In addition to moba games, what can LOL do “doing”?
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “drugs” (ID :youhaoxifilm), author Jiang Yuqi.
“Congratulations to IG!” “Congratulations to FPX!”
With the two cheers of the commentator, the two focus battles of the League of Legends (LOL) S9 World Finals quarter-final have come to an end. Two teams from the Chinese LPL team IG Both FPX and the FPX will advance and will meet in the semi-finals. For the organizers, this is undoubtedly a good result, so that until the end of the finals, the Chinese audience will still maintain a high level of enthusiasm for watching because of the LPL team.
For S, Chinese users are too important. During the group stage this year, only Penguin E-sports a live broadcast platform in the Mainland, and the number of people watching more than 10 million in the evening was over 10 million; while the statistics of EsportsCharts pointed out that Under the calculation of China’s viewing data, the ratings The highest number of viewers in the game peaked at 2.04 million – at S6 in 2016, this number exceeded 6 million times.
Popularity is not only the S race, but the heat of the entire LOL has seen a big decline in recent years. Multi-party statistics show that after the peak of LOL monthly activity reached 100 million in 2016, the number of monthly livelihoods has been declining in the following two years. Since 2017, the number of bonuses in S has also declined. The main reason is that The contribution bonus pool has been reduced.
From the launch of LOL in 2009, LOL is already a 10-year-old “old age” game. In history, there is rarely a game that has such a large global influence after 10 years of launch. In the view of Poison ID (youhaoxifilm), even such a phenomenal work, when the original old players have grown up, the taste of new generation game lovers When the point of interest begins to change, it is still inevitable to face the fate that will be replaced.
Before the objective law of the industry, it may be difficult to have the next “10th Anniversary” in the game of LOL alone.
LOL’s “Ten Years of Itching”
“IG 牛逼!”
On the night of November 3, 2018, such a short and powerful shouting resounded through the Chinese Internet. Since S2 began to participate in the S-sports, the teams from the Chinese mainland have been smashed several times in the expectation, which has made many old players heartbreaking. IG, which is the least optimistic about people, has unexpectedly reached the top in S8, but many people have long wished for it.
A senior player with a “LO age” of up to 6 years told the drug lord: “Before everyone always joked, maybe LOL will not win the LPL, but I didn’t expect this day to come so suddenly.” /strong>
Up to S8 IG
When the old player started to contact LOL, it was the high-speed development of the game. According to official statistics, In 2012-2016, LOL’s global monthly users increased from 32 million to 100 million, and the number of online users exceeded 7.5 million. It is the hottest online game in the world.
In the S3 and S4 held in 2013 and 2014, the royal team from China won two runner-ups, which made the LOL professional competition begin to enter the domestic audience’s vision, greatly promoting the development of the professional league. .
But after entering its peak in 2016, LOL’s fate ushered in a watershed. On the one hand, the entry of large amounts of capital has made the e-sports industry gradually larger and more formalized. LOL has naturally become one of the biggest beneficiaries. In mainland China, Li Ning, B Station, Suning and other listed companies have been formed. Own LOL team.
In 2018, the Chinese team won the LOL championship in the Asian Games and the IG won the S8 championship, which not only allowed more non-core audiences to reach the LOL competition, but also used the applause of the official media such as People’s Daily to further e-sports. Justified.
People’s Daily is the name of the e-sports
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On the other hand, the popularity of the LOL game itself has not risen. In 2017, although LOL’s developer, Riot, did not directly publish game monthly user data, some players extracted millions of data points from RiotAPI and calculated it through Heimerdinger. LOL’s monthly activity may have fallen to 81 million.
After IG won the championship, some practitioners told the drug lord that this might be an opportunity for LOL’s strong rebound. After IG’s aspirations, there were indeed a lot of old players pouring into the national costume “nostalgia”, but when the championship boom spread, According to the relevant data released by the Tigers E-sports, the monthly activity of LOL in 2018 is about 63 million, which is nearly 40% lower than the peak value of 2016. The number of users in Europe and the United States has decreased significantly. .
The decline in popularity is particularly direct at the income level. Before 2016, the annual prize pool of S races showed a steady upward trend and reached a peak of 6.7 million US dollars in 2016. However, the prize pools in 2017 and 2018 are only 4.6 million and 6.45 million. Among them, the “player contribution bonus pool” contributed by players to purchase special skins and props is the main reason for the fluctuation of bonuses.
According to foreign media Superdate, LOL’s total revenue in 2012 was only 1.4 billion US dollars, down 33% from 2017, the first decline since 2011.
The emergence of new games is the most direct cause of the decline in LOL. After 2016, from “Jesus Survival” to “Fortress Night” “APEX Hero”, there will be some popular new tours every year, challenging the status of LOL online game hegemon.
Although from the results, the life cycle of many games is not LOL long-lasting, but the new game’s “going to succession” still makes LOL’s popularity always diverted. In 2018, foreign media reported that the parent company Tencent had focused on some new games, which made the fist company have some anxiety about the development of the business.
In response to the impact of the new game, the fist company has been adjusting LOL’s gameplay and game mechanics in recent years. For example, adding new heroes with more playability and difficulty, changing map resources and talent settings to speed up the game, etc., so many veteran players and drug lords said that if you don’t play LOL for a while, it’s very It may be “cannot adapt to the game”.
However, such a