can see them on your screen. Let's count this down...

In October 2013. seventy players from around the

world competed in the Season 3 League of Legends World Championship

You know, a lot of people ask me the question,

What's it like? Do you look back and remember the journey and what not?

To me it's like climbing a mountain. I very much

remember being at the base of the mountain and

looking up, and we sort of think we know where

we are going. Then everyday it's, you know, one

foot in front of the other. You just make a mistake

with your wires, or you plug a router in wrong,

you can tank a whole performance. If you want to

talk about mistakes from the Season 2 Quarters,

we had some outages during the matches and ultimately

the game couldn't be recovered and we had to have

these teams start over.

So unbelievably patient with us...

But then periodically, you look back behind you

and your like, Wow! We have come a long way.

When it comes to thinking about League as a spectator

sport, we kind of always felt, initially that,

Hey, there is some hardcore subset of fans that are going to be like us.

That want to watch other people play games,

but I don't think we were ever very confident that

a large percentage of our audience would actually

be interested in experiencing it like a sport.

I think people really started to connect the dots.

Everyone had dreamed of this type of thing becoming

a reality, and it's starting to be here.

Get up, you lazy bum. Get up. Why?

Gwang-Jin (Piglet) was a mama's boy when he was young.

The kind of baby that doesn't detach from a mother's lap.

You've gotten bigger.

His dream... Whenever he had to write down what he wanted to

be, it was always to be a pro-gamer.

I just couldn't understand what this pro-gaming thing was.

I always enjoyed playing video games as a child.

And one day I saw a professional gaming tournament on television

and I thought to myself this is what I want to do.

Until he went to high school, I think I threw away

a handful of computers.

I thought maybe if I threw them away he wouldn't play.

If we didn't have a computer,

Piglet would go out to the smoke-filled PC Bangs to play games there

and, well, I'm not sure how long he can keep doing this,

but this is his dream.

Our home life wasn't... we weren't happy.

We were also struggling financially.

I would come home way past midnight, even though I was only in high school.

We would sometimes play non-stop without eating and sleep in late to miss meals.

My older brother did a lot of bad things,

so he would say things like there should at least be one good guy in the house.

The good thing about playing games professionally

is that people recognize me and I feel somewhat famous.

Hello, this is SKT T1's Unit 1!

Unit 2!

Unit 3!

Unit 4!

Unit 5!

In our country (Korea)

I think it's a given that you have to give up everything else

when you decide to become a pro-gamer.

I think the mental stress

is the worst part about being a professional gamer.

I was never this skinny before, but ever since I started playing professionally

I've lost over 10 kg (22 lbs).

Yeah, it's kind of unfortunate.

We are more or less the hope of North America apparently,

so there is a lot of people jumping on our bandwagon

basically now, becoming our fans, because they

want North America to do well at Worlds, and they

think that we are their best hope to do that. We

are the underdogs at this tournament, actually,

relative to Europe, China, and Korea at least,

so we are seen as the weaker region. Going from

being no one and being a nothing team to making

it in was definitely the hardest part for us. My

favorite moment was probably when we qualified

for LCS, because it was the second time we tried.

The first time we failed pretty horribly and that

was really depressing, so we came into it again

with a better mindset and we made it that time.

Ever since then we weren't really known for anything

until we came into this split, which is the summer

split of 2013. We took first place in it. It was

just basically getting more popular, and more popular, our numbers

on social media sites had just gone

up and up. We've been winning everything, we went

25-3 and we won Regionals. We were like, destroying

the whole scene. It feels weird, but cool at the

same time to have fans. Since we first entered

the LCS, everyone has always had high expectations

for us, no matter what. I definitely never thought

that I was going to be a professional gamer when

I was younger, and since I started playing League

of Legends professionally I never thought I would

be playing at Worlds for North America. I don't

think Europe is much better than us, I don't think

China is much better than us, but I do think the

Koreans are better. They just breed talent over

there, because that's what they've been doing for

the past ten years, whereas most of the people

in North America haven't been able to do that.

Playing against SKT would be really sweet, because

I would get to play against Faker, but I would

prefer to have easier routes to the Finals if that's

possible. It would be great if my team won Worlds.

Like if a North American team just wins and, like,

no one can bash North America anymore, so that

would be like... that would be amazing.

My family was ordinary, neither rich nor poor.

My parents were migrant workers outside my hometown.

I was raised by my grandparents.

I was a bad student in school. I just didn't like to study.

At that time I was so little that I didn't know much, but I felt something missing.

I felt happier and didn't worry so much once I started playing games.

He'd only go to school when someone took him there.

If no one took him to school, he would skip it.

I would tell him not to play. He would say I won't

go to the cafe, I'll go to school.

Even if you hit him and yell at him, he'll say ok.

But after two days, it's useless.

The Internet cafe owner would say, he doesn't need much money,

with one yuan he plays the whole morning or afternoon.

My parents saw me playing games everyday, they started to ask me questions

like who did I want to be? What did I want to do when I grew up?

Everyday you're out playing, sleeping, eating all at the Internet cafe. That's not acceptable.

They sent me to a boarding school and I barely came home.

I learned to climb over the school walls to the Internet cafes,

but I was often caught.

I could never forget,

one time I ran away from school.

My dad found out and very seriously told me not to return home - ever.

I felt the dearest person in the world to me...

wanted to abandon me.

I really felt my life was nothing but misery.

Sometimes I wondered: why was I born into this world?

A professional team invited me to join them,

because I was known to be an outstanding gamer.

My attitude towards life was reversed suddenly.

I realized life was good.

Come eat!

I didn't want him to leave, I told him it's very chaotic outside.

You don't understand it, you're too naive. I felt protective of him.

Before I wanted him to just work in our business.

He told me he doesn't want to do it.

He said he could play this game and compete internationally.

I didn't believe him. How could there be such things?

May 9. 2012 he left home.

I was so sad.

He said I have to go. I want to go to America to compete.

I told him you must be dreaming, going to America to compete.

He said it's true, there's prize money too.

I told him stop dreaming.

Now we're fully supportive of him.

We cheer him on, and wish him to be a star.

I do have the fortunate

pleasure of knowing all the big names in League

of Legends Esports and it's been really cool to

watch them grow. These are gamers who love playing

games and really do what they do primarily for

passion. They feel like they are living the dream,

because they are living the dream.

I see a future for my son.

I tell him, there's the next one, S3 Worlds in America, you need to push hard.

He said, I'm not afraid. I will try hard. I won't fail.

I felt very proud of my son.

Once you start killing some minions, once you start

trading with your enemy laner, you kind of forget

about the fact that you