Wywiad z właścicielem Vega Squadron - Alexey Kondakov

Dota 2

— You have recently updated the roster, added Palantimos, Blizzy, and Undershock. How did you form the roster? Why did choose these players? Why did the previous players leave the roster of Vega?

We had the full list of all CIS players. I, the coach of the roster and the manager took part in the selection. We were choosing, according to our criteria, that we guessed to be necessary, made a table of players in accordance with the team’s priorities and started slowly working with them. I had a personal conversation with candidates, first of all, I asked various questions: I asked about their lifestyle and what they were fond of, if they were studying or not, living with parents or alone. I mean, I decided to assemble the team, relying on other approaches.

As for the reason why the previous players left the roster of Vega Squadron. At a moment, I came up with the idea and I realized what was going on: the players had no motivation, they didn’t want to win, they didn’t need that and that’s all! They wanted that their victories were achieved on a silver plate, while if you want to win, you have to work hard. And no one can do this accurately and for a long time. This is about the players we previously had. The times when CIS teams had assembled in 2012, come and prevailed at the tournaments have passed. Now, Dota is at the different level and Team Liquid did a great job to become who they are now. This is a prime example. Having talked with previous players, I understood that they didn’t want to change themselves. Because they allowed themselves to think in the way like: «Why did I have to do this? I don’t want to. Why do I have to do what I don’t want to?». Accordingly, neither I nor the coach was satisfied with that. I have decided to rely on young players that are extremely motivated, that have a fire in their eyes and also everyone can play well. They just have a lack of experience. So we started searching such players in CIS and now we have assembled a new young team.

Undershock

Undershock, obviously, is famous, he isn’t a newcomer. The choice fell on him totally accidentally. Nix had to play instead of Undershock, we tried him out but he refused in the last moment for an unknown reason. He said fair: «I can’t, I don’t like the roster, I don’t want to continue». We had to hire a mid player to continue playing a block of screams and Semion said: «We have Undershock». By the way, he was on the very first roster of Vega Squadron many years ago. We decided to invite Undershock and won the Poles, as much as I remember, with a score 2-0. We also liked who Dima communicated with the team, sympathized with his understanding of the game. He played well with us, so we decided to continue playing together. We tried and were happy with the results.

CemaTheSlayeR

Semion has been still playing. He is our long-liver and suits the whole team in all aspects: he plays good, is relatively consistent and understands the whole process that is happening in the organization. He is good, reliable, tried and tested.

Zayac

Zayac had been on the team before but then we decided to bench him and he waited a bit. I personally decided not to cancel a contract with him because right at that moment when we substituted me, there was a feeling that we actually wanted to work with him. This is a really talented player, in my opinion, he will have a great future. He is still young, he is 19 y.o. and a whole career ahead of him. I think that that is a player that will grow and be a very cool captain. He has a potential, a leadership, the understanding of the game.

— Who is a captain of the team right now? CemaTheSlayeR or Zayac?

Semion is officially a captain now, he makes drafts but Zayac coordinates more in the game.

— Do you have any problems with the Kyrgyz esportsmen? Are there visa issues or problems with bootcamps or Internet?

To tell the truth, we have. When they play at home, they have a very bad Internet, an awful ping and a packet loss. Due to this, it is uncomfortable to play at home for them. The guys come on a bootcamp with a great pleasure. They have a good Internet there and they definitely have not problems with coming to Russia. But there are visa issues. if a Kyrgyz wants to receive a visa to China, for example, he will have to have a surgery that we have made. You have to write some letters to the embassy as Kyrgyz are not given personal Chinese visas. You have to receive a group visa, then this group flies in the certain airport in China and then it is being accompanied from there further. This is about a group visa, however, then we were lucky to receive an individual one for Zayac. Since then, we have not come to China.

— And what will you do if you qualify for The International?

The USA is not a problem. They will go to Astana, receive the USA visas there and that’s all. By the way, that’s not the fact that The International will be hosted in the USA this year. Probably, it will be run in Canada but we have no experience of playing in Canada. I think that there will not be serious problems with North America and Canada. What will we do? We will get visas. We have a good visa agent, a good manager. We are already experts in this.

— So, do you have a visa agent, who works on visas for all players?

