Interview with Wu Lihua, President of EDG Esports Club - strive to let the outside world feel the charm of the esports industry

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【Wenyan】Baidu APP exclusively released the Asian Games special program "Hardcore Arena" interview with Wu Lihua, co-founder and CEO of Chaojing Group and president of EDG Esports Club.

E-sports became an official event at the Hangzhou Asian Games, with the Chinese team winning four gold medals in seven events. Why did esports make the Asian Games stage? What role can esports play in the future? With EDG Esports Club as an entry point, the answers to these questions will be more vivid

Author丨二trouble

Picture丨From the Internet

On the evening of September 26, in the final of the Asian Games King of the Glory Asian Games in Hangzhou, the Chinese team defeated Malaysia to win the first gold medal in the e-sports event of this Asian Games, and also brought the first real gold medal to the e-sports industry.

As a member of the e-sports industry, Wu Lihua witnessed the historic moment of China's e-sports on the spot, but he was not a bystander, among the Chinese e-sports athletes competing in this Asian Games, King Glory Asian Games version player Chi Xiaoming was from EDG Esports Club.

Making e-sports into Asia a reality and allowing e-sports players to enter the stage of Asia's largest multi-sport event is backed by the years of dedication of the entire industry and the continuous improvement of the industrial ecology by various roles. Taking EDG Esports Club as a detailed starting point, we can find some "confidence" to help e-sports enter Asia and deliver e-sports athletes to the Asian Games venue.

01 Chinese e-sports athletes come from a rigorous training system

At this year's Hangzhou Asian Games, a total of 31 athletes from the Chinese sports delegation participated in e-sports. From the formation of the national training team of e-sports at the end of April this year to the Asian Games, Chinese e-sports has been able to form an internationally competitive team in a very short period of time, behind which is the player training system polished in the ecology of various e-sports events, and we can see this achievement from EDG.

In the League of Legends arena, EDG's competitiveness is reflected from the league "Royal Sanjia" to the championship and championship in the world arena. In the glory of the king, even if Wu Lihua frankly said that the club's results were not outstanding enough, Chi Xiaoming stood out from the outstanding players, which also showed that the club's strength of players can withstand scrutiny and testing. In the Intrepid Contract esports arena, EDG also holds the best score of "CN Watt". These achievements all come from the EDG "pyramid" type training system in Wu Lihua's mouth.

Located at the top of the tower are the club's main teams and main players in various esports sports. In the next level, the substitutes are "eyeing the spire". In the middle waist and "tower" position of the pyramid, there are also the second team of the club and the youth team that continues to pump "fresh blood" to the upper level.

Such a training system is not uncommon in the entire e-sports industry, and thanks to the Internet DNA of e-sports, clubs are more convenient in discovering and selecting talents.

Wu Lihua said: "The performance of each team member in the game, or the competitive performance, is recorded and ranked on the Internet, so in this environment, it is more honorable to select good seedlings." ”

A solid foundation of talent hematopoiesis one of the reasons why the "spire" is sharp enough, in addition, it is a professional and strict training system throughout the pyramid.

"For example, in the Honor of Kings or League of Legends projects, one of the tasks (players) is to 'replenish troops', and you have to practice repeatedly and carry out special training in this detail alone. After the training, (if) you don't do it well, you don't have the rest of the training content, you have to go back to the original point and train again. Wu Lihua said.

Repeated refining of technical movements and technical details is very common in the field of competitive sports, and it is also extremely boring. Similarly, in the field of e-sports, "replenishment" is only the tip of the iceberg polished by the details of players. In Wu Lihua's view, in competitive sports, any deviation in detail may produce a butterfly effect, resulting in earth-shaking changes in the final result, which is why EDG players strictly pay attention to details in the training.

In the past, the mature training system in the e-sports industry was the basis for clubs and players to compete in professional events, but with the entry of e-sports into Asia, the solid skills honed by players in the training system have become the strength for e-sports athletes to win glory for the country in the Asian Games.

02 The spiritual core becomes the key to e-sports joining hands with the Asian Games

In the past 20 years of development and accumulation, the embodiment of the same spiritual core of e-sports as traditional competitive sports has become more and more obvious, which is the core factor that has contributed to the ability of e-sports to participate in the Asian Games today.

So how exactly does the entire esports industry demonstrate a positive spirit? E-sports clubs and players rely on their own influence for content output is an indispensable part.

