If you haven't heard of Tencent, you may recognize a few subsidiaries that belong to China's largest internet media company: Supercell, the maker of the popular mobile game Clash of Clans, and Riot Games, the developer behind the popular esports title League of Legends.
This weekend, representatives from Tencent Interactive Entertainment and Riot Games will visit the MIT Game Lab, a group within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dedicated to video game research and development. The purpose of the gathering is to take a deep dive into the world of competitive gaming, also known as esports.
The Saturday and Sunday events are part of a deeper relationship between Tencent and MIT that began last fall when the company became the first corporate member of "Ludus," the MIT Center for Games, Learning, and Playful Media that houses the Game Lab.
"We’ve been working with them to help them understand what esports is like in North America."
Rik Eberhardt, the Game Lab's studio manager, told BostInno that Tencent is working with MIT to gain a better understanding of the greater esports ecosystem, especially as the company is looking to bring Kings of Glory, its most popular game in China that's also known as Honor of Kings, to non-Chinese audiences, including North America.
"We’ve been working with them to help them understand what esports is like in North America," Eberhardt said. Bloomberg previously reported in July that Tencent is planning to launch Kings of Glory in the United States and Europe sometime this year.
Conversely, the Game Lab is looking to learn from Tencent about the growing popularity of esports in China, where the esports market is expected to reach $1.26 billion this year, according to a recent report by Niko Partners. The report estimates there will be more than 200 million esports fans in the country by the end of 2017.
Eberhardt said the Game Lab is also sharing findings with Tencent from its work on the AnyKey Initiative on the topics of diversity and inclusion in esports.
While esports is red hot in China, it does have its detractors, including the Chinese government. In July, Tencent lost $14 billion in market value on the Hong Kong stock exchange after The People's Daily, the state-run newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, criticized King of Glory for being "poison" for young people. With about 55 million people playing the game in China, King of Glory was the highest-grossing mobile game for the first half of 2017.
On Saturday, the Game Lab will host exhibition matches for League of Legends and Kings of Glory with collegiate sports teams from Peking University and Nanjing Institute of Technology, as well as students from the MIT League of Legends Club — which Eberhardt said is meant to serve as a cultural exchange, as well as a way to connect students.
The next day, the Game Lab will host a panel on how the competitive gaming community can promote the positive values of esports led by Scot Osterweil, creative director of the MIT Game Lab and TL Taylor, an MIT professor who focuses on esports. The panelists will include Mars Hou, vice general manager of Marketing for Tencent Interactive Entertainment; Sage Huang, general manager in the product department for League of Legends; and John Lasker, vice president of digital media programming for ESPN.
Using its relationship with Tencent as a model, Eberhardt said Ludus and the Game Lab are looking for more companies to work with in their bid to gain a better understanding of how games work and the impact they have in the world.
"We’re looking for other companies to get them to exposed to ideas and work at MIT," he said.
