Yicun: ‘League of Legends deserves to be understood by more.’
source. yicun special column (mirror) by danneergou (丹尼二狗) and yicun (一村) for pentaq. images by yicun.
translator. it’s been forever, but maya brought my attention to this article by the lpl photographer, yicun, on his experiences at worlds this year. it’s actually a really fascinating and very personal reflection, and i hope you enjoy reading it as much as i did.
Because for those who don't understand, there's so much more excitement to be experienced.
From our first interview with him during the 2016 Mid-Autumn Festival, PentaQ has known this LPL photographer for more than a year. Since we didn’t meet him on the competitive stage, our understanding and knowledge of Yicun comes more from his photography - in it, you can find all that is League of Legends. That five-colored stage, that youthful, passionately shouting audience, the champions lifting their trophy and their glory, the losers crying in the corner, or even those busy passerbys coming and going.
Before the 2017 World Finals began, PentaQ published a series of 'Pre-Game Special Columns,' one of which was on Yicun. In that article, Yicun used photography to reminisce about how from when he first encountered League of Legends at All-Stars 2013 to now. After the finals, we once again contacted Yicun in hopes that we could hear his new feelings after the entire Worlds weekend.
And so, in the same place we saw the same old Yicun – dressed in athletic gear, full of life. From his arrival in Wuhan on 9/20 to his return to Shanghai on 11/5, he said this hectic yet fulfilling journey of a month and a half let him once again see the heyday of esports.
post-worlds memory: a heart under the giant championship cup.
the longest, yet the happiest worlds.
If I had to remember the last time I worked for this long, I would look back to Season 5 Worlds, two years ago. If I calculated carefully, it would only be shorter than this year’s by a few days – that was 9/26/2015, when I and some friends went to watch a concert by Rene Liu, then hurried to Paris.
A person in a foreign country will have a lot of boring moments, a lot of spare time – after all, that place is someone else's center stage, and where you live will not be that close to the players and the competition. But when this year’s Worlds came to China, my life had nothing else. Every day was Season 7 Worlds; there was no spare time, no leisurely moments – just focusing on one thing. Time really flew.
yicun in 2015: carrying his bag and his camera, he followed the world championships across europe.
Looking back on S5, the biggest feeling at the time was regret, but this year - perhaps some people might disagree with me, but I think SSG lives up to this championship. When I experienced this year’s Worlds, I realized the championship was not just determined by strength on paper, but rather by willpower. Sometimes, what we are battling with is not just skill and strategy, not just the player’s in-game performance, but rather their mental strength - in groups, SSG didn’t perform well and lost two matches in a row to RNG, but once they entered the playoffs, they became the team that wanted to win the most.
In competitive sports, ‘the one who is brave wins on a narrow path.’ In that moment, whoever could endure to the end won.
No matter what, looking back on that one and a half months - perhaps it was a shot that was both the longest and yet felt the shortest. It seems like only yesterday that I was preparing my luggage, yet now, the battle in the Bird’s Nest has drawn its curtains.
from short sleeves to long sleeves, from Wuhan to Guangzhou, to Shanghai, to Beijing - a month and a half’s ‘strange journey.’
from play-ins to groups, from excitement and worry to pity.
Most of the time, my photography plan isn’t officially set, but rather determined by myself. To me, photographing Worlds is a kind of mission, a kind of responsibility. It’s not that someone else is making me take these, but rather that I want to take them. To be honest, the official commission I received didn’t include Play-Ins, but I felt that anywhere that had LPL teams, I should attend.
Because I hoped that no matter what the result, even if WE could not make it out of Play-Ins, I could still faithfully chronicle this moment.
Throughout the entirety of Play-Ins, WE still had some stumbles. Apart from the LCK, this was almost a rehearsal for the performance of the other major regions, so even though the wind was calm, the waves were choppy. Compared to later rounds, I was more anxious during Play-Ins, because this was the first year this stage existed and many didn’t consider it a serious competition. As a result, I was all the more worried that WE might not make it out. However, even as I worried over this, I saw the analyst team working to help the LPL. At the time, the three teams had already come to Wuhan and started practicing, and we could once again see the strength of the LPL working together.
the play-ins were a part of we’s world championship experience.
Because my hometown is Huangshi, Wuhan was very close to home. I had originally planned to visit home after Play-Ins ended, but for various reasons failed to do so - I’m usually someone who returns home periodically, but this Worlds, after Play-Ins began I didn’t go home at all.
In the groups, EDG was truly worth pitying. They really had the ability to get out of groups. Sometimes, though, you just get unlucky; that’s all that can be said.
