Nine Analysis Sections, One Word N/A: Is Vietnam's Esports Data Industry Lulling Itself With a Template?

Nine Analysis Sections, One Word N/A: Is Vietnam's Esports Data Industry Lulling Itself With a Template?

That evening I sat in front of a screen reading a nine-section analysis report about an esports match. It was laid out like an internal document from an international organization: a "Patch and Meta Analysis" section, a "Tournament System and Format" section, a "Teams and Players" section, a "Regional Landscape" section, a "Club Finance" section, a "Governance and Compliance" section, a "Risk Profile" section, a "Public Narrative" section, a "Industry Transmission" section. Each section had a table, a checkbox column, and a one-to-five-star rating scale. At a glance, anyone would assume this was the work of a veteran expert.

But reading closely, the phrase that appeared most often across all nine sections was: "N/A — insufficient information, cannot assess." The tables were empty. The scales had no scores. The risk checkbox column had exactly one line ticked: "Cannot assess any risk — no patch or title information was provided."

The report was not wrong. It was honest to the point of cruelty. And because it was honest, it accidentally exposed a sickness I had long suspected: Vietnam's esports analysis industry is producing perfect templates to conceal the fact that there is nothing worth analyzing. The template is so beautiful that people forget there is nothing inside it.

I have worked as a sports commentator for eighteen years, most of the recent stretch devoted to esports. I have watched this industry move from Zoom commentary sessions during COVID, when stadiums were empty and commentary booths were bare, to a point where every small tournament claims to have its own "data analysis department". Since football went dormant, I learned to dream in data — and I am not the only one.

It all began with a beautiful belief: data would save us from sentiment. Instead of arguing over "which team is stronger" by feeling, people offered win rates, minion counts, damage per minute, pick-ban ratios. Then came heatmaps, then predictive models, then nine-section analytical templates like the one I read that night.

The problem is this: once something becomes a standard, people start mass-producing it without checking whether the raw material is sufficient. A nine-section template is easy to teach and easy to replicate. Anyone who memorizes a few dozen boilerplate lines can build an analytical table that looks serious. But an empty template is still an empty template, even if you frame it in mahogany.

Vietnam's esports scene is especially prone to this disease, because we carry a chronic inferiority complex. We always want to prove we are "professional on an international level". And the fastest way to look professional is to wear international templates, even when we hold not a single trustworthy data point. I call this the "N/A armor": impressive when worn, naked when removed.

Look at the structure of that report and see how it incriminates itself.

The "Patch and Meta Analysis" section had a four-column table: meta direction, beneficiaries, losers, key data. All four columns read N/A. But the interesting part sits in the "Analytical Conclusions", where the author writes: "Cross-title comparison is impossible without any title identified." This is logically correct, and it is also a confession. A patch analysis table that does not know which patch, or which game, is not patch analysis. It is an administrative form decorated with jargon.

This is exactly the same as the heatmap story in football. I have said it many times: the heatmap has become the new fortune-telling. People slap a cloud of blue and red onto the pitch and believe they understand the player. But a heatmap only tells you where the player was, not why he was there. It conceals the player's true role within the tactical system. In esports, the "heatmap" has become the "nine-section analysis map": something beautiful, full of squares, concealing the fact that the writer has nothing to say.

Why does this happen? Because three pressures stack on top of each other.

The first is production pressure. The esports content industry runs on the tournament rhythm: a match happens, a piece must follow. If there is no time to understand the match, people still must ship a product. The nine-section template is the fastest way to produce a "product" without understanding anything. You simply fill N/A into every cell, add a line saying "insufficient information to assess", and you have a two-thousand-word document. Readers skim it, see many tables, see many sections, sense "something deep", and hit share.

