95: Chapter 95 The Upcoming Esports Event

On the big screen, the promotional video for crossfire began to play.

On screen, soldiers from two factions exchanged fire in an abandoned factory. Gunfire was intense, bullets sparked against sheet metal, and smoke grenades detonated. A soldier charged out from the smoke, firing his rifle in rapid succession.

The camera cut to a sniper's perspective, the crosshairs locking onto a moving target.

Although the trailer's pacing was intense, expectant players quickly realized that the game's graphical quality was clearly a notch below alliance of valiant arms.

After the trailer finished, many players in the comments section were puzzled. With graphics this poor, could it really compete with alliance of valiant arms?

"How should I put this? Honestly, the graphics are a bit mediocre. I thought this was going to be another game with top-tier visuals."

"Forget alliance of valiant arms; it doesn't even compare to the graphics of CSGO."

"It looks worse than single-player shooter games from several years ago."

"Can this really beat alliance of valiant arms?"

However, there were also comments defending crossfire.

"Good graphics don't mean it's fun to play. CS doesn't have the best graphics either, but it's still popular."

"I trust Qin Mo's judgment. He was able to create league of legends; it's impossible that he would just license a trash game."

"Try them both and stick with the one that's fun."

"Just based on Qin Mo's move to stand up to Ma earlier, I'm definitely playing this game!"

Although crossfire's graphics looked crude, most players watching the livestream didn't have overly negative thoughts.

After all, they knew something.

Graphics aren't everything.

Since both games were free and launching their open betas on the same day, there was no harm in trying both out and just sticking with the fun one.

Meanwhile.

After the crossfire trailer finished, Qin Mo walked off the stage. Without wasting any time, he took the team from Inspur Technology and Jiang Youyou and left the venue through a side exit.

After the top awards were presented, the rest of the event consisted of promotional videos for various new games.

This was a standard segment of the annual Global Game Influence Awards.

After the final awards were announced, there was a batch of trailer content that occupied the majority of the livestream's duration. Because these trailer slots were cheaper than the time before the awards, more companies chose to buy them for this period.

By this point, the Global Game Influence Awards were drawing to a close, leaving only various trailers that would run for several hours.

Therefore, most guests would leave at this time.

Vice President Chen Yongnian and the others also stood up from their seats at this time and walked quickly to Ma's side.

Their expressions were not very pleasant.

Ma glanced at Vice President Chen Yongnian, his voice suppressing anger.

"It's not just Douyin; he also created league of legends."

"Compared to him, you are all useless."

"You even forgot to do something as simple as deleting the award speech, making dota 2 a laughingstock."

Vice President Chen Yongnian lowered his head, not daring to reply, and Sun Qiang also averted his gaze.

After cursing a few more times.

Ma took a deep breath and suppressed his anger.

"What's the deal with that crude-looking crossfire? The name sounds familiar."

Vice President Chen Yongnian hurriedly spoke up.

"Mr. Ma, that's the game that the South Korean side insisted on bundling when we were looking to license alliance of valiant arms."

"The engine for crossfire is too old; its graphics can't compare to alliance of valiant arms."

"The developers in South Korea themselves didn't think the game had potential, which is why they wanted to bundle it at a low price."

"Aside from operating costs, they were practically asking for no revenue share."

"We didn't want this junk game that was practically being given away, so negotiations were at a stalemate."

He paused.

"But later, the other side suddenly relented, saying that a company had licensed crossfire separately, so there was no need for bundling."

"At the time, I thought it must have been some small domestic game company that didn't have enough funds and could only license crossfire to try their luck."

"But I didn't expect…"

Vice President Chen Yongnian's voice became a bit dry.

"It turned out to be Qin Mo."

Ma was silent for a long time.

Then he spoke.

"Are you sure this game has no potential?"

Vice President Chen Yongnian immediately guaranteed, his tone quite certain.

"Not just us, even the developers in South Korea themselves don't think this game has potential."

"If we hadn't licensed it, no one else would have bought it either. The game might even have been abandoned directly. Its biggest problem is that the graphics are too crude and there are no major innovations; it can't keep up with the times anymore."

He took out his phone and pulled up a screenshot of the livestream's comments from earlier.

"I just looked at the livestream comments, and players generally don't think highly of crossfire's graphics."

"So this time, there will definitely be no problems."

"Not to mention that we have everything crossfire has, plus we have more new modes and higher image quality."

"The gameplay logic for both games is the same; it's not like one is hard and the other is easy."

"dota 2 lost because it failed to discover potential MOBA players; the difficulty was too high and too complex, blocking out casual players."

"But I have carefully examined both alliance of valiant arms and crossfire. There is no difference in the entry threshold, and for two games where there isn't much difference in difficulty and gameplay, graphics are what determine the winner."

"So this time…"

Vice President Chen Yongnian looked up at Ma.

"I am confident."

Ma stared at him for quite a while.

Then he spoke slowly.

"I hope it's as you say."

"I don't want to be disappointed again."

After saying this, he also took everyone and left the venue.

...

After the last few game trailers finished playing, this year's Global Game Influence Awards officially concluded, but the heated discussions across the internet were just beginning.

The slip of the tongue in the dota 2 award speech.

The direct clash between alliance of valiant arms and crossfire.

The revelation of Qin Mo's identity.

Any one of these, if pulled out, would be enough to stay on the trending topics of major platforms for several days.

On Weibo, the entry about the revelation of Qin Mo's identity stayed at the top of the trending list for nearly two days.

The discussions in the comment sections came wave after wave, and the popularity never died down.

"I've been using Douyin for over a year, and only today did I learn that this software was made by someone not much older than me."

"The key is that he quietly created league of legends as well. Tencent has really hit a hard wall this time."

"Before Qin Mo went on stage, he handed champagne to Ma, and Ma just stood there holding two glasses of wine. Did anyone take a screenshot for a meme? I think the livestream captured it."

"Someone already has. There are screenshots from every angle. Click on the third trending topic and you can see them."

The photo of Ma standing there dumbfounded, holding two glasses of champagne in both hands, quickly spread across the entire internet of Great Xia.

The captions were varied.

"At eighteen, standing like a lackey, only able to hold champagne for others."

"Shocking: Before Ma's entrepreneurial success, he actually worked as a waiter!"

Each meme was followed by tens of thousands of reposts and posted on the gaming sections of major forums. However, when people tried to send this meme to others via QQ, they found that the image couldn't be sent.

Some people kept trying to send it and ended up getting banned for a few days.

However.

While the global internet was constantly buzzing with discussions because of this Global Game Influence Awards,

during these few days, a group of expert players were not paying attention to these discussions, nor to the events that happened at the awards ceremony; it was as if they had completely blocked out every move from the outside world.

Their attention was entirely focused on one place: the ranked system of league of legends.

This group of people played ranked matches every day to climb the ladder and improve their skills, battling fiercely in the Challenger and Master tiers across various regional servers. Ever since league of legends opened its ranked system, they hadn't paid much attention to the outside world.

And there was only one reason they were doing this.

That is, at this moment, there was less than ten days left until the official launch of the league of legends esports tournament.

And this group of people.

would be the first generation of true professional esports players in this world!

...

(PS: Thanks for the extra update, thanks to Cuo Ba Shiguang Dang Mianban, Ai Chi Cuipi Shanyao De Qiu Zhanglao, Ai Chi Qingzheng Muyu, Pidan Shourouzhou, Mimi De Hua, Bagua for the gifts.)