So, Pei Qian could only think of different ways to dissuade everyone from buying Tengda’s products. However, under the effect of the reverse Tacitus Trap, everyone was taking his ways as more meaningful than they were…
Pei Qian was exhausted.
…
After the meeting, Pei Qian immediately rushed towards Great World Shopping Mall in the center of the city. Today was the first official day of GOG’s first global invitational tournament!
Before this, Pei Qian had been kept so busy by Struggle that he had not had the time to see the set-up even after it was done.
However, it did not matter whether he had managed to or not. In any case, the main purpose of the competition was to burn money. Pei Qian only cared that they achieved that as much as possible.
Before arriving at the competition grounds, Pei Qian checked the competition schedule that Wang Xiaobin had sent to him on his cell phone.
There were a total of sixteen teams taking part in the competitions this time. Eight were from China, and the rest were from overseas.
That ratio really did not make sense, but the organizing team had rushed to plan the competition, and so they had no other choice.
They had chosen the oldest teams from overseas to compete with. All of them were wealthy and managed well, and each individual member was strong.
The lousier ones had not been invited at all, for fear that the competition would become boring.
Foreign teams had only been invited to ensure that the competition gained a certain amount of attention from all over the world. After all, most players would support their own countries or states before anyone else.
The other half was local teams so that the competition would be worth watching.
Simply put, the local teams would be in charge of putting on a show while the foreign teams would be in charge of bringing in the viewers.
Compared to the previous competition, there was double the number of teams. Thus, the competition was to take longer this time.
The first round of games would be held from September 10th to September 13th.
The second round of games would be held from September 15th to September 18th.
The top eight teams would be determined from September 20th to September 21st.
The quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals would be held from September 23rd to September 25th.
From the point that the top eight teams are to be determined, the competition would take on a ‘best of five’ model.
Within two-odd weeks and three weekends, the entire competition would end. There would be time to rest between every round, but only for one day.
As for why they had to rush this… of course, it was because Pei Qian wanted to spend all the money on the competition before September 30th.
If he left it to next month, how would he deal with that sum of money? Would he still be able to incur losses during this cycle?
Still, most gamers were happy with the competition schedule.
The game would go on for sixteen days, with rest on the 14th, 19th, and 22nd. They could sit back and enjoy high-level performances!
Of course, once the scale of the competition increased and they changed venues, the rest time between the semi-finals and finals would likely extend up to a week. After all, that would keep the competition the hot topic. Putting the events on weekends as much as possible would also ensure more viewers.
Nevertheless, waiting one entire week to watch the next stage was torturous to the audience.
All in all, Pei Qian and the audience were all quite happy with the competition schedule.
Ten minutes later, Pei Qian arrived at the competition grounds.
Great World was a large shopping mall in Jingzhou, just like Huanyu Tianjie. It was different from Huanyu Tianjie in that it contained huge multi-purpose halls, where large-scale competitions could be held.
This time, GOG had rented the largest multi-purpose hall in Great World, which took up the entire top floor. Rent cost thirty thousand yuan per day. Although it was considered cheap compared to rent in first-tier cities, the price was enough to catch the attention of most companies in Jingzhou.
The multi-purpose hall on the top-most level of the shopping mall was about 4,500 square meters large and twelve meters tall. Its maximum capacity was 1,800 people. Since Great World was located in the most prosperous district in Jingzhou, transport was convenient and train stations were everywhere. On the whole, this place was the most suitable location.
Decorations had mainly been done on the stage, and they had begun about a month ago. Now, they were all done.
Pei Qian alighted from his car outside Great World and then looked up to see the gigantic promotional poster on the outside of the building.
On it were several iconic heroes from GOG, as well as the words ‘GOG’s First International Invitational Tournament’. Of course, Modest and Ruan, the hot favorite heroes, were featured among the heroes as well.
Pei Qian looked helplessly at Modest on the poster, feeling that the joke was becoming increasingly unbearable.
In the future, as GOG became popular in other countries around the world, he might see Modest everywhere he looked.
From the entrance to the hall, there were elements of the competition scattered around, directing Pei Qian to the right location. There were flags of the various teams and large posters of the various heroes. The audience only had to follow those elements to get to the competition ground, get their entry tickets checked, and enter.
The tickets were priced extremely low this time as well. Even tickets for the finals did not exceed a hundred yuan. After all, Pei Qian was here to spend money. The cheaper the tickets, the better.
Clearly, he had to put measures in place to prevent scalpers from taking advantage of the situation as well. After all, selling tickets at a low price would invite many scalpers to take action. Using information from TPDb and Tengda account data, Pei Qian could filter scalpers out as much as possible.
