Present in the Brazilian competitive scene since 1998, Alexandre "gAuLeS" Chiqueta one of major figures inside of Brazilian electronic sports. Alone, gAuLeS created the g3nerationX, one of most victorious Brazilian team in the age of Counter-Strike. After that, the former pro gamer helped Made in Brazil as Coach win important international tournaments as DreamHack 2007.
Now gAuLeS continues helping the development but in the backstage. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Agency X5, marketing company that manages the Brazilian Gaming League, who could be compared as the Brazilian ESL, and the Brazilian National Gaming Team, project to help lead the teams travel out of Brazil
Check the original Portuguese interview Gabriel "gabrielpumba" Melo has done here.
You are one of most well-known people in the Brazilian e-sports scene. Inside it, you participated for nine years in the Counter-Strike world, where you played and led one of major teams “g3nerationX” and “Made in Brazil”. Today you command the X5 Agency, the company that manages the Brazil Gaming League and Brazilian National Games. How do you analyze your accomplishments in the e-sports realm? Have you achieved everything you dreamt of all this time? If not, what was missing?
I believe that my journey was much like most players of my generation. My relationship with e-sports began inside the LAN Houses making friends and discovering that there was a very interesting competitive spirit around. I always am passionate babout competition and when I found that I could spend my time training, battling, traveing and having incredible experiences, I had no doubt and went upside into this competitive universe.
I wanted to be the best in my district, and afterwards the best of my city. Then it occured to me,, we were among the bests in the world and representing my country (2001). When you starts to focus only one objective, you end up leaving aside other things. I could have been a son more present, a boyfriend more participative and cultivated better some important friendships. Today, I believe that this maturation helped me to see much of my success which I obtained through extreme dedication , and that it is so much harder find something that will hold maintain both the success and the relationship aspect of your life.
For many years my goal was solely to win championships and in the middle of this journey I met a lot of nice people! Friends who encouraged me to invest in this market, study and be able to give a better opportunity for today's generation. We often have to make difficult and tough decisions inside the industry. Many people judge me by these decisions but today, in our country, it is very difficult to build a structure dedicated to e-sports with employees, expenses, duties and obligations, and still make it profitable. So often I would leave my desire aside to achieve a higher goal for the community, As I know that my wishes could never be greater than the desire of my team. That was when I was a player. Today, I also know that my desires can never be greater than the desires of the company I own. I try to balance my desires with the needs of the market and community and do something that works for everyone.
I try every day to be a better person , to listen to more to people who are close to me and build a scene with better conditions for our players, our audience and also for our investors! During the XMA I was full of soul. This event is something I dreamed many, many years of and thanks to enlightened people that God has placed in my path, that dream became a reality and we were able to do something amazing. Also, i was pensive there...The biggest dream of my last decade was performing and for some motivation, for some reason, until everything would end up perfect, it was not enough to quench my desire.
Of course I have a lot of other dreams that I will fight for every day to accomplish within the e-sport realm, but I have a giant fear of it never being enough. I reflect quite often on how i could collaborate to help Brazilian teams accomplish what it needs to succeed, but i haven’t yet found the correct conclusion for this. I hope I can be next to these players when that happens!
The Brazilian competitive scene focused on Counter-Strike as their major game for several years, but with the forced transition into Global Offensive, which did not please the public, the Brazilian scene died for a small period with a lack of important tournaments. But with arrival of League of Legends and all of the investiments made by Riot Games, the Brazilian scene is once again busy and full of life. If Riot had not arrived to Brazil, do you think all these developments would not have happened? In your vision, what does Brazil need to become a world power in the e-sports realm?
Riot played a very important role in reigniting e-Sports globally. Brazil is one of the emerging powers of the world and of course it would not make sense to stay out of their strategy. I believe that if Riot had not come to Brazil, it would be much more complicated to reach the level we are at today. Although we have great companies investing in their games performing tournaments and supporting the players, it is evident that the workers of the Riot Games global team does their research, and with that they saw positive references on what to do for communities that play all competitive games. In Brazil we have a lot of difficulties in many ways, lacking government support, our society is extremely prejudiced and misinformed about almost everything related to culture, especially if it is something as innovative as electronic sports. Our society prefers to believe what is most interesting you spend eight hours of your day working in front of a computer within a traditional company than spending 8 hours a day working to realize their truest dreams. When our current players are made aware that not all people were born to please others but to realize their dreams, I believe we will arrive at the level of other regions again! I feel that many players today and are in sight of making a living and not necessarily winning the championships.
As mentioned above, you are the CEO of Brazilian Gaming League, the main organizer of tournaments in Brazil. In the last two years the BGL invested heavily in the Brazilian e-sports scene with so many tournaments, and their prize pools, and creation of the Arena X5 SBG, which is Brazil's premier venue for gaming. What is the focus of the last two seasons?
When i created the BGL i had the intention of giving the biggest opportunity for the teams to train, to compete and display their own sponsors. Brazil is a country very far from reaching its potential, where were organized and played the major tournaments and the expense to travel for them, to train against the big teams and compete in the important tournament is the goal.
