League of Legends: A Moment in the Sun – Remembering Gravity Gaming

League of Legends teams are measured by their seasons, by the slow movements of their rosters. But Gravity’s story was too short for any of that.

The end of Kurt Vonnegut’s short story ‘Harrison Bergeron’ always sticks with me, even when thinking about League of Legends. There’s a moment where the protagonist sheds the weights he’s been forced to wear all of his life. And all the muscle he’s built from his years of shackled living lend him this superhuman nature, this ability to transcend the laws of nature and gravity.

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And when he leaps in the air, there’s a frozen second where he hangs suspended, in total defiance to the system that has crippled him his entire life. In defiance to gravity itself, it seems.

That moment of strength was perhaps made more profound by the fact that we all knew it couldn’t last. We tend to hold onto moments like that. Their fragility and the fact that we never know when the next will come makes us grasp ever tighter.

Team Gravity may be the most neglected League of Legends team to almost finish first in the regular season. They rose from the ashes of Curse Academy — who had themselves qualified by beating Team Coast and Fusion in that year’s Expansion Tournament.

Changes in the league’s policy meant that Curse couldn’t sponsor two teams, and Curse Academy rebranded as Gravity Gaming. From the beginning, no one knew what to make of them, this combination of complete rookies and washed-up old-schoolers dressed in their trademark leather jackets.

Yet their logo, an intricate orange arrow shooting skyward couldn’t have been more apt. And what goes up must come down.