Welcome, Robin. Recently you have helped Chinese players with their participation in all the big tournaments we already had in 2019. You will help me with interviewing some of them. I already did interviews with former Chinese Diguobbs moderator Fine, Renny Cheung, Tim, Lyx and Yo. There I also asked about the Chinese AoE community, but since then a lot of things have changed. What exactly is going on?
First, I want to ask you a few questions about yourself:
How old are you, where are you from and how did you start getting involved with AoE?
[Robin] I am more than 30 now. I come from the Jiangsu province in China. I started playing AoE nearly 20 years ago, I was at university at that time. I played with many of my classmates in the internet café. But I didn’t play it after I graduated. Till I occasionally found some AoE players streaming the game about 2 years ago.
Is there any reason for your comparably good English to a lot of Chinese players?
[Robin] I work in an American company now. English is the official language for my daily work. Also, most primary schools have English class from grade 1 in China.
I know that, still most Chinese don’t speak or write much in English once the are out of school.
What did make you choose to assist Chinese players in AoE tournaments the way you do?
We had Fine, and more recently Renny Cheung, who helped Frantic. But both of the disappeared after less than a year. I don’t know if you know them, but how is your position different? Many people stay involved with AoE for many years, how is it part of your life now and how can you and can we not make it a burden for you to be a helper without reward?
[Robin] I don’t know anything about the Chinese AoE community after I graduated 15 years ago, until I found some top players stream AoE on Douyu TV 2 year ago. Then I watched their streams.
When I watched CL play in an Arena tournament semifinal 1 year ago, he got an admin loss due to picking wrong civ twice. He totally didn’t know the rules. Also, other Chinese players meet similar issues when they stream AoE in China. When a foreign player sends a message to them, they often open an online translation page, copy and paste the message to the page to know what they said. Then write in Chinese on that page, copy the translation to answer the foreign players. I think I can help them to resolve this issue. So I began to help the Frantic team by translating since the start of the ECL.
I am not too busy doing my daily work, so I spend some time to help them sign up and do scheduling.
About your assistance for Frantic: Are you involved in the drafting or did they learn the system quickly enough? I think the process is easy, but when I tried to explain it to CL back then, I could not in Chinese.
[Robin] I always help them drafting in ECL.
Now to the current situation of AoE 2 in China:
This year we had Nili’s Apartment Cup, Memb’s King of the Desert 2 and T90’s Hidden Cup 2 already. Hidden Cup 2 reached 17,500 stream viewers during the final. Multiple tournaments with $10,000 prize pools plus smaller tournaments and show matches with a few $100 to a few $1000 during half a year seem to be nothing unusual now. So I would say that AoE 2 is in the best situation it ever was, at least since more than 10 years, but 15 years ago is hard to compare to now, with the evolution of the internet, computers and streaming.
In 2015 and 2014 we had 2 Nations Cups sponsored by Chinese business man “SY”. We had a live LAN final of Clan Masters: The Final Showdown in 2016, which was partially sponsored by Douyu TV. Douyu TV and Panda TV sponsoring big Chinese tournaments. _VG_F0rgeT was a popular streamer. Reports of 100,000 viewers watching the Chinese teams. China seemed to be a long way ahead and with huge potential.
In 2017 sponsoring of the 3rd SY Nations Cup became a bit more complicated, but it did not look like the end. But during the last 1.5 years some more things have happened. Douyu TV did not pay prices for tournaments, _VG_F0rgeT stopped streaming AoE, the biggest Chinese AoE forums Diguobbs.com closed. No more Chinese tournaments. Paladin (aka Fengxin) stopped streaming. Stream numbers are declining, Panda TV closed completely in March 2019.
What happened?
[Robin] Many venture capitalists invested into the popular Chinese streaming sites before, that helped the streaming sites to focus on their business and not worry about their costs. It also caused that some stream sites could not earn enough money from streaming to support their daily cost. That means venture capitalists invested much to the site, but earned less from the site. In the recent 2 years, the global economy situation became worse than before. No more venture capitalists wanted to invest into such streaming sites anymore.
Panda TV closed because it could not cover its daily cost from its income.
Douyu TV also fired many employees this year. And changed the streamers income rules. On Douyu, only the top 8 popular streamers in a category earn a monthly base salary since this year. 0 base salary for streamers from the 9th on. There is no AoE category on Douyu, because it is not a popular game, AoE is in a category named “Classic games”, many old games like “Red Alert”, “Diablo 1 and 2” and other very old games are all in this category.
Vivi usually is the AoE streamer who is in the highest position in this category. But even he can only get the 9th in most months. Other players like Lyx and Yo own 0 base salary from streaming AoE. Most of their income comes from their fans sending virtual gifts on the site. They earn about 30-40% from these virtual gifts. Another 60-70% is the income of the site.
