This article is fromJiang Yuqi , title map from: Visual China

“Congratulations to IG!” “Congratulations to FPX!”

With the rappers of the commentator, League of Legends (hereinafter referred to as LOL)S9 World Finals Quarterfinals The two focus wars have come to an end. Two teams from the Chinese LPL are promoted to the IG and FPX 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 esports a mainland live broadcast platform, and the number of people watching the game more than 10 million in the evening, and the statistics of Esports Charts pointed out that without counting the data of China’s viewing, The peak number of viewers with the highest ratings was 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. It is the “player contribution bonus pool” that has been reduced.

From the 2009 LOL US service online,LOL is already a 10-year-old “old age” game. Few games in history have such a large global influence after 10 years of launch. In the case of Toxic (WeChat ID: youhaoxifilm), even such a phenomenon-level work, when the original old players are ” When the tastes and interests of the grown-up adults and the new generation of game lovers begin to change, it is still inevitable to face the fate that will be replaced.

Before the objective laws of the industry, it is difficult to have the next “10th Anniversary” in the LOL game alone.

LOL’s “Itch of Ten Years”

“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 veteran player with a “LO age” of up to 6 years told the drug lord: “In the past, everyone always joked that LOL might not win the LPL, but I didn’t expect it to be so sudden.”

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, during the period of 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 runners-up, let LOL professional events began to enter the domestic audience’s vision, greatly promoting the development of the professional league.

But Low’s fate has ushered in a watershed after entering its peak in 2016.

On the one hand, the entry of a large amount of capital has made the e-sports industry gradually large-scale and regularized. LOL has naturally become one of the biggest beneficiaries. There are many listed companies in China, such as Li Ning, B Station, Suning, etc. The company formed its own LOL team. In 2018, the Chinese team won the LOL championship in the Asian Games and the IG won the S8 championship. Not only did more non-core audiences come into contact with the LOL competition, but they also used the applause of the “People’s Daily” and other official media to further give e-sports a name. .

People’s Daily is the name of the e-sports

On the other hand, the popularity of the LOL game itself has not risen. In 2017, although LOL’s developer fist company (Riot) did not directly release the game monthly user data, some players extracted from the Riot API. Millions of data points, calculated by 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 data released by Tigers Epic, 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 as long as LOL, 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 “self-help” may help LOL temporarily hold its foot in the world of end-games, but still can’t help it resist a more critical impact – continuous iterative media environment, gradually Changing core audiences and audiences’ entertainment spending habits. All of this makes this “old game” born before the mobile Internet era appear to be “out of date”.

“It took too long to spend a flower, and it was not suitable for office workers. I rarely played LOL after I worked.” An old player and drug lord who played for 5 years LOL simply counted “accounting” “,” counted on the boot, landing, qualifying queue, forbidden heroes