RTCPODS - China English Podcast Hub

This December 20th marks the 25th anniversary of Macau Special Administrative Region. To celebrate this historic milestone, we've prepared a special segment just for you, dedicated to everything that brings us joy. Happy Place, and in other exciting news, no other city has done what Shanghai has, hosting three of the world's biggest video gaming tournaments in just a few years. Has the gaming world found its new capital? Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Roundtable. I'm He Yang. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Li Yunxi, first on today's show. Shanghai has just pulled off something truly remarkable. It's now the first city in the world to host the three biggest esports tournaments. That is, the League of Legends World Championship, the International Dota 2 Championships, and most recently in December, the Counter-Strike Major Championships, also known as the Shanghai Major. To put this into perspective, it's like a city hosting both the Summer and Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup all in just six years. Talk about a legendary streak in the esports world. So for those like me, who might not be deep into gaming, can you break down what exactly esports is? And since Yunxi, you are a media professional by day and gamer by night, may I say? I'd love to hear your take on this. It's somewhat true. I think it is. I'm the right option to be invited to this episode since I've had my fair share of experiences of what some people might call addiction to esports in the past. But I think for people who don't really play games, I think it's important to first understand what esports is. So by the definition from the Oxford languages, esports refers to competitive video gaming where individuals or teams compete against each other in organized events, often for cash prizes or other rewards. So the key of esports is that people are playing video games. And I'm sure Huyang and Steve, you both played, let's say, Super Mario Tetris, right? This is totally different, though. Yeah. But do you think Super Mario can be or can be defined as an esports game? In my knowledge of what esports is and in my gaming history, I don't think Mario or Mario Kart would be considered in the esports realm. Here we're talking about professional leagues. Think about other sports, professional basketball leagues, professional baseball leagues. Think of it that way, except these are professional video gamers. And professional athletes, they have tournaments and leagues. They have casual events. They have different styles of games as well. Some of them are real-time strategy games. There are also first-person shooter games. Multiplayer online battle arenas are MOBA, I think those are referred to as. And these have audiences, just like other major sports do, of millions of people, tons of people around the world. This is global as well. Support these players, support these teams, and they love watching these events. This is a really big, big industry. Right. The ability of esports is actually based on the competitiveness, but fun fact, Super Mario actually can be competitive. Oh, can it really? Yeah. Some people would do Super Mario in a speedrun, try to finish the whole game as fast as possible. And there are currently 420 players around the world that have finished this whole Super Mario Bros. from 1985 in just five minutes. Oh, wow. Wow. Somebody sounds like the super fan of that game. Absolutely. And for this particular topic, with Shanghai hosting three of the biggest esports tournaments, can you give us an overview of just how massive these events really are? Well, Shanghai has done a really big job of hosting these different championships, the ones that you mentioned. And the prize pools for them are massive. The number of people that they bring to Shanghai is impressive as well. The Shanghai is one of the leading cities for hosting esports events. And they have one of the highest concentrations of esports clubs as well. To use 2024 as an example, which is a good year to choose, they hosted 27% of all offline esports events in China. And I mentioned the clubs, they've got 52 clubs as of June 2024. That's a really, really high number. And globally speaking, they rank second among prominent esports cities around the world, sandwiched in between Los Angeles and Paris. And they dominate China in terms of esports revenue, especially an event and club revenue. This year they reached 11.15 billion yuan. That represents almost 47% of the national total. If you're looking for, basically what we're saying here is if you're looking for esports in China, Shanghai is the place to be. It is the place. And I think the significance of Shanghai claiming this title is probably hosting three of the most popular esports games, which are League of Legends, or short as LOL, Counter-Strike and Major Championships, which just took place earlier this month. That concluded on December the 15th. And also the esports game that I was personally sort of addicted to. The Dota 2 Championships, which Shanghai hosted this prestigious tournament, The International in 2019. And all of these previous tournaments, the hosting city for this tournament were mostly in Seattle, which is the developer company was based in. And then also there were other international cities like Vancouver, Singapore, Copenhagen