FireCuda flexes its pro gaming muscles in the world of pro gaming.
The world of pro gaming may not be all fun and games, but it sure is fun to put to use FireCuda’s ridiculous speeds.
A Conversation with Eric Khor
We recently spoke with Eric Khor, the manager of Fnatic Dota 2, about his team’s successes, how the pro gaming is not all fun and games, and why they love Seagate FireCuda drives provided to them by team sponsor Seagate.
How did you get started in pro gaming?
I started out in Esports as a Dota 2 journalist having worked for myMYM.com, joindota.com, and gosugamers.net. Through a lot of hard work, I soon rose up the ranks on these websites and was appointed to be the Dota 2 crew leader in GosuGamers. As part of this role, I ended up getting to interview a lot of prominent players including Malaysian legends, Mushi and Ohaiyo. When Mushi came back from China to form an all-Malaysian squad, he asked me to become the manager of the then Team Malaysia and it took me no hesitation to accept the job. Since then, I have always been a team manager and was responsible for the acquisition of Team Malaysia by Fnatic.
What does your job amount to?
My job is to ensure that players on my team do not have anything to worry about outside of game and that includes, but is not limited to meticulous scheduling, food arrangement, team house maintenance, visas, financial planning, travel arrangement, sponsors fulfillment, contract extensions, buyout situation, and whatever it takes to make sure the players remain at tip top shape. It is a 24/7 job that requires me to be on standby at all times.
What’s the difference that gear can make? How has gear made or broken your games?
When playing online competitively or for scrims, we rely heavily on the equipment we have in our gaming houses. Lackluster performance can lead to frame-rate and connection issues. This leads to poorer in-game performance, no matter what skill level you have. Our equipment has never really undermined our performance due to the high quality products our sponsors supply. Knowing that you are using the best of the best with the reliability it provides, helps to get you totally focused on the gaming, rather than having to worry about your equipment.
What are your favorite tools to use in gaming? Any of them made by Seagate?
Our Seagate drives are mainly used for storing replays from matches we are analyzing and revisiting in order to improve our game. We are currently using FireCuda it has been great. It has a very high transfer rate which allows for faster downloads as well as the transferring of files. This is especially prominent when we have to revisit our previous games. All in all, a lot of time saved.
What’s the latest event you’ve played and how did it go?
We recently played in several qualifiers including The Summit 8 SEA qualifiers, MDL Macau SEA qualifiers, and Dreamleague Season 8 SEA qualifiers. I am very happy to say that we won and qualified for The Summit and Dreamleague. After two months of sub-par results, we made a small roster change and while we went into these tournaments without any practice, we are very proud that the team gelled immediately. Unfortunately, we lost in MDL Macau qualifiers to the eventual winner TNC. We will be heading to Sweden for Dreamleague on the 1st of December and then to Los Angeles for The Summit 8 on the 13th of December.
What are the common misunderstandings about the world of pro gaming?
The Esports industry is still a very young industry and the biggest misconception about Esports is that it is all fun and games. But it is not. Everybody actively involved in Esports works extremely hard and let their work do the talking. Sometimes I feel that the newer people are trying to get famous or be known too quickly while not putting in the work. That is not sustainable. As I have always said to some of my friends, “Let your work do the talking, and acquire skills to enable you to do better.”
