EEG: Hope you are having a great day! Knowing that one of the big influences in your life are video games, let me start by asking: how does a day in the life of a gamer like you looks like? How do you use your time, since the moment you wake up, till the moment you fall asleep?
Silviu Hotoi: Hey! That’s a bit hard to answer, really depends. Mostly I get up at 7:30 AM, take a shower and go to work (I work as a workforce/ data analyst at a multinational company). I get off at 6 PM and sometimes go for a drink (I laid off beers and coffee lately, so mostly tea), sometimes go for a walk and shooting some pictures (beginner photograph) or straight home. When I get home, I usually eat and take a shower and then I play until getting sleepy or tired. I don’t play League exclusively, I also play CSGO, OSU! and other MMOs like Lineage. When there’s a tournament coming up, I dedicate myself to League for a couple of weeks in advance.
EEG: Gaming is also a big responsibility. Especially when you’re in a competition and you also have other players that rely on you. Tell us about how you started to train in a professional manner?
Silviu Hotoi: I consider I started training myself in a professional manner when I took time to look at replays and analyze my mistakes. It’s different looking to the game without having to focus all the time at the map, CS-ing or micro play. I’m a bit of a perfectionist so even when I finish a game with a perfect KDA I take the time to look at the replay because I’m sure I made some mistakes that went through unpunished by the opponents. Oh, and as a note: I don’t consider myself a pro-player and not even semi-pro, but I do consider that I have the ethics and mindset.
EEG: It took something before video-games were actually considered “sports”, but nowadays we have real eSports competitions! I’m sure you’re very familiar with this kind of events. Tell us about your experience with them, your performances and share a few thoughts and insights.
Silviu Hotoi: My first contact with LAN tournaments were about 10 years ago when I started playing Counter-Strike 1.6 . I wasn’t in the top then, was merely a high skilled player running with the pros, but nothing fancy. I’m an extremely competitive player (all my friends can back that up, even the non gamer ones) so I liked the feeling. After the first season of League of Legends (I didn’t watch the championship series at all, didn’t even know that existed), the EU server split into EUW and EUNE, and there was a massive upcoming tournament. I gathered some local friends and we created a team. We didn’t practice or anything, we just checked-in at the event (hosted by ESL if I recall correctly) and started playing. We went to the only Internet Café in town and played for 12 hours straight. That was the first time I thought of myself “Hey, I can really do this”. Unfortunately, that was not the day. We lost in the quarter finals against Zombilau’s team (probably the most known player in Romania), but I was proud of myself. We got ranked top 8 of over 120 teams and it felt great. When season 2 started, I had some problems and wanted to focus on my studies so I quit League, only to get back in the middle of season 3, when I treated everything more serious. I started attending LANs when I got into college and even won a few, teaming up with my brother but lately playing with better ranked players. When I moved to Bucharest 2 years ago, I started going to bigger events and looking for better teams. Got first place on two events in Bucharest: Nexus tournament at Eastern European Comic-Con (teaming up with Trel, Vrow, Speedy and DeadliestHit, all known players in Romania) and LSE League of Legends tournament (Hosted by Polytechnic University of Bucharest, where I played for team Nexus Gamers Pub, teaming up with Alddy, Vrow, Xellos and CrazyBannana, again, all known players in Romania).
Regarding the atmosphere, and general feeling on LAN tournaments, it’s great. The fact that you’re friends with everybody from every team, but as soon as you enter champion select you’re enemies is great. Nobody takes it personally and that’s awesome.
EEG: Let’s imagine for a moment, that you’ve just been promoted to CEO at one of the biggest eSports Events in the World. What would you change, regarding the way these competitions work, or how would you organize it, having the free will to do so?
Silviu Hotoi: I don’t think I’d change much at all. The big companies are already hiring ex-esports pro players to manage big events or being esports directors and stuff like that. Esports events are organized by people of our kind, esports people.
EEG: Are there any people that inspired you? Or maybe any fictional characters from video games/comics?
Silviu Hotoi: I think I got mostly inspired by me, especially when I was failing. I always wanted to prove to myself that I can get to the top. Of course, I also get inspired by pro-player stories and quotes and all that.
EEG: A side question: what can you tell us about the so called “skin-industry” regarding the sums of money that can be made by selling skins? (ex CS:GO)
Silviu Hotoi: I think it’s great. Everything is as valuable as much as somebody is willing to pay for it. For example, if you just spent $500K on a Porsche, but nobody is willing to pay more than $10, that Porsche has $10 net value. It may worth more for you, but you can’t get your money back, can you? It’s the same with skins in CS:GO. If you have an unique Dragon Lore AWP skin and you put on sale for $10K, it’s worth absolutely $0 until somebody pays that up. And sometimes they do.
EEG: Is there any country in this world where you would like to participate in a eSports competition?
Silviu Hotoi: That’s debatable. Depending on what I would want at that time(I’m referring to regions, not countries in particular):
If I wanted the biggest competition, that would be Asia, there’s no secret that Korean and Chinese players are most skilled and practice the most.
If I wanted the “show”, that’s clearly North America, they have the best production.
If I wanted to play with the biggest blend of playstyles and mentalities, I’d choose Europe.
But if I wanted to play for the best crowd, I’d choose the Brazilian League, that’s the most energetic public I’ve ever seen.
EEG: One last question. Let’s imagine again. If you could move to any place in this world and stay there forever, what would that place be and what are the 4 things you would take with you?
Silviu Hotoi: I adapt really easy to any gear, so there’s nothing fancy, so I’d take my motivation, will and self esteem. No, leaving the deep talk aside, I’d take my computer, my internet connection (assuming there’s none) and my tea cup.