that hosted this game tournament, The International. And Shanghai became the very first city in Asia to ever host this championship from Dota 2. Yeah. The International, that's the name of the tournament for the Dota 2 Championships. Just to give you an idea of how huge these tournaments are, they had the record setting number for a prize pool. In 2021, it's the largest prize pool to date. The prize pool was $40 million, which is astonishing. So that gives you an idea of the prize pool. And here's an idea of how many people watching. The League of Legends World Championship for 2024, also called Worlds 2024. They broke the viewership record for the most watched esports event ever, according to the data platform Esports Charts. They had a peak viewership of 6.94 million people all watching together. And it's just unbelievable. So if you think that Esports is, oh, okay, it's people at home playing their video games on their consoles or their mobile phones, no, this is not the case. This is the big deal. It is indeed. And can I also just add one more figure that shows you how big the gaming industry is? Because Esports is essentially one slice of the gaming business. And apparently, the gaming industry is now far larger than both music and movies combined together in terms of total revenue. And the global gaming industry is worth more than $200 billion annually. And some estimates reach up to $250 billion US dollars. And the global music industry is only $60 billion US dollars in comparison, whereas the global film industry, well, we kind of have seen the film industry go through some troubles since COVID, and it's valued about $40 to $50 billion US dollars annually. So gaming is much larger than those two combined togethers. If you're looking into the future, and I know a lot of Chinese families have some taboo or kind of... Doubts. Doubts, yeah, definitely about gaming, but this seems to be the industry where the money is. I wouldn't be surprised because I believe gaming or Esports may be the modern form of art. Because first you have movies that incorporated script writing, story writing, and music, everything into one packed art form. And now you have gaming, which is more interactive. And so one of the most popular mobile games in China, The Honor of Kins, which was the top grossing mobile games last year in 2023. And actually, this mobile game, they invited a very famous composer, music composer, to write their soundtrack theme song, who is Hans Zimmer. The Lion King! The composer for a lot of, yeah, Christopher Nolan movies, Batman, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises. You've also heard his works from Pearl Harbor, and also Interstellar, Inception, Gladiator. Name a big movie, and Hans Zimmer has his hands in its mouth. And this composer is making music for a Chinese mobile game, The Honor of Kins. Yeah, The Honor of Kins or Wang Zhongryou, that's what a lot of people play on their smartphones as well, right? But you can also enter major competitions and win big bucks if you are really that good. But when you look at Shanghai, how do you see as it achieving this prominent position in the global esports landscape? Well, the city invested pretty heavily in infrastructure related to esports to help support the industry's growth, and that includes the construction of esports arenas and the development of training facilities for professional players as well. And these players do need training. It's extremely competitive, extremely, extremely competitive. And to be the best, you have to practice at this. It's not just sitting down at your computer once a week to play a video game. No, these players are insanely good at what they do, and it requires a lot of practice, hence the training facilities. The Shanghai International Culture and Creative Esports Center, that's a $1.55 billion project, and that's just a great way to exemplify the commitment. These investments are also, which is a wonderful benefit, they're creating thousands of esports related jobs, and they're attracting leading esports companies to Shanghai too. Indeed. And I can't help but think about actually how difficult it is to become a professional gamer, just like Steve has told us. And I happen to have a quick chat with a friend's friend who happens to be one of the owners of Vangju Arunya, or Honor of King's the Beijing Team Base. And it's so shocking, Steve, you alluded to, once you enter the professional realm, you're talking about super young geniuses, and they're training 12, 15 hours a day or more constantly playing the game. And for some of the obsessed gamers out there, they must feel, oh, that sounds great to me, but hold on, you're also competing with the best of the best geniuses. And to even get yin in, you need to hit a solo rank of 75 stars with a 90% win rate, which basically means you cannot afford to lose. And sending your kid there, no matter how much they love or are obsessed with this game, usually they come back humbled, seriously, focus on school, because that's much easier. And also, just to give you some Chinese figures on this, every year, around 10 million to 15 million high school seniors in our country sit for the college entrance examination. And the top universities in China emit just a few hundred thousand students. Doing the math before the show, I came up with this figure, about 3% of all