tN1R on GUN5 Esports: “When I joined, it was a real joke of a team.”

In an international roster, when people don’t… Well, English isn’t their primary language. In any case, there are certain workarounds in place to facilitate communication. That’s how it was for us at HEROIC. I can’t judge other teams, because each one has its own internal dynamics and structure for how they do things. At HEROIC, for example, we had these “codes”: a short word—I don’t know, something like… We had “Terminator.” That was actually the word we used. It meant that one person would go to a location to gather—roughly speaking—information, while the others would follow slowly behind. And if there was, say, a group of people there, the other group would simply split off and head to a different location.

People are very different. And Europeans, in this regard—I don’t know—compared to CIS teams, as I’ve always said, they’re calmer and less confrontational. At least the guys I’ve worked with—they really aren’t confrontational. They’re very laid-back, just going with the flow. I mean, the way it is with us in general—it seems to me—with guys who want to achieve something, even if you’ve reached some kind of peak—I don’t know, won a major tournament or something—it always feels like it’s not enough, and you want even more. There—and this is just my assumption, just a subjective opinion—it’s not like that. I mean, you’ve achieved something, and for them, well, to put it bluntly, that’s enough, but if you manage to do even more—great. But with us, we always have to be better—we have to be better. You’re always trying to be better than you were six months ago. 

Objectively speaking, when I joined, it was a real joke of a team. ...> Our goals were to get the team into the top 30 so that either Slava would give us more money and we could strengthen the roster, or we’d get noticed and be picked up by another team. In fact, it turned out that they picked me up, they picked up xiELO, and they picked up someone else like that. It felt like a huge push for me because I joined a team where, to put it bluntly, I had to start from scratch to prove myself.