The interview with the owner of Vega Squadron Aleksey Kоndakov

We present you the part of the interview taken by egamersworld.com journalists from Vega Squadron owner Aleksey Kоndakov regarding PUBG team and scene.

— 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.