League of Legends: The Curse of Being the Best In The West

With the big pickup of Wildturtle from TSM, Huni and Reignover coming over from Europe, Adrian in support, and star midlaner Pobelter, Immortals is looking to be the best team… in the west. Even with all these top-tier players the best team in North American LCS still can’t compare to mid-tier LCK teams. Just last week at IEM, Team Solomid; one of the top teams in the NA LCS, lost to SKTelecom T1 the seventh place team in LCK. But why is this? Why are the top western teams always losing to the middle of the pack Korean teams. The obvious answer is that the Korean teams are better than the western teams. But why? Do they just practice more, or is it something deeper than that? The main difference between Western teams and Korean teams isn’t the players that are on the teams, but the culture that surrounds these players.

The infrastructure of Korea is more adept at creating these high-quality players. The entire Esports scene and a large portion of the Korean population is based in the bustling city of Seoul. While at first glance this doesn’t seem like a practical reason as to why Korea has had such large success in the LCS, it is a key factor in gathering new talent. With the majority of the League population being compacted in the same city, it is easy for teams to scout out new players and for these aspiring stars to get on a team. Contrast this to the season 2 Worlds contenders Moscow Five, this team had to travel every week from Moscow to Copenhagen in order to compete with other teams. This eventually took its toll on the team and affected their personal lives and ability to perform. But this would never be a problem for a Korean team since they are all based in the same city. Korea also has a larger history in Esports than the West and has access to better coaches, better ways for teams to practice and living conditions that allow the players to more quickly build their mechanics and overall game knowledge.

The Korean culture is a long and rich culture that emphasizes work ethic and builds hard working individuals in all aspects of society, esports players are no exception to this. The challenger scene in Korea is many times more competitive than any Western Challenger scene. Pro players who are in challenger in NA, place only in low challenger to diamond on the Korean servers. In North American and European soloqueue many people who play are pro’s who aren’t trying their hardest, or are one trick ponies. But in Korean Challenger everyone tries their best and wants to place their highest. This all relates back to the Korean culture and the mindset of a Korean player. These Korean players may have quit their jobs to climb soloqueue full time. Because of this, they play every game seriously and try their hardest to hit the highest rank. Every tier in Korean soloqueue is competitive and there is a distinct difference in player skill when climbing from tier to tier. Being a challenger player in Korea pretty much guarantees you a spot on a Korean team, while there are a number of challenger players in NA and EU that aren’t on teams and don’t even want to be on teams.

Korean professional players also take their jobs very serious. The teams and coaches behind them train them to be the best that they can be. A European or North American pro player may practice for 6-8 hours a day. While a Korean player practices for 12-15 hours a day.  There are so many challenger players vying for a spot on a team in Korea, that if a Korean pro player underperforms they will easily be replaced. So a Korean player practices these inhumanly high hours for the sake of their job. This makes being a pro player in Korea a very high-stress job. Some players in North America  and Europe have girlfriends and even wives, while in Korea this just isn’t possible. There isn’t time for any sort of social life, the Korean pro player sacrifices so much to keep his job. The mindset of a lot of these Korean players is that time spent on a life outside of League of Legends is time spent not playing League of Legends and not perfecting your skills. So while a European player may be eating, sleeping, or spending time with family, the Korean player is playing Korean soloqueue and practicing with his team.

These are things that just aren’t possible in the West, the culture is against working constantly for such long hours. And the majority of players would not want to sacrifice s0 much in order to be as good as the Koreans. Though you can’t change the culture of the West, the one thing you can do is imitate the infrastructure of Korea and attempt to up the competitiveness of western soloqueue. To make soloqueue more competitive you would have to change the players mindset of what soloqueue is for. It is not for messing around and playing with your teammates, but strictly for raising your rank and to show other players that you’re the best. And to improve infrastructure it may be  possible to recruit more experienced coaches, and have the teams provide more resources for the players to practice and work together. All in all, it is very difficult for the West to become as good as Korea, because it is not so much how Korea treats the players and teams. But it is the culture of Korea as a whole which breeds these amazing players.

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