Being a professional gamer may seem like a dream job, but the reality of the situation is that it’s hard. You’re dedicating your daily life to a video game, and while that may seem ideal, it can become strenuous and take its toll. But most of the time we hear from the players, and the guys that have made it to the top. Heretics are a team that are still rising, and aside from the four players on the roster, there’s two more guys who are behind the team every step of the way who don’t get as much time in the limelight.
Introducing Arnau Vidal, the owner of Heretics and Antonio Llovo, the coach for the Call of Duty squad. Both of them have been involved with competitive gaming for years; Vidal has connections to Spanish YouTubers and has previously worked with another huge Spanish team, Giants, while Llovo used to work as an analyst at Giants and is a former journalist at Dexerto, along with coaching the Heretics squad.
So what is life like for the guys, working alongside the squad? Vidal says that they try to be a “familiar team”. Their main goal is to make the players feel comfortable and that they don’t like how some teams have a visible disconnect from their players. “We prefer to have a good relationship with them, hang out together, and do stuff together because I think that if you have good energy in a group and you feel like a family, everything will go better.”
Llovo followed this sentiment by explaining that whenever he’s not busy with university, he’s with the guys, coaching them and figuring out what mistakes they made during scrims, along with watching gameplay from other teams matches to see what tactics they can use in their own gameplay.
Life for Llovos outside of his university work is focused on Heretics, but from his role at Dexerto to becoming an analyst at Giants and now a coach for Heretics is a big change. He explained that he left his role at Dexerto in August of last year, before being approached three months later to be the head coach at Heretics: “The analyst role is not as influential as the coach role because it’s mainly just knowing the game and how to play it and stuff.” He also revealed that he got a lot of help during his short spell at Giants in terms of group management, and he understands that he’s been given an opportunity most people only dream of getting, and that he reckons he did quite well during CWL Atlanta.
He went on to explain that social media is absolutely key to younger players wanting to go pro. “You should be careful in social media because it may not seem like it’s that important, but maybe a tweet or post could get you signed to a big team or not. For the record we have two 18 year old guys who just came in that played a lot and have been competing for 3 or 4 years and I think it’s just that, they play the game, but you don’t leave your status behind.”
He added to this by explaining just how often the guys play, reaching 8-10 hours nearly every day of the week, and sometimes going as high as 14 hours per day in the run-up to major events such as CWL Atlanta and Birmingham. “If you want this and you’re convinced you can do this, then just put hours in and work hard and eventually you’ll get there.”
In terms of the younger players, Llovo explained that there’s three 18 year old guys in the team, along with MethodZ who is 23. So MethodZ often helps Llovo out when it comes to teaching and educating the others when they underperform, along with dealing with the pressure because he’s been in this situation before, playing against OpTic in previous years.
One of the most important aspects to being a good Call of Duty player is being able to shoot straight. Which is obvious right? If you can’t hit your shots, you can’t kill the other team, meaning you can’t win. But Llovo explained that while raw gunskill is important, a large part of it comes down to knowing how to play the game. Watching other players, learning the best positions, predicting where other players will be and being proactive rather than simply reacting to when someone shoots at you.
There’s really nothing like getting practice against the best teams in the world though, and that’s exactly what the Heretics guys get when they come to events like these and play against teams like OpTic, FaZe and eUnited. Vidal touched on this specifically, saying that he’s “sure that the players learned so much from Optic, Faze, United, and Era. They were the teams in our pool. I’m sure it’s going to help in terms of experience, how to react to certain situations and in the next events; Birmingham, Seattle, Anaheim and hopefully Champs.”
But where does the future of Call of Duty lie for the competitive players? According to Llovo, the Spanish scene has had quite a few problems this year. “We don’t have the national leagues this year and I think most of us think this is a step down, but this game is great and I think that next year it will be even better.” He explains that the current system for players earning pro points every day is draining, and he hopes the system can return to how it was during Black Ops III, with regional leagues for North America, Europe, etc.
You can catch Heretics in action at CWL Birmingham next weekend, March 30-April 1. For more Call of Duty news, check out why Sharp has quit WWII and get all the information on FaZe’s apartment being burgled. In other news from our interviews at Atlanta, we spoke to numerous players about their thoughts on Black Ops IIII.
