September 10th, Saturday …
The Manage Loss Trainees had a regular meeting in the morning, but there was no new information worth paying attention to this time.
Ever since He An posted that long Weibo post explaining the deeper meaning of Struggle, the game's reputation and sales had entered a period of rapid growth.
After Struggle was named a masterpiece, all the UP Masters on Aili Island started to commentate on Struggle. Although most of the UP Masters only uploaded one or two episodes due to time constraints, some of the bigger UP Masters had a terrifying effect on their own fans. They rushed to the front page of the website in a short period of time and obtained millions of views.
There might be many cloud viewers, but there were also many who bought the game after watching the video.
The mentality of the people who bought the game was also different.
Some people felt that it was better to play the game themselves even though they had seen it before.
Some people felt that it was not important to play the game, but they had to buy such a classic game to add 1 to their game library.
Some people felt that every choice people made was a vote for the world they liked more. If you liked a game, a movie, or a book, you had to support it with real money. The more people supported it, the more such works would appear.
If you thought that something was good but did not support it, there would be fewer of such things in the future. You would not have to complain.
Similarly, if you thought that something was good and supported it so that there would be more and more such good products, the credit belonged to all the supporters. Even if it was a simple tap water, you would have done your best.
On top of that, the official games platform was also sparing no effort in promoting Struggle.
Hu Xianbin and the others were also preparing for the English version to be published overseas.
That was because the game itself had a foreign background, and it was spoken in English. The characters in the game also had foreign faces. Therefore, it should be quite acceptable to overseas players.
Of course, no one knew if overseas players would like this theme before it was released. They also did not know if overseas players could understand the deeper meaning of the game without analyzing it.
However, there was no harm in trying. It was better to sell as many copies as possible.
If Tomorrow is Beautiful could succeed overseas, Struggle would definitely have a chance as well.
Pei Qian had no other way about that.
He could not do anything about it!
The gamers were determined to buy it, and the game developers were determined to recommend it. What could they do?
If the game's domestic sales and reputation were to collapse, Pei Qian could still persuade Hu Xianbin not to publish the overseas version and admit that the game was a failure. However, the game was considered popular in the country now. If Hu Xianbin wanted to publish the overseas version to give it a try, Pei Qian really had no reason to disagree.
This was very stiff.
Pei Qian now felt like he had fallen into a reverse Tacitus trap.
The so-called Tacitus Trap refers to what Tacitus said about a Roman emperor: Once an emperor becomes an object of hatred, people will hate him regardless of whether he does good or evil.
On the other hand, Pei Qian was facing a reverse Tacitus trap: once Tengda became a company that everyone liked, it would attract people's love for it no matter if it did good or bad things.
Of course, Tengda could not really do bad things because of the constraints of the system. It could not cut corners or sell shoddy products. It had to ensure quality and fluctuate the price within a range that matched the quality.
Therefore, Pei Qian could only think of some tricks to dissuade everyone as much as possible. However, under the effect of this reverse Tacitus trap, everyone interpreted these tricks as having other deeper meanings …
That was very tiring.
…
After the meeting, Pei Qian immediately rushed to the Great World in the city center. That was because today would be the official day of GOG's first international invitational tournament!
Previously, Pei Qian had been a little troubled by Struggle so he did not have time to watch the venue after it was set up.
However, it did not matter whether he watched it or not. In any case, the main purpose of this competition was to burn money. To Pei Qian, it was fine as long as the progress was guaranteed.
Before going to the competition venue, Pei Qian checked the competition schedule sent by Wang Xiaobin on his cell phone.
There were a total of 16 teams participating in the competition this time. There were eight domestic teams and eight foreign teams.
This ratio was not very scientific, but it could only be done in a hurry since the preparations were made this time.
The foreign teams were the most established esports teams. These teams had more financial resources, more scientific management, and stronger players.
If they were too weak, the competition might not be fun to watch.
The main purpose of inviting foreign clubs was to ensure that the competition had a certain amount of global attention. After all, most players would still prioritize supporting their own country or region's teams.
Half of the domestic teams were mainly to ensure that the competition was fun to watch.
In layman's terms, the domestic teams were in charge of the performance, and the foreign teams were in charge of making up the numbers.
That was because the number of teams had doubled compared to the previous competition. Naturally, the competition time would be extended accordingly.
September 10th to September 13th would be the first round of group matches.
September 15th to September 18th would be the second round of group matches.
September 20th to September 21st would be the quarterfinals.
September 23rd to September 25th would be the semifinals, third place, and finals.
From the quarterfinals onward, it would be a set of 'best-of-five' matches.
In more than two weeks and three weekends, the entire competition schedule could be completed. There was basically a break in between each round of competition even though it was only one day.
As for why Pei Qian was in such a rush, of course, it was because he had to solve the problem of the prize money for the competition before September 30th.
If the competition was dragged to next month, what would he do with the prize money? Would he make a loss for this cycle?
However, after the competition schedule was announced, most players were quite satisfied.
There were 16 consecutive days, with only the 14th, 19th, and 22nd resting days. The high-intensity performance was enjoyable to watch!
