Arena of Valor (Free) has been a strange game for us here at TouchArcade, as when it comes to the Chinese version, Tencent could likely take a page out of John Lennon’s playbook an accurately say that Honor of Kings is bigger than Jesus. (Honor of Kings being the Chinese iteration of Arena of Valor.) In the North American market, however, it seems Arena of Valor is still struggling to find its stride. Our community of hardcore iOS gamers love complex games like Arena of Valor, while the rest of North America focuses on far more casual titles. In a sense, it’s a fascinating cultural phenomenon as in the USA, it’s super common for gamers to have a current-generation console or two, and maybe even a gaming PC which likely serves their gaming needs fully- Even though they might have an iPhone X or high-end Android phone in their pocket. In Asia, if you’re gaming, you’re doing it on your smartphone, full stop.
In a way, it feels like Tencent is playing the long game on the North America market, as it seems inevitable that gamers en masse will eventually come around to playing the kind of “full" game experiences that titles like Arena of Valor (or Honor of Kings) offer. We’re already seeing that with both PUBG (Free) and Fortnite (Free), two games that have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times, despite the insistence from hardcore console/PC gamers that a shooter is impossible to play on a touchscreen. (Remember, it was not that long ago when Halo was first released on the Xbox and everyone gaming on a PC with a keyboard and mouse insisted that there is no way a first person shooter would ever work on a controller.) The shift is already happening, particularly as a generation of children who grew up with Angry Birds as their Super Mario are looking at what to play next.
This put the Arena of Valor World Cup in a somewhat awkward situation, particularly as when Tencent hosts esports events for Honor of Kings in China, there’s no problem selling out arenas that host tens of thousands of people. Meanwhile, the TCL Chinese Theater, right at the heart of Hollywood hosted a crowd of … tens. Tencent apparently isn’t releasing specific stats yet on attendance and viewership, but when it came to what I could observe myself, there were around 500 people watching on Twitch, around 2,000 people watching on Facebook, another 2,500 or so on YouTube, and around 2,000 people watching in game. Add that with the absolute maximum of a couple hundred people in the Chinese Theater and you’re left with a North American viewership of under 7,500 for a event that gave out $550,000 in prize money.
Meanwhile, allegedly there were millions upon millions of unique viewers watching from Asia, although I couldn’t find any way to verify those figures myself. If that’s true, and there’s millions of concurrent viewers and not just people who had the stream auto-load because they opened the game during the tournament, Arena of Valor (and Honor of Kings) are in a league of their own. Comparatively, in North America the largest streaming event in history was the Fortnite Pro Am during E3 which broke all records at 700,000 sustained viewers on the official channel and 1.5 million viewers across all Fortnite channels that were hosting the stream. So, again, depending on how the numbers actually work out, the Arena of Valor World Cup could have been a really big deal, despite low North American viewership.
As far as the event itself, Tencent nailed the checklist of things to have for a huge esports event. The stage setup looked amazing, and it was obvious the stream was the priority given the beehive of production staff swarming the Chinese Theater with camera gear. The competition was fabulous too, with Korea coming back from the losers bracket to beat Thailand in an incredibly dramatic seven game series that went all the way to seven games. (Amusingly enough, Chinese Taipei end up taking third place over China, which came in fourth.) Game seven was delightfully dramatic, with both teams playing some of the most conservative Arena of Valor I’ve ever seen- First blood didn’t even take place until after some shorter AoV games are over entirely.
Comparisons to League of Legends are somewhat inevitable with Arena of Valor, but the fascinating thing about watching super high-level AoV play is that if you were able to strip away all the UI and other subtle elements that differentiate the two games, I really don’t think you’d be able to tell which game was being played on a touchscreen versus which was being played using a keyboard and mouse. The expert maneuvering, the absurd plays both teams were able to pull off, and the ridiculously accurate skillshots are just … not things I’m personally capable of.
From a spectator perspective, this made the Arena of Valor World Cup was great to watch. I’ve always found MOBAs to be the most spectator-friendly team-based esports, as the teams and objectives are very clearly defined. For the finals, I was sitting near a group of people who didn’t have much (if any) experience with most aspects of Arena of Valor, and it’s almost weird how easy it is to catch someone up to the point of being able to enjoy following along.
Hopefully I’m lucky enough to eventually be able to go to an Arena of Valor event in Asia, just to experience what I’m sure will be a absolutely monumental difference. With that being said, I’m super thankful that we have companies like Tencent trying so hard to crack the nut of figuring out what is going to be the spark that gets massive amounts of North American gamers to play core games like Arena of Valor on their phone. I think it’s a “slow and steady wins the race" thing, as the shift to mobile is inevitable, at which point these long-running franchises with years worth of content are going to look super appealing to anyone looking for an alternative to League of Legends or other similar games on the go.
