Today, we want to present to you a team from Australia. I’m so surprise when I found out a team leader is just 16 years old, but he has a big dream to go to IeSF 2012. However, no one gives him a chance because A.V.A. is still not popular enough in Australia. So we hope via the interview, you will know more about a young A.V.A. community in Australia.

RGN: Let's get start with introducing yourself.

Jack Smith: My name is Jack Smith. I’m 16 years old. I play A.V.A. both in servers of U.S.A. and Singapore. I’m in a team called “Azures”, who is looking to go competitive.

 

Jack Smith - Leader of Azures

RGN: How's the story of your team?

Jack Smith: Well, it started with just me and my best friend ‘teeks’, which is the co-leader of Azures. We first started playing A.V.A one year ago just for fun, but over this past year we have been interested in competitive gaming, so we went out looking for people from Australia to join us. At first, it was not working at all. So we went on to start playing League of Legends, and we met a few Australians on there, ‘isteventi’, ‘riarazz’, ‘Rondevu’ and ‘Daikon’. Once we had our starters, we tried playing in tournaments on USA A.V.A. but with our ping, we weren’t allowed. But we still practiced a lot.

Over our years of playing A.V.A., we always knew we were good enough, just never knew how to tell the world.

 

Sam 'teeks'  - Co-leader of Azures

RGN: Why are you guys interesting in A.V.A.?

Jack Smith: We are interested in A.V.A. because we all like the pace and the structure of the game. There is no other FPS game like A.V.A. and also, we are good at it. It is all about our pings that let us down.

 

RGN: Could you tell us about A.V.A. community in Australia?

Jack Smith: Well, there are just few people in Australia that play A.V.A. 100 people at the most due to our pings, no one likes playing with lag.

 

RGN: What's the most popular games in Australia?

Jack Smith: There are a lot of games such as CS: Source, DotA, LoL, SC2, but the most popular would have to be COD. No doubt.

 

RGN: BF3 and COD Series so famous in your country. What a reason why you don't focus on it?

Jack Smith: COD is more of an arcade game, and we don’t really like the gameplay and BF3 is just to slow paced and the maps are huge. Not that those games aren’t fun to play, we just don’t feel like they are our sort of games.

 

RGN: You said you were played in both U.S.A and Singapore. How many ping you got?

Jack Smith: In USA, with all of our players it ranges about 200 to 300, depending on which server. In Singapore server, we get 120 to 150, which is really hard in both games.

 

RGN: Did you ever try to play in Bangkok server?

Jack Smith: We tried our pings everywhere. Singapore was the lowest.

 

RGN: So how can you practice or scrim matches?

Jack Smith: We have to clan war on USA with 200 pings. If you play against Americans or Europeans, it is really hard with all the shots that don’t register, but we still manage to beat most of the teams we play.

 

RGN: Besides ping is your major problem, anything else?

Jack Smith: Well, we have a good solid team. Because we’re living in Australia and our country gets overlooked in competitive gaming in A.V.A., and no one knows what we can do.

 

RGN: When you do some scrim, which teams is your biggest rival?

Jack Smith: We scrim usually on weekends due to the fact most of members have work or school on weekdays. We do like the ‘inQ_SG’ team, mainly because they are also our rival.

 

RGN: What's about your team goal?

Jack Smith: Our main objective is to get noticed by the world. It’s just really hard when hardly anyone in Australia plays A.V.A. I mean who would sponsor a team when the game they play is unknown in this country. We really do wanna join IeSF, just so we can show the world how good we really are.

 

RGN: So what's the plan you going to do to let the world notice your team?

Jack Smith: We plan on playing in IeSF 2012. But before we can do that, we need to get sponsored. I’ve been sent email to a lot of associations in Australia about this. Like I said before, A.V.A. is unknown is this country, but I will never give up.

 

RGN: Any shoutword? Do you want to say something to Australian gamers and associations?

Jack Smith: We are called Azures. We are the best in this country at this game. If you give us a chance, you will not be disappointed, and we will make this country proud.

 

RGN: Okay. Thanks for your time Jack. Hope you guys get luck.

Jack Smith: Thank you very much. It’s much appreciated.