hexOr: 'I never thought my channel would become as big as it is'

Hi hexOr! On behalf of the GosuGamers and Dota community, I would like to thank you for accepting the interview and congratulate you for winning the Goldenhall Dubai Dota 2 LAN. For those who do not know, can you introduce yourself?

Hello GGnet! For the people who don’t know me yet, I am a German Dota 2 player and also moviemaker.

Can you care to share your experience with us on the tournament which your team has won recently?

It was an amazing experience for us of course, especially being at Dubai for the first time, but also to be given the opportunity to play in a real gaming hall and on top of that winning the tournament. Therefore we did not regret to take the trip to Dubai and we are pretty happy about how everything turned out.

As your team has just competed and won your first LAN, how do you feel about your team? Do you have any set goals?

Well, currently we don’t have a stable 5-men lineup, but we are looking forward to create an all German Dota 2 team. As soon as our line-up is stable, we will of course be looking forward to participate in as many tournaments as we can. How much further it goes from there will depend on how we perform.

When creating your team, was it important for you to play with friends? Was that something that tore the old ICCup apart?

In my opinion it is normal that you prefer to play with your friends, but the main factor was the language problems. It is very hard to play with 4 people who speak a language you don’t understand, so it was more or less obvious that we would go separate ways in the future.

You are now called “The Avengers”. Is there any special meaning to it or is it just based off the movie?

The name was originally made for our mix-team for the tournament in Dubai. We decided to keep the name, because we actually liked it :). Concerning the meaning of it, it is basically based off the movie “The Avengers”.

Could you tell us about playing with PGG?

I guess it is better for both parts, if I don’t comment on that question :).

How would you rate the German scene, its players and its progression during the past months?

Well, in my opinion there was still no real progression during the past months, in my opinion it is still the same like it used to be - Germans need to take the game more serious in order to be successful, both online as well as international events.

Can you share with us your Gamescom experience (WCG Qualifier and SEE)?

It was fun, even though we only ended up being on 3rd place we enjoyed the time there, because it was a cool event, especially if you can play there with friends you’ve known for a very long time. It was also very interesting to talk to other people and also get to know each other better, e.g. Wagamama (at that time Infused).

Moving on to your video making/editing career. How time consuming is it?

"It is indeed very time consuming, but I like to do it besides my real job and Dota 2. Most of the times, it is hard to keep my channel active, but I am trying my best to provide some cool videos as much as possible to my loyal fans and of course also to everyone else who likes to watch my videos.

Can you share with us your experience from being a total beginner at movie making to becoming who you are today?

Honestly, I just started to simply cut my Pudge scenes together and I wouldn’t have thought that this channel would become as big as it is nowadays, so I am pretty happy with the result now, because like I said, it was not even my initial goal to become this big. It is definitely an experience that has affected my life. I’ve learned a lot, just by being criticized and learning from my mistakes, getting constant feedback from the community. Moreover, it also helps me with my real-life job, because I manage my social media platforms everyday which is also an important aspect I am confronted with in my company.

You mentioned constant feedback. How do you cope with criticism and haters?

Nowadays my feedback, likes etc, is about 95-99% positive, so to be honest I don’t care too much about haters, because there will always be haters :) and constructive criticism is good, it is in my opinion not negative. However, I don’t get such a good feedback all the time, sometimes there are also videos which people don’t like. If some of them put constructive criticism in the comments, I might be able to improve the quality of the further videos, which is very important to provide the best quality all the time.

Blurpi has recently returned to the movie making scene. How would you describe yours and his editing style?

Let’s start with Blurpi. Blurpi is one of the best Moviemakers I ever worked with. He is very experienced and as far as I can remember he is also visiting a Motion Graphics Class, not quite sure about that. Anyway, the reason why his videos are unique, is first of all the perfect sync with the music, it is just awesome if you really pay attention to it and the second fact is that he always comes up with something that no one has ever seen before in any other Dota movie yet, a new idea which just looks incredible. Compared to my edit, apart from Luck Is No Excuse 2, which was also time-consuming and a lot of work and with a lot of ideas, I rather edit my videos clean, so people can follow the actions better, without too many effects and camera spins.

You have been a movie maker ever since DotA: Allstars. Could you describe how movie making has changed with Dota 2?

Well to be honest, and I guess I am speaking for most of the moviemakers, Dota 2 still misses a “Simple Cam” to get smooth 360 degrees turnarounds which look very good, e.g. a slowmo Tide ultimate (camera flies 360 degrees around all the units), I don’t think that it is possible in Dota 2 to move the camera free, without any limits concerning the movements and angles, and that is pretty sad.

Would you ever consider doing something like helical did - making videos for a Dota 2 team (other than yours of course)?

Yeah, why not.

Do you plan to continue your career as a Dota movie maker or move on to being a full-time professional gamer?

To be honest, I don’t want to lose my real life job and I also don’t want to just throw away my YouTube-Channel and everything, so I will stick to those 2 for 100%, which means that it won’t be possible for me to be a “full-time professional gamer”. However, that doesn’t mean that I will stop playing Dota 2 on a high level, because we are actually planning to get into the competitive Dota 2 scene with our German team, again.

What are your personal goals as a movie maker/proplayer?

As a Moviemaker: Doing more videos, becoming more known, reaching more of the Dota 2 community, satisfying my fans with better quality in future videos, maybe also getting a new partnership e.g. with a huge company
Proplayer: Getting back to the competitive scene with an all german Dota 2 team (AVENGERS).

You have probably reached a possible milestone on becoming more famous, seeing as you partnered up with Gamersbook. What can we expect from this partnership?

Yes! To be honest, this partnership is only a few days old, but it seems also good so far. We are talking a lot to each other about giveaways to the community and also videos in cooperation. Let’s see how well this goes in 2013! Personally, I’m looking forward to this :).

If you had to give advice to new movie makers, what would you tell them?

Try to learn from the best and fuck the rest!

Thank you for the interview, any shoutouts?

Thanks! Shoutouts to all my mates I ever played with in Dota 1 and also Dota 2, to all my loyal fans, friends and to the people who support me.


hexOr in social media