The game-playing girl: watched by hundreds of thousand people
Next Station: Esports
The well-known broadcaster usually does live once a week, sometimes more, but she understands that this cannot be her lifelong career.
Her next target is electronic sports.
Electronic sports, or eSports, are “a form of sports where the primary aspects of the sport are facilitated by electronic systems”, as defined by the Social Science Research Network.
Annie held an eSports event for the first time in 2015. It was a Minecraft competition and 32 teams of contestants were to fight for flags in a designated area.
She says it was a good experience for her, as she had to look for sponsorships and collaborate with all the people involved.
The most worrying part, according to the curator, was that the promotion was not as effective as imagined because of the view counts. The question would the sponsor still support them next time made her nervous.
As one of the organisers, Annie says the hardest thing was to make the event impressive. She could always finish the event quietly, but given to the low participation and noises under this scenario, which then just wasted their time and money, there would not be second time.
Put simply, holding events like this, she thinks, needs gigantic audience hit rates and capital support.
“This was like stress from the achievements I have to make in an ordinary company. It was way different from my streaming. It felt like a job to me,” she comments,”After I finished this, it seemed I had made something huge and I could finally take a good break.”
She mentions she is planning to hold the second competition later, with the new features of the latest version 1.9 of Minecraft. She says this latest update opens a lot of new possibilities, like new biomes and ways of combating and she and others are preparing a new map and the flow of it.
Annie thinks the upcoming one will show that Minecraft the game can produce a lot more games.
This job is in fact free in a way that the broadcasters can try different sorts of things.
“Streamers cannot have too many limitations on themselves, or else they just will not succeed. The only thing to do is to keep making breakthroughs or try anything one had not done before,” she notes,”they can do a lot more things except playing games and have to maintain a fresh perspective on their job.”
She cannot think of a better job at instance, but all in all she has been happy and that is good enough.
Competitors also had to survive in the Minecraft environment.
Screenshot at:【Minecraft 競技場】150606 - 8強 - Z組
Esports in Hong Kong
This is becoming a job for Hongkongers.
Playing video games had been regarded as a unhealthy hobby. But given to the rise of the Esports events, this preception is being changed.
Mr Ryan Chow Kai-hong, the co-founder of Hong Kong Cyber Game Areana, a organiser of Esports events, says it is getting better recently.
At the moment, there are numerous full-time Esports athletes in Hong Kong.
However, given to the local's preferral on foreign game-playing, Hong Kong players are not having adequate attentions.
While contests are always having Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan as a group, the development at the latest one is the best.
He says it is because many competitions are held in Taiwan and their government gives much more support to them. Regular leagues are also happening there.
Viewing Hong Kong, Ryan says price level in Hong Kong is high that with the same budget, he can do twice of the works in Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the impression to video games, the gist of Esports, is also to be improved.
Last but not least, he says the government not only does not sponsor Esports, but also does not recognise them. Without the recognition, they cannot regard themselves as the "Hong Kong team".
Ryan says they now got sponsorships from computer-related companies, such as Asus, and brands targeting the young audience, like Expedia. He adds that having suitable sponsors can be a win-win situation.
To ease their burden, Ryan leases the studio for players to practise to help the rent.
