"Actually, I didn't like to play CS at the beginning, because of halo 3D."
"But then you became a pro."
"Because you don't have to go around, you just have to look in one direction."
"The outside world says you..."
"I know, they say I have an iron head." When he said this, Zhang Zi smiled and didn't care.
#1 Select
In 2012, Zhang Zi, who was in charge of the operation of the official mall of the Chinese Olympic Committee at Huaao Starry Sky, suddenly received an invitation from a friend of Tencent, which was an invitation from the "League of Legends" project team.
At the same time, in front of Zhang Zi, there is also a document printed with "Body Classic Character [2012] No. 204", and one of the documents reads "Encourage private capital to enter the emerging sports industry fields such as sports tourism, outdoor sports, extreme sports, and e-sports." ”
Zhang Zi still remembers that when he left the e-sports industry three years ago, everyone really felt the impact of the financial crisis on the e-sports industry. In the face of the general trend, e-sports at that time could not withstand any storms. A lot of people said goodbye to esports at that time.
Today, two ways of return are in front of Zhang Zi at the same time.
Once the idea of returning to the center of esports arises, it seems to have a lingering magic, and the memories of the past also emerge.
On November 18, 2003, at the launching ceremony of the "China Digital Sports Interactive Platform" held in the Great Hall of the People, He Huixian, then vice president of the Chinese Olympic Committee, announced that the State General Administration of Sport officially approved e-sports as the 99th sport.
Later, under the impetus of the leadership of the State General Administration of Sports, the All-China Sports Federation and Huaao Starry Sky hosted the National Electronic Sports Games (CEG). In 2004, CEG launched a professional esports competition between provinces based on home and away.
The sports bureaus of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Sichuan, Shandong, Shaanxi, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces have all formed provincial teams containing multiple e-sports projects, and Zhang Zi was first a member of the CS team of the CEG Guangzhou team. Before long, his parents felt that he was too far from home, so they transferred him back to the CS team of the CEG Beijing team.
Zhang Zi said that he is the third generation of CS professional players in China, but the less than two years of career that began in 2004 are easily obscured by the light of the two generations of players before and after, so that you can rarely see him in the residual information about 2004 and 2005.
A year later, persuaded by Gao Dapeng, the event director of Huaao Starry Sky, Zhang Zi retired and joined Huaao Starry Sky and became a referee in CEG Beijing.
CeG, which fully mobilizes sports systems and market resources, has high-quality resources that are popular in the current e-sports competitions, and the sports systems and radio and television systems of various provinces have joined the vigorous e-sports national games test.
Every week, four provincial teams fly or train to the home of four other provincial teams, and so on. The addition of the broadcasting and television system made a Taiwanese display manufacturer smell the wind and win the naming rights of CEG with tens of millions of sponsorships. The money was split into two parts: a larger expenditure was used to subsidize 8 provincial teams each year for 1 million yuan, and the rest was used to fill the daily expenses of the event.
In fact, this new model for e-sports is almost a transplant of the traditional sports model. Referee recruitment, training, examinations, list announcements... The mature competition system of traditional sports is directly connected to the CEG system, and all provincial team members have a salary of 1500 yuan per month, which is equivalent to the national second-level athletes.
Zhang Zi still remembers that it is this identity that has helped him alleviate the conflict with his family.
At this time, CEG has become a high-speed train running forward with Chinese e-sports, and for the first time in China, it has set off a trend called e-sports. When the European esports organization ESL sought to further expand the market, they found Intel, CEG, and Huaao Starry Sky to jointly host international e-sports events such as the CEG Masters Cup and ESWC.
The first big stride in the development of Chinese e-sports finally came to an abrupt end in 2008.
With the development of the Internet, esports suddenly changed from a tall technological movement to a derivative content with the stigmatization of original sin in video games. Managers want to get rid of esports to some extent, which brings esports back to a state of complete marketization.
However, in the context of the 2008 financial crisis, e-sports, which was supported by the administrative framework, suddenly fell into the bottom. People can only try to survive the cold winter, and it was not until 2011 that people seemed to smell spring.
At the time, there were only four production companies left in Chinese esports: game storms whose content production capabilities were closer to the broadcasting system; PLU, which got TGA executive projects; GTV, which began designing the Crossfire Pro League, and NeoTV, which was still insisting on WCG.
Although the esports production company was still the protagonist dominating the development of the e-sports industry at that time, in retrospect, Cheng Wu's appearance at the TGA and Ma Xiaoyi's appearance at the opening ceremony of the first CFPL together constituted a certain sign.
