text | Digital Entertainment DreamWorks, author | Qian Luoying, editor | Zhang Hanshu
At 5 a.m. on September 15th, Beijing time, the hero "Xiao Mei" of San Francisco Shock player Rascal threw the last fatal move "Blizzard", All members of the Hangzhou Lightning team who were near the Dorado delivery target were frozen into "ice sculptures" and were destroyed by the team.
Overtime ended and the game ended. The players of the Shock team jumped up from their seats excitedly and hugged each other, while the members of the Lightning team could only look at each other with regret - this marked the beginning of this year's OWL (Overwatch League: " Overwatch League"). League 》) the four Chinese teams have been completely wiped out in the playoffs.
At 3 o'clock in the morning on September 30, the San Francisco Shock and the Vancouver Titans, two teams that have been in the limelight since the first stage, will successfully meet and compete in the finals. It was already dawn outside the window of
. The audience who had stayed up all night occasionally cursed in a rhythmic manner, but most people still spared no effort to support the Hangzhou Lightning team on the barrage: "The shock is really too strong, it's already Very good", "Improve our strength and see you at home next year"...
After the game, the Hangzhou Lightning team took a group photo in the center of the field
Compared with the 70-40 unbeaten record of the Shanghai Dragons last year, this year's OWL four Chinese teams The results have met expectations:
The "all-China class" Chengdu Hunters established by Huya and RNG has been relying on the reverse version but miraculous wrecking ball system and various genius tactics since the first stage of the competition. As soon as it shines, it attracts countless fans;
Bilibili’s Hangzhou Lightning team has set off a pink two-dimensional trend for OWL, and the main T Guxue has also become one of the MVP candidates in this year’s regular season;
Neng Xing The Guangzhou Charge invested by the group has strong players from many countries. In the latter part of the season, it followed the trend of the version and achieved impressive results;
NetEase's Shanghai Dragons also swept away the haze of last year, and even passed five levels and defeated six in the third stage. Will win the first place in the stage competition. All four teams of
entered the playoffs without any danger. From "The Dragons broke the losing streak", "The Dragons won the stage championship", to "Guxue MVP", many OWL keywords continued to trend on Weibo. Search, it can be seen that OWL is much more popular in China than last year in terms of attention and topic.
“Celebrating the New Year” with Chinese fans is also the organizer of OWL - as an e-sports event that has insisted on following the traditional sports league route since its birth and is not favored by the outside world, OWL also handed over a A satisfactory answer.
html On September 6, the Overwatch League released for the first time year-on-year viewing figures calculated by average viewers per minute (AMA) (this move is closer to traditional sports and is intended to better serve advertisers). The data shows that, The total number of viewers in the first week of the league was 13 million, an increase of 30% compared with the same period last year. The global AMA in the 2019 regular season was 313,000, an increase of 18% compared to the same period last year.
This data undoubtedly breaks the previous rumors of OWL's sluggish ratings, and also proves that the league still has huge potential to be tapped.
However, controversy still accompanies this year's OWL: 's solidified role has led to a decline in game viewing, and version changes have also caused complaints from players and continuous loss of users; OWL events have a single monetization capability, and compared with traditional sports, they have a longer lifespan. The question of whether short game events can be completely professional sports is another aspect. Next year, OWL will officially begin its global deployment. 20 teams in the four major regions will compete on a home and away basis. New opportunities and challenges are coming. In the second year of
OWL, how is the commercialization performance? In the third year of OWL, how will each team respond to the challenges of the home and away system? Can China OW take advantage of the home-and-away game to recover? These are all questions left to the "players" of the Overwatch competition.
The first year of OWL: Making a lot of money amid doubts
Time goes back to July 2017. Blizzard officially announced the seven city teams of the "Overwatch League", using one city and one team, and using the city to name the team. In the form of learning from traditional sports, completely turned the Overwatch League into a professional sport, hired a large number of executives from the NBA and NFL, and also attracted a large number of investors from traditional sports clubs.
It is reported that Nate Nanzer, co-chairman of OWL last year, reported directly to Pete Vlastlica, president and CEO of the e-sports league under Activision Blizzard, and has a very independent status.