You see, in this year’s Worlds, the Western teams really are not weak. From certain standpoints, the Western teams and the SEA teams have a greater tactical ability than LPL teams, or even LCK teams. Asian teams are more stable in their basic mechanics, in their fighting and teamwork than the West, but when something unusual happens, or when there’s a patch change, our ability to react is less than those of other regions. We are too used to following our own tempo in the game. So, even if it’s just my own opinion, when EDG faced C9, perhaps they had yet to adjust themselves to their best form.
If you want to talk about pain, this year’s EDG was not as painful as that of the past two years. After all, that year was far more regretful. Speaking of something that left a serious impression on me: after EDG lost, Clearlove walked off the stage. At that time, he hadn’t yet gotten his mindset out of the game, and as he walked onto the stairs and saw me, he said something like this.
‘What’s left depends on WE and RNG.’
So, I want to say - our players have their own shared honor, and this honor, it all exists in each of their hearts.
even if i can’t go on, then please take my hopes with you and go forward. this is the honor of a region.
to touch hearts, to leave no regrets.
Quarterfinals and semifinals - one in Guangzhou, one in Shanghai. Comparatively speaking, the quarterfinals most touched our hearts, while the semifinals most caught our attention and left us with no regrets.
Of my entire Worlds photography journey, the quarterfinals were the most unforgettable. Here, whether they sadly left the stage or continued on, each team had their own story to tell.
For example, FNC vs. RNG. I had followed FNC for a long time, while RNG was one of our LPL teams. I liked both teams a lot, so I felt like I had returned to that quarterfinals in 2015, where FNC faced EDG. Another game was MSF vs. SKT. MSF performed incredibly well, and I really hoped they could win. To me, the quarterfinals brought all the highlights from the group stages together. In groups, even if you lost every game the first week, you’d still have a thread of life to cling to in the second week. Quarterfinals were different. If you lost, you lost - win or die.
Luckily, both our LPL teams took the win.
Ah, the quarterfinals. How many years had it been since we last broke out of quarterfinals? That was really a different feeling. In past years, my heart would always feel empty after quarterfinals, because our team was out. Semifinals, finals - those photos were all taken for someone else to see.
The position I gave myself was not just for Worlds, but also for the LPL. So once the LPL teams had all left, my heart would feel that ‘emptiness.’ Even in the Bird’s Nest, it was the same. I knew that in my life, I wouldn’t have many opportunities to take photos in the Bird’s Nest, but as the as the 11/4 finals drew closer, I was more willing to ‘pull myself out’ and experience the match as a spectator - it had been a very long time since I last watched a game as an ordinary spectator.
So if the end result of the quarterfinals were happiness, then in Shanghai, in what could truly be called the ‘esports headquarters,’ what we welcomed was the pain of the LPL teams being eliminated.
Compared to those of the last two years, this year’s results are, of course, slightly better, and perhaps even reminiscent of S4 - really, so close. Even though the Chinese teams didn’t make it to the Bird’s Nest, this year was still a successful year for the LPL. Even if we didn’t have the best competitive results, through our matches we had broadcasted the culture that belonged to us, that belonged to League of Legends. The people around me who played other games had begun to appreciate League of Legends; my friends from other careers, who had no relationship to the game, were also supporting League of Legends, supporting the Bird’s Nest, supporting the S7 World Championships.
‘fighting’ might be the best descriptor of the lpl. it implies ‘no matter who wins or loses, we will put in our best effort.’
After the semi-finals ended, many people said it was like the end of youth.
Hearing this, I felt comforted rather than miserable. Whether our youth had come to an end was not for us to say, but if you could wholeheartedly say something like that, it meant League of Legends had completely affected you, that it had become a part of your youth. Those who said ‘my youth has ended,’ congratulations. You have become adults. But if you are willing to wait, League of Legends is really just like you. It too is growing up.
So, I don’t think ‘youth has ended’ is a sad topic. No matter what, it proves ‘once, it existed.’
So, I don’t care ‘whether youth has ended or not,’ ‘whether the game was deleted or not,’ what I care about is if it really gives you happiness.
league of legends deserves to be understood by more.
Honestly, that day in the Bird’s Nest, before the game started I was worrying the seats wouldn’t fill up, and then the photographs would look ugly. But after Jay Chou finished his song and Legends Never Die began, I looked all around me and discovered I had already sunk into a sea of people.
