Data Map: The 2019 League of Legends Professional League Spring Season regular season attracts many League of Legends fans to watch. That day, the game was held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. The BLG team won the LGD team 2: 0. Photo by China News Agency reporter Wang Gang

Chinanews Client Beijing, April 2 (Wang Hao) With the spread of the new crown pneumonia epidemic worldwide, major professional sports leagues have "closed their doors and thanked their guests." It is not clear when they can restart. In this context, some e-sports leagues are held online, which brings a little bit of vitality to the currently boring sports world. Professional e-sports, while encountering shock in the sudden epidemic, also saw hope.

Helpless move

Unlike some people ’s traditional perception that they can “play online”, the normal form of e-sports competitions is actually held offline. There are live audiences and interactive links, and contestants compete on the electronic equipment on the scene.

For some important e-sports events, the size of the audience at the scene is no less than that of football and basketball games. For example, the 2017 League of Legends Global Finals was held at the Bird's Nest in Beijing.

Therefore, at the beginning of the outbreak, the Chinese e-sports leagues that have already started, just like other sports leagues, can only be forced to stop. During the Shanghai New Crown Pneumonia Epidemic Prevention and Control Press Conference held on February 26, Wang Yayuan, deputy minister of the Propaganda Department of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, said that during the epidemic and in the first half of the year, more than 400 offline e-sports competitions have been affected. Degree of influence.

Data map: The 2019 WUCG Sanya E-sports Festival opens in Sanya, Hainan's Banshan Peninsula sailing port. The picture shows the competition scene. Photo by China News Agency reporter Luo Yunfei

Shanghai is the center of China's e-sports industry. Many clubs, live broadcast platforms and league headquarters are located in Shanghai. Therefore, this number has great reference significance, and the epidemic situation has had a great impact on the development of e-sports leagues.

This impact is not limited to China, as is the foreign e-sports league. For example, LCK (League of Legends Korea) once tried to hold the game in an empty field. However, with the spread of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the risk of open games continued to increase. In the end, many of the more well-known e-sports leagues around the world chose to play online.

Online competition means that the two teams are concentrated in two different places and use professional equipment to compete. Compared with the conventional competition methods, there are many technical difficulties in the actual operation of online games. Prior to the epidemic, this form was rarely used in high-level e-sports competitions.

However, what many people did not expect is that the e-sports league ’s helplessness in online battles for “continuing life”, but inadvertently inserted willows and shadows, became an eye-catching flower in the international professional sports arena that was almost stagnated under the epidemic .

League of Legends officially released the highlights poster.

Blessed by misfortune

Taking China's most popular e-sports league, LPL (League of Legends China Mainland) as an example, statistics from domestic professional e-sports media show that before the Spring Festival, the first week after the LPL started on January 13, the highest PCU in a single day ( The highest number of simultaneous online users) and the average daily viewing time increased by more than 70% compared with the same period last year.

After the online game resumed on March 9th, the live broadcast viewing enthusiasm continued, and the daily average number of independent visitors continued to increase compared to the first week, which was an increase of over 30% compared to the 2019 LPL spring game.

In addition to the numbers, viewers who are concerned about e-sports games should also be able to directly feel the popularity of the league. After some important games, there are often many e-sports-related hot searches on the Weibo platform. In some sports forums, the popularity of e-sports can also be compared with basketball and football.

In fact, under the tragic situation of whether the major professional sports leagues can be restarted, the dispute over the championship ownership, and the big players taking the lead in reducing wages, the e-sports league has become one of the few "lucky people" under the epidemic. This is also a great opportunity for the development of the e-sports industry.

Data Map: The 2019 WUCG Sanya E-sports Festival opens in Sanya, Hainan's Banshan Peninsula Sailing Port. The picture shows the Chinese League of Legends team in the "League of Legends" competition. Photo by China News Agency reporter Luo Yunfei

The support policies of some domestic cities have also escorted the “upstream” gaming industry in the epidemic. During the epidemic, Shanghai announced that it will speed up the administrative review and approval of e-sports and game-related online publishing content products. In addition, it is fully preparing for the 2020 League of Legends Global Finals (S10) and actively deploying a new round of international head events.

And Beijing has formulated and issued "Several Measures on Coping with the Impact of the New Coronary Pneumonia Epidemic and Promoting the Healthy Development of Cultural Enterprises", which mentioned the active preparation for brand conventions and exhibitions such as the Beijing International E-sports Innovation and Development Conference. In an interview, Liu Yong, vice president of public affairs of Tencent Group, said in an interview that he had decided to co-host the King Glory World Championship Finals with Beijing.

Surviving crisis

Domestic e-sports leagues can be played online, but some international competitions are difficult to play online.

First of all, the value of many high-level e-sports games has surpassed the game itself. Originally, the event could promote the development of tourism in the host place, and the online event obviously lost its role in this regard. The online game is relatively simple for the game and the player's packaging, it is difficult to achieve the effect of the spread of normal events.

Data map: BLG team members focus on the game. On the same day, the 2019 League of Legends Professional League Spring Season regular season was held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. The BLG team won the LGD team 2: 0. Photo by China News Agency reporter Wang Gang

In addition, the more important reasons are technical aspects, such as how to assign event supervisors to ensure fairness, how to handle emergencies and perform system backtracking.

The core problem is the network. The two teams use different networks, which means they are likely to face different ping values. The so-called ping value refers to the speed at which the computer sends and receives to the network server. The smaller the value, the higher the network speed. Professional events have strict regulations on the ping value range. If the game is played online, it means that it is difficult to control the ping value of the two teams.

Before that, before the start of the LPL online game, many people expressed concerns about the network situation. Fortunately, there were basically no problems in the implementation. However, the teams of international competitions come from different countries or regions, and it is more difficult to control the ping value.

On March 10, League of Legends officially announced that the annual mid-season championship was postponed from May to July. The competition will start on July 3 and end on July 19. This event is an international tournament that is second only to the Global Finals in the League of Legends professional arena.

DOTA2 officially released the 2020 International Invitational Poster.

The DOTA2 International Invitational Main Event this year was originally planned to be held in the Swedish capital Stockholm from August 18th to 23rd, local time. This is the highest level event in the DOTA2 professional arena.

However, at present, the epidemic situation is still severe worldwide. The Tokyo Olympic Games, which was originally planned to open at the end of July, has been postponed for one year. Under such circumstances, whether it is the League of Legends Mid-Season Championship or the DOTA2 International Invitational Tournament, a question mark can be put on schedule.

The most worrying Chinese audience is S10. The event was originally planned to be held in Shanghai in the fall. This is a good thing for the domestic e-sports industry, the development of League of Legends events, and the development of the local tourism and service industries in Shanghai. .

In the early stages of the epidemic, few people may worry about S10 being affected. However, judging from the current development situation, anti-epidemic has already become a protracted war, which makes people have to worry.

Data map: On March 30th local time, the Stockholm International Convention and Exhibition Center in Sweden was converted into a field hospital to prepare beds for patients with new coronary pneumonia.

In the field of professional sports, among the shocked projects under the epidemic, professional e-sports became one of the "lucky ones". But in such "lucky", there are still hidden risks. May the shadow of the epidemic dissipate as soon as possible, such "lucky", nothing more. (Finish)