Tokyo: Being coveted by my wife, I just want to play games

According to the company's statistics, the global e-sports market size last year reached US$72 billion, excluding the live broadcasts of players and gamers.

This number is actually quite exaggerated, but what is even more exaggerated is that the market value of the e-sports industry is still expanding at a rate of more than 15% per year. However, this so-called e-sports industry is actually a bit of a fake.

Last year, 82% of the e-sports industry's revenue came from e-sports games, such as various in-app purchases such as tokens and skins. The live broadcast of e-sports games accounted for 15%, while the combined revenue from events and clubs only accounted for about 3%.

Data cannot speak for itself, and these data are clearly conveying a message - the e-sports industry is just a gimmick for the game itself, or in other words, those professional clubs are just atmosphere groups in the bar.

These professional clubs and various professional competitions are just "atmosphere groups" used to attract players' attention and attract players to play games. The so-called real money-making point of the e-sports industry is the various in-game purchases by players.

This may sound like putting the cart before the horse, but it is actually a relatively normal phenomenon in the business world.

For example, "Pokemon" in the previous life.

Many people may think that the most profitable part of the "Pokemon" IP is making games and animations, but this is not actually the case.

The annual revenue of the Pokémon IP exceeds 200 billion US dollars, but 60% of the revenue comes mainly from [licensed merchandise], that is, toys, clothing, household goods, and peripheral things such as theme parks.

Licensed merchandise accounts for about 60% of Pokémon's total revenue, while the Pokémon game itself only accounts for about 20% of the company's total revenue.

Similarly, although the e-sports industry has become an Olympic event, the industry itself does not generate huge revenue. However, because the e-sports industry can attract a large number of players and thus greatly increase the sales of certain e-sports games, the e-sports industry is still a battleground.

Or put it simply.

The e-sports industry is like the supporting characters in mobile games. These supporting characters themselves cannot deal huge damage, but they can amplify the output of the C position, and as long as the operation is proper, the output will increase greatly.

The e-sports industry is very important, so Dongchuan Che is also paying close attention to it.

"By the way, last time we talked about the league, who wants to be in charge of this, you or Fujiko?"

After watching Sayuri Sato sign the contract, Toru Fuyukawa raised his eyebrows and looked at Miyano Mitsuko. Although League of Legends has not been released yet, not to mention whether it will become a hit, Toru Fuyukawa has confidence in this game.

According to market research, the current market situation of MOBA e-sports games is very similar to the period before "DOTA2" was released.

To put it simply, DOTA is definitely a phenomenal game. When it was popular, almost all the boys in the university dormitory were playing DOTA. But the same principle still applies: every game has a lifespan.

"DOTA" is a map released in 2003. Although the version has been continuously updated, new heroes have been added, and the gameplay has been fine-tuned, these changes are ultimately only temporary solutions and the players' enthusiasm and freshness for the game will slowly disappear.

Although many old DOTA players claim that if DOTA2 had been released a few years earlier, there would be no League of Legends, but in fact, the possibility is not great.

The early version of "DOTA2" is actually a graphically enhanced version of "DOTA", and the gameplay is almost seamless.

The advantage of doing this is that "DOTA2" can inherit a large number of "DOTA" players, but the disadvantage is that "DOTA2" cannot provide much freshness to old DOTA players, which also means that "DOTA2" has no reason to bring the "DOTA" map back to its peak.

Because the core problem facing "DOTA" at that time was the lack of novelty. The game could not provide players with fresh and interesting gameplay, and the problem that "DOTA2" solved was the graphics problem.

This is also the reason why "League of Legends" can surpass "DOTA2".

When League of Legends was first released, it was criticized for plagiarizing DOTA. But in fact, this is the same as Genshin Impact being criticized for plagiarizing Zelda.

These games all seem to be very similar at first glance, but once you play them in depth, you will find that the gaming experience is completely different.

"League of Legends" has no TP, no blocking, and no counter-help, so in terms of the lack of basic skills, the difficulty of "League of Legends" is lower than that of "DOTA". But precisely because there is no TP, no blocking, and no counter-help, and the defense tower has higher attack power, "League of Legends" players have to care more about the soldier line.

This is not about the pros and cons of one way of playing, but these are just two ways of playing!

Although there are both lines of soldiers, defensive towers, and hero laning, for old players of "DOTA", the gameplay of "League of Legends" that focuses more on the lines of soldiers can give them a sense of freshness that "DOTA" cannot give them.

