Marketing & Esports : A Future Fairy Tale?

by Louis "Guichex" Lemeillet

Esports teams do basic marketing, but do they have the future in mind? Esports is gaining in popularity, with a viewership boasting over 70 million people. Gaming structures are faced with a swiftly-growing market and need to adapt very quickly, and that requires planning out their future.

Esports has huge potential because it represents a bridge between traditional sports and high technology. Moreover, a new game-breaking technology is on the verge of being achieved and commercialized and it brings new stakes both for high-tech industries and Esports.

To Infinity and Beyond

Across social media, we've seen teams offer merchandise like clothing and accessories, do giveaways for sponsors, and even participate in commercials. Tech companies and electronics conventions like CES are showing the world what could be the next big step concerning technology and computers. After bringing smartphones and tablets, it is time to bring something which could revolutionize our habits once again: flexible computers.

You can see manufacturers such as Samsung and LG talking about flexible phones like this one and praising their merits. It is a cool innovation, but the best part will come just a bit later. What can you do with a flexible screen and components? You can twist it at will and include it in objects you couldn't before like glasses, clothing and wristbands. With it, you reach the full potential of this new technology. Wearable computers. If you're curious enough, you can see plenty of stuff about Apple having some “secret facility” working on the new iWatch which will basically do what your smartphone is doing: email, music, agenda, etc. You also have Google Glass which does the same but with a little bit more virtual reality included. Maybe the next step is a Wi-Fi hat with a screen inside it. The possibilities are infinite.

Of course, not all of these technologies are available to the masses yet, but Esports is also not fully developed yet. And we can assume that, in some way, those two worlds will reach a new point at almost the same time, creating so many new possibilities for tech companies to advertise their new products.

One of the most effective marketing techniques at the moment is using brand ambassadors: whether they are movie stars, famous bloggers, or from a rich dynasty. It doesn't matter as long as they can wear or consume your products and give a good review; promoting them in whatever way possible. This kind of marketing relationship can bring very good image to the company if their values and personality are matching those of the ambassador. It is also long-lasting and so can bring a lot of profits to both parts.

A Bridge Between Esports and High-Technology

Where is the link with Esports ? Our favorite e-athletes can't really hope for sports companies to support them since they are not committed to any true physical effort; and they don't really need sportswear. What pro-players use daily is top-notch gaming devices which can help them reach a better performance. Nevertheless, they are considered, at least for the moment in some regions, as professional athletes and bring entertainment to millions of people who are also hardcore users of computers, gaming devices and every kind of technology.

Since that audience is most likely to adopt these new products, we represent, as Esports lovers, a great target for those companies. With the rise of Esports, they might have found the faces of the ones who will represent their company on the field.

If we project ourselves three or four years into the future, I truly believe Esports will have grown a lot more and every company will be taking a closer look at "this new thing.” Also, tech industries will release the first projects of their new “flexible devices” and they will want to boast them as much as possible. Trying to sign sponsorship contracts with some great multi-gaming company can bring fame and profits to both parts.

As a matter of fact, you can see that in Korea, where Esports is kind of a national thing, it is technology companies which sponsor the teams: SK Telecom and Samsung among others. I think at some point in the future, when Esports are acknowledged by everyone, we might see the same deal in our occidental countries. Imagine “Google Solo Mid” vs “Microsoft Cloud 9”. (I really hope we won't have those team names though.)

Whether or not Google and Apple would buy pro-gaming teams is a different matter. But what we can be sure of is: Esports powerhouses will be sponsored by one specific brand and they'll build long-lasting relationships by advertising their new products on the players while obtaining fame from the team results, in exchange for money.

Beware of Fairy Tales

Bringing tech companies, which represent a lot of devices every one of us is using on a daily basis and which represent what kids will consider “normal” in a near future, can bring further fame and importance to the Esports world. If you mix this with the “international future” of Esports, and by that I mean that they are shared worldwide and not only popular in one region, it could become something bigger we could ever imagine.