Zhang Zi doesn't know much about these potential changes. For three years before 2012, he rarely actively followed esports, occasionally hearing from friends. He was happy with the news that some of his friends were getting better, but he never thought about leaving Hua'ao Starry Sky.
Tencent's invitation has pulled it back into the unpredictable marketplace. He learned that League of Legends was taking advantage of a rather aggressive adventure, when the League of Legends league was in the run-up period and handed over the hosting of the event to the PLU.
"I thought about it for a long time and felt like I still wanted to do esports." Not to mention that the friend offered himself a not low position, but he did not give a specific answer.
Ostensibly, he's worried that he's having trouble adapting to being a screw in a big business, but in fact, some deep-seated lines of thinking make him more inclined to wait for another system to react.
In April 2013, the document [2012] No. 204 changed from an illusory title, "Implementation Opinions on Encouraging and Guiding Private Capital to Invest in the Sports Industry", to Zhejiang News Media's acquisition of 100% of the shares of Hangzhou Winger and Shanghai Haofang, followed by the completion of the capital increase of Huaao Starry Sky in August.
As the only person in Huaao Starry Sky who had intersected with e-sports at that time, Zhang Zi was naturally associated with the National E-sports Competition (NEST). Without much hesitation, Zhang Zi gave up Tencent's invitation and chose to rediscover his regrets in the CEG era at Hua'ao Starry Sky.
Many years later, he explained why he made his choice: "In China, who can say that it is a real official event? ”
#2 Bonus
On March 16, 2013, the inaugural League of Legends Pro League (LPL) kicked off in an abandoned factory building in the LOFT Industrial Park in Taicang, Jiangsu Province, which will permanently change the face of China's esports industry.
As the popularity of "League of Legends" continues to rise, more and more e-sports enthusiasts have begun to catch a bus from the junction of Shanghai Kaixuan Road and Huichuan Road to Taicang.
Four months later, on July 15, the official website of the State General Administration of Sport forwarded a news article from Zhejiang Daily titled "Registration for the National E-sports Competition is Hot."
The news mentioned that the 2013 NEST National E-sports Competition, co-sponsored by the Sports Information Center of the State General Administration of Sports and the China Sports Newspaper General Agency, hosted by Beijing Huaao Star Technology Development Co., Ltd. and Zhejiang News Media Group Co., Ltd., and sponsored by Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co., Ltd., has opened the registration for five competitions: "StarCraft 2", "DOTA2", "League of Legends", "FIFA2013" and "Warcraft 3".
After another half a month, the registration for starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 projects has been overcrowded. On the other hand, the registration information for the League of Legends project also appeared on the official website of the League of Legends.
In the e-sports environment at that time, large-scale cross-industry sponsorship was not common, wahaha gave a lot of support to the entire event, so that the organizers could play freely, and all Zhang Zi had to do was to put these resources in the right position. He hired Gamewind to execute the event, and soon everything was on track.
Zhang Zi found his former teammate Wang Xi, and the two formed a division of labor in Wang Xi's mouth that "one person is on top, one person is external", Zhang Zi is still responsible for docking with the government and sponsors, and Wang Xi is responsible for docking with the game. Zhang Zi prefers to describe it as "one person inside, one person outward." "It was not until june 2014 that Huaao E-sports was officially established that the two had official badges, No. 001 and No. 002.
After more than three years, after returning to the e-sports industry, he could not allow him to think much, standing on the social credibility built by the General Bureau and Zhejiang News, and sometimes, even NEST pushed Zhang Zi forward, until something difficult for him to understand happened in front of him.
The 2013 NEST Finals were held at the Shanghai Fengyun E-sports Hall. Before the game began, Zhang Zi happened to meet the we team that had just arrived in the background. As several of the team members stepped out of the van, fans who had been waiting at the back door quickly gathered around. Strawberry, Smile and other star contestants wear masks and hoodies. As soon as they got out of the car, they quickly put on their hats and walked quickly into the venue with their heads bowed.
"I didn't understand it at the time, and I said how to pretend."
Later, when he watched these star players in the backstage of the stadium being surrounded by fans in the toilet, he suddenly realized that his understanding was a bit out of touch with the market.
"At CEG, there are also star players, and there will be people to sign and take photos, but it is not so exaggerated. The status of the event is the highest, it is the parents of the players, the media, and the direct of everyone. But when I got to NEST, I found that it was different, the status of the event was reduced, the status of the manufacturers and players was raised, and both exceeded the event itself. That could be the starting point for esports trafficization. He recalled afterwards.