In addition, "DOTA" does not have small dragons or big dragons. Although there is a Roshan, it is not a decisive resource. Moreover, the development team of "DOTA" did not implement the "resource group gameplay" like "League of Legends" around the Roshan resource.

In the early days of DOTA, the pace was very, very slow, and a game of 40 to 50 minutes was considered normal. In fact, when playing DOTA on platforms such as VS and HaoFang, because there was no penalty for quitting the game midway and no surrender option, it was common for a player to control two or three heroes after 40 to 50 minutes. This brings us to another difference between League of Legends and DOTA - operation.

"League of Legends" has relatively fewer targeted skills, and most of the damage is not dealt by basic attacks, but "DOTA" is different.

DOTA is a landmark work that represents the development of MOBA games from their infancy to maturity, but it also means that DOTA has no reference objects to learn from. Moreover, DOTA is a map built on the platform of Warcraft 3, and the character modeling and skill mechanism are all adopted from Warcraft 3, so most of the skills in DOTA are directional skills, and the operation requirements are not high.

Late-game heroes like Phantom Assassin and Rifleman are all heroes that deal damage with basic attacks. At the same time, there are also equipment like Black King Bar that grants magic immunity to characters, and there were no skills in the game at that time that could enhance the damage of mage skills. This also led to the fact that once the late-game heroes of "DOTA" were fully developed, their role in the team was far greater than that of the late-game heroes of "League of Legends", and they could chase three or four people without any brains.

However, the operational requirements of DOTA are lower than those of League of Legends, but the vision design of DOTA is more in-depth than that of League of Legends. For example, taking a big medicine and going around a tree to block the vision and then counterattack, or opening the fog to enter the wild area to catch people, etc.

It is precisely because of these seemingly similar but completely different gameplay differences that distinguish "League of Legends" from "DOTA".

Of course, this is not the only reason why "League of Legends" can replace "DOTA". Other reasons include the style of painting that is more easily accepted by Asian players. For example, because there is no counter-killing and no blocking of soldiers, the entry threshold in low segments will be lower, so the audience is wider. For example, Tencent owns the two largest social media platforms in China, and its advantages in publicity and promotion are much stronger, etc.

But the end of the game's lifespan must also be a key factor. After all, the previous "League of Legends" also began to decline without the emergence of high-quality competitors. As for the emergence of mobile games such as "Honor of Kings" affecting the popularity of "League of Legends",

This statement is actually not so easy to sustain because data does not lie.

In 2016, the monthly active users of "League of Legends" exceeded the milestone of 2021 million, and has continued to grow since then. By 1.8, the monthly active users have reached about million.

2016 to 2021 is a period of rapid development of mobile games, and during this period, "League of Legends" did not decline, but continued to grow. This shows that the impact of mobile games such as "Honor of Kings" on "League of Legends" is not that great, and the decline of this game is mainly due to the end of its life. The current situation on the market is somewhat similar to the stage when "League of Legends" came out in the previous life.

The most popular MOBA competitive game on the market now is OTTO's "Sentinel Scourge", and this game has been on the market for twelve years.

Twelve years.

The ignorant teenagers who used to play games in black internet cafes, the passionate young people who used to blame each other with their roommates in the university dormitory, are now middle-aged and tired uncles who are either holding their babies or smoking cigarettes and watching live broadcasts of games.

The influence of this game has experienced a decline since last year, not particularly drastic but not insignificant.

Facing such an outdated masterpiece, Dongchuan Che is confident that he can defeat it. Once League of Legends replaces Scourge Sentinel, he will start to vigorously develop League of Legends e-sports events. Moreover, this vigorous development requires not only the Holy Light Society to set up a team itself, but also to attract more big bosses to participate.

In addition to professional teams, Dongchuan Che will also organize various campus competitions and city competitions in the early stages, especially campus competitions!

Not only does he want to develop professional team youth training, he also wants to learn from Japanese football and develop a dual system of campus x professional youth training!

To put it simply, why has Japanese football developed so well in the past twenty years?

On the one hand, it is because the Japanese government is vigorously promoting football, and the whole society attaches great importance to football. On the other hand, the talent training system of Japanese football is very three-dimensional.

In China, football is basically taught at the elementary and middle school levels. If a child shows talent and his family wants him to pursue a career in football, he will be selected into various professional youth training camps.

The advantage of doing so is that it can tap into talent more fully, after all, you play football for a long time every day. But the problem is that this path is too risky. How many families are willing to let their children not study and go all the way to football?

Not to mention whether he can play football or not, what if he gets injured along the way and can't play football anymore? At the same time, because he was playing football before, he neglected his studies. What will happen to this child's future?

