fielded a team entirely made up of content creators with experience in competitive games. When we spoke to the roster, the first thing that surprised them was how nice everyone was.

“I play League of Legends and there is so much toxicity there,” said Boyuan ‘bobqin’ Qin. “Here, everyone is so nice, they explained to us how to improve and complimented us on our progress throughout the weekend. I had such a good experience I’m considering switching careers when it comes out.’

“There’s also no game quite like it,” Liquid’ streamer and Mecha Break partner content creator DeeJayKnight added: “It has the team-based mechanics of Overwatch with two or three mechs that have a high skill ceiling, but there’s nothing around with this much verticality and dashing action. To become an established esport in the western world, however, they have a steep hill to climb.” 

The Asian market loves mech-based fiction — Mecha Break is also the fifth most wish-listed game on Steam. Despite this, the members of Team Liquid identified two critical factors for the game’s success: its marketing and the introductory tutorial.

“For a game to be successful it needs three things”, Leonardo ‘frttt’ Braz told Esports Insider, “A community, tournaments and ranked: for the game to work it needs a lot of promotion, which we feel we’re not seeing, and an investment by the publisher in the competitive scene. The game is good enough but it needs a lot of marketing as it feels like there’s an esports worthy game coming out every other week now”.

Tiffanie ‘Tiffae’ Hsu, a streamer with Team Liquid with a very big following in China, explained what the other major problem for the game could be: “The tutorial is too long. It takes almost two hours to complete and you can’t skip it, it takes the zoomers (those born between 1996 and 2006) out. People quit games after 15 minutes. I want to get into the action right away and learn my way, for the game to succeed with a younger audience it needs a much shorter tutorial or a skip function.”

To understand what the appeal of Mecha Break is to western orgs and what would make it worth their time and money, we spoke to Jena Gares, Senior Director of Talent at Team Liquid. 

He said: “I would love for Mecha Break to be the one of the focuses of our future efforts along with Marvel Rivals or Deadlock. League of Legends has been so prominent for so long that people are ready for something new.” 

The game also checks a lot of boxes for advertisers: “It feels family friendly, there’s no death (mechs have pilots that are ejected when the robot is destroyed), no modern guns, and very little violence. A lot of companies don’t want to touch shooters for their marketing right now.” 

Liquid would prefer if the esports ecosystem that’s going to be conceived after this tournament adopted a more traditional top down approach rather than a grassroots focused one “as we thrive on professional and polished experiences.’

Gares added: “I want to see the esports scene thrive, and to do so publishers need the right game and strategy.” 

The other prominent North American organization at the tournament was Disguised, who made headlines fielding the former Overwatch league player of the San Francisco Shock Dante ‘Danteh’ Cruz. When talking to Chris Yong, Team Operations Manager at Disguised, he was of a similar opinion to Gares on both relationships between developer and orgs and what would be his favorite ecosystem format.

“Developer involvement in the competitive scene is a must for any esport to thrive. Seeing this invitational tournament and the amount of effort and resource they put into it shows that Mecha Break values all aspects of competitive esports and brings attention to the scene,” he told Esports Insider. “Having a tight relationship with the developer” he continued “is always a plus because we as the benefactors of the ecosystem feel heard and that it is a system where both parties are trying to elevate each other.”

Looking at the quality of the games played by the Chinese and Japanese teams and feeling the excitement among the top players present, it’s evident that the game is going to perform great in Asia where the market has been waiting for a big mech-based game for years and is still bummed by the failure of Bandai Namco’s Gundam Evolution. 

Also, the level of hype in China is comparable to that of Overwatch 1’s 2015 beta debut: a new Ip that’s very innovative from a company with a long history not in shooters but in a fantasy MMO played by hundreds of millions of players.

Only after launch, scheduled for this spring, we’ll know what this tournament has yielded in terms of esports approach, and what decisions it has informed on the gameplay and monetization side. 
Meanwhile, every mech-based action game fan has every reason to board the Mecha Break hype train.

Amazing Seasun, however, cannot rest easy as it’s not the only company to have noticed the market gap. Steel Hunters, a much slower paced and tactics focused giant robots game, is in development at a subsidiary of Wargaming, the company behind World of Tanks, and will enter early access on April the 2^nd.