Why are Chinese and Korean players better at LoL?

With the notability for being the most challenging servers in Riot’s famous MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game League of Legends, China and Korea are home to some of the most gifted and competent players to have ever graced the game.

The Korean server and Chinese ‘super server’ have established their reputability from the sheer competition and national average skill level of players in this region of the world; the East Asians have an indisputable reputation for being a step above the rest.

This reputation is supported by statistics as well as trophies earned by the regions spanning the last decade in which professional LoL has been established. The most prestigious and highly respected achievement of all in competitive League is, of course, the World Championship.

The tournament is cutthroat and sports the most dominant performers of the season’s global leagues, with only the top teams from each server qualifying to earn their place at the annual international competition.

Try to think about it like a cross between the World Cup and the Champions League in soccer (or football), only the best of the best can participate, but throw in the patriotic representation of each team playing proudly under the banner of their region’s server.

The trophy awarded to the winners of the LoL World Championship, the Summoner's Cup. (Image Credit: Riot Games)

There are currently 13 active servers in the game and they may be geographically categorized, hence they are sometimes referred to as “regions”. These servers include the regions of North America, Europe West, Europe Nordic and East, Oceania and Republic of Korea, to name a few. Each region acts as its own, independent server - apart from China which has around 29 servers due to how populous the country is.

If you wanted to play LoL, once you have downloaded the client, you would then have to choose which server out of the 13 is located closest to you. After this, you will connect to and play on this server indefinitely, unless you decide to move residency.

You only have to do this once and the client will automatically load you into the game on your preferred server after you set up your account. Each server has its own community of players and amongst this pool is who you may be teamed up with or against, when you queue up to play your public matches.

So, each team that participates in the World Championships (often shortened to Worlds), is representing their respective server and fighting to elevate their region to the pinnacle of competitive League of Legends.

Since the first Worlds competition in 2011, to the most recent tournament that ended last month, 9 out of the 10 teams who have been crowned champions have either been from the region of East Asia or SEA (South East Asia). The question being posed today; is this just a coincidence or is there something more to the success of the East Asians?

According to statistics from several websites and on the discussion of global average intelligence quotients (IQ’s), in the top 5 of every list are both China and South Korea. Also amongst them are various other East Asian countries such as Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.

An overall level of intelligence higher than the average is a common theme in this part of the world. Why is that the case? The simple answer is, there is no definitive answer. It may be due to a number of factors such as DNA/genes, the education system and other external or environmental influences.

But some of the things that we do know are that, on average, competition for survival and the desire to be better than your peers is much more rampant in East Asia, and Asia as a whole. Standards for success in education and life goals are set very high by expectations of family members, tradition and culture.

This is not only due to the fact that you are competing with so many more people than we do here in the West, but it is also a result of the average level of poverty in this continent. Asia accounts for 60% of the world’s population and stands first among the seven continents in absolute GDP at $31.6 trillion, but fifth in GDP per capita bracket at $7,350.

In other words, Asia is extremely populous but also significantly poorer as compared to its Western counterparts. This is one of the driving forces of desire to be ahead of the rest; both China and India, for example, have a population that is more than four times their nearest competitor, the USA.

(Image Credit: Digg)

This combination of a huge population, which translates to intense rivalry, and poorer living conditions directly influences how a person’s cognition in this area of the world develops as they age.

So how exactly does this link to LoL? Well, League is a highly intense and competitive game, especially near the highest ranks of the public ladder. As someone who has played the game at a respectable level over the past few years, I can vouch for the difficulty of competing in the ranks well above the average of a regular player.

A game like League is designed in a special way where nobody will ever actually be able to master it. Sometimes, you may get players who can be extremely proficient on a specific champion or in a particular lane, but in general the skill ceiling for MOBA’s like LoL is technically uncapped.

Therefore, when you consider the average levels of intelligence of the people in East Asia coupled with the desire to be the best, it makes sense that these servers are the toughest to compete with as “technically”, the average player is “smarter” over there.

On average, they just take the game more seriously than the other regions and the mental game is harder to keep up with. Because of the nature of the game, League consistently requires the player to compute literally dozens of factors throughout every single game that you play; sometimes within the space of a few seconds, in a gruesome team fight for example.

(Image Credit: Amino Apps)

Of course, this is not unique to League as you do also spend a chunk of the game farming, but even during the laning phase, you must constantly be aware of jungle ganks, your enemies cooldowns, your own cooldowns and much more. The players who calculate all of these factors consistently and subconsciously are those that you will find in Master tier and above.

The ability to think quicker, more efficiently and have better reaction times are components that are required to play with the best of the best and, often (but not always), come simultaneously with people who score higher in IQ tests.

