Recently, Touro was invited to Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, to participate in a series of meetings organized by Tencent eSports, the Asian Electronic Sports Federation, and the Zhejiang Digital Culture***. The meeting was held at the Hangzhou International Expo Center, divided into two parts: the morning of the 2022 Global eSports Leadership Summit, focusing on the development of the eSports industry under the opportunity of the Asian Games; in the afternoon is the Tencent eSports annual conference, focusing on the Tencent eSports annual layout planning.
The 2022 Global Esports Leadership Summit and Tencent Esports Annual Conference was held in Hangzhou, with more than 20 guests in attendance
The past 3 years have been slightly bumpy for all industries, and esports is no exception. Traditional offline tournaments have been forced to move back online, and we've experienced the postponement of Ti10, the Dagger Tower 2 tournament, as well as remote participation in the League of Legends 2022 Mid-Season Championships. In fact, it wasn't easy to hold the "Race to Asia", which was the first offline conference of the year for the gaming industry against the backdrop of the epidemic. You can see the excitement and nervousness of the people at the event, whether it's the staff, guests, exhibitors, or the gaming media, people have all the expectations for this offline event, and hope to find the answers they are looking for here. Because of this, it can't afford to go wrong, and all entry procedures are very strict, with requirements such as epidemic prevention.
Thinking about e-sports from the Asian Games
The morning of the Global e-Sports Leadership Summit focused on the development of the e-sports industry under the opportunity of the Asian Games - 2019, e-sports formally announced that it was "entering the Asian Games. ", which is considered a milestone event in the history of e-sports, and is also the result of the development of e-sports for so many years.
Not only in the sports world, this influence is now reaching the general public, especially in Asia, where Newzoo's Global Esports and Live Gaming Market Report 2022, released this month, mentions that the Chinese market accounts for nearly one-third of the world's esports revenue.
In the past, when we talked about the Asian Games and women's volleyball, we would always say "traditional sports". Over the years, eSports, as an "emerging sport", has continued to learn from and integrate with traditional sports. Because of this, we can see Mr. Huo Qigang, President of the Asian Electronic Sports Federation, and Mr. Lang Ping, Vice President of the Chinese Volleyball Association and former head coach of the Chinese women's volleyball team, at the E-Sports Summit - I think E-Sports is changing, and this "emerging sports industry" is changing with the "traditional sports industry". This "emerging sports industry" is developing and progressing together with the "traditional sports industry "*** to create social value. The realization of this goal may be now, or in the near future, and to promote these possibilities is exactly what we need to do, and what we are doing.
The spirit of women's volleyball is similar to the spirit of e-sports
While the industry as a whole is evolving, it is also changing internally. At the summit, eight people from different companies, different projects in charge of sitting together, Tencent Interactive Entertainment Tianmei gaming center general manager, the glory of the king of the e-sports general director Zhang Yiga, perfect world gaming senior tournament director Wang Sheng, the soul of the network R & D VP, the soul of the network of the light years of the general manager of the studio Yao ShaoLong, the vice president of the tencent game LvPeng, NetEase Blizzard cooperation department of the senior director of the e-sports PangYe, Tencent Interactive Entertainment K6 cooperation department deputy general manager, Tencent Sports CEO Jin Yibo, Tencent Interactive Entertainment photon marketing director, PEL alliance chairman Liao Kan - in fact, also included did not come to the scene, from CAPCOM's "Street Fighter 5" producer Matsumoto Shuhei.
If you're unfamiliar with these titles, they actually represent League of Legends, Honor of Kings (Asian Games Edition), Peaceful Elite (Asian Games Edition), Tower of Blades 2, Dreams of Three Kingdoms 2, FIFA Online 4, The Legend of Hearthstone, and Street Fighter 5, which are the eight e-sports competitions that have officially been selected to compete at the Hangzhou Asian Games. The people in charge sat together to talk about the relationship between their respective projects and the Asian Games, as well as the new development of Asian gaming.
Usually we can hardly imagine such a scene, but in the premise of the Asian Games and the current industry is under pressure, such a scene is really realized. 8 project managers to take the opportunity of the General Assembly to sit together in the same hall, this conversation also to a certain extent shows the unity of the development of China and even the Asian gaming industry attitude.
