During the weekend, Esports Heaven had the opportunity to interview Harsha Bandi, or simply Harsha as he is better known within the competitive Overwatch community. As an analyst, coach, journalist and a pivotal member of the scene, he offers a unique perspective on the World Cup committee and gave us his picks for US.

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Before we get onto more current events, what's your gaming and esports background, from before Overwatch?

I actually started out playing competitive Pokemon online when I was thirteen. I could probably skip this part of my background since it's embarrassing, but it's actually kinda important, because I moved on to other games with the same friends I made from Pokemon. I played Super Smash Bros. Melee throughout high school and played League of Legends with those guys for almost four years before Overwatch was released. At the time, I was looking to write analytical content for League of Legends' esports scene, but I realized I didn't even enjoy playing the game anymore and watching it was becoming a chore, so I decided to start writing about Overwatch after studying the pro scene for a while.

Recently, the Overwatch World Cup committees candidates were announced and a number of fans were puzzled that your name wasn't on the list for the US. How surprised were you when you learned that you aren't going to be nominated?

I honestly thought I had a pretty solid shot of making it, but I don't think the committee candidates that they did end up choosing were undeserving in any sense. The problem here is that even if I was nominated, there would be a very, very slim chance I would be voted in as a candidate, so while I'm a bit bummed out, it doesn't mean too much in the grand scheme of things. Even if I thought I could put together a great American team (and I do), it probably would never have come into fruition.

As an early audition for next year, and out of curiosity, what is the team you would have tried to put together?

DPS: GrimReality and Jake Flex: Seagull Tank: MESR Support: Adam and Rawkus Tough omissions: Sinatraa, xRetzi, Gods

You do have to dig a bit deep given how much talent that plays in NA comes from EU and Canada, but I think this is the best six that you can make. GrimReality is the best American DPS for my money, especially when you see how even at Immortals' worst, he is visibly going ham. I picked Jake as my next DPS because he's a very versatile player, and I think it opens up a lot of compositions, as he is strong on both hitscan and Genji. His deficiency on Pharah is made up for by Seagull, who I would place on the flex role. It opens up a lot of rotations you can run with triple DPS (aka Seagull on Genji) or even single and double DPS, with Grim on Roadhog and Seagull on Zarya or D.Va. MESR is the best Reinhardt player in America, I would say, though, FCTFCTN could compete for the role. I haven't seen enough from FCTFCTN to actually place him on the team, at least in recent times. Adam would serve as the Lucio player and he can flex on Mercy if need be, given how many people claim that he is still the best Mercy player in the world to this day. Rawkus has always been an exceptional Ana player and even though FaZe is kinda down in the dumps, I think he's the strongest of all NA players at the role.

I think Sinatraa is exceptionally talented but a bit too one-dimensional for this team. xRetzi is a viable alternative to GrimReality but I do think Grim is slightly ahead in terms of skill, and he has more experience competing in LANs. Gods actually really impressed me with his Winston play in Rivalcade and I thought it was only matched by KnOxXx throughout that tournament, but I do think having a strong Reinhardt is generally more important because he's less of a plug-and-play character than Winston is.

You've been doing your fair share of analysis and features, but — perhaps more so than anyone else in the scene — you've also been doing first-hand reporting and critical op-eds. Do you think it affected your chances of being nominated?

Mmm, tough to say. I think it'd be a bit overconfident of me to say any of these things had an effect on the selection given that my brand isn't particularly big, but reporting things also can really upset a lot of people. However, I think Sideshow does the same kind of work overall, and he was selected as a UK nominee, so I'm inclined to say it wasn't particularly meaningful in this case.

To my experience, most of the younger esports communities — and some of the not so young as well — are extremely skeptical and sometimes outright hostile toward investigative journalists. Recently, you made a video about the value of journalism. Can you summarize it in several sentences,  for people who haven't watched it?

Some people have really been bashing journalists, myself included, and I've noticed that it's become a running trend in the Overwatch community. I made the video to actually explain why journalists are important and what they provide for whichever scene that they're currently a part of. It's more focused on the reporting aspect of journalism and why they should receive some level of measured trust when they are publishing because numerous reputations are on the line when doing so.

