The Development of the South Korean Esports Empire an Jiang
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The Development of the South Korean eSports Empire An Jiang In 2018, Incheon Munhak Stadium—the prestigious venue for the 2002 FIFA World Cup and the 2014 Asian Games—was once again glammed up and flled to maximum capacity for a very different event: the League of Legends World Championship Finals. As star-studded Korean pop acts roamed the stage alongside augmented reality video game characters, the 70-pound Summoner’s Cup was revealed to the cheers of tens of thousands of attendees. Meanwhile, online, the livestream of the event at its peak garnered 200 million concurrent viewers—more than the Super Bowl.1 The players took to the arena in their team jerseys; however, for fans of ‘traditional’ sporting events, this is perhaps where the similarities end. The players then sat down in front of their top-of-the-line gaming computers, put on their headsets, and warmed up their hands in prepa- ration for the match ahead. In recent years, electronic sports or ‘eSports’ for short, has been increasingly pop- ular worldwide. Best defned as professional video game competitions, eSports became a billion-dollar revenue industry this year, with an astonishing viewership of 453.8 million people worldwide.2 eSports has begun to expand into other plat- forms such as mobile gaming and console gaming, but ‘traditional’ eSports in- volves two teams playing a co-operative PC game against each other in front of a live audience. While there are no athletics involved, eSports has the same high stakes and competitive edge that traditional sports have. Currently, South Korea dominates this PC gaming scene, winning many prestigious championships across a range of game titles. ‘Nerf South Korea(ns)’ is an oft-quoted mantra on West- ern eSports discussion boards for popular titles such as League of Legends (Riot Games 2009) and Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment 2016); ‘nerf’ refers to making a particular element of a game (generally a character or ability) weaker or less effective in order to balance it. Such video game jargon is deployed to accentuate the systematic manner in which Korean teams repeatedly beat other teams. Here, I examine the socio-political reasons behind South Korean success in the realm of computer games by tracing a history of eSports in the nation. South Korean 35 The Development of the South Korean eSports Empire An Jiang eSports domination is an intersection of several strands of ideologies, national- isms and identities. It is at once a reclamation of sportive masculinity—a challenge to the Orientalist conception of the effeminate or desexualised, physically inferior Asian male; as well as a unique blend of technological and economic nationalism shaped by experiences of Japanese invasion and US cultural imperialism. Recognising eSports as Sport There is ongoing debate as to whether eSports should be considered a ‘real sport’ and have the same access to resources and funding. To those who wish to preserve the sanctity of traditional sports, gaming appears to lack the physical exertion of dunking a basketball or tackling an opponent. But to play games at a professional level requires many physical skills—players must have good hand-eye coordination and quick refexes as well as superb dexterity and agility in order to react to the fast pace of the game and perform many strategic ac- tions per minute in response. A sportive ‘spirit’ is also central to the professional competitive setting, as pro-gamers must engender a dedication to skill-training and improvement, display leadership and communication skills when playing on a team, and treat their rivals with respect and dignity. In terms of the professionalisation of gaming, eSports also shares many of the same components of traditional sports—that is, of ‘players, teams, managers, leagues, competitions, marquee events, endorsement deals, player transfer fees, college scholarships, and a dark side with match fxing, doping, and gender-re- lated disputes’.3 Recently, eSports was introduced as a demonstration sport at the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia, and will be a medalled sport in the 2022 Games—this could possibly pave the way for entry into the Olympics by 2024, which would be a major step towards the recognition of its status as a real sport.4 eSports operates with a fexibility and permeability that differs from traditional sports. In many ways, it is much more participatory—eSports fans often play the game themselves as well as watching professionals play. In playing the game, they also give feedback to its makers about elements they think should be changed, such as nerfs and buffs (buffs being the opposite of nerfs, making an element of the game stronger for balance) as well as suggestions for new things to be added. As such, eSports is unique in that ‘consumers can concurrently play, watch and participate in institutional governance’.5 While basketball fans cannot change the rules of basketball, eSports fans play a huge role in the development of the game as well as the professional gaming scene. 