The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

Why the OPL appears to be imploding, and the role Riot plays

Women are comparatively rare in esports. (Chiefs eSports)
Expert
27th March, 2017
2

For those who seek scandals, and who leech off the drama of others, welcome to your heaven.

The Oceanic Pro League (OPL) has been inundated with controversies and conflicts over the course of its first attempt at moving the league into a weekly LAN environment, leaving a poor impression on the international audiences looking in for the first time, and a sour taste for those working in the OCE eSports space.

The various transgressors of these conflicts should not be held solely at fault for their actions. All of the drama contextually stems from an underdeveloped scene being pushed too hard and too fast by an overly zealous developer, not ready to deal with the consequences of this pushing.

Although it would appear, due to the size of the title, the high production value and lofty conceptual goals of Riot, that League of Legends is the biggest eSports title in Australia, this is hardly the case. CS:GO has been holding the primacy of power, boasting more consistent viewing numbers, a higher influx of sponsors, both endemic and non-endemic, and greater opportunities for international exposure.

Although the Australian CS:GO space is no where near the level of North America or Europe, it’s only two to three years behind in terms of infrastructure, which for a region that has such a relative small population and many issues facing it.

League of Legends in Australia on the other hand, is not only not the biggest title, but also further behind than CS:GO in terms of both infrastructure and audience size. There might be some big names like Swip3r and Swiffer, but this does not translate into a big scene as a whole. Viewership numbers aren’t great, with decent numbers only spiking during big games like Chiefs vs Legacy or playoff matches, and it feels as though the drama around the scene gets more attention than the games themselves.

This is not for a lack of trying on Riot Australia’s behalf at all though, client notifications, advertisements and catalysing a vibrant community have been solid attempts at trying to stoke a small ember. However, moving the entire league from an online environment to LAN, with teams all requiring team houses, has blown the ember almost out. Riot has failed to let the OCE League scene grow organically to the point where this transition would be seemingly flawless.

To put it into perspective, before the season started, many would’ve cited Chiefs, Legacy, Tainted Minds, Dire Wolves, and Avant Garde as the top five teams in the region – all with the vast majority of the scenes top talent between them. None of those teams have played the first 8 weeks of competition with the same starting roster. Each team has either had to deal with roster drama, organisational controversy, or competitive rulings from Riot. Could you imagine the outcry if the same series of problems – especially the competitive rulings – faced TSM, Cloud9, Phoenix1, CLG, and FlyQuest, separately?

Advertisement

The multitude of bans in both the OCS and OPL just goes to show the clear disconnect between the professional expectations from Riot and the organisation/players. The issue of account sharing has plagued the OPL article page with competitive ruling after competitive ruling, cutting some of OPL’s greatest and most legendary teams/players at the knees.

This is the first split that we’ve seen such large numbers of players and teams look to bootcamp overseas, before the split started. This is largely due to the OPL being on LAN and teams needing to step up their preparation accordingly, however, based on the rulings, it would appear that this was done fairly rushed, without much help from Riot Australia and resulted in split changing bans later down the track.

Whilst it’s reassuring in some senses to know that at least Riot is consistent with their rulings, one would thing they would be more magnanimous in their punishments – especially when it’s the first split of play. It’s a bit disingenuous to constantly push the importance of every single game down the throat of the viewer whilst simultaneously hampering the chances of the regions best teams in important matches due to seemingly harmless actions they engaged in months prior.

It’s not fair to expect organisations and players to make the dramatic shift – for the first time – of moving from an online to offline studio setting, throw in some also first time overseas bootcamps, and expect no mistakes. And then when these mistakes do eventually happen – with no clear malicious intent on the part of the players or organisation – punish them, and in some cases quite severely.

A similar Riot rationale has been applied to  the TM controversy. Although the matter of who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong occupies the vast majority of discussion, Riot Australia’s role behind the scene’s shows just how unprepared they were to deal with any dramas that might occur with moving the league to a studio setting with team houses. They pressured both parties to come to an entirely amicable solution as quickly as possible, as quietly as possible, and without any direct intervention on their end.

Whilst this direct intervention is justified given the historical role Riot has played in conflicts, and the problems that can arise by intervening,  one can’t help but get frustrated when learning about the nitty gritty details of the story. A major point of the story was the nature of Fasffy’s role as manager. It caused many of the dramas between herself and the organisation, and could’ve largely been avoided had Riot accurately outlined how they viewed the role before the split started.

It’s seemingly innocuous details like these that can blow up in the face of the developer if they aren’t ready.

Advertisement

That’s what many of these problems really come down to, a breezing over or unawareness of rules which never truly applied to the scene since before the move. These are the growing pains of a burgeoning scene, and now that they exist there’s no backtracking. Riot pushed the scene massively in forcing the teams to move into houses and play in a studio. No it’s just a matter of dealing with the consequences of that pushing and then readjusting so that next split the same problems don’t pop up.

However, it’s easy to sit back and criticise, maybe this dramatic change of environment will be the masterful push that takes Australian League of Legends to new lofty heights.

close