So, I realized that maybe a good solution to this problem was to have a quality league in Brazil. We're still at the beginning and the result is incredibly satisfying! I’d have never imagined that in a few years BGL would be giving such a high award, with such a solid structure and a broadcast of such quality and high attending audience. At this point the sponsorship of companies like Nvidia and X5 Computers was crucial to the success of the league! I imagine BGL soon getting international teams and helping bring further growth to the Brazilian community! Surely this all so much better than planned :)
In March the BGL announced a big change for their third season. Now all of the tournaments have become leagues. Why is that? And what you could tell to us about the plans of BGL for this year?
The changes occurred to follow the format of the other major leagues. The original format of BGL Battle was interesting when nothing existed in the Brazilian scene. In that course of time we realized we had to bring something more attractive for teams and the public also. The format of the league is very interesting and makes it so that we have a means of a clear cut beginning and final , which will be the BGL Arena. Our planning for BGL this year is to have two seasons of each of the games that we announce with the grand finals in Arena X5 - SBG, with new qualifications every season!
Before we had a number of good teams playing weekly awards and now we have great teams playing major awards and especially training and keeping in shape for international competitions
Two years after the creation, the BGL continues with three games in their ladder, but with Crossfire and Combat Arms in the places of Counter-Strike and StarCraft II. How is the choice of the games for the Ladder of Brazil Gaming League? Did you have a plan about further increasing the variety of games on that list?
The process of choosing games in BGL is directly impacted by the type of support that the publisher of the game can offer to our league. It is extremely difficult to work with games for which you do not have any server support, outreach, award incentives, and also teams that play that particular game.
Today our league has great sponsors and a massive audience, we can not afford to include a game that does not offer some support for our technical team. On the other hand it is clear that we expect more and more publishers see our league and provide the support we need to accomplish the same with all the quality you’d expect.
For several years Counter-Strike was the most popular franchise of Brazil. But after the launch of Global Offensive the popularity of this game decreased because the Brazilian community did not like of this "evolution". The output of the CS has something to do with it?
The output of the CS on the game list of BGL has to do with no incentive of Valve to capitalize on the market of the game itself in Brazil and the low ratings of the matches. Every week, we suffered with problems of server, game updates and more.
Dota2 is a game that is gaining strength in Brazil since the Brazilian teams are able to participate in qualifying for major tournaments such as The International. Could Dota2 enter in the Ladder of BGL?
Surely there is that possibility! We’ve been studying for a long time to do something with Dota 2 and I believe that soon we will conduct some tests with the game! I cheered enough to CNB staff during first stage of American qualifications for The International and i decided to learn more about the game! I hope to soon bring news to the Dota community.
In League of Legends, the BGL has announced a league online. Could you speak about this league, when and how it will take place?
We will perform the league of BGL LoL after the end of Riot’s league -- it would not be interesting for both companies have the championships going on simultaneously. It would be bad for the teams and for the community that would be super confused about having two similar competitions happening at the same time and with broadcasting being made by the same company (Agency X5).
Recently the Brazil Gaming League has organized the X5 Mega Arena, which was nominated as the largest in Latin America and was compared to DreamHack and others biggest events of world. How did the idea of ??holding such an event emerge and what is the vision?
The idea arose because the Brazilian market of e-sport achieved maturity and growth and had no major event dedicated to the public who loves e-sports in general! The plan was to unite the community and have different competitions while playing at the same location. The result of the first edition was fantastic in every way, I felt that the whole community was united as ever to make something new and the result could not have been better, from the pictures we saw during the event! Many moments of excitement and joy occured and it’s bound to happen again with the second edition of the event upcoming in September!
And about the next edition, what could you reveal about XMA #2? BGL will increase the prize pool of the tournaments?
We have not yet defined the attractions, games, and prizes for the next issue. But I'm sure after the success of the first edition will bring a lot, including something nice for the teams and the public at the event!
Brazilian Nations Games became known to support the Brazilian teams in international tournaments. If a Brazilian team qualifies for a worldwide competition, can SBG (Brazil’s National Gaming Team) help this team in making a bootcamp outside the country? What are the plans of SBG for this year?
When I created the project of the Brazilian National Games the Brazilian scene was completely different from the present day. It was something needed, in my vision, to give a push to the teams and players to motivate themselves to do a better job and get more support and structure.
With this, the project of Brazilian National Games took another course and today we do more institutional work with it .. but of course if any team needs support to be relevant international competition, we will be quite open to study how feasible the project will be!
To finish this interview i would like to thank you for the opportunity and give to you this space for final words.
I wanted to thank all who trust in our work and in our dreams, we have a very difficult task but if you do not wake up every day focused on these objectives nobody will do it for us .. I want to thank all the support and love I have received from the Brazilian community and say that nothing motivates me more than to see so many young and passionate-Sport!
Interview & Translation by: Gabriel "gabrielpumba" Melo
Formatting & Editing: Gabriel "gabrielpumba" Melo
Proofreading by: Michale "DreXxiN" Lalor
?Photo Credit: Agency X5 and gAuLeS Archive