36 Issue 2 The way that the internet has changed the nature of communication and inter- action is particularly demonstrated by the eSports industry. In an increasingly networked online world, eSports audiences can interact directly with their favou- rite players via chat messages when they livestream gameplay, as well as other fans from around the globe instantaneously on video sharing platforms such as Twitch and YouTube. Twitch, the forerunner for video game streaming, was the fourth largest internet traffc producer in 2014, behind only household conglomer- ate names like Netfix, Google and Apple.6 While the average age of an American TV viewer is 54 years, the average age of a Twitch viewer is 21 years—it is clear that game spectatorship is an emergent market with a young consumer base very much in touch with cutting-edge technologies.7 Indeed, the video game industry has already surpassed the flm and music industries in gross revenue, becoming the number one consumer-entertainment industry globally.8 In South Korea, the game industry generates more export revenue than every other cultural media industry combined—as early as 2006, online games alone accounted for 89 percent of the total volume of exports.9 The exponential growth of this industry is an immensely fertile ground for research, as statistics have proven there to be an unceasing interest in and market base for gaming and game spectatorship. Behind South Korea’s eSports Success South Korea boasts the fastest average internet connection speed in the world, as well as the longest history of pro-gaming infrastructures, which have developed over the last two decades—long before ‘eSports’ as a term was even coined in the West.10 There is also a rich culture of homosocial gaming, with an estimated 25,000 PC bangs (internet gaming cafés) in major cities, a popular past time for young men who gather together after school to game on high-end PCs for a small hourly fee.11 While women also play eSports titles, their participation—even at the casual level of gaming in PC bangs—is held back by gatekeeping structures that have construed gaming and by exten- sion the game industry, game content and the culture of gaming as masculine. ‘eSports player’ as a future profession is seen as both desirable and viable, ranking eighth in an education ministry survey for primary school students in 2017, above even ‘scientist’.12 League of Legends, currently the most popular PC game in the world, broke records at the 2018 World Championships with 78.5 million unique viewers. In the professional League scene South Korean players are highly sought after, with every team (regardless of geographical ba- sis) having had at least one Korean player on their roster. The only teams that have maintained complete ethnic homogeneity are the South Korean teams 37 The Development of the South Korean eSports Empire An Jiang themselves, who have never recruited players from outside of their home- land.13 Yet, South Korea’s internet gaming culture did not arise organically—it was the product of many institutional factors. Firstly, the specifc privileging of computer gaming is due largely to the ban on Japanese products in South Korea up until late 1998, meaning popular gaming consoles produced by Japanese companies such as Nintendo and Sony were not able to penetrate the Korean market despite fnding huge success else- where in the world, especially in the US.14 The ban was instated as a ‘balancing act’ to rejuvenate a sense of Korean identity by eliminating Japanese infuence, which had stifed the country from 1910–45 under its colonial rule. It was within this context of national resistance to imperialism and Japanese soft power that PC gaming took off in Korea with no competitors. The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 inadvertently helped the development of the game industry. Of three countries to receive stand-by credit from the Interna- tional Monetary Fund, South Korea received the largest amount—$US 21 billion. On top of this were added funds from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other countries, totalling another $US 24 billion. This set the country at a signifcant advantage compared to other developing nations and boosted economic development.15 Being a new democracy under provisional international funding, it was almost inevitable that Korea underwent further (neo)liberalisation. Supervised by its in- ternational sponsors and driven by a desire to differentiate itself from communist North Korea, South Korea quickly delved into American-style free market capital- ism. Innovations in the IT sector, in particular, have been heralded as the saviour of the economy.16 Meanwhile, the implementation of a nationwide broadband policy provided the technological infrastructure for further developments and catalysed more innovations in technology.