Rebirth is fine, but I get eight hundred dollars right from the start?

No one expected that the seemingly "boring" live stream, "Next Stop, Career!", would become its biggest selling point.

Huya, Tencent, and even a host of sponsors never expected this.

The young man's impromptu shooting suggestion actually yielded such great results.

Lin Shu remained silent amidst the various data analyses and shocking information circulating in the collaborative group chat.

Audiences aren't stupid. Everyone knows what the domestic variety show market was like back in 2013—either celebrities acted according to a script, or ordinary people argued according to a script. After watching too much of it, it became tasteless.

Suddenly, this show appears, and it's from the rapidly growing e-sports industry in recent years. Thirty real young people, without lines, without retakes, without "director yells cut," just sitting in front of you so genuinely. They're nervous when they should be nervous, frustrated when they should be frustrated, and spacing out when they should be spacing out. Coupled with their natural curiosity, the audience finds it fresh and real.

More importantly, for esports players, this kind of live streaming format, or variety shows with esports attributes, is a "rare thing".

In 2013, the domestic e-sports live streaming industry was just starting out. Although YY Live already existed, most of its content consisted of streamers playing ranked matches and commentating on games. This was the first time that the entire youth training selection process had been laid bare on camera.

For the first time, players can truly see the daily lives of professional players—even those who are still in training programs and haven't yet become professional players—in the training room.

How they sit, how they talk, how they practice, and how they deal with rankings—these details are closer to the true face of esports than any competition.

After all, there's a saying that goes, "Humans always like to entrust things they can't do to other people or things."

Of course, the drawbacks are also obvious.

First and foremost is the issue of privacy.

The group of thirty young people, most of them in their teens and early twenties, are at an age when they are easily embarrassed and have strong self-esteem.

The public rankings are cruel enough, but now even where you sit, your expression, and who you talk to are being filmed from every angle, doubling the pressure.

Some people are naturally extroverted, which is fine, but someone like Fang Han, who is a chatterbox, gets more energetic the more camera time he gets.

But for introverted people like Zhao Yicheng, or others with weaker psychological resilience, hiding in a corner for half a day without saying a word, makes the audience feel suffocated for them.

Secondly, there's the issue of rhythm.

Live streaming means there is no editing, no highlighting, and viewers see a continuous, unprocessed stream of time.

It's alright when there are intense training matches, but when there's free time, it's just pure torture.

For viewers accustomed to the pace of short videos, this kind of live stream tests their patience.

However, in 2013, viewers hadn't been spoiled by short videos yet. People could watch a live stream for two hours with great interest, which is unimaginable in the future, but it was the norm back then.

Another risk is content-related.

Nobody knows what will happen next. What if a player has a mental breakdown and cries in front of the camera? What if someone gets into an argument or fights? What if someone says something wrong? Once it's broadcast live, there's no going back.

This is why the production team only broadcasts live from public areas such as the training room, corridors, and cafeteria. Although cameras are installed in the dormitories, they are not kept on all day, leaving the contestants with a little breathing space.

As for the data, let's just say this:

On the night of the premiere of "Next Stop, Career!", the peak number of real-time online viewers in the official Huya live stream room reached 870,000.

Note that it's the number of people, not popularity!

What would this number mean in 2013?

At the time, the most popular variety show in China had a peak viewership of only three to four hundred thousand, not even real-time viewership.

The number of users reached 870,000, more than doubling, and it crashed Huya's backend servers. The technical department had to urgently expand capacity to stabilize the situation.

The total number of bullet comments is even more exaggerated.

Within two hours of its premiere, the number of bullet comments exceeded 4.2 million, averaging more than 500 per second. The screen was densely packed with comments, like a torrential downpour, and the picture was completely obscured without turning on the bullet comment filter.

The most outrageous thing is that this data was generated at 10 pm, which is almost past the prime time.

The production team was initially worried that this time slot would be a bit eerie for the viewers, but the live chat was flooded with people introducing themselves – "Hey, why aren't you streaming all night tonight!" "Cultivating immortality, cultivating immortality, cultivating immortality is important, I'll say it three times, brothers." "Tomorrow's the weekend, let's stream a little longer today."

People then realized that the main audience of esports users is young people who like to stay up late.

Huya's mobile traffic surged three times compared to usual. Back in 2013, smartphones had just become widespread and data charges were exorbitant. Yet, some people were still watching live streams on 4G, and some even posted their addresses in the chat asking, "Do you have any Wi-Fi I can borrow?"

More importantly, it's the user's dwell time.

The average viewing time per person is 72 minutes, which is more than an hour.

This was an extremely alarming figure in the live streaming industry in 2013.

Back then, most viewers in a live stream would only stay for an average of ten or twenty minutes. The only ones who could keep people sitting for fifty minutes were either top-tier matches or top-tier streamers.

"Next Stop, Pro!", a youth training selection program, has succeeded.

Forums, online communities, and QQ groups are all buzzing with discussions.

"Have you seen Fang Han? He scored over 1,500 points. He's a monster among monsters."

"Zhao Yicheng looks like a sports student, but he plays AD carry. It's an adorable contrast."

"That guy's worn-out shoes really got me down. Is he genuinely poor or just faking it?"

"Luo Yu is last place. I bet he won't last two weeks."

"Who is TheShy? A Diamond 1 jungler ranked 24th? The coaching staff's ranking is wrong."

Overnight, the names of these thirty players became hot topics in the e-sports circle.

Fang Han and Qin Yijie became trending topics on Tieba, and Zhao Yicheng's phone call clip was edited into a short video and went viral in various QQ groups—although the concept of "short video" didn't exist yet, someone recorded the screen and posted it on Youku with increasingly outrageous titles: "Seventeen-year-old King of Glory player with 800 points, wearing ripped rubber shoes to call his sick mother, making 300 million people cry."

Of course, despite the hype, there were also many criticisms.

Some say it was a script deliberately arranged by the production team, some say Zhao Yicheng's phone call was acted, and some even dug up a contestant's previous posts on Baidu Tieba, saying he "has a criminal record."

But these controversies did not cause the show to fizzle out; on the contrary, they fueled its popularity.

That night, Huya's top management contacted the head of Tencent immediately and even dragged Lin Shu, who was about to go to sleep, out of bed for an emergency meeting. The project, which was originally only planned to be done for one season as a trial, was immediately approved to receive additional resources, and the plan for the second season, which involved the entire competition area, was launched ahead of schedule.

The sponsors started calling at seven o'clock the next morning. They were all from peripheral brands to energy drink brands, from gaming chairs to pork floss cakes. They were all very anxious, afraid that if they were a step late, they would miss out on a spot.

All of this was unknown to the thirty contestants.

All they knew was that the real, brutal elimination process would only begin at eight o'clock tomorrow morning.