This does not mean that lower ranked players are not as smart, because intelligence can be measured in a multitude of ways, but a high ranking player needs superior game mechanics coupled with game knowledge in abundance. On top of that, they need to know when to gel the two together in what becomes a totally unique situation almost every time.

This is something that you do not see in the lower ranks of the leaderboard. Whilst there is some skill to players below Diamond, (apologies if you are Platinum or below), the consensus amongst higher elo players is that lower ranked players often act impulsively, with little to no real strategy or calculated decision making.

Of course, sharp thinking and calculated decision making does exist in the lower ranks, but not to the level of expertise or the muscle-memory induced, subconscious nature of the ways in which the higher ranked players are able to execute in their games.

A point I would like to emphasize; studies have shown that academic proficiency has no direct link to general intelligence and similarly, being ‘game smart’ does not always mean you are the smartest outside of the game and vice-versa.

Nevertheless, the fact still remains that Korean and Chinese solo queues are notoriously known for being an unforgiving playground for those who really want to test their abilities on Summoner’s Rift. It’s a common trend for big streamers and content creators to endeavour on challenges where they move to Korea, for example, and attempt to ascend the leaderboard there.

In recent years, what immediately springs to mind are the likes of some of the most popular LoL streamers on Twitch, “Yassuo”, “TF Blade” and “Midbeast” who have all made a trip to the East, staying there for a period of time to test their skills against the Korean server.

Achieving the same rank they have attained on their home server is seen as a respectable accolade, as the highest rank in the game ‘Challenger’ on the NA server is often compared to ‘Master’ tier in Korea, two full tiers below Challenger. Essentially, that’s how tough the competition is in East Asia.

Another factor that should be considered and also much easier to grasp is the dreamily low ping that players have the luxury to indulge themselves in on the Korean server. Ping is a network utility that refers to the signal sent out across the network to a computer, which sends its own signal back.

It has also been reported that certain parts of China are also home to a desirable level of ping, depending on the distance between where someone is living in the country to the nearest server. Since there are around 29 servers, there is a high chance of you being close to one of them. Another obvious contributing factor is your personal internet speeds and broadband deal you are paying for.

The ping signal, which is measured in milliseconds (ms), tells you how long it takes for data to travel from your computer to a server on the internet, and back. In the world of online gaming, ping refers to the network latency between a player's computer (or the client), and either another client (peer) or the game’s server. Simply put, the lower the ping, the smoother your gaming experience is.

The idea of gaming without ever lagging is renowned as a point of jealousy from players in other regions, who envy the low ping in Korea, (with the server based in Seoul, players can achieve a ping of 10ms or lower). I play on the Europe West/EUW server and with regularly stable internet speeds, manage to achieve around 20ms ping on average, which is more than playable.

Nevertheless, players who move from North America to experience the beauty of extremely low ping in Korea have labelled it as being advantageous for the East Asian players. Some of these claims are that they are able to execute in-game maneuvers quickly and more efficiently than themselves.

Unfortunately, this is something that cannot be helped for the US and is as a result of the sheer size of the country in comparison to Korea. The Koreans have their own server for everyone to experience and as such, most of the players are able to get very high speeds of connection to the server.

North America only has one server in Chicago which everyone in the continent has to play on. Additionally, there are only two servers that account for the whole of Europe.

Historically, South Korea has had the world's fastest average internet connection speed and has consistently ranked first in the UN ICT Development Index since the index's launch. The government has established policies and programs that facilitated the rapid expansion and use of broadband, leading to the most DSL connections per capita worldwide.

(Image Credit: Statista)

It is not always the case nowadays, as several other countries have significantly improved their infrastructure and have made a concerted effort to increase their internet speeds. It is really just a technical advantage for the Koreans, and a reward that they have been reaping as a result of importance being placed on superior infrastructure for the country, several years before others.

Contrastingly, China is approximately 96 times bigger than Korea but has one main server based in Shanghai, which is split into 29 sub-servers spread across the country. Each of these servers hosts around 650,000 people which means the Chinese server is easily the most populated in the game.

China is also the home to the newest server in the game. Dubbed the unique "Super Server", only users who are Diamond 2 or above can create an account and play on it. This is mostly used as a training ground for professional and high elo players, or as a field for teams to scout new talent for the LPL (Chinese pro league).

Another point of interest to be discussed is the general culture of gaming in Korea and China, compared to that of which we have in the West. Arguably, video games are taken much more seriously over there and its respective esports scene, whilst it is currently expanding over here in the West, is already established in East Asia.

