Tencent Sports, April 24th: The UP2018 Tencent New Cultural and Creative Ecosystem Conference (hereinafter referred to as the UP Conference) was held in Beijing. At the UP Conference, Tencent Esports announced that 2018 would be the "Year of Deep Layout" for the golden five years of Chinese esports, and it would focus on the core idea of "sports-ization". Three major strategies and specific measures, namely "systematic upgrade", "urbanization layout" and "standardized operation", were released. Apart from the strategic release of Tencent Esports in 2018, what other significant announcements of esports and sports-related products were made at this UP conference? Tencent Sports sorts it out for you one by one, providing you with insights into industry trends.
The S7 Finals brought e-sports to widespread attention
Tencent Esports has launched the "Year of In-depth Layout in Sports", with Fortnite investing 100 million yuan to build an esports ecosystem
The year 2017 was undoubtedly a milestone for the Chinese e-sports market. The League of Legends S7 event made its debut in China for the first time. This not only became a feast for Chinese e-sports players but also gave the general public a personal experience of the current influence of e-sports in China. With the International Olympic Committee's agreement to recognize e-sports as a "sport" and the Olympic Council of Asia's inclusion of e-sports as an official event in the Asian Games, e-sports has increasingly become a mainstream sport nowadays.
At the Tencent Esports Annual Conference in June 2017, Cheng Wu, vice president of Tencent Group, released the "New Five-Year Plan", kicking off the "golden five years" of China's esports. Tencent's e-sports business began to be laid out with TGA in 2010, and its official brand was established on December 9, 2016. It covers the development of multiple fields led by the League of Legends series (LPL) and the Honor of Kings series (KPL). Currently, Tencent E-sports has 11 major e-sports events, with a total annual viewership exceeding 22 billion. The number of e-sports users has exceeded 250 million.
At this year's UP conference, Hou Miao, the general manager of the self-developed Marketing Department and the Comprehensive Marketing Department of Tencent Interactive Entertainment, stated that in the second year of the "golden Five years", Tencent Esports will deeply layout with "sports-ization" and continue to explore more possibilities for the commercialization of esports as a sports event.
In order to build a more complete professional e-sports ecosystem, the event system under Tencent Esports will undergo a comprehensive upgrade in 2018. The KPL and LPL will adopt a fixed seat system to help teams gain more space to implement their long-term business plans. At the same time, they will start exploring new event categories in June and establish the QQ Fly Car Game S League. The finals of the Honor of Kings Champions Cup International Invitational Tournament will be held in Beijing on August 11th, with a total prize money of up to one million US dollars. On the 28th of this month, the Spring Finals of the League of Legends Pro League will be held at the Great Magic Cube in Chengdu. The champion will represent the LPL region to compete in the MSI Mid-Season Invitational in Paris. This year's Continental tournament, the Asian Games, will be held in Dalian.
In 2018, Tencent Esports allocated dedicated funds and resources to help potential events create high-quality event content. It continuously explored the deep integration of regional culture and event layout under the home-and-away model. While providing support for the incubation of strategic events, it closely collaborated with other businesses to help build an esports business card for the city's digital culture. Form Tencent Esports' "Esports City Development Plan".
The awareness of the "e-sports ecosystem" also influences the development strategies of other games under Tencent in China. At the UP conference, Tencent officially announced that it had obtained the agency rights for the Chinese server of "Fortnite". Along with the release of this significant news, Tencent also announced that it would invest a total of 100 million yuan in cash resources to build the content and e-sports ecosystem of "Fortnite", establish the in-game ladder competition, and make it one of the events in the EpicGames global event network.
In terms of creating secondary events, Fortnite will join Tencent's e-sports city development plan. It will select core cities in East China, South China, North China and Southwest China for business support, holding over 200 events each year to build a diversified matrix. In addition to its own event construction and maintenance, Fortnite cannot do without the continuous development of derivative industries. Fortnite will provide over 50 million yuan in support funds, including plans tailored for Fortnite by teams, commentators, and streamers. This plan can continuously supply high-quality professional teams and official commentators to professional leagues, enhance the quality of the events, and promote the positive development of the overall ecosystem.
The combination of anime and Honor of Kings
IP Derivatives: Mayday's Happy Mahua supports the cross-border collaboration between the "Honor of Kings" anime and e-sports
During this year's Spring Festival, Harbin Ice and Snow World added a 15,000-square-meter real King's Canyon, fully recreating the real scenes from "Honor of Kings". According to relevant data statistics, during this year's Spring Festival, Harbin Ice and Snow World set a record for the highest turnover in 19 years and ranked among the top three popular tourist attractions in the country. The top two were West Lake Rain in Hangzhou and the Forbidden City in Beijing.
The value of the "Honor of Kings" park in this matter cannot be exaggerated, but it is undeniable that "Honor of Kings" has indeed brought some new vitality to this 19-year-old scenic area. At the UP conference, Zhang Yati, the marketing director of "Honor of Kings", said this, which made both her and "Honor of Kings" see the powerful derivative ability of its IP.
