I attended the League of Legends 2016 World Championships. I have played the game but not in any serious way. I am a little familiar with professional gaming because of my prior Starcraft playing experience but I was never very good at that game either. Here are some thoughts as an outsider attending this event.
We had a packed Staples Center. Fewer costumes than I expected. The point is not the cosplay. It's the game and the cult of the game.
We had a huge four-sided screen set up around the scoreboard that usually hangs at Staples. Even though the screen was huge, I still had trouble making out the characters. The game is visually complex and here's my main criticism of the game: it takes a lot of sustained concentration to follow the game. Each game can take over an hour, with rising action and shifts in advantages, sort of like soccer. But a soccer field is way less visually complex and there's only one focal point, a ball, around which all of the action takes place. The three parts of the LoL playing field mean that there will be action in different parts of the field all at the same time. The visual broadcast of the game attempts to take you to the areas of interest, but there's so much jumping around it's hard to follow the progress of a single player. Replays helped.
Also, do most sporting events have a live broadcast of commentary during the game? No, and I'm glad of that. There is auditory fatigue listening to commentary by three guys for the four hours I was at the event. I also didn't feel the commentary added a lot, and was mostly focused on the technical aspects of the game. I'm sure in the audience of 40,000 at least half of the attendees were not experienced players of the game. Wouldn't there be some point to at least explain some of the game's mechanics to them? Sure the game has millions of players, but that also means there are plenty of people who don't regularly play the game. Shouldn't one of the goals of the tournament be to bring new players into the fold?
There was a pre-game show that was well-done, but it only lasted 15 minutes! There was no attempt to put on a show between the five games. Even the Lakers send out dancing girls during time outs.
After three games and four hours, I went home. There is pleasure in going to Staples for a game, but as any patient in the ER will tell you, there is also pleasure in leaving. The event was still going strong and didn't finish until six hours and thirty minutes after starting, and the arena was still packed!
To me, this goes beyond diehard fandom. Nobody got up to get food or go to the bathroom during the games.
I feel like the servers and even outdoor vendors near Staples must not know what to make of this event. I'm told they closed the food after the second game, so there wasn't any food for most of the event! The hot dog guy and guitar player were set up outside Staples when we left at 8PM but there were no fans outside the building. They wouldn't leave for another 2 1/2 hours!
I have to say the games were engrossing. The skill of the players is evident but it's hard to understand what one team does better than another: what does it take to be a winner? Baseball has all kinds of statistics and a few really encapsulate performance. Batting average. RBI. WHIP. Can we have that here too?
We had very little about the players as humans. Where are they from? What are their real names? How did they make the team? How many hours of practice does it take? Why are Koreans so much better at this game than the rest of the world? How does one coach a LoL team?
I would also like to see Riot put up more info on the champions. What is Faker's go-to champion and why? Why are certain champions banned? This should probably be in the format of video clips.
Is it a sport? I think it is. There are elements of football but none of the bone crushing injuries of that sport. The roar of the crowd was real, especially when underdog SSG stole an important dragon kill in Game 3. They went on to win that game and the next one. SKT had more of a run for its money than it expected!
I'm thinking this can be a thinking-man's pro wrestling. You know it's fake, but it still has an emotional story: humans struggling for glory using on-screen avatars. I found out today that Vince McMahon, the WWE guy, is a billionaire. The Riot guys are on their way to becoming billionaires themselves, but perhaps they could take a few lessons from pro wrestling. Yes the razzle-dazzle is not the main event, but people like that. This is the challenge: how do you take something that is inherently machine-based, and make it human?
Maybe I've got it all wrong. These guys hosted a prior event at Wembly Stadium. Doesn't that thing hold over 100,000? Perhaps there's something very right about the formula that Riot doesn't want to tinker with. You've got a different demo here than a Lakers game, after all.
Will I be back next year? Maybe. I wish there were more effort to make this event more like a conventional sporting event--music, timeouts, shorter games. I think best two out of three is fair. That would leave more time for entertainment breaks. Six hours of intense action means this sport will remain a niche event.
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