I may be over-reacting, but I think bringing such companies into the Esports market will at least bring our virtual sports onto the same level as big traditional sports such as soccer, football or baseball. Traditional sports will have sports companies more than Esports, but Esports can claim sponsorships from bigger companies. Such deals would bring further development to the Esports world and help gaming structures improve their infrastructures, their team salaries, their staff and their power.

On the other hand, such deals can bring tons of money to a quite new sector, and with it some disappointments. With an industry growing that fast and that big, everyone is playing with the balance between investments and rewards. For the moment, gaming structures are trying to court any advertising possible to upgrade their financial possibilities, but many problems could come arise from that. For example, you can see with the last Dr. Pepper marketing campaign with the European LCS teams, that they're selecting only one player to represent them, and not the whole team. So where does the money go? Towards the team or towards the player?

Lots of teams might try to take advantage of their players by “selling” them to whichever company offers money while not paying attention to the overall image of the person. Or players' egos might get in the way as they want to claim part of the money for their own personal benefit. Such moves would potentially slow down the industry as a whole and discourage big companies from investing as they could.

Esports is growing at an explosive rate. Technology companies are on the brink of unveiling cool, innovative stuff. This may be destiny. The two industries will find a lot of common interest if they manage to create sponsorship contracts. The most important part of all this being: the first to hit is the first to win. Pro-gaming structures need to be aware of that fact, and need to decide on a precise marketing strategy oriented towards the future.

What are your feelings towards all of this ? Do you also think sponsorships between high-tech industries and pro-gaming structures might exist someday ? Feel free to leave your comments, everything is open to discussion! 

The Evolution of the Meta

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

So let’s talk about how the meta has evolved from the “standard” lane match-ups. We've seen a huge change from what we started with. The game has grown into a much more strategic, albeit predictable early phase until mid game. This is actually really limiting picks in some aspects. We’re going to look at everything from mid S3 until the most recent popular strategies. Following that I’ll give a bit of an opinion on each.

Originally, the pro scene followed what is usually seen in solo-queue. Top laners and bottom laners matching up against each other. The strengths of this rely almost solely on your ability to lane. If you had a strong lane ability you loved it, if you lost lane every game you were screwed. If we go way back, sustain lanes were really popular. They were safe and let teams focus on farming and getting champs that needed farm to their insane late game status. In this meta we saw the likes of Anivia, Ryze, Jax, Singed, Tristana and Vayne. All of these champs had insane late game scaling.

In the jungle and support, however, we had the exact opposite. In order to try and counter these champs you had to strike early and hard. Lee sin, Xin Zhao, and Jarvan IV were popular at the time. They could gank easily level 2, which was so popular it became routine to do. They hit lanes early and gave their laner an advantage that they could use to snowball faster and once one of the lanes got ahead they were usually able to take control and bully the other lanes out.

If we look at bottom lane synergy, we had supports who were usually champs with great utility and bad scaling, i.e. Sona, Thresh, Lulu (who had bad scaling at the time), Alistar. These champs had great base damage skills and little to no ability to scale. They were used to protect the late game scaling ADC. Late game these guys usually turned into CC bots, and because there were no support specific items at this time they usually built cheap tanky items that had some kind of active in order to help their team. And wards. Pretty much all of their income was spent on wards.

Pros/Cons

So what are the pros and cons of this meta? Let's look at a few different areas of it. The game usually started off with everyone going to their respective lanes. We had actual match-ups, and in-lane play was extremely important. Your ability to duel was key and usually determined how far ahead you were or how much you had to come back from. This was great for rewarding you, but it was a bit too steep, to the point that any small advantage you gave was almost impossible to come back from - and don't even start on a successful invade and what that would give you. 

Next, the meta was very team fight oriented. This made awesome dragon fights, and a lot of strategy focused around forcing the enemy into fighting for objectives. There seemed to be a lot of strategic positioning that had to be done here to compete.