Yes, of course. But he is not full time but an outsource one - the tested and tried agent, with whom we have been working for a long time. Sometimes we miss him and we have to use some connections. Semion once was refused twice to receive a visa to Germany that was noticed in his passport (this happened in the Kiev embassy), I helped him to receive a visa in Moscow. Sometime later, he was given it for three years. After that case, there’s nothing to scare me.

— You have already finished your participation in The Bucharest Major. What main goal did you have?

Our main goal was to show the maximum play, which we were able to. There was nothing about a score, victories, and points. The guys didn’t have such goal. Our organization had a minimal pressure on the players. They had a goal to maximally show what they were able to do. Generally, he managed to do this in the third match. This was not a maximum but we were playing well. We could win the first two matches too, to tell the truth, we could play better. But actually, I and the coach are happy that we made some kind of progress, we received a lot of experience and played every next match even better and better. We played really normal in the third match. If this had been a bo3 series, we would have likely to win it, however, it’s still difficult for us to gain momentum. We lose the first game in best-of-three series very often. Basically, it’s Vega’s thing always to lose the first game, this had been before even on the previous roster.

— You had had a failed qualification to EPICENTER before the Major tournament. What has happened to the team?

This was a knockout for me, to tell the truth. Noone expected this because we had been preparing with cool teams, we had won Team Secret. Things had really gone well. Probably, the youth played an important part and the fact we were very worried, that was a real pressure! Because this was the CIS qualification and there were teams that we had not to lose. These were teams, in which Vasily AfterLife was playing, who we had kicked, which were a stack but not a team. But the thing is that such things get us out of our comfort zone. The CIS players, in fact, don’t know how to play in the discomfort zone. This is typical not only for the esports but for traditional sports too. The whole world knows how to play against CIS. If they make a pressure and get us out of comfort zone, we will not win, we need to learn this. We involve experts for this purpose. Various experts tell us, explain us and make some training. There is a small effect but it’s right.

— From what kind of sports do you involve experts?

I can’t tell you this. I would like this to remain a secret but can say that is not a hockey or a football. We have a very little amount of experts that know this methodology in CIS. Traditional sports psychologists claim: «You must turn off your emotions. You must come to competitions emotionless». We aren’t robots, we don’t have such emotion switch. What happens? You get on the stage, sit down to play, emotions emerge and you say to yourself: «Listen, that should not be, I do something wrong, I have emotions, that’s not right». After that everything comes to the end, you have a panic, a catastrophe and things start going bad. The main sense is not to fight with your emotions but to realize that you can be friends with them. Everything is easy. They emerge: positive ones or negative ones. You have to know how to use these conditions right and have a proper reaction to them. That’s the point.

— Are you going to play with such roster after The International?

It’s a difficult question. I can’t say anything for sure. It depends on if we qualify for The International or not, but before that, we are not going to change the roster. First of all, the transfer window is closed. Secondly, we have assembled the roster and decided to play so, I believe in the coach and the guys. I simply give them a time. If we fail the qualifiers to The International, then okay, I was not right, I made a mistake somewhere. A sad practice taught me not to do any sudden moves. If you look at Virtus.pro, for example, it is obvious that they are consistent. The rest of CIS teams are like waves. The super talents are really playing in VP, this is a good team. Na’Vi has also shown something in the season. It is unknown how their things will go. The rest of CIS teams exist in such way: we are at the peak of the form, our things are going well, we are in comfort zone, after that we certainly will have a failure, a comfort zone, everyone starts searching for other players, kick their previous teammates, the new player comes, the team feels a boost again, wins something and then things start going worse again. Here we think so: when we have the peak of decline, we will not have to break down but to break the system. And if we once survive this moment, then we will be able to reach the more stable level. That’s our plan.

— You are one of the very few teams that have not changed the roster after the end of the transfer window. You have a chance to receive an invitation to the qualifiers, in which 10 participants and only 2 invited teams will be. Will it be a plus for you to play against teams from open qualifiers?

