The Shimadas aren’t the only Japanese heroes to enter the Nexus. For the first time in Heroes history, this Phase 2 Horizon Clash has expanded its reaches to Japan via the Taiwan Qualifier. And with this opportunity, the first Japanese team of HGC has been born. Five new heroes have joined the Nexus: Omnia, Yanda, Bukkoro, HoriCat and BiMi of Arrogância.

Esports in Japan

Japan is one of the most important countries in video game industry. With big Japanese companies such as Nintendo and Sony leading the market, they have produced many of the most iconic games in video game history. However when it comes to esports, Japan is far behind the rest of the world. Despite boasting some exceptional talent in many fighting games—a consequence of these being the arcade game of choice for many years—they lack the prominent names and teams of their peers in more popular esports.

How is one of the biggest influencers upon the video game industry so far behind? That’s due to the restrictive Japanese laws on gambling. To avoid “unjustifiable premiums and misleading representations”, Japanese tournaments have had to cap their prize pools at 100,000 yen (around $900). These low prizes have prevented “professional gamer” from being a sustainable career, and thus the esports industry has stagnated as a result.



However, things are changing. The Japanese government is establishing a system of licenses for pro players to allow them to compete for large prizes, but it’ll take time to fully come into action. Their objective is to make Japan a top contender in esports for preparation of the Paris 2024 Olympics where esports is being considered for inclusion. What we know for sure is that esports has already been a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESports_at_the_2018_Asian_Games］demonstration sport[/url] at the 2018 Asian Games (though sadly Heroes wasn’t one of the chosen games). There, Japan qualified for only two out of the six titles played but managed a gold medal in Pro Evolution Soccer.

Road to Heroes

PC gaming didn’t have the easiest way into Japan. This country is the homeland of two out of the three most important consoles and is the empire of arcades. The traditionally PC-orientated Blizzard have had trouble reaching the island country but have had more success as they expanded little by little into new markets with games like Hearthstone for mobile phones or Diablo 3 and Overwatch for consoles.

The first Blizzard games barely even reached the Japanese market. World of Warcraft wasn’t localized in Japan, and StarCraft 2, launched in 2010, began to introduce professional play for both Japanese PC gaming and esports, despite players using American versions of the game and playing professional matches on NA servers. In spite of being a small community at that moment, tournaments (with small prize pools due to the anti-gambling laws) were held and teams even began to form, such as Detonation in 2012.

During early 2010s, more games began to gain traction in the region: Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Hearthstone. Even League of Legends developed a league for the Japanese region, which remains to this day the smallest of all the ones they have. It includes only six teams (others have at least eight) and reduced prizes due to the laws (though made up for somewhat with salaries).

The real twist came with Overwatch. Compared to the Overwatch hype in other countries, Japan’s scene is quite small, but it’s still surprisingly large compared with other games in the country. They have played qualifiers for every World Cup and even achieved first seed in their group last year (though they later lost in the final bracket and failed to qualify). This year they were 13th team in the ranking (only the top 24 get invited to qualifiers). They also have a top team in Contenders Pacific region, CYCLOPS athlete gaming.

Now Japan has Blizzard games to love and so they can keep playing their StarCraft, Overwatch, Warcraft (met through Hearthstone) and Diablo (console versions were localized and sold well) characters in the Nexus.

The Japanese Community

Japan is opening to esports. They are willing to be a top contender in the years to come, and with no single game dominating the region, there is everything to play for. This is a huge opportunity for Heroes to place itself as one of the top MOBAs in the region, if not the leading one. After an initial attempt to get into the Japanese market, Dota 2 backed off (Detonator, the most relevant team, dropped its Japanese roster in 2016). League of Legends is there, but it’s still a small competition and they rely a lot on Korean imports. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an official broadcast for this first appearance in the Taiwanese qualifier, though many Japanese viewers are watching the official Mandarin stream.



That’s why the inclusion of Japan in the qualifier for Horizon Clash is so important. And Arrogância has delivered: according to Blizzard sources they are the only Japanese team to join the tournament, and they not only passed through the preliminary rounds but ended in fifth place after a very close series against The Avenger that could have got them fourth slot and further into the playoffs.

Heroes’ Japanese player base is around a tenth of Taiwan’s. However, they have created a community that even organizes its own events: back in 2017 they hosted a tournament where winners got a showmatch versus DeadlyKittens. Besides their own events, some Japanese teams are joining the Taiwanese amateur league HEROES XD, such as AntiJapan or bloodbond knights.

It won’t be easy, but Japan has started a way into HGC, and that’s good news for us all.

Big thanks to Blizzard TW&SEA for the help with the research. Follow the Japanese community on Twitter and welcome them to the HGC!

• HotS_jpn
  
• Bukkoro and Yanda from Arrogância
  
• Hiromisuto from AntiJapan
  
• Hisakant from bloodbond knights