This meetup was not meant to be for an interview. After a season is over, players and coaches tend to meet friends and catch up. It’s rather difficult to meet friends during the season since almost everybody is busy practicing or doing things within the team.

Once the end of a season comes around, everyone gets a chance to rendezvous and talk about all the events that happened during the season. This instance was supposed to be a similar gathering; just friends drinking and talking. I was supposed to meet two people: coach cComet of Afreeca Freecs (AFs), who was the runner up of the Spring Split, and Flyn of MVP’s contents team. Both were former journalist colleagues who are still in the esports scene.

We tried not to talk about work; we intended to talk about the various events men in their late twenties and early thirties experience, things like marriage or the routines of daily life. But since we all were in the same industry, there was not much to talk about aside from esports. As we drank, ate, and reminisced, I realized that it would be a waste if these stories didn’t see the light of day, so I asked for permission to publish our conversation as an article. This is part 1 of the behind the scenes stories of the 2018 LCK Spring Split.

■ Round  1 - How Did AFs Become Stronger?

Laffa: We interviewed Kuro not long ago. He says there’s too much practice, but no one really knows how much practice you’re really doing.

cComet: We really practice a lot. Probably two-three hours longer than other teams.

Flyn: Our team’s scrims end around 11PM. Then do yours end around 2AM?

cComet: Yes, we cut down a lot of time for sleep.

Laffa: But do you think practicing that much really helped?

cComet: Well, with a lot of practice, putting everything else aside, prowess develops for sure. Honestly, if other teams play six scrims a day and we play eight, the players’ concentration isn’t as good in the later two games, because of course, they get tired. So for example, if we get like 50 ‘knowledge-and-strategy-points’ per game in the earlier six scrims, we’re only able to gain around 20-30 per game in the extra scrims; that’s true.

But if we play two games like that, as a result, it’s like we’ve gained one more whole game’s worth of knowledge than other teams. They say it becomes less efficient if the players are tired and exhausted, but even though the efficiency isn’t as good, it’s a plus, not a minus. So if we go through a whole season like this, the prowess develops for sure.

The champions and surprise picks need to be confirmed before we can actually play them in competitions, but we can experiment a lot by having 5v5 scrims within the team.

Laffa: So is that why AFs insisted on having a 10-man roster? Since it’s hard to have extra scrims with other teams?

cComet: To start off, deciding a time is difficult when arranging scrims with other teams, and we can’t expose our ‘hidden’ picks or surprise picks against other teams in scrims. In the playoffs, that doesn’t really matter, but during the regular season, we need to keep that hidden card hidden. But time is so limited. We meet at least two different teams in a week. There are many different situations, but it’s better to keep our strategies secret while practicing.

Laffa: Right. It seems like the other teams are also trying to make 10-man rosters, since KT, KSV, and MVP are all looking for more players.

cComet: Since we got to 2nd from 5th. Come to think of it, doesn’t SKT have 10 players too?

Laffa: I think so? SKT had a full second team since quite long ago.

Flyn: Well, your team used to be similar to our team (MVP) but you suddenly went up there. The other teams can’t just stay the same.

Laffa: Frankly, I was surprised. Of course it’s possible to reach a higher position in the league if you’re good, but I didn’t think you would be that good.

cComet: I think we got a bit lucky and had good timing. The strong teams were in a slump and at the same time, we developed a lot.

Laffa: The players wouldn’t even be able to say they want to rest; the results are too good. (Laughs)

cComet: I know. I saw that Kuro said that in an interview. Even if they’re really tired and they want to rest, the results are too good for them to say that they want to rest during the season. But our head coach’s (Choi “iloveoov” Yeon-sung) theory is that we need to rest as properly as we practice. It’s just that there’s not enough time to rest more than we practice. So for now, we’re enjoying our time off, resting properly. Everybody’s thinking hard about how to rest better during the off season since we can’t rest much during the season. (Laughs)

Laffa: MVP had a hard time this season. You were frustrated when we were watching games together.

Flyn: Well, yeah, this season was quite rough. I really was frustrated. Nothing personal, but I complain since it’s my team and I need to cheer them on.

cComet: He might have been grumbling because if he does, others don’t tend to. So maybe he was complaining more before anybody else does.

