Esports: Leveling Up Teach-Out

Kelsey Moser is a League of Legends esports personality, content creator, analyst, and current Competitive & Collegiate Development Lead for Evil Geniuses.

Can you tell me about your transition from economics and taxes to an esports coach? What steps did you take to get into this field?

A: I became very interested in League of Legends, especially at a professional level, and studying why teams succeeded. Over time, I became progressively more interested in professional gaming. I ended up transitioning into writing and commenting on games, which opened up a lot of doors for me in esports generally. From there, I received requests to coach and work with players more based on my public-facing work.

What skills from your career at the IMF did you find useful in making the jump into esports?

I spent three years at the IMF and a year at Morningstar, a financial data firm.  My background in math and economics helped me formulate ideas on how to think logically and apply that to teaching information and coaching. I had an experience where a math professor effectively allowed the students to run most of the class with guidance from him, and that is the kind of structure I have attempted to replicate.

Can you tell us more about the differences when working with players and teams from Asia, Europe, and the United States?

I think first of all “Asian” cultures are really really different, so it’s hard to bucket that as one category. Differences in approaches to learning and grinding are significant between Chinese and South Korean teams, for example, so I’d rather avoid that broad stroke. This is a really nuanced topic, but I think one of the  biggest things that is a cultural struggle for US esports players is a feedback-seeking mindset. There is a lot of emphasis on “talent” in US culture and less of a focus on consistently grinding skill when you are bad at something to improve. Changing wording from “wow that person is so talented” to “It must have taken a lot of work to get this good” is one of the key things I’ve tried to implement.

We’ve heard from some of our experts that esports competitors tend to get out of competition at a fairly young age when compared to traditional sports. Can you tell us about your thoughts about transitioning out of competitive play into another role?

I think that, right now, there’s a really weird approach to getting better. It is often over-reduced to “you didn’t play enough.” Introducing a goal-based approach to improvement is a big cornerstone for how we can make practices more efficient and prolong careers.

I also think there isn’t a clear pathway right now for what a player does after playing. More can be done by pro teams to create a pathway for players to gain resources and education when they finish their playing careers to transition out of esports or into a role that doesn’t rely on them continuing to play a game for the rest of their lives if they don’t want to.

Can you tell us about some of the key administrative roles that make a competitive team function?

Administrative roles include human resources for onboarding and player resources, general manager in recruitment, signing, and running programs, coaches who help set up goals and facilitate player success, marketing to create externally facing materials that coordinate and promote the team to a fanbase, financial managers who handle budgeting, partnerships who reach out to and coordinate with sponsors, and many more.

When people think of coaches they often think about the person on the field or in the locker room helping players run plays and pushing players to get better and work together. How is being an esports coach different or similar to that vision?

One thing that is a bit different is that esports games are constantly changing, which makes strategic development between coaches and players more collaborative than one might expect. The main functions of coaching include mentorship, goal setting, and culture setting. You should also have good game knowledge, but the most important function of a coach is setting up a structure that pushes players to improve and create goals for success.