Esports players are treated as role models for aspiring youth and they are elevated to celebrity status, whilst studying esports and the business side of things is a viable academic choice for high school and university students, an idea pioneered and popularized by South Korea.

In the current climate, esports courses may now be studied at selected institutions from across the globe, with several universities in the US offering programs and scholarships for hopeful gamers.

The UK is shaping up to follow suit as some universities now offer similar opportunities. But if it was not for the phenomenon that esports has been in Asia for so long already, would we have followed suit in the West? Statistics from Newzoo, a website dedicated to esports analytics, share an insight into the gravity of online gaming in South Korea.

(Image Credit: Newzoo)

28.9 million people play video games in South Korea, which is more than half of its population. 59% of men and 47% of women play mobile games at least once per month, compared to the 24% of men and 14% of women who play console games.

39% of South Korea’s online population watch gaming video content, with over half (51%) watching on their mobile device. Of those aware of esports, 1/5 watch esports related video content several times per month, and the most regularly watched franchise is, you guessed it, League of Legends.

A fad amongst Korean youth is the spending of leisure time at ‘PC Bangs’, which are their equivalent to internet cafes. As I mentioned earlier, in Asian cultures, educational achievements are seen as the main priority for youth, making the educational environment highly competitive.

Unfortunately, this does not leave much time for adolescents to enjoy outdoor activities. An indoor culture has contributed to many students’ preference to play video games, whilst connecting with friends via the internet is the chosen option during free time.

New York Times Magazine labelled gaming and esports in Korea a “national pastime,” highlighting the fact that gaming in South Korea is more than just playing and is something that unites not only the youth, but also different people across professions and ages.

Similarly in China, esports has developed past the point of uncertainty and has established itself into mainstream culture. A report published in January by research group Ampere Analysis found that 26% of Chinese internet users watch esports at least once per month, which is more than double the rate of audiences in the US and Western Europe.

Unsurprisingly, Worlds in 2018 drew a concurrent audience of 203 million in China, compared with just 2 million for the rest of the world.

According to Newzoo, in their Global Esports Market Review report earlier this year, they predicted that 2020 will be an extremely successful year for esports. Global esports revenues will grow to $1.1 billion for this year, a year-on-year growth of +15.7% and up from $950.6 million in 2019.

The total global esports audience will grow to 495.0 million people, a year-on-year growth of +11.7%, and China is the largest market by revenues, with total revenues of $385.1 million so far. It is fair to say that esports has reached the heights of global recognition as of today, but in East Asia, they were already ahead of the curve.

Overall, after considering a number of possible factors as to why gamers in the regions of East Asia and SEA have the slight edge on their Western rivals, the truth is that there is no definitive answer. It is highly likely that the main reasons lie within the lifestyle and cultural differences of Western and Eastern societies.

Some may be attributed to the differences in IQ, but the IQ test is revered by many to be an inaccurate judge of measuring one’s intelligence and considered rather arbitrary, as there are too many aspects to human intellect. Could it be a correlation? Yes, it could - but definitely not a causal link.

As a side note, (although regulations began to ease in 2013), until 2015, games consoles were banned in China from 2000 due to fears that devices had a negative effect on the mental and physical development of children.

After the ban was lifted, a huge market for games consoles arose and companies like Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft were allowed to operate in the world’s most populated country. Having said that, 15 years of console-free life in China has pushed players to PC gaming and allowed for PC gaming titles to rise above the rest.

I thought this was necessary to include because, as we know, League is a PC game and at present has no compatibility with consoles. Supposedly, League of Legends: Wild Rift will have an adaptation formatted for consoles but right now, Wild Rift is only available for mobile.

It may be perceived that this lifestyle of prolonged PC gaming has been advantageous for the Chinese, but the same may not be said about Korea. Whilst they had no strict regulation on consoles, Koreans have traditionally preferred playing on a computer out of choice over the years.

(Image Credit: WBUR)

As mentioned before, the culture of ‘PC Bangs’ coupled with the best internet speeds in the world have created a world where playing games makes you “cool”, and the choice to hang out here precedes the partying and drinking lifestyle that prevails in the West.

The truth remains however, that when it comes to League of Legends, although the West have many tremendously talented rosters and individuals who have risen as challengers in recent years, G2 Esports and Fnatic, for example, the stats from Worlds and the reputation of both the Korean and Chinese servers remain a constant.

After all things considered, Korea, China and East Asia as a whole have absolutely dominated the global stage for LoL, commanding Summoner’s Rift with an iron fist. With a ridiculously impressive 9 out of 10 World Championship wins coming from this region, we must give them the credit that they deserve. Surely, they must be doing something right.