Image source @ Visual China
Text | Entertainment Hard Candy, author | Mao Lina, Editor | Li Chunhui
The draft is suspended, the showman is low-key, and the vacancies left by the old are being filled by new faces.
E-sports players who participated in the League of Legends Global Finals (S12) overseas have become hot search regulars recently. From the player's diagnosis of the new crown to the 2:3 defeat in the knockout round, even if it is an e-sports layman, he can be seated in the face of the words "EDG" and "RNG" - "although I don't know what it means, but it is related to competitors at first glance".
Since IG won the championship in 2018, the esports industry has been pressed the accelerator button for four years. With policy support, the investment of college education resources and changes in the public opinion environment, "professional games" have been widely accepted, and e-sports players have also become idols in the spotlight.
At the same time, esports fans (fans) are growing in a stealthy and fast-moving way. This hard candy jun himself has a deep experience, chasing drama groups, game groups and even star chasing groups, after getting acquainted with each other, there will always be a "competition for fans to recognize relatives".
It must be admitted that competitors can have today's public recognition, which is directly related to fans. The commercialization of esports events such as LPL and KPL is also inseparable from the help of fans. Of course, like other circles, in the face of the invasion of the fan economy, the competition circle is compromising on the one hand and fighting on the other.
Is the competitor open for business today?
Idol business is to send beautiful photos, and competitive business is to open live broadcast. The fun of competition lies in the large number of materials. Except for the closed training period of the World Championships, competitors will be open in the live broadcast room at other times, such as fixed ranking live broadcast. In the off-season, competitors will also live stream some standalone or other popular mobile games.
For example, South Korean player Beryl is known as "Brother Genshin" because of his addiction to "Genshin". LNG club player Doinb is good at reorganizing in live broadcasts, and player TheShy simply learned "Newspaper Dish Name" in the live broadcast room.
In addition to the live broadcasts of the competitors themselves, the club will also produce homemade variety shows to feed fans. Taking the EDG club as an example, "EDG'cam" is similar to the reunion complex, and the content is mostly about werewolf killing, secret escape, or team building; "E Can't Help It" is a voice clip of some matches, fans can more intuitively feel the cooperation of competitors during the game and the atmosphere of the team; Elog is a player's personal Vlog, recording everything that happens from the player's perspective.
The club also includes the monthly live broadcast time as a KPI in the contract, which ensures that even competitors who don't like to stream will have to get the job done. Recently, player mlxg sued RNG Club for non-performance, and mentioned that the down payment and live broadcast salary were arrears, which shows that live broadcast KPIs are common.
Competitive live streaming and club-made variety shows complement each other to ensure that fans have content to watch during the competition and off-season. Compared with the showmen who have not been heard from for half a year, the materials and business frequency of competitors are indeed large and sufficient.
Everything can form CP, and competitors cannot escape this objective law. Even if the competitors' girlfriends are beautiful one by one, they can't stop the hearts of fans. The club has also sometimes followed suit, catering to some fans' desire for "socialist brotherhood".
"In fact, CP is really not mainstream in the competition, and everyone knows that the competitors are all straight men." Fan L told Hard Candy Jun that the audience loves to watch, and the club will cater to it. But because the competitors themselves do not rely on CP to eat, the qualification to play the game cannot be spent because of who can engage in CP. Therefore, compared with the practice of the showman, the competitive CP is more like two people who have a good relationship to push the boat along the water, not as strong as the Xiuren CP industrial saccharin.
To be fair, most of the fans are still very rational. After all, there is no love ban for competitors, it is only a matter of time before you find a girlfriend, and it is CP fans themselves who are too injured. Even when the grades are good, everyone will bang frantically, "focus on scolding when you hit the dishes."
In the face of some CP rice snorting to death, or even dancing directly in front of the contestants, the competitors have gradually changed from being uncomfortable at the beginning to "tired and casual". However, CP rice quarrels will also affect the friendship between competitors, and some CPs have gradually drifted away because fans tear too much.
What exactly do fans love
Last year at S11, Team EDG won the championship on the night alias "When the Demons Dance". Male college students collectively ran naked, washed their hair upside down, and even threatened to eat live, and even the fan group was labeled as "extreme" and "out of line". In recent years, some people have deliberately focused the camera on women in the competition, deliberately concocting the topic of "brain-dead female fans invading the competition circle".
In fact, competitive fans are still very different from show fans. As fans like to say, "E-sports, dishes are the original sin". How far the players can go depends on their strength, and the club will not risk the world's condemnation, everything depends on the fans.
In recent years, the influence of e-sports has expanded, and there are indeed some homeless fans who have flowed into the competition circle and brought the set of "he has worked hard" words. But this kind of people are still a minority, and they will be attacked by other competitive fans.
This is obviously different from Xiu fan. Although good-looking competitors do attract more fans, they are still based on achievements. Some competitors are still quite ruthless, and the results drop and say goodbye.
Although the fan team continues to grow, many passers-by still express confusion about fans, especially girls, to compete, "It's not how handsome you are, it's just playing games."
