Opening

On the last day of 2015, our filming crew spent the day filming at QG’s team base.

This place should have been called Newbee’s team base, but the house was purchased on the final day of the trading deadline. After the esports giant Newbee purchased the QG team that performed well in the 2015 LPL season, top players like Uzi heard the news and flocked towards the QG organization.

After about a week of planning, we booked the final day of 2015 to finish the shooting. For us regular people, a new year means a new beginning. For an esport mega-celebrity with a net worth that is sky high, a new year also carries its own special significance.

We finally arrived at the team base after getting stuck in traffic. Similar to many other team bases that we have visited before, QG’s new team base is a type of standalone villa. This kind of team base has its unique traits. Due to the large space that a villa offers, players tend to live and practice in the same area. Despite the fact that this kind of solitary living alienates the players from the general societal life, it greatly improves the practice time for the players. From what we heard so far, the unique advantages that a standalone villa offers as a team base are widely acknowledged by the LPL team managers.

The first thing in QG’s base that caught our attention wasn’t a person, but a dazzling white Samoyed named “Carry” that resided in a cage at the villa’s door. But the main character for our story that we were looking for wasn’t him—it was another “dog”. As we continued to walk forward, we arrived at QG’s training room. It was a spacious room with computers neatly lined up against the walls. As we looked towards the direction of the Samoyed’s gaze, we found another of his kind.

On the white QG uniform, three words was written in black ink—???. If you haven’t realized it yet, the Chinese calligraphy calls to the name of a player commonly known as the “crazed dog”. Indeed, it was Uzi.

In the Chinese LoL community, he is widely considered an individual with the most outstanding mechanics. Even in Korea where there are tons of highly-skilled players, many Korean teams still have nothing but praises for Uzi. Although China never won Worlds, the public opinion of this super-aggressive Chinese player still remains unanimously positive. When it comes to individual mechanics, anyone that has seen his play can arrive at the same conclusion, but when it comes to temper, no one can definitely predict what he will do. In order to discover the truth, we decided to do an interview with Uzi.

When we were interviewing Uzi, we noticed a few interesting phenomenon. After some careful planning, I hope we can use the following discoveries to paint the picture of the real Uzi.

The details that are hard to be overlooked

1. Uzi has no patience when it comes to managing relationships with people and handling everyday     problems, but he shows sudden enthusiasm when it comes to problems in League

When it comes to questions about managing relationships with people, Uzi seems to have not put too much thoughts into them. However, when it comes to League-related problems, Uzi would suddenly become extremely enthusiastic, meticulously answering our every question while explaining his thought process involving every tiny in-game detail.

But when it comes to questions about how he views his old teammates, what he expects from his new teams and so forth, Uzi always answer with a bare bones answer, and sometimes a simple “I don’t know.” Logically, if he simply hates all interviews, he would approach all questions with an unwilling attitude and a one-line response. But whenever a question about his understanding of the game comes up, he would immediately become a chatterbox. It felt like watching an excited university professor zealously scribbling one complex algebraic equation after another on the black board, while the entire class watches in utter amazement.

If it was a question in an area Uzi was good at, he would happily answer down to the tiniest detail. But for questions about dealing with other people or his perspective on a certain person, Uzi offers a bare minimum amount of details. Judging by how he allocates his time every day, I came to the conclusion that Uzi most likely spend almost all of his effort on how to improve his in-game skill. If normally players approached the game with a fun attitude, then they would at least show some sort of resentment when talking about the game after playing thousands of games. However, after four years of continuously competing, Uzi still keeps such a high level of interest in the game. This proves my theory that in his life, aside from winning and losing, nothing else matters.

2. “If I am extremely angry, I would still AFK”

At first, we wanted to set up our interview questions around the topics of whether Uzi’s temper is truly bad and whether he would improve his temper. However, during the interview, Uzi didn’t answer the way we expected him to. From what we heard, he clearly knows about his bad temper and how it negatively impacts his team environment, and he knows he shouldn’t act up the way he does. Nonetheless, Uzi also acknowledged that if the opponents focus on him or his other lanes are not playing well, his play would still be greatly affected.

Because from his understanding, if any lane gets dove by multiple people under tower, other lanes should at least pick up some sort of advantage. However, Uzi rarely finds those kinds of teammates that would play up to his expectations, whether it is in SoloQ or competitive play. When asked if he won’t let his temper flare up again in the future, Uzi chuckled and said “I can’t promise that. Although my temper has improved a lot in the past few years and I regularly try to control myself, if I get extremely agitated by the peanut gallery flaming me, I think I might choose to AFK.”