But it was precisely these star players who appeared on the stage of NEST, allowing Zhang Zi and NEST to catch up with the node when Chinese e-sports was launched again.
From overcrowding to the difficulty of finding a ticket for the finals, from the registration information appearing on the official website of the State General Administration of Sports and the League of Legends at the same time, to a series of China's top League of Legends teams such as WE, OMG, EDG, and Royal Family gathering on the stage of NEST, NEST's identity has made it an outlet for Chinese e-sports to continuously release the energy it has been accumulating.
In the 2013 NEST Finals, the rocker arm swept through the audience seats in the Fengyun E-sports Hall, whether it was the light signs in the audience or the leaders sitting in the front row, which formed an interesting metaphor - ten years later, the government and fans together constitute the biggest source of power for China's e-sports to move forward.
On November 10, when the competition ended, the lights in the stadium were gradually extinguished, and the workers who dismantled the stage had already entered the venue, which was undoubtedly a sense of accomplishment for Zhang Zi, who had been away from the e-sports industry for three years, and Wang Xi, who had just retired.
But Zhang Zi always had another sentence in his head, "At least compared with CEG, NEST is still far behind." ”
Since 2014, Zhang Zi first found a leader in his career, Huang Zhen, the former head of CEG event broadcasting, and then successively found some "old buddies" in the CEG period.
Two people, five people, seven people, Huaao Starry Sky gradually became lively in the office building of the National Sports Newspaper Group. Huaao E-sports has gradually divided into different business sectors such as commercialization, marketing publicity, content production and broadcasting, and constantly looking for suitable people to join. Even so, having multiple roles is still the norm.
As one of the partners, Yang Liu, CEO of Huaao E-sports, once recalled that in the initial stage of NEST, she and Zhang Zi and Huang Zhen often had to discuss until late at night about how to run this comprehensive competition. But under the influence of Zhang Zi and Huang Zhen's enthusiasm, she rarely felt tired. And Zhang Zi is like returning to the CEG period, constantly drawing the nutrients he needs from Yang Liu and Huang Zhen.
Zhang Zi took back some of the event content production business from the game storm, leaving only labor-intensive work such as construction and videography. The purpose of this is on the one hand to save costs, on the other hand, he hopes to use his entrepreneurial spirit to drive the people around him to complete some goals that exceed expectations. In the market-oriented transaction with the game "do as much as you want", this is impossible to achieve.
In addition to NEST, Huaao E-sports began to get involved in some Party B business, such as undertaking large-scale comprehensive e-sports events such as IET, NEST, ESUC, ZEG and so on.
CEG has not only had an unprecedented influence blessing, but also paid a tragic price. Although the support of the General Administration and Zhejiang News has allowed them to have high-quality sponsor resources that the e-sports industry could not match at that time in the short term, no one can give an answer immediately as to what kind of identity NEST will survive in the future and how to shape a common development relationship that is in line with the present and even the future.
When using the support and recognition of the audience to push back the power outside the market, Zhang Zi is looking for a set of methodologies that only Hua Ao is suitable to do, which is not only based on his belief in the value of e-sports outside the market, but also the task he must complete when he sees the friends around him who are reunited because of NEST.
Those beautiful, regretful, struggling, and brilliant memories are mixed together, and people will have more expectations for the world.
#3 Brothers
In 2001, when there were few people in the Dawei Internet café near foreign trade and economic cooperation, Wang Jianping opened a map, sprayed a circular pattern on the wall, and then emptied a magazine bullet against the pattern. He often repeated this monotonous training for hours in order to keep all the bullets in the circular range.
He even found more tricks, "Not straight pulling, different guns, different situations, you have to have a different method." He then added free-moving robots to the game and set himself a goal that sounded unattainable: "One shot, you have to hit the head." For this reason, he often practiced in an Internet café for one night.
It is precisely because of this effort that Wang Jianping joined the team formed by the owner of the Internet café, free Internet access, food and accommodation, and often went out to play on behalf of Dawei Internet Cafe.
When Wang Jianping was obsessed with boring honing his shooting skills, Zhang Zi was what he called an "online game player", not "a circle". Zhang Zi's favorite game at that time was "The Legend of Jin Yongqun", which was also played with friends, also played better than friends, and was also in an Internet café for a night, but Zhang Zi had been fighting monsters so that his character could reach a higher level as soon as possible.
