Baka: Well growing up comes from experience, and it seems like Philippines never got the international experience at all, and when they did, their performance was lacking. My question is, are the top Filipino teams getting the sponsorship money to attend international events?

HoA Chan: Well, I wouldn't say our performance has always been lacking (WCG 2005 and WCG Pan Asia 2006 for example). Much of the teams here get sponsorships, but they are privately funded by managers. Not much corporate sponsorship goes around. These privately funded teams get stuff like food allowance, local tournament fees and stuff like that, nothing huge.


Baka: Who or what's to blame for the lack of development in the international definition of "competitive" gaming in the Philippines then?

HoA Chan: Our poverty I would say, and the fact that no one ever really wanted to step up and say, “Hey, let’s use the newest versions of CS.” Everyone just wanted to stick to their retarded CS 1.3. Of course, the people that ran cafes couldn’t force it upon the gaming community since these people were their customers and they’d lose them if they didn’t stick to 1.3. A lack of online infrastructure hurts us too. There are no online leagues here and barely any online servers for that matter. There is quite a large online CS community though called PLDTPlay which is run by the largest telecommunications company in the Philippines, PLDT. Unfortunately, the servers run CS 1.5.


Baka: Ok, why don’t you tell me about the “competitive” scene in Philippines instead.

HoA Chan: I would say that we sort of have a monopoly over the competitive scene here. All of the Philippine teams just practice against each other and never really learn anything new. I actually think our country has the potential to do quite well in international events, but we need more events. We need to be able to play good teams all year-round and to stay motivated. It's hard to want to play CS when you only have one event to look forward to and by then, you’ve probably already been too burnt out. As for my team, we practice by playing online against teams like Hybrid from Malaysia, RageFaction, TitaNs and xqR from Singapore, as well as eXtreme Gamers from Taiwan and Nearly Gods from Thailand. But the problem it is difficult to play with them regularly, because it's very rare to find teams who can field five players at any given time. On most nights, the best competition you can find are just PUGs or mix teams.

Baka: The ping difference?

HoA Chan: We usually get 70-90ms whereas other teams we play hit around the 20s.


Baka: And so, what can we expect from Filipino teams in the future of competitive gaming?

HoA Chan: There are talks that there will be an ESWC in 2007, along with WCG. Definitely, better results next year. (Seeing as we couldn't have done any worse than this year!)


Baka: How much is it in for a Filipino team to attend an international event like CPL Dallas? Including flight/accommodations etc.

HoA Chan: I’ve calculated this before and I would say around 15,000 USD is a safe estimate. That's a lot of money, and the average team cannot afford that.


Baka: Well, you've been very helpful Chan, any final words or shoutouts?

HoA Chan: Shout outs to my teammates over at HoA, my homies over at Hybrid, XcN, TitaNs and xqR, SteelSeries, Pandesal, esports.ph (particularly Tjader and Mike), Matt Swordsteve and the rest of those crazy Canadians, dutchfoo, lurppis (suksi vittuun! :P), tM[st], fetishK, Chris Co and our fanbase! (which is probably composed of 4 or 5 people or something) :D Look out for big things from us soon!