I recently finished reading “Thinking in Systems” by Donella Meadows and for fun thought I would apply it to Valorant, VCT and esports orgs using the “shifting the burden to the intervenor” discussion.
Instead of writing a long drawn out 20 page paper, I want to shrink this into something hopefully readable. I know a lot of people won’t engage with this post and that’s fine. Once again, my targets are the few who do and who maybe are not in a position today to do something but in the future, maybe.
I believe that we, in Valorant esports, have a “shifting the burden to the intervenor” problem. This idea goes like this, there is a problem, team underperformance. There is a quick fix, switching out a coach or players. And a fundamental solution, something that takes longer, which in my opinion, is building on fundamentals and doing the boring stuff.
The boring stuff takes longer to learn and the system (Valorant esports ecosystem) always has a quick fix in the name of players or coaches to swap in and out. This even exists at the academy level where we are trying to develop the future of Valorant esports. The boring stuff is not an endless calendar of scrims. It's not comparing this game to magic the gathering or chess. It's diving into the mechanics of the game and using those mechanics to produce interesting results. This game is more than the agent select screen. We can break this boring loop we find ourselves in.
This loop looks something like this, Team A, underperforms over the course of a season and doesn’t place well internationally. Despite giving the team ample time to “figure it out”, they don’t. The organization feels they have only one option, cut players and find new ones. Another round of a season goes by and the team still underperforms. The organization feels they have only one option, they cut the coach and the cycle continues. This has been the last five years of our lives.
The fundamental path of leveling up teams cannot be explored because the franchise system is closed. An organization has a certain subset of people that have the experience to be “trusted” in these positions. These people participate in a talent carousel that drops them out of the system and a couple years later pulls them back in. The organizations claim to create super teams from outside talent but then over time when it shows to be false, they quickly dissolve and we are distracted by new players from Ascension.
The fix is to attack the fundamental problem. This problem is there is no exploration outside of the system because the system is closed. There are no discussions and there are only echo chambers. We believe only tier 1 has the answers yet we have had no progression. We still have the same things happening in every game. No one is willing to try new combinations of agents or develop new paths to gunplay unless they are shown to be successful. But there is no opportunity for new successful combinations to be displayed. We have roster moves that are always safe and predictable. Coaches are rewarded with additional time when blame can be shifted away from them and towards the players. Everyone is aware of the loop and is constantly worried about the loop.
Just like Riot promotes causes like inclusivity, this needs to be expanded to capture more of the community. There cannot just be one initiative to get the community involved. There needs to be more open tournaments for everyone who wants to participate that goes beyond online.
Historically, in tactical FPS games, online was never the final destination. It was the space between LAN events. If we have more Riot endorsed tournaments, a wider net will create more potential than the carousel of talent we currently have. Counter-strike built a generation of players that then passed that love of the game to their siblings who carried the torch and still play to this day.
The house is on fire, the system is broken, we cannot be reliant on the same fixes for the next five years. We need to wake up and smell the smoke, see the fire before we are only left with ashes and the next game that will repeat the same mistakes.
Thank you for attending my TED talk.
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