Football + e-sports is building an IP biosphere, can competitive football games enter the Olympic Games?

"Chinese football may not conquer Brazil, but Chinese football games can conquer Brazil. "this is what NetEase, Inc CEO Ding Lei mentioned in his speech at the annual meeting of China's game industry in 2019.

Although it looks like a joke, it is actually an affirmation of the performance of the domestic football mobile game "Top of the Green".

NetEase, Inc launched the Brazilian App Store platform with his own football competitive mobile game "Top of the Green" and topped the list of free ios games in Brazil within 72 hours of its launch. On December 20, the platform-wide public test should be conducted in the national service.

It is worth noting that "Live Football Mobile Games-2020", which was issued by NetEase, Inc and developed by KONAMI on December 11, also carried out a platform-wide public test.

Is it really necessary for NetEase, Inc to release two mobile games of the same type in 10 days? Let's start with the story of KONAMI and NetEase, Inc, vs EA and Tencent.

EA vs KONAMI of Football Category

Unlike MOBA, RPG, leisure and other categories, the mature development of football competitive games is mainly reflected in the mainframe and stand-alone. The most representative are the "FIFA" series launched by EA and the "live football" series launched by KONAMI.

The 1994 World Cup was held in the United States, and there was a wave of football in the United States. To seize the moment, EA launched its first football game product, FIFA94 (then called FIFA International Football) in 1993, and sold it on all major platforms at the time. Live Football, a competitor, was officially released by KONAMI in 1996.

As a football competitive game, its biggest selling point is the high degree of restoration of real sports, so as to give players a "real sense of competition". In the early days, because of the "real" feel of the main operation of the "Live Football 8" series, there was a sense of identity in the player circle that 'FIFA' is just a game and' live'is football.

At that time, the "Live Football" series emphasized the cooperation of players and the use of space, requiring players to have a certain tactical awareness. "FIFA" series is more operational, defense requires players to carry out full manual joint defense, so as long as the offensive side as long as skilled skills, hand speed is fast enough, can score twice repeatedly put on a single knife.

In contrast, "Live Football" appears to be more friendly in operation, and the functions of assisting defense and following defense allow players to experience the feeling of semi-automation in defense, which is now the so-called intelligent AI.

As the football competitive game is a high degree of reduction of real sports, which means that the game has a high demand for authorization, in order to obtain real players, teams, clubs, leagues and other real information. Compared with EA as FIFA's top sponsor, KONAMI is in a weak position in terms of copyright.

This has led to the lack of game elements such as teams, stars, jerseys and leagues in the follow-up of "live football", which has been repeatedly criticized by players. The "operational realism" of a more realistic football competition is not enough to save the market performance of "live football".

In 2010, "FIFA Soccer 10" sold 10.73 million, while Live Football 2010 sold only 5.99 million. With the passage of time, "live" and "FIFA" integrate into each other, the boundary between them in the game is no longer clear, but the sales gap between the two is still widening.

In 2014, sales of "FIFA 15" set a record of 18.4 million, while sales of "Live Football" reached 1.63 million, a difference of more than 11 times. Over the next few years, the annual sales of the "FIFA" series basically maintained steady growth. In contrast, the sales of the "Live Football" series have shrunk year by year, leaving only 1.44 million of the sales of "Live Football 2017" in 2017, while the sales of "FIFA17" reached 21 million, 14 times that year.

Times have changed, and years of poor sales have prevented KONAMI's "Live Football" series from competing with EA's "FIFA" series in the mainframe and PC platform, but that doesn't mean KONAMI and EA have no leverage at all.

With the development of smartphone hardware and 4G network, the mobile game market is becoming more and more hot. With the blessing of the 2014 World Cup, KONAMI launched the "Live Club" mobile game. The work should give up the "operational reality" that the "reality of operation" paid attention to in the past, and focus on the management of the football team, including the training methods of the players, the arrangement of the game, and so on, and adopt the mode of collecting cards, setting up the array and playing automatically.

Although the game "Live Club" is very similar to SEGA's "Football Manager" series, the game has achieved good results after it was launched, and was once at the forefront of the download list of various mobile games. In the same year, EA launched the "FIFA 15" mobile version, but the content of the game is based on the simplified transplantation of the host game, and the core game is the same virtual game as the mainframe.

The war between EA and KONAMI, "FIFA" series and "Live Football" series never went out, and it also led to the Chinese game market for a time. Compared with the foreign market, the football competitive games in the domestic market are not yet mature.

Tencent vs NetEase, Inc of Chinese football competitive games

With the rise of China's game market and sports events, the market demand for sports categories is expanding, which provides a good opportunity for EA and KONAMI.

Today, China's 640 million users, compared with MMO, cards and so on, the domestic football competitive games are still relatively lacking. According to the game version number approved by the State Press and publication Administration, from 2009 to now, the number of games with "football" and "Greenland" as key words is 72 and 7 respectively.

Compared with the total number of game products in the tens of thousands, football games are only a small cluster. In 2019, the State Press and publication Administration approved the publication of 1468 games and only 17 football games, including NetEase, Inc's "Live Football 2020" and "Green Top", Tencent's "Football online 4" and "Hot Blood Football".

In recent years, with the cooperation between Tencent and EA, NetEase, Inc and KONAMI, the domestic football competitive game market presents a situation that the two jointly compete with each other.

