e-Sports Frontline] Vol. 1 "AKIHABARA ENCOUNT" Aims for the World through e-Sports

e-Sports" has suddenly become a popular name in recent years. In the United States and other countries, e-Sports has gained considerable momentum, but in Japan, the name has only been heard of this year, and the gap in awareness between Japan and other developed countries is quite large. Few people have a clear idea of how e-sports is actually played and how exciting it is. In this series of articles, "e-Sports Frontline," we will cover various aspects of e-sports in Japan, and attempt to clarify the actual situation.

In this first installment, we will feature AKIHABARA ENCOUNT, a professional team based in Akihabara that is working day and night to challenge e-sports competitions around the world.

AKIHABARA ENCOUNT is a professional e-sports team based in Akihabara, our sacred land. Although the term "professional team" may not be familiar to some, they are a group of professional gamers who strive day and night to make a living by playing games.

The office of AKIHABARA ENCOUNT is located in Kanda-Sudacho, across the Banze Bridge at the southern end of Akihabara, and when I took the elevator up to the seventh floor of a neat office building one July evening, I found a cozy office that looked like an IT start-up company. I was taken to a room at the back of the partitioned office, which turned out to be a playroom. Several desks were organically arranged, with game-playing PCs lined up on each desk, and professional gamers belonging to "AKIHABARA ENCOUNT" were enjoying their games to their heart's content. The members were a joint team of Japanese and Koreans. The number of players was about 50-50, and Japanese and Korean were spoken at the same time, which made for a very strange atmosphere. I was told that they were warming up for the League of Legends (abbreviated as "LoL") league game*, which would start in a couple of hours.

*"League of Legends Japan League Challenger Series 2018 Summer Split".

They polish their game skills every day while living their daily lives here at the "AKIHABARA ENCOUNT" office. It is surprising that they spend as much as 14 hours a day playing (practicing). It would be rare to find someone who works this hard every day, even in a typical office job. They live their lives almost entirely devoted to games, from morning to night. This is the life of a professional gamer. They are not just game enthusiasts, but a group of people who are trained for competition. Of course, being a professional means making a living at it. They are paid by the team to live off the money and food they earn. They also have their own living space just a short walk from the office, where they live together in a camp-like environment while training for the game. This is the very essence of the "sports" approach. In order to become stronger, the team spends as much time as possible in the competition efficiently while living in a training camp. This is one of the reasons why video game competitions are called "e-sports.

In the world of e-sports, it is commonplace for teams of players to live together and hone their game skills every day.

Jerophilip Ha, who has been invited as the general manager and coach of "AKIHABARA ENCOUNT," said. Jerophilip, a Korean, got hooked on the real-time strategy (RTS) game "StarCraft" when he was in elementary school, and won the championship in an elementary school tournament. In high school, he was so good at the game that he reached the top four in an amateur tournament. Later, he played for a professional team in Korea, but unfortunately, he gave up the path to become a professional gamer due to a physical injury from playing too much. He then studied abroad at a Japanese university in 2015, but in 2017, by chance, he returned to the world of e-sports. This time not as a player, but as a coach. What was the impetus for his return?

I happened to be looking for a part-time job, and I found that they were looking for a photographer for a game tournament called "Overwatch. Of course, I had played the game and knew the flow of the game. I thought I could get some good shots as a photographer, so I applied for the job and was hired.

Jerophilip happened to come into contact with the Japanese gaming industry, and through this connection, he was invited to work as a coach at "AKIHABARA ENCOUNT.

I'm not much of a player in Korea, but in Japan, people look at me like I'm a professional player from a gaming powerhouse, so I came to visit as a guest rather than a coach. But since I was here, I offered my own opinions and suggestions.

As mentioned above, e-sports has only recently become a household name in Japan, but in Korea, where Jerophilip was born and raised, "professional gamers" had already begun to appear around 2000. However, at that time, just as in Japan today, professional gamers were considered to be "just playing," he says. Later, however, when the finals of the "StarCraft" tournament were held in Busan in 2002, the event attracted an audience of 110,000 people, even though the professional baseball finals were held on the same day (15,000 people were in the stadium for the baseball game). Since that time, the public's view of e-sports and professional gamers has gradually changed. Korea is now a very strong country in the "e-sports" scene worldwide, but it is fair to say that there is a gap of about 15 years in the history of e-sports between Korea and Japan. What was Jerophilip's impression of the Japanese e-sports scene?

To be honest, I thought the awareness was completely different. It's at the level of college students playing with their friends at an Internet cafe or some other tournament. I thought, "These kids are called professionals? I thought to myself. So, if they are going to do it, they should do it properly. You have to do everything right, from the players' daily lives to everything else. I think I gave them that advice. Then they asked me to come and coach this team.

In South Korea, the home of e-sports, it is a matter of course to train hard every day in order to call yourself a professional gamer. Jerophilip says he felt there was a big gap. He was invited as a coach, and under his direction, "AKIHABARA ENCOUNT" organized a variety of practice menus to win games. The practice time amounted to about 14 hours a day. About 6 hours of that time was spent in "practice matches" against other teams. The rest of the time is used for individual practice.