Finally, late game saw some awesome plays because we saw a clear transition from early game power champs to champs that scale. We saw huge emphasis on protecting carries like Vayne and Tristana. This basically meant late game was a test of who could kill the other team's ADC first. ADC was the end-all be-all once they had two or three items and they became almost impossible to stop. For an ADC main, this was awesome. Anyone that played a tank usually hated this and teams came up with two ways to fight this. Assassins, and early-engage burst supports. Enter late Season 3 and Worlds.

Worlds 

When we got to later in Season 3 we saw a huge change in the picks of support and mid lane. Zed and Ahri were hotly contested picks because of their ability to bypass bulky tanks and deal huge burst damage to ADCs. Supports started swapping as well. From motherly protection supports that healed and buffed ADCs until they got items, to engage heavy CC machines that punished the enemy at any wrong step. This brought a more action packed early game as we saw kill lanes become the norm. Leona, Annie, and Thresh were the holy trio of supports all through Worlds.

A small note to make as well is that the increase in aggressive laning and assassins forced ADC players on to more mobile carries. This, in addition to buffs to Trinity Force, made Ezreal and Corki go-to picks. They had reliable abilities to reposition themselves and could still put out damage while they moved. All throughout this time the top lane meta shifted marginally. Jax and Singed were still notable picks with more late game carry types being favored over tanks, but this change was much more gradual.

Now let's look at the game health at this time. In my opinion, the most notable thing of this meta was the power assassins and ADCs. The mid to late game team fights still revolved around killing the other team's carry, but now it was all about bursting them down before a fight really broke out or when they moved to a favorable position. Battles were won and lost based on single missteps. Even some supports had potential to knock people out of fights. This combined with how wards and gold income worked. As soon as a team got first blood or first dragon it was transitioned into complete vision control and instant burst kills on any team member that attempted to get it back.

Teams that knew how to play aggressive early waltzed over traditional late game teams. While games could last over forty minutes, you could easily see who was going to win as early as ten minutes in. Unless the team made massive mistakes, they just had to sit on their lead as soon as they earned it. Riot realized they had a lot of changes to make during the off-season.

Offseason/Vision Changes

Off-season started after Worlds ended, and Riot decided to take this time to make sweeping changes to vision and supports, as well as take a hit on the amount of damage ADCs could put out. Ever since it became part of the meta to have a player that relied on no definite gold income, they were immediately relegated to spending almost any money they earned on warding the map. Support was basically ward duty with some CC protection late game. Sightstone was a welcome change, but that alone wasn't enough. As long as it was possible, teams would funnel all warding onto whoever functioned best with little to no gold (read support).

Finally we get huge vision changes. Each champion can now only have up to three regular wards on the map at one time and one pink ward. Pink wards were no longer stealthed and took five hits to take out as opposed to three. Oracle's also was removed from the game. Riot just had no way to balance it. If they made it last until death, supports just played a bit safer or bought an extra one with their money. If it lasted for a specified amount of time they just fell straight back to buying an extra. With Oracle's in the game, there was no way to keep one team from completely controlling vision and, consequently, the game.

With this change, they also gave every summoner a specified slot for a trinket which was free and could be swapped at any point invoking a cooldown on the activated ability. The three trinkets made vision a bit easier for the team to spread out. There was no point in not using a free ward when it was up. This is huge because it was an indirect nerf to early gankers and assassins. Everyone had the ability to protect themselves now with some extra vision. Junglers were forced to stay in the jungle for a little longer, as was the intention. Masteries were also reworked to make penetration and other offensive-oriented abilities much further down the tree and considerably weaker, and defense got huge buffs.

Tower Pushing

For a little while things worked out as intended. Soon enough though players realized that with extra safety, they could play more aggressive. The best person to funnel gold into was still the ADC because they had more item dependency than any other position, and teams realized that with champions that could push early the best way to get a big spike of gold was to take towers fast.

What's the best way to shove? Run your ADC and support into the tanky melee champ that has no way to take on a ranged character at the start of the game. It forced them to try and get as much farm and experience under the tower as they could while trying not to die. The teams that prepared best for this had a top laner that was innately tanky with the new masteries, and could either sustain a lot of harass or clear waves quickly at early levels. Shyvana, Renekton and Dr. Mundo topped this list because of AoE damage early on and the ability to put out damage without building a lot of damage items. Sunfire Cape and Spirit Visage were extremely gold-efficient items that were key on these champs and were almost always first and second buys. Since hyper-tanks gained popularity, a new champ grew with them as well. Trundle.

