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In the wake of another all-Korean League of Legends world finals, the rest of the world is left to once again wonder “what are we doing wrong?”
We’ve seen non-Korean teams expand their coaching staff, employ sports psychologists, turn Korean boot-camping from an option into a requirement, and take various other measures to improve. In spite of all this, the gap hasn’t closed.
Let’s assume that SKT is a special case, with the pairing of a once-in-a-generation coach with a once-in-a-generation player being some kind of historic freak occurrence. But what about the other finalist, Samsung Galaxy?
What about the team SKT narrowly beat 3-2 in the semifinals, the ROX Tigers? Neither of them had a large coaching staff.
Samsung had a head coach and assistant coach for most of the season (they acquired a third coach before worlds), while the Tigers have run a two-coach system in their lead up to worlds.
Neither team has much money either. Samsung famously failed to retain a single one of their players or coaching staff after winning Worlds 2014, and effectively started from scratch. In ROX’s case, their sponsorship struggles have been open for the world to see. Clearly, the advantage Korean teams have must not be material.
Yet, the highly publicised measures taken by Western teams always seem to involve spending a ton of money on ‘infrastructure’ and staff. In all likelihood, teams realise that such expenditures will have limited effectiveness.
They still focus on that path because the other problems they need to tackle are institutional and/or incredibly complex. Take for example the oft-cited terrible North American solo-queue/ladder experience for high rank players.
Solving that isn’t just about reducing latency – it’s about convincing thousands of players to drastically change their behaviour and mentality at the same time. Good luck with that!
Organisations already have enough trouble convincing five people on their payroll to do what they want.
Ultimately, the non-Korean scene needs to realise the way they’ve used their material advantage has achieved very little. Teams need to step out of their comfort zone and tackle problems that no one else has attempted to address.
Instead of being awed by gaudy numbers and famous names behind new investment, fans must demand innovative plans that don’t involve burning money over the same old fires.
How about hiring a coach who doesn’t stay with the team, but instead stays embedded with a Korean team for a year (for a fee, of course) in order to learn the best practices? How about drastically overpaying for an LCK champion coach?
How about directly paying hundreds of high level players to ladder during certain times of the day? These ideas are a bit crazy. But are they that much crazier than, say, bringing on a coach with a traditional sports background and hoping something good will happen?
The gap might yet be closed by filing it with money; it would just take a shorter time if we could find the shallowest part of the chasm.