In the first season, Overwatch League seat holders include Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots; Stan Kroenke, owner of the Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Rams; Comcast Spectacor, parent group of the Philadelphia Flyers; and Sterling VC, sister company of the New York Mets. Traditional e-sports clubs such as Cloud9 (hereinafter referred to as C9), Team Envy, Immortals, Misfits, NRG and Optic Gaming also have seats in the league.
Companies including Toyota Motor, T-moble, candy giant Sour Patch Kids and other companies have also signed cooperation agreements with OWL. Among them, the broadcast contract signed between the league and Twitch is US$90 million over two years, while HP Omen's sponsorship is US$17 million, and Intel's sponsorship is US$10 million.
Nonetheless, after a large investment, how can the alliance ensure the long-term interests of investors and sponsors in the short term? Faced with overwhelming doubts, the league organizers also came up with a package plan:
. In order to ensure the stability of the income of team investors, the league canceled the promotion and relegation competition system, and announced that the league will use advertising, ticket sales and broadcast rights, peripheral products Sales revenue creates value for team owners, and each team will equally share the net revenue of the entire league; 2. In addition to the above-mentioned sources of income from traditional sports projects, OWL also launches league-related virtual items for sale in the "Overwatch" game , the sales proceeds will also be shared with the club.
Therefore, even though the Shanghai Dragons, which did not win a single game last year, became the bottom team in the league, they still made a profit with a good share of the revenue - their team uniforms ranked first in sales in the Blizzard Mall. The biggest winner of
last year was Jack Etienne, the team owner of the London Spitfire and C9 club owner who won the first OWL championship. He once revealed in an interview that due to the success of OWL, the club's valuation has almost doubled, and it was rated by Forbes as the most valuable e-sports club currently.
(Jack Etienne once replied to others on Twitter: "The Overwatch League has increased sponsorship income to a level that I thought was impossible to achieve in 2018.")
relies on professional operational capabilities and the continuous exploration of the commercial value of each team. The huge commercial success attracted the attention of more investors. In the middle of the
league last year, news showed that the league announced that the seat fee for the second year would almost double, from US$20 million to between US$30 million and US$60 million. Even so, around November last year, many new teams announced their participation in OWL, including three new Chinese teams: Hangzhou Lightning, Guangzhou Charge and Chengdu Hunters.
The second year of OWL: The Chinese team has become the mainstay, Blizzard abandons ordinary players for the league? The arrival of the three new Chinese teams
has brought a large number of new OWL fans. As of now, the four teams have more than 500,000 Weibo fans. The promotion of the
team is also becoming more and more mature: in addition to Weibo, on Bilibili, a video website where a large number of young people gather, the four Chinese teams will also regularly release game highlights, match highlights, team vlogs and other content to keep fans They understand the daily lives of teams and players while strengthening interaction with fans.
The marketing manager of the Chengdu Hunters revealed to Digital Entertainment DreamWorks that the official fan base of the Chengdu Hunters has reached more than 8,000 people and is very active: "They will also create a lot of interesting content for us."
New fans The arrival of the event gave sponsors a glimpse of more business opportunities.In addition to several stable sponsors from last year, the list of new sponsors this year is still being updated. As for the
team, in addition to the largest financial backers, there are also teams such as the Los Angeles Valiant that have introduced KitKat (Nestlé Kit Kat, a chocolate wafer food brand popular around the world) as a team sponsor. During the regular season of
, its team members cooperated with KitKat to conduct a series of marketing activities, such as "Agilities and Kariv's Small Kitchen" (after being sponsored by KitKat, the two players became visibly rounder). In the last week of this year’s regular season, KitKat also became the title sponsor of the Los Angeles Valiant’s Homeland home stadium.
Screenshot of the "Gamer Snacks" program filmed by the Los Angeles Valiant team sponsored by KitKat
However, the influx of new teams, new fans and new sponsors cannot completely dispel the market's concerns about OWL.
As soon as this year's OWL started, it became the most watched game on the live broadcast platform Twitch. However, for horizontal comparison, the data collected on ESC, the two major Chinese live broadcast platforms Huya and Zhanqi, show that Chinese audiences account for the vast majority in terms of both viewing time and number of viewers.
