An interview with Realistic Ballers

 

Arguably the best FIFA team to have come out of Malaysia, Realistic Ballers has since earned for themselves over 15 podium finishes in major tournaments spanning the past two years. Note-worthy triumphs include the FIFA 11 WCG Malaysia, a clean sweep of medals at FIFA 12’s PS3 Subang Summit, the 2012’s WCG Asian Championship, a double snag of both 2011’s IeSF Malaysia Qualifiers and 2011’s One Asia Cup Malaysia Qualifier medals, Gold and Silver, as well as being conferred the double MyCORE eSports Award winners in 2011 for both FIFA 11 and FIFA Online 2.

 

 

RGN: Hi Realistic Ballers’ members, it’s nice to have this interview with you. Your team has quite a unique name, what does that mean?

Reallistic Ballers: The name Realistic Ballers actually came from the combination of the words, “Realistic” and “Ballers”. The term “Realistic” was used to describe how much the founders love to play FIFA in a ‘realistic’ way, similar to how the game is played in real life. While the term “Ballers” means ‘footballers’ because the founders are also football players besides just playing it virtually. Thus, Realistic Ballers basically refers to footballers playing FIFA realistically! That’s why our team’s slogan is “Playing it realistically!”

 

RGN: How was your team established?

Realistic Ballers: Realistic Ballers FIFA Gaming clan was formed and established in the year 2011. It was formed and established as just another FIFA gaming clan in Malaysia by 3 experienced gamers from 2 previous top FIFA clans, which are [W|nDs] and -MyFES-. With the objective of bringing Malaysia’s FIFA standard to another level, these 3 experienced gamers and close friends who shared the same passion in FIFA and real football, decided to form this team.

 

RGN: Can you tell us more about your founding members?

Realistic Ballers: The founders are Kent ‘aRrOyOs’ Liaw, Alexander ‘A13x’ Lim and Vincent ‘Vin’ Chew in no particular order. They are 3 very experienced, veteran and semi-professional FIFA gamers in Malaysia who have been involving in the competitive gaming scene in Malaysia for more than 10 years.

 

RGN: Do you have any sponsor? Is it hard to find a sponsor for an eSports team?

Realistic Ballers: At first, we were working hard to look for sponsors to fund the team. Without sponsors, the team had no training ground to meet up for training and to conduct team discussions. Besides that, it prevented us from executing our plans for the team and the Malaysian FIFA community due to financial limitations.

However, we were very happy and fortunate when we successfully secured 2 sponsorship deals. Currently our sponsors are FTZ Asia.net and Reebok Malaysia. Our first sponsor FTZ Asia.net, which is located in SS15 Subang Jaya, is one of the popular cyber cafes in Malaysia. It has now become our official training venue since October 2011.

Our second sponsor was secured in September 2012, with Reebok Malaysia as our official apparel sponsor. The American-inspired global brand shares a common objective with Realistic Ballers, that is to challenge and lead through creativity and we were happy to have our own apparel to be worn during our training sessions and during competitions. We were really grateful and thankful to FTZ Asia.net and Reebok Malaysia as our first 2 official team sponsors and we are working hard to secure more sponsorship deals.

 

 

RGN: How many people are there in your team?

Realistic Ballers: Team Realistic Ballers currently have a total of 11 members with 5 Senior members in the Main “Senior” Team. When we officially kicked off our program to nurture young and passionate FIFA gamers in March 2012, we recruited 6 more members into the team’s new sub-division, called the Realistic Ballers FIFA Academy “Junior” Team.

 

RGN: What qualities do gamers need to have when they want to join your team? Why did you think about setting up Senior and Junior teams and how do they help each other in training?

Realistic Ballers: When we first started our recruitment drive during the establishment of our RB FIFA Academy, we, the founders, were very clear on the criteria of the members we are looking for. In Realistic Ballers, we emphasize a lot on good disciplined behavior, professionalism and sportsmanship as well as a great passion for the game.  We believe that no matter how great a gamer can be, if he/she doesn’t possess a good attitude and doesn’t practice sportsmanship, we strictly would not consider recruiting such gamers into the team at all.

