Recently, a group of Chinese cheaters caused a big sensation in Escape from Tarkov, about tens of thousands of players in major game forums called to “Region lock China”.

Chinese players, it can be said that it is the group of players that has the biggest impact on the gaming industry. Until 2020, Fps, Moba, Fighting game, Chinese players have achieved good results in all types of video and online gaming competition. For a long time, when people think of Chinese players, “experienced”, “tactical diversity” and “master skills” will be imagined by global gamers.

But in recent years, more and more players seem to have a bad impression of Chinese gamers. The outbreak of “Chinese hackers” originated in a game called PUBG. After this game launched, it seemed to be extremely hot but immediately have encountered a little trouble, players around the world were complaining about too many cheaters in the game. In 2018, almost a game has been reached where 30% of the players are cheaters, which seriously disrupts the game’s balance. After conducting a survey, the game company found that 99% of the cheaters were from China. Subsequently, thousands of players on reddit requested to set up an independent server for Chinese players, and, the request succeeded. Today, almost exactly the same thing happens to Escape from Tarkov, In fact, the influence of the cheaters on this game is far worth than PUBG.

Tommy, 24, a college student who have a great passion on Escape from Tarkov said: “This game is not like PUBG, in here, if your character dead, your whole equipment will disappear, you need to start again, which makes the game very exciting”. Most players said playing this game requires a lot of attention, which is why it’s fascinating. “Chinese player ruined it all” said Tommy. “imagine, what you want is a duel based on pure skills, but the result may be the person who killed you is sitting in front of the computer with eyes closed.” Although the game company has not investigated the matter, most of the players on the forum said that the cheaters they encountered were from China.

In fact, hackers, especially those hackers from China, have a big impact on the game context. “LaoGuanzi”, 31, a video producer with 18.4k followers in BiliBili (China’s video platform) said, since Bluehole locked China in, the game’s popularity has plummeted, the PUBG no longer receives as much attention as before. “I think the same thing could happen to Escape from Tarkov” said “LaoGuanzi”. He stated in his video, perhaps the reason we have so many cheaters is because we have too many players, but maybe, it is still very young with the development history of Chinese games. Chinese players have not developed a correct concept of video games.

“Whatever the reason, I think some measures are needed to reduce the number of game hackers in China, ideological or physical”, he said.

On March 7, a Super Smashbros Ultimate Tournament was held at the Castle Leazes Halls, Newcastle University, hosted by NSE(National student Esports), 63 students to participate in the competition as a gamer.

In 21st, the development of e-sports competitions has been global and rapid. For instance, The International, DOTA2 Championships has been held for 9 consecutive years in 5 countries, the 2019 prize pool once reached $ 34,330,068. MOBA, FPS, RTS, Fighting games there are all have series of games which the number of audience has 443 million in 2019.

Recent years, the major gaming race we see from the screen are no longer just exclusive professional e-sports players, Official competitions also seem to be geared towards college students, There is even a large league like WUCG (World University Cyber Games). Wang Gang, Vice Chairman of China University Sports Association said: “These competitions provide a stage for e-sports-loving colleges and universities to show their skills and creativity, and drive them to apply the skills of e-sports and the thinking of teamwork to daily life.”

The Super Smashbros Ultimate Tournament facing college/university students across the England, large scale, established playing venues at Newcastle University, Manchester University and King’s College London. These three universities were chosen because they cover almost all parts of England in order to get more students involved.

Dhillan Kumar, 21, a staff form NSE who running in the scene said, dividing the participants into eight groups in this tournament in Newcastle, 5 players per group, the player in their groups fight each other and pick the top 2 player in each group, and let them play until a winner. “Then is the 3v3 team fight, there are 6 teams totally, will pick 2 teams as the winner.” Kumar said. Jonathan Tilbury, 28, the managing director of NSE said, winners of team and individual races will receive free tickets and accommodation for the finals in Nottingham, April. “Monster and Nintendo both sponsored the game, players don’t need to worry about their logistics.” 

The players present showed their passion for this series of games. Charlie Wilson, 21, study in Durham University who bring his team called The Real Durham Gamer and also is team leader. He and his team won the last term competition in Manchester, in Newcastle’s term, he remains confident in this game. “The main team in this round we think is Northumbia’s team, they are strong as we know, but we are also fully prepared. We have done a lot of practice and studied the opponent’s past game videos, so we know their playing style, I think we definitely have a chance.” Wilson said.

