Paul Delos Santos is a reporter based in Las Vegas. He covers the Vegas Golden Knights for NHL.com and also covers esports and general Las Vegas sports for The Sporting Tribune. He’s a gamer who never has time to play them, so he naturally opted to write and talk about them instead.
Olivia Richman is a seasoned esports journalist who has worked with Inven Global, Esports Illustrated, Esports.gg, and more. As an editor and writer at Esports Insider, she loves telling unique esports stories, especially within the FGC. When not working and gaming, Olivia loves collecting Kirby plush, eating sushi, and driving her cars at the track.
Image Credit: Riot Games FlyQuest jungler Johnson “Griffynn” Le moved to Korea at 16 years old to try and climb up the region’s brutal League of Legends player development system.
It was uncomfortable, especially since – by his estimation – he probably could have been in the LCS by then. But the lure of playing in the hotbed of the game in one of the most prestigious academies in the world (T1 – home of Faker) as one of the first foreigners in the academy was too much to pass up.
“It just seemed like at the time … it was a no-brainer,” he said to Esports Insider.
But while he valued his time in Korea, it wasn’t until he went to Brazil that he saw his gameplay take major steps forward.
“I made a lot more progress when I made it to Tier 1,” Griffynn said. “By playing scrims against Tier 1 players, having a good [Tier 1] coaching staff … actually did help me more than being in Korea for an extended period of time.”
So what did Brazil – a region still considered lower-tier globally – give him that Korea’s faster internet and tougher solo queue didn’t?
“Coordinated practice will matter most,” Griffynn said.
But are there enough in place to make that happen in North America?
Image Credit: Riot Games At 16, Griffynn chose to leave the country to become a better League of Legends player – joining a generational organization and training amongst the best in Korea.
Testing his skills was one thing. What he actually needed was regular reps against Tier 1 players at Tier 1 speed – and Brazil, with LOUD, gave him exactly that.
“CBLoL was an amazing experience,” he said. “I joined LOUD, probably the best organization to join in CBLoL, and they treated me really good, the fans were amazing, it was great.”
While Griffynn could be seen as a special case, Dignitas general manager Jonathon McDaniel said the departure of the West to train in Europe or Asia is one of three pathways’ players can take when trying to go pro.
The first one is the traditional Tier 2 route, where teams play in the North American Challengers League. The second is going to college and playing esports, while the third locks players into joining an academy abroad.
The issue, however, was the tree’s most well-known branches (Tier 2 -NACL vs. Collegiate Esports) have offered more confusion than clear answers.
“They’ve kind of converged into a bit of a soup where a lot of the teams that are formed in tier two over the last few years have been either an entire collegiate roster or like bits and pieces of a collegiate roster with one or two ringers on the side,” McDaniel said to ESI.
The blurring of lines has SIDO CEO and founder Parth Naidu bluntly stating that he has a “short list” of things he likes about the NACL.
“NACL has nothing to do with player growth,” Naidu said. “I like that [NACL] exists, I guess there’s that. NACL…