Flower Street Reference · produce
Author | Lin Mo
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Guoxue master Wang Guo Weizhen said that every generation has a generation of literature.
Under the immersion of different era environment, each generation has different interests and interests, and has achieved and influenced each other with the cultural products of that time. In ancient times, it was Chu Ci, Han Fu, and Tang poetry. Now, it's esports, comics, and animation.
And when a generation of young people becomes the mainstream force that holds the power of social discourse, what they like will naturally be upgraded to mainstream culture.
Ten years ago, no one could have predicted that esports would become the language of the younger population and usher in the best of development. It entered the hall and occupied the "annual influential e-sports event" section in the entertainment festival of Weibo Night, and the 2022 League of Legends League and the 2022 Honor of Kings Pro League won the spotlight.
Group photo of the honorary representatives of the 2022 Weibo Night Annual Impact E-sports Awards
The beginning of this story was written in March 2013.
At that time, the first LPL (League of Legends League) Spring Tournament landed, officially opening the process of professionalization of domestic League of Legends events. This is the first and most crucial step in completely separating professional esports from playing games.
Those young players who are "not in business" are doing something that will change the industry, and the fortunes of many involved will change as a result. For example, the IG team, which won the League of Legends World Finals in 2018, can only brush its sense of existence with a monthly salary of up to 6,000 yuan.
Of course, ordinary people do not care.
We are busy watching the four major portals roll up in the "Weibo" world, and Sina Weibo is far ahead with 503 million registered users, becoming the ultimate winner living until now. At this time, Sina Weibo published and forwarded more than 200 million pieces of information every day, which is already quite an astonishing data.
Today, in 2022 alone, League of Legends-related topics can exceed 300 billion views, and it has won more than 2,000 hot searches throughout the year.
According to iMedia data, the market size of the e-sports industry has reached 167.3 billion yuan, and the user scale has exceeded 506 million. The leader in professional esports has become a new idol with tens of millions of fans. And before they became famous, no one believed that such gravity and value were hidden in them, including themselves.
The soundness of the industrial chain has brought huge benefits, and the stories of professional players have stimulated more people to participate in it. This e-sports circle, originally gathered by interest or self-proof, has become a big spectacle, and it has been announced on Weibo.
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The degree of dramatization of the professionalization process of esports is completely comparable to that of online novels.
Lonely boy, the wind rises Qingping; Team up to attack and enter the famous door; After years of hard fighting, the dream has not yet come true. Fortunately, with the help of all the gold lords, the world rose together, and the dark horse finally counterattacked and returned home with the championship.
Before 2015, Chinese esports were in the darkest moment of internal and external difficulties. The rich second generation who rushed to enter the market did push the industry, but it did not fundamentally change the dilemma of love power generation, which is still the enclosure of a few fans.
It was not until 2016 that the state began to release e-sports support policies one after another, and Suning, Jingdong and other enterprises have seen e-sports clubs, and the industry has undergone earth-shaking changes.
However, the voice on social media is still limited. Don't look at the official blog of the League of Legends event now, there are tens of millions of fans and active users, and it was originally just a small transparency that no one cared for. As for the King Pro League, it just landed in September 2016.
The real turning point came on November 3, 2018. LPL team IG fought hard to win the 2018 League of Legends World Finals, the first time the LPL division has lifted the S Championship trophy. The news quickly swept the Chinese esports circle, and then monopolized the topic of online social networking.
Team IG won the 2018 League of Legends World Championship
People's Daily News, the Communist Youth League Central Committee and other official media reported, and mainstream media also competed to forward it. That night, Weibo's hot search was flooded by related topics, and many entertainment topics similar to "what does Egypt bull mean" appeared. It was the biggest outing of esports, and everyone was talking about IG winning the championship. Among them, the Weibo topic #IG won the championship# stopped at 580 million views.
This fulcrum really kicks off a magnificent era of e-sports.
The following year, Jane proudly topped the list of "Weibo Night" Person of the Year, followed by Wang Yibo and Xiao Zhan. In addition to him, e-sports professional players Ming Kai, Jiang Chengzi, and Yu Wenbo also squeezed into the top ten.
Uzi, the 2019 Weibo Night Person of the Year, topped the list
This prosperous ecology is shared by all games, and a series of e-sports events such as "Honor of Kings", "Crossfire" and "Hearthstone" have reached the glory of the top, and everyone can feel the growing popularity of the esports circle.
In the 2022 King Glory World Championship KIC Finals, Wuhan eStarPro team finally won the Phoenix Cup. On Weibo, the number of views on topics related to this event quickly exceeded 100 million and exceeded 1 billion... This time, ordinary netizens are no longer surprised, and they can already understand and even empathize with the smooth meaning of the teenager's dream.
The winner of the 2022 King Glory KIC Finals won the cup
E-sports content has become a norm on Weibo.
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Weibo users have definitely contributed to bringing ordinary passers-by into the world of esports.
