Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

It starts with 10 random matches from all regions of the world, and then the 16 countries with the highest scores are selected for the finals.

So here, some players are probably wondering: now that the rules are in place, who will compete?

it's actually really easy.

Gundam Battlegrounds has a ranked ladder system.

During a battle, players will be recruited starting from the top. If any of the top 32 players in a region are offline, in a battle, or refuse to participate, the recruitment process will be cancelled.

This continues in the same way. In short, at the start of the battle, the player with the highest rank on the ladder that each "server" can muster represents that server in the battle.

As long as your region can draw 32 people who are eligible to compete, then your server can participate. Anyway, it's a 10-round free-for-all, and the fact that you can't encounter the same enemy repeatedly basically ensures a certain level of fairness.

Therefore, the name of this gameplay is not a team battle, but a "server" international competition.

The reason they can do this is because Spark is one of the few companies that has its own server matrix globally, which allows it to allocate resources to the competition rooms.

In addition, the pace of the Gundam battlefield is relatively slow, so a slightly higher ping value is acceptable.

Finally, this game mode was initially advertised as an entertainment competition, and the winning server would receive a 50% experience bonus and a 50% silver coin bonus for the entire server for one day.

So initially, the organizers of Gundam Battlegrounds didn't expect the event to become so popular.

There wasn't even any commentary at the beginning of the match...

Chapter 590 The Road to Esports?

The rules for this first "Cricket Fighting" competition in "Gundam Battlegrounds" are actually quite simple.

First, a free-for-all was held to select the top 16, followed by the knockout stage.

There are a total of sixteen teams, and the competition is divided into sixteen to eight, eight to four, four to two, and then the final. The schedule is also very simple: before the semi-finals, there are two matches every day, and after the semi-finals, there is one match every day.

The entire schedule was set from the beginning.

However, in this process, Spark's attitude towards the competition gradually evolved from initially viewing it as merely a marketing activity within the Gundam production team to a competitive competition operated by the entire Spark platform.

Once the competition entered the knockout stage, the tension immediately became apparent for viewers worldwide.

It's strange to say.

Even though it was just a server-wide match, with no clubs or prominent players, player participation and viewership skyrocketed.

Using the word "ascension" is absolutely correct.

Whether it's Baidu, Google, or any other search engine, the search popularity for "Gundam World Cup" has increased dozens of times in the past two days. Looking at the graph, it's almost like ascending to heaven.

These data have also surprised the global gaming industry, especially gaming companies involved in esports.

Their surprise stemmed from the fact that, under normal circumstances, with the consolidation of Xinghuo's core business, the launch of many of its games in 19, such as Destiny's Path and Eastern Fantasy World, would have also led to an increase in search volume.

But usually it only increases by a few times, at most ten times.

This time, however, the number increased several dozen times, which means that many more people who were previously unfamiliar with Xinghuo, or who were just casual viewers, have become more aware of the event.

The reason is actually very simple: if this matter hadn't gone viral, Spark's players wouldn't have used Baidu to search for it; they would have used Baidu to search for it.

Most of them were passersby who didn't know anything about Xinghuo before, which is why this happened.

Ever since.

As the "Gundam Battlegrounds" service battle competition becomes more and more popular.

Many game developers who are organizing competitive events, and those who are preparing for competitive events, have also turned their attention to this.

For a long time in the past, most of the capital and game operation teams.

When organizing esports competitions, the focus is usually placed on the clubs and esports stars.

When organizing esports competitions, the first thing to do is to organize clubs; this has become a rule.

The reason this law exists is naturally due to the success of League of Legends' esports development.

In fact, League of Legends esports can no longer be called a success; it should be called a great success.

Therefore, almost all games that want to pursue esports will refer to the successful path of League of Legends.

This is actually easy to understand. Just like after Genshin Impact's success in its previous life, all anime and manga game developers were referencing the path to Genshin Impact's success.

When a market has only one single vendor that has achieved a single path to success.

This path will naturally become a model for others to follow.

However, as time went by...

Whether the success of League of Legends is the only solution for esports games has gradually become an unanswerable question in the industry.

The emergence of this problem is very similar to the problems that arose later in the market boom caused by Genshin Impact in its previous life.

It's just that everyone noticed that it imitates Genshin Impact or the competitive game mode of League of Legends.

Aside from the original game, almost all subsequent games that simply copied the model have failed; no game has achieved renewed success through a competitive match mode similar to League of Legends.

This questioning of the League of Legends competitive model reached its peak after Overwatch's esports competitions became unsustainable.

In terms of popularity, Overwatch was once even more popular than League of Legends, but even at its peak, Overwatch's esports competitions were not as popular as League of Legends, which was a few years earlier.

Afterwards, Blizzard encountered a series of problems, which caused Overwatch's esports journey to plummet to the brink of collapse.

Later on, even Valorant, developed by Riot Games (the developer of League of Legends), failed to replicate the success of League of Legends. So, what should esports be like?

Is the club model sustainable? These are all questions that have arisen.

Lin Li naturally noticed this problem as well.

But for a long time, he didn't care about it.

Because most of the games currently available on Spark are single-player games with relatively few competitive ones, Lin Li has no plans in this area.

I didn't even think about how to solve it.

After all, Lin Li isn't a god. He only knows that if esports is to be developed, it can't be completely copied from League of Legends. But the problem is that if we expand the esports market to a global scale...

