I'm going to go in a little opposite direction from the subject of my last few posts. In addition to being a huge sports fan, I also play quite a bit of video games. While I won't sit here and bore you with my qualifications, it's something that I've happily enjoyed for most of life. To be more specific I want to talk about the electronic sports scene, commonly referred to esports.
Gaming competitively has been around for almost as long as video games themselves. Players would constantly try to best each others scores on the leaderboards, word would get out that a certain high score was achieved and then other players would set out to topple them. This was all before the Internet happened. Fast forward to today. Players are now able to directly compete with one another over the Internet, or through sanctioned and well put together events. The whole concept of esports blew up and every one seemed to have this grand plan that playing video games in a competition would soon grow into a television market and would be able to go head to head with regular athletic sports. Except there has been one problem, no one seems to know how to get there.
By now most gamers have heard of the game League of Legends. It's a free to play to game where two teams of five battle it out to destroy the enemies base. It's not the first of it's type or necessarily the best, but it's what's current and what's popular, and it's also the basis of what this post is about.
LoL's publisher Riot Games has attempted to take esports to the next level by running a league of LoL teams on it's own. The players of the teams draw a salary from Riot and games are "televised" (in actuality webcast) on a set schedule. Fans are easily able to keep track of their favorite teams and players and it really is a step forward from where the scene was before I got into league.
I had been playing league for about a few months when I started looking into the tournament scene. It was one of those things where if you were in the know, you knew where to find everything you needed to know and if not, well tough luck. Luckily the league subreddit helped me find out. Here is where I found my first problem.
The only real competitive scene was through tournaments. There were a few big ones, some of which are still around and still the traditional route. IGN, MLG, etc...They had a number of events scheduled throughout the calendar year, some had some kind of points standings, and for the most part, it worked. Or I should say it still works. Coming into LoL's 3rd season. Riot wanted to raise the bar. They would take the LoL "pro" scene into their own hands. 8 Teams played each other for as of right now 26 weeks, on a set schedule and they streamed the webcasts to make it appear like a legitimate sporting event. Also a bold and progressive move to establish that dream of esports making it the next level. However, this is where things fall apart a little for me.
Comparing the "League Championship Series" to that of a regular teams sports league is still a ways off. One of my huge issues is with what Riot (and esports in general) consider a team versus a team in, say, the NFL. The NFL is made of 32 teams, regardless of what players are on them, the team remains, you can take the Patriots, cut everyone on the team, hire a team full fo scrubs and they're still the Patriots. Now then, an esports team is considered for the most part independent of any one league, or circuit. They are normally carried and funded by one or more sponsors. I think Riot's teams have eight players each. Five starters and 3 bench players. Okay so, what's the deal? Well the big thing is what happens when a team does poorly. In the NFL, if a team sucks, they suck. No real repercussions. The GM and Coach may get fired, but nothing overly serious. Well what happens in esports when a team does poorly? Well usually their sponsor(s) cut them, they lose all funding and are pretty much forced to disband. Players may find space on another team, but there's no guarantee. In the LCS I believe the bottom two teams are virtually "relegated" or kicked out of the LCS and are put back with all us amateurs. Though it would be safe to say that they would lose most, if not all of their sponsorship.
I'm not going to sit here and say it's right or wrong. One is a well established entity and the other is a fledgling idea. However, in order for esports to grow, the team dynamic needs to change. I believe it is an dramatization on the part of esports teams that if they fall out of the elite light for just a second, their team life is over and they might as well blow it all up and start anew. It's a terrible mindset to promote and is counterproductive. By the same token, teams should be managed independent of sponsors, and I realize that most teams need the sponsors to survive, but the "contracts" that some of these kids are forced into are absurd. A little adversity never hurt anyone and would make for great storylines. Could you imagine how boring football would be if it was only the Patriots, Giants, Ravens, and 49ers that played each other because the other teams had to disband because they finished last?
I think Riot has the team esports scene going on the right path but it's going to need help from the outside for the genre to catch-up.
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