In the early days, the fans entered the pit because they played games and wanted to learn technology. Later, as the influence of e-sports broke the circle, the bloody dream-chasing characteristics of competitors and the legendary story of talented players becoming famous at a young age attracted another group of people.
Meow is such a fan who is attracted to "hot-blooded e-sports". In them, she saw an ideal sustenance, and she liked the "look of wanting to win".
"Actually, the life of an e-sports player is very boring, most of the time is training. But it is also pure, it is to work hard and rank in order to win this goal. Maybe I've never tried to fight so hard for something, so I feel like they're doing something they can't do. ”
Indeed, there are Japanese hot-blooded teenager comics before, and there is a talent reality show story line later, and the story of hot-blooded teenagers chasing dreams is a big killer no matter what era it is. Compared with the showman, the story of the competition's bloody pursuit of dreams is more real. After all, the dreams of showmen can be pieced together by script and editing, and the story of competitors is directly presented through a game. In other words, the blood of the showman may be acted, and the blood of the competitors is really seen by the audience themselves.
In addition, the career of an esports player is not long compared to other industries. This year, EDG lost to DRX with a two-game lead, an era is over, genius returns from the peak to ordinary, and the king falls from the throne, which also adds a tragedy to esports itself. This tragic beauty also has a strong attraction to fans.
The changed esports circle
The star-chasing mentality of competitive fans and show fans is different, and looking at the comment areas of major clubs, it has indeed not developed into the "protect the best XX in the world" in the comment area of show people. But some things have changed with the development of the fan economy.
The good side, of course, is that the commercial value of competitors begins to be noticed by brands. After all, fans mean purchasing power, and although fans are not as crazy as show fans, they are still willing to spend money for their home team or favorite players. The top player Uzi has won brand endorsements including Nike, Harbin Beer, and Yujie. Team RNG has endorsed KFC. In addition, mobile phones, radiators, functional drinks and other products have thrown olive branches to competitors.
Commercial value is not only the competitors, but also the clubs behind them and the event itself. Clubs and esports brands are also starting to make stars.
How can there be no list if there are fans? Competitors have also begun to appear on various lists, as well as votes for competitors such as "most popular". Although fans often openly say that they do not do data and do not vote, the fact is that someone goes to vote or even brush the vote.
Last year, "Honor of Kings" and "League of Legends" competed for fans because of the "Top Ten Influential Players" list. The "Kings" contenders hold seven seats in the ten general elections, and there is already a subtle chain of contempt between the two companies, so the KPL player's inclusion is considered to be the result of vote swiping.
There are frequent conflicts between different fan groups, breeding "black fans" is a logical plot, and even professional black fans. Some black fans took advantage of the fact that the players lost the game to engage in verbal bullying on the Internet. As mentioned above, competitive fans are not brainless for competitors, and some seemingly rational words of black fans are quite inflammatory, and it is easy to evolve into a mental war against players.
However, at present, the main battlefield of domestic black powder is basically on the Internet, relying on comment areas and private messages to spit black mud to influence the players. Next door, South Korea is even more excessive, sending threatening letters and items to players offline. No matter how calm the players are on the field, they are only young people in their twenties, and some people are really frightened because of this, and their state is sluggish and cannot recover for a long time.
Since the basic elements of the rice circle have been matched in the competition circle, the derivatives with the color of the rice circle will naturally not be left behind. Needless to say, competitors may also join the team crazy for three-inch small cards.
BEFORE THE START OF THIS YEAR'S S TOURNAMENT, LPL LEAGUE PROFESSIONAL LEAGUE GENUINE LICENSE, EXTRAORDINARY TOYS BUFFUN PRODUCED AND RELEASED A BATCH OF 2021 SUMMER PLAYER COLLECTIBLE CARDS. It is generally believed that this move indicates that the competition circle is also going to embark on the road of star cards.
And with the precedent of the star card that got rich overnight, the fans are still watching, and the cook (the person who hypes various peripheral prices in the rice circle, because he loves to fry, so he is called the cook) has already bet on treasure. Some of the small cards of popular players have even reached a high price close to five figures.
The price fluctuation of the competitive small card is more exciting than that of idol, because it is directly linked to the competition results. Some cooks said that after receiving the card at a high price, he burned incense at home every day, hoping that the competitors would perform well in the S race, "If you lose, the price is likely to plunge." ”
Competitors are hotly discussed in the social field, and some young people with star dreams see new employment opportunities: no need to be able to sing and dance, no need to be too sharp, just play games. Playing e-sports seems to have become another way for young men to become famous in addition to singing and dancing and speaking crosstalk.
However, hard candy jun must pour a basin of cold water, what is seen is always only the head, and the survival of the bottom competitors is not as good as that of small Internet celebrities. Fans revealed that members of the club are jokingly called "water dispenser administrators", but fans will not blindly join the shares to support because the administrator looks good, "It still depends on the results, you can't beat me why do I have to support." ”
The invasion of the fan economy has indeed brought some changes to the competitive circle, but the nature of competitors and esports competitions dooms it to not be a draft replacement.