[thejosh]

Apart from the fact that most "Western" (ie: Non Korean) players who dream about becoming the next major eSports hero will never make it, due to them not practising enough.

The reason why Koreans seem to dominate eSport games such as Starcraft 2 (SC2) is that they practice 12+ hours a day in a tiny apartment chockfull of other players.

The winnings are good: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Winnings , and the top players receive salaries but it's very cutthroat.

I don't follow League of Legends (LoL) (which the OP is talkin g about), however they really have paved the way for this as they fought extremely hard. LoL doesn't have as many open tournaments as SC2, however the main tournament (LCS) is run by Riot, the company who made League of Legends. Their typical viewers for livestreaming on sites like Twitch surpass atleast 100,000+ viewers. It's a crazy world out there.

[smacktoward]

> Apart from the fact that most "Western" (ie: Non Korean) players who dream about becoming the next major eSports hero will never make it

Of course this is true of most of those who dream of a career in "traditional" sports as well.

[kbar13]

let's just say the competitive gaming scene in ridiculously smaller than the physical sports scenes.

you have a ridiculously higher chance of going pro in a video game than playing in the NFL, etc.

his point, while perhaps not really the best worded, is correct. there are way more Koreans who are better skilled than western players (called foreigners... even by westerners themselves).

also, as an american, I feel that it's kinda sad that american gamers are in no way able to compete on a large scale against europeans or asians in most big competitive games.

this doesn't include console fps games, since playing an fps game with sticks is like playing hockey with your penis.