Wuxi promotes competitive e-sports

Crowds of people were seen in a shopping mall, watching sports games with friends and family while snacking on crayfish and drinking cold beer this weekend. No, they were not watching traditional sports games, but matches from a video game competition held for amateur players in Wuxi, Jiangsu province on Aug 25.

The competition was hosted by Wuxi's local sports authorities and welcomed some 160 participants from in and around the city.

Wuxi holds many such video game events each year, with this summertime competition centering around two games; Hearthstone and Honor of Kings.

The Asian League of Legends Women's All-Star Game was held in Wuxi last year, with the city escalating in status to host the World Games this year. The competition will form an important part of the upcoming 2018 World Internet of Things Expo.

Wuxi is among the first cities in China to develop an e-sports industry, and began organizing video game competitions eight years ago, said Huang Ao who works with the Wuxi e-sports association.

Such events have greatly promoted e-sports among residents of the city, and as some of the video games have entered the 2018 Asian Games as a demonstration sport, Wuxi is also seeking to discover talented amateur players for future world-level games. Many of the young people in Wuxi have built up quite a reputation for themselves. He Huan, who only became a professional player in August 2017 after quitting his job as an IT engineer, won the Hearthstone China Korea championships last year.

JONJ, a team made up entirely of college students, won a championship earlier in the month at the China Digital Entertainment Expo and Conference in Shanghai, which is one of the most influential events in the global digital entertainment industry.

Wang Yuhao, captain of JONJ and a supporting player in one of the world's most popular mobile games, Honor of Kings, said that his team trains for two hours every day and that their ultimate goal is to make an appearance at the King Pro League, the premier Honor of Kings tournament in China, and even in the Asian Games.