Trundle has a kit that is made to counter tanks. Rushing a Blade of the Ruined King on him made his increased attack speed from his Frozen Domain insanely good at shredding HP-stacking top laners. Throw this on top of his Ultimate skill, Subjugate, which stole a percentage of health, armor and magic resist, and you had a perfect tank-buster to counter and split push any hyper-tank.

Riot saw the huge strength in the two previously mentioned items and nerfed them appropriately. Sunfire Cape had its passive scale with level rather than do a flat amount of damage, weakening its power spike when bought, and Spirit Visage had part of its cooldown reduction taken off and its price was increased. Sunfire fell out of favor in exchange for Randuin's Omen, and Spirit Visage became the niche item it was supposed to be on people who had a lot of self heal.

Mid lane saw new picks as well, since vision was no longer dominated by who was ahead. Players had to dominate the map rather than their opponent in order to get vision. Champs like Nidalee and Ziggs started seeing more play now. They used their immense range and damage to control minion waves and force the enemy away from objectives. Anyone who was seen making a rotation was poked out as they roamed.

Junglers realized that the only actual gank that was open because of the lane swaps was mid. Mid laners started warding harder and just generally playing safer. Jungling didn't gain enough gold to warrant just trying to farm, so the next best decision was to join their ADC and support and force the other team’s tower down as fast as possible. Eventually, the top laners joined in on this as well. They'd force down two towers and then back off.

After this, the top laner would go back to the lane that was shoved and freeze the wave while they caught up, after giving up their farm to shove. This stagnated the game for about 10 minutes or so and the team that had stayed bot lane would usually get a free dragon at this time. It’s important to note that dragon’s gold value was changed from a static value to a growing value as the game progressed, relative to the average level of each player. So an early dragon’s value dropped significantly from its previous value, but it was still worth grabbing.

Carry Top Laners

Riot attempted to fix the lane swaps that were happening at the pro level. In fact, they were only happening at the pro level. They gave buffs to the defenses of the top turrets. This is the first time that they really enforced a meta. Before they had always claimed that any team strategy was viable and never claimed that one way was the correct way to play. But this was a direct attempt to force ADCs back into the bottom lane. It took Riot a few patches before they were able to get a number that they were comfortable with. Even now it’s pretty easy to say that they were unsuccessful in their attempts to fix the problem because while they may have stopped fast pushes on towers, teams still lane swap almost every game.

Since lanes were getting frozen deep in enemy territory, champions had the ability to free farm for an extended time. Any team that tried to still pressure that deep into their enemies lane would be promptly taken out as soon as they showed themselves. This was actually the end of Dr.Mundo as a meta champion. He was played mostly because of his decent wave clear and ability to scale off the strength of the strong items of the time. With nerfs to his items and the strength of his early wave clear no longer needed, he faded out of picks.

Since top laners could free farm for a long time, top lane players started picking up champions that scaled well with gold. Shyvana still worked well, but some new picks were Jax, Ryze, etc. Defensive masteries were still substantial at this point, so anyone who could put at least nine points into defense was strong. Plus, getting free farm to scale meant later on in the game they’d be more impactful in objective fights. Also, mobility was usually a must on these champs to get in and get out of sticky situations.

Summoner Spell Changes

Amidst all of this, the summoner spell Heal was bolstered to give more health and a move speed buff. This became the preferred summoner spell of safe mid lane players and ADCs over Barrier, because of the ability to reposition in addition to the extra effective health it brought. It was also a nerf to assassins because they no longer had an easy way to burst down ADCs. Barrier was already starting this and heal buffs were a final nail in the coffin. Since assassins fell off, ADCs that had fewer escapes but consequently more damage could be played. Twitch saw a rise to popularity due to his hard carry team fight role and the strength and synergy he had with Blade of the Ruined King. After Twitch, we saw Kog'Maw start being selected as well.

