How many more years can League of Legends be popular?

With RNG beating DK 3: 2 to win the championship of MIS this year, the first heavyweight event of League of Legends this year also came to an end. Surprisingly, although the popularity of League of Legends is gradually declining at a speed visible to the naked eye, the number of spectators in the world once exceeded 1.8 million, and this figure was only close to 540,000 two years ago, which made many people who called League of Legends a past tense slap. (Because domestic live broadcasts like to use popularity calculation method, it is difficult to judge the exact number of viewers, so the general LPL audience is not included in the statistics. )

Of course, the development of League of Legends is not smooth sailing. With 20 16 watching the pioneer's fire, the sudden emergence of 20 17 eating chicken, and the launch of the glory of the king's mobile game, LOL was once greatly affected, and many players and anchors chose to move their positions. However, with the passage of time, League of Legends, the "old bacon", not only failed to spill over a thousand miles, but won the S championship with IG and FPX, which means a big turnaround. However, after just a few years of operation, the once popular "Eat Chicken" and "Watch Pioneer" finally declined rapidly under the influence of plug-ins, stand-alone machines and similar competing products, and the players lost seriously. Until 202 1, the hottest PC game in the world was still League of Legends.

At the same time, people will inevitably have some doubts. Why is the classic MOBA game League of Legends, which was born in 2009, so powerful? Why is it difficult for other games to win the dominance of LOL? How many years can League of Legends last? There are probably no standard answers to these questions, so I'll just talk about it in a humble opinion, which can be regarded as attracting jade.

First, the vitality of LOL

(A) excellent game ontology

The author probably came into contact with LOL around the second year of high school, and then inexplicably followed his classmates into the pit. I still remember that because I am not an adult, I can only search an ID number online to register. Then occasionally skipping classes and classmates rushed into the black internet cafe near the school, driving the three giants of novice heroes and playing very dark in Summoner Canyon. Now, as an "old bird", recalling the time of that year, I can't help but wonder why I am so addicted. After careful consideration, I boil it down to one point, that is, its excellent ontology built around music, art, gameplay, background stories and so on.

Let's talk about the gameplay first. LOL is a classic MOBA game, and the word is actually initiated by a fist company. Prior to this, this mode was mostly called "DOTA-like" game. This ultimate goal of destroying the enemy crystal can greatly improve the antagonism and cooperation of the game. Whether it's a solo show operation, a team battle, or even a magic dragon grab at a critical moment, it can make people excited beyond control. Even if we fail temporarily, we will try to find the next place. That's why there will be a ten-game losing streak. Damn it. At this point, we are no longer ordinary players, but incarnate as summoners in the game, sharing weal and woe with the heroes. Moreover, compared with DOTA2, LOL has no compensation mechanism, and the overall difficulty of heroes is low, even disabled players can have a better experience. In addition, LOL can always bring forth new ideas on the map, and the rich and varied maps are suitable for almost all players. The polar chaos of Buddhism, the infinite firepower full of excitement, and the interesting clone wars are really endless. Early doomsday man-machine, soaring mode, the battle of six kills, the war of terror, the Odyssey and so on. It will also be talked about by current players. Of course, the fist company did not rest on its laurels while achieving great success, and the big version update every once in a while greatly extended the vitality of LOL. Although players complained before the version was updated, they soon experienced new equipment, new creatures and new maps. (Ah, it smells good ~)

Secondly, regarding art, fist companies can be said to have mastered the real wealth code. LOL's own painting style is biased towards comic style, and the lines of characters are very clear and have a strong three-dimensional sense; The scene is built with 3D modules, and the refreshing and bright interface looks very pleasing to the eye. At the same time, the fist updated the hero's skin very diligently. Chinese style, sci-fi style, dark style and western style emerge in an endless stream, which often makes people feel the urge to save money. For example, western cowboy Lucian, the combination of western flame+devil+cowboy is so cool! (I rank 1 in my mind, and I feel that Lucian and I are two heroes. ) I must also praise my fist here, because they are really willing to listen to the opinions of the players, and even the magical girl Ogat can take it out and ask for a pair of eyes that have never seen Lao Xu.