"That momentum may be not to accept defeat, I go to a new server to play, and soon, I am the person at the top of this server level." 」
That was when online games were born, and it was a phase in which game designers racked their brains to provide players with a richer world. But in Zhang Zi's description, when friends and other players are inseparable, he is fighting monsters; when friends buy and sell props in the game, he is fighting monsters. No matter what the people around him were doing, Zhang Zi was always fighting monsters.
He enjoys the most direct feedback from this boring process — the presence of his ID in the most prominent position on the server.
There have been a few times, invited by other people in the Internet café, Zhang Zi tried "Counter-Strike" several times. But the dozens of people fighting on the warehouse map always made him turn around and couldn't find his way. In less than half an hour, he forced himself to endure a violent vomiting sensation and quit the game.
But soon, his antipathy to Counter-Strike was completely reversed by an experience in an Internet café. Once, when they were packing nights, some people in the Internet café wanted to play an amateur game, but they came around and found that there were not enough people, so they looked for Zhang Zi.
That was the first time he felt the charm of Counter-Strike. In the 5v5 duel, he no longer needs to go around frequently, everyone has their own task, and all he has to do is look at a specific direction. It could be the main road on Desert Two in Area A, or the exit of the underground passage in Area B; it could be an exit on Nuke.
Although the cooperation between his teammates is rough and low-level, he still feels similar to the brotherhood and righteousness in the real world. "That's when I really felt like it was a team game, and the feeling of being compatible with each other made me addicted."
Zhang Zi was still 3D, but he began watching more game videos to systematically learn how to win the game. The next step is to endlessly press the gun against the circular pattern on the wall, practice point shooting at the robot's head, look through the video of the game, and learn how the players on each map deal with the situation.
In the past few years, Wang Jianping, who failed to hit the WCG World Finals, chose to retire and joined a large advertising agency with the help of his father. At this time, Zhang Zicai began to really try to become a professional player.
Soon, Zhang Zi's talent in CS began to show. He quickly got out of the "kill the big net" stage and began to intentionally find high-level teammates for himself.
Zhang Zi first found an Internet café that was interested in forming a team, and he himself posted a recruitment post on the Internet. Soon, he received "cover letters" from Tianjin, Shandong and other places. Not long after the invitation was issued, they arrived in Beijing. Several people trained together and lived together.
The cooperation with these teammates did not last long, from one person to a team of people, whether in life or values, Zhang Zi was confused for a while. Living with his teammates, the most basic personal hygiene problems made him very distressed, and later, he went to Guangzhou with the well-known player Sang Nan.
"Hey, Zhang Zi, do you think I'm going to eat two bowls of beef rice at noon today, or will I eat a double fight?" With a monthly salary of 1500 yuan and prize money for the event, on average they have a disposable income of about 3000 yuan per month, while the average monthly disposable income of cities and towns in the country in 2005 was 874 yuan.
At the beginning of the CEG in 2004, Zhang Zi participated in the CS project as a member of the Guangdong provincial team, and entering the professional competition has changed from a youthful fantasy to a very real experience.
Shortly after staying in the Guangzhou team, because it was too far from home, Zhang Zi's parents were worried about the safety of their children and afraid that Zhang Zi was not used to living alone outside, and they transferred Zhang Zi from the CEG Guangzhou team back to the CEG Beijing team through the relationship of the sports system, and the identity of the team member corresponded to a national second-level athlete certificate.
After entering the Beijing team, Zhang Zi once spent a simple time with his teammates. At the 2005 CEG Masters Cup, Zhang Zi finished third with the team. A reporter from state media interviewed him and later mentioned in the report: "Beijing has emerged a group of talented new players like Zhang Zi. ”
Looking back now, Zhang Zi is not satisfied with his career as a professional player, and he enjoys the satisfaction brought to him by the technology and teamwork in the game. But because there was a way out, I couldn't put all my energy into it.
Although young, he even began to think about what the identity of e-sports athletes represented, and the obsession of his teammates with the fairness of e-sports itself, which stemmed from the unfairness of external factors such as birth and background.
Afterwards, he described his mood this way: "Many people say that they do e-sports because they are happy. I'm different, I did esports because I was unhappy. I think how can this be? At that time, e-sports was more like an outlet for me, just like rock 'n' roll in the past. ”
#4 Rising period
When he was confused, Zhang Zi and Gao Dapeng, the head of the CEG at the time, talked about this. In the eyes of the latter, Zhang Zi has a maturity that far exceeds that of professional players, and at the same time, professional experience has made him more aware of e-sports.
At the end of 2005, Gao Dapeng issued an invitation, and Zhang Zi has since withdrawn from professional competitions to turn to the background.
