What makes EDG?

　　China News Weekly reporter/Qiu Guangyu

　　Issued in the 1022th issue of China News Weekly on November 29, 2021

　　On November 7, 2021, with the first winter snowfall, the news that the Chinese e-sports club EDG won the 2021 "League of Legends" global finals in Iceland was also screened on the social networks of the entire Chinese world.

In addition to the carnival of young people, many people are also curiously asking: "Who is EDG?"

　　EDG is the English abbreviation of China's famous e-sports club. Its full name is Edward Gaming. The word Edward comes from the English name of EDG founder Zhu Yihang.

This EDG victory on behalf of China is not the first time in the "League of Legends" global finals. The IG team in 2018 and the FPX team in 2019 have won the championship of this event.

But this time is the first time that the Chinese team won the championship against the powerful South Korean team. This background makes the gold content of this championship more genuine.

　　With the gradual standardization and professionalization of the game industry and the e-sports industry, the victories of these e-sports teenagers can no longer be explained by genius and accident, but are attributed to teamwork and scientific training.

In the eyes of many people in the industry, EDG's victory is the result of such "time, place, and people."

When talent meets profession

　　Most of the players who won the championship on behalf of EDG have been considered extremely talented since they were young.

At the same time, they are also fortunately born in an era when the masses are gradually accepting e-sports.

They were generally born between 1998 and 2001. Different from the suppressed "post-80s to 90s" e-sports veterans, in their youth, the Internet game industry continued to develop, and the e-sports industry began to explore disorderly The law of professionalization, the commercial club formed by this professionalization not only trained many players, but also began to feed more people.

　　Li Xuanjun, who served as the "top laner" in the championship game, is a recognized genius player. He was born in 1998 and his hometown is Jiangmen, Guangdong.

When he was a child, the owner of the game hall always said to Li Xuanjun's mother: Don't let your son play the game, he can pass the level with just one game currency, and I can't do business.

　　In 2014, Li Xuanjun, who was still in junior high school, became famous in the "League of Legends" circle under the nickname of "Holy Gun Brother" and the position of "Top Single". This nickname was derived from the heroes he used in "League of Legends". ——Lucian, the holy spear hero.

At this time, he began to consider whether he should be a professional e-sports player, and raised this idea to his mother many times.

Until then, his mother didn't know what professional e-sports was. Naturally, she didn't agree at the beginning, and she was so angry that she "want to break his leg".

　　Zhao Lijie, a boy from Xiangyang, Hubei who served as the "jungler" in the EDG championship, has just turned 20 this year. In addition to his outstanding performance in the game, his academic performance is also very good, and he is a seeded player that the school focuses on training.

Around 2013, Zhao Lijie proposed to his family to be a professional e-sports player for the first time, and he was immediately rejected.

But later, his mother found out that her son had already made the first money in his life by playing games, which surprised her.

　　At the same time, the entire society's understanding of e-sports has also begun to change.

In March 2013, the State Sports General Administration decided to establish an e-sports national team to participate in the 4th Asian Indoor and Budo Games.

Also in 2013, LPL, the highest-level domestic "League of Legends" event, was officially born, and e-sports began to attract attention.

Since 2014, with the development of more convenient "mobile games", the number of audiences and fans interested in games and e-sports has increased substantially, which has also laid the foundation for the further prosperity of e-sports.

　　Slowly, the concepts of parents and teachers of some seeded e-sports players began to loosen up.

In 2014, Li Xuanjun won the consent of his family and joined the Snake club in Shanghai as a professional e-sports player. He began to set his ambitions and wanted to earn "pension money" for his mother.

After entering high school, Zhao Lijie proposed the idea of ​​becoming a professional e-sports player for the second time. He also proposed that he would not be able to score within two years and would like to apply to re-enter the first year of high school.

This time, his family agreed, and his high school also reserved his student status.

In 2019, Zhao Lijie joined the EDG.Y team in the secondary league and started his career.

Road to group

　　E-sports is a sport related to personal talent, acquired training reaction speed and teamwork spirit, but it needs to be fully industrialized if it wants to become a real sport.

Young, open-minded, Chinese "rich second generations" who hold a lot of resources have become the people of choice for the development of e-sports.

In the eyes of the public, there was Wang Sicong who brought out the IG team before. Now, Zhu Yihang, the son of Zhu Mengyi, the founder of EDG and the founder of Hopson Creative Exhibition, has also become familiar to the public.

　　In 2012, Zhu Yihang's friends invited him to watch a "League of Legends" game, and he was quickly attracted by the competitive and youthful vitality displayed by this event.

In September 2013, Zhu Yihang formally established EDG.

After the formation of the team, the first thing we face is the problem of talents.

In 2014, Abu, who once represented the WE Club and won China's first world-class championship, joined the newly established EDG with senior players Ming Kai and Curly.

The 28-year-old Ming Kai has a special status in the history of e-sports. He is the player with the longest career of "League of Legends" in China. His strength and spirit of struggle have influenced many top players.

　　In 2014, when EDG was established just one year ago, EDG won a number of championships at home and abroad, and also successfully advanced to the "League of Legends" global finals that year and entered the quarterfinals.

But then, EDG's results were ridiculed by some fans as "Civil War insider, foreign war outsider", meaning that their level in the country is already at the top, but they always make a mistake in international competitions. The best results in the League of Legends global finals have remained in the quarterfinals for many years.