students are enrolled to the top universities in China. Not bad, huh? Still pretty competitive. Meanwhile, at the peak of Honor of Kings, or Wang Chiu-Rong Yao, there were about 100 to 200 million registered users competing for, if you're that good, you're competing for only a few hundreds of spots in the professional teams. Wow. You have a better chance of getting into one of the top universities. So if you're listening, before you send your kids off to their pro-Esports career, dig into the statistics and how difficult it is to be among the best. Oh, yes. The odds are really steep, my friend. So when we talk about the development of the e-sports arena, then certainly, it's not just about the talent who are getting in, it's also about the various stakeholders who are involved in this. What do you think are the primary motivations behind Shanghai's pursuit of becoming a global e-sports capital? And yeah, we're seeing that definitely the economy or the economic opportunities, that's a huge thing. And also, industrial growth, because for the city, you kind of need this area that can attract people's attention and investment and all those good stuff. Yeah, there's plenty of reasons. There's the economic opportunity, like you mentioned. e-sports is booming here in China, but it's booming globally as well. There's huge revenues from tournaments, the streaming platforms, the sponsorships, the merchandise. Don't forget the merchandise also brings in a lot of money as well. Shanghai, of course, is one of China's most dynamic and economically advanced cities already. And they're seeing the opportunity to capitalize on the growth. And by positioning itself as a city for a hub for e-sports, well then, you're looking at being an attractive city for investments. We talked about the number of jobs that can be created as well, and that just boosts local economy, the local economy, and then it boosts tourism too, because you have people coming to visit for these massive tournaments. And the opportunity to capitalize, financially speaking, is one of the major incentives for sure. I believe economy must be a very main drive behind this boom of e-sports, let's say in Shanghai in particular. Because if you talk about e-sports, this has really become like how the industry runs. It's very similar to how we see these economic factors run behind sports teams. You have professional players, you have clubs that run these players, and you have sponsors. They sponsor these mega sized clubs, and then you also have media that's reporting on these major events that's taking place globally, and also fan communities that's very crazy and also willing to spend money to support their favorite teams. And Shanghai has invested very heavily in e-sports infrastructure to support this industry's growth. And this includes the construction of the dedicated e-sports arenas and the development of training facilities for professional players. So Shanghai International Culture and Creative Sports Center is a 1.55 billion U.S. dollar project that's expected to be completed by 2023. And that shows how much dedication this city has invested into helping this industry to grow. Yeah, and as a fellow Beijinger, I'm always watching Shanghai's development with encouraging and a critical eye. And what's really interesting, I realized is that to some extent, maybe you can argue, only to some extent, Shanghai have missed the boat on some of the more recent technological development trends. For example. For example, okay, Beijing for, let's say, AI. I'm not saying Shanghai isn't doing much in that front, but it's sort of playing a little bit of catch up to Beijing in that sense of AI. And also for Hangzhou, Alibaba's blockchain initiatives have caught the headline in the last five years or so. But blockchain sounds so yesteryear, I'm sorry to say, in Shanghai, because these trends just go so quickly. But Shanghai is really focused on investing in e-sports. And ever since 2011 or 2013, did we first see e-sports appear in the local documents of directives and a lot of this infrastructure building, soft and hardware building, a lot of this stuff doesn't happen overnight. So Shanghai has really shown commitment to become the e-sports leading capital, not only in China, and now it's saying, huh, maybe I can also show what I've got internationally. And I think that's really exciting. Yeah, I mean, they're not new. The city isn't really new because they launched their e-sports journey back in 2011. That's when the G League competition kicked off. So that's what, 14 years ago now, almost 14 years ago. And then as early as 2013, the government documents indicated that the city's commitment to develop the e-sports industry was real. And then you've got initiatives such as the Cultural Innovation 50 articles, the e-sports 20 articles that provide incentives and support for e-sports companies. And that helps attract both domestic and international players to Shanghai, setting it up as a world hub. Yes. And what potential challenges and opportunities will Shanghai encounter in its pursuit of becoming a global e-sports capital in the future? I think social awareness and acceptance is one of the challenges. Oh, you think so? Well, for e-sports in general, right? I mean, we're kind of aware of the topic, but when we think of video gaming, we tend to associate it with kids playing at home. So