The interview with western media on chinese esports

After a long period of preparation, the 2015 Mid-season Invitational has finally started in Florida, USA. Teams from all across the world gathered here to compete for the champion in order to prove they are the best team on this planet.

It spent ten years for Chinese esports professionals to eliminate the misunderstandings and discrimination from their parents and the whole society to become a decent career now. Have you ever wondered what the people from other countries think about Chinese esports? This series of articles will help you know something about that.

When we came to the very special venue in Tallahassee, Florida, US, Riot had already decorated this place into a paradise full of E-Sports elements for the Event. The atmosphere here is so cool that it feels like the games have already started and we could hear the crowd screaming in their loudest voice. Roit is really good at holding events like this, which gathers so many top players, famous commentators, and professional media together.

We luckily came across a veteran esports media person Rob during the first day of the event. His smile made us feel comfortable and welcomed when we first met. Working in game industry for so many years, Rob is very familiar with games and esports like LOL.

In his early times, Rob started his career by writing articles and guides on different kinds of games. It was until League of Legends became a worldwide esports game, he didn't formally take esports journalism as a job for living.

Rob told us that the first Chinese League of legends team which caught his attention was the SH Royal club which played well during S3 finals. Although he simply knew that the Royal wasn’t as strong as OMG, he deeply attracted by this team for the wisdom they showed in front of the audience which was different from other teams from other countries.

Western teams always pay more attention to create a star for their team due to the “heroism” culture which western countries always emphasize. This is good for building the image of a team, but also brings a lot of pressure when their stars take part in a fierce, oppressive competition. That is why not every star plays as well as they should during a formal match.

Unlike this, Chinese players always play as a team, and regard co-operation as a more important thing to do. Rob thought that Chinese teams played a game using their brains which can be noticed by their tremendous team fight.

Since Rob don’t like taking a airplane and some other reasons, he hasn’t been to China before. But he think he might go to China in the future when the time is right.

After we said goodbye to our beloved Rob, we saw a familiar face in the media section--Travis Gafford. This might be a strange name for most Chinese LOL players. But if you followed LCS league or other international tournaments often, I’m sure you should know this lovely person very well.

Travis Gafford is a veteran e-sports journalist who works for Gamespot.com right now since his graduation from college. There were two main reasons which drove him into this special career. Firstly, he is so into electronic games which made him think taking esports as a career will make him happy. Secondly, his roommate during college time, the famous Doublelift, made a huge impact on him. Here's a story between these two buddies that you might already know: when Doublelift was driven away by his family for his professional esports career, it was Travis who took him in for quite a long time.

During our conversation, we found this American dude knew a lot of things about China. Travis has been to Shanghai during the all-stars competition in the year 2013. He likes the classic old town in Shanghai, especially when he watched the old town and the new Shanghai at the same time on the top of the old town. Shanghai dumplings is another Chinese classics that made him love this orient city.

Although Starcraft II was the first esports game Travis ever worked in, Chinese players didn’t impress him a lot since Korean teams just dominated this event for such a long time.

Travis thinks it happy to work for Chinese esports media as China has the largest group of League of Legends fans than any other part of the world. The things he writes must been read by millions of people if he worked for a Chinese website or someplace like that. So when we told him this interview will been recommended by Tencent and read by plenty of fans, he looked so excited and happy.

When we talked about the difference between American esports environment and Chinese esports environment, Travis told us although the growth of American League of Legends seemed to become slower than 2 or 3 years ago, when it came to China, the growth was faster and seemed more stably. The investment of large companies played a very important role in this scenario.

He also expressed the confusion and worrying about Chinese esports industry that players made more money streaming than competing. It also happens in America nowadays. Also, Travis thought it was not a good thing that most teams were owned by wealthy families and people just for fun.

Chinese players always thought “free play” seemed to be the spirit of western players which led to lots of uncommon picks during their matches. They just liked to try out different lineups even though it was not easy to win. This thing happens in LPL league more and more often which both entertains the fans and helps players understand the game better. Travis thought the best ban/pick strategy was the combination of uncommon picks and picks of the strongest lineups. This will surprise their opponents and maintain to be strong during the game.

Travis also told us Cool (OMG club) and Tabe (former player of Royal Club) were the most familiar Chinese player for him. Cool recognized Travis during last year’s all-star tournament which brought him a lot of impression. As for Tabe, Travis knew him when S3 finals began and became friends with him since then. Tabe is also a friend of Doublelift somehow.

Since most Chinese parents don’t allow their children to play esports basically, we asked Travis how the things went in the US. Travis said he thought parents all want their children to succeed. As more money was available in esports, the understanding would become easier day by day. Doublelift was just a good example for that.

The last “serious” question we asked him was “what do you think of the beautiful female broadcasters in China?” He smiled evilly and answered, “I love working in esports for many reasons, but one of the reasons is because there are very beautiful women that work in China, in Korea and Europe and North America. And I think I’ve seen a lot of beautiful Chinese women working in esports.

At the end of our interview, our lovely friend also asked us an awkward question out of curiosity. He said he wanted to know the meaning of the Chinese phrase “ni ma fei le”. He heard of it from a Chinese friend often without knowing the meaning. It seemed to mean “your mother flew” directly translated from Chinese which was kinda confusing. We could do nothing but told him that it’s just a common slang to express one’s emotional state like “fuck” in English. But actually, we didn’t know the meaning of it, either. Maybe it’s a mistake of pronunciation which just happens, or a American English phrase like some Chinglish expressions. Maybe some of the readers will tell us the answer.