By William Dinh
The group stages for League of Legend’s World Championship recently ended just a few days ago. There were a lot of matches where the outcome completely left me speechless for each group! The one team I wanted to focus on participated in Group B which consisted of Longzhu Gaming (KR 1st seed), Immortals (NA 2nd seed), Fnatic (EU 3rd seed), and Gigabyte Marines (1st seed GPL). It seemed like the consensus before group stages started was that Longzhu would be the unanimous first seed because of how strong they looked beating three-time world champions SK Telecom in the LCK playoffs 3-1. Then it was a tossup between Immortals and Fnatic for the second and third seed, which means it left the Gigabyte Marines as the unanimous fourth seed.
The group stages for League of Legend’s World Championship recently ended just a few days ago. There were a lot of matches where the outcome completely left me speechless for each group! The one team I wanted to focus on participated in Group B which consisted of Longzhu Gaming (KR 1st seed), Immortals (NA 2nd seed), Fnatic (EU 3rd seed), and Gigabyte Marines (1st seed GPL). It seemed like the consensus before group stages started was that Longzhu would be the unanimous first seed because of how strong they looked beating three-time world champions SK Telecom in the LCK playoffs 3-1. Then it was a tossup between Immortals and Fnatic for the second and third seed, which means it left the Gigabyte Marines as the unanimous fourth seed.
If you guessed I would be discussing the Gigabyte Marines
(GAM) then you’d be correct! Unfortunately, they didn’t make it out of the
groups since Longzhu made it out as the first seed and Fnatic made it out as
the second seed. The way Fnatic made it out of group stages this year is a
crazy enough story by itself! But for now, I’ll be focusing on GAM.
GAM represents Vietnam and have been playing in the Garena Premier League (GPL)
where they have placed first in both the spring and summer split for 2017. They
also made the accomplishment of being able to secure a spot in group stages for
their region. Now typically on an international stage like the Mid-season
Invitational (MSI) or Worlds, the GPL is a rather weak region that is typically
lumped together under “Wildcard” regions. It’s also known that a
lot of matches that have wildcard games are typically expected to result in a
loss, but there’s always a chance of a crazy strategy that will propel the team
into the limelight for doing the unexpected.
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| Image by: Riot Games via Flickr |
I personally was hyped as Worlds approached because of what
GAM did at MSI. Typically wildcard teams are always regarded as the underdogs
when it comes to international events. In 2016, the wildcard team that took
Worlds by storm was Albus NoX Luna—where their upset victories against the ROX
Tigers (KR 1st seed that year) secured the first time a wildcard
team has ever made it to the quarterfinals. With the association of being a “wildcard”,
teams like Albus NoX and GAM have nothing to lose. This means that they’re able
to try and innovate strategies to try and play the game a different way—which GAM
did this year at worlds.
In their very first game against Fnatic they chose an
interesting team composition—Galio top, Nocturne jungle, Kassadin mid, Tristana
ADC, and Lulu support. However, it didn’t stop there. Their strategy to lane
swap their bot lane to top lane and use Galio to leash Nocturne 5 camps allowed
Nocturne to hit level 6 at roughly 5 minutes. This allowed a shocking gank at
Fnatic’s bot lane, resulting in a kill. Their lane swap also allowed them to
zone off Fnatic’s top laner sOAZ, which quickly resulted in taking the first
tower of the game as well as a couple kills. This strategy allowed GAM to
snowball heavily and win the game at a quick 24 minutes!
After watching that game it made me think about what data
and analytics would show for Gigabyte Marines? Here are some things that I
found through various different tools.
Google Trends
First off, I used Google Trends to take a look at a few
things. The first thing I looked at was the interest over time graph for the
search term of GAM in both Web and YouTube searches. In comparison, the web
search had interest spikes between April 30 to May 6 (100 interest score) and
October 1 to October 7 (72 interest score).
