WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.240 It's fair to say most of us don't like spreadsheets, but the people who do like them 00:00:04.880 --> 00:00:10.240 like them a lot. And while many of us use Microsoft Excel in our day-to-day work, 00:00:10.240 --> 00:00:14.720 an elite few have adapted the world's most popular spreadsheet software 00:00:14.720 --> 00:00:22.720 into an e-sports phenomenon. In 2022, the Excel World Championship debuted as part of ESPN's 00:00:22.720 --> 00:00:29.280 The Ocho, an annual showcase of lower-profile sports like axe throwing, corgi racing, and of 00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:34.800 course, the Slippery Stair Climb. The vast majority of viewers had never even conceived of 00:00:34.800 --> 00:00:40.640 competitive Excel before, because there are some levels of nerdy that are simply beyond mere mortal 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:46.800 ken. But the sport was popular enough that it was renewed for the 2023 Ocho and will be holding 00:00:46.800 --> 00:00:54.320 its finale in the Las Vegas HyperX e-sports arena this December with a prize pool of $10,000 across 00:00:55.280 --> 00:01:01.600 But Excel as an e-sport didn't appear out of nowhere fully formed in 2022. It came out of an 00:01:01.600 --> 00:01:07.200 existing culture of financial modeling competitions. Basically, these are tournaments where participants 00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:12.800 must create a financial forecast for a fictional company based on a provided data set in, what 00:01:12.800 --> 00:01:17.840 else, Excel. The organizers of the Financial Modeling World Championship were looking for a 00:01:17.840 --> 00:01:23.600 way to turn these competitions into a spectator sport, because apparently the cultural mainstream 00:01:23.600 --> 00:01:28.960 is unenthusiastic about debt service coverage ratios, which is a real shame. They gradually 00:01:28.960 --> 00:01:34.320 adapted the format to make the contests more exciting and accessible, and in mid-2021, 00:01:34.320 --> 00:01:40.960 they went viral. Because, you know, pandemic. Finally, ESPN expressed an interest, and the 00:01:40.960 --> 00:01:48.720 FMWC Open was streamed on ESPN3 in December 2021. The next year, Microsoft sponsored the competition, 00:01:48.720 --> 00:01:53.360 lending it their own name, and making it the Microsoft Excel World Championship. 00:01:53.680 --> 00:02:00.720 But what does a round of competitive Excel actually look like? And how do you Excel enough to win? 00:02:00.720 --> 00:02:05.760 Each round of an Excel tournament has a unique challenge, like tabulating the results of a 00:02:05.760 --> 00:02:10.720 series of hypothetical elections or projecting the outcome of a game of whack-a-mole. Participants 00:02:10.720 --> 00:02:15.680 have to answer a series of 100 increasingly difficult questions about the puzzle in only 30 00:02:15.680 --> 00:02:21.120 minutes. That's roughly one answer every 18 seconds, but that assumes that the players are 00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:25.520 answering them one at a time, which they aren't, unless time is short and they're desperate. 00:02:25.520 --> 00:02:30.640 Questions are typically organized into five batches of 20 questions, and the dominant strategy 00:02:30.640 --> 00:02:36.320 by experienced players is to create a single formula that will solve an entire batch. This means 00:02:36.320 --> 00:02:42.320 that a player's score can stagnate for long periods, then jump rapidly. It can even go down, 00:02:42.320 --> 00:02:48.800 which means it's time for a quick undo. But that might not save novice players who get stuck and 00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:54.240 wind up with a big fat zero out of a thousand. The winner is whoever answers all the questions 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:59.680 correctly first or whoever has the most points when the 30 minutes are up. The puzzles can vary 00:02:59.680 --> 00:03:05.440 a lot in terms of difficulty, so the points players receive are typically adjusted to normalize scores 00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:11.360 across games. An infamous 2021 case based on the game's civilization was so difficult that the 00:03:11.360 --> 00:03:16.560 winner managed to get just eight points total, narrowly edging out his opponent who managed to 00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:22.080 accumulate a paltry six. Both of them were guessing, which can be executed quickly and 00:03:22.080 --> 00:03:28.080 efficiently using the formula rand between to cover large batches of unknown answers. Familiarity 00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:33.280 with keyboard shortcuts is obviously a necessary skill, to the point that player BIOS will list 00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:37.920 their favorite shortcut. And there's some hot controversy in the meta over whether competitive 00:03:37.920 --> 00:03:43.680 players should ever use a mouse to navigate. Advanced players with a fluency and visual 00:03:43.680 --> 00:03:49.360 basic might even code on the fly. Unsurprisingly, the game tends to be dominated by accountants, 00:03:49.360 --> 00:03:57.200 actuaries, mathematicians, and engineers. You know, the alpha nerds. The format of games can vary as 00:03:57.200 --> 00:04:02.640 well, with tournaments sometimes featuring 1v1 elimination matches and other times 8 player 00:04:02.640 --> 00:04:09.200 battle royales. It's brutal. A panel of commentators narrate the game, dissect the outcome, 00:04:09.200 --> 00:04:14.080 and introduce and interview the players before and after the fact. And at in-person events, 00:04:14.080 --> 00:04:19.840 there's often an electric crowd excited to see their favorite Excel battler perform the spreadsheet 00:04:19.840 --> 00:04:25.840 equivalent of a mounted elbow drop off the top rope. And it's not a sport without merch. They've 00:04:25.840 --> 00:04:31.760 got shirts like this invalid formula, divided by zero design, or this one with all your favorite 00:04:31.760 --> 00:04:38.160 formulas. I'm partial to equal count ifs, open, parent, closed, parent, myself. The Microsoft 00:04:38.160 --> 00:04:43.200 Excel World Championship isn't the only gaming arena where you'll find Excel. It's had a long, 00:04:43.200 --> 00:04:48.640 if eccentric history in gaming, usually acting as an external, supplementary tool for complex 00:04:48.640 --> 00:04:54.480 RPGs that require advanced data management. Eve Online, the game sometimes called spreadsheets 00:04:54.480 --> 00:04:59.760 in space, actually got an official Excel plug-in earlier this year, much to the excitement of its 00:04:59.760 --> 00:05:04.720 player base. Not to mention that people have been programming games directly into Excel for decades, 00:05:04.720 --> 00:05:10.160 like Snake, Minesweeper, and even Battleship. If there's anything we can learn from a sweaty 00:05:10.160 --> 00:05:14.640 crowd cheering on their favorite Excel champion as they formulate their way to victory, it's that 00:05:14.640 --> 00:05:20.800 human beings can find joy in literally anything. And it brings me great joy to see you here at the 00:05:20.800 --> 00:05:25.200 end of the video. Welcome! Thanks for watching, like the video if you like it, dislike it if 00:05:25.200 --> 00:05:29.120 you disliked it, check out our other videos, comment below with video suggestions, and don't 00:05:29.120 --> 00:05:35.680 forget to subscribe and follow and plug us into your spreadsheet of choice. I know you have it.