A lot of esports journalists actually reached out to me and told me they liked the video afterwards, which was reassuring!

For this year, some of the countries have players or streamers on the lists with committee candidates. In an ideal world, how would you distribute the ten slots between analysts, professional players, personalities and etc.?

I think that the people selected should have the highest knowledge of the game and players possible to ensure that the best team possible is made. I think people within the esports scene should be valued over YouTubers, streamers, and so on because they should know more about building a proper team and taking it to the top. Analysts and coaches should be the first people selected, while I think you need to be a bit more stringent with journalists and casters because their game knowledge can have a bigger variance. In the end, this will always be subjective, but I think giving the spots to people who actually know the game best would be ideal.

What traits would the ideal people, for building a team that will win the world cup, have? Which of the candidates for the US committee fit those roles the most?

I think someone like MonteCristo would provide the most in terms of leadership; he's actually probably one of the few leadership figures amongst the pool that I think every single person would respect. Flame is likely the most knowledgeable [person] in the committee, though to be fair, I might be underrating KyKy a lot here. You could probably build a committee with these three alone, but I do think having a person like CaptainPlanet who would communicate with the team actively and be able to provide information that most others can't would be very useful. I think everyone I mentioned is trustworthy, too!

Are there any candidates from other countries that you think might get overlooked by fans, but would do great job if they were picked?

Hard to say because I don't know the internal structures of the other countries as well, and honestly, I only really have looked at the US committee in detail. That said, coaches did seem a bit underrepresented in the pool of candidates worldwide, and I think they would be a really great addition because they a) have knowledge working within a team and b) can provide leadership and guidance.

It's still early at this point, but — excluding Korea — which country has the highest chances of winning the world cup in your estimation?

There is no team more deserving than Rogue to go to BlizzCon!

I think Rogue has some of the best target selection in the game, and even though the metagame might change by this point out of Rogue's favor, I think they could dominate under current circumstances if selected by the committee.

Several days ago you and some other people announced an educational project, under the name Team Valfard. For those who've missed the announcement, what's it about and how are you involved in it?

Team Valfard is basically a project made to keep the skills of the players fresh while they wait for Overwatch League's sweet embrace. Four of the members are currently benched free agents despite being top players, and they're enjoying the experience because it helps them keep in touch with the game and also builds their stream and social presence.

My involvement is that of a coach and analyst; I'll be working with Peak and flame to review VODs, make strategies, develop comms, and so on for the team. All team activities are going to be streamed because the goal of the project is simply to be educational. We've received a lot of great responses to it, so hopefully the community will enjoy watching the team develop!

As we mentioned already, you wear many hats in the Overwatch community. If you had to focus on a single one, which would be it and why?

The problem here is that I like doing every single thing that I currently do in the Overwatch community. That being said, I think I'm a bit too young to coach a professional team at the time being, since it would be a bit of a weird dynamic to have players older than I am have to see me as an authority figure.

I really do love journalism, and especially writing features on the people within the scene, but I don't know if a point will come where I can ever make it a full time job and focus fully on it. A lot depends on the success of the Overwatch League most likely, but I guess we'll have to wait and see!

I did actually want to start joining analysis desks in online tournaments so I could get experience for down the road if any LANs come up, but an opportunity never panned out, so that's on the backburner. I think my ideal future would be focusing on journalism and my own YouTube channel while taking gigs on analyst desks, not unlike many of the people in the CS:GO community, but right now that's a pipe dream.

The final words are yours.

Was fun to be on the other side of an interview for once — I don't have any shoutouts outside of come support Team Valfard while we stream our work on Twitch! Thanks for the interview!

You can follow Harsha's content on Twitter, YouTube and Twitch at /ggHarsha for each of those. All of Team Valfard's streams can be found at twitch.tv/communities/Valfard.

Cover photo credit: TBS

About the author: Hello readers, I go by the ID RadoN! My introduction to esports happened in 2009 and I’ve been following different titles within the industry ever since. Esports that I watch regularly are Overwatch, CS:GO, LoL, QL with the occasional SFV and DOTA2. If you wish to reach out, follow future content, or simply know more about my thoughts on esports, you can find me on twitter at @RadoNonfire.