China's competitive gaming circles reflect on a year of losses

In some ways, it has been a rough year for China’s competitive gamers and fans. Although its top players remain among the best in the world, their results this year in major MOBA games — which are increasingly the ones top gamers are focused on — have been a bit disappointing. China didn’t do very well at TI3, the year’s biggest DOTA 2 tournament, and although Chinese team Royal Club (pictured above) did make the finals of this year’s League of Legends world championship, they ended up getting swept 3-0 by the Korean team SK Telecom T1. Here’s a quick video summary of the latter match, in which China’s Royal Club comes off looking rather inferior:

So what gives? That’s the question being asked in China’s gaming circles this week. Netease Games came up with five issues China’s competitive gaming scene faces that, if resolved, might be able to turn things around for China:

• Chinese society is still mostly unfamiliar with competitive gaming
• There’s still not enough investment in the scene
• There’s not enough self-discipline in the domestic e-sports industry
• Commentators make more money than players
• Players’ professional spirit and cultural qualities need to be improved

In the comments on that post (there are hundreds), some commenters also suggested that China’s competitive gaming scene is too insular, and Chinese teams focus on defeating the strategies of other Chinese teams but fail to spend adequate time learning (and learning to counter) the strategies used by their perpetual rivals in Korea and more far-flung competitors in the US and Europe.

Another potential issue is that as more domestic game companies launch MOBA games like Netease’s Heroes of the Three Kingdoms, it’s possible that some of China’s future gaming talents will choose to focus their efforts on domestic games. These games may hold more appeal for Chinese gamers because they’re more precisely targeted, but Chinese dominance at a Chinese game is unlikely to do much for China’s status on the global e-sports scene because domestic games rarely develop a significant player base outside of China and the Chinese diaspora.

But as many others have pointed out, with teams finishing fourth at TI3 and second in this year’s LOL championship, China’s competitive gaming scene is not exactly in a state of crisis. Indeed, Korea is arguably the only country in a better position at the moment, and few would expect China to be able to surpass Korea so quickly given that competitive gaming is pretty new to China and fairly established in Korea.

So what do you think? Should China’s e-sports gamers be searching for a new way forward, or is this year just a blip on the radar as China moves closer to e-sports dominance?