The other major difference I found was that the interest
scores were basically reversed for the YouTube search (MSI time period has only
a 76 interest score while Worlds has a 100 interest score). I think with the
information given and the small snippet of the FNC vs GAM match I mentioned
earlier, that is a strong reason why the interest was higher in the YouTube searches.
Looking at the related queries for the YouTube search, it also supports that
notion because “Fnatic vs Gigabyte Marines” is the most popular search query. The
small spike around July 2 to July 8 because of another event called Rift
Rivals, which was a competition of rival regions (North America vs Europe,
China vs Korea, and etc.).
Ubersuggest
After taking the information I got from Google Trends and
thinking about possible correlations, I took a look at Ubersuggest and searched
up “gigabyte marines”. In similar fashion to Google Trends, I applied it both
to web search and YouTube to see if there were any differences. One of the
major takeaways I got from comparing the two search results was in the YouTube
search, the second keywords were “gigabyte marines unlocked”. Now, I didn’t
know what it was so I went to YouTube and did a quick search. Unlocked is a
series done by Riot Games (creator of League of Legends), where this specific
video was essentially a 23 minute documentary behind GAM’s story through MSI,
Rift Rivals, and the players’ takes on their experience so far.
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Returning to the Google Trends interest graphs, during the
period where it includes September 6, 2017 (release date of the video), there
is a noticeable increase but not a huge spike. Another takeaway I found was in
the web search this time—where the second keywords were “gigabyte marines levi”.
Levi is the starting jungler for GAM who has a very aggressive style that
surprised (and pleased) a lot of people. Typically when a player on a team
seems to be outstanding, it can be assumed that some people start searching for
more information.
A third takeaway I
found, also from the web search, is the third keywords of “gigabyte marines
reddit”. The subreddit for League of Legends is quite active when it comes to
the user base and it isn’t only limited to fans—a lot of Riot employees,
streamers, professional players, and etc., have interacted within the subreddit
before. With this search I assume that the intentions of the search lies in
finding the most popular threads that have come up that deals with GAM. This
could be AMAs, Post-Game threads, news articles, and etc.
Moz
As a third comparison I used Moz to look at a few of the
things they offer: Keyword suggestions, SERP Analysis, Mentions, and a lot
more. Looking at the information between the three sources, a lot of things
line up pretty similarly. For example, keyword suggestions that deal with
gigabyte marines that have monthly volumes are keywords like “gigabyte marines
vs tsm” and “gigabyte marines levi”. These results tie back into what was
discussed earlier when it comes to MSI and worlds. The interesting thing is
looking at the SERP Analysis. The top 3 deals with overall information on GAM.
Leaguepedia is like the League of Legends equivalent of Wikipedia. LoL Esports
is the website dedicated to professional play where you can look at articles,
game information, schedules, and etc. These results are likely pages to come up
when searching for GAM. Within the mentions, the top three were: an article
from ESPN about the 5th day of group stages, a French article on
Fnatic making it to quarters, and the ending of GAM vs LZ.
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| Image by: Riot Games via Flickr |
Between the three different sources I used, it seems like
they all have a similar result when it comes to making an inference. The
performance of GAM at the two biggest international tournaments coincides with
the spikes in interest of GAM both in web search and through YouTube videos.
The web search would probably be fueled by an interest with the background
information on the GAM roster, what their history/records, news, and player statistics.
Compared to the YouTube searches to find highlights, full games, interviews,
and things along those lines. All of this is coming from a previously unknown
team that didn’t have many expectations but ended up surprising the world with
their playstyle and strategies. Even though they may have not made it out of
groups, the heart and effort they put into their matches, regardless of who
they’re against, they won the hearts of many fans around the world.
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| Image by: Riot Games via Flickr |
The quarterfinals of the knockout stage start on Friday,
October 20 at 3:00AM Central Time with the first match going to SK telecom T1
vs Misfits Gaming. If you’re interested in watching the matches, interviews,
and other vidoes leading up to the knockout stage, be sure to check out the LoLEsports YouTube page!
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