This will not be a plus at all. In general, the chance to win, while playing against any CIS team, is always equal 50/50. I think there will be no one to be invited and there will be a lot of slots for the open qualifiers. Relatively speaking, there will be not two open qualifiers but five, for example. Teams will be the same: Team Spirit, Team Empire, Team Effect, Gambit eSports and all, against which we like to play, will be there. In my opinion, the CIS qualification is some kind of slaughter and a random. Usually, as I have said, this isn’t due to the level of play but due to the ability to be in a comfort zone. Because when you are playing against a CIS team, you can’t lose, you always remember what and who will say and think:«Oh, I lost this. What a shame!» There will be appropriate comments from the community after the failed match, they will discuss this on “prodota”. I personally always say to players: «Do not read this!» I don’t forbid but why do you do this? It’s a masochism. To be honest, I stopped reading comments after losses. I had read them before but then I realized: «Why? What’s the point?». Inadequate people write there more often. Of course, there are single essential comments as we have really devoted fans that are ready to go through fire and water for us. Many viewers cheer for the CS:GO roster and worry about Dota too. There is a phenomenon when a person cheers not for a roster but for a tag and that’s really cool. We are actually striving for this. We want to run away from the practice when people root for some single players, we want people to root for the organization. That’s our strategy.

CS:GO

— Vega Squadron played badly in the qualifiers to StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 4. It was a shock to many people. What happened? Was there too much CS:GO for the players?

First, this can sound trite but yes. The guys were tired. The Major tournament took all our strength. We really tried hard there and the strength ended a bit earlier. We didn’t have one victory to receive a “Legend” status. Secondly, there are enough problems in the team and the guys had a serious conversation after the loss at cs_summit 2 and they decided to make changes inside the team. A lot of transformations happened: a change of roles, a change of positions, we decided to try so. I can’t tell in details as we will see this in action very soon. I guess this will happen at the end of March, I will not say where but I’ll give an inside. There will be an announcement soon. It is extremity to change the roster now. We have decided that the potential of the roster is not unleashed. We know how we can play when we crush FaZe Clan, when we make a comeback against G2 Esports, when we stay strong against Team Liquid. We know our play, we know our level but we play very unstably. At the moment, we don’t have victories but the stability in the priority. If we advance to all LAN tournaments even with an average result, that will be acceptable for everyone. Then we will be working on our next step: how to win these LAN tournaments. To achieve stability, we made this step: changes inside the team, the change of the in-game leader and so on.

— So is it not worth for us to wait for changes on the roster?

No. I think that it’s not worth to wait until the Major tournament and it will be hosted in September. Yes, this can sound like a loud announcement and maybe everything will change there but at least I am not planning any changes on the roster. We try now if things go bad, inside changes in the team don’t work, we will think about that. But I am sure that everything will be fine.

— Have you ever planned to establish an Academy roster?

We thought to create such Dota 2 roster. I have been dreaming about that for a long time, to be honest. I want to assemble young pub players, to organize some kind of no-name team and to try to grow strong players. We have a lack of financial resources to realize the idea now. It seems that they don’t need a lot of money but you will need a manager, a bootcamp, trips and all of this will add up a sum. Even though we have five disciplines in our organization and the number of sponsors is even smaller, so we can’t realize this idea now.

PUBG

— StarLadder i-League Invitational PUBG finished a couple of days ago. Your team had failed the first two days but then played well and finished the participation in the 11th place. Did you have any goals for the PUBG roster?

Of course, we had a goal: to get as high as possible. Definitely, the top 1 was not what we had expected but PUBG actually is not our game and the first two days were really bad. At the moment, I think that PUBG is still very raw for the esports. It is spectacular but it is very random. We had a bad zone. Yes, of course, everyone was in the same conditions but someone was lucky with it, someone was not and the next time it will be good for you. But if our results had been a bit better in the first two days, maybe we would have entered the top 6 and this is a very different result. The guys are young, this was a big LAN tournament for them. Obviously, they competed in smaller LAN tournaments, drAmer (Georgy Faleev — the esports director of Vega Squadron) went with them, he noticed that the guys were very nervous on the second day and they showed they felt unconfident. Especially, after the so failed first day. Before the first day, they had really focused and been ready to destroy but then they were unlucky to do so and they demoralized. He tried “bring them back to life” as much as he could but as a result, they gained momentum on the third day. What can I say about them? I like our PUBG roster. We have the qualifiers to GLL ahead. The top 8 teams will go to GLL that, as much as I remember, will be in April and we are in the 9th place now. I think we have good chances to qualify for the tournament. Basically, we always have chances to go to LAN tournaments. In my opinion, we are the best team in Russia, not in CIS but in Russia. AVANGAR obviously looks stronger than we are but I can’t highlight any other team in Russia.

— Changes to PUBG rosters started yesterday. Will this affect you too?

We had a serious conversation. If we agree and solve problems with a training process and an attitude to the discipline, there will probably be no changes. I will say in such way: the possibility of the change of the PUBG roster is not big but I can’t exclude such turn of events because anything can happen.