As for music, I don't think it's necessary to say more. Don't forget that fist also has a good name-"fist music company". Every S-race will produce excellent products, from Ma Genan's Warriors, Nicky Taylor's WorldsCollide, LegendsNeverDie in s7 season full of regrets, to rise and Phoenix, which won the championship twice. Whenever I turn on LOL, I can't help but turn on these music, as if I were a hero galloping on the battlefield, even if I face faker! In addition to the theme song of S-match, Fist also created the first album "The Musico f League GendsVolume1"in 15, and the first champion single "POP/STARS" of KDA band in 18 was also popular on the Internet. (Hey, Ali, my Ali)

Finally, let's talk about the huge League of Legends story universe created by fist in recent years. The early LOL didn't have a complete map. Most players learn about the three or two traces of the rune continent from the hero's background story and the MV released by the fist. For example, Knox Sass is a martial country, and Demassia is a deadly enemy; Pierre Wolff and Anzu are twin city-states, and their hacker skills are very awesome. Shadow Island is the location of the hammer stone and horse, where Lucian's wife burps. Players are also keen to form various CPS, such as Carter and Mudd, Raven and Yasuo, EZ and gems, men's guns and cards (Lax cried tonight). With the growing strength of LOL and players, fists began to build a grand universe similar to Azeroth. 20 17 big edition update, fist first shows the whole picture of rune continent. Freiredrod in the far north, Noxas and Demassia in the northwest, Ionia standing proudly in the northeast, the free Federation of Zuppi scattered in the middle, the Shadow Island in the southeast corner, Surema and Giant Mountain in the southwest, all the countries we are familiar with are finally printed in our minds in a clearer way. Their names come from. In the subsequent version of Fist, in addition to filling LOL's game background step by step, a real story line is also set up-the wandering mage Ruiz is looking for the lost world rune in the mainland. Up to now, Lucian has welcomed his wife Senna, and Shadow Island has also welcomed its owner, the King of Destruction. The once blank history has gradually become vivid, and I seem to see a thick chronicle slowly unfolding.

In retrospect, I have been deeply touched for a long time, maybe it was a psychological bonus that I couldn't get when I was young, but in the end, what attracted me to LOL was that it was good enough and interesting enough. Such an "epic masterpiece", as long as it remains excellent and continues to improve, then I don't think players will easily abandon it.

(2) Mature e-sports events

If LOL's excellent ontology provides basic users, then the injection of capital will completely transform this game into a mature commercial competition. Just like someone sings LOL, the number of LPL teams has been sold to hundreds of millions. Behind the sky-high admission ticket is the result of Tencent and fist companies' continuous commercialization of e-sports.

E-sports, I believe many people have heard of its name. On the day when IG won the championship, it seemed that it emerged overnight, and the whole network was scrambling to discuss it. But where this word comes from and where it develops is probably unknown except the insiders. So, here I'll do some small science popularization first. In fact, the beginning of e-sports can be traced back to the live broadcast of two children playing Nintendo games on ABC channel 1986. With the birth of the red and white machine, Nintendo held game competitions in 29 cities across the United States, and these activities were a great success. The Nintendo World Championship also became the first video game competition in history, which was 10 years earlier than the WCG we later became familiar with. Subsequently, the outbreak of the financial crisis led to the global economic depression, and South Korea began the starting point of e-sports with the fire of starcraft. Until today, South Korea is still the only country in the world with a complete e-sports industry chain.

In China, although the General Administration of Sports listed e-sports as the 99th official sports competition in 2003, parents of children, school teachers and even the public opinion environment of the whole country regarded games as a scourge, let alone what developed. In the following ten years, the government and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television also made a lot of efforts to dispel people's misunderstandings about games. For example, Lu Yu You Yue produced a series of programs for the world e-sports champions, CCTV5 Sports World showed the documentary of League of Legends Prince E-sports Club, and Jakarta 20 18 Asian Games even listed e-sports as a performance project. China people finally understand that playing games has money and a way out, and they can even win glory for their country.

The e-sports industry has developed so much, how can capital predators stop? Thanks to LOL's huge global users, the e-sports of League of Legends can be described as smooth sailing. Take LPL as an example. V5,2018, it took 8000W to enter LPL. By 19, according to PDD live broadcast, the LPL admission fee of ES is nearly1100,000. In 2020, according to the gossip, the price of ES and RW has reached1.70 billion. Despite the impact of the epidemic, such a terrible increase illustrates the fact that capital is still optimistic about the e-sports Red Sea, which is also confirmed by the increasing global audience in recent years. LOL's e-sports operation with a global vision has generated a wide range of job requirements in the gradually mature e-sports system, from core players, coaches and managers to marginal operations, translation, photographers and even cooking aunts, and even fans and live broadcast industries. Such a perfect industrial chain has fed a large number of people and contributed a huge number of new consumers to the country. E-sports is like a solid wall built by capital around LOL. Today, it is hard for me to imagine the scene of LOL's death.

(3) Content creation

League of Legends has formed a very complete industrial chain since its development. From the upstream game companies, to the mid-stream e-sports events, and then to the downstream content dissemination. We have discussed the first two, and the downstream content creation is actually a link that most people can contact more.