At the same time, all tickets were sold with the purchaser’s name and were non-transferrable. If people could not make it on the day itself, they could ask for a refund. Others could look for spare tickets through official channels, but private transactions were prohibited.
Pei Qian followed the crowd into the competition ground and quietly walked to the back row, prepared to observe how GOG’s international invitational tournament would go.
However, this time, Pei Qian felt more relaxed.
That was because he had no expectations of the game to begin with. Whether it became popular or not did not seem to matter. In any case, it probably would not be able to affect settlement.
The structure of the stage made him think about Fish-Catching Internet Cafe 3.0’s Live Esports Museum.
Obviously, Xiao Peng had been organizing frequent competitions in the internet cafe while managing the Live Esports Museum. Thus, he had accumulated a lot of precious experience which he could apply to the international invitational tournament.
There was a large screen above the stage, which would project images of the competition. On either side of the large screen were two longer screens, which displayed each team’s heroes and line-up.
There was also one small screen in front of the team members, which recorded each of their expressions.
At that moment, the competition had not officially started yet. Thus, Pei Qian whipped out his phone to check the situation on various platforms.
Local live-stream platforms had already set up a dedicated room for GOG’s international invitational tournament. Larger streaming platforms like Waiwai and ZZ were already experiencing huge traffic because of how popular the competition was among the audience.
That was largely because GOG had organized a local invitational competition before, and ZZ had organized a Performance Competition as well. GOG had already gained a lot of traction within the live-streaming circle. Now that the international invitational tournament was taking place, GOG only needed a
little extra publicity to draw in large crowds.
After all, this was akin to a huge carnival.
On top of that, Shang Yang Games had also contacted live-streaming platforms overseas to stream the international invitational tournament.
Although the game’s popularity overseas could not be compared to that in China, it was still significant.
On one hand, it was because GOG had conducted aggressive publicity overseas. Ever since the Multifaceted Man was released, many foreign players began paying attention to the game. Gamers of both client-side games and mobile games alike were familiar with GOG. On the other hand, it was also because eight foreign veteran clubs were taking part in the international invitational tournament as well. Naturally, this had become a topic of discussion in the foreign esports circles.
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. With fluent English and a confident expression, she helped to win over many fans for the game.
“GOG’s international invitational tournament is by far the biggest GOG competition yet, and it’s about to become the biggest esports competition as well. We have esports athletes from all over the world, and a total of sixteen teams gathered in Jingzhou. They will fight for the most generous esports championship in history.
“Tengda’s mission has always been to go all out and achieve perfection. We have invested a huge amount of money in this international invitational tournament to prove our determination to promote esports and build an esports ecosystem.
“Here and now, I promise this to GOG players all over the world: We will strive to build GOG into the strongest competitive online game in the future. Please be our witness!”
Lin Wan looked very natural and exuded confidence on the screen.
However, all the netizens overseas understood the hidden message in her words.
Obviously, she was declaring war against IOI!
Chapter 647 - There are Nine Other People who are Better than Me
Pei Qian could not help but feel emotional.
For some reason, he felt like Lin Wan had become much more confident after taking over GOG’s international server.
Yet, speaking of which, if Lin Wan was declaring war against IOI, then…
Why wasn’t there any news of IOI’s local server from Eric?
Before this, during meetings, he had heard that Eric had failed twice trying to manage IOI’s local server. First, he failed to find internet cafes that would support him; then, he failed to find live-stream platforms or clubs that would support him. In the end, his strategy proved to be an utter failure, and he shifted his focus to manufacturers of peripheral products. There, he tried to find other gamers.
At the time, Pei Qian was overjoyed. He instructed GOG’s people to follow closely behind Eric.
However, after what happened with Struggle, Pei Qian completely forgot about the matter. Until now, the employees of Shang Yang Games had not updated Pei Qian on the fight. There was also no news of Shang Yang Games online.
All of a sudden, Pei Qian felt worried about Eric.
Brother, you didn’t quietly leave, did you?
How I look forward to you coming to Tengda Headquarters one day… arrogantly asking to see me. That would mean that IOI was getting better again. Then, I would be able to continue burning money with you!
Pei Qian searched for news about IOI’s local server online and realized that, apart from a few insignificant advertisements from cooperating manufacturers, there were no other hot news.
There were a couple of posts discussing how IOI’s local server was completely deserted though.
Compared to GOG’s current situation, they were unbearably miserable.
For some reason, Pei Qian felt sympathy. He thought about the high-level executives of multinational corporations coming all the way to China, hoping to tear the veil and put on a big show. Yet, in the end, the game that had become hot in every other corner of the world had failed to take off here…
Then, even the overseas markets began to be dominated by GOG…
Awful.
