The following article comes from Esports, author of the Esports Editorial Board
At the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics a few days ago, the festival that spanned a whole year was finally fixed in Lichun, and the imagination of "going to the future together" was opened with ice and snow sports.
In the last month of 2021, we interviewed the heads of some e-sports projects in China, including those selected for the Asian Games, to depict the footsteps of those who "picked up the level" through the content of the "pick up". We try to think from their perspective about the changes that the Asian Games will bring to the entire Chinese e-sports industry in 2021, and reflect the reflection on the future direction of the entire industry through the changes.
Based on different projects, communities and development backgrounds, no one can give a universal answer to the complex concept of esports, and when we put the answers given by these leaders together, another magnificent picture may emerge.
On December 26, the competition between Shanghai HH and Shenzhen MD in the Sports Center of Chengdu High-tech Zone was the final of the King's Glory National Competition, and it was also the final battle of the entire King's Glory tournament in 2021.
"E-sports for all" has become a concept familiar to more people in 2021, and through the attention of the whole society to the field of e-sports in the year after the official entry of e-sports into Asia, the glory of the king has stepped out of a unique value system of its own.
Three weeks before the final of the Chengdu High-tech Zone Sports Center, also in Chengdu, we and Zhang Yijia, general manager of Tencent Interactive Entertainment Tianmei E-sports Center, general manager of King Glory E-sports and chairman of KPL Alliance, launched an interview from the value and back to the value.
In 2021, the entire game industry is suffering from systematic adjustments, and there is no doubt that The Glory of Kings will often become the most concerned case due to its huge influence.
Whether it is in the game itself, or the construction of the past e-sports system, 2021 is a year full of thoughts, compared to the past high-flying progress, Zhang Yijia hopes that the king glory e-sports can go more rigorous and more solid.
PART 1
Don't lie to yourself
A year has passed since the Olympic Council of Asia announced e-sports as an official sport for the Asian Games in December 2020. This year, it gave the e-sports industry an opportunity to truly benchmark for the top international sports events, which made the e-sports practitioners involved realize how strict a process is when a project is truly presented to the world on behalf of the country, and what kind of responsibilities need to be shouldered.
In the face of many changes, Zhang Yijia said bluntly, "What the Asian Games itself means, I want to talk more from the perspective of social responsibility, which is indeed what I have thought about the most this year." Why are some people not so comfortable with esports? We will all become parents, facing our own children should go to the end of what esports is? Where is its positive value? How do you see the industry? Perhaps this is the question that we as practitioners should think clearly, solve and answer. ”
Since 2012, Chinese e-sports has been groping for breakthroughs in business models, but compared to this, we have largely ignored the discussion of the value and meaning behind it.
In business, young people are undoubtedly very important target users, and in the broader public perception, we can not form an effective logical chain, can not use this is the trend of the world's young people to pay attention to, to reverse the rationality of the industry itself.
2021 is a very thorough inward exploration for Zhang Yijia, with a rigorous attitude to face the problems that e-sports are encountering in China's development to today.
Our output value is not large enough, our emotional time accumulation is far from enough, the emotional experience and belonging of the audience group cannot be effectively productized, and our scientific exploration is still in the stage of reference, and has not formed its own system.
Although KPL is not inferior to any esports competition in terms of initiative and mobility, many questions are just beginning and have not been answered satisfactorily. Based on the industry-wide profession of athletes, from the desire to become a professional player to the establishment of a retirement guarantee experience that matches their own sports achievements, these questions that need to be accumulated and explored for a long time have not yet been more suitable for the characteristics of the e-sports industry and China's national conditions.
For the king glory e-sports system, 2021 is first of all a year to face itself inwardly, how to turn the old experience and attempt into a positive value dissemination direction for the future system, no one can give an answer immediately, but at least Zhang Yijia has a strong sense of urgency in the pursuit of the answer.
PART 2
Those more universal values
In the course of the interview, Zhang Yijia summarized the rethinking of e-sports in the past period of time as "an exploration of the universal value of e-sports". As he said, the Asian Games is not only in the system of rules to bring changes to the esports industry, many times the process of framework building, so that people can more easily find out whether the foundation of the supporting framework is really solid.
After the exploration of 2021, Zhang Yijia has three directions to be clarified, the first thing in front of him is the definition, what e-sports has brought to these participating players, audiences and amateurs in the past 20 years of exploration.