For those beautiful friendships that were once there, they are both guilty and helpless.
Zhang Zi's paradox is that he loves and hates the system behind CEG. It had enormous energy, but it was operating in a way that he could not fully approve of. Turning his head, zhang Zi became a referee for the CS project during the noisy 2006 CEG competition. He entered Huaao Starry Sky, a state-owned enterprise with a background, which was a result that both parents recognized.
What Zhang Zi did not expect was that after three or four years of tossing and turning in the official e-sports system, e-sports began to gradually divest from managers, and the work on e-sports within Hua'ao became less and less, and the transfer of a certain leader's position projection into the industry will form different feedback.
At the beginning of 2014, Ding Dong was transferred to the director of the Information Center of the State General Administration of Sports, becoming a new e-sports reformer in the field of sports. Ding Dong's innate boldness of Hunan people, coupled with his emphasis on the e-sports industry, has brought the entire industry back to a critical period of government-authorized competitions.
Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet.
In 2015, Xiamen C&D Group, a state-owned enterprise, took a stake in Huaao E-sports.
The attempt to package NEST as a national e-sports event and the traffic that the event had made Zhang Zi quickly receive feedback from advertising agencies across the country. Through the Shanghai Canning Factory, Coca-Cola reached a partnership with an e-sports event for the first time as a sponsor.
Xiamen, which was once insulated from e-sports, ushered in NEST. In Block B of The Xiamen International Convention and Exhibition Center, Zhang Zi met his former idol Wang Jianping. At this time, Wang Jianping ran an advertising company and undertook some exhibition business.
Ten years ago, Zhang Zi could only watch Wang Jianping offstage, behind his back, and in the video, but now, Zhang Zi has become the helmsman of the largest comprehensive e-sports event in China, and has also become a potential party A for Wang Jianping.
"Remember to look for me for work." The two players who were separated by a generation did not have much intersection, and after a simple greeting, Wang Jianping smiled and said to Zhang Zi.
NEST and other concurrent exhibitions were held at the Xiamen International Convention and Exhibition Center. Prior to this, Xiamen had not landed any e-sports events. Before the event landed, some heavyweight leaders in the city met with Zhang Zi and came to the scene on the day of the event.
On the morning of the start of the game, Zhang Zi, Wang Xi, Huang Zhen and others came to the competition venue very early and were busy making final preparations.
"Look here, look there, ask everything." Wang Xi said with a smile. "In fact, there is no need for him to intervene at all, everything is arranged."
But Zhang Zi couldn't sleep at eight o'clock in the morning, and he was more responsible for connecting with sponsors, the State General Administration of Sports, and shareholders, and he had been away from the front line for a long time, and he basically couldn't help much, but he still came to the scene of the event very early.
He describes his state as "200% effort." "When I was a player, in fact, I didn't do my best, I probably did 70% of my efforts, and the best result was the third place in a certain competition, and I really had regrets." And after I retired, I felt indebted to my teammates. After coming back to do NEST, I demanded that I had to do 200% of the effort. NEST can not be done, can fail, I accept all the reasons, but I do not accept that I do not work hard. ”
What Huaao Esports is asking of itself is to make sure that nothing goes wrong before the start of the game, and in order to do this, the whole team is doing 200% of the effort. But standing at that point in time, no domestic event team dared to play 200% of the package tickets.
The mayor of Xiamen and other leaders arrived at nest at the Xiamen International Convention and Exhibition Center ahead of schedule, and the opening ceremony became an extremely important task.
The scene gradually darkened, and the screen lit up, and the light was a little dazzling. The pattern on the screen is presented in a very messy way, and an unexpected bad spot disrupts the design of the entire screen. "If in the live broadcast, the background is completely black, nest brand is finished."
The broken screen divides the scene into two worlds. Inside the screen, Wang Xi and others anxiously checked the problem and found a solution. Off the screen, Zhang Zi gave full play to the skills he had cultivated since childhood to communicate with government leaders. Outside the venue, more than 1,000 fans who grabbed tickets in the pre-sale are waiting outside the door to enter. Almost an hour later, when Wang Xi started the content device again, nest officially began.
In 2015, at the beginning of the launch of "Glory of Kings", the copyright owners of all games once again sensed the changes at the level of the competent authorities after a year. Zhang Zi once again received an invitation from Tencent, this time the position is closer to e-sports, and the rank is higher, but nest in the rising period gives Zhang Zi plans to try to complete some grander goals.
