Author: NGA-Rinakawa ♀ Akira ( ♀
On January 19, KeSPA, the Korean Electronics Sports Association, announced that they will send players to participate in all e-sports events at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games as much as possible, completing the task of submitting teams to the Korea Sports Association. This means that there will be eight e-sports national teams in South Korea participating in this Hangzhou Asian Games, including the League of Legends program that we care about most.
To this end of last year, KeSPA became a performance improvement committee according to the rules of the Korea Sports Association, which is responsible for the recruitment of team leaders, the selection of players and the internal affairs of e-sports events, and the committee is composed of experts in various fields. Starting from January 21, they first conducted the open recruitment of heads of various e-sports projects, and those who wanted to apply for a team leader must register with the KeSPA Association and have at least 3 years of experience in domestic events or more than 2 years of overseas event experience.
South Korea recruited an esports coaching staff in February
KeSPA said it plans to hire a coaching staff for the esports national team for the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games in February and determine the selection method of the players. Once the coaching staff has finalized, the next step is to select the players. Team selection can be said to be the hottest link in the preparation process for the Asian Games, and South Korean officials have not yet announced clear selection criteria.
In addition, KeSPA will expand the registration of players and coaches to form a national team, expanding the registration target from the existing esports selection agency to the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta. Participants in the Asian Games are required to register athletes or coaches and, on this basis, provide compulsory education, relevant information and administrative support.
This means that South Korea's preparations for the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games e-sports project have officially begun. In a press release, President KeSPA said they would ensure a fair process, form a strong national team, and do their best to make e-sports bring more joy to Koreans.
Since this is the first time that eSports has become an official event at the Asian Games, there is no precedent for all countries to learn from, and the esports at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta is a performance event, and the national team is set up in a hurry. The Vietnamese team is selected through a selection competition between teams, the Chinese team uses the RNG team as the core to carry out personnel changes, and the Korean team limits the maximum of two players per team.
The 2018 Korean team was based on the performance of the LCK Spring Games, taking into account the playoff experience, international event experience and intention to participate, and did not overemphasize the individual ability of the players. Therefore, The Korean media believes that compared with the representative teams of other countries, the players of the Korean team in 2018 are not run-in enough, and it is difficult to achieve better performance in the short term, which is one of the reasons why they only won the silver medal in the field of League of Legends.
Therefore, in the preparations for the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games, the Korean media and players demanded a fair and transparent selection process and established clear criteria for the selection of players, after all, this e-sports has become a formal event, and Korean athletes who have won gold medals can get the opportunity to be exempted from military service.
Overseas esports players have the opportunity to participate in the Asian Games
Another real question is whether Korean players who are active overseas can participate in the selection of the Korean esports national team. In traditional sports such as football, there are often cases of foreign players returning to their home countries to participate in the national team. And League of Legends now has a lot of excellent foreign aid active overseas, the most representative of course is last year's League of Legends world champions Scout and Viper, their two players have strong personal ability.
Therefore, the Korean media asked KeSPA about this issue, and the official response they received was that KeSPA currently has no plans to exclude overseas active players, and they will seriously consider the best way to select each project. This means that Scout and Viper are likely to represent the Korean team in the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games.
However, the reality is that overseas active players seem to have difficulty representing their home countries in the tournament. Because the LPL League itself is very tight, if the EDG team is lucky enough to qualify for the 2022 Mid-Season Championship, the players basically don't have much time to rest, let alone fly back to South Korea for selection and special training.
Due to the intensification of the spread of the new crown epidemic, China has now strengthened quarantine measures and proposed strict epidemic prevention standards, and LPL venues have cancelled live viewing. South Korean players Rich and Hope of the V5 team did not end the quarantine until this week to get the opportunity to play, the domestic isolation standard is 2 +1, and the Korean aid players also need to self-isolate if they return to South Korea.
As can be seen from the press release, KeSPA intends to open a training center to conduct specialized education and training for members of the Korean national team. The national team's selection tournament is expected to take place between March and May, which is the second half of the LPL Spring And during the playoffs, for which the LCK League has made shortened schedule adjustments. In this case, the national team will definitely give priority to players who can coordinate the schedule, so it is not easy for LPL Korean aid to return to South Korea to participate in the Asian Games selection tournament due to the impact of the schedule and the time limit of isolation.
The selection criteria for the contestants have not yet been finalized
The secretary general of KeSPA also mentioned another issue, that is, they will study whether they need to prepare substitutes to perform at the best of the team. In the League of Legends program at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, both the Chinese team and the South Korean team had a substitute player. This was due to the limited training facilities at the time, and only The Korean team had Score registered as a substitute.
Since the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games last year, there has been news of a training center, and it is expected that this year's Asian Games will have fewer restrictions on the number of teams, and it is possible to carry multiple substitute players.
But the most important thing is to select the five starters who are really suitable. Although the League of Legends World Championships has allowed each team to carry two substitutes since 2019, we have rarely seen sixth- or seventh-person players get a lot of appearances on the field in the past three years.
League of Legends is a team game with a steady five starters who are more likely to have an impact on results, and the three most recent world championship teams, FPX, DK and EDG, all rely on a steady five-player starter to lift the Summoner Trophy.
In particular, the national team will not select five players from the same team, and the training time of the players is also very short, and the five starters who maintain a stable team will play a greater role in the final result. The role of the substitute is to change the style of the team when necessary, as well as to act as a firefighter in the event of promotion.
The selection criteria for esports players are not yet determined, in part because esports players do not have a best measure. We cannot judge a player's current individual ability based on their previous achievements and experience. Esports players have very short careers, and no matter how brilliant their previous careers may be, the peak period may be short. Experience may be helpful for a large event like the Asian Games, but it is not a necessary condition for selecting players.
The team is likely to be based on the players' performance in the recent period, especially the individual performances of this spring. Of course, the indicators are all decided by the committee, and the key is that the selection process needs to be fair and transparent, so that the players and the audience can be convinced. South Korea's national team e-sports selection criteria should not be further made public until February.