Anyone who has kept themselves up to date in the league of legends scene over the past two years is quite familiar with the predictable outcome of many of the offline tournaments. With Allstars having just been completed this is the second time in a row that a Korean team seen to be struggling by their own scene has shown up and dominated a tournament with some of the best teams from other parts of the globe. The question isn’twhy however, many people have routinely cited the same two major issues, a lack of infrastructure and a lack of talent – the question is why haven’t we done anything to change that fact?

The answer to that question is much simpler than one might originally think, we just don’t want to. Let us take a look at the main infrastructure issue that we currently have.

Many top professional teams in the west do not have full time coaches, analysts and support staffs that would make life easier for the players and increase the efficiency of their practice.

This is self explanatory. Even a team at the level of Fnactic, a team that has won the European LCS three splits in a row, has said they need an analyst and it proved to be a glaring problem for them at Allstars. The very best teams are not actively seeking out additional resources that will make them stronger, or willing to spend time and effort grooming an additional resource, despite its clearly proven value. If our very best teams are being so complacent in this department what sort of example does it set for the teams aspiring to catch them in their regions? (Fnatic doesn’t have that sort of stuff; I guess we don’t need it either!) This mentality is incredibly dangerous for the success of our regions. The support staff Korea has built around its teams is proving to be, not a nice extra, but essential for making a team relevant in the ultra competitive international scene.

So why doesn’t every team have a support staff if it is becoming so evident that they have such a positive impact on the players and their performance? Money. The truth is there is a lack of funding for the majority of western teams to pay 3-4 people on top of the players full time to ensure that these teams really do have well rounded support staffs. The fact that more North American teams have and are willing to spend this money than Europe, has already manifested itself in demonstrating the superior quality of the top NA teams, despite a lot of agreement that European players seem to be more talented on an individual basis. This hammers the point home even further, demonstrating in a second region how much potential can be unlocked in a team by having a proper staff to support them.

The question becomes however, why would money want to invest in a western E-sports team? The answer for the most part is that it wouldn’t. As much as some organizations (like TSM or EG) do a great job at marketing and promoting their teams/players they simply do not get the results. In any already established sport, sponsors look to go after the best players with the most talent. Big companies want to sponsor the Kobe Bryants and Tiger Woods of the world, not some guy who barely made it onto a starting roster of an NBA squad or squeaked through the PGA qualifications. Thus it only makes sense for these organizations to preferably go to Korea for this sort of sponsorship, as they are more likely to achieve results on the world stage.

For my evidence of this we have to look no further than the sad state of the NA scene. What is one comment repeated by many top pros in North America? There is no upcoming talent. I find this comment to be incredibly amusing. Are the few pros we have who can compete really that ignorant? Do they think they have been bestowed a divine gift usually reserved only for people born in Asia? I completely disagree with the notion that we have no talent, I believe we just put in no effort to develop that talent.

Let me explain why I think this. I am going to start with the pro players and work my way down to the very worst players on our servers. First to our pros. The community loves you guys, they look up to you and want to be just like you. This is why despite many of you giving us hours of entertainment you have hurt your abilities to compete internationally. The overall mentality of American pros in solo queue is to not care. Many of them view scrimming as practice and solo queue as a way to keep enjoying the game. I don’t want to be the guy to burst the bubble of handholding and love but this is BIGGEST issue that our scene has today.

You don’t see professional hockey players counting shinny as practice or NBA players citing the hours they spend playing pickup with their friends, because it isn’t practice. If you don’t enjoy the practice, doing drills, watching replays, going in depth on all sorts of possible scenarios etc, maybe being a professional isn’t for you. It isn’t what many pros want to hear but if you are not willing to sacrifice you cannot realistically expect to compete with people who sleep 5 hours a day so they can dedicate the rest of their day to improving their game (Hi Piglet). A great quote was on the wall of a gym I used to frequent “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard” it was by a high school football coach Tim Notke and I think it is very fitting in this sort of situation.

Thousands and thousands of people watch professionals’ stream every day. Many get to become more acquainted with them and cheer for them more because of their personality on stream, which is great and unique to E-sports. I’m not advocating for this to go away as I think it is partially responsible for the rapid growth of E-sports, nor am I advocating a practice style with no enjoyment. So what is the issue then? The pros don’t try. Watching hundreds of hours of streams myself, many players do not use their solo queue time as a very serious practice mode but instead as a fun mode, like many people in the lower ranks use normal modes. This has the direct effect of discouraging amateur players who reach that level of competition. They see their favourite players just having fun and they decide that is what they are going to do too. As this attitude filters down you get tons of players who take the game more lightly and thus never unlock their potential playing it. Of course some pros do take solo queue seriously but I think those are the few that get credit for being able to compete on an international stage.

This is where, as a fan, I beg our pros to stop and think about how they play solo queue. What are they trying to accomplish playing it? There should be set goals every time a game is played that help define in concrete terms how a player tends to use that game to improve. Without this sort of dedication and intensity I don’t see how the west will ever catch up to Korea. This doesn’t mean not enjoying the serious practice, but like I said earlier if you are a pro and find playing seriously isn’t “fun” for you anymore it’s probably time to hang up your skates.

This second issue is not as easy to fix but is the one the average person reading this has the power to change. It essentially boils down to how we look at the game and gaming in general. When we play a game what is our purpose? Are we trying to relax? Enjoy ourselves? Improve our ability? League of Legends is popular because it has outlets for all of those desires. Aram and normal games are available as fun modes where people go to enjoy themselves, but ranked must be treated differently and it is not.

It is too acceptable in our culture, for ranked to be taken as “just a game”. If that is your attitude, no matter if you are in bronze 5 or challenger, you are the source of this second problem. This attitude and nonchalant way of playing ranked, the mode specifically designed for improving and winning, destroys our ability to compete internationally. Want to pick a troll champion? Go play normal. Sounds harsh? Good.

It is not acceptable, at any level of competition, to not try. I’ll never forget a conversation I had with my father when I was a child after one of my hockey games. I was playing house league at the time and was miles better than most people on the ice in most of my games, so occasionally I would play a game where I didn’t put any effort in. Coaches and other parents would think I did fine as I would still score, but my dad got angrier at me than if i scored goals in my own net. He instilled in me that the end result wasn’t what was important, it was the journey. The effort you put in directly related to how you felt at the end of the day and to your overall success. What does this have to do with league? Everything.

It doesn’t matter if you are in bronze 5, when you enter the queue for ranked you are making a commitment to yourself and the community that you are going to do your absolute best to learn from, and win, the game you are in. If that doesn’t sound like something you want to do, don’t play ranked. Currently we have the nonchalance dripping from the top of the leagues down, maybe this process can cause desire to win and improve to move from the bottom up.

What the west needs is an attitude shift, we need the hunger to improve and win to be instilled in every player that goes into ranked. It is common practice for people to play at the level they are forced to play at in order to succeed. Players are much more capable than we think of raising their play to match that of their competition if they are forced to repeatedly (a strong solo queue environment) however if it is not demanded of them they will player at a lower level, thus struggling when thrown into a series against players who constantly force themselves to perform at their peak.

I’d love to say an injection of millions of dollars would help us compete with Korea but currently, I think it would just be a waste of money. If we want to improve it is going to require us to think about the game differently, and that is going to take some time to fully implement. The good news is that you can help. Next time you play a game make a conscious choice of how you want to play, and when you enter ranked make sure that learning and improving or winning are the only acceptable outcomes. If you do this, the rest will take care of itself.