In 2015, at the scene of an LPL game, while chatting with Tencent's friends, the other party asked him how the LPL is doing so far. "I said it was a good job, but whether an event is doing well or not is ultimately left to the market to verify."
The following year, LPL officially began the commercialization process of the event, selling the rights and cooperating with sponsors.
After experiencing the charm of e-sports for the first time through NEST, Coca-Cola reorganized the brand and locked in the best marketing targets in the e-sports industry with the usual attitude of the international top brand - that year, Coca-Cola decided to take the younger Sprite as the starting point, ended the cooperation with NEST, and became the first title sponsor of LPL with tens of millions of sponsorships.
After Coca-Cola left, NEST welcomed two important sponsors: Chery Motors and McDonald's.
Since 2016, iG has won the nest championship for two consecutive years, and NEST has been dubbed the iG Cup, and the influence of the top League of Legends teams in China has begun to become concrete.
Zhang Zi remembers that in the offline finals stage, whenever two strong teams play each other, the ground is always full of spectators. "We generally only open 1000-1500 hundred seats. But for example, if iG hits RNG, there are not enough seats, and fans will sit on the ground. It was also since then that NEST has had a tradition, because there are not many seats open each time, so more fans sit on the ground to watch the game.
On November 12, 2017, also at the Xiamen International Convention and Exhibition Center, fans lined up early. Wang Xi and the others continued to make final preparations in the background, while Zhang Zi was busy receiving the guests who came to the scene, including an extremely important guest, his mother.
In order to welcome the arrival of the BRICS conference, the security of the whole of Xiamen has been upgraded by more than one level, which has brought unexpected trouble to nests that gather a large number of young people.
Zhang Zi once said with a smile: "All those who do events, in the end, rely on experience, in the end, it is more experienced, so it is not chaotic when things happen." At that time, too, the guests and leaders who came to the scene were comforted in the venue; and the colleagues outside the venue were pacified by the audience waiting under the scorching sun, all of which were seen by Zhang Zi's mother.
During the competition, she did not forcibly pull Zhang Zi to accompany her, but chatted with the young people around her with the inherent kindness of the teacher.
"After the game, my mom said, it was a great game, we were a great team.
#5 Second half
In early 2016, in order to celebrate the establishment of Panda Live, Wang Sicong held a grand banquet on the Bund in Shanghai, when almost all the well-known practitioners in the e-sports industry were present. At the banquet, several veteran practitioners received invitations from Tencent. However, this time, instead of inviting them to join Tencent, they joined Tengjing Sports, an institution that represents change in the near future.
E-sports events under the copyright owner began to be called "manufacturer events", "one-party events" or even "official events", and events organized by nest, NESO and other state general administrations of sports were inevitably defined as "tripartite events". This definition makes the rules of the market no longer the same, in the perspective of managers, the value of e-sports can be gradually observed, but how to manage e-sports, how to cut the risk between video games and video games, how to develop effective standards, how to explore the industry governance means in line with e-sports, is still a problem to be solved.
The most crucial point is that this is not something that can be decided by a ministry of the General Administration of Sport.
Also in early 2016, the preparatory work of the China E-sports Association has already been put on the agenda, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Education, the General Administration of Sports and other ministries and commissions are involved, it is also the respective management logic is completely different, and finally after more than a year of efforts, it is still impossible to reach a multi-party agreement, the plan of the China E-sports Association can only end in vain.
During this important window period, the copyright owner of the e-sports project has opened the market with real money and silver, and there are several well-known MOBA games with the copyright owner.
But the arrival of new projects is always exciting, whether it's Overwatch, which was released simultaneously worldwide on May 24, 2016, or PUBG, which broke out in the second half of 2017.
The two esports games that once had high hopes have one thing in common, and both can be called FPS games, which is a first-person shooter. Compared with these two new projects, the more pure CS:GO project of "Daotong" has not found a suitable positioning in China.
As a result, expectations for the new project did not converge on The "Hello China" held at the "CS:GO" national costume conference held at Perfect World at the China Film Directors Center at No. 9 Jiuxianqiao North Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing on April 12, 2017.
The game ended as Zhang Zi killed the last rival anchor at the entrance of the underground passage in Area B with an AK in his hand. The exhibition match called "Legendary Superstar" vs. "Rising Star Anchor" was the last link of the "CS:GO" national service launch conference held by Perfect World, and it was also the beginning of the "CS:GO" national service operation.
Zhang Zi smiled and took off his headphones, cut his hair, and discussed with Shen Weirong and Bian Zhengwei next to him with a little excitement what had just happened. When it comes to the rise, he habitually uses his finger to go down the screen.
