The Piltover Post

With the League Championship Series making its return on January 24th, Dignitas made a few changes with their staff after a tumultuous past couple of years that drove a lot of fans to question their decision-making. A sour taste was left in most people’s mouths after players openly talked about the stressful environment and how they didn’t feel supported. With that being said, Jonathan “Jonathon” McDaniel, formerly of Counter Logic Gaming and NRG, was signed on with confidence that he would be capable of turning their reputation around. He gets honest about the pressure on his shoulders and provides some insight into the past few years.

Q: The organization has been around in League of Legends for over a decade and has been existing in the gaming space for over 20 years. Not many orgs can boast the same. What do you think contributes to DIG’s longevity in League of Legends, when so many others, like Counter Logic Gaming and Team SoloMid,  have failed? 

A: I think longevity is one of those things in esports that is a mixture of passion, circumstance, and luck. Many of the original League of Legends esports orgs (especially the ones you named) all left for different reasons, and many honestly just took an opportunistic moment to just make the most of tumultuous times, or to no longer need to struggle to reconcile competitive aspirations and financial realities. I would say the uniqueness of Dignitas is the mixture of legacy and a commitment to not letting competitive aspirations cloud those financial realities, making sure that we do what we can to make budgets, stay close to those budgets, and not let creeping increases in scope and budget lead to that death by a thousand cuts that some organizations have suffered from in the past. Though I will say in fairness to everyone in the space, ownership and direction can rapidly change on a dime as people come and go, and sometimes it creates great opportunities or impassable obstacles that can sink the metaphorical ship.

Q: Many LCS fans pointed out that the discoverability for Dignitas as a brand is lacking, due to the Swiss non-profit company that shares the same name. Unless you specifically put the game with it, the Swiss organization comes up first.  Do you think that a rebrand with a different name would make a difference in DIG growing its fanbase? If you could rebrand, would you bring back Clutch Gaming?

A: I can’t imagine we would make a new brand or bring back Clutch Gaming in particular because that was a brand made by the Houston Rockets when they made the brand for the 2018 LCS and doesn’t really have much of a connection to DIG outside of the worlds run which happened just after the acquisition of the slot but before the brand was transitioned fully to DIG (which is where we got the DIG gold colour shifted Clutch Logo as a nod to what was coming). I think there are a few organizations that struggle with SEO for various reasons. For example, NRG has an energy company and a venue, both with the same name but without any affiliation. I think while we do have some issues with discoverability, we also have to walk the same line these other organizations walk in finding a way to be identifiable to the fans (especially legacy fans) that know us, while still being discoverable, and it’s a tricky line to walk. We even had a silly anecdote recently, trying to find accessible photos of our sub ADC Mobility. Typing his tag and LCS into Google images was just a giant wall of mobility assistance devices. SEO can be a fickle thing.

Q: When you exist as a company, there is bound to be controversy. However, over the last few years, many people have felt that DIG has been making questionable decisions that reflect poorly on their brand. Much of it was heavily weighed against the promises of striving for long-term growth, and many would argue that the constant roster changes actively contradict the original stance. Do you agree with the sentiment that frequently changing rosters hinders a team’s chance to play the long game, so to speak?

A: So I will dive into the philosophy of rosters first. I think change isn’t inherently a bad thing, and sticking to the wrong person isn’t any better on its own than trying to change for perceived upgrades and missing the mark. It’s all about the context of your organization and current place within the ecosystem. Nowadays, in the LCS, it’s not really possible to grab a big prospect and be guaranteed to hold onto them for the long haul unless you are willing to outbid other bigger teams, so teams have to be opportunistic to a certain extent, especially if they aren’t perceived as a good destination for talent. So sometimes teams need to be willing to make hard choices, even if they had previously been excited about their previous choices. I think traditional sports as a reference point honestly does a big disservice to our ability to break down and understand roster moves, we don’t have long term guaranteed contracts that teams can shuffle around the league or other not contract assets like draft picks or other considerations, and not having draft picks or other systems to reward teams that are struggling to find their footing means losing can become a death sentence without a radical change through players that are underserved or underrated or taking the plunge on prospects from tier 2.

Q: Everybody wants to finish in first place in their respective leagues, attend the World Championships, and prove they are the best. Sometimes, that passion can be channelled in a way that is harmful to the team environment. Players like Jett “Srtty” Joye and even current top laner Kyeong “Photon” Gyu-tae have been vocal about the toxic environment that they were brought into. Many LCS fans have speculated on what specifically was causing the harmful environment, blaming both players and staff. You signed on with an organization that looked broken from the inside out. That puts a lot of weight on your shoulders to fix it. What are your first steps to bringing the team together? Do you think promoting a positive environment will lead to significant improvements in the team’s performance?

A: This was one of the first things I did, not just in joining DIG but also when I first joined CLG after they had a year at the bottom of the league in both LCS and Academy. I spoke with all of the players from the team in the previous year (including Srtty for DIG) about what went wrong, why things happened the way they did, and to try to figure out how we could prevent things from going the same way in the future. I’m not going to go into the specifics of what I found on either org but a big intentional part of my rebuild was the same for both teams to make sure that every person we brought in was bought into the kind of team we wanted to be in and out of the game and the kind of culture we needed to have to achieve our goals as a team. I think personally, in my experience, it can sometimes matter more to have a good environment than to have the best players in the league. We’ve seen plenty of superteams implode because of poor environments, or teams that look on top of the world in one week, look completely destroyed the next due to the effects of a bad environment. On CLG/NRG for example we never had a PERFECT environment and were rarely considered a team of strong individual players, but we had the guardrails provided by coaches and just overall structure needed to have those relief valves and the kinds of players that could adapt and change with feedback until we got much closer to the best versions of ourselves than other teams thought possible and that is something I would love to be the team known for replicating if we can, its not easy but its definitely worth trying.

Q: LCS fans haven’t seen a lot of you since the NRG miracle run in the summer of 2023. Funnily enough, you have been reunited with three of them: Christian “Palafox” Palafox, Victor “FBI” Huang, and Lee “IgNar” Dong-geun. Do you think having experience with them prior will help pave the way for DIG’s 2026 success? What are your goals for this team?

A: I think one of my greatest strengths as a manager is getting to know how the people I work with function not just together but as people, and being able to work with the 3 former NRG teammates of mine gave me a strong idea behind how the team would function in and out of game, and really helped us to be confident in grabbing eXyu and keeping Photon to play with them. When we built this team, the goal was to be a consistent playoff team, making the top 6 in regular seasons. I know many have concerns and doubts about us, and honestly, that works well for us to use that as motivation to show over the year how we can grow our system as an org and start to recover some of our fans that may have doubted DIG in past iterations.