The individual practice is left to the players' own initiative. They will set their own assignments based on the points of contention raised in the daily team MTG, and practice on their own to complete those assignments, as well as to acquire basic information specific to the game they are playing. For example, taking "LoL" as an example, each player will play with different champions in order to learn the characteristics of each "champion" (character), which is important in the game.

In baseball, it's like a pitcher learning different types of pitches. It is more advantageous to be able to use various types of pitches than to be able to use only one type of pitch. Or, if you can play in a variety of positions, you can play in a wider range of positions. If both champions learn the characteristics of each other's body, they will be able to play together more smoothly when they become a team.

In "LoL," where strategy and team play are more important than mere action, a great deal of prior knowledge, such as knowing the characteristics of each champion, is a major factor in determining victory or defeat. In actual game play, players have to make various decisions and take action in an instant, so they need to memorize the characteristics, merits and demerits of each of the more than 130 champions, or else they may lose instantly.

It is the same with maps. In the world of professional gamers, however, they know when and how things will change on the map by the minute or the second, and they have it drilled into their heads. Knowing when, where, and what kind of changes will occur on the map is what makes it possible to formulate a proper strategy. If you don't go that far, if you don't study the game and play it hard, you can't make it as a professional gamer.

Because they know the characteristics of the game so well and have firsthand experience with them, these professional gamers are able to make the right decision in any situation at a moment's notice. Of course, the same is true for the opposing team, so it may be fair to say that practicing and learning these things thoroughly is the minimum practice for competing in the professional leagues.

I think it is important to practice and learn these things well, because it is the minimum practice for competing in the professional leagues. Just like in sports, the amount of practice is important. In our case, we tell our players to practice about 14 hours a day, but if they are left to their own devices, they will practice for as many as 20 hours a day. Some of them practice even cutting down on their sleeping hours, but that would be damaging to their bodies. That is not good, so one of our jobs as coaches is to guide and manage the players so that they can get a good rest.

The "AKIHABARA ENCOUNT" athletes live their daily lives as if they were in the sport itself. Many of them live together in a house near the office. The team provides not only housing, but also daily food expenses. The team's LoL division currently consists of nine members, including the coach, three of whom are Korean and six are Japanese. But will a mixed team of Japanese and Koreans cause any communication problems?

We try to communicate with each other in both languages during the game. We try to communicate in both languages during the game, and if we don't understand something, we try to explain what we meant later. But before that, we all live together as a team, so we all get along extremely well. Simple expressions come naturally in both languages. I think this is one of the reasons why we are able to communicate so well with each other.

In this way, "AKIHABARA ENCOUNT" is a team of Japanese and Koreans who live together and train together on a daily basis. On this day, I had the opportunity to interview them during the precious time just before the "LoL" league game, and was impressed by how congenial they were, enjoying the game play for warming up. They hope to eventually aim for the world, but even so, there must still be various problems in the Japanese e-sports market.

The problem is that the popularity of e-sports itself is still too low in Japan, and the number of people playing is still too small. Even when you look at league matches, there is almost always a set number of people who are good at it, and only those people are playing. In Korea, there are many more tournaments than in Japan, and there are regular top-ranked teams in major tournaments, but not only certain teams participate. So, the meaning of winning the top rank or winning the championship is completely different.

The problem with Japan's e-sports scene is the thin demographic of players and the resulting lack of friendly competition. Of course, the small prize money for winning each tournament is also a major hurdle in motivating people to play games.

Of course, the small prize money for winning each tournament is a major hurdle in motivating people to play the game. The term 'professional gamer' was first used in the media in 1997 at a game tournament called 'Quake' in the United Kingdom. I believe I won a Porsche sports car as a prize for winning. Later, a Korean won the 1999 world championship, and for the first time, the term "professional gamer" was used in Korea as well. I think we need to create such an environment in Japan as well.

The e-sports market is expanding rapidly, and I personally think that it will even surpass the NBA by 2022. I personally think that the e-sports market is expanding rapidly and may even surpass the NBA in 2022 or so. If things continue as they are, I think it is clear that we will be left behind in the global flow, and even if we decide to start at that time, the hurdles will be even higher than they are now.

What are the immediate goals of "AKIHABARA ENCOUNT" as Jerophilip sees them?

Jerophilip: "Of course, the competition is important, but this year, first of all, we want to let as many people as possible know about our team's approach. We look at professional gamers as professional athletes, and we want to deepen awareness of the fact that they play games professionally and as a job by making sure that they have a good health care, diet, and salary system. By doing so, I think our performance will naturally improve.

Also, we have the name of the city, Akihabara, in our team name. Akihabara is a well-known place all over the world, and I think we can contribute to the town of Akihabara itself by going to world tournaments with this name. It's not like soccer, but my dream for the future is to become a community-based team that is loved and supported by the people who gather in Akihabara.

The Japanese e-sports market has only just begun. However, there are already professional teams such as "AKIHABARA ENCOUNT" that are training to become world-class professionals. Although there are still only a few of them, as more and more professional teams like these emerge and become active on the world stage, the world's view of e-sports will naturally change. We look forward to the future activities of AKIHABARA ENCOUNT, an e-sports team that embraces the name of our sacred city of Akihabara.

(Editorial Department, Kamata)