Why do we import players?

Why do we import talent?

In the world of competitive e-sports regardless of the game there is always one region that tends to have the strongest players or just strongest competitive scene; when it comes to Starcraft and League of Legends this place is Korea.

What makes this important to realize is without looking to these regions it is very hard for us to improve but at the same time simply emulating them will only allow us to catch up them, never passing them. We see this phenomena every single year at the World Championship of League of Legends where year in year out ever since season 2 the Koreans thoroughly trounce everybody else with every year being better and better for their dominance.

So what can we do to get better? Imitation will not allow us to get better than them so we have started to do the next best thing, get better by doing a mix of everything all at once. We add foreign players to our rosters to get a mix of their mechanical skill as well as learning about how the others have done in the past, as well as adding support staff and growing the stability of the industry as a whole in countries where e-sports is not quite as popular as the east.

THE PAST TRANSFERS

One of the most notable transfers was Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg to TSM, his success has allowed TSM to drastically improve. Shortly after the acquisition of Bjergsen we saw TSM get Maurice “Amazing” Stückenschneider and Jang-sik “Lustboy” Ham making them even stronger and allowed them to take first seed to worlds from C9 who took it the year before.

The main reason these acquisitions worked was because they were calculated and from various previously successful teams.

POSSIBLE FAILURES

One of the most glaring issues with importing talent is the possibility of failure which we saw with Shin “Seraph” Wu-Yeong, unfortunately the language and culture barriers seemed a little too strong on top of the CLG team composition did not allow for Seraph to play the way that had got him his place on CLG in the first place.

This highlights one of the times where the strength of the Korean mindset was not enough to improve a team due to the way Seraph was shoved into a position that was not optimal for him.

 

THE REAL SUCCESS STORIES

Bjergsen and Lustboy have been some of the most powerful acquisitions ever made and they were both for the same team. These picks made TSM go from a top 4 team with somewhat inconsistent results throughout an LCS split to a team that shoots up and takes first at the end of the 2014 summer split.

Additionally the not very frequently pointed out foreign import is EG and their acquisition of Shin “Helios” Dong-jin who managed to be the catalyst of EG and their slow but steady climb out from the bottom of the standings to be a team with a real potential to take out some of the top teams depending on how all of the crazy roster madness pans out.

All in all I think there is much to learn from embracing all of the different league scenes across the world but it must be done with caution because there is more to a team than just the individual strength of its members. Taking a player from a foreign country to a new place and speaking a new language can be a bit risky in a game where communication is key.