The idea of having a Senior team and a Junior team (RB FIFA Academy) is actually to give the overall team a proper structure. Obviously the Senior team comprises of very experienced gamers while the RB FIFA Academy team comprises of newbies and gamers who are still struggling to reach the top. Thus, during training sessions,the RB FIFA Academy members are being supervised and guided by the Senior members.

 

RGN: Do you often train with each other? How do you schedule your training?

Realistic Ballers: Due to the fact that some members work and study daily, we try to have our training sessions as often as possible. We have a weekly training session on every weekend of the week where we will be training, sharing discussions and guiding the Academians in the 6-7 hours training session at FTZ Asia.net cyber café. However, we will conduct more training sessions for the team when we have tournaments around the corner.  As for our training routines, we have come out with a structure dedicated for our Academians where one Senior member is assigned to one Academy member as the supervisor to guide and monitor the Academian’s progress during the training session. Then the supervisors will report to the managers on the Academians’ performances during our final discussion of the day. Sometimes the management will also conduct team discussions between the members from time to time on how to improve each of the members as a team.

 

 

RGN: What do you do to balance your gaming and your life?

Realistic Ballers: In Realistic Ballers, we encourage our members to practice WORK.LIFE.BALANCE, which is to know how to practice an effective personal time management. We want and hope our members to be able to absorb the good benefits from gaming, while not affecting their everyday lifestyle. Therefore, we advise the members to always attend at least the weekly training sessions and to train themselves at home on other days, so not to affect their work, studies and family time.

 

RGN: Your team is one of the most successful FIFA teams in Malaysia now, how did you guys get there? And do you have any rivals in Malaysia?

Realistic Ballers: A huge passion for the game and a never-give-up attitude are the main things we believed that had driven us to gain achievements. Without a great passion for the game and E-Sports, gamers will not have the hunger to strive for glory. Over the years, we had seen and met many new FIFA gamers in Malaysia but unfortunately, only a small numbers who stayed and continued to compete at the competitive level. We are rivals to everyone on the virtual pitch but we are good friends in real life.

 

RGN: Can you tell us about some memorable moments that you have experienced in your time with the team?

Realistic Ballers: Our memorable moments are plenty as we managed to quickly achieve our successes upon Realistic Ballers establishment. In 2011, the team achieved a Gold medal in the FIFA11 WCG Malaysia national championship as well as in the FIFA Online 2 scene, where the team had representatives to play for Malaysia in the One Asia Cup tournament in Malaysia and the IeSF international tournament in Korea. However, the most memorable moment will be in the year 2012, as Realistic Ballers started clinching several huge titles. Realistic Ballers started clinching their first 2012 Gold medal in the first small-scaled PS3 tournament in the Heroes Challenge Cup organized by Heroes Tavern. Then we proceeded to secure the Gold and Silver medals in the FIFA12 WCG Malaysia national championship as well as securing the FIFA12 WCG Asian Championship Gold medal too on the same day!

 

RGN: I see your team also plays FIFA Online 2, what do you think about this game, compared to the “traditional” FIFA series? What’s the difference and how must traditional FIFA gamers do to adapt to FIFA Online 2?

Realistic Ballers: Actually we only have two RB members who were playing FIFA Online 2 (FO2) competitively in the last few years, that is A13x and Vin. However, they have dropped FO2 recently to focus fully on the FIFA series instead. FO2 is a fun game but due to its online nature which required a lot of time and effort spent to play the game and to keep up with other FO2 gamers, it’s difficult to be focusing on 2 different games especially when we are working adults. The main difference between FO2 and FIFA13 is the realism gameplay of course, where FIFA13 is way more realistic while FO2 is still using the old engine, which is quite a direct and restricted gameplay. We would say current “traditional” FIFA series gamers will find it hard to adapt to an older gameplay but due to its specialty of getting to own your favourite team to play with, there will be gamers who play FO2 if they have the time for it.