Do you often open the mile every Friday to see what food Lao Xu's mountaineering trip has brought us today? Will you occasionally open the relevant communities of League of Legends and check the teaching strategies of various heroes? Or, you are surfing hard every day, and suddenly you accidentally see a wonderful "muscle golden wheel" and you are deeply addicted to it.

Whether you are a LOL player or a game-related media, or an ordinary passerby. In this era of traffic first, as long as you are in the network, all kinds of complicated information will flood in, leaving you nowhere to hide. LOL's content production is very easy to get out of the circle, all kinds of stalks are flying all over the sky, the classic famous sayings of the Fifth Five-Year Plan, YYDS of UZI, Wuhu take-off of Teacher Ma and so on. When these stalks spread on the internet, many unique innovations joined the feast, and the Bible followed, and everyone enjoyed it. Almost every once in a while, LOL-related content will appear in the hot search of the whole network, and viewers, anchors and even stars are willing to take a look at this wave of traffic. It can be said that this continuous heat has further strengthened the vitality of the game.

Second, the comparison between similar and heterogeneous games.

Although LOL has such a big advantage, it is not without games to attack its dominance before.

What impressed me the most was the survival of the Jedi born on 20 17. It's a little too much to say it's natural. After all, the ancestor of eating chicken was H 1Z 1, but unfortunately it was soon hanged by the Jedi who had more realistic pictures and richer gameplay. Eating chicken, an excellent escape mode integrating gun battle, strategy and competition, quickly attracted players all over the world, and the game was popular all over the country for a time. "Survival of the Jedi" attracted more anchors to join the game because of the live broadcast. For example, LOL heads such as 50-50 split, PDD and MISS are not spared. If 16' s watcher pulled out a hair from LOL, then 17' s Jedi survival really began to try to draw blood from LOL. With the increasing popularity of "Survival of the Jedi", the voice of singing LOL has gradually increased. However, the good times did not last long. Due to the rampant plug-ins and the gradual withdrawal of professional teams, Jedi survival players began a cliff-like decline on 20 19, and now CS:GO has returned to the throne of steam.

The decline of Jedi survival is actually conceivable. On the one hand, there are limitations of payment and platform. Not everyone loves steam, everyone is willing to spend money to buy a game first. On the other hand, FPS is also a game type with a threshold. For players who are not good at gun battles, the experience brought by eating chicken is not good. After being killed many times for no reason, most people lost interest in continuing the game. (The early watch pioneer is really the best shooting game for beginners. )

If FPS games limit the number of people because of their types, then why are the same MOBA games, such as DOTA2 and Storm Hero, so far away from LOL? The author believes that LOL has made most MOBA players adapt to its gameplay and set a typical example by occupying the market in the early stage. When other PC-side MOBA games are launched, the clumsiness of the player's operation and the strangeness of the map are far greater than the freshness it brings. The higher cost makes many players choose to abandon the pit and return to the embrace of LOL. However, learning from the characteristics of World of Warcraft RPG map and DOTA, the dream of the Three Kingdoms with the traditional history of China as the background seems to me to be a new way to some extent, but the hero card policy introduced by Electric Soul 20 12 and the level design of 20 13 have greatly damaged the vitality of the game. Arrived at 14 and 15, players lost seriously and switched to other games. With the extension of the timeline, LOL's first-Mover advantage becomes more and more obvious, and its position in the PC-side MOBA game is no longer unshakable. As for LOL and DOTA2, in fact, someone has made a detailed analysis. The author only mentions one point here. As far as beginners are concerned, LOL really won too much.

Third, how many years will LOL be popular?

Finally, after the above discussion, let's go back to the original question: How many years will LOL be popular?

Although the current results are optimistic, LOL also has many crises, which may lie in an unbalanced design of the fist, which may be destroyed because of Tencent's poor operation, or may be scratched because of a game on the mobile side. However, none of these crises touched the root of LOL. Even if it happens, it may be a short recession like the chicken-eating era. It's only a matter of time before they get back to the top.

However, there is a truth that cannot be ignored, that is, science and technology are the primary productive forces. Every change in the game world is closely related to technology. From ancient vacuum tubes and circuit diagrams, to ancient microprocessors, to modern 3D modeling, touch technology and increasingly mature artificial intelligence, human beings have been pursuing the "realism" of an experience.

We hope that the future sports meeting will be another world, another spiritual home and even another warm hometown. According to this trend, the game may be a 100% simulation experience, or it may be a thing in the palm that can be played at any time, or it may be a chip implantation like a science fiction movie. Either way, it will announce the decline of LOL, and this decline is also the decline of traditional games.

Of course, if one day, LOL can naturally ride the east wind of new technology, and we can really become heroes of Summoner's Canyon, and have a happy contest of flesh and blood!