Writtten by: Jonathan Yee

___

The year is 2012, year of the Season 2 League of Legends World Championship.

Saigon Jokers, having narrowly overcome the better-fancied Singapore Sentinels in the SEA Regional Finals, earned a berth in what was to be the second-biggest event -- behind IPL5, which many perceive to be a greater tournament -- of the year.

Although they came away with only a sole victory against Dignitas who were in very bad shape due to leaked scrims, South East Asia as a region has never quite gotten close to that fleeting moment on the international stage. Since the inception of the Garena Premier League in the same year, no team from SEA -- a region in which we shall intentionaly dismiss TW teams as a means of relevant current discussion -- has shown even a smidgen of success relative to the five major regions – Korea, China, Taiwan/Macau/HK, North America, and Europe.

SAJ Circa 2012

This is despite League of Legends having been launched in the region in 2011; way before other wildcard regions, and GPL preceding the League Championship Series.

Much has been made of Garena’s handling of the esports side of things: complaints have been made repeatedly over the years about how Garena prioritises profits from its casual LoL fans over the competitive side of things. To many detractors of Garena, Riot was clearly more well-equipped to handle the management of LoL in the region.

Looking back at these complaints in 2016 where Riot is suffering a PR meltdown in the esports side of things, it is funny to imagine for a moment that Riot would actually be lauded for being able to run an esports division, but that was indicative of Garena’s perceived failings of the time.

Things had never been great: minimal sponsors and tournaments, poor marketing and advertising, and tournament streams never attracted attention even within the region. The melting pot of languages and culture in SEA did not help things either; in part due to an experiment to integrate Vietnamese players into the Singapore/Malaysia server ending with hostility and outright xenophobia, a decision was made to separate SEA servers into six instead of having a single server to service the player base.

This obviously affected player pools and potential for growth within the region as it became limited to one’s proximity and location; cross-server movement was practically nil since every server had their own language and only the Singapore/Malaysia server primarily used English as a mode of communication.

Vietnam has always stood out within SEA, firstly due to their player base relative to other servers, and secondly due to their relatively advanced support for esports: regional events were historically held often in Vietnam due to their ability to support large crowds. In addition, former Xenics coach Lee ‘icaruse’ In-cheol was brought in to spearhead the growth of esports in Vietnam, over time improving the quality of sister teams Saigon Jokers and Saigon Fantastic Five to the point where they could go toe-to-toe with Taiwanese teams, a considerable achievement especially in light of a history of Taiwanese teams dominating GPL with seeming impunity. 

For a time, depending on which sister team was more dominant, Vietnam led the region until the emergence of Bangkok Titans in 2015 as a legitimate rival and contender for the mantle of SEA’s best.

Indeed, BKT’s growth was down to a stable lineup and acquisition of the right personnel; before their star players Lloyd and G4 were acquired, BKT were the whipping boys of the GPL and were fairly unimpressive in their local league as well. They also stepped up in a year where SAJ and SF5 were undergoing massive shuffling within their teams as older players began grooming young stars to take over in the future.

The performances of Vietnam’s premier teams suffered as a result and BKT took full advantage, dominating both GPL Spring 2015 (only narrowly losing to SF5 in the final, and that was a clear upset) and Summer 2015, eventually making it to the Season 5 World Championship via the International Wildcard Qualifer with a dominating performance. SEA may have been relegated to Wildcard status by then, but they still had a leg up over developing regions like Turkey and Brazil back then. Or so it was felt.

However, competition within Thailand was weak and although BKT effortlessly swept the local leagues in Spring 2016, the rock of the team, Warl0ck, abruptly left in March during the off-season to start up his own team, e.o.s. While the circumstances behind this is uncertain, Cabbage, who was BKT’s coach during their dominating phase in 2015, also left with Warl0ck to form e.o.s.

It was then that the Titans began to lose their mojo, so to speak. A series of appalling decisions and desperate manoeuvres reminiscent of their struggles in 2012-2013 led to a sluggish performance in GPL Spring despite a strong Summer season in the Thailand Pro League and Saigon Jokers -- now sans their frequent scrimming partner in SF5 due to regulations forbidding sister teams -- took back the championship.

For the first time since 2012, the Jokers was going to represent the region in international competition yet again. This time, SAJ showed their deficiencies in having to juggle a 9-man roster and only came in 3rd-4th place despite SEA being one of the favourites to take the whole thing. To be sure, SEA’s reputation was largely based on BKT being a remarkably strong Wildcard team in the previous International Wildcard Qualifiers and were hardly indicative of SAJ’s actual strength.

