OpTic Gaming’s Gears of War pro team is quietly becoming one of the most dominant in esports, notching another win at the recent New York Fall Regionals. Despite an apparent mastery over the competition, the team of pro gamers is hopeful the Gears community can continue to grow and provide more competition.
Four of the team’s players talked with Player.One at the Mixer NYC Studio at the flagship Microsoft Store in New York about the tournament and what they would like to see from the Gears community.
It seemed OpTic intended to come into Fall Regionals as underdogs. One of the team’s five main members couldn’t make it, nor could the team’s coach. According to Alex “SuMuNs” Ascencion, this means the team can’t do much in terms of planning different strategies.
“We have a substitute, so there isn’t much strategy we can do,” SuMuNs said. “It’ll just be the basic fundamentals.”
This limitation didn’t seem to matter, as OpTic beat out Ghost Gaming in the finals to claim first place. In fact, it might have worked in the team’s favor. “Going into this tournament, everyone wants to take us down, especially knowing that we have a sub.” SuMuNs said. “ We’re still pretty much the same core four.”
“We’ve been considered the team to beat, or one of the best teams for the past two years now,” team captain Gilbert “Xplosive” Rojo added. “For a while, it was difficult with the target on our backs. After a while, you just learn to live with it and embrace the pressure.”
Surprisingly, unlike other pro teams, OpTic doesn’t have a home base where the team can gather together to prepare for events. “That affects our scrimming and practicing. We have to connect online from different places,” Justin “Kenny Bounce” Kenny said. “Usually it’s not too good, but that’s what we got right now.”
Thankfully, there are enough tournaments during the Gears of War season that the team still sees each other frequently. “Tournaments are usually once a month or once every two months,” said Kenny Bounce. “Right now, we have this weekend. In two weekends we have the Dallas major, then the Mexico City tournament after.”
While Gears of War 4 has become a major boom to the Gears esports scene, it hasn’t always been that way. “Honestly, there’s only been enough money put into our game over the past two seasons or so where you can live off it,” Xplosive said. “These past five or six years, it’s been straight passion and us grinding the game just because we love the game. We love competition. It’s nice to see us being rewarded for that.”
The team wants to see the Gears community grow. This would mean bigger events, more competition, and hopefully more money to be won. However, achieving that goal will require more people to make more content to bring in a bigger audience.
“We need to stream more and make more videos to reach the crowd that’s just getting into the game,” Xplosive said. “More players will help create a longer lifespan.”
Kenny Bounce agreed, saying he knows many people who entered into the franchise with Gears of War 4. “There’s a lot of people who saw Gears for the first time with Gears 4,” he said. “Just getting their hands on it and then bringing them over to the esports side would be great for the scene so we can have bigger events, more teams and all that.”
Now that the team has claimed gold for the New York Fall Regional, the team is getting prepared for the Dallas Open on Dec. 1. The target is still firmly planted on the backs of all the OpTic team members, but from their perspective, that’s not such a bad thing.
And to all the fans of OpTic Gaming out there, Xplosive wants you all to show the love during the team’s games. “#greenwall in the chat please, thank you!” he said.
So what do you think? Are you excited to see if OpTic can continue its dominance in Gears of War? What other esports teams do you follow? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