— You said in the announcement of the roster that the shooter had shown itself as a great competitive discipline but the esports structure still had needed to be completed and a great number of participants. Do you still think that this game has an esports future?

If the developers do something with this random or maybe if zones appear in some specific places, which everyone knows, or if they make a small random, for example, they make four places where the zone can emerge, I guess the game will have a future. PUBG is a phenomenon that has gathered so many viewers, so many fans in such small period of time, it can’t just vanish without a trace. There were lots of views during StarLadder and I definitely think that this game has an esports future. I believe in the developers and that they will somehow fix this random. Because it’s really insulting when such things happen. It is very risky to change a drop point if trained to jump out not in Sosnovka but somewhere else.

— Why did you choose the former roster of Grachi?

To tell the truth, we didn’t choose a lot. The guys played at CyberSpace, at our home arena. The guys that worked at CyberSpace wrote me: «There are good players, they are communicative, hard-working and simply nice in person, come here, meet them. Maybe we will get them on the roster». And I did so: came and met them. Basically, I knew one person there a very long time ago, it was Gosha. He is a friend of Pasha Hvistunov from Virtus.pro who has previously played in Vega Squadron and we basically hung out together in the past. We didn’t have a great selection in the choosing of the roster for the reason, it just happened so. I think these guys are strong. We have made sure that they play well.

Others

— What is your opinion about Artifact, Valve’s new game?

I really want to play it. I am waiting for it so much. I didn’t like Hearthstone long ago. By the way, we had a good Hearthstone roster but we had to part ways with it then. I was not focused on it at that moment. I guess that Artifact will be loved, this will be a cool hype and a lot of people will be playing it and I think that we will maybe sign one or two players.

— Will they be Russian-speaking or English-speaking?

This doesn’t matter. We’ll see. Maybe they will be English-speaking. This will be a solo discipline. It is not so important in it. I had a StarCraft II roster in the past and we had such players as ShoWTimE, Bunny, for example. All of them have been in Vega Squadron, we grew them up. Maybe it’s not correct to say “grew up” but they were in our team. They were picked by a cool organization after us and they started playing there. So I have a big experience of working with solo discipline players, so it doesn’t matter if it is an English-speaking player or a Russian-speaking one. Basically, it can be said that we are an international organization. We have a Kyrgyz, a Ukrainian, a Belarus and a Russian.

—You have a FIFA player. What do think? Will he be able to fight his way to the world scene? Does he have a future?

He is gaining momentum in CIS thanks to Iura Sashinskii, the guy does a good job in Russian Federation of E-Sports Football. He is really doing great, a fan of his job. I don’t know how this will play out, we have picked a player maybe for the World Cup that will take place in Moscow. Maybe we will make some cool cases due to this but there are only thoughts now. I think I will come up with something. We have a talented player, he is in the top 5-6 in CIS, plays well, we support him and he needs someone to support him. If you dedicate yourself to your case, you will have not a time for a work or an education, you will have to do only this. A money must be earned somehow, so we have given him a small support and will see what will happen.

— What are plans for such esports discipline as League of Legends?

We have good chances to advance to the playoffs in this split, they are very small but we have them. We hold the 5th-6th place on the tournament table that consists of eight teams. We are not top at all in this season. However, we are going to power up the LoL roster for the summer split and focus on the summer split. Because, as you know, the winner of the summer split will go to the Worlds. So it is very important. I simply like the discipline, I like how the LoL structure is built and the game is good too. To be honest, I play LoL sometimes. I must understand what’s going on in what discipline and I play every discipline when I have time for this.

— What is your favorite discipline?

Now, I play LoL more often, strangely enough. But I can’t say that I like it more than Dota 2. I play this and that. I don’t have time for games. I had before but now I don’t. My favorite discipline is StarCraft II. This is on what I have grown up and Vega Squadron was created thanks to it. So of course, StarCraft II is my favorite game.

— Do you want to send greetings to someone as our interview is coming to the end?

Of course, I will send greetings to all fans that follow us. I want to thank them a lot for their support and patience that is the most important. I want to say that we will not let you down and proceed to our goal, the goal that we are going to achieve. We just have a long way compared to Virtus.pro, for example, that have a big financial resource. We do everything progressively but we will proceed it for sure. It’s just a matter of time.