"Thank you perfect for giving this opportunity, when playing professionally, we old guns have not been able to be so together." In the post-match interview session, Bian Zhengwei, who took the microphone from Wu Runbo's hand, said so.
Zhang Zi stood next to Bian Zhengwei, and when it was his turn, he looked at Bian Zhengwei, Wu Runbo, and Shao Feng, who were standing on the left.
"It's our first half and there's a second half." He smiled and said, with a little cunning, a little excitement, a little anxiety, and a great deal of certainty. If you want to change the influence of copyright owners on the market, change the squeeze of MOBA games on other projects, then you have to do something.
In 2016, under the impetus of Zhang Zi, the Sports Information Center of the State General Administration of Sport led the establishment of the first China E-sports League, the China CS:GO Alliance. At that time, the latest work in the "Counter-Strike" series developed by Valve, CS:GO, had already determined the launch time of the national service.
On March 22, Zhang Zi and others representing Shanghai Huaao E-sports Information Technology Co., Ltd., the leaders of the Sports Information Center of the State General Administration of Sports, as well as AG, BOF, B.O.O.T, EDG, eFuture, LGD, Tyloo, VG. The owners of the nine clubs of CyberZen and Wings officially adopted the charter of the China CS:GO Alliance in the conference room of the Sports Information Center of the General Administration of Sports, announcing the establishment of the China CS:GO Alliance.
This is not only the first domestic e-sports alliance in history, the Sports Information Center of the State General Administration of Sport as the chairman unit means that this can be regarded as the first and only official e-sports alliance in China, and Shanghai Huaao E-sports Information Technology Co., Ltd. is the vice chairman of the alliance.
Prior to this, there was only the ACE Alliance established in the country from the DotA era. However, such alliances are more loosely linked by verbal agreement. The China CS:GO Alliance emulates the NBA in terms of capital operation, management model and decision-making mechanism, and its members as shareholders not only take out real money and silver, but also participate in decision-making through voting mechanisms.
Two days later, the league's first event, the Chinese CS:GO Super League CSL, officially began. This alliance attempt brought together almost all well-known practitioners in the field of FPS in China, including Bian Zhengwei, Wu Xiaobo, Shao Feng, Huaao E-sports and 5EPLAY, the largest CS:GO battle platform in China at that time, were deeply involved.
The emergence of the CS:GO Alliance and CSL in China has made a series of choices that Zhang Zi began to make in 2012: on the commercial track, in 2012, he chose to drive into an intersection that seemed to be the main road, but in the process of later, he recognized the reality of driving on the side road. When passing through the next intersection again and again, facing the signs on the main road to the left and the unknown to the right, he always made a choice that surprised everyone: first turn the steering wheel clockwise, and then press the throttle hard.
The practice of trend divergence has also begun to make Zhang Zi always hear two voices. In front of him, others will say, "You have been able to do this for so many years, real cow." Behind his back, everyone used a fashionable word to describe him: head iron.
Initially, the term was used to describe a player who knew he couldn't do it, and everyone thought he was on a path that was doomed to a dead end from the start.
From a business point of view, the alliance wants to make a profit, the pressure to make a profit under the squeeze is huge, and when the money that the players get their hands on cannot match their psychological expected income, the penetration of the betting platform becomes easy, and the alliance without law enforcement power cannot strongly prevent the deterioration of things.
From a player, to an event organizer, to a league manager, control of the situation increasingly relies on the support of administrative means rather than the embodiment of individual will or ability.
When the second CSL Finals came to an end, Zhang Zi decided to stop CSL. A month before that, Ding Dong, director of the information center of the state general administration of sports with a very pioneering spirit, left his post. The State General Administration of Sport then launched four mass sports projects such as e-sports and square dance to negotiate the delivery of cultural tourism, and everything became unknown.
#6 Reboot
In 2018, the iG team won the 8th League of Legends Global Finals in Incheon, South Korea, which originally made Zhang Zi and others look forward to it, because the team that gathered the most traffic would soon be on the stage of NEST.
However, before the start of the tournament, the iG team announced that it would give up participating in the NEST finals held in mid-November. The matter caused a lot of discussion under the announcement of nest refunds. Some fans accuse iG of "inflating", some fans believe that iG has the freedom to participate, and some point out that nest influence is declining.
"There are some things you have to accept, but once you have the beginning, the back is not something you can control."
iG's withdrawal caused a cascade of reactions, starting in 2018, on the stage of NEST, the LPL team first team was less and less, replaced by a second team composed entirely of newcomers, nest is still the stage for top club training.
