It's easy to dismiss 23-year-old Byun Hyun-woo. In the world of competitive gaming, prodigies rule; almost every new game which gets dubbed an "esport" is picked up by a teenager or young adult that fits the game like a glove. They come from the underground of the amateur scene, emerging with an unstoppable glint in their eye, astounding everyone who comes across their path.

No country is more accustomed to prodigies than the perceived Mecca of esports, South Korea. The likes of Lee "Flash" Young-ho (StarCraft: Brood War), Lee "Life" Seung-hyun (StarCraft II), and Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok (League of Legends) have become the best at their respective titles before even hitting the age of 18. In short, superstars.

Byun is not a prodigy. He began his competitive gaming journey six years ago when StarCraft II released in South Korea. Starting with the ID "Bleach" and playing the advanced technological Protoss race, Byun didn't initially set the world ablaze. He was relatively pedestrian; good enough to smack around the average Joe at the game in its fledgling stage, but a longshot against the top players in the world. In his first three seasons of play, Byun won one match in the first season, lost immediately at the start of the second, and failed altogether to qualify for the third when he decided to switch from Protoss to the infantry-based Terran. Editor's Picks Adidas becomes Team Vitality's jersey outfitter

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Over the course of the next few years, Byun's career was more of an odyssey than a transcendence. His best performance, a semifinals appearance in the Global StarCraft League, was brought on when he made a bet with team management that he could adopt a puppy if he made it that far in the tournament. A player that was modeled to play online, Byun was notorious for his nerves; twitching in the booth when a game is about to start, looking claustrophobic in the tiny booths provided to the players. This led to faults in his play. Whenever Byun was a few steps from greatness, he would trip over himself while sizeable leads evaporated.

Instead of being known for his inhuman speed on the keyboard or offensive tactics, he gained the title of loveable loser; the type of player that drew you in with his exciting play but could never be the one raising the championship in the end. By the end of 2013, Byun would go from loveable loser to a ghost. He stopped participating in all offline tournaments, effectively shutting himself out from the world around him. Any time he would pop up in an online tournament to qualify for a larger, more prestigious offline competition, Byun would qualify with little resistance, and then, like his performance was just your imagination playing tricks on you, he'd decline to appear in person for the offline event.

"His best performance, a semifinals appearance in the Global StarCraft League, was brought on when he made a bet with team management that he could adopt a puppy if he made it that far in the tournament."

Two years ago it would have been more likely that Byun was never seen again in the public eye than to be our Esports Person of the Year. There have been hundreds of Byuns in the history of esports; players, for one reason or another, that couldn't handle it. Either they realized they didn't have what it takes and returned to a normal life, or they flamed out, putting everything into esports before realizing everything around them is scorched earth.

Anxiety is a staple of esports, from merely feeling anxious in a booth or playing in front of a large amount of people, to having anxiety in meeting people offline and interacting with them. Almost every esports star of today was scouted from the safety and comfort of their own home. The transition can break a person, especially someone whose first job out of high school is playing video games for a living. Your hobby, the place where you feel the happiest, has now become your job, judged by hundreds of thousands, and that, as fun and whimsical as it sounds, can crush you.

It did not crush Byun. He did not fade away into void with the thousand others who once wanted to be great. When the third expansion of StarCraft II was released, Legacy of the Void, Byun returned to the scene, spindly in his looks, but precise in his game play. His achievements in the online world bled into the offline scene, and he started his climb from nothingness like he was a rookie once more. His team, Prime, the one that had put him on the map back in his early days of being a professional, was no more, disgraced following a match-fixing scandal that found various members in violation of throwing games.

Byun "Byun" Hyun Woo is the unexpected champion of StarCraft II in 2016, not only dominating the competition, but winning the game in his own strange way. Provided by Kenzi/Fomos.

From the ruins, Byun lifted himself to the surface; not a prodigy, but a veteran, one sharpened by his years of his experience, the good and the bad. The dark hole of anxiety didn't suck him up, and he persisted, eventually playing in the major South Korean leagues without a team name to his ID. StarCraft, regardless of the version, had rules set in stone for a player to succeed. You needed a professional team behind you, providing the best infrastructure possibly by the top coaches. Beyond all else, the team came before you -- not only in StarCraft, but in South Korean culture.