In Wu Lihua's view, the attributes of the e-sports industry are more inclined to content, and relying solely on the victory or defeat of the event cannot attract more users to gather and retain, and the embodiment of the core of the e-sports spirit also needs to be told with content other than victory and defeat. Therefore, from the beginning of its establishment, EDG has always invested a lot of energy in the IP shaping of teams and players and the construction of content ecology.

"Let everyone know how we prepare, how to fight for each game, and at the same time, we will also make character IP for the story behind each team member, growth process, player goals, etc., and will IP our short and long videos, and present the content to fans in the form of a series." Wu Lihua said.

Due to the club's continuous output of these content in front of and behind the scenes, the image of e-sports events and e-sports players has become more three-dimensional in the eyes of the audience. How to train strictly, how to overcome difficulties, how to win, how to face failure, behind these contents, the core of e-sports' spirit of pursuing higher, faster, stronger, more united, and fighting bravely is not only continuing to pull itself closer to traditional sports, but also arousing the emotional resonance of more e-sports audiences, so that e-sports can now gain hundreds of millions of fans.

In the 2021 League of Legends World Finals, EDG successfully defeated Team DK from South Korea to win the World Championship honor. Within a single day, EDG's victory generated more than 80 trending topics on social media, and the relevant videos were viewed billions of times. This effect comes from EDG's years of deep cultivation of content ecology and IP building, and continuous interaction with fans through content, and the brand image of "Knight" has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

EDG's brand building process is also the epitome of the full image of the entire esports industry. It is precisely because the content ecology of the entire industry is maturing, and the content forms and content carriers have become more diverse, so that the same spiritual core of e-sports and competitive sports is displayed in the vision of more outside people, which has provided assistance for e-sports to gain mainstream recognition and enter the Asian Games stage.

03 Entering Asia, a new starting point for e-sports

Wu Lihua clearly remembers that in 2014, almost all the cooperative brands of EDG Club were computer peripheral brands. At that time, EDG had reached a full-year cooperation with a brand, with a cost of about 200,000 yuan, which was already the highest in the industry that year.

Today, including EDG, the cooperation between commercial brands and leading clubs in the industry has reached tens of millions, but the perspective is still significantly different from the magnitude of brand cooperation in the traditional sports field. With the emergence of esports at the Asian Games, this gap has a tendency to accelerate and flatten.

The Asian Games with national attention can not only amplify the positive value of e-sports and promote the image of the e-sports industry to break the circle, but also present the influence of e-sports clubs and e-sports players among young people to more external brands, thereby expanding cooperation opportunities between e-sports and external brands. At the same time, Wu Lihua also mentioned that due to the different growth environments, the e-sports industry relying on the Internet may also have its own distinctive business models waiting to be explored, which also requires e-sports and external industries to work together to explore.

In addition to the business model, the e-sports in Wu Lihua's eyes are far from reaching the peak of development, and are even in their infancy.

"Now, people may just play so-called confrontation projects on mice, keyboards or mobile phones, but with the continued development of wearable devices, gravity feedback devices, and imaging equipment, in the near future, people's physical fitness may also participate in e-sports competitions, gradually forming the prototype of digital sports." Wu Lihua said.

Not long ago, the landing of the Olympic E-sports Series and Olympic E-sports Week made "virtual sports" a hot word in the development of the industry, and the virtual taekwondo, full dance and other projects on the Olympic e-sports event also fully demonstrated the imaginative space of the integration of e-sports and sports and the development prospects of digital sports.

Of course, whether it is the integration of e-sports and the Asian Games now becoming a reality, maintaining e-sports in the Asian Games more permanently, or the new form of digital sports that the sports and e-sports industry is still trying and imagining, it needs to be refined to more professional talents to promote, and the future development of the industry will be directly reflected in the quality and quantity demand for talents.

According to Wu Lihua, the business territory of Chaojing Group behind EDG also covers the field of e-sports education, and has published 16 e-sports vocational textbooks with 2.5 million words of textbook content and 5 million words of courseware matching the textbook.

"We hope to cultivate professional practitioners with professional knowledge of the esports industry and participate in the construction of this industry." Wu Lihua said.

Whether it is player training, content ecological construction, and the development of "e-sports +" business, Wu Lihua has only one goal in his mouth: "We are working hard to do our own thing, hoping to promote the development of the e-sports industry." ”