Outside of the industry, NEST hasn't changed much. On November 15, Li Guihua, deputy director of the Sports Information Center of the State General Administration of Sports, Ye Chun, vice president of China Sports Newspaper And Chairman of Beijing Huaao Star Technology Development Co., Ltd., Du Xinfei, deputy director of Xiamen Municipal Sports Bureau, Ye Yanliu, deputy general manager of Xiamen C&D Group, Zhang Yisen, secretary of the Discipline Inspection Committee and vice president of Spgiarica Xiamen Branch, attended the opening ceremony of the finals held at the Xiamen International Convention and Exhibition Center, and the addition of MANY brands such as FAW Toyota also made NEST a complete body in Zhang Zi's eyes for the first time.
NEST has become a government guide, but itself completed the market share, has a stable development path of the project, outside of Xiamen, Zhang Zi began to look for nest development opportunities in many second- and third-tier cities.
In the evaluation of many people, Zhang Zi is still one of the few senior practitioners in the e-sports industry who understands the thinking of managers and knows how to use the power of the administrative system.
In the cooperation with McDonald's, he has always firmly grasped the university market, but also came up with one after another marketing solutions close to the market demand; in the cooperation with JD.com, he tried to put NEST's own traffic on the balance to see what the value is; in the process of going to the second and third-tier cities, in addition to these chips, he knows how to use the support of higher-level departments to give it authority...
On the other hand, Zhang Zi did not give up his bet on CS:GO.
In 2020, outside of NEST, Zhang Zi established a new event IP, Funspark. On Funspark, Zhang Zi did not emphasize the label of "national level", which instead gave him more space. He placed CS:GO under this new tournament IP and named it Funspark ULTI (hereinafter referred to as ULTI).
Putting aside the format of this event, in essence, the biggest difference between ULTI and CSL is that Zhang Zi has placed most of his resources abroad, not only in the host place, but also in the invited teams.
From the beginning, ULTI did not set up a Chinese region, but set up an Asian region and a European region, using a direct invitation method. Of the 32 teams participating, only 6 domestic teams, including Tyloo and iG, were invited, while the T1 teams from Europe were supported by ULTI traffic.
But the advance of ULTI has not been smooth. "I'm going to keep trying to educate customers about CS:GO from scratch," he said with a wry smile, adding that two years after CSL was discontinued, the game still hadn't built its own popularity. Abroad, Zhang Zi also has to repair the trust crisis that has been torn down by the prevalence of domestic fake matches. "A lot of teams don't want to play when they hear about Chinese." A CS enthusiast for many years said so.
When it comes to ULTI, Zhang Zi does not shy away from his ambition to make it an Asian CS:GO Major. "There is a fixed rule in the V Society, and if you reach it, he will approve you and will certify you as a Major."
Asia's only CS:GO Major event is enough to help Zhang Zi leverage more resources in Asia, and the gradual invitation of world-class teams to participate also ensures the domestic ratings of this event.
It seems that Zhang Zi has finally followed the trend and integrated into the tide of the copyright owner's promotion of e-sports, but another remark makes people realize that he is just a different way to practice the beliefs he has always believed.
"If it is not affected by the epidemic, ULTI may land in Hainan this year." Hainan is the city with the largest government e-sports efforts recently. In the middle of the road, Zhang Zi became more sleek, trying to use the power of copyright owners and the market to leverage the power of the government again.
He still retains NEST as a sign of strong connection with the government, but does not invest too much while changing his posture from offense to stalemate. He worked hard for 8 years, and this time, he wanted to wait for the system to respond.
In Funspark, the new event IP, Huaao Esports has invested more. He began to dabble in more, including offline, consoles, drones, and even combined various trend brands to create Funspark products. Outside the control of the copyright owner, he completed the layout of almost all the remaining locations.
The 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games is just around the corner, and the relationship between e-sports and managers is once again close. The Information Center of the State General Administration of Sport has also ushered in a new full term of managers after four years and five leadership changes. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism almost withdrew from the impact on e-sports at the administrative level, and at Chinajoy in the middle of the year, Zhang Jianchun, deputy director of the Central Propaganda Department, led a team to participate in the e-sports-themed summit, and the management framework led by the publicity system is gradually being clarified.
Zhang Zi is still the most senior practitioner in China's e-sports industry who understands the way managers think, and in the next five years of changes, we may see more of him. When the rapidly moving e-sports chooses to change tracks from the project copyright direction to the competent authorities, the evaluation that was once "head iron" may become another description.