it doesn't really get taken seriously, perhaps, by the global audience outside of its fans, obviously, which are in the millions, but just speaking globally. So perhaps being maybe more aware and accepting that this is a real legitimate and valuable form of entertainment and competition. And ways to do that would be showcasing the positive effects of e-sports. It's not just sitting in front of a computer, it's teamwork, it's strategy, it's skill development, and selling those things, maybe selling's the wrong word, advertising those things to a larger audience so that they can become more aware of what it is. I think that would help. Yeah. I think social acceptances must be one of the main obstacles to, let's say, to promote, to take e-sports in China to the next level. Because we do have a lot of parents that might think this is not a proper career for their children to develop, but at the same time, you have a lot of younger kids that they are really attracted to e-sports, and they actually believe they can make something, develop something in this career. I don't think there's going to be a problem with the number of potential e-sports athletes in the future. I think the interest from the ground up will always be there, and I think that the audience is going to be there as well. This is from cmmagonline.com, and these are 2024, well, actually, going back to 2020 statistics up until today, the number of viewers in millions, going back to 2020, it was $435 million for that year for e-sports. 2021, it went up to $474, 2022, $520, then $540, and then this year in 2024, $544 million. What we're seeing there is consistent growth in the number of viewers. You have the athletes there, you have the viewers, you have the revenue, the industry has been there for a while, it's continuing to grow, and now it's time for everyone around the world to accept this as the legitimate thing that it actually is. And I think it's also important, as we did establish on today's show, that you've got on the one hand, the really bright side that Steve painted for us in figures, but also there was that figure that I cited earlier about the 3% of top students that go into top universities in China, but you only have 0.0003% of players of, for example, honor of kings, to be accepted into the professional teams. And these aren't people that are guaranteed will win big money either, you're only being admitted to the team, and you've only had the ticket to enter the game of professionalism. Only attribution to the industry. Yeah, so I think it's important for the families to have that in mind as well, but there are so many other things that one can get into, for example, like game design, music, and all these other aspects of the gaming business. Talking about challenges, challenging to become one of the best in the world, of course. But Shanghai, the city is doing incredibly well becoming a hub, but Shanghai faces competition from other cities too. We talked about the fact that in the top three are LA and Paris, but you also have London and Berlin and Seoul and Singapore who are investing heavily in esports infrastructure and events just like Shanghai is doing. And what that means is that the landscape is becoming increasingly competitive. So to maintain its competitive edge, Shanghai is going to have to continue innovating, continue offering unique value propositions to attract top talent and top events. And this could involve developing specialized training programs or establishing esports incubators to nurture new business, or there's plenty of paths to achieve that goal. But the competition is out there for the city as well, so they need to stay on their toes. And how can Shanghai ensure the sustainability and positive social impact of its thriving esports industry? But I believe there are many incentives for the authorities to keep promoting this industry, to promote esports, for example, through these. Because it's a competitive game in which you have multi players that are playing at the same time. And through these exchanges, there's actually a lot of cultural language exchanges that's taking place during this process. Let me paint the picture for you, both of you, that you're in the middle of a gaming and then the internet is not working very well, right? And that's a main problem for a lot of the gamers. And then somehow you see a player typing kale, K-A-L-E, in the chatting room. What does that mean? That sounds like kale, but actually it's a Chinese player saying that his ka-la, oh, his broadband is lagging. And this actually has become a buzzword among the Dota 2 player community, that a lot of English speakers, they learn to Chinese ka-la through these exchanges. So it's not a healthy vegetable suggestion. I don't think so. Well, certainly having more responsible gaming practices, that could be something great to help the development of gaming in any country. And in China, we've seen that the government has rolled out a basket of policies or directories in the last few years, also to organize and direct particularly young players to better use their time as such. And from hosting the world's top tournaments to shaping the future of esports, Shanghai is carving out its place as a global gaming hub. It's a city, not only, well, maybe you can argue that it's not really the global gaming capital yet, but it's definitely a top contender.