HANGZHOU: China won the first gold esports medal in Asian Games history in the Eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou on Tuesday (Sep 26) by beating Malaysia in the smartphone multiplayer battle game “Arena of Valor”, to delight fans in the world’s biggest esports market. Esports, which refers to video gam
HANGZHOU: China won the first gold esports medal in Asian Games history in the Eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou on Tuesday by beating Malaysia in the smartphone multiplayer battle game “Arena of Valor”, to delight fans in the world’s biggest esports market.
Inside the recently built Esports venue, organisers used lights, ear-splitting loud music and live commentary to create something akin to a gameshow scene in a movie set in a dystopian future world. In the Asian Games version of"Arena of Valor", a smartphone game developed by a subsidiary of Chinese tech giant Tencent , teams of five players first pick characters, called"heroes", to operate in the virtual world of the game before working with team mates to destroy their opponent's base.
“I stopped working and to watch CCTV's e-sport broadcast, almost bursting into tears,” one user wrote on Weibo, referring to coverage of the match by the state broadcaster which, though not live, was history-making given authorities' recent nervousness about gaming. "The position of the Chinese government on gaming is ambiguous," said Serkan Toto, founder of consultancy Kantan Games.
China has the world's largest esports market by revenue and fans. The market generated US$445 million in 2022 or 64.8 per cent of the Asian esports market and China boasts 400 million esports fans, also the highest number globally, according to data from leading Asian video game market analysts Niko Partners.The next step for esports will be a much tougher ask - to get Olympic recognition. Several players and managers on Tuesday made the case.
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