Looking back at the beginning of this season, rumors of declining ratings became more and more intense. The biggest reason was that the first three stages of the league were "unsightly".
In the first three seasons of the regular season, it was a 3-0-3 (3 tanks, 3 assists, 0 output position) version focusing on tanks and assists. caused the SPF (first-person shooter) game "Overwatch" to be forced by professional players. They played hand-to-hand combat.
And many of the "Human Aiming Essences" who are known as spear heroes can either only "look at the water dispenser", or have become "Human Hammer Swinging Essences", somewhat depressed.
At the same time, many teams that were once powerful last year became the bottom of the pack because they were incompatible with the game version - a result that neither the audience, fans, players, nor coaches wanted to see.
In May of this year, in the middle of the regular season, Nate Nanzer resigned as OWL co-chairman, and Pete Vlastelica took over the position. Everyone hopes that he can change the current situation of OWL's solid lineup and imbalanced game balance.
Pete Vlastelica
In order to solve this problem, the new version of "Overwatch" and the fourth stage of OWL began to implement a mandatory 2-2-2 matching mechanism: both players and professional players must fix 2 T positions and 2 outputs during competition. position and 2 auxiliary positions. Once this position is selected, the hero in other positions cannot be selected - this has triggered heated discussions among OW players, OWL players, and the audience. Most of the
players are supportive, but many players don't buy it. They believe that when "Overwatch" was first released in 2016, it attracted the attention of a large number of players with its flexible hero selection in the game, 2-2 The -2 restriction undoubtedly goes against the original intention of its game design.
In addition, the side effects of the 2-2-2 system were quickly reflected in the game - since there are more players in the output position than in the T position and auxiliary position, many players reported that their queuing time has been extended (however Official data shows that the average queuing time of players is not much different from that before the competition system update); and there are always moments in the game where "there is just a little bit of output/shield/milk", and players cannot make up for it through position changes... ...
In fact, before locking in the 2-2-2 lineup, the many game version changes of "Overwatch" were accused of sacrificing the game experience of ordinary players: the heroes with strong performance in the league were constantly weakened, and the so-called "weak heroes" were constantly weakened. Been strengthened - There is a huge difference between ordinary players and professional league players, and the true perception of the strength of heroes is also very different from the league. With such changes, many players believe that "Overwatch" is building a "castle in the air" - with The cost of losing ordinary players is to serve the league.
Players made emoticons to ridicule the most powerful hero in "Overwatch" that makes everyone scream but is still not weakened - Doomfist
Analysys' game and e-sports research expert Dong Zhen was interviewed by Digital Entertainment DreamWorks During the interview, he believed: “The current main profit point of OWL is still the competition copyright, but the monetization method is relatively simple. For event organizers and teams, they should work more on user generation. As the user growth of "Overwatch" reaches a certain bottleneck, we should continue to use the competition system to attract more new users and maintain the old users, so as to maintain the foundation of the competition. ”
The biggest controversy over the traditional sportsization of e-sports has always been that the lifespan of games is far less than that of traditional sports. Since the foundation of e-sports audiences is based on the number of game players, grasping the balance point has become the key for game developers. An important issue. Whether Overwatch's method of changing game versions can effectively extend the life of the league needs to be questioned.
The third year of OWL: the future of the home and away system is especially unknown.
The global home and away system may be. Another "antidote" for OWL.
The home and away system that OWL originally planned to implement this year has been postponed to the 2020 season due to various reasons. However, OWL is still the first e-sports league to implement a home and away system worldwide. Wang Xingrui, head coach of the
Chengdu Hunters, once said in a live broadcast that playing in a different place in has brought huge psychological pressure to the players and coaching staff. In addition, this year, many Chinese players are on the stage of such a competition for the first time. The high-intensity competition arrangement and the two-point and one-line life trajectory have more or less caused problems with the players' mentality, which "resulted in some games being lost in unexpected ways." After domestic fans learned about it, In addition to heartache, other help is beyond our reach.
Faced with such a challenge, the marketing manager of the Chengdu Hunters said: "We use the guidance and guidance of the management and coaches to make them believe that they are fully capable of winning, and they must trust each other and communicate with each other. , it will get better and better in the future. Good logistical support is also the basis for a team's victory. "
Therefore, being able to return to the local competition is excellent news for domestic teams.
