Case Study

When the pandemic upended in-person esports tournaments, Blue Mammoth Games needed a way to host remote tournaments for their highly praised platform fighter Brawlhalla. With Parsec, the remote team successfully broadcast full-production esports tournaments and dev streams without losing critical components like instant playbacks, countdowns, and hype moments. And now that the studio has adopted a hybrid work model, Parsec has remained their go-to remote access tool for broadcasts.

Blue Mammoth Games has successfully used Parsec to run more than 170 days of shows at eight hours of broadcasting per day, resulting in over 35 million hours of viewership since 2020.

The Challenge

Brawlhalla’s esports tournaments began in 2016 and quickly grew popular with players who competed both online and in person, depending on the event. When the pandemic made working from home a necessity, the Blue Mammoth Games team had to determine how they could give their operators access to resources in the studio to continue hosting events remotely.

Without the colorful commentary, fast replays, and hype moments that are cut and edited in the moment, broadcasts wouldn’t exist. With the team scattered, Blue Mammoth’s high-quality tournaments were in jeopardy.  

The Solution

A colleague recommended Parsec to the team, and they decided to give it a try. They got set up with Parsec in minutes and quickly found that they were able to edit the Brawlhalla tournament broadcasts as they worked from home, miles away from the studio. 

Parsec’s high-performance and responsive streaming made it easy for the Blue Mammoth team to broadcast battles remotely, reaching a real-time viewing audience of more than 43,000. And the team didn’t stop there – they eventually added a developer stream three times per week, where devs could share updates and play Brawlhalla with their diehard community. Just like their tournaments, these developer streams are produced using Parsec.

Since 2020, Blue Mammoth Games have successfully streamed over 1,000 hours of content across tournaments and dev streams remotely using Parsec. With this success, the team has adopted Parsec as their hybrid work solution across both their game development and broadcasting cycles.

Why Blue Mammoth Games chose Parsec for Brawlhalla esports tournaments and developer streams

Responsive, low-latency connections

Parsec offers the Blue Mammoth Games team a solid, battle-tested way to connect remotely and produce their tournaments as if they were in the studio. When Brawlhalla gameplay begins, events are trimmed and pulled together for replay in seconds. Parsec’s high-performance streaming comes to the rescue during the game’s ending countdown when every second needs to be accurate. 

“A lot of my work is based on timing, and that’s where Parsec’s low latency shines. While the game is going on, I’m taking moments from the gameplay and trimming them down to events to be replayed – all in a matter of seconds.” – William Carico, Videographer, Blue Mammoth Games

Studio cost savings of more than $100K

Even when aspects of Brawlhalla esports tournaments returned to in-person venues after the pandemic, Blue Mammoth’s team never stopped using Parsec. In early 2023, the studio sent a small team to run the first major open of the year, DreamHack San Diego. 200 competitors flew in from all over the world, but the production team worked from Atlanta, Georgia using Parsec. 

The onsite Blue Mammoth team worked on traffic control and as producers, saving costs since the studio did not have to cover hotels, flights, and expenses for the production team. The studio also realized enormous cost savings with Parsec since they did not have to ship expensive machines and hardware to employees. Instead, their entire team could remote into the studio.

“Parsec saved us thousands of dollars. Being able to centralize operations to computers in the office and give our remote and in-person team members access helped reduce travel and hardware costs.” – Mateo Palfreman, Director of Esports, Blue Mammoth Games

Community engagement

Community is incredibly important to the Brawlhalla team. In 2021, Blue Mammoth Games and Parsec collaborated to host the Parsec Invitational – a remote tournament with participants from North America and Europe battling it out to earn a winning pot of $20,000. This tournament garnered millions of views on YouTube and Twitch, bringing together fans of Brawlhalla and Parsec alike. 

In addition to tournament broadcasts, they regularly host dev streams on Twitch, where they’ve amassed a following of 1.9 million people. On these streams, Blue Mammoth Games engineers and artists share updates and play their game with fans, allowing the team to hear firsthand what players love and what can be improved. 

These dev streams require the same level of mixing and involvement as tournaments, but without the same level of resources. Mateo Palfreman, director of esports, handles all of this solo, thanks to Parsec – switching between workstations on the fly to mix video streams, add on-screen graphics, and engage with players.

Looking forward

Blue Mammoth Games is headed into a bright future as they iterate on their smash-hit game, build community, and continue to leverage a rigorous tournament schedule both online and in person. Parsec is definitely a part of that future. 

As the team continues to embrace a flexible work environment, Parsec has become pivotal to the way Blue Mammoth Games operates. Now, not only does the broadcasting team use Parsec on a day-to-day basis, but their artists and developers are now on board, for an all-Parsec in-house studio. 

“Parsec is here to stay. I can’t imagine hosting tournaments or dev streams without it.” — Mateo Palfreman, Director of Esports, Blue Mammoth Games