What the West needs to become “Average Koreans”
5. Sponsorships
The Western scene is starting to receive high profile sponsors from brands such as Coke Zero for the LoL Challenger series and Monster energy drink for the team Evil Geniuses, but that is nowhere close to the kind of sponsors that the Asian scene receives. Not only are they some of the largest brands out there (Samsung, SK Telecom, and Acer) but these sponsorships are willing to make decisions for the team because they are willing to do research on the game and scout for future players. But in the West we see instances like XDG where the coach, who is the brother of one of the players, made the majority of the decisions and managed to run the team to the ground without any intervention by their main sponsor, TechBargains, simply because he wanted his brother to be the star.
4. Mainstream Coverage
With the season three World Championship Finals completely destroying the Super Bowl in viewers and the season four World Championship Finals in Korea having more than half a million viewers in the West despite the time difference, it is honestly a surprise that there hasn’t been a single televised tournament yet, compared to Asia in which there are often channels dedicated solely to eSports. To be fair, ESPN did stream the season four championships. However, it was very unprofessional (using the wrong replay for the commentary and just a general lack of knowledge of the game). Other than that, any form of mainstream media coverage is often negative and biased because of the lack of mainstream acceptance. In contrast, the Korean channel OnGameNet (OGN) broadcasts the tournaments for most eSports games with casters that have extensive knowledge on each game and can offer in depth analysis of the matches along with a color commentator who hypes up a match. This is important because it would encourage high elo (method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in competitor-versus-competitor games) players to try and go pro and become more famous due to the exposure from playing on a professional team which would also lead to a viable future of streaming after their pro careers (Popular streamers with an average of 10,000 viewers often make around $2800 a week), which also leads to my next point.
3. Better amateur scene
The amount of talent in Korea is comparable to the ancient Roman army, it’s so big that when one leaves two takes its place. This is due to the superior amateur scene they possess. The main reason for this is because of the level of competition in solo queue (ranked play), in Korea solo queue is take very seriously and because of teams are more willing to scout for talent within solo queue (this is where Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, the best player in the world came from). In contrast western solo queue can get silly at times and it’s harder to show your potential as a professional player. Due to this the challenger scene is often dominated by former pro players who aren’t good enough for the LCS. This leads to more importation of foreign talent such as the Korean AD carry Chae "Piglet" Gwang-jin who recently joined Team Curse instead of an American. This may be due to the lack of support for these challenger teams such as gaming houses and coaches which leads to my next point.
2. Better support staff
Behind every good team is a great coach, and it is also one of the main things that the western teams are lacking. When Asian teams have everything from coaches to analysts to managers it’s no wonder the Asian scene is so professional compared to the West. But the West is catching up with high profile coaches like Locodoco (former pro player that is known for his ability to scout godlike support players), Montecristo (caster for OGN’s English stream), and Last Shadow (former StarCraft 2 player that has insight on the Korean scene). It is clear that the Western teams have realized how important a good support staff is with some teams even hiring sports psychologist to improve player mentally. Riot is also supporting teams by giving them $25,000 to pay coaches. With time these coaches will make sure every team will be at their maximum potential at making fast decisions during the game.
1. Time
All four of the previous points have one thing in common, they will all happen with time. Because of this Riot should be praised for what they’ve been doing. With things like the Coke Zero sponsorship, the collaboration with Imagine Dragon on the song Warrior and the athlete visas for professionals they have been speeding up the process of catching up to the Asians. But for now Asians shall still dominate the eSports scene with their superior mechanical play and infrastructure.
Rui Yang Xu