On Wednesday, Merry Jane announced that Snoop Dogg was set to launch his own gaming series called the Gangster Gaming League. Which isn’t a bonkers idea. What was more surprising was that his first tournament would be held on Thursday, March 14th, 2019 (the day after the reveal). With recent announcements like how much franchises in the new Call of Duty World League will be, and a massive collegiate tournament held by ESPN later this spring, it seems like the right time for any sort of launch in the Esports realm. The industry is buzzing right now.

Fans of the historical West Coast rapper SnoopDogg are well aware that his newest brand, Merry Jane, has been a boon for the celebrity cannabis connoisseur. The artist behind such hip-hop hits as Drop It Like It’s Hot, and Gin and Juice, has also never been shy regarding his adoration of video games. So these two things in combination makes a lot of sense.

Back in 2016, Snoop was seen playing in front of a live audience at the celebrity-filled Battlefield1 E3 demo party. He even helped make and was the star of his very own video game within the last decade titled Way of the Dogg, a rythme-based fighting game.  

me n @MERRYJANE are launching the Gangsta Gaming League ?? we'll be live streaming our @EAMaddenNFL tourney tomorrow at 5p PT! we'll be on live on Twitch, Mixer, YouTube n Facebook! https://t.co/4K6pbXCsVX pic.twitter.com/msqi8ol7CM

— Snoop Dogg (@SnoopDogg) March 14, 2019

Players invited to the first tournament in the Gangster Gaming League would participate in a one-versus-one Madden 19 Ultimate Team game, and the finalist would earn the right to face off against the Dogg-father himself for a chance to double their earnings. Thursday's total pot was $11,000, and as of writing this the tournament only just concluded. The stream was hosted on Snoops Twitch channel, his Mixer channel, YouTube, and more. All of those links can be found in the announcement on Merry Jane's website.

A Real "Soft" Launch

Admittedly, it’s always going to be pretty exciting when anyone of note is starting a new operation revolving around Esports, and with a name like Snoop Dogg as the face of the Gangster Gaming League, a lot of eyes would presumably be on this launch.

When we heard the news of the GGL launching so soon, there was a ton of speculation, but no real concerns. That was until the show actually kicked off around 5 PM PST on Thursday. Instead of something really cool, or even slightly interesting in a weird way, the Gangster Gaming League turns out to be just Snoop and a handful of friends (with more people just lurking in the background) hanging out and playing games. Oh yeah, Snoop smokes a lot of weed on the stream too, which shouldn't surprise anyone.

Watch Snoop Dogg's GANGSTA GAMING LEAGUE from Doggydogg20 on www.twitch.tv

A minor effort was made in production value, as there’s obviously a switchboard with an operator and cameras set-up for each of the opposing players. There's also a “broadcast” table -- that looked like a regular basement bar table wrapped in green screen paint -- where two folks talked about almost anything but the actual gameplay that was going on in the tournament. Any sort of sponsorship came in the form of swag stickers stuck to the back of the broadcasting monitors, and whoever was running the twitch channel didn’t even change poor Snoop’s “Offline” background, as it’s still advertising a gaming event he did in promotion with SoS almost a year ago.

To us, it looked and felt like a half-baked attempt to grab at some of the hype surrounding Esports in this moment. It was a rush job, and it walked into twitch without very many people even noticing. As far as we can see (thanks to SullyGnome's stream stats) , the inaugural Gangster Gaming League tournament peaked at around 2,600 viewers -- which is not too shabby, if you’re anyone but Snoop Dogg -- and the VOD clocks in at just under six hours long. The stats for Mixer are even more dissapointing, reaching numbers that never broke two digits. But with almost 40,000 views on the stream video so far, it seems like the YouTube feed of the show did the best. 

We haven’t even commented on the actual stream quality yet! For one, the overlays we’re almost non-existent. There was a rotating GGL logo in the corner, far larger than it needed to be. The commentator cameras and player cameras were simply laid atop the gameplay source in a picture-in-picture style. But the worst culprit of them all was the abysmal stream quality as a whole. The stream's feed stuttered and tore nearly every 30 seconds or so, and all of the audio was either off, or headset microphone quality.

The Future Gangster Gaming

There’s still a whole lot of promise when it comes to what (we think) Snoop Dogg might be trying to do with his newly minted Gangster Gaming League, but there’s a lot of work to do. Snoop Dogg comes to the table with the fandom already, and he obviously has a lot of passion for the gaming, and competitively so. Which begs the question; what is GGL missing?

The answer, from what little evidence we have thus far (Thursday was the first tournament ever)  is simple. It’s a combination of money and time. Putting in the effort to ensure everything is ready and of quality for a live-stream is hard, I know, but with a little elbow grease, and some epically useful additions to the equipment roster, you can go from little pup to big dog in no time.

Looking back at all of the statistics collected from the various stream feeds, it might be worthwhile to go all-in on YouTube for Snoop and Co. as that is the platform that had the best turnout. The Gangster Gaming League feels like an out-of-touch group of folks with a passion for gaming that just don’t know how to hit all of the right buttons to make it great. Perhaps, adding some youth or Twitch broadcasting experience to the team is the first step.

Did you happen to catch the launch of Snoop Dogg's Gangster Gaming League? Let us know.