In comparison, EA's "FIFA Mobile" has more rights to mainstream events and a wider user base, and although Tencent is very cautious about the operation of the "FIFA" series, judging from the market performance of the "FIFA OL3" PC games launched in 2014, "FIFA OL3" has about 35 million registered users, which is a great success in the minority sports category.

In 2018, Tencent announced that he would join hands with EA to upgrade "FIFA OL4". More importantly, FIFA Mobile, the country's first football-themed competitive mobile game, was also launched.

For EA, there are also good gains from repeated cooperation with Tencent. WeChat Mini Programs and other entrances let "FIFA Mobile" have a natural channel advantage.

It is different from Tencent and EA to choose to launch product matrix and use PC game + mobile game product matrix to cover mass users. NetEase, Inc and KONAMI launched a "live" series of mobile games, focusing on the user market of mobile games.

After NetEase, Inc represented the "Live Club" mobile game in 2014, KONAMI launched the manipulated football game "Live Football" and the brand-new card football game "Live: Masters gathering" in 2018.

The experience of both sides in development and operation reflects the advantages of "Live Football" in the field of mobile games. "Live Football" mobile games are superior to similar products on the market in terms of modeling refinement, AI intelligence, operation feel, game rhythm and balance.

The engine of "Live Football" was upgraded on April 29th, 2019, and the "Unreal 4" engine completely replaced the original "HAVOK" engine of the mobile game, improving the quality of the game in terms of picture, action, game rhythm and AI.

On December 20, 2019, NetEase, Inc launched the self-developed football competitive mobile game "Top of the Green" in the national service. The show was launched early overseas on December 10, and reached the top of Brazil's iOS game free list within 72 hours of launch.

As of December 20, the ranking of App Store sports games in China, NetEase, Inc "Top of Green" free list No. 3, best-seller list No. 23, "Live Football-2020" free list No. 7, best-seller list No. 2; Tencent "FIFA Mobile" free list No. 13, best-seller list No. 3, "National Champion Football" best-seller list No. 6.

Whether it is Tencent or NetEase, Inc, EA or KONAMI, their development of competitive football games may still be on the level of market demand.

However, with the development of e-sports, competitive games have entered the Asian Games, and even joined the Olympic Games. From the level of sports events, the development of e-sports will affect the whole world like traditional sports, and football games will also have the opportunity to be included in the list of Olympic events.

Football games may become an Olympic e-sports event.

From an ideal point of view, the football e-sports game may become one of the international sports events and e-sports events, while from a realistic level, game manufacturers, including Tencent and NetEase, Inc, are not only optimistic about the products themselves, but also optimistic about the potential of combining traditional bow sports with e-sports.

On June 16, 2017, at the annual brand conference of Tencent and e-sports, FIFA ONLINE 3, together with China Sports E-Sports Alliance, joined hands with 10 Chinese Super League football clubs to officially launch the "Chinese Football e-sports League CEFL". The teams participating in the third season of CEFL in 2018 include Guangzhou R & F and Shandong Luneng, with a total bonus of 880000 yuan.

In 2019, KONAMI officially launched the "eFootball" new professional e-sports match, the eFootball.Open Championship will be open to all users through the new game mode "match Day", and the eFootball.Pro Championship will see the best professional players wearing their club's jerseys to compete with the top e-football teams.

In addition, league sponsored matches organized by KONAMI and local football associations, such as the J League or Thai Super League, will be held as local football tournaments in Asia, South America and Europe.

Between December 2019 and April 2020, 10 teams, including Barcelona, Manchester United, Arsenal, Juventus and Bayern Munich, will compete in Barcelona in the "live football" eFootball.Pro electronic football professional e-sports league, and finally decide on the two best teams. After the knockout stage, the finals will be held in the summer of 2020.

Not long ago, Mr. Li Leiming, the national server producer of NetEase, Inc's Live Football, said in an interview with the media: the green match is now more open to players to play on their own, and activities based on the green game system will be launched one after another in the future. The team system is the most basic bottom in the design of this series of e-sports events, and next year NetEase will do a complete set of events on the basis of the bottom.

The combination of games and traditional sports by game manufacturers can not only expand the influence of the game itself, but also attract more pan-user groups, and prepare for the creation of football game IP pan-entertainment ecology.

In recent years, the rapid development of e-sports has gradually led from the life level to the national and international level.

In March 2013, the State General Administration of Sports decided to set up a 17-member e-sports national team to compete in the 4th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games. In 2018, the Chinese e-sports national team took part in the "League of Legends" finals of one of the events in the Asian Games in Jakarta. The Chinese team won the gold medal by beating arch-rival South Korea 3-1.

In the event e-sports, the fourth Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games and the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games are all involved in football competitive games, the former is "FIFA", the latter is "live football".

In the past two years, there has been a lot of information about e-sports joining the Olympic Games. Although there is a long way to go, there is still a glimmer of light. The International E-Sports Federation GEF (Global Esports Federation) was officially established on December 16, 2019.

Chris CHAN, the first chairman of GEF, said that after the establishment of GEF, it will be committed to promoting the exchange and integration of e-sports and sports in various fields, so as to promote a greater degree of recognition of e-sports in international sports official organizations; in the future, GEF will be used as a platform to connect e-sports partners around the world to help in more standardized, rigorous and healthy international standard-setting.

At this point, the entry of e-competition into the Olympic Games has taken a crucial step forward.

Can football games, as one of the e-sports events, board the "big ship" bound for the Olympic Games?