It was so awful.
Still, he soon recalled that the other party had forced tens of millions of US dollars down his throat and then stopped feeling sympathetic.
Whatever. Dayak Corporation was an extremely wealthy multinational corporation after all. How could they collapse over such a small thing?
Yes, he had to trust in their wealth.
He should just focus on the competition for now.
Before this, Tengda Games and Shang Yang Games had already organized competitions before and accumulated a certain amount of experience. This time, they were also working with experienced esports media. Thus, every aspect of the competition was well-planned.
Apart from all the hard factors like equipment, network, on-site scheduling, and so on; another important factor that would determine whether the audience enjoyed watching the competition or not—and whether the competition would run smoothly or not—was the details.
For example:
They had to film promotional videos for each club and member to warm up the field…
They had to brief the members well on the rules and etiquette of competition, so that every team would take the initiative to shake hands with their opponents after each game, regardless of whether they won or lost. They would also have to walk to the center of the stage and bow to the audience…
They had to arrange for the emcees to interview members after each match. At the same time, there were special interview stands at the side of the stage for interviews to be conducted in English and streamed to the overseas audience.
The competitors’ mouses and keyboards had to be sent for inspection in advance to ensure that there were no hacks installed. Moreover, two sets of additional equipment of the same models had to be prepared to minimize disruptions.
It was necessary to come up with back-up plans for all sorts of emergency situations. For instance, if there was a jam, the director would have to immediately notify the commentator of the reason behind it. The commentator would then have to explain it to the audience to prevent them from losing interest. Of course, they also had to minimize the chances of the game jamming as much as possible.
Soon, the competition officially began.
There was a warm-up video with intense background music at the beginning. Key landmarks in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other first-tier cities flashed across the screen… before it finally settled on Great World in Jingzhou—the location of the competition.
There was a 10-second countdown, which everyone in the audience joined. After ‘one’, there were loud cheers and exciting electronic music that swept the audience away!
On the screen, a huge beam of light descended from the sky and lit up a huge, silver treasure chest. The treasure chest suddenly cracked open, causing more beams of light to shine through it. Then, it turned into the map for the game—the Canyon of Gods.
An exquisite-looking trophy hovered above the Canyon of Gods. Around it, the silhouettes of GOG’s iconic heroes appeared one after another, causing the audience to scream and cheer in excitement.
Since they had not had much time to prepare for the competition, the opening ceremony was rather simple. However, for an audience that had not seen anything as grand as this, it was enough to fill them with excitement.
Even Pei Qian’s blood began to rush through his veins in the charged atmosphere.
After that, a trophy that looked exactly like the one on the screen slowly rose up from the bottom of the stage and appeared in front of the audience.
The trophy had been ordered about a month ago and had only been delivered a few days ago.
It was 35 centimeters tall, gold-plated, and made of zinc alloys. A dragon and a phoenix were engraved in it, m
aking it look like a beautiful piece of ancient Chinese treasure. At the same time, it harbored elements of GOG.
Yet, that was not the main focus. The main focus was that it weighed 28 kilograms.
That’s right—28 kilograms.
That was because the initial intention behind the design of the trophy was for all five members to raise it up together.
After that, promotional videos of all sixteen teams were screened, ending with a family portrait of all sixteen team leaders. The sixteen team flags around the arena were lit up, and the commentator shouted every club’s name, along with the names of each team member. One by one, the teams went up onto the stage to show their faces.
The thunderous applause and cheers in the competition ground did not stop for a long time!
…
After hyping the crowd up, the commentator announced that the competition was officially starting. The two opening teams were the first to play against each other.
This time, the opening match was to be played by H4 and FRY because both teams were veteran clubs. As early as when Starcraft and Fantasy Battle were still popular, both clubs had participated frequently in global competitions and put on multiple exciting shows.
It was precisely because both teams were quite well-known globally that they were made to play the opening match.
The groupings had not been done by drawing lots this time. Instead, it was decided internally and rather shrewdly. Since there were eight each of local and overseas teams, there were four groups in total. The numbers of Chinese teams in each group were zero, one, three, and four.
They had arranged groupings in this manner instead of putting two local teams in each group, mainly for fear that there would be no foreign teams left after the first few rounds. That would be a tough situation indeed.
If only local teams made it to the semi-finals, the foreign audience would become extremely anxious.
Thus, more foreign teams were placed in Groups A and B to peck at each other. Then, three foreign teams would surely make it to the top eight, and one would surely make it to the quarter-finals. That way, the foreign players would feel a stronger sense of existence.
Losing Money to Be a Tycoon c1-883 Page 419