During the finals, I mostly enjoyed the game from a spectator perspective. Because I spent most of my time in the audience, my photographs were largely of the whole venue; because the stage was so distant, I didn’t take many pictures of the players or match details. There was one photograph - during the most critical moment in the third game of SKT vs SSG, I caught the last rays of the setting sun. The second the setting sun passed through the Bird’s Nest, Faker secured first blood. I had a strange premonition: this could be Faker’s last first blood in this year’s World Championships.
the last ray of the setting sun filters through the top of the Bird’s Nest, alighting on the faces of the audience.
-- but since I’ve been talking so much, many of these questions have been brought up already. So I wonder, is it still important to discuss the final victory more?
I think back to six or seven years ago, maybe 2011 or 2012. I was still in Beijing then and had yet to take up a League of Legends-related photography job. I would often go to the Water Cube to swim, and no matter how many times I saw the Bird’s Nest, how many times I saw the Water Cube, I would never have thought that one day, we would be hosting an esports competition there.
And now, in this very moment, it is truly a golden age, a golden age that belongs to esports.
I began to photograph esports in 2006. In these ten years, I have been through the rise and fall of many games, and I have experienced many of what I felt were golden ages. When I photographed CS, I found like that was a golden age; when I photographed DOTA, I felt like that was also a golden age. But thinking about it now, for those of us in the gaming sphere that was definitely the case, but that’s only a small group of people who love games. It is still a very small circle.
Whereas now, I truly feel the real golden age is not just something that occurs within the community. It needs to influence more people, more people outside its usual sphere of influence, like your parents, like your friends, like those strangers who walk past you - allowing those beside us, who have no understanding of the game, to still feel the beauty of esports. This is something that League of Legends’ World Championships has accomplished.
these musicians from all around the world - in their creations is the best evidence of the golden age.
It’s just like the Kaiyung golden age in the Tang Dynasty. The development of our economy, the strength of our country - those were only internal things. What really radiated out and influenced the whole world was our history, our culture. This kind of intangible power is what endures.
League of Legends is the same way; it is not just a competitive sport. It has the positive energy of a competitive sport, the ability to excite people, but now and in the near future, we can still have more - music, movies, and even more forms of art. We will always be growing. We have not stalled.
In the past, when I photographed esports and games, I’d always have this desire to photograph ‘culture’ - at that time, I didn’t realize what I photographed was actually ‘culture.’
League of Legends deserves to be understood by more.
And to those who do not understand it, I say - there’s so much more excitement to experience.
yicun has many good photographs, but few are of him. this one, taken by ren yijun, is of him at the sixth anniversary celebration.
postscript: a moment for those who left.
'Taking photos is like being a historian. Even if they're not pretty, I still need to document them.'
'Even after so many years of photography, I wouldn't rate my skill too highly. I don't think I'm a talented photographer, but I do think I'm one with a sense of responsibility.'
'I don't take photos just to please people, but rather I hope they'll be like a slice of time, a truthful reflection of what happened.'
'I like photographs with stories. Only those have life.'
As a photographer, Yicun is constantly adjusting his own trajectory, constantly questioning what kind of photographer he wants to be, what kind of photos he wants to take. But his target has never changed: to chase the truth of a photo, to use the photo to tell a story.
So, at the end of this article, we've included some of Yicun's photographs. These represent the departure of the LPL teams from the 2017 World Championships, and in their moments, a story from Yicun's first-person perspective.
Of course, this kind of outcome may have left some people sad, but as Yicun wrote in his previous column, for some things 'the longer we wait, the happier we are when they are fulfilled.'
The night EDG was eliminated, after everyone had left, I went to their practice room and happened to encounter Meiko and iBoy. They were packing their things and preparing to leave. I noticed a commemorative coin left had been left on the desk; each player only got one, so it was especially precious. I asked them, why aren't you taking it? Meiko looked at it and said he was afraid that seeing it later would make him sad, that I should take it as a gift.
The day RNG was eliminated, Mlxg was the last to leave the stage. Even off-stage, he still sat taciturn in his seat, giving the impression that he had turned to stone.
11/14, after the final battle in the Bird's Nest, shouts of 'RNG' were suddenly heard on the stream. At that time, Ming sent me a message – he said, when he heard the audience shouting RNG's name, his heart felt 'empty.' In that moment, I could feel how his heart had stirred, how much he wished that the team appearing there was really RNG.
WE was eliminated in the quarterfinals. After the game, Condi kept smacking the hand-warmers against the chair, hitting it again and again. To him, that may have been a way to vent.
The night WE was eliminated, Mystic and his little sister were outside the hotel. To Mystic, China will always be a foreign country, yet he has made it his home for the sake of his dreams. When he meets his countrymen, his real family, that strong feeling of closeness will burst out.
In the end – thank you, Yicun, for making time for us.