The Esports Journal

Page 42

BRANDS

AUTHOR Andrew Hayward  @ahaywa

Bo Shen

VP of International Expansion and Innovation

Royal Never Give Up Not giving up on the West iven how many popular esports teams already exist in Western countries, what chance does a Chinese team have of breaking through and going truly international in appeal? That’s the challenge ahead of Royal Never Give Up (RNG), best known for its successful League of Legends and Dota 2 squads. It’s also a meaningful personal challenge for Bo Shen, the team’s Vice President of International Expansion and Innovation.

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“The ultimate goal is also my personal goal,” Shen told The Esports Journal. “We want to, through esports, really connect the cultures between the East and West.” Shen joined RNG in Shanghai in 2018, but previously worked in Los Angeles for Riot Games from 2013 to 15 as a Mandarin Translator/Culture Ambassador. At the time, he worked with the all-Chinese League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) team LMQ to help promote them in the West. He looks back on that experience with mixed feelings.

“That was an experiment that was kind of a failure, because it was a full-Chinese roster at the beginning of the league and the cultural barrier was very tough to break through,” said Shen. “Also, I thought there were a lot of different opinions and even prejudice among different groups.” Ultimately, however, Shen said that they were able to build some traction for LMQ in the LCS, and endear popular players to that audience. Now he’s trying to execute that same sort of philosophy on a much larger scale, with several teams across multiple games.


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