Of course, if the competition developed to a larger scale in the future and the semifinals and finals had to change cities and venues, it would be normal for there to be a week between the semifinals and finals. After all, they had to maintain the popularity of the topic. At the same time, they would try their best to shift the competition time to the weekends to ensure the attendance of the venues.
However, it would be quite painful for the audience to wait a week for a competition.
All in all, Pei Qian and the players were quite satisfied with the competition schedule.
More than ten minutes later, they arrived at the venue.
The Great World was a large shopping mall in Jingzhou, second only to Huanyu Tianjie. What was different from Huanyu Tianjie was that it had many large multi-purpose halls that could host large-scale competitions.
This time, they rented the largest multi-purpose hall in the Great World. It occupied the entire top floor, and the daily rent was thirty thousand yuan. Although it was cheaper than the big shopping malls in first-tier cities, in Jingzhou, this price was enough to make most companies flinch.
The multi-purpose hall on the top floor covered an area of 4,500 square meters and was 12 meters tall. It could accommodate up to 1,800 people. The Great World was in the most prosperous area in Jingzhou, and there were subway stations leading underground. Transportation was convenient. Therefore, all things considered, this was the most suitable venue for the competition.
The main decoration work of the venue was mainly on the main stage. Preparations had begun more than a month ago, and they were all completed now.
Pei Qian got out of the car in the square outside the Great World. He looked up and saw the huge publicity poster hanging on the Great World building.
There were a few iconic GOG heroes on it and the words' GOG's first international invitational tournament '. Of course, these heroes included heroes like Modest and Ruan.
Pei Qian looked at Modest on the poster helplessly. He felt that he could not get over it.
As GOG became popular around the world in the future, he would probably see Modest's image no matter where he went.
From the entrance to the venue, the entire route was surrounded by relevant elements as a guide. There were flags of various teams, large-scale concept art of various heroes, and other elements. The audience only had to follow these elements to successfully reach the competition venue and check in to be admitted.
The ticket prices were also set very low this time. Even the tickets on the day of the finals did not exceed a hundred yuan. After all, Pei Qian was here to spend money. The lower the ticket prices, the better.
Of course, he still had to take measures to prevent scalpers. After all, the lower the ticket price, the more likely they would be targeted by scalpers. With information such as TPDb and Tengda's account data, he could filter out scalpers to the greatest extent possible.
At the same time, the tickets were all based on real names and could not be resold. If something happened and could not make it, he could refund the tickets. Others could go to official channels to pick up scraps. Private transactions were not allowed.
Pei Qian followed the crowd that was entering the venue and sat in the back row very quietly, ready to watch the situation of the GOG international invitational tournament.
However, Pei Qian was more relaxed this time.
That was because he did not have much expectations for the competition. It did not matter whether it was popular or not. In any case, it would not affect the settlement this time.
The structure of the main stage made people subconsciously think of the layout of Fish-Catching Internet Cafe 3.0's Live Esports Museum.
Obviously, Xiao Peng had been running internet cafe competitions in the Live Esports Museum. He had accumulated a lot of valuable experience that could be used in this international invitational tournament.
There was a huge screen above the main stage to show the competition. There were two long screens on both sides of the big screen to show the heroes and lineup of the teams.
There was also a small screen in front of the team members to record each team member's expression.
The competition had not officially started at that time. Thus, Pei Qian took out his cell phone to check the situation of the various platforms.
The domestic live-stream platforms had opened special live-stream rooms for GOG's international invitational tournament. Whether it was Waiwai Live-Stream or ZZ Live-Stream, the popularity of GOG's international invitational tournament was off the charts for several larger live-stream platforms.
That was because GOG had already held an invitational tournament for domestic teams before, and ZZ Live-Stream had also held a performance competition. GOG had already gained a lot of popularity in the entire live-stream circle. Now that the international invitational tournament had started, a little publicity would be enough for a large number of viewers to pour in.
It was a grand carnival after all.
In addition, Shang Yang Games had also contacted foreign live-stream platforms in advance to live-stream the international invitational tournament.
It was not as popular overseas as it was in China, but it was not low either.
On one hand, it was because GOG's overseas publicity campaign had been fully launched. The game had entered the vision of overseas players after the release of Multifaceted Man. Whether it was client-side or mobile players, they were already very familiar with GOG. On the other hand, it was also because eight veteran overseas clubs were participating in the international invitational tournament. Naturally, it would cause discussion in the overseas esports circle.
On top of that, Shang Yang Games had specially produced a promotional video for GOG's first international invitational tournament.
In the promotional video, Lin Wan appeared as the director of Shang Yang Games and the person-in-charge of GOG's overseas operations. Her fluent English and confident expression won many fans for GOG.
"GOG's international invitational tournament is the grandest GOG competition so far and will become the grandest esports competition. Professional players from all over the world, a total of sixteen teams, will gather in Jingzhou to compete for the highest esports prize money in history.
"Tengda's motto has always been to go all out and strive for perfection. We have invested a huge amount of money in this international invitational tournament to prove our determination to promote esports activities and create an esports ecosystem.
"Here, I promise to GOG players all over the world that we will work hard to make GOG the strongest esports game in the future. Please bear witness with us!"
Lin Wan's expression on the screen was natural and full of confidence.
However, the netizens all understood the deeper meaning behind her words.
Obviously, she was declaring war on IOI!
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