Alongside the heal buffs was a buff to Teleport - lowering the cooldown significantly when it was used on turrets. This meant weak, early laners now had a way to handle their weakest point in the game. If you got chunked out, you could just back to base, buy and teleport back. For a little while we went back to a standard meta. Then teams began trying to funnel whatever gold they could into their ADC because of how hard these popular ADCs would scale. Lane swaps were back, and there was little to no reason not to do them. Dragon wasn't worth as much gold, and that was the reason that you kept your bottom lane near it - so you could have more players to contest it.

ADCs started freezing the lanes rather than pushing early because of the changes to how towers took damage. They took as long as possible to take the tower in order to keep the top laner starved for farm. Top laners started roaming with the jungler in order to actually gain experience until they could safely farm. This led to three-man ganks on mid laners because of supports roaming as well. Since the early game has become so much less intense and more strategic, we've seen much more late game oriented compositions, including many "protect the carry" teams. Mids are choosing higher utility champions that can give their team buffs and either peel or put out sustained damage. 

Conclusion

In a way, we've come full circle back to early to mid Season 3. In all honesty, this is the kind of meta that I prefer - mages and late game tanks and ADCs. It’s a very strategic game compared to mid Season 3 though. Rather than trying to get ahead and snowball, you take your time to get guaranteed gold by farming. Once you’re able to get some gold onto your carrys, you move down to force objectives and use your sieging-power or team fight potential to take them or force them off. The game has evolved in ways, but it’s always been somewhat related to the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Squishy constant damage beats tanks who beat assassins who beat squishy constant damage. This isn't an end-all be-all, but it’s a great way to try and predict counters and how the meta will evolve. I think eventually we’ll see more assassins come back that can take out ADCs like Kog'Maw and Twitch, or maybe a way to counter their freeze in the top lane with another ranged character like Kennen. Teams will always find ways to counter what’s popular and that, in turn, will become popular. That’s how metas work.

Do Transfers Create an Identity Crisis?

by Reece "Sabrewolf" Dos-Santos

We've begun to see an increase in international transfers and signings between the pro teams which is something we all should have come to expect with so many different teams and leagues. The most noticeable trend at this moment is the movement of Korean players to leagues across the world. In recent times, we've seen Seraph move to CLG, MakNooN, Winged, SuNo, Lactea and Olleh move to Brazil and Helios may be the latest addition to Evil Geniuses.

A rising concern is the identity crisis that could occur from teams heavily populated by other regions performing at international events. Fans will obviously want to cheer for their nation’s talent at international events the same way it is in events like the World Cup for football/soccer. Inevitably the mixture of Korean players, Chinese players and European players in the NA LCS basically voids the discussion on “which region is better” as relative nations could claim that “Bjergsen is still Danish” (as Deficio often likes to reminds us). But what we really need to do is accept that once you enter a different league, you represent that league no matter what your background is. Each region should still be represented in the majority by their own players, but there shouldn't be a hostility towards transfers from other regions.

I believe that true integration between teams worldwide will help to create a healthy international community within the LoL pro scene and will gradually help to make each league more exciting and diverse. The NA scene on a whole has benefited immensely in terms of popularity and competition since the introduction of key European players, LMQ, and Seraph from Korea. Competition is fiercer and this overall provides a better experience for the viewers as well as the players who work harder to produce upsets and exciting brawls. With more international representation across the leagues the community will find more incentive to watch leagues aside from their own. I myself have found more reason to watch the NA scene since the movement of Evil Geniuses and I’m sure that LMQ have Chinese fans that watch their NA LCS games in the same regard.

There is however a risk of domino effect that comes along with an expanding transfer market in that when one team invests in the aid of a Korean player, others will gradually do the same in order to keep up. In a professional scene like LoL’s where stability is essential for players, the last thing they need is the threat in the back of their mind that they may be eventually axed in favour of an international alternative. Perhaps stability of job is a main reason why we've seen an increase in movement of Korean players abroad as the scene in Korea is very fast paced and demanding. There is much less room for error, let alone continuous error, and under-performers are almost certainly dropped in favour of fresh hungrier blood.