In terms of scale, popularity, and profitability, only League of Legends stands out. Other esports events may seem decent on their own, but they pale in comparison to League of Legends.

But now.

Spark, on the contrary, seems to have found another approach to e-sports competitions because of an experiment with Gundam Battlegrounds.

That is international confrontation.

This is actually reflected in League of Legends, as well as in all esports competitions and traditional sports competitions.

The most attractive and popular competitions are definitely international ones.

The same applies to the FIFA World Cup and the League of Legends World Championship.

Only confrontations between nations can evoke the greatest resonance, just like when Overwatch was in such a state of decline, but once the Chinese teams achieved success.

It can still attract the attention of the entire Chinese internet community.

Now, the competition model created by Gundam Battlegrounds is like the purest form of wish-fulfillment fiction.

It has no clubs, no star players, and its competition mechanics are not even well-developed.

However, this model has completely extracted the core concept of "national confrontation".

Towards the end of the knockout stage, a certain characteristic had already emerged, and this characteristic became even more pronounced in the final round of sixteen.

This is very evident on Douyin.

The "Gundam Battlegrounds" tournament, which was divided into eighteen to six rounds, saw almost every live stream on Douyin reach around five million viewers. When China participated, the number of viewers quadrupled to twenty million.

That's twenty million!

Even for a platform like Douyin, even without simultaneous online users, this number is still extremely exaggerated.

Many ordinary viewers who don't usually watch esports competitions will also choose to watch this competition during their breaks.

Chapter 591 Do you need a club to get into esports?

Later, Xinghuo himself reflected on it. Just like many of us who don't usually watch hockey, curling, or similar sports, but when we encounter them on CCTV-5 during the Olympics, we still put down the remote and can chat about them with our family and friends.

For example, on YouTube right now.

Besides Russia defeating the United States, another major upset that garnered a lot of viewership in Europe and America was the defeat of the British team by the Brazilian team.

It's worth noting that the British team was highly favored before the match.

Before the official round of 16, the "Gundam Battle World Cup" essentially replaced the official server competition hosted by Spark.

As a more appealing term, it is widely used by the media, gamers, and video bloggers.

Gundam Battlefield was the first World Cup.

Therefore, before the competition, many video bloggers released various analysis videos, some explaining how to play Gundam on the battlefield, some talking about the turning points of the competition, and others analyzing the fighting styles, strategies, and win rates of various national teams.

Especially the win rate.

With the support of Spark, an American blogger created a global Gundam battle team combat power evaluation table.

This combat power rating table was compiled by them, and it is a comprehensive evaluation based on the past combat power performance of the top 32 players on the global servers.

This program is very well made and very professional.

Besides them, there are also a large number of European and American DB companies that have sponsored many bloggers to hype up this event, and have produced all the gameplay strategies and win rate references for various national teams on various servers.

Gambling is definitely illegal and not recommended for everyone, because it can easily ruin a person.

However, all competitions in Europe and America are related to this.

After all, it's a place where even DP (Democratic Progressive Party) is legal, so it's part of their culture to some extent.

Actually, it all started towards the end of the Gundam Battlefield elimination tournament.

There are already professional betting websites worldwide that offer betting odds on the Gundam Battlegrounds, and the British team performed quite well in the knockout stage.

With nine wins out of ten matches, Britain has always been highly regarded.

However, there is another problem in the knockout stage, which is that there is no way to predict the opponents in advance.

This stage involves directly selecting all online server teams capable of assembling 32 players from the designated match days and conducting a matchmaking process.

So the DB board was difficult to open at that time, but it came down to the round of 16 to 8.

Because of the pre-drawing ceremony, various websites became very active.

Their attitude towards this matter also confirms that the current "Gundam Battlegrounds" competition has indeed had a very wide influence.

All Xinghuo can do is try their best to prevent these things from affecting the competition.

For example, we sign fair competition agreements and contracts with all the contestants who make it to the top 18. Also, we try to confirm the contestants in advance for the top 16 matches and bring them together at the offline competition venue.

In addition, an extra prize pool was added, with the top three teams each receiving a personal victory bonus of 100,000, 50,000, and 30,000 respectively.

Of course, since Spark's mode is a server-based competition without clubs, participating players may have various reasons that prevent them from fully participating in the competition.

It's possible that someone might participate in the round of 16 to 8, but not in the round of 8 to 4.

Although this situation is relatively rare, it cannot be completely ruled out.

For players who do not participate in the entire competition, Spark will provide a portion of the prize money based on their participation in one aspect.

In addition to the victory prize, Spark also prepared a participation prize.

This is a reward for all players who participated in the Round of 16.

If you participate in the round of 16, then even if your team doesn't win the championship, you will still be considered based on their performance in the competition.

A maximum bonus of 50,000 yuan will be awarded.

This prize can be combined with previous win bonuses.

The entire bonus system, while not a huge amount, is certainly not small either.

More importantly, for Spark, because there is no club and it is a large team competition with 32 people, there is no intention to deliberately create star esports players in Spark's esports operation strategy.

On the contrary, the entire Spark team is currently focused on how to make the competition more exciting.

As for individual players?

Since it's a conscription system, if you don't go, they'll continue selecting those who are willing to go.

In Lin Li's view, whether the exorbitant esports prize money is good or bad for the promotion of esports is a very delicate question.