The second is the pressure of legitimacy. When an opinion is presented as tables and rating scales, it automatically acquires an objective sheen. A statement like "I think this team wins" gets challenged immediately. But a statement packaged inside a "Roster Depth Index" or a "Risk Profile" is harder to refute, even though the two are essentially identical in nature. This is exactly the point I always stress: the space for subjective judgment inside supposedly objective systems is far larger than people think. VAR referees have "clear and obvious error" — a vague clause. Data analysis has "source confidence level" — a clause just as vague. Both open a gap into which people stuff whatever they want.

The third is entertainment pressure. Esports readers do not only want to understand; they want to be stunned. A correct but bland analysis drowns. An analysis with a nine-section template, a red risk warning, and "signals to track" makes readers feel they are accessing classified intelligence. I understand this feeling better than anyone. The day I mispronounced a player's name, the whole country remembered me more than the match — simply because the error was packaged into a compelling story.

These three pressures combine to create an ecosystem in which the value of an analysis is measured by the number of tables, not the amount of understanding. The result is that nine-section reports full of N/A are still produced, still shared, still cited as if they had value.

But there is a paradox worth considering.

Reading that report closely, I found it never tried to deceive. It stated plainly: "The input is empty." It stated plainly: "Every conclusion is impossible without fabricating facts." It even had a "Re-Analysis Requirements" section listing what must be supplied. In other words, this very template, in the one moment it was honest, was pointing directly at its own sickness.

I have followed Vietnamese esports long enough to know that most analyses out there do not dare to say "N/A". They fill in a team name, a percentage, an indicator that sounds impressive. I have done this too. I once fabricated a detail to prove my point — and I admitted it publicly, because an error handled skillfully generates a stronger media wave than a victory. But there is a line I always try to hold: fabricate to illuminate the truth, not to fill a void.

A template is not analysis. A template is an excuse to postpone analysis. A real expert does not begin with nine sections. They begin with a question, then seek information, then ask themselves what is missing, and only then write. The report I read reversed that process: it began with nine sections and ended by confessing there had never been a question.

I have re-watched hundreds of esports matches, slow-motion every play, freezing frames on situations nobody notices. What I learned is this: an analysis worth reading lives in a detail others overlooked, not in a table anyone can build. That detail needs no rating scale. It needs no risk checkbox. It only needs someone who sits long enough to see it.

At this point I must slap myself, because I know there is another reading.

Perhaps that all-N/A report is the most honest thing in a sea of fake analysis. Perhaps its willingness to say "I don't know" is an act of courage, while hundreds of other analyses loudly assert things they also do not know. If so, the one who deserves criticism is not the empty template, but us — the readers who created demand for that template.

And this is where I suspect myself. I am famous for shocking takes. I earn attention by saying something in advance that I can later be wrong about and correct. But if every time I am wrong I stage it as a grand show, then at some point I am doing exactly what I just condemned: packaging emptiness into an attractive product. Someone who always shouts "I told you so" is no different from a nine-section report — loud, structured, and empty.

Perhaps the problem is not the template. Perhaps the problem is that we have forgotten that analysis is an act of humility. It begins by admitting you do not know. It progresses through the discipline of looking back, slowing down, taking notes. And it ends in a judgment the writer is ready to own. No cell among those nine sections teaches that.

I may be wrong. But if I am wrong, at least I am wrong for betting on a specific detail, not for filling N/A into every cell and calling it professionalism.

So what happens next?

I predict that within one or two seasons, Vietnamese esports analysis will split in two. One camp keeps producing ever-thicker templates, ever more sections, ever more rating scales — and ever fewer readers who finish them. The other camp does the opposite: fewer tables, more details, one argument per piece, but that argument must survive a slow-motion frame.

I am betting on the second camp. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard. The biggest comeback is not on the pitch; it is in the commentary booth. And that booth is waiting for someone who dares to delete all nine sections, reopen a single frame, and say: "Look right here."

As for that N/A report — I am keeping it. Not to mock it, but to remind myself: a template can be beautiful, can be full, can be professional. But if it is empty inside, all it does is teach us a more polite way to lie.

And I hate polite lies. I prefer loud truths.