Their income decreased greatly this year. FengXin had to choose other work to make a living for his family. CL also chose different business to make a living. Maybe more top players have to do other works to make a living in the near future.
My second topic is: Of course you have helped the top Chinese players (Tim, vivi, CL and more) participating in international tournaments, but what about the ones that are not 2k3+, not SY or Frantic? I don’t know if there are less Chinese players playing AoE 2, but when also looking on Voobly China, I see many of the players who already were 2k-2k2 5 years ago still playing almost daily. I think if you have fun investing 100s of hours every year, shouldn’t you also have fun participating in some tournaments? Do they know of some like “Aspiring Experts” Or “Double Ages”? There are people to help them sign up, but why don’t they.
I know the old arguments about communication and connection problems, but those are not worse than 5 or 10 years ago and back then, at least in team game tournaments we had more Chinese players sign up. If they say it is not worth it, in my opinion they are wrong, because nowadays you make money with popularity. A _CCS_Acuo, myth or _CX_youwei would be a popular player because of his style if more people watched them play. If you participate in a tournament, even the qualification stage, now 100s of people watch you worldwide. Then, if people like you, you will more likely be invited to invitational or show match, where you can earn $50-100 by just participating. Those in question are players who reached 2k1-2k2 many years ago, and if they played a lot on the ladder on Voobly International now, I have no doubt they would reach 2k2-2k3 again.
This is not a request for you to be a nanny for 30 players, but there are more like you and me and if you have one person helping 1-3 players with some scheduling, then the burden is not too high.
[Robin] In my opinion, this answer is similar to the upper answer. Even top players like Vivi, Yo: They have almost 0 base salary from streaming in China. Other players can only do other work to make a living. They play AoE just for fun after their daily work ends. They have no more time to play the game, and participant many tournaments.
I am not satisfied with your answer. I wanted to know about players who play almost daily, some even 5+ hours per day, but still don't participate in tournaments. A tournament would be 2-3 h in one week. If they have enough time to play 20 hours for fun and reach good ratings, why not 2 h for a tournament?
For example jibatong played 600 rated games on Voobly International in 3 months, at 2k2-2k3 level. _CBJ_lang played almost 900 games on Voobly China in 2 months - that's probably 60-70 h/week.
For the international players, only TheViper earns a good amount of money from streaming. All other top players have their income from other jobs. Sometimes they can't play 1-2 weeks, but they still participate in tournaments.
[Discussion with Robin summarized in my words:]
Some players have their income from donations from stream viewers or play their own competitions, which are financed by the viewers and/or the participating players.
For the older readers: Maybe you remember how DauT and Chris paid their BO21 themselves.
They seem to prefer this over playing in actual tournaments. Also, they mostly play Nomad, so a Nomad tournament with a higher prize pool might make them want to participate.
Still, I did not really find an answer, why you can’t do both the fun and viewer-involving challenges and tournaments. Maybe I will find something when I interview the players.
In our cooperation more interviews will follow soon:
1. LoveCheng (yinghua)
2. StrayDog
On the list (but not sure yet): vivi, _CBJ_lang, xiaofan, D8_baby
My wishes: jibatong, Whoop, IamOK...
Questions and answers of the interviews will be posted in Chinese and English.
Some additional info in these 2 replies:
First, I want to ask you a few questions about yourself:
How old are you, where are you from and how did you start getting involved with AoE?
[Robin] I am more than 30 now. I come from the Jiangsu province in China. I started playing AoE nearly 20 years ago, I was at university at that time. I played with many of my classmates in the internet café. But I didn’t play it after I graduated. Till I occasionally found some AoE players streaming the game about 2 years ago.
Is there any reason for your comparably good English to a lot of Chinese players?
[Robin] I work in an American company now. English is the official language for my daily work. Also, most primary schools have English class from grade 1 in China.
I know that, still most Chinese don’t speak or write much in English once the are out of school.
What did make you choose to assist Chinese players in AoE tournaments the way you do?
We had Fine, and more recently Renny Cheung, who helped Frantic. But both of the disappeared after less than a year. I don’t know if you know them, but how is your position different? Many people stay involved with AoE for many years, how is it part of your life now and how can you and can we not make it a burden for you to be a helper without reward?
[Robin] I don’t know anything about the Chinese AoE community after I graduated 15 years ago, until I found some top players stream AoE on Douyu TV 2 year ago. Then I watched their streams.
When I watched CL play in an Arena tournament semifinal 1 year ago, he got an admin loss due to picking wrong civ twice. He totally didn’t know the rules. Also, other Chinese players meet similar issues when they stream AoE in China. When a foreign player sends a message to them, they often open an online translation page, copy and paste the message to the page to know what they said. Then write in Chinese on that page, copy the translation to answer the foreign players. I think I can help them to resolve this issue. So I began to help the Frantic team by translating since the start of the ECL.
