

Now that 2016 has begun, it’s time for ESEX to look back on 2015 with incredulous and cavalier eyes. There are many awards to be had: some oddly specific, and others you may have seen before — we know we have! Let’s get right into it, shall we?

The “Yes, anything” Award for the Thing Least Likely to Exist after 2015

Winner: SK Gaming

SK Gaming has finally won something — and it’s this prestigious award. This award goes to a team that is not only dead, but the deadest of all teams.They had a very strong showing in the Spring Split, and they were able to carry that momentum downwards, losing to Gamers2 (now G2 Esports), a team as memorable as Piglet’s Twitter. Filling your team with Koreans will surely work out, SK Gaming — just ask Quantic Gaming, Team Coast, and Winterfox!

Runner Up: The next team Froggen joins Echo Fox

The “$240,000 Art History Degree” Award for Most Efficient Way to Waste Money

Winner: LGD’s 2015 Roster

Boasting salaries of about $500,000, the LGD Gaming roster was surely going to be the best-dressed wherever they went (and they were!). However, it turns out spending ludicrous amounts of money doesn’t necessarily improve your team — see: the LA Dodgers. China can buy the Koreans out of Korea, but they can’t buy “losing to Koreans” out of China.

Runner-up: A tie between an NA team’s ticket to London and the babysitter Mylixia hired

The “Your Lucky Hearthstone Game” Award for Most Unsurprising Thing To Not Actually Exist

Winner: Ann Pragg

Women in esports receive an inordinate amount of hate, ranging from anonymous potshots to doxing, from community hostility to to death threats. Given that, it’s pretty lucky that Ann Pragg isn’t one. Although many in the esports industry were shocked to learn that the Female Thorin was neither, suspicious accusations had assailed Pragg from the beginning. Almost caught, the man behind the curt Tweets went out on his own terms, revealing that it was all a hilarious social experiment. Immediately, everyone laughed at the awesome prank, and high-fived him, and let him into all the cool esports events, and Mike from down the street stopped calling him names.

Unfortunately for Duncan Shields, this marks the second time his esports love interest turned out not to be interested in men.

Runner-up: Riot’s recent fix for minion block

The “Soaz” Award for Most Likely to Talk Tons of Shit But Ask Others to Be Easy on Them for 2015

Winner: EU as a region

No one can dish and not take it quite like our favorite peninsula of Asia: Europe. Remember that regions worse than Europe, like North America and China, are pure garbage; but regions better than Europe, like Korea, are try-hard, emotionless robots. Sure, Fnatic lost 0-3 to KOO Tigers, but that’s only because they were “mentally exhausted.” This is not to be confused with “tilting,” of course, because that’s what NA does.

Runner-up: Paul “sOAZ” Boyer

The “Replays” Award for Feature We Are Most Excited for in 2016

Winner: Replays

This award is meant to get everyone hyped up about a League of Legends feature that will definitely be coming out in the upcoming year 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016! Riot knows what the fans want in their competitive eSport, so they wasted no time in announcing that Replays – a hotly anticipated feature that has long been a staple of their competitors’ games and other eSports in general – will be definitely ready for us to enjoy very soon. Hell, the only thing we might be looking forward to more from this coming year is catching Osama the London Olympics the long reign of Pope Benedict the World Cup the next Star Wars movie the 2016 US Presidential Elections!