　　No matter how ridiculous, EDG, which has sufficient funds, a complete management system, and a number of well-known talented players, is still regarded as a "high-end team" and "potential stock" by everyone.

During that time, the development of domestic e-sports clubs took shape, but the entire e-sports industry was brand new globally, and there was no precedent to learn from.

Pan Yibin, general manager of the EDG club, found that European and American e-sports clubs mostly invest in traditional sports clubs. The development paths of Japanese and Korean clubs and China are not exactly the same. The only management model that can be used for reference may be a club model similar to football and basketball.

　　The management of EDG borrowed the traditional sports club model from the very beginning, determined to make the club an efficient organization with scientific management capabilities.

In terms of selecting talents, in addition to digging talents from other clubs, they will also cultivate their own youth training system.

In addition, EDG has also established its own health management center. In addition to high-intensity training, professional sports team doctors and psychologists can follow to ensure the physical and mental health and recovery adjustment of the players.

　　For a club of the size and reputation of EDG, being able to make a profit is also a guarantee for the team's operation and the stability of the players' lives.

Club general manager Pan Yibin once publicly stated that EDG is currently the only profitable Chinese e-sports club.

EDG's business operation model is to ensure the diversification of its operations. In addition to sponsorship, its income sources are mainly divided into five parts: commercial sponsorship, live content on-demand, event sharing system, derivative income and player transfer fees.

　　EDG is constantly cultivating and tapping players of its own style through the youth training system and transfer methods.

Tian Ye, who debuted at the same time as Li Xuanjun, is also a 23-year-old "veteran player". He joined EDG in 2015. As an auxiliary player, his personality is relatively mild, and his personal status and performance are extremely high. The stability of the team is like a "stabilizer" in the team. In 2019, Tian Ye began to serve as the captain of EDG.

In December 2020, the "genius player" Li Xuanjun also transferred to EDG, and the team gradually moved forward as the new players continued to run in.

Professionalism and human touch

　　After EDG won the championship, the celebrated Weibo posted by the founder Zhu Yihang did not specifically mention which team member participated. Instead, he thanked the two groups of people who did not appear on the Icelandic arena. One was once a coach for EDG. The veteran Mingkai who was back as a player but failed to go to Iceland to compete. The second is the European e-sports club G2 who is willing to be the "sparring" for EDG in the championship.

　　This kind of simple, passionate and emotional expression is also reflected in the words and deeds of many e-sports people.

People gradually discovered that this kind of sport is not just a complex battle world on the screen. The character of the players themselves will give completely different abilities to the "heroes" in the chosen game. Creative people will come up with completely different abilities. Strategies and methods of use, friendship, collaboration and even sacrifice can also be the key to success.

This kind of competition certainly has a cruel side of competition, but it is also full of creativity, collaboration and human touch.

　　Abu, who has served as an analyst, coach, manager and other positions in the e-sports team, has also led the Chinese e-sports national team to win the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games Exhibition Championship. He has a deep understanding of this kind of human touch.

In his view, professional e-sports is more like a combination of online and offline sports.

And what he does is a job about communication and running-in between people.

In the process of cultivating and training the players, he must understand them in a long-term common life, keenly notice the players' individual real-time status, and constantly debug.

　　When selecting players, the ability to fight online is only the first step, and who is behind the screen is even more important.

The main conditions for Abu to select players include three items: game talent, internal driving force for the profession, plus a little "spirituality" (flexible thinking and creative).

If a grassroots player is able to hit the "national service first", he must ask this person to talk offline as soon as possible, and give him a professional test to determine whether he has what he needs Those professional qualities.

　　After winning this championship, EDG player Tian Ye once revealed his work and rest as an e-sports player: wake up at 11 or 12 am every day, and formal training starts at 14:00 after lunch. The content is to play training games with other teams; at 17:00. Eating, health management and physical exercise from 17:00 to 19:00, training from 19:00 to 22:00, sometimes working overtime to zero, and free qualifying at other times.

Pan Yibin observed that because many players are young, they don't care about their physical conditions and are ashamed to admit that they have physical problems. At this time, the team doctors will take the initiative to communicate with the players about their physical conditions, or ask Chinese medicine practitioners to help them relax with a massage.

　　Under the universal language of games, different cultures and languages ​​are no longer barriers.

In recent years, more and more "foreign aid" players have come to Chinese clubs from South Korea, a major e-sports country.

Among the players representing EDG to win the championship, there are two players from South Korea. Among them, Li Yancan has been training in China since 2016. His strength has attracted much attention, but he has never won a championship. This has also become the driving force for his struggle in China. one.

Li Shucan's Chinese is very good, and he still has a Wuhan accent when speaking Chinese. Like him, Park Duo-hyun, who joined EDG in 2020, also quickly mastered Chinese.

　　Today, eight e-sports events including "League of Legends" will soon become official sports events of the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2022.

Pan Yibin, general manager of EDG, described to China News Weekly half-jokingly: “In the past, when we played games when we were young, my mother would say, can we play games as a meal? Now I can tell her that we can really eat as a meal.”

　　China News Weekly, Issue 44, 2021

　　Statement: The publication of the "China News Weekly" manuscript is authorized in writing