I am not too busy doing my daily work, so I spend some time to help them sign up and do scheduling.
About your assistance for Frantic: Are you involved in the drafting or did they learn the system quickly enough? I think the process is easy, but when I tried to explain it to CL back then, I could not in Chinese.
[Robin] I always help them drafting in ECL.
Now to the current situation of AoE 2 in China:
This year we had Nili’s Apartment Cup, Memb’s King of the Desert 2 and T90’s Hidden Cup 2 already. Hidden Cup 2 reached 17,500 stream viewers during the final. Multiple tournaments with $10,000 prize pools plus smaller tournaments and show matches with a few $100 to a few $1000 during half a year seem to be nothing unusual now. So I would say that AoE 2 is in the best situation it ever was, at least since more than 10 years, but 15 years ago is hard to compare to now, with the evolution of the internet, computers and streaming.
In 2015 and 2014 we had 2 Nations Cups sponsored by Chinese business man “SY”. We had a live LAN final of Clan Masters: The Final Showdown in 2016, which was partially sponsored by Douyu TV. Douyu TV and Panda TV sponsoring big Chinese tournaments. _VG_F0rgeT was a popular streamer. Reports of 100,000 viewers watching the Chinese teams. China seemed to be a long way ahead and with huge potential.
In 2017 sponsoring of the 3rd SY Nations Cup became a bit more complicated, but it did not look like the end. But during the last 1.5 years some more things have happened. Douyu TV did not pay prices for tournaments, _VG_F0rgeT stopped streaming AoE, the biggest Chinese AoE forums Diguobbs.com closed. No more Chinese tournaments. Paladin (aka Fengxin) stopped streaming. Stream numbers are declining, Panda TV closed completely in March 2019.
What happened?
[Robin] Many venture capitalists invested into the popular Chinese streaming sites before, that helped the streaming sites to focus on their business and not worry about their costs. It also caused that some stream sites could not earn enough money from streaming to support their daily cost. That means venture capitalists invested much to the site, but earned less from the site. In the recent 2 years, the global economy situation became worse than before. No more venture capitalists wanted to invest into such streaming sites anymore.
Panda TV closed because it could not cover its daily cost from its income.
Douyu TV also fired many employees this year. And changed the streamers income rules. On Douyu, only the top 8 popular streamers in a category earn a monthly base salary since this year. 0 base salary for streamers from the 9th on. There is no AoE category on Douyu, because it is not a popular game, AoE is in a category named “Classic games”, many old games like “Red Alert”, “Diablo 1 and 2” and other very old games are all in this category.
Vivi usually is the AoE streamer who is in the highest position in this category. But even he can only get the 9th in most months. Other players like Lyx and Yo own 0 base salary from streaming AoE. Most of their income comes from their fans sending virtual gifts on the site. They earn about 30-40% from these virtual gifts. Another 60-70% is the income of the site.
Their income decreased greatly this year. FengXin had to choose other work to make a living for his family. CL also chose different business to make a living. Maybe more top players have to do other works to make a living in the near future.
My second topic is: Of course you have helped the top Chinese players (Tim, vivi, CL and more) participating in international tournaments, but what about the ones that are not 2k3+, not SY or Frantic? I don’t know if there are less Chinese players playing AoE 2, but when also looking on Voobly China, I see many of the players who already were 2k-2k2 5 years ago still playing almost daily. I think if you have fun investing 100s of hours every year, shouldn’t you also have fun participating in some tournaments? Do they know of some like “Aspiring Experts” Or “Double Ages”? There are people to help them sign up, but why don’t they.
I know the old arguments about communication and connection problems, but those are not worse than 5 or 10 years ago and back then, at least in team game tournaments we had more Chinese players sign up. If they say it is not worth it, in my opinion they are wrong, because nowadays you make money with popularity. A _CCS_Acuo, myth or _CX_youwei would be a popular player because of his style if more people watched them play. If you participate in a tournament, even the qualification stage, now 100s of people watch you worldwide. Then, if people like you, you will more likely be invited to invitational or show match, where you can earn $50-100 by just participating. Those in question are players who reached 2k1-2k2 many years ago, and if they played a lot on the ladder on Voobly International now, I have no doubt they would reach 2k2-2k3 again.
This is not a request for you to be a nanny for 30 players, but there are more like you and me and if you have one person helping 1-3 players with some scheduling, then the burden is not too high.
[Robin] In my opinion, this answer is similar to the upper answer. Even top players like Vivi, Yo: They have almost 0 base salary from streaming in China. Other players can only do other work to make a living. They play AoE just for fun after their daily work ends. They have no more time to play the game, and participant many tournaments.
