In the Call of Duty Mobile World Championship, Chinese players have finally raised their eyebrows this time
Text: Yan Jinyan
Since its completion and opening, the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, USA, has a history of 47 years. It is the third-largest convention center in the United States and receives more than 1 million visitors each year. On December 17th, this venue was hosting large-scale events as before, but people didn't expect that what happened here spread to China, thousands of miles away, causing countless players to boil.
On the same day, the 2023 Call of Duty Mobile World Championship came to an end in Atlanta. Chongqing Wolves from China defeated the defending champion Tribe in North America, the No. 1 seed in China, and the No. 1 seed Godlike in India to win the World Championships.
In the relevant post bar of Station B and "Call of Duty Mobile Game" (hereinafter referred to as CODM), this news is crazy to swipe the screen. From the streamer's awesome voice, you can feel the excitement behind the vibrato.
Players can't wait to celebrate this victory with all the words of praise. Behind such a carnival, on the one hand, it is naturally due to the fact that Wolves has many fans, and it is one of the old teams of CODM in China. But it's more because the Chinese team and national server players have accumulated a belly of resentment before this game.
As everyone said, they have waited too long for this moment, CODM national server needs a world champion too much, and this victory also means that the Chinese team has once again broken the domination of European and American FPS.
01
When it comes to mobile e-sports, everything we can think of may be more or less regional. This is easy to understand, for example, if a game is only popular in China or a certain region, then there will be a clear regional bias in the composition of players, and the establishment of events will naturally have certain limitations. But for CODM, the situation is slightly different, and this time the World Championships is a truly global event.
One of the most important reasons is that the Call of Duty franchise has a 20-year history, and to this day, every time its new game is released, it will set off a heated discussion in the gaming circle, and you will be hard-pressed to find a similar product to compete with it. This is enough to reflect the popularity of the Call of Duty IP around the world.
Born out of such an IP, CODM has been talking about its global success since the day it went live. By the middle of this year, according to Activision's financial report, CODM's cumulative revenue had exceeded $3 billion, and the number of global user downloads exceeded 650 million.
To achieve such global results, of course, it is also due to the global layout of CODM e-sports. Since the launch of the game, it has held regional events in North America, Latin America, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia and other regions. With the launch of the national server in 2020, China's event system was rolled out, and Chongqing Wolves also opened an e-sports branch of CODM at that time.
However, as mentioned earlier, CODM has accumulated hundreds of millions of players overseas at that time, even if China has always performed well in the field of mobile e-sports, but when it comes to the CODM project, everyone knows that there is still a lot of gap between us and the always strong European and American FPS.
Among the 16 teams shortlisted for the World Championships this year, in addition to the Wolves, there are two Chinese teams, namely Qingjiu and SPG. Before the start of the war, the Wolves team was not the most optimistic Chinese team, after all, on the eve of the World Championships, the Wolves had lost to Qingjiu 1:4, and everyone was generally worried about the state of the Wolves team.
In the group stage of 16 into 8, the Wolves game made everyone "shocked". In the hot match against KAGE (which can be understood as a point-grabbing mode), KAGE once took the lead to get the match point with a score of 249 points, leading the Wolves by as many as 43 points, and only one point away from victory. To put it simply, as long as KAGE stays in the point and doesn't let the Wolves in, even if it takes one more second to win.
But the Wolves team is like triggering the silk blood buff, they won't play until the endgame, and they will directly explode all the seeds, and they won't let go of a point, not only successfully breaking through KAGE's defense, but also successfully defending the hot spots, and finally successfully turned the tables with a score of 250:249.
Although this kind of comeback is very morale-boosting, from an objective point of view, the ups and downs of Wolves' form do worry many Chinese viewers. Therefore, when everyone learned that the Wolves team will meet the defending champion North American team Tribe in the round of 8, it not only made people pinch a cold sweat.
As the champion of last year's World Championships, Tribe sent Wolves home with his own hands. At that time, due to the schedule, the Wolves had already played many games in a row, and two players were unwell and could not withstand the fierce attack of the Tribe. It can be said that it is very rare for the Wolves to persist in the semi-finals as the only seedling in the Chinese division.
On the one hand, from the perspective of historical record and home field advantage, everyone agrees that Tribe has an absolute advantage. But on the other hand, who doesn't want to see the drama of a dark horse counterattack?
