The idea of attending a championship of any sport has always been so distant to me. Most of the time it takes a great amount of resources to make it happen. League of Legends Worlds is not the exception. Yet I was extremely both pleased and surprised when I got invited to by Amazon Web Services (AWS). I was not just going to one of the most important events in the esports world, but it was also going to be my first time in Seoul, let alone in Asia!

How Did This Happen?

I have been part of the AWS Community Builders for a few months – in the Serverless category. Although it never crossed my mind that this program would at any point relate to League of Legends, or any other videogame. To be fair, I didn't even expect that Riot Games would be involved at such a deep level with AWS. I was wrong.

There’s always weekly announcements in this group, where opportunities, giveaways, resources, announcements, and feedback are shared. I was confused, and at the same time impressed, when I read:

AWS has a partnership with Riot Games … There's an opportunity … to be part of an exclusive three-day esports LoL experience in Seoul, South Korea, … This experience includes a behind the scenes tour, attending the live LoL World Finals at the Sky Dome, and lots of other cool game tech-related opportunities – Jason Dunn, AWS Community Builders Program Lead.

I thought, hey I love League, and I couldn’t be there last year's Worlds finals – sure I went to the Knockout Stage here in New York, but I don’t think it would hit the same – so I applied.

The process was decently smooth. I submitted an internal form in which I described why I was a great candidate fit for the experience. Not only I’m a huge LoL esports follower and player, but a Software Engineer in the largest monitoring and security company.

After a couple weeks, I got an invitation email, which included the following banner:

I was so excited! Let’s keep in mind that T1 vs Weibo wasn’t even set yet. This arrived around midnight in the middle of a work day, now it was game time decision, I had to book a flight to Seoul. If I remember correctly, this was in the middle of the Knockout Stage, so there was not an immense hype for Worlds Finals yet.

The Experience

As it was my first time in Seoul, I couldn’t just spend the three days of the event. I had to enhance my own experience too – it was also my first solo trip to a country where I don’t speak the language.

It’s worth mentioning that Thanksgiving was just around the corner. Something that it’s not really celebrated in my culture, but I already had planned on visiting San Francisco, so I canceled my flight from New York. I was going to arrive straight from Seoul. I ended up arriving a week before it, so leave on a Thursday, arrive on a Friday, and enjoy both weekends there!

I had to make the most out of the city. I had packed my photography gear. Once there, I started exploring and shooting what attracted my eye… and the touristy stuff too. Seoul has been the densest city I have been to. There is no comparison to Mexico City or the 5 boroughs in New York.

Let me get back to it. The 18th came, so I moved from my small hostel room in Hongdae to the 5-star Fairmont Ambassador in Yeouido. AWS went all out on us Community Builders. I went from a 4 sq/mt room to an amazing suit with views of the Han River.

The first day was packed with activities, and I didn’t miss a bit of it. I had my first experience meeting other AWS Community Builders and Heroes. The background of each of them impressed me, not just technically, but culturally. People came all over the world just like me. There was a significant presence of fellow Latinxs, and we clicked at once – shout-out to Pablo and Daniel. At the same time, I got the chance to meet both AWS and Riot Games executives. Everyone was truly chill and down to earth. And last, but not least, the staff helping us with the experience was the one hidden jewel I didn’t expect to meet.

After presentations, we had to depart to the LoL Park, Korea's main stadium for regular matches. The challenges began here: a hackathon, AWS LoL GameDay; a reception and introduction, with excellent panelists in the esports industry; and, a AWS x Riot Games Tech Talk.

AWS Lol GameDay

I love gamified Hackathons. This one didn’t fall short in any category. It was fun, challenging, and the content accurate. Did you tune for Worlds in 2022? You probably saw the “AWS Win Probability” metrics during the match – game five gave multiple heart attacks. Well, we had to do the same thing but in 60 minutes. Or sort off. In a team of maximum four, given a dataset, you had to train a Machine Learning model with the right features to accurately predict who was going to win the game. Unlike the real thing, here it only ran once. As opposed to the constantly-running process with live data. AWS SageMaker is going to be the tool for this journey. I didn’t expect it to be really good to work with. With a click of a button, we had an endpoint in which other machines could interact. We had a set of questions which were basically NumPy and Pandas manipulation.

You trained your model and it has a decent accuracy? Well, now get ready to also use AWS Amplify to deploy a provided front-end app. You also had to leverage AWS Lambdas for an API. I must say, I had high expectations to win this competition, but I wasted a lot of time. I was definitely rusty on the hackathon side.

Hey, at the end I still got lots of AWS Poro swag: a pin; a cap; some stickers; and a mousepad. I also got some for my roommate, they were generous.

I got to record some post-event content for AWS. I unexpectedly discovered that I have an adequate speech for videos – although don’t expect me to vlog, I tried and it was definitely time consuming.

The winners were announced, and by none other than the incredible Ashley Kang, renowned esports journalist and founder of Korizon Esports media. And Travis Gafford, interviewer and content creator. They were collaborating too with AWS to enrich the experience. The prize? Oh yeah, it was TICKETS for WORLDS. Anyhow, I already had mine thanks to AWS, yet it would have been exciting to give it to someone in need.