 

RGN: Can you share with us some of the plans you have planned for the team in the near future?

Realistic Ballers: Our team was established with the main missions to improve the FIFA gaming community and to nurture new young talents in Malaysia. The team management had identified a list of plans for the team in which we will carry out step by step. One of the plans which has already started is the establishment of the Realistic Ballers FIFA Academy in March 2012. Along the years since our establishment, Realistic Ballers had also organized a few FIFA gaming tournaments on our own for the Malaysia community. In year 2013, we are working on building a community portal to gather all the FIFA gamers in Malaysia under one common platform. On top of that we will also be developing a web system whereby it will be used to host our own official RB FIFA13 league and tournaments online. Not forgeting, the team is constantly working hard to secure more sponsorship opportunities, especially in cash terms to aid in the team’s plans to hold more events and competitions in Malaysia.

 

RGN: What are your plans regarding participation in foreign competitions?

Realistic Ballers: Definitely a yes! Organizing and expanding our FIFA tournaments and online leagues to other SEA countries is our dream and a huge step. At the moment, we hope that we can start things off properly and gain more exposure for now. When things are great, we will definitely be planning for this!

 

RGN: What are your thoughts on the FIFA community in Malaysia as well as in Asia?

Realistic Ballers: The FIFA community in Malaysia is getting better and better over the years and we have seen more new faces joining the tournaments in Malaysia, which we feel is a good sign that community in Malaysia is growing and improving.  Eventually this increases the competition level in Malaysia and we would say that the standard of Malaysian FIFA gamers is pretty good now. However, we are hoping for more FIFA teams to be established by other gamers in Malaysia to create a competitive and challenging atmosphere in which we feel it will help boost the talent among Malaysian gamers.

 

RGN: Have you ever had any clan-wars with players from other countries? What’s your greatest takeaway from those matches?

Realistic Ballers: So far, Realistic Ballers only participated in a PS3 FIFA12 clan-war against Team Kickers from Singapore last year. Our matches were being streamed LIVE over the Internet and it was a great experience for us to be playing with the Singaporean experienced FIFA gamers. We hope that we can organize another one with them in the coming months as well as with other FIFA clans from other countries!

 

RGN: Does your team have a specific playing style?

Realistic Ballers: If we have to say, our specific playing style is to play the game realistically! Haha but the truth is, we do not practice a single and specific playing style. We allow the flexibility of each member to incorporate their own creativity and ideas into their games. After all, we believe that everyone is comfortable with their own playing style. We encourage creativity in the game and we do exchange ideas, formation line-ups, creativity and tactical information among the members.

 

RGN: What are your thoughts on FIFA 13 and what do you think EA should do to make the franchise more attractive?

Realistic Ballers: The FIFA soccer series game had improved dramatically over the last few years especially with the implementation of next-gen engine in the game since FIFA 11. In our opinion, FIFA13 this year is much more difficult compared to previous FIFA series, which we think is good as it’s getting more realistic and no longer depends on specific ‘bugs’ to score goals. Scoring techniques/methods that worked well in FIFA 12 is no longer that effective on the FIFA13 engine. Several in-game teams and players are more balanced now in FIFA 13 as well.

A couple of game modes in FIFA13 that caught our eyes are the ‘TEAM PLAY’ mode and the ‘BE A PRO’ mode. In fact, Realistic Ballers have plans to organize team-based FIFA tournaments in the future rather than the common traditional 1v1 tournament format because we want to promote “teamwork” more.  Hopefully EA will have the same vision with us and bring in more flexible and multiplayer features on the ‘TEAM PLAY’ mode in FIFA14.

 

For more information on Realistic Ballers, head on over to their official Facebook fanpage at http://www.facebook.com/realisticballersgaming?fref=ts/