GNiK recently made his way into the Quake Pro League by qualifying through the Challenger’s League and competing at Lucca. Here we cover topics such as picking up Quake 3 as a 5-year-old, his controversial escapades as a teen in Quake Live and his journey into the QPL over the past year.
First and foremost, we need to say thank you to Smango for making this interview happen. It is because of his diligence in monitoring the Quake Pro League (something I do not always have time to do myself) that this interview came to be. I’ve been a fan of GNiK for a long time but in all honesty; I had no idea GNiK was doing so well in the Challengers League. Fast forward to the weekend before Lucca Comics & Games when I receive a message from GNiK:
“QuakeFans is doing some thing on me and one of the questions was about you doing a podcast with me.”
THANK YOU SMANGO!
You can read that article (which is a profile of GNiK’s gear and settings) here.
Suddenly I’m up to speed on the recent happenings and GNiK is on his way to Lucca for his first ever major LAN event and to pursue his dream of becoming a professional Quake player. AND HE DID IT! The weekend of Lucca I had just transitioned to night shift at work, freeing me up to be awake during the event where I watched GNiK defeat Br1ck in an epic best of 5 match-up. More importantly, this win meant that GNiK was now an official member of the QPL.
After the event we quickly scheduled some time to sit down and record this interview as a celebration of GNiK’s victory and a peek into his unique journey to get here.
GNiK’s Journey
GNiK is a 21-year-old from British Columbia who had never (until Lucca) been further from home than Alberta. His Quake journey began while he was a child playing with his father and brothers. As he grew into adolescence, he made a controversial name for himself in Quake Live (more on that in the interview). Fast forward to Quake Champions. After the infamous Christmas patch of 2018, the official competitive scene took a LONG lull. Luckily, people like S L I P & UNKiND of State of Quake and IamFortyLions kept the North American competitive scene alive through various community events.
Enter GNiK.
Throughout that season, GNiK fought his way to the top, winning a disproportionate amount of events and showing the world that he was a force to be reckoned with. When the QPL began at Quakecon 2019, who better to throw their hat into the Challenger’s League than GNiK? You know the rest.
Talking about Quake Champions
Now I am perfectly aware of how critical I have been of Quake Champions over the past 6 months. I’ve been involved in several interviews where I have laid out my opinions on the game, most notably my appearance on Beyond Strafe Jumping with Shazzik. None of this is to say that I am any less enthusiastic about Quake Champions or the QPL. Quite the contrary. It is only to say that my relative lull in involvement with the game left me a little out of the loop over the past few months.
So… we brought in an expert. I asked Hawr1x of quake.cz to join us for this interview as there is no one I can think of more qualified (and easily accessible) to ask questions of about Quake Champions eSports than the man who dedicates himself to covering it. Furthermore, Hawr1x was AT Lucca to witness all the happening in person.
Links/Credits
Artwork by Haducant/Spaced.
Music by Immorpher:
https://immorpher.bandcamp.com/
GNiK
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GNiKgg
Twitch: http://twitch.tv/gnikgg
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/gnikgg
Hawr1x
Website: http://quakechampions.cz/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CzechQuake
The Keep
Go to http://inthekeep.com for all episodes, links and podcast directories.
Go to https://quakefans.net/network/ for more shows like this!