Moreover, after Tribe won the championship last year, it also released cruel words, saying "West is best, East is ass." It can be said that Chinese players dream of seeing them overturned.
Unexpectedly, the results really exceeded everyone's expectations. In the round of 8, the Wolves carried out the explosive genes to the end, and in the face of the heat map, they once again staged a script that they would not play until the last moment. After winning the first game, they swept Tribe with a clean 3-0 score to achieve revenge.
This is not only a battle for Wolves to break the demons, but more importantly, in the next semi-finals, Wolves will meet the No. 1 seed Qing Jiu, who is also from China. This means that no matter which side wins, the Chinese team will appear on the stage of the finals, which has broken through the best result of the Chinese team in the World Championships.
And the Wolves, which have always been a dark horse, are obviously eager to go further on the international stage. Looking at CODM's domestic competitions throughout this year, Wolves and Qingjiu are old rivals. The two teams have won almost all the championships and runners-up in domestic competitions, and from the perspective of historical records, the two sides have won and lost each other, and they are evenly matched.
In the end, the more imposing Wolves defeated Qingjiu in the semifinals with a 3:0 attitude. Then in the final, they also fought quickly, facing the Indian team Godlike, who eliminated the European and American giants and the runner-up LG last year, and the Wolves finally won the coveted World Championship with a score of 4:2.
It is estimated that no one thought that the entire Wolves schedule,
Only 3 small games were lost
It is worth mentioning that after each game, according to the rules set by Activision, the winner needs to go to the team logo wall and spray an "X" on the team logo of the defeated team, while the Wolves team drew a heart when they eliminated Qing Jiu, who also belonged to the Chinese division, and after defeating Godlike in the final, they drew a heart + arrow.
This move has made Wolves a huge fan in European and American circles. It can be said that whether it was last year's fierce battle to win the top four, or this year's dark horse counterattack and finally won the championship, the Wolves have perfectly interpreted the e-sports spirit of "winning without arrogance and defeat without discouragement".
There is no shortage of praise for the sportsmanship of Wolves
For Chinese players, the significance of winning the championship this time is even more indescribable.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the Chinese team has been at the bottom of the vast majority of FPS esports for a long time, and after failing again and again, it has finally broken the domination of Europe and the United States in a game.
As the game ended, the on-site commentators passionately chanted, "The best search and destroy team in the world", and the Wolves showed their tenacity and ability to players around the world. It may represent more than just a team's counterattack, but also a collective proof from Chinese FPS players that we can also stand on top of the world.
02
Of course, going back to the industry perspective, I think there is more significance to Wolves winning the championship this time.
On the one hand, they represent the national server region, breaking the long-term domination of European and American teams, such a huge momentum of winning the championship and the pride of the competition will inevitably promote the development of the game ecology, more FPS players will be attracted to it, and old players will be more belonging. I don't think there is a need to count all the cases of this kind of global e-sports events driving the growth of games.
On the other hand, the Wolves trip should also play a role in encouraging and feeding the development of e-sports in China, allowing the Chinese region to "roll up", thereby giving birth to more local teams and enhancing the overall strength and influence of the region.
In fact, at the 2023 Global Esports Leadership Summit in July this year, I learned that the relevant event data of CODM has increased for many consecutive quarters, including the number of views, cumulative time, and final retention rate. At that time, CODM producer Yao Yuan mentioned that in the future, they will continue to increase their investment in e-sports events, in addition to the domestic league twice a year, the pioneer tournament, and the summer and autumn invitational tournaments will also be held in Asia, so that the domestic league will further integrate with the world competition system and do a good job of "welcoming in" and "going out".
At present, CODM's domestic e-sports events have initially achieved "welcome in", and the twice-a-year invitational tournament has given the national team more opportunities to play against overseas teams, which helps them understand the playing style of other regions and improve their tactical reserves and comprehensive strength.
And with the Wolves winning the championship this time, I think they have completed the "going out". Today, the national service team cultivated by the national server competition system has the strength to compete with the FPS teams in Europe, America and even the world.
With the globalization of esports, I think CODM's esports storyline will become more and more abundant. In the future, there may be more Chinese stories like Wolves on the global stage of CODM.