The risk is too great.

Moreover, generally speaking, after domestic children finish junior high school and reach high school, professional teams will basically no longer accept them.

This is very rigid. Children who are too young are reluctant to go down the path of football because the risks are too great. However, when they reach junior high school and high school, the opportunity to play professional football completely disappears.

This is one of the reasons why there are few professional football players in China. But it is different in Japan, where professional youth training and campus football are running in parallel.

To put it simply, in Japan, the coaches of almost all school football clubs must have a professional [football coach qualification certificate]. Generally, there will not be a situation where a physical education teacher acts as a guest coach or a music teacher takes over. Especially in some schools that are famous for football, the coaches of the football clubs are all very professional people.

Therefore, the level of school football in Japan is actually very high. Against this background, Japanese school football teams often compete with professional youth training football teams. If there are outstanding and talented players in the school football team, they will be poached by professional teams.

at the same time!

If some players who enter the professional youth training camp show great talent when they are young, but become mediocre when they are older, then these players can go back to school to attend classes. It is not the case that they find that they are not suitable for football and have no place to go to school when they return.

This provides a way out.

In fact, the same is true for the e-sports industry.

The reason why many parents don’t let their children play e-sports is essentially because the risks are too great and there is no way out. If they give up their studies at the age of 15 or 16 to play in the youth training, and still can’t play in the league at the age of 20, what else can they do when they go home?

And Dongchuan Che is here to solve these problems.

Don't think this is a fantasy. The dual-track system of campus football + professional youth training in Japanese football was actually only officially established in 2005. Around 2010, this system had begun to mature. Finally, around 2018, Japanese football began to see a surge in talent.

It took Japanese football ten years from the establishment of the model to the explosion of talent, but this is because the talents of Japanese football are benchmarked against the top players in Europe!

Japanese football started one year earlier than Chinese football. The Japanese professional league J League was established in 1993, the Chinese Jia A League was established in 1994, and the earliest European football league Serie A was established in 1929.

Having started seventy years later than others, it will indeed take more than ten years to catch up with others, but the e-sports that Dongchuan Che wants to do puts everyone on the same starting line.

To put it bluntly, Fuyukawa Che thinks that the dual-track system implemented in Japanese football is very suitable for cultivating talents in the e-sports industry. Moreover, if schools can organize various campus competitions, it will also be of great benefit to the promotion of games!

but

This matter involves a lot, even involving education, which is the foundation of the country. However, it is not a big problem. Dongchuan Che does not expect those schools and parents to treat e-sports like football, but the plate of e-sports is not as big as football. As long as the scale and system of e-sports youth training can reach 50% or even 30% of the level of football, it will be great!

By then, there will be a steady influx of talents, and because the school is equivalent to being responsible for part of the youth training, the influence of "League of Legends" will be more easily spread among the student group!

But it was obvious that even if Dong Chuan Che didn't ask for too much, this kind of thing was still very difficult to handle. Someone had to travel all over the country to find schools, education bureaus, and big capital bosses to communicate and negotiate.

this kind of thing

Dongchuan Che can do it, but it is impossible for him to attend all meetings in person.

On the one hand, he doesn't have that much time. Let's not talk about game production. Now that Holy Light Society is so large and involves so many fields and markets, he has to read countless reports and approval forms every day, and it is difficult for him to spare a lot of time to fly around the country.

On the other hand, it is king against king and general against general.

His status is different now. He only needs to meet those high-level official leaders when things are almost settled or when the other party has shown interesting information. Otherwise, it would be inappropriate for him to meet some local leaders in person.

Therefore, some more specific tasks still need to be handled by Miyano Mitsuha. However, the company has been busy recently, with the release of handheld games and games, Izumi Himawari's global tour, Yuezhu Asuka's live-action World of Warcraft drama, and a lot of business in animation, music, novels, etc., all intertwined. Therefore, although Fuyukawa Che had discussed this topic with Miyano Mitsuha last time, who will be responsible for this area has not been completely determined.

Understanding what Fuyukawa Tetsu meant, Miyano Mion rolled her eyes and smiled, "I'd better go. My English is not good, and Fujiko will handle the overseas business of the handheld game console. Let's talk about it later."

At this point, she sat down in Dongchuan Che's arms, took Dongchuan Che's big hand and put it on her belly, then smiled charmingly and shyly: "If I go on a business trip this time to a place as close as Yokohama, someone has to accompany me. It's just right for me to have some alone time, and then... well~ I'm ready to get pregnant, brother~~"

"!"