It's not something we've seen a lot of before
It's probably a historic moment for gaming in China, and I don't want to make too big a deal out of it until it happens, but maybe in the future, when you look back, you'll see that gaming in China is really different today.
For these eight sports, the ultimate goal of getting to the Asian Games is the same, but the paths to it are different. You can find a lot of the same and different points from them, let's say "Honor of Kings", "League of Legends", "Blade Tower 2" and "Dream Three Kingdoms 2" are MOBA games, the former two were also selected for the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games showpiece along with "The Legend of Hearthstone"; "FIFA Online 4" originated from the reality of competitive soccer, while "Peaceful Elite" has transplanted the traditional traditional forms of shooting and racing to competitive forms of sports to e-sports tournaments.
Going into the Asian Games, the games in these eight sports are being adapted accordingly for the Games, and we haven't seen any particularly definitive results yet, but there are some nodal announcements, like Honor of Kings, which recently began testing an international version of Honor of Kings, which is seen as an attempt to globalize e-sports.
'Honor of Kings' is an attempt to globalize the future of 'Honor of Kings'
After a postponement, the Hangzhou Asian Games are now scheduled to open on September 23, 2023, a little more than a year from now, and the road to the Asian Games for these eight sports enters a sprint. A year from now, they'll be on the same field as such traditional-to-traditional sports as track and field, soccer, and boxing. It's impossible to stop thinking about the future - will there be more programs after that? After Asia, what's next? We may not have the answers for the future yet, but there was a slight change in gaming at the conference, and it got a new name, "Emerging Sports Industry". This change may trigger a new round of "butterfly effect" in the future.
The Future of Tencent Esports
These thoughts may be far off, but we talked about some of the more recent ones. The theme of the afternoon is Tencent e-sports annual conference, catering to the Asian Games, Tencent e-sports has entered a new development cycle, Tencent game vice president, general manager of Tencent e-sports Hou Miao at the meeting formally released the "Tencent e-sports annual planning", which includes The League of Legends, The League of Legends handheld game, The Glory of Kings, Call of Duty, Handheld game, Peaceful Elite, Flying Frogs, and so on. Hand game", "peace elite", "FIFA Online 4", "QQ Speed", "Dark Zone Breakout", "Naruto" and "Cross Fire" series, the projects are on stage to introduce their own tournament planning for the next period of time.
Hou Miao released Tencent's annual plan for e-sports
A lot of these programs mentioned e-sports events rooted in the private sector, such as Honor of Kings, which released the "King Sai Bao," a universal e-sports system. Let's say you want to organize a class or company tournament, but the participants' accounts are scattered on WeChat and QQ, and the heroes and inscriptions are not very complete. In addition, a tournament also needs referees and other staff members ...... It's a pain in the ass to run a tournament, and there are usually professional tournament companies for large-scale tournaments, but small-scale private tournaments don't necessarily The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on a new one, and you'll be able to do it.
Wang Sai Bao solved a considerable part of these problems, the organizer in the Wang Sai Bao's public number, subscription number can directly create the game, the participants can get all heroes, all inscriptions of the limited privileges, but also cross-platform competition, at the same time, the Wang Sai Bao also provides OB, cast screen broadcasting, and even AI commentator - the big The competition is naturally important, and the Asian Games represents the future of the industry, but the small, ordinary competitions that take place around us and are accessible to everyone form the cornerstone of the game and make "King's Glory" the "King's Glory".
"King Sai Bao" solved a lot of folk running tournaments
This thing is not only "King of Glory" is doing, including "Naruto" and "Cross Fire" series of e-sports have also begun to develop a private In fact, this seems to be one of the goals of the entire Tencent e-sports. Through this conference, we can see that the identity of Tencent e-sports is changing, and taking responsibility for the industry and transferring experience to the outside world has become the next step in their planning. As you can see, in addition to the King Sable, the conference also announced the "e-sports SaaS tool set" and the construction of Hangzhou intercontinental e-sports city, as well as tournaments and e-sports talent incubation program, which are all very basic tools and modes, from a single game, tournaments, to now assume the responsibility for the development of the industry, tencent e-sports is about to complete the turnaround.
The ceiling of this conference we're participating in at the Hangzhou International Expo Center is almost two stories high, but the theme we're discussing is how to lower and lower the threshold of the e-sports industry, so that everyone can enjoy coming in, not just as a spectator, but as a participant.