There is a fine balance that needs to be considered with the LCS when it comes to transfers - the balance between stability and over-complacency. To create a stable environment, teams shouldn't really encourage dropping players midway through a split, as this harms both the team and the players. Evidence of this would be Selfie and KottenX for the Supa Hot Crew and Millenium, who needed time to grow into their new teams and develop into the crucial players they are now. Players should be entitled to play the whole split they are contracted for, or at least be rotated out for the substitutes that exist within the team already rather than axing them for someone new completely. Otherwise, what’s the point of having those subs in the first place? Rotating and battling for your spot on a team with a sub provides incentive to improve and develop as it did with EG in summer split of EU and certainly gave Snoopeh a new lease on life in terms of his performance when he was re-introduced into the starting line-up. I know if I was a player knowing that somewhere on Reddit there was a huge thread discussing my “replacement,” my performance would suffer. But what’s also important is knowing when a certain team structure just isn't working. Gambit’s failure to see this is partially what has led to their gradual season by season decay while Froggen’s realization lead to the new super team that is Alliance.

As long as players can find stability within their teams, and not every problem is solved by bringing in a Korean player, transfers should never be a problem for the LoL pro scene.

Do you know your Champion Abilities? Take this LCS FanZone Quiz and Find out!

(*Note..Question 3 should read Yorick's "W," not "E".. and Question 8's choice 'C' should read Frost Armor, so you have been warned!)

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

LCS FanZone Question of the Day

We asked: If you could add a new game mode to LoL..what would it be?

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- Each team picks which 5 champs the other team will play. (You can trade with other players on your team). Nuggetsauce ‏@nuggetsauce

- Capture the flag Jose ‏@SporadicJ

- I would like a mode that emphasises the 1v1 aspect of the game. Not sure if you could do anything more creative than showdown. Arron Dempsey ‏@ArronDempers

- One where everyone is normal, but I am slightly buffed so I don't get frustrated as I can't die :p David Fletcher ‏@djfletcherer

- Hide and Seek would be awesome... people already do it in customs, but a mode of it would be so much fun! And the seeking team would be able to have 1 Rengar in the team xD Hopping all over! Monstro ‏@PokeBoobies

- Something similar to Dota's Ability Draft. Jesse Raen-Saunders ‏@VocalTerrorist

- Ability draft! It's a game mode from Dota 2. Pretty fun! But I didn't know how to play the game so it was really confusing too. Judar ‏@PikaJudar

- A mode where you pick any champion and any 4 abilities. Lucian with wish for his ult for example. Adam Cowley ‏@adz250

- Death match. 10 champs in an arena start at lvl 18 full items. NE0 Jets ‏@Jetslove81

- Free for all, every man for himself. SabreTilt ‏@SabrewoIf

- I was thinking of something like a normal mode but with minions spawning faster and faster throughout the game. Minions invasion. Jhyrar Baenre @Jhyrar

- I think would be nice to chose (to play) every minion from the map.. hmm ..baron drake minions wraths =)) donno sounds stupid?  Summer ‏@summmeryy

- That is an easy one, make a map, sword and shield style. 4v4v4!! :) three teams In a minion spawn point capture style. Mod bro ‏@Aust_Modbro

- Faction wars would be fun. Branch ‏@ThatGuyBranch

- 3v3 arena with everyone at max level, pillars etc to block skill shots and buffs that appear in specific places.  Amber ‏@kikuzLoL

- 6 player FFA arena last man standing, with an evolving map with randomized effects such as firebreathing statues and pitfalls. Lullaby ‏@LullabyGaming

- a story mode maybe. Chaz ‏@xheshire

- I have 2 ideas. Make all ults global, or instead of the nexus, there is a Baron Nashor at each base you need to kill. Accio Pwns ‏@AccioPwns

- Some mini games with skill shots or stuff like that. Token ‏@Fayetoken

- Somewhat of a tower defense game. Zack | 달 ‏@ChubsLoL