Your 20s will be some of your favorite years. Definitely miss the carefree nature of being a kid but the freedom of being an adult and being able to choose your path is something you'll learn to appreciate

Mostly listening to stuff like Currents, ERRA, Darkest Hour, Monuments, King Von, Jedi Mind Tricks and Plat Chat

Recommendations?

W

Looking for names I might not have heard of before

lol I am just a little bit under 6'2'' Kr1stal is a big boy, I think about 2 inches taller than me.

Thanks bru

Appreciate you man. Just trying to do my part to make the industry a bit better

Hardest scrims were Nongshim, BLG, Talon and PRX.

We scrimmed VLT once with them on 80+ ping. LF dropped 30+ and we won 16-8 or something like that

cringe

Zest from original Vision Strikers

send me the contract

Each region is unique. Asian teams are definitely the most aggressive. CN being by far the most chaotic. EMEA is the most structured and Americas tends to be second in this regard. I don't know too much about the internals of the CN scene but I know from other esports how seriously they take success in competition so I won't be surprised if they take over the game in a few years. That being said, right now there seems to be a lot more reliance on individual talent and "hero plays" than actual teamwork and solid theory.

I respect their system a lot and Vision Strikers is still my favorite team of all time.

PH passport is pretty weak and the government really makes it difficult for young people to leave the country. Definitely lots of talent there but like many of the SEA regions probably needs to invest more in the mentoring pipeline for the players. More experience coaches, developing IGLs. Right now you have a lot of fraggers and not a lot of great structure around them.

So, right after the match me and one of the players would always get pulled into the post match press conference for about 15-20 minutes. After that we would be back in our room in the arena and it would kind of depend what the context was. I think the players had a hard time talking about the games amongst themselves so after certain games we would have a little discussion about the stuff we did well or why we lost. Other times it was obvious that we needed some encouragement and had actually played well but just lost on the little things. I would always encourage everyone to stay off social media but of course it's hard to do and often I'd come back from the press conference to a totally silent room with a bunch of sad people doom scrolling twitter.

There were a couple of occasions where I lost my shit because of how poor our energy/effort was and these involved a lot more yelling.

After that we'd either go out to dinner or order in and I would immediately begin the review process to prep for the next week of practice.

Just treat everyone like humans. Mistakes and disagreements are totally normal in a competition. Be incredibly honest with players and encourage or even force them to speak to each other about problems. Also, making sure you have your own thought process and ideas cemented goes a long way in convincing others. But you also need to be able to reevaluate and be open to changing your mind.

It's probably the hardest part of the job

Yes, in an ideal world they should. I know they definitely would like to. However, you also have to take into account that the Indian passport is one of the hardest to get a visa with and investing in a player only to have them not make it into Korean is a devastating problem.

Some do I'm sure. I've never talked to a CN team personally

Send the contract

Ill AC for a competent and well organized head coach for sure.

Honestly, there are good Aussies but you guys are just so screwed by the ping. It's impossible for the scene to get the best quality scrims which means the player development is super behind. We scrimmed the Minimise team when they came to Japan and it really felt like a tier gap on pure mechanical skill.

I think there is a world where getting an Aussie team into VCT could boost things and maybe consolidate some of the best players like autumn, minimize, swerl but baring that it would kind of require teams bootcamping in a place they can get good scrims regularly

I came into the tryouts when there were about... 25-30 names being considered? Something like that. I would watch the vods of scrims and give management and staff my notes and I also kept stats manually from the end screens to track performance of people over a number of scrims and agents.

I gave my opinion on players and their decision making, comms and skills. Generally, there was quite a bit of agreement but there were a few names that some people liked and others didnt. I dont know how much impact I had on final decisions as a lot of the work and discussions were happening while I was asleep but we ended up with several of the players i liked and statistically had the top player from the tryouts in each position

I really liked Korea. Probably my favorite country I've ever been to other than maybe Iceland. Definitely miss the food, the public transportation and the adventure of being a stranger in a foreign land.

This was my first time living outside the US. Obviously I missed my family and just the comfort of my own home and life/routines but I could totally see myself moving back to Korea for a while even without esports work.

Anyone that will take me

Questionable upper body strength... tenacity? I'd clock him in at like 12 minutes 23 seconds with 4 failed attempts before success

Really appreciated getting to tell more of the story. Thanks Jeno. Happy to answer any other questions VLR might have.

Well, I've been lucky/dumb enough to bounce from position to position while finding jobs and also creating content. I did YouTube full time for a bit, casted, worked for startups, sponsorships, worked as head of media for acend while volunteering as a coach and eventually got a shot to do it full time.

Now that I'm out of work, I'll probably test the waters with content while looking for an opportunity with a new team and if nothing presents itself then I'll probably go find another career. I think a decent chunk of coaches/players get paid well enough to float for 6-8 months while looking for a new team. I dont have the same luxury so I'll be looking for whatever I can get for now.

Esports/gaming/streaming is a grind for 99% of people. But then again all jobs are grinds unless you're incredibly incredibly lucky

Hello fellow fraud coaches!

I've never played Minecraft....

Okay, I have a 10K minimum appearance fee though

On what? We are both unemployed with no podcast T_T

Big fan. teach kids violence from an early age. I didn't like him using a baguette though during Paris. Very disrespectful to bread

Unemployed bump

No

Xavi is a great prospect. Unfortunately for him, I think a lot of the Pacific teams have their IGLs locked in by this point (and over half of the team comm in languages other than English). Also, the PH passport can be pretty problematic for getting visas (although he does appear to have dual citizenship).

Well, I think being able to grab a tier-1 coach + and IGL with a season of working together + a tier-1 ready duelist is about as good of a haul as you can. I definitely think it's correct to try and get good talent from your region as much as possible. Imports should mostly be saved for when you absolutely cannot find a better alternative in your own region.

HYPOTHETICALLY

Honestly, idk. I think we have quite a bit of overlap so it might be better to focus on some other skills. But I'm sure we could work together well.

20 minutes ago?

No complaints. Thanks for asking! How's your day?

Alive probably would have done well in the Yoru meta but I think he retired. I'd say it's a big shame we haven't seen Chiwa on stage yet. I'd also love to see Pyroll get a real chance instead of being thrown into a dead team like on KC.

Nope. Dota was my MOBA of choice

I think they may be a bit like NSR from this year. In tier 2 they get away with WAY too much crazy stuff. They will need to adapt a bit and find a real style to build around instead of just brawling. I would have liked to see them play vs NSR in Ascension to see if their aim holds up against another fearless team of 5 shooters.

No trials as of yet as far as I know. I'm a bit out of the loop and not in KR at the moment.

1) Thanos Mug Academy, Totoro Gaming, Moon Raccoons
2) Sadly never :(

Oh I see.
Next year:
ULF
NSR
DRG
Envy
BCF
SLT

If the 6 played right now:
NSR
ULF
Envy
DRG
SLT
BCF

Relax child. Take a deep breath and step away from the keyboard

I keep asking him but he won't leave his house

Hmm, including G2, XLG?

G2 probably still top 3, Envy unfortunately likely to be bottom half since they lose two players who really make their style work.

I think BBL PCIFIC is probably like 8th-10th, ULF could make top 6.

Nongshim will be in the top 8 but I think SLT will probably struggle vs better competition.

DRG? I guess similar to last year. xlg i think falls off a bit.

Roger, sending the suggestions to management.

No, he's hopeless :(