I am not satisfied with your answer. I wanted to know about players who play almost daily, some even 5+ hours per day, but still don't participate in tournaments. A tournament would be 2-3 h in one week. If they have enough time to play 20 hours for fun and reach good ratings, why not 2 h for a tournament?
For example jibatong played 600 rated games on Voobly International in 3 months, at 2k2-2k3 level. _CBJ_lang played almost 900 games on Voobly China in 2 months - that's probably 60-70 h/week.
For the international players, only TheViper earns a good amount of money from streaming. All other top players have their income from other jobs. Sometimes they can't play 1-2 weeks, but they still participate in tournaments.
[Discussion with Robin summarized in my words:]
Some players have their income from donations from stream viewers or play their own competitions, which are financed by the viewers and/or the participating players.
For the older readers: Maybe you remember how DauT and Chris paid their BO21 themselves.
They seem to prefer this over playing in actual tournaments. Also, they mostly play Nomad, so a Nomad tournament with a higher prize pool might make them want to participate.
Still, I did not really find an answer, why you can’t do both the fun and viewer-involving challenges and tournaments. Maybe I will find something when I interview the players.
In our cooperation more interviews will follow soon:
1. LoveCheng (yinghua)
2. StrayDog
On the list (but not sure yet): vivi, _CBJ_lang, xiaofan, D8_baby
My wishes: jibatong, Whoop, IamOK...
Questions and answers of the interviews will be posted in Chinese and English.
Some additional info in these 2 replies:
My 2 cents on the 2k player problem:
1. They might have a really strong status quo bias - I have enough fun playing AoC just for fun, why should I play in WK tournaments where there's stress to reduce the fun factor and I have to learn the new civs? No thanks, I'll just play AoC on Voobly CN. The prize is nice but realistically obtaining it is not going to help my life much, not really motivating for me.
2. The prospect of having fans worldwide really does not concern them - they just cannot imagine the outcomes of this popularity, heck, even the popularity itself. Even in the CN community they are not widely known, and the ones that are (Vivi, Lyx, Yo, Fengxin), aren't doing too great. So I'd wager that they just don't consider this to be a factor. If they just don't understand the benefits, why do it?
On the topic of finding people to help these players - it might be very problematic. From my experience, the new blood of the CN community, especially the ones that's drawn in by HD, is unfamiliar with the older players. They know Yo, Vivi, Lyx, Tim, CL, Fengxin, maybe Geoffery, yinghua and Straydog, but I think even SotL is better known by them than jibatong, IamOK, Whoop and D8_Baby (personally I don't even know how they play). The problem is, this new blood are the ones that have better education and know English, but they don't really care about the 2k players. The old people can and probably want to help, but most of them don't know English.
Overall, I'm not too optimistic about the CN community's future from what I experienced. But this is why I really look forward to your interviews with the players - maybe they can shed light on what (if any) is wrong with this community, and probably give me reason to believe in AoE2's future in China again.
First, why do many 2k+ masters not participate in international tournaments?
1. In China, only two top players, vivi and Yo, are under 30 years old. The remaining 2k+ players are over 30 years old, or even close to 40 years old. In their eyes, AoE is just a game for entertainment. Their expectation of AoE is to make their day happy. It's more fun to play with friends than to participate in these tournaments. Play Nomad on Vooblycn, and then the spectators outside will gamble, win or lose, or kill odd or even numbers, and laugh at each other after playing. This kind of entertainment is enough after daily work. In comparison, tournaments require reading rules, studying maps, and possibly playing games at an uncomfortable time. And they also need to endure lag. Obviously, then, they will choose what seems easier.
2. The AoE community in China now lacks a core:
China's AoE community has always had a few people in the leadership position, all the experts will be around them. When SY sponsored the first and second Nations Cup, all the top players focused on the SY Boss. At that time, Vooblycn had whole night high-level 4V4 games every night. Later, _VG_ForgeT became the core. He applied funds from Panda TV and Douyu TV to hold "Who is the King" tournaments. At that time, almost all Chinese 2k+ players were involved.
I think only in a group with a core they will work for a common goal. The SY boss was disappointed with the results of the third Nations Cup and _VG_ForgeT left AoE because of low salary. There is no other core in China that can lead them. Then they formed small groups to enjoy themselves.
Second, what is the future of AOE community in China?
There are both pessimism and optimism.
After the launch of HD and with new civilization, a large number of new players joined in, while many old players picked up AoE again.
Now there are two large groups on the Tencent platform and on Steam. The base of players is really expanding. There may be more players in the future when the AoE 2 Definitive Edition comes out. That's the good part.
On the other hand, I think the overall environment of the community is not good.
1. No core. I hope vivi, Yo, Lyx, Tim can play a leading role. Organize competitions and train these new players. But now they don't.
2. The network environment is poor, firewalls and delays prevent many people from accessing Steam and Voobly. I hope that with the progress of the 5G network technology, we can solve some network problems.
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