Prelude: Personal Grievance Round
On the bed, there were several laptops, mice, keyboards and headphones strewn about.
A practice game had just finished in this room.
Now only Ai Qing remained in the room.
She sat at the desk, her eyes reflected the continuous fluctuating lights of the computer screens. She carefully checked the video of the game commentary she had just produced. Very quickly, she reviewed the video and opened the SP club official website to upload the video to her own home page.
Then she posted the video to her personal Weibo, shut down the computer, and walked out of the room.
This was the first time she had come to Korea as part of the SP club staff.
There were over 30 people in her group. Except the Chinese regional manager Baona and Solo who each stayed in a villa, all the others shared rooms, three in one room.
Ai Qing, with the map provided by the organizer in hand, walked around three small buildings and finally found the small villa Baona was staying.
She reached out and rang the doorbell.
It rang once, twice, then a third time…...
There was no answer?
She looked at her watch.
It was 8:30PM, the time Baona had scheduled the appointment with her.
Did they all go out to eat?
Probably not. Though Baona liked to have fun with others, he never missed any meeting.
She carefully listened to the sound inside the room and found no sign of any movement in the first floor. She rang the doorbell again, then waited for three more minutes. Finally she could not help but call Baona’s cell.
He answered the phone shortly. “Are you here?” Baona’s voice sounded a little excited.
“Uhm.” Ai Qing replied, “I am downstairs.”
“Sorry. Sorry. Ai Qing, I forgot the appointment with you. Let me send Xiaoduo downstairs to open the door for you.”
She heard the footsteps not long after she hung up the phone.
Xiaoduo stretched out his head after he opened the door. He made a funny face at her, then without saying anything, he turned around hurriedly ran back upstairs.
Ai Qing had a strange feeling about all of this. After she followed him to the second floor, the strange feeling became even stronger.
She found a very large living room, with a bar on the second floor, but n.o.body was there. All twenty three people, holding either beer or c.o.ke in their hands, gathered around the dining table watching the only three laptop computers in this room. It was too crowded, she could only see their backs and their heated discussions. She could not really see what was displayed on the screens of those three laptops.
“Is our top commentator here?” Baona looked like he wanted to continue watching and reluctantly moved his eyes to look at Ai Qing. “I surfed around your Weibo today. It was so weird. How come all the people who confess to you are all girls. Someone said she wanted to have a baby with you?”
Xiaoduo chuckled and said. “She was different from Solo’s arrogant and cold style. Gou Gou absolutely was the public lover. On the gaming platforms, she was the best candidate for a ‘husband’.”
Ai Qing laughed and walked over behind Baona. She looked over the screen and saw DotA2. “Practice game?”
The big boys crowding around quickly gave her some room.
Baona mysteriously shook his head. “No, we are watching a grievance round.”
“Grievance round?”
Grievance round, as the name suggests, is the gamers’ way to settle personal scores.
Be it arguments in game, on the forums or disputes over qualifying games; or small issues in the real world, such as who took whose girlfriend, who spilled whose lunchbox; issues as big as fans of different clubs fighting with each other or disputes of professional players from different countries, they can all be settled by a round of game.
It’s like a duel in the old days.
On all gaming platforms, there are many disputes happening everyday. Naturally there are tens of thousands of grievance rounds usually. There’s nothing special about it.
Only…...What kind of grievance round was worthy to the eyes of so many SP club members? To the point that even the Chinese regional manager Baona and Solo showed such great interest?
As the strongest club in China, SP recruited many top players and had become a peculiar legend in the esports circle. Being a legendary club, there were much hearsay about the club and it’s hard to get a true picture of it.
Every year, those SP top players would receive invitations from various tournaments around the world.
The top SP players would use alternate ids to play on the three largest platforms, Battle Net, VS and CGA, therefore, anyone could have the chance to play against real top players who were hiding behind the screen.
“Exploring the Mysteries of SP”, “SP Secrets”, “Talk About SP’s Affairs”, any post with ‘SP’ in its t.i.tle would become the hottest post on a forum…...
But now, what attracted such attention of these legendary top players was absolutely not any ordinary grievance round.