Chapter 593 - A Venue Dedicated to Whipping People while They were Down (1/2)

July 22nd, Friday…

The team members of the H4 E-Sports Club stepped onto Jingzhou’s soil for the first time.

Team Leader Su and two team managers led the GOG and IOI teams from the club. They were here to take part in the Jingzhou competition over the weekend.

The competition schedule was very simple. The finals would be ‘best of five’, and the other rounds would be ‘best of three’. There would be eight teams competing in the single-elimination format for seven rounds in total. The entire competition would take two days—Saturday and Sunday.

The schedule was quite tight, but it made sense. After all, if they kept the events close together, they would be able to sustain the popularity of the competition, and the audience would not lose patience.

What Team Leader Su found more ridiculous was that the GOG and IOI competitions were taking place at the same time. Both were to be conducted this Saturday and Sunday!

Were they made to overlap so that the audience would have to choose either one?

What’s more, both of those were Tengda’s games. Was it trying to steal attention from itself? Was there an internal battle going on?

Wouldn’t it have been better to schedule the competitions for separate weekends?

Team Leader Su found this very confusing. However, what everyone didn’t know was that there was indeed an internal battle going on between GOG and IOI at the moment.

There was a reason behind such a schedule.

To organize a competition, organizers would have to contact teams, prepare a venue, set the program, and so on. Both organizers required approximately the same amount of time.

Whoever’s competition took place first would enjoy more attention!

If GOG players knew that there would be an IOI competition this weekend and a GOG one next weekend, they would probably watch the IOI competitions over this weekend, just to observe the situation.

The same went for IOI players.

However, by the next week, when the GOG competition started, IOI players would not necessarily tune in.

The competition that took place first would inevitably enjoy more attention. It could be likened to cell phone manufacturers fighting to release their new model.

Thus, Tengda Games and Shang Yang Games refused to give each other any leeway, and both tried to hold their respective competitions first.

However, neither could shorten the preparation time required, and the competitions had to be held over a weekend when there would be a higher number of visitors. Since neither wanted to fall behind, both fought and struggled to be the faster team and used the minimum time required for preparation. In the end, both competitions were set for the same weekend.

Once the dates were set, it was too late to make any changes. They had no choice but to see it through!

Based on the gamers’ data, GOG was undoubtedly the winner.

However, IOI had poured a huge sum of money into publicity as well. Apart from inviting a few local first-tier clubs, they had also invited several foreign clubs to join the competition. Now, they could use the title of an ‘international competition’.

That was quite attractive to many people as well. After all, external battles were always the most entertaining and exciting.

Since both teams had run large quantities of advertisements to draw more attention to the competitions, whether IOI could be revived or not boiled down to this.

If GOG continued to suppress it, it could be much harder for IOI to run publicity in the future.

“Team Leader Su, we’ll go to the hotel first. Let’s work hard together and bring the trophy back. We’ll be triumphant!” Once the team manager finished speaking, he left in a car with the other team members.

The two competition grounds were in different locations in Jingzhou, and they were quite far from each other. Obviously, this was to dissuade the audience from sitting on the fence. Everyone had to choose one competition to watch.

Thus, the H4 Club’s two teams rented two different hotels to stay in, so that traveling to the competition grounds would be more convenient. Of course, the organizers would cover all expenses for accommodation and food.

Team Leader Su prepared to hail a taxi and go to his hotel as well.

At that moment, Captain Pang Ling said, “Team Leader Su, it’s still early. We don’t have to go to the hotel yet. Wouldn’t it be better if we go to the DGE Club to train with Huang Wang, Jiang Huan, and the rest?”

Team Leader Su paused for a moment and then nodded. “That’s true! We can grab the chance to check the results of the training we have been doing.”

Since the DGE Club left Shanghai, the H4 Club had been training extremely rigorously. They repeatedly watched the recording of the DGE Club while they participated in mock competitions against other clubs online.

They had improved rapidly!

Both of the DGE’s teams could beat H4 despite having 4-6 members due to many reasons. Some of those reasons were powerful individual skills, good teamwork, and unexpected battle strategies.

On top of that, there was another very important point: they understood the game very well.

When they should do what, what each person’s role was, and how they should administer their battle tactics… everyone at the H4 Club had benefited a lot from observing all of those things.

Having learned from what they had observed, the H4 Club had employed the same tactics to fight other clubs and achieved excellent results.

Thus, their confidence had ballooned, and they itched to fight against the DGE Club’s teams again, just to see how much they had improved.

Team Leader Su sent a message to Zhang Yuan who happily agreed and sent their location over.

The H4 Club’s GOG team headed straight towards Ming Yun Villas.

“When the time comes, we can just have the mock competition in a random internet cafe, right?”

“I heard that there’s a famous internet cafe chain in Jingzhou called the Fish-Catching Internet Cafe. It’s said that it has good hardware and a good environment. I wonder if we will go there for the mock competition.”

“Is the hardware really good? How good can it be?”

“Who knows? I think the internet cafe is overrated online. It would definitely be better than the internet cafe we often visit, but it can’t be that much better, right? Anyway, we’ll find out when we get there…”