Taking place during the first weekend of January (4-5th) the 12 highest skilled mobile motocross gamers will compete head-to-head in Stockholm, Sweden for the first ever Mad Skills Motocross live World Championship.
In James Lambert and Cody Stevens the finalists include two real-world BMX and motocross champions with the real skills appearing to translate to the game which has paid out over $900,000 (£735,247) during 2016. An initial 200,000 competed to try to earn their right to race in Stockholm to be one of the final 12.
In the first world championship there’ll be support from mobile and console esports company Gumbler, wherein contestants will race over two days in knockout heats to win from the $20,000 (£16,338) prize pot. Developer Turborilla has created brand new tournament tracks for the Championship.
Ahead of the tournament Tobias Andersson, CEO Turborilla, said: “This is incredibly exciting! Our goal is to make this game the world’s largest title within mobile Esports. There’s few championships within mobile Esports of this magnitude and it’s important to take a front position.”
Simon Sunden, VP & Head of Esports at Gumbler commented: “The top five players in the game also happen to be people who are either champions, or have spent their lives racing BMX or motocross. The game is all about skill and applying many of the same principles from the real-world to the game. The championship will be a battle of skills; without the risk of injury.”
The contest will be live-streamed for six hours each day via Twitch and Facebook Live. Contestants, who are being flown into Sweden from the US, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada and Europe include Justin ‘JCOOPER19’ Cooper, Cody ‘Sixfootseven’ Stevens, James ‘Master52’ Lambert, Zach ‘ZSE743’, and Brandon Jasper ‘Jgoodin’ Goodin amongst others.
Turborilla integrated Gumbler into the game back in October 2015. Since then the top riders in Mad Skills Motocross 2 have been earning and are currently said to be winning up to $6000 (£4901) per month.
Esports Insider says: Cool to see those in the real world sport getting involved properly in a simulation. This suggests developer Turborilla is doing something right, and this championship will be a big test in its quest to make Mad Skills the largest mobile esports title.