In the past few years, there have been etymological debates in definitions, and there have been comparisons in sports, but people have not faced up to the motivation of e-sports.
What qualities are the key qualities of e-sports, in the day-to-day competition, what does this sport bring to the players, if social competition is the cause, then what kind of results are guided? No authoritative scholar, whether in China or elsewhere in the world, has done similar research.
Starting from the past experience of King Glory, Zhang Yijia and his team made this description of the necessary conditions of e-sports: it is an intellectually driven sport, and past experience has led him to believe that there is a certain correlation between e-sports for the improvement of brain power and the process of human-computer collaboration, and in the next year or two, they hope to test this problem with researchers.
If the role of esports in individual physiology can come from the above description, then what value it achieves in the group scope is also worth paying attention to.
"The universal value of e-sports is that it can stimulate the collective honor of ordinary people to their groups, and I prefer to call this term collective honor rather than team spirit." In China, the meaning of collective honor is richer, and we have our own understanding of the team, which is to contribute to the team. The process of participating in e-sports competitions, increasing communication and collaboration and enhancing the sense of collective honor is a value point that I think is very important, and we should continue to refine and amplify it. ”
Zhang Yijia gave a very thought-provoking description, with a strong era mark of the concept of "collective", which really brings a different background to the glory of the king e-sports.
This change in the background color allows us to see the huge changes in the entire king glory e-sports system in 2021, when e-sports returns to social responsibility itself, the perspective of thinking changes, providing a more possible opportunity for the public context.
This shift is unprecedented in the last two decades, and for many esports practitioners, it could be a new beginning, underpinning the beacon that we can go further in the next two decades.
PART 3
An agreement reached six years later
Since 2020, the e-sports system of King of Glory has always described a concept - e-sports for all. At the beginning of the emergence of this concept, the first interpretation of this by the outside world is only the e-sports breakthrough strategy of King Glory based on its huge market ownership, and this concept has caused a lot of discussion as soon as it appeared.
It wasn't until mid-2021 that people gradually found the context of this. From the design concept of the game, the interaction mode, to the surrounding ecology and supporting software, and then to the e-sports community and the event system, the concept of "Everyone Highlight" has been able to form a complete system. If the exploration of universal values is the vertical axis of the king's glory e-sports system, then the concept of "everyone highlights" from the game to the game constitutes horizontal malleability.
This is rarely seen in the development process of many online games in China, and domestic games that can have a relatively long life cycle often weaken value judgments. After more than six years of development, King glory has completed the consistency of value judgments.
In the game, we should emphasize the higher evaluation of the wonderful performance of the assistant, and the performance above the average line in their own position will trigger the incentive mechanism, and encourage everyone to participate in the king glory national e-sports competition with convenient tools and an open attitude.
Although you are in a different life, you can gather on the stage of the national competition. These changes have largely given the entire system a set of coordinates that can be constantly corrected for the next six years, or even longer.
In the past, many projects have mentioned giving the market greater patience, but in fact, China's e-sports development process has never gotten rid of this free state, and there is not a clear value judgment that can be used as a basis.
In the last month of 2021, based on years of accumulation and understanding, we have seen this clear transformation, so that "everyone highlights" is a sign of correcting the direction of progress on the timeline, and amplifying the characteristics of communication and collaboration as an e-sports project and enhancing the sense of collective honor, so that the glory of the king e-sports has the confidence to go out of a wider road.
Since the end of the interview with Chengdu Tianmei, I have been thinking about the significance of this consistency for many domestic e-sports projects, and how much the driving force blessing for the huge e-sports system of King Glory will be. We may see part of the answer in 2022, and it may take longer to confirm the value of this model in the development of Chinese e-sports, but in any case, we are surprised by the determination and motivation of the King of Glory e-sports system to turn around.
This kind of change from the inside out makes us have more expectations for the glory of the Asian Games year.
About Tencent Esports
Tencent Esports was founded on December 9, 2016. As the most competitive e-sports brand in China, Tencent's e-sports business has been deployed since TGA in 2010, and after years of exploration and accumulation, it is helping e-sports to become a new "super digital scene", adding more possibilities to our lives and creating more beauty for the world. In the future, Tencent E-sports hopes to work with all partners to jointly bloom the diversified values of e-sports in more fields and jointly help realize the vision of "science and technology for good".