3. In his pursuit for perfection in-game, he became the player known for having bad tempers

After Uzi’s skill level reached a certain point, not many people could understand or keep up with him. His skill level is continuously rising above the level of the average professional player in China because he spends a lot more time practicing and thinking about the game. Since the ADC position has gotten weaker as the patches change, Uzi was unable to showcase his continuous improvement in-game. However, I can see that Uzi’s performance has never fell off. He is actually stronger than he was before.

It was Uzi’s pursuit for perfection and his unwavering passion for the game that created this once in a generation genius in the history of Chinese League of Legends. When other people or Uzi himself could not perform up to his expectations, negative emotions would overwhelm him until he starts flaming at other people. If Uzi does not care about winning or losing, then he wouldn't have any reason to cuss someone out for making mistakes. The conclusion we can draw from this is, because he wants to win so badly and every little thing can dictate the outcome of the game, Uzi appears to be very short-tempered.

4. Admits that he is good, but not the best in the world

When asked about who is the best ADC in the world, Uzi did not appear to struggle with the question. Usually, questions that ask about ranking different players are the hardest to answer. If he proudly admits as being the number one ADC, then many people would criticize him for being arrogant or cocky. If he declines and defers the title to another player, then it would make people think that he is being fake. Uzi’s answer, however, was succinct.

“I know that I am a very strong player, but when it comes to the topic of being number one in the world, there are still many issues I need to overcome.” Maybe in Uzi’s world, he and many top players in other regions have already transcended the boundaries of the normal world. He recognizes that he reached where he is now through many sacrifices, but he is still able to find ways to further improve himself. Someone with this kind of self-understanding, I believe, is more mature than those who criticize him for having the tempers of a child.

5. Maintaining his enthusiasm and his desire to attack

Anyone that has played with Uzi or has watched his stream would know very well about Uzi’s quirk in game—he likes to talk. During our filming, Uzi showed his quirk while streaming. “Come, baby!”; “Don’t be afraid, kill him kill him!”; “He is feeding here!”; “Go go go, catch someone!” Uzi’s mouth is like a machine gun, continuously spitting out noise. Maybe this is what other people meant when they said that Uzi likes to talk. We also picked up on this phenomenon, but is Uzi really someone that likes to nag? Quite the opposite. I believe Uzi is a very emotional player. His lightning-fast reaction speed and near-instantaneous response to any situation in-game is similar to the pace that he talks.

Even though those are all simple shotcalling, Uzi puts his entire mind into the game. Uzi claims that he releases all of his emotions in-game through yelling and flaming at other people. We can see this every time when he gets hyped after a brilliant mechanical outplay, or when he starts to mutter endlessly after getting ganked by multiple opponents. It is due to those flaring emotions—in ways that are beyond our understanding—that gifted Uzi his superfast reaction speed and the ability to react on the fly. Perhaps, the ability to constantly keep up enthusiasm while maintain aggression is a trait only found among elite players. Maybe Uzi isn’t a model esports athlete when it comes to certain expectations set by the audience. But Uzi is definitely an elite esports athlete. His efforts are not for the fans, not for his team, but only for his desire to win.

Uzi’s drive to become great at the game gave him the skill and recognition he has today. But his energy is limited, therefore he didn’t have any energy left to think or worry about other things. In the classic Chinese kung-Fu stories, there is always a type of practitioners that cared so much about raising their skill levels that they simply neglect everything else. It was Uzi’s pure desire to become stronger that made him an enigma to other people. The good thing is that we are able to provide an angle in this interview to help all of you to understand a person like Uzi.

What Uzi makes us think about?

Opposite from the mainstream belief of “playing for fun”, the most important thing to Uzi is winning and losing. Only players that don’t care about the game would put up with his teammates slacking off.

Uzi arrived at where he is today because he put a lot more time and thoughts into developing his career than other players. It could also be due to Uzi’s endless interest in the game. Regardless of the reason, Uzi’s unparalleled dedication for the game is what brought him the mechanics that surpassed all others. Compared to an esports athlete who only focuses on having a large fan base, Uzi seems more suitable for the competitive stage. Indeed, for all the hard work Uzi has put in, the only thing he desires in return is the endless victories on the battlefield. 

This is a translation of an interview with Uzi for Chinese League of Legends site 15W that was translated by Steven Yu. The original interview can be found at 15W .