During the Super Smashbros Ultimate Tournament, players will win the points of British Esprots championship (overall E-sports competition for Universities’ student across the U.K), these points will qualify the player for this big match.

Several members of Newcastle Game society assists NSE staff on the scene.

The services of Reslife Accommodation in Newcastle University provided a playing field, responsible for answering questions about services.

PS5 and Xbox series X are coming and players around the world are looking forward to them, but Newcastle’s local e-commerce does not seem to show enthusiasm for these game consoles.

After months of rumours, more and more details and information of new generation game consoles’ are exposed, players seem to be expecting them a lot, but we found that the electronics store didn’t seem to be ready for this sale.

“We don’t know too much about the next-gen consoles, we didn’t do a lot of research about it, let’s decide what to do after the consoles and new games are released.” Paul, 34, a staff of HMV who lives in Newcastle said. He has been work at HMV 5 years and he also has more than ten years of experience in the offline electrical appliance sales industry. “With the online sales came out, people think its more convenient, I mean, recent years, quite a few people came to the physical store to pick those consoles or games what they want.”

However, when the previous generation of consoles went on sale, it seemed completely different.  “During that time, when PS4 release, the market was much better.” said Paul. He remembers that at that time, as long as something was related to ps4, crowds could be seen in various electrical stores.” HMV and Sony have maintained close business relationship, especially in the past 6 years. In the past few years when the previous generation consoles were very fresh, they often held offline game sales activities at midnight, he think this is how people’s passion for games is officially produced. But nowadays, both Sony and Microsoft seem to focus on the promotion and sales of new-gen consoles on the line. “I mean, it’s a shame”, Paul said.

People no longer seem to be inclined to choose a physical store as a channel to buy a game console. We have asked 20 people in the campus of Newcastle University, 19 people will choose to gather the information of new generation consoles and games through online channels, the only one left has a similar opinion to Paul.

Dale, 29, staff of Menkind Newcastle, said they probably don’t sell the next-gen consoles but the thing related to them. “We might sell Sony and Microsoft consoles a few years ago, but now we may should only sell peripheral products.”

After a long and unbearable decade, the new generation of game consoles is finally on sale, releasing in late 2020. The game console has changed a lot, but gamers may more concerned about the game itself, how would it changed?

Came in 2020, a surge of excitement seems to spread among gamers. This is precisely because after a long wait, this year’s new generation of game consoles will soon be revealed in front of people. Microsoft and Sony name their consoles Xbox Series X and PS5 respectively. February 20, 2020, on the description for a GDC 2020 panel, Microsoft indicated that the sound quality of Xbox series x will have a big improve with “dedicated hardware acceleration”. So far, we know that these two home consoles will have huge changes compared to previous products, such as appearance, hardware performance, and gaming experience. NeoGAF forum user OsirisBlack said he sit with a Sony engineer fortunately and experienced the 90 fps 4K game on PS5 which means frame rate and performance of ps5 are several times that of previous console. Some engineers have revealed that the new generation of console loading games will no longer consume time.

The more important things than the consoles is game itself. Nolan Bushnell, a romantic engineer, who founded the famous Atari company, In the early morning of 1971, a game machine, named computer space, was pieced together with simple parts, thus rewriting the blankness of video games in the commercial market, the more important is, this originator console has completely changed the form of gameplay. The same thing happened over the next few decades. Super Mario Brothers with Nintendo Family Computer, or the Gears of War which release with Xbox 360 redefining the game quality, and the hot Fitness Ring Adventure recently made full use of the convenience and performance features of the Switch. All these indicate that the development of games is closely connected with the new generation of consoles.

Steven Clive Biddulph, 20, a student at Newcastle University who also is the core member of NCL Game Society and Esports chairman, telling us what he think about the new gen’s consoles, he indicated that game companies should not only focus on the improvement of consoles, but game itself. “People’s require on the content of game is significant.” said Biddulph. In conversation with him, he expressed that compared with some external things, the content of the game is the key to attract gamers.

He also said there are indeed some technologies such as graphics-Real-Time Ray Tracing on RTX, which will improve the player’s gaming experience, but this is not the primary. There are still many games on the market that do not pay attention to the graphic, but are more inclined to content, such as League of Legends, World of Warcraft, etc., are still loved by gamers, even some latest released game like The Legend of Zelda-Breath of the Wild. In the conversation, he categorized the game and made detailed expectations for the future, we haven’t heard him say anything about hardware requirements.

Ming, 23, a postgraduate student in Newcastle, said “I just want to play more leagues in fifa21 and experience more personal legends of players, of course, cheaper props.”