Warning bells were already beginning to ring; if SAJ was now the strongest team in SEA but did not rank among the best in Wildcard teams, surely the region was slipping as a whole. Dark days were prophesied as teams in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines were nowhere near the level of SAJ, and BKT in its current incarnation was just straight-up bad, with e.o.s. not nearly good enough to take over in Thailand as of then, having only formed in April. SAJ’s play during GPL Summer was also worrying, as they only narrowly took a 3-2 series over BKT in a sloppy final even for SEA standards. Western analysts and wildcard enthusiasts, not fully cognizant of SEA’s ongoing struggles in 2016, still had SAJ pegged as potential winners of the tournament. But the other wildcard teams knew better.

It was apparent from the start of the IWC qualifers that SAJ were very much outclassed. Lyon Gaming’s analyst had them rated dead last out of the teams assembled in Brazil, presumably based on scrim records, and that prediction turned out completely accurate as SAJ failed to win even a single game in the round robin stage, eclipsing even Latin America South’s abysmal records in previous IWC qualifiers. Just how did SEA end up in this state after such a strong showing last year? SAJ’s failings are not just a manifestation of the team’s weaknesses, but also of the region itself. One of the biggest talking points of 2016 was Le Quang Duy, otherwise known as SofM, joining Snake Gaming in the LPL; as an early supporter of his aggressive and innovative playstyle, I had been plumping for his move overseas since at least a year ago when I was covering GPL Summer 2015.

Already then, there were signs that SEA was beginning to stagnate; SofM’s team, Full Louis, was a group of amateurs in all senses of the word. There was no staff infrastructure to speak of besides a manager who took care of administrative duties but contributed nothing in-game; role swaps occurred on a frequent basis seemingly on a whim; the star SofM would play way too aggressively and get caught out, and there was little strategy beyond all-out solo queue-esque gank oriented aggression. It worked against lesser teams, but SAJ and SF5, with their superior macro play and equivalent mechanical skill, would always best them when it mattered in playoffs.

There probably isn’t much of a problem with the player base in Vietnam; there are tons of young stars with potential like SofM, just waiting for their big break. He may be special, but it is not unlikely that someone like him is obsessively playing solo queue somewhere in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, maybe on a team in the VCS (Vietnam’s local league). But it is 2016, and SEA as a whole is lagging behind in infrastructure, having not improved significantly since the opening of GPL in 2012. In fact, infrastructure has regressed; the Garena Stadium in Singapore, built as an esports hub for the region, shut its doors in 2015 over a lack of returns on investment, signifying the complete lack of interest in esports in the mainstream. This regression was also shown in the format change for GPL Spring and Summer in 2016. No longer would the best 1-4 teams from each server play in a tournament; instead, only the top team would qualify. It was a definite lack of budget that led to such a move, as most of the games in GPL were played in tiny rooms able to fit just five computers and players and little more.

Some rooms even required players to play in rows of 2 or 3 instead of 5 as usual stage set-ups permitted. While wildcard regions like Turkey was growing at a rapid rate via big clubs joining the scene, Garena was cutting back even further on its already measly budget for esports. It is difficult to envisage icaruse staying on as SAJ’s coach after this year as the disappointment over SAJ’s performance in IWCQ will likely have ramifications for the future of esports in SEA. BKT has already split up, and other teams look to be nowhere close to be even on BKT and SAJ’s levels.

South East Asia is mad and just as passionate about gaming as any major region, but it is unfortunate that various circumstances have led to their decline even as a wildcard representative in League of Legends esports. Esports as a career here is still seen as unlucrative and unrealistic, with little money to be made even playing on the best teams in the region and several players retiring as a result, not because they were bad players but because there is little potential in carving a living out of esports here.

No longer are players clamouring for Riot to take Garena away from the reins of running the game servers since Riot is proving to be almost, if not as incompetent. While the rest of the major regions grapple with various other issues, SEA has had no choice but to look back fondly on the days when BKT earned the right to face the likes of SKT T1 and EDG in international competition. Those halcyon days may never be replicated in the future with Garena refusing to invest more, and SAJ’s dismal showing at IWCQ may have been the final nail in the coffin.

If you enjoyed this piece, follow the author on Twitter at @Uhhhmigraine.