As I'm sure everybody reading this undoubtedly already knows, yesterday was the finals of the League of Legends Season 2 World Championship. The winner? The Taipei Assassins!
So what the heck did I just say? Well there is this computer game called League of Legends. Right now it is by for the most popular as well as most played game on Earth. However unlike World of Warcraft, I'm sure nobody reading this has ever heard of it. Regardless this game is more popular than oxygen and just like oxygen, the game is free.
On top of this, over the past few years video game and computer game competitions have really taken off. They are most popular in South Korea, and many matches there are streamed on the internet and on tv around the world. Other countries such as Japan and America also have been putting more time and money into gaming competitions.
This year was season 2 of the international competition for League of Legends. After a year of local competitions and regional finals, the 12 best teams went to LA for the finals. Yesterday was the championship match and the team from Taiwan won! Yay! Go Taiwan! Best of all they get paid 1 million USD for their victory.
This is a big source of pride for Taiwan. In fact yesterday morning the match was shown on TV and quite a few Taiwanese gathered at a friend's house to watch the match on their huge TV. I watched for a bit, not really knowing what I was watching other than I was watching something important.
It's a big victory for Taiwan, as the sport is basically dominated the South Koreans. The Taipei team beat one South Korean team on the way to the championship match, and beat another in the championship match. This is enhanced by Taiwan's somewhat unnatural disdain for Koreans, with the rhetoric being that they are cheaters and liars.
It can also feel like all of Taiwan had a part in this victory as a large part of the country spends hours each day at home and at gaming cafes playing League of Legends, upping the game of all players in Taiwan. Every few months when you hear about somebody dying in a Taiwanese gaming cafe, League of Legends is the game they were playing.
Above is a picture I took while on my way to the book store last month. This building is the Taipei Convention Center and outside of it was a huge line of "home boys" (see September 5th's post for more info on them). This could have meant it was a video game exhibition, or an anime exhibition. However after using my horrible Chinese to ask them, I found out that it was a computer game competition. Only yesterday did I find out that in fact this was the regional championship in which the Taipei Assassins won to get into the world championship in LA.
Actually their win was not a surprise as they have been by far the best team all year. But still great to see them take home the win. It might be hard to really understand, but for a large population of people in Taiwan this is the best thing to ever happen. I'm quite envious as I think for America as a country there really isn't anything that could happen for us that can compare. I look forward to going out and seeing people's heads held high. I might even go to some gaming cafes to join in on the celebrations.
