Crafting Champions: An Observation Study of Esports Coaching Processes

As esports grows into a multi-million dollar industry of professional players and competitions, so too grows the interest in and need for professional coaching. Accordingly, there are increased demands and attempts to support and improve coaching for esports. A more comprehensive, granular understanding of the esports coaching process would provide a valuable foundation to inform opportunities to advance the domain via HCI theories and practices. However, in-depth studies of coaching practice, from the lens of HCI, are far less common in existing literature. In this paper, we take the first steps to provide such a foundation through an observation study conducted at an elite, award-winning League of Legends training academy. By analyzing 112 hours of dialogue and footage from coaching sessions, we identify pertinent activities and events that occur within the coaching process, which enable us to consider how esports coaching can be improved via theory, practice, and technology from HCI.