Flyn: (Smiles) Not really. I think pro gamers are just another kind of laborer; playing games for them is like us working. If they don’t have good results, it’s just like being a bad worker. Although they may have excuses or personal reasons, since they’re not just playing games as a pastime, they’re working, so they need to deliver good results. It’s a relief that we played well during Round 2 and that we avoided relegation.

Laffa: How do you maintain the players’ mentality? Was there anything that made the team’s mentality crumble? AFs was stable all year.

cComet: We had one. Against KSV, when we lost because we weren’t able to hit that last one hit on the Nexus.

Flyn: That was critical.

Laffa: Agreed.

cComet: What happened there; although KSV isn’t performing as well as before, they were like one of the strongest teams; it wasn’t that long since last year’s Worlds. So everybody was hyped up because we were about to defeat the defending world champions. But that one hit failed us, so that hit us hard. Jong-hoon (Kramer) was crying. He didn’t hit the Nexus. Luckily enough, it was really early in the season and we were able to overcome it quickly.

But there’s nothing much to maintaining the players’ mentality. Even if they whine about losing, we just let them be and practice more.

Flyn: How were the scrim results for AFs this season? Were they good during the whole season?

cComet: Of course we have our ups and downs. When we’re down, it’s really rock-bottom. We lost to teams that we think are underdogs, but we were still confident even if we lost. We need to practice, you know, so we can find new champions and experiment with different strategies. But it’s hard to try that against strong teams. If we try to experiment against strong teams, we lose before we can even learn much.

But against relatively weaker teams, we can try more tactics and the game goes longer; more practice time. We still lose. If we turn dead serious and play scrims like competitions, we have enough confidence to think that we’ll win all of them. Our goal for the season was not losing to weaker teams and giving a good fight to the favorites.

Flyn: That’s like the goal of all teams. It just doesn’t go as you hope.

cComet: Being deceived by the scrim results isn’t good. The commentators sometimes say ‘this team has a very high win rate in scrims’. But actually, that’s really meaningless. Scrims are scrimmages; they’re just practice games, just preparing for competitions. So in scrims, the goal shouldn’t be to win, but to try certain strategies and to get used to them. It’s meaningless to play serious competition picks against experimental teams; yet they’re not able to win in the competition. Having good results during scrims but losing in competitions? That’s just lack a of capability.

Laffa: Having 10 members seems good in that sense. But for the remaining 5 members, since they aren’t able to play that often, don’t they feel deprived or anything? They’re in the same team, yet they don’t have many chances to play.

cComet: They should be. Obviously. But if they are, they should be putting in more effort; more than the starting members do.

Flyn: That’s true.

cComet: You know, this season, TusiN was really good. Too good. Our sub support is this guy, Jelly. I think he might have a grudge. He practices a lot, and really puts in a lot of effort. I think he puts in the most effort out of the ten. He practices longer, and has the most questions. Even our head coach knows that. But this season, TusiN’s long efforts finally paid off. So even if Jelly is doing well, he’s not able to play in games. Personally, I think all our subs are capable of starting. They may not have been as good, but they also developed a lot.

But there’s nothing they can do. It’s unfortunate for them, but their “rivals” are too good. It’s important not to give up at that point. For Jelly, he needs to continue until he can finally step over TusiN, since the coaching staff needs to fill in the starting lineup that’s best for the team. I feel sorry for them, but there’s nothing we can do.

I know they may feel left out, but again, another part of our head coach’s theory is ‘a player needs a sense of inferiority’, and I agree. Aside from their desire to win, they need to have complaints. It’s something that can’t be fully filled. For example, the laundry chores are given to the 2nd team only and even though there are comfy beds, they have to sleep in the clunky bunk beds. If they want to be treated better and play better, they need to put in more effort. The only answer for them is to get better and to become a starting member. Making these distinctions is as intended.

However, we did have a problem once. We always think of the 2nd team as a team that’s a bit better than other teams. First of all, they know the starting team too well. When we were doing alright, playing internal scrims was very close. The starting team lost quite often, since the 2nd team knew them too well.

