Deep Analysis Without a Single Number: The 'N/A' Disease Is Killing Vietnamese Esports Journalism

Last week, a colleague sent me a 3,000-word tactical analysis about the grand final of an LoL tournament. I made coffee, opened the file, and settled down to read. By the third paragraph, I had to stop. All the main sections—Context, Core, Contrarian—displayed three letters: N/A. There was no match name, no patch, no teams, no players, no score. A 'deep' analysis with not a single data point. I texted back, asking, 'What is this analyzing?' My colleague replied innocently, 'It's the template from our AI tool, we just wrap ads around it.' I wasn't surprised. In over ten years of following esports, I've seen plenty of garbage on news sites. But the thing that really unsettles me is the spread of these 'analysts' who create hollow content, where a writer can discuss the meta without watching a single game, or predict results with zero data modeling. People call it shocking when I say this bluntly: Esports is not the future. It's the present trying to pretend it's the future. And I'm here to document that pretense. Yet I didn't realize the pretense would go so deep that AI tools, trained on the very same junk news sites, are now cloning themselves into 'experts'. The root problem is the business model. In Vietnam, most esports sites make money from display ads, not from paying readers. To get more pageviews, they need to publish continuously. But there are too few qualified editors. So they use AI to write fast—or worse, let AI 'analyze' by scraping keyword density from a Korean T1 article and turn it into a 'perspective piece' without understanding tactics. According to Statista, the global esports industry is expected to reach $1.87 billion in revenue in 2026. Digital content alone accounts for about 35%. There is a real market for in-depth, factual writing. But in Vietnam, advertisers rarely read the content they fund. They only see engagement metrics. An empty analysis, full of 'N/A', but with sensational headlines and nice visuals, can still draw 300,000 views. The disease feeds itself. I remember the 2026 World Cup in Doha. I was in the media area when Japan came from behind to beat Germany 2-1. My gut told me immediately that Germany's defensive line was too high. While colleagues waited for Opta heatmaps, I wrote a short piece about Flick running a machine from a decade ago. That piece was controversial, but it had something the 'N/A' analyses never have: an opinion rooted in a specific moment. People call it shocking, I call it a map. Russia 2026 was only the starting point of a migration of faith. That migration has now reached esports. And on that journey, faith has been betrayed by media people themselves. They create analyses without knowing the match, without understanding tactics, just hitting 'generate'. The result is a young generation of readers who never learn critical thinking. They read a conclusion like 'GAM will win because they are in form,' and nobody asks what 'in form' means, where the numbers are, or whether the patch favors their playstyle. Some will say I'm too harsh. AI is just a tool; editors should refine it. But I've seen too many articles published without a single journalistic eye. A piece on 'split push' might be copied verbatim from a North American player's analysis, without mentioning that the Vietnamese server patch differs from the Korean server. Such small details get erased during 'SEO optimization.' When I was a freelancer for a major sports outlet, I had an unwritten rule: do not write before watching the match. But for freelancers paid pennies per article, watching a match is a luxury. They find highlights, read fan comments, then write from imagination. The result is a shallow esports press where terms like 'macro play' or 'map pressure' are randomly used to sound deep. We need to talk about this seriously. If we let 'N/A' analyses continue to dominate, the most loyal audiences will eventually turn away. Because they sense the dishonesty. A VCS viewer of two or three years may not know football's xG, but they know how their favorite team is playing. When they read that 'Saigon Phantom holds towers well,' without any data on tower health, vision control time, or jungle pathing, they won't believe it. What happens when a 15-year-old, new to esports, Googles 'GAM vs TW analysis'? They'll find dozens of polished titles, optimized for the top of search, but the content is nothing but a paraphrase of the Liquipedia standings. That child grows up thinking that sports writing is the job of people who outsource thinking to AI. That is a disaster. I'm not a pessimist. I'm a realist. Good signs are there: individual YouTube channels of former pros like Levi or Zeros are starting to make short analytical content explaining playstyles. Fan communities build their own wikis and discuss tactics on Discord. But those efforts are being strangled by major sites, where ads take up 70% of display. I propose something called the 'Minimum Data Rule.' According to it, every match analysis must include at least three verifiable metrics: scoreline, match duration, and an analytical stat (such as gold differential, ban/pick counts, or lineup win rate). Without those, the piece must be labeled 'Opinion' and not placed in news sections. It sounds radical, but it's the only way to filter out something meaningful from a mess. When I posted about this issue on my personal Facebook page, a SEO friend messaged me: 'Sister, if we do that, how can we produce daily content?' I replied: 'Better no article than a junk one.' They didn't understand, but I think media bosses should. Readers are not stupid. They are stupid in a limited way. They can scroll past an article without realizing its emptiness in seconds, but later, when the same website continues to post full content from Reddit, they will get bored. Maybe I'm dreaming about a mature esports press. But I've seen traditional sports journalists in Vietnam struggle with revenue, and they choose the short-term path of chasing views. Esports is younger, so it falls into that trap more easily. Yet, being young is not an excuse. We—writers and readers—must demand quality. In a way, the problem isn't AI. AI merely reflects what we feed it. If we train AI on junk articles, we get junk that resembles 'analysis.' The only way out of the loop is to restore data verification from the moment an article is submitted. A piece without raw numbers and clear sourcing should be rejected upfront. When a player costs 100 million, I don't ask how good he is. I ask who needs to launder money. I ask the same about analyses: why does an empty analysis exist? Who is paying for it? Those are the questions every writer should ask before hitting the keyboard. It's time for Vietnamese esports editors to make a declaration: Abandon the 'N/A disease.' No one is born with innate tactical analysis skills, but anyone can learn to watch matches, take notes, and track situations. We need journalists as miners, digging through raw data, not as parrots, repeating AI's phrases. And if there is nothing to say, say so honestly. Takeaway: An esports press without data is a press paying for the desperation of bosses and the arrogance of hype men. Remember: Esports is not the future, it's the present pretending to be the future. And if media folks like me don't get to recording the truth behind the lights, then all that's left is one big N/A. I refuse that. What about you?