Looking back at IG's victory in 2018, most of the most out-of-the-loop topics came from those e-sports fans who played memes on Weibo. What impressed me the most was that the memes and jokes of "Congratulations to Xiao Yang" (IG team player Xiao Yang) were scattered on Weibo, and Xiao Yang personally responded to this matter, which is a source of happiness.
Weibo has become the intersection of fans Amway esports and passers-by into e-sports.
So, does e-sports only need one event and a batch of hot searches? Not. Its process of growing into mainstream is closely intertwined with the rise of entertainment forms such as live streaming and short videos, and is inseparable from the long-term blessing of Weibo e-sports content ecology.
Weibo has always been an essential channel for users to obtain content such as games and e-sports. Data shows that at present, the core users of Weibo games are as many as 130 million, and the number of game-related content read exceeds 180 billion. Interestingly, compared with short video platforms, the average Weibo user creates more than 30% of the game content.
This is enough to show that the "community-style" game ecology built by players has been completed on Weibo. Professional gamers, game bloggers, core enthusiasts, and ordinary users are active, and this consumption atmosphere can promote the flow of e-sports culture in the public's vision, and be seen and appreciated by more people.
In addition, Weibo game content types are also diverse, including graphics, live broadcasts, short videos, etc., which can be used by everyone to find the most comfortable posture for opening e-sports.
Core fans prefer in-depth content, and they can forage for food on official accounts, live broadcasts, and professional gamers' Weibo; Players' fans prefer entertainment news, and they can be active on Weibo, fan base, and go in both directions with professional e-sports players; Even our ordinary users, brushing Weibo nights, may unconsciously be covered by e-sports content.
King Glory KPL professional player Yinuo parachuted into the super talk to interact with fans
This does not explain why esports events are getting more and more popular. In 2022, the Glory of Kings Pro League is unprecedentedly popular, with more than 80 billion views on topics related to the four events throughout the year, and as many as 1,300 hot searches on the list throughout the year, refreshing historical results.
The mainstreaming of esports did not come suddenly in the spring, but we have completed one link after another and a wave of consumption on Weibo over the past decade.
Money has given the e-sports castle a solid foundation. People, so that the magnificent hall of e-sports has the possibility of expansion.
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You must have felt that the public's impression of e-sports has long changed from playing games to sports that win glory for the country.
At the beginning of this month, the Weibo hot search of #The first batch of Asian Games e-sports licensed products was launched#, and it also set off heated discussions among netizens. Many onlookers were curious about the employment situation of the first batch of domestic e-sports students after graduation, and they were lively and jubilant.
The road is still very long, and the best times do not mean to stop here.
If esports has finally found the answer to "how to mainstream" in the past decade, then it still needs to answer another question, where should the industry go beyond the circle?
Is it to become a new way of life?
Quite possibly. After all, today's game manufacturers, esports events, etc., are trying very hard to get closer to this concept. The problem is that to this point, esports content must first permeate all aspects of reality until it is truly ingrained.
The traffic and national interaction effect of e-sports are fairly given to every manufacturer and brand, but how much they can expand this radius and how far deep they can penetrate is a test of marketing power.
The game doesn't go on, but marketing can. Weibo, which has been deeply engaged in the field of e-sports for many years, has done its best in four aspects: channel socialization, game branding, marketing hot talk, and operation community, trying to provide supporting marketing resources for corresponding brands and tap user value and commercial value as much as possible.
For example, Weibo can provide flexible and rich marketing scenarios, covering the entire link cycle of the game, relying on tools such as information flow advertising, Weibo hot search, brand windows, and super topics to help games enhance user value from various dimensions.
Taking the blockbuster game Genshin as an example, the product's super words have attracted more than 9.5 million "travelers" and produced 2.79 million posts. Official, game bloggers, core fans, etc. have been built in the air, making it the first mobile game super talk all year round and attracting more new players.
For example, Weibo marketing has an obvious ripple effect, which can accelerate the pace of brand breaking the circle by laying out star content, brand zones, reservation components, etc.
Previously, "Douluo Continent" launched its anniversary celebration on Weibo, taking advantage of star spokesperson Yang Zi to achieve cross-circle integration of games and entertainment, deeply activating target players while expanding brand interest groups. The data shows that the average brand voice on the day of this anniversary event increased by 4.8 times compared with the previous day, and the number of related topics read exceeded 65 million.
In a word, in the era of mainstream e-sports, e-sports players and e-sports commentators have also stepped on a bright star path, and their influence is not inferior to ordinary artists. On Weibo, if it builds its public image with a star operation model, the personal traffic and commercial value are also immeasurable.
In addition, closing the loop is something that any business model has to talk about. And this is another advantage of Weibo to empower the game industry. The platform strongly integrates the upstream, midstream and downstream resources of game manufacturers, e-sports ecosystems, and practitioners, diving deep into the production and consumption ends, and can accurately grasp the pulse of the industry and empower each other.
Success is often the story of countless individual destinies, intertwined in the course of history. In the long years of professional e-sports, Weibo is not only a bystander, but also you and me.
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