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.
From the end of 2019, Peace Elite began the S0 season. No one expected that not long after the end of the S0 season, the haze of the epidemic began to envelop the whole world.
For the start of the event, although the peace elite already has the rich experience of Tencent's entire e-sports system in the past, we can truly realize how great the challenges facing the event are after we have enough understanding of the impact of the epidemic on our lives. Therefore, for the evaluation system of the peaceful elite, we have always been under an abnormal coordinate.
In the past two years or so, some media have said that Peace Elite is the third pole in Tencent's e-sports system, and compared with the League of Legends e-sports that has been cultivated for many years, and the glory of the king e-sports that has taken advantage of the mobile Internet dividend, they all need to face and solve problems far beyond the past.
In short, our record cannot find a template that can be used in the history of modern sports, and technology has become a key link in changing the rules of viewing.
When the problems are clearly placed on the table one by one, we first see the attitude of the peaceful elite to seek change; when people thought they still needed more time to cultivate their internal skills, they entered the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games in a situation that exceeded the expectations of the vast majority of people.
In any case, the peace elite is a game closely related to weapons, but they found a way to enter the Asian Games and eventually succeeded in practicing the claims of the application. This breakthrough itself tells us that the revision of the peace elite evaluation system is very important in 2022, and if we look at them according to the methodology of the past decade, under the FRAMEWORK of MOBA, we may eventually miss the opportunity to observe a wonderful evolution.
PART 1
Projects without templates and experience
The question of how the peaceful elite finds its way is the subject throughout 2021.
In the course of the interview, Liao Kan, marketing director of Tencent Game Photonics Studio Group, talked about the system at PEL as soon as he came up, and they felt that they had touched on most of the problems, but not all of them could be answered immediately.
Old experiences don't seem easy to solve problems, but that may not all be a bad thing. On the one hand, people do not have to be bound by experience, on the other hand, people have to put down their lazy ideas and strive to disassemble the problem downwards, and the process of returning to the essence is the process of finding the answer.
Although, in the final stage of 2021, we did not immediately see PEL's future problem solving process, but when Liao Kan said, "From the beginning of the competition, it is not a concept of marketing activity, it is doing content." There are a lot of facets in this content, there are a lot of participants, a lot of chains, commercial parts, and a big content together" When I think PEL has completed the marking of the solution idea.
In the e-sports market in the era of copyright owners, no matter what changes have taken place in the past five years, from beginning to end, the competition has not been able to cross the active thinking and truly become the content thinking. What is the difference between the two, in simple terms, the event is responsible for the effect, and the content is responsible for the audience.
In the past two years, Peace Elite Esports has built more content portals in order to serve the logic of the audience, and the first and third perspectives of each contestant can be switched without restrictions, as well as a large number of virtual cameras from the map.
In our past experience, as a mass media television, how to build a signal source with a rich story is the key to solving the content problem, but when we open our minds, if the presentation of e-sports competitions is not necessarily based on the logic of mass media, but to build a social media position around the concept of peaceful elite e-sports?
In the past, PEL's online home attempts have been very close to the answer to the question in my opinion.
Kuaishou's head anchor Shepherd Boy has built his own content community outside the game, and around the community, the online home of TJB Club has also formed a continuous discussion. At the same time, in the scene of the game, the main live broadcast room, the community such as Tiger Poker Tieba and other online home venues, they have formed a continuous interaction scene similar to social networks.
PEL may not be behind some kind of traditional broadcast media content logic, when the information overflows, the return of broadcast media to social media, with the development of Internet technology in the past three decades, is a fully verified law.
When PEL is technically able to provide far more information than previous esports projects, social media is not a fantasy.
PART 2
The wonderful value of the open world
Whether it is the accumulation of long-term content or the possible changes in the model, we have completely different expectations for PEL than previous e-sports projects. If described by the characteristics already demonstrated by past peace elite projects, Liao Kan's "openness" may be a key word that is more in line with this expectation.
We have seen the content integration of peace elite e-sports and many cross-border resources, compared to the wasteland-style "PUBG", peace elite can be said to be a completely open world, under the overall perspective experience of a slightly punk, its integration has a great tension.
Most of the past e-sports projects have either pursued the ultimate visual experience of the current era, or reduced the input of interfering information, so that the audience can better focus on the game, which makes the peace elite closer to the RTS project that has created countless brilliant projects in the underlying openness of the project itself. I don't know whether to describe this as a cyclical regression or an exploration of essence.
When we return to the essence of e-sports, the rise of e-sports projects compared to other video game categories is to weaken the rules of the timeline dimension, giving participants more space, and there is enough competition. If we can also maintain enough space on the space axis, we see a "Peace Elite Asian Games version" based on the Peace Elite project, but completely different from it.
Being able to flexibly display the relationship between its own firearms, maps, and vehicles, incorporating elements of competition, and sufficient openness is the key to the peace elite Asian Games version to be shortlisted for eight official competitions.
Although there are not many specific details to disclose about the Asian Games version, from the first half of 2021 to the game mode that has been very highly completed, the open foundation of the assumption of early completion has undoubtedly shown its charm.
You can ski during the Winter Olympics, and you can seamlessly switch to the Asian Games mode in the summer, as Liao Kan said, "We are a project with a broad foundation, a platform like the Asian Games, coupled with the complementarity between e-sports and sports mentioned earlier, how can more sports enthusiasts and people in the sports industry quickly understand e-sports projects?" As far as the peace project is concerned, one of our best ways is the background we just said, we have such openness and creativity, we can let the audience see what they see with sports for the first time. ”
In the esports space built by the peaceful elite, even the audience experience is being subverted, and the embedded lens language is completely different from the simple first-person shooting or moBA from the perspective of God.
At the same time, Liao Kan also mentioned that the interactive characteristics of the peaceful elite in the Asian Games cycle may also bring some inspiration to many traditional sports.
"We've done things like online home, spectator plugins, reinforcement systems. Even if these are parts of traditional sports that have the potential to generate new vitality, I think it is an opportunity to show this part of the advantages to others through such a large-scale and higher-level sports event as the Asian Games, and to let more sports fans and audiences know. I think it's a kind of complementarity, your strengths are used by me, my strengths and strengths are amplified through your platform, and I can also help the system, so it is a process called Pareto improvement. ”
We also look forward to september 2022, not only will esports learn from the Asian Games how to become a regulated and long-term international sporting event, but esports will also be able to show the Asian Games something different from the past.
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".