eSports and a Beginning to New Team Dynamics

written by Hieu-Joe Vo (@JoeTruVo)

Throughout my college years, I always wanted to start my own business. I was confident and thought that my path after school would be set. I soon realized those ideas were going down the drain as I foresaw factors that would lead to  a career path I would not be happy with down the road. After being involved in the cosplay community and getting introduced to those who professionally play games, I began developing a large growing interest in eSports. Soon after I made a career change as I began to see myself in eSports.

Throughout the past several months I began diligently looking into the history of what has happened so far with eSports teams, most particularly in League of Legends. The growth and narratives within its scene have developed so much in the last several years, setting down a decent amount of groundwork to look back on. Over the course of my time in the League of Legends community, I found myself keen to the issues that involved the dynamics of players, teams, support staff, and managers. Digging deeper I became very interested in these aspects after learning from the mistakes of these individuals. After watching Team Liquid’s “Breaking Point,” the video brought to my attention what could happen when team dynamics fail due to a variety of factors. Although the video negatively impacted the reputations for Team Liquid, it did seem to provide a transparency into what affected their success in 2016 and what could happen to other teams.

Although there are a variety of factors that affect team dynamics, some of the most drastic changes occur when the team rosters are adjusted. From there, a new type of team dynamic is created with changes everyone in these organizations must prepare themselves for.

The League of Legends North American franchise is finally starting its inaugural season here in 2018. The franchise for those who don’t know is a brand new system being built for professional teams that will allow them to secure themselves as permanent partners. The benefits include “Changing the structure of the league to encourage long-term investments” to “Sharing league revenue to provide a better foundation for teams and pros” which leads to “Giving pros a larger voice and better protections."

So far, ten teams have secured their positions in the franchise.

With the new franchise, the most particularly interesting aspect is the creation of new rosters all across the board. Every existing team that has made it through has undergone a roster change and every brand new team has built a new roster with certain prospects that create a greater uncertainty in their success. Although some analysts can predict their successes through past performances, what is even harder to predict is how well these individual players will be able to work with their new teammates.

As we start the beginning of 2018, it will be very interesting on what will happen as these new rosters start coming together. No matter how young they are or how experienced, it is still uncertain how well these players will work with each other for this next year. All we can do for now is watch and see what happens.