Welcome Reception And Introduction To League Of Legends

We had a catered lunch, where all invitees and staff from AWS were resting after the intense hour. It was time to educate folks, which Gafford took care of by giving the intro to League. Not everyone was deep into the game like me and my friends, so this was a concise and simple presentation. If you want to learn more, just check the video he showcased along.

To finalize, there was a Q&A, which I jumped right away to ask Travis about his thoughts of the fast-growing esports industry and why we should keep an eye on it. As an experienced personality, he explained why it has been a long decade which hasn’t reached its peak, yet it was extremely important to keep betting on it.

AWS x Riot Games Tech Talk

We didn’t want to focus in infrastructure, but on building games – Brent Rich, Riot Games Head of Global Infrastructure and Operations.

This was by far my favorite activity of the first day. A one hour tech talk which we could say was a preview of their AWS Re:Invent 2023 presentation. Packed with content around their partnership. I took enough notes for it to be its own blog, I’ll save up the technical parts for it.

This talk was moderated by Emil Mouhanna, AWS Games Vertical Leader; where the speakers were of high caliber. Also from AWS: Ashwin Raghurman, Senior Solutions Architect, and designer of the AWS LoL GameDay; Junghun Lee, SA Lead. On the Riot side we had: Brent Rich, Head of Global Infrastructure and Operations; David Sirgurdson, Head of Live Operations; and Eagon (Hyungsuk) Choi, Director of Technology.

The key insights here are:

AWS was the only cloud provider who had the right infrastructure and regions for Riot Games.
AWS meets the bar in every aspect for them.
Korea was the last region to move their data centers to AWS, it’s its own unique market.
Thanks to AWS, Riot was able to launch their first cloud native games: Teamfight Tactics; Legends of Runeterra; and Valorant.

At the end, I asked about the observability done at Riot. Sigurdsson, Head of Live Operations at Riot Games, answered correctly – from my experience. They don’t care about every piece of software equally, only focusing on critical services. Their bar is incredibly high in terms of monitoring, so they train their engineers to use observability tools to have quality data to use. Meaning that less logs is good, ensuring the incoming ones contain relevant data.

Worlds Finals

Day two starts. A bus came for us and we headed to the LoL Fan Fest. I clearly had to try to get every PARANOIA photo card – I couldn’t.

Right before going to the main event, I couldn’t shut up telling everyone who didn’t follow the game, or the esports scene, to cheer for T1. I had the luck to see Faker win against other titans in past events, but not a final. And this year, I was cheering for the team once again.

I was ready for this. We arrived at the Gocheok Sky Dome. There was a tremendous line, but the crowd was immensely organized. In less than 20 minutes, we were inside. I still felt daydreaming, I was 11,500 kilometers away from home, about to take part in the most important event in esports of the year.

The event started, everyone was screaming as loud as they could. The announcer popped out of nowhere, gave a hyped introduction. The teaser videos started to play on the enormous screens. Ruler appears on the screen “Our (golden) road is inevitable”. Faker follows up “All roads lead to me”. Jingdong Gaming (JDG) wasn’t even playing and the stadium resonated. Legends Never Die played for a while, warming up for what was about to come…

Music started, the hottest virtual boy band members came out one by one. It was HEARTSTEEL. They debuted on stage with their song PARANOIA. I was happy for the folks watching from home, they could see all the VFX behind the presentation. Of course I wasn’t missing anything, it was just confusing having to see both the screen and the stage to catch up with what was happening.

Next up – you were waiting for it – NEW JEANS presenting GODS. It was surreal. I will always pray for Riot to keep creating songs and bands with Kpop artists, it's just a next level show. Right after the song was about to end, rising from the ground, it was Weibo on the left, T1 on the right. Fireworks all over the place. The presenter was announcing the teams. It was time for the match.

And you’ll have to watch it, because it was a stomp from T1s side. #T1Fighting

Hoping For Next year

Seoul was by far the best (first and only so far lol) solo trip. I combined my three passions and didn’t limit myself to enjoying it all. I couldn’t be more grateful for this opportunity. I not only learned about complex use cases with multiple AWS technologies I develop products for. But I watched the greatest roster T1 has had lifting the fourth cup in their hometown. Next stop? London, England. Will G2 finally make it to finals again? Or will I have to see T1 lift the fifth?

Catch me again next year, I’ll try to go to Worlds again!

–– thank you note: Thanks a lot to everyone involved in this journey. From AWS, thanks to Annie Harris and Jason Dunn, for aiding me during the early stages of the process. Also, Darren Aasen for every motivational speech. Tracey Goodfriend; Abril Hernandez; and Crystal Lee from R&CPMK – thanks for making my last day in Seoul a never-ending adventure. Alexander Vicars, a new friend I didn’t expect to meet and share hobbies. Special ‘thank you for everything’ to my girlfriend Legina, who supported and pushed me to jump into the unknown.