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Know your gamer: Quatervois (Vainglory)

Amos “Quatervois” Ker, captain of Team Impunity’s Vainglory team. (PHOTO: Yahoo Singapore)
Amos “Quatervois” Ker, captain of Team Impunity’s Vainglory team. (PHOTO: Yahoo Singapore)

For one of Singapore’s top Vainglory players, the journey to professional gaming could have taken another turn.

Amos Ker, better known as “Quatervois”, had to make the decision whether to continue his Vainglory journey on his own, after a friend he started playing with migrated back to Korea.

The decision to continue brought him to the world of eSports, and with it, competitive Vainglory. Now, as the captain of Team Impunity, the 18-year-old is aiming to make his mark at the World Electronic Sports Games (WESG), after competing in a showcase event on the same stage a year ago.

Yahoo Singapore sat down with Ker to talk about his journey into eSports and with Impunity, as well as the challenges he faces as a team captain in this growing industry.

What got you into eSports?

When I was just a little kid and I actually watched a lot of videos, and I sort of found out about eSports through watching someone called “Faker” (a renowned League of Legends player). I saw his story so I want to replicate his legacy and how he won three world championships out of the four that he attended, and I wanted to replicate the dominance that he showed in eSports. I was playing games casually and generally me, as a person, I’m very, very competitive so any games that I play in school with my friends, I always end up on top because I always spend a lot of time and effort playing the game.

Naturally (I brought that) over when I started to play “Vainglory” and I realised I was starting to get good at it, but my friend actually left the game because he had to migrate back to Korea to study. So I was on my own and I had to make the decision on whether I should continue to play the game because I started playing just for my friend and he already left. I decided to continue and from there I discovered eSports.

What do your family and friends think about you and eSports?

I actually have a group of really supportive friends and family as well but it didn’t start out that way. My friends were always supportive but… I mean in school and stuff, some people when they see you get little more famous – you appear in newspapers or online article, or featured in the game section, they will tend to mock or tease you a little but it’s all for fun and they’re really supportive deep down.

My family, my mum especially, was not really supportive of me when I was doing eSports at the start. But after time, I showed that I could juggle both studies and eSports. I also showed I was very determined, because she tried to talk me into leaving eSports and stop playing games competitively. But she could also see that it was not an addiction or just a hobby; rather, it’s something I want to be in the future, like an aspiration.

She saw that determination in me and how I was making concrete stuff – if she wanted a timetable, I would do it for her. I’m that determined that I’ll just do everything just so I can continue playing competitively. That’s how she started to support me and eventually, now she’s fully supportive and I’m really thankful for that.

Ker playing Vainglory. (PHOTO: Yahoo Singapore)
Ker playing Vainglory. (PHOTO: Yahoo Singapore)

How would you challenge the traditional view on eSports versus academic pursuits?

My focus will not be changing the mindset of the parents, but of the actual players themselves. If you are truly passionate of something, then why let your parents’ opinions affect you?

You have to spend hours and days to convince them but just spending those hours and days is actually worth it because, [while] your parents can tell you what to do, they can advise you what to do, but what [is it] you want to do, you have to let them know very clearly.

If you let them know super clearly and they still force you, then they’re really not understanding their child well enough. If they are interested in medicine and you force them to be a chemist, you wouldn’t say that to your child. Then why can you say things like, “No, you can’t do eSports, you have to be a doctor”.

eSports is really similar to sports, so if you would consider sports a profession, I wouldn’t understand why you would not consider eSports a profession simply because it is on an online platform.

The skillsets needed (for eSports) are sometimes more developed than they are in sports. You need the same amount of practice, you face a lot of mental fatigue rather than physical fatigue because you have to focus… for the entire 20 minutes to one hour. I do think that it is a very legitimate profession especially if you see the industry of eSports where it’s actually blooming.

Don’t just talk about eSports players, talk about eSports event managers, production managers… you can see them achieving and doing a lot of things that are similar to sports, maybe even better, because of the wider access of platforms that they are able to reach out to.

What is it like being the captain of a professional eSports team?

Because I am a very performance-driven captain, like, I really will expect my team to hit that performance and if you are playing on a Monday and by the end of the week you are not improving then something is wrong, you have to go fix it and if you don’t fix it then actions might have to be taken.

So you might be subbed in by a sub that is training almost as hard as you, except he is improving and you are not. I think that is the hardest thing for me because even though I’m performance-driven, I’m also a people’s person so I really like to bond with my teammates.

We are very close, and sometimes it’s difficult to make the decision whether to let this guy, who you know has been putting effort but maybe he’s just not improving, to sit out for a while, maybe see what his mistakes are. Maybe some others are trying very hard to get into the team but they aren’t just there.

So how do we motivate them to continue trying? How do we motivate them to not give up on what they want to achieve? I think that’s one of my biggest struggles as well as any captain’s – you’re responsible for a lot of things, especially in team dynamics, because I’m mostly in charge of analysis and I plan a bit of the gameplan as well. If it doesn’t work, then you’ll be blamed. Other than that, being a captain is pretty okay for me because I have that responsibility and I have that commitment to drag the team on the right track… Sometimes people just want to have fun, I’ll just redirect them to the goal.

What are some of the things that local eSports players can improve upon?

It’s like they (Singapore players) have this inferiority complex that stops them, like they’re inferior to maybe the Americans. They look up to them and they feel like they can never be better than them.

You have to aim really high if you want to achieve what you want, like a higher standard (than) just in the nation itself. (I feel) our team is successful is because we are a bunch of individuals who aim really high, like world-champion levels of high, instead of “Let’s be the best in the nation!”.

If you aim just to be the best in the nation then you’re only going to be the best in the nation, and if you keep trying to stay at the top of the nation you’re not going to get anywhere. But if you’re at the top of the nation already, maybe aim to be the top of the region, which is the whole of South-east Asia, then maybe the whole world after that.

Ker and his teammates discussing strategy. (PHOTO: Yahoo Singapore)
Ker and his teammates discussing strategy. (PHOTO: Yahoo Singapore)

You have to keep aiming higher and higher instead of just trying to maintain where you are at.

(There are also) those who are very reluctant to accept feedback and when they lose, they are not getting the right lessons from it.

If you lose a competition, you have to learn why you lost and you have to make that loss count, don’t just get angry for a while and then be like, “Okay, I’m fine now”. You might be fine but are you improving?

If you understand eSports, you understand that it’s not just three to four years. It’s going to be a long journey for yourself. If you want to be successful in eSports, you have to be in it for 15 to 20 years and even more. The lifespan of a player can only last five to 10 years but after that, what are you planning to venture into?

If you’re really passionate and you want to get into eSports, that five to 10 years of playing could actually help you or propel you into another whole part of the industry where you can be a shout-caster or a coach or an analyst. So there are a lot of paths you can go down… You really have to watch for the long term and there is a shortage of Singapore players who are willing to take eSports for the long term.

Ganesh Thayagarajan was a mentee from the eSports Journalism course run in partnership by Yahoo Singapore and SCOGA, and now writes as a contributor for eSports in Southeast Asia.