So when the 2nd team took a strong jungle champion, they started to try very risky plays and when they succeed, they win, and become satisfied with the victory. That only works in internal scrims, it doesn’t work in competitions; it’s fake ability, like an illusion. As if they’re satisfied thinking “We beat the starting members.” So I was really angry at that. That was bad in the jungle; they just picked a strong jungle champion to counter-jungle to blow the game and that went on and on. The whole thing became meaningless practice.

It seemed that they thought ‘this should be enough’. The game blows up because the game is so different from competitions starting from the early phases because of the jungle; the laning phase becomes easier. But they think that’s their ability and become arrogant. I thought that point was the most critical situation for our team, when the 2nd team started beating the starting team, and when they started believing that they’re winning because they’re better.

Laffa: Thinking about it from their perspective, they might think it’s unfair because they won.

cComet: True. Maybe they could think it’s unfair. I didn’t even fully elaborate. I just told them if they continued to play like this, it’s not really practice and they won’t ever be able to play in competitions. I think that was the worst crisis of our team this season.

Laffa: I’m glad everything worked out well. (To Flyn) How do you think MVP will do next season?

Flyn: I think the Summer Split will be better than the last season, since if we pick three more players, we can go double squad too.

Laffa: KSV and KT are also recruiting more players. It really seems like they’re also trying to use the double squad system. When I first saw that KSV’s looking for players to play at their top and mid lane, I thought CuVee and Crown were quitting. Since their performance wasn’t as good during this season. I was worried, but after I saw other teams do the same, I was convinced that they’re recruiting to make a double squad.

cComet: KSV could be a bit disappointed. Even though they won 3-0 at the finals, the spotlight was on the runner up, SKT. They couldn’t have been happy when Faker’s tears received more limelight than the champions.

Laffa: Out of curiosity, at the media day before the finals, you said that you have a way to beat Kingzone. Your way was proven to be wrong, but what was the problem?

cComet: We were just confident of our prowess. There was no special picks or strategy, we just believed that if we did what we always did, we would win.

Laffa: Then did Kingzone do better than expected?

cComet: No. The problem was with us. We weren’t ourselves. If we didn’t make mistakes, we would have won. Game 3 went like that, and if we had won game 3, we could have tried a more aggressive joker pick in game 4. But I was kind of indecisive. I should have tried that joker at game 4, but I thought that if we lose it’d be over, so I wasn’t able to. We decided to play safe, and we lost safely. (Laughs) Still, there aren’t many regrets. I thought the draft was alright, but we weren’t able to take the initiative.

Flyn: So many fans were bashing you because you didn’t ban Kai’Sa when you lost three straight games against her.

cComet: Our comps were all attempts to counter Kai’Sa, although as a result, we failed. Still, the games weren’t games that would be blown away from the laning phase. Our compositions were good enough to win even though we let them pick Kai’Sa, but we made mistakes. I’m just regretful of the mistakes.

Laffa: How was the atmosphere after losing?

cComet: Everybody was down. Still, we just consoled each other and said let’s do better next time. You know, I felt really good during the finals. At the beginning of the season, I thought that the difference in prowess between Kingzone and us was about 50, but when we were playing in the finals, it seemed like that gap was reduced to like 10. That means that we’ve developed. If the gap stayed at 50, I would have thought our next season was hopeless, but what I saw was different. So I’m really looking forward to the next season.

I’m a bit worried about the other teams though. They’ll become better at summer. Strong teams will appear other than Kingzone, and I’m worried about whether we’ll still do well. We’ll have to wait and see. The updates could also be an issue.

The LCK is going through drastic change. KSV and KT have recruited new members to the team, and MVP also recruited more players on that very day we met; all creating a double squad for more practice. AFs head coach Choi “iloveoov” Yeon-sung stubbornly insisted on his method, and proved his method by finishing the season in second place.

This may be a method of the past. In the current flow where the players’ rights and freedom are important; intended distinctions between the starting and 2nd team to give the players a sense of inferiority may seem a bit inhumane. However, iloveoov made an unbelievably developed team through this method in only one season.

Actually, it’s not much of a ‘method’. The only difference between other teams and AFs was the amount of practice, and the only thing that iloveoov did was create an environment where this was possible.

So our first main topic ended like this. We filled our glasses with more alcohol and went on with our conversation.