Alleviating the discomfort of overseas players and coaches when competing in other places to improve player performance and increase game viewing is on the one hand, and on the other hand The local fan economy and commercial real estate value driven behind it can also be imagined. After nearly two years of preparation, the home court of the Chengdu Hunters is the Wuliangye Chengdu Financial City Performing Arts Center; Hangzhou, which hosted the LPL 2018 Spring Finals. The Lightning team has chosen the Hangzhou Theater and the Wuzhen Grand Theater where the 2017 OWPS was held; the Guangzhou Charge has locked in the Tianhe Stadium, the venue for the 2010 Asian Games, and the Foshan International Sports and Culture Performing Arts Center, the venue for the 2019 LPL Spring Finals.
chose Wuliangye Chengdu. As the home venue of the Financial City Performing Arts Center, the Chengdu Hunters are interested in its experience in hosting e-sports events, top-notch equipment, complete supporting facilities, and very convenient transportation. However, the opening of the Chengdu Financial City Performing Arts Center in Wuliangye is 5,000. + With the above seats, how to make OWL more "attract fans" and "arrange" new and old fans will be a challenge for the Chengdu Hunters next year.
"First of all, we must get close to them. "The marketing manager of Chengdu Hunters said that they will cooperate with local universities in Chengdu and hold fan activities regularly. While expanding the fan base, they have planned many local activities in Chengdu with the purpose of serving these fans and further attracting fans. The distance between the melee team and fans. Xiao Yang, chief operating officer of
Guangzhou Charge, told Guangzhou Daily: "We will also build a 3,000-square-meter e-sports training base next to the venue in Foshan. The Guangzhou Charge will open it by the end of the year. Take the lead in settling in. We also hope to organize youth training and academy teams here as part of our plan to build comprehensive facilities. "
It is worth mentioning that Nengxing Group invested in Dragon Lions Basketball Club in 2009, and the club was listed on the New Third Board 7 years later. Tianhe Stadium and Foshan International Sports Culture and Performing Arts Center are also the home stadiums of Dragon Lions Basketball Club. Maybe basketball Elements can also create different sparks with OWL.
Compared with other teams using mature venues or building bases next to the venues, the Shanghai Dragons announced a temporary home venue of Jing'an Xinyefang.The reason why
is a temporary home is because NetEase Games President Ding Yingfeng once said on ChinaJoy that the company plans to invest more than 5 billion to build a NetEase e-sports ecological park in Qingpu District, Shanghai, , and the plan covers the possibility of being used as a future Shanghai The Dragons’ home venue for professional e-sports competitions.
The concept of one club and one city will undoubtedly closely integrate the city and the team, which is also very beneficial to the city's publicity. Therefore, league organizers and teams are actively participating, and the local government is also supporting with funds, policies, etc.:
On August 29, Guangzhou released the "Guangzhou Action Plan to Promote the Development of the E-Sports Industry (2019-2021)", stating that Guangzhou We will create a relatively complete e-sports industry ecosystem and strive to basically build a "National E-sports Industry Center" by 2021.
Shanghai has been committed to building an "international e-sports capital", opening up athlete registration channels for e-sports players, providing millions of financial support to e-sports clubs when they settle in, and issuing policies such as the "E-sports Venue Construction Specifications" and "E-sports Venue Operation Service Specifications", two e-sports group standards, which provide financial support and preliminary guidance for the development of the industry.
For Chinese OW viewers and players, the arrival of OWL has different meanings.
went from being popular when "Overwatch" was launched in 2016 to gradually becoming "cool"; from the regretful disbandment of the MY team in 2017, announcing the fall of CNOW, to the unexpectedly good results of the Chinese team in the 2018 OW World Cup, which made "Overwatch" There are signs of recovery in China... This year's OWL ratings in China are enough to prove that China is still a "treasure land" with great potential for "Overwatch".
However, problems such as the poor environment of the national server, repeated bans on cheating, the loss of players, and the lack of access to the next generation of players are still like a sword of Damocles, hanging over the head of every CNOW participant.
Relying on the globalization of OWL, can CNOW, which has four teams, come back to life in China? We'll have to wait and see.
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