In 2018, in the development of IP extension products for "Honor of Kings", apart from collaborating with the renowned author Butterfly Blue to expand literary and film and television businesses, it will also cooperate with top industry figfigine brands in the IP licensing field, including domestic ones such as hobbymax and myethos, as well as Japanese ones like goodsmile and megahouse. Successively produce high-quality figurines with distinctive features; At the same time, it will also cross boundaries with national-level masters of arts and crafts and design such as Yan Bingwu, and carry out cooperation in the directions of high-end cultural and creative products, postal stamps and other derivative products. In the music field, a series of heroic hit songs co-created with star singers have been released one after another. Zhang Yati revealed on the spot that the well-known band Mayday will sing the theme song for "Honor of Kings". In the field of drama, "Honor of Kings" will deeply cooperate with Kaixinmahua to jointly create innovative live interactive dramas.
As one of the five major business segments of Tencent Interactive Entertainment, the Animation Business Department has also recognized the potential of the combination of e-sports and animation. Tencent Animation has announced a collaboration with the core team of the "Honor of Kings" IP to jointly create an official series of "Honor of Kings" comics, launching "Honor of Kings Heroes" and the serialized comics of the Great Wall Defense Army. By using comics to interpret the stories of heroes and their characters that players love, including popular heroes such as Kai, Su Lie, Mulan, and the Bai Li Brothers, the wonderful and grand world view of Honor of Kings is presented to fans and comic readers.
Zou Zhengyu, the general manager of Tencent Interactive Entertainment's Animation Business Department, admitted that the current user base of China's e-sports market has reached 350 million. Facing the booming mobile e-sports industry, in addition to testing the test with "Honor of Kings", Tencent Animation will collaborate with Super Jing Interactive Entertainment to create five e-sports-themed animation works. They are respectively "Future Reboot", "Wild District Ancestor", "Sales Master", "Starlight Gate", and "Ladder Battlefield", jointly developing e-sports derivative ips.
Tong Mengcheng, the champion of the 2017 Tencent Go Championship, lost to Jueyi in the middle game while playing with the white pieces
Jueyi serves as the training AI for the Chinese Go team
I have always been a fan of Tencent's card games. I play Dou Di Zhu and a series of other Tencent card games. Standing in the center of the stage, Ke Jie's words amused all the guests present. While joking, Ke Jie said that his favorite Tencent chess and card game product is still Tencent Go, especially the Go AI Jueyi under Tengxu. Due to the opportunity of internal testing, Ke Jie often competes with Jueyi.
The year 2017 was a significant one for both traditional Go and Ke Jie. Under the impact of AI, traditional Go players went from being "unable to accept" the defeat to using AI as a tool for their own progress.
At the UP conference, Lai Siyan, the general manager of Tencent Interactive Entertainment's Photon Joy Game Studio, stated that in 2018, Tencent Chess and Card Games will focus on four aspects: e-sports, IP, artificial intelligence, and public welfare, to make the connection of chess and card games more powerful. In addition to announcing Ke Jie as the cultural ambassador of Tencent Go, Tencent Chess and Card Games also announced that it will become a partner of the Chinese Go team, and Jueyi will serve as the dedicated AI for the training of the Chinese national Go team.
Yu Bin, the head coach of the national Go team, was also present at the scene. He expressed his great anticipation for reaching a cooperation with "Jueyi". Currently, many national players of the Chinese Go team use Jueyi as their daily training tool and have benefited a lot. In the future, he hopes to have more cross-border cooperation with Tencent Chess and Card Games to explore the boundaries of Go development.
NBA2 KOnline2 will be launched this summer
Recently, in domestic cinemas, the Hollywood sci-fi film "Ready Player One" has been highly favored by players. In this movie, we have witnessed seamless integration across ips, the breaking of category barriers, and the gradual dissolution of the boundary between reality and virtuality.
For a long time, sports games have been a special category of games. Although what we play through the screen is a virtual game, when we release our hand shadows and keyboards, sports are everywhere. The feeling people have when playing sports games is the sense of closeness that comes from its ability to reproduce daily reality. This is its greatest unique advantage.
At the UP conference, Tencent, in collaboration with VisualConcept, released the brand-new NBA2 KOnline2.
Compared with the first-generation NBA2KOnline product five years ago, NBA2KOnline2 is equipped with the latest single-click engine of NBA2KOnline, providing players with physical-level graphics and a realistic feel. Based on this, the second-largest motion capture studio in North America recreates the most realistic player movements and on-site experiences for everyone. In addition, NBA2KOnline2 features all players from around the world in the league and updates player data in real time. In terms of self-built players, it also brings the most highly anticipated feature among a generation of players - the free addition and subtraction function of self-built players. Players can make targeted additions and subtractions based on the characteristics of different functions. More importantly, NBA2KOnline2 has also introduced a brand-new trading system, where players can freely trade and build their dream dynasty teams.
Huang Lingdong, vice president of Tencent Games, said that over the past five years, Tencent has carried out many cross-industry collaborations with NBA2KOnline. This time, NBA2KOnline2 will also deepen these cooperation scenarios around NBA culture, bringing more surprises to players. This time, NBA2KOnline2 has invited basketball pundits like Yang Jian, Su Qun and Yang Yi to do the voiceovers. After going online, everyone can enjoy the witty remarks of the three. Huang Lingdong revealed that NBA2KOnline2 has already started its internal testing and will officially meet players this summer vacation.