If you had a big individual final coming up, a match with your team was supposed to take precedence. The team helped you become the best you could be, and you did your best to help the team the best it could be.

Byun broke all those rules in 2016. He didn't want a team. He didn't want to play in Proleague. His practice partners, which some teams used to have droves for each specific matchup, were foreigner players from North America and Europe on their off time wanting to help Byun prepare.

After almost two decades of StarCraft being controlled by governing bodies and corporations owning teams like they were military barracks, Byun went to the left where everyone had gone right; he was a rebel, of sorts, the de-facto oddball leader to the disfranchised. When he played his important matches, his fans held up signs to support Byun, not a team or a company logo.

Everything came to a head at the ultimate GSL finals of the year. Byun played against Kim "sOs" Yoo-jin, the star player on the best team in the world, the Jin Air Green Wings. The crowd was in full support of Byun, dubbed "The One Man Army" for his rebel status, cheering him on at every turn in the series.

At the end, when Byun did the once thinkable of winning a major StarCraft tournament teamless, the crowd exploded, ushering the man once thought to be a ghost onto the stage as the best player in the world, weeping as he raised his arms in victory up to the sky.

Less than two months later, the entire story had been flipped on its head. This time, at the StarCraft II World Championships in Anaheim, Byun was on a team, recently signing with Team Expert following his GSL conquest. Almost everyone (besides those on Jin Air) else once on a team was now teamless following the death of the long-standing Proleague.

Byun began with the Terran Jun "TY" Tae-yang, a former prodigy in his time, having started his pro-gaming career at the age of 12. Next, Byun moved onto, and defeated, TY's former KT Rolster teammate and Protoss Kim "Stats" Dae-yeob. Former SK Telecom T1 Zerg Park "Dark" Ryung-woo awaited him in the final, the two putting on a classic where Byun won in six games of a seven-game set.

"ByuN" Hyun Woo, a Terran player from South Korea, is swarmed by his fans in the StarCraft II Arena after his win over Dark during BlizzCon at the Anaheim Convention Center. BlizzCon is host to the annual world championships for game developer Blizzard. Brinson+Banks for ESPN

It was the destination of a six-year career. All the pain, hardships, and nerves led to Byun's world championship win, once again celebrated by a crowd, this time in America. Pro team, semi-pro team, teamless, it didn't matter -- Byun, wherever he would go and whatever he would wear, would always be the champion of the people. A player that spoke his mind in candid interviews. One that blurred the line between fan and pro-gamer, by continuously mentioning his love and fanboyism of fellow Terran player Lee "INnoVation" Shin-hyung.

No one knows where how far StarCraft II can go in the future. Proleague, the championship which made Jin Air Green Wings the best team in the world, is now gone. The giants SKT T1, KT Rolster, and others have bowed out from the scene, leaving numerous star players without a team to support them. For every Stats and Kang "Solar" Min-soo that get picked up by a respectable and forward thinking organization like Splyce, you have far more walking through the minefields of signing contracts with a shady team that are more likely to steal money from the unsuspecting pro than actually pay them. A-teamers who once commanded a decent salary now have to rely on tournament winnings to make rent. At a time where the predecessor, StarCraft: Brood War, is having a resurgence in South Korea with the return of former stars, SCII is on a raft, floating down a river with only darkness ahead of it, not knowing if it'll go on for years to come or drop off without a split second's notice.

But Byun will continue on. He is not a former Brood War star that can return to his former glory. He is too old to switch to a new game with his pro-gaming years counting down until he has to enlist in the South Korean military for his mandatory service. This is why he will continue on, the world champion of the only game he truly knows. To him, as it was in 2016, the scenes from the outside don't affect him; the brimstone and destruction of the professional structure of South Korean StarCraft will not touch him within his walls.

He will continue his diligent practice at home, the walls of his game's mortality enclosing on him from all around. His hands will dance around his desk, prancing across the keyboard with his fingers and maneuvering the mouse in rhythm, giving a world-class performance only his most loyal companion, his dog, will bear witness to.