Zero1Gaming Sits Down with New Astralis Captain HooXi to Discuss the Team's Future

Now that the IEM Cologne Major is over and you have had a little time to process it, what is your first honest reflection on the event?

That I brought a new playstyle, kind of as a "Hail Mary," to potentially make a good result. Looking back, it was the wrong decision, and I didn't manage to get the best out of my players, and take accountability for that.

Was there a specific map, round, or moment at Cologne that showed fans what this team is capable of when it is pushed to the edge?

At Cologne, no, not that I recall. We have had way higher highs than we ever showed at Cologne, and it was not the real Astralis on display that tournament.

You are often discussed as a leader first rather than a player. How do you personally define a good performance from yourself vs your team?

Although I am in a role that can get a lot of criticism from the outside, I still think I am my own biggest critic. I may have called a good game and helped a lot in terms of being motivational and bringing energy, but if I have played a bad game individually I will still focus on that. So yeah, it takes a lot to make myself happy.

For readers who do not follow the IGL role closely, how would you explain your job inside this Astralis team?

As kind of an octopus role. I have to juggle a lot of different responsibilities. Obviously the most important thing is to get the team into advantageous situations and make sure we have a good plan for how we want to play. At the same time I have to hold my own when it comes to an individual level. Besides that there's a lot of balancing in terms of energy and mood (which is obviously a work in progress), and then there's a ton of preparation for both practices and official matches and the ability to develop your players, especially on this level.

Trust is a huge part of in-game leadership. How do you get four other players to fully commit to your calls in the middle of a round, especially when the pressure is so high?

I think it's mostly about if everyone buys into the idea of how you want to play and if the players respect you as an IGL. And I think I have a team that fully trusts me.

People who have played with you have often pointed to your preparation. What does that preparation look like before a match, apart from what fans see on the screens?

I'm obviously not going into details when it comes to how we prepare, but it takes a lot of time to prepare for a tournament, to develop our own game, and then balance that against the weakness of whoever we face, which also takes a lot of hours of prep the day/night before a game.

When a round starts to break away from the plan, what are you looking for first to give your players the edge they need?

That is a very broad question, but generally it's about putting pressure and understanding where the gap will be from what happened and then playing around that. But at that point, when things get hectic, it's also a lot up to the players individually to make decisions on the spot.

As the IGL, you are often the person people look at first when things go wrong. How do you carry that responsibility without letting it become too heavy?

I think I often let it become too heavy, which is something I need to be better at dealing with. I think it makes a lot of sense that people look to me when things go wrong.

Your reactions in matches can get clipped and discussed online. What do people often misunderstand about those moments?

I mean, at this point I think there's some propaganda to make me look like this bad guy all the time. I rarely see clips of me trying to bring my team up when things go bad, or just in general hyping people up when they make a good play. It is what it is; as long as my teammates think what I do is good, I shouldn't care about the outside noise.

After leaving G2, you went through a long period without a permanent spot on a leading Counter-Strike team. What was that period like for you professionally?

At first it was very needed. I needed a breather, a lot of this came from a rough period in my personal life, but also from the pressure of constantly playing, both schedule-wise but also from my own expectations. After some time I started to just work on myself individually and waited for the right opportunity.

Your arrival at Astralis came at a point where the team was still trying to define itself. What made you believe this was the right project for you?

I have always dreamed of playing under the Astralis banner, and I really believed in the players that were on that roster and that their potential was not being fulfilled at all. I saw it as a great opportunity and challenge to prove myself, and I still think we could've done good things if we didn't end up in some unfortunate circumstances.

What still has to improve for Astralis to become a truly fierce contender again?

First of all we need to play in a way that everyone feels comfortable with. Then I need to do better to keep everyone locked in during games and make sure the energy stays at the right level. I think I can make calls way better than I have done the past 3-4 months, and I am eager to work on that. For the team in general, I think tier 1 tournaments always get decided in the hectic moments where rounds come down to X-on-X situations, and in those we need to have more consistent quality in our decision making.

Are you trying to recreate the old Astralis? If not, what kind of Astralis are you trying to build now? What is your ideal vision for the team's future?

We need to take it one step at a time. With the current landscape of CS, the most important thing is to constantly make deeper runs and get a lot of LAN wins for the VRS. So I think consistent runs have to be the goal for us for now. In the future we all, of course, want to realize our biggest dreams of winning tier 1 tournaments, majors and what not, but that is not for now.

When people look back on this Astralis era in a few years, what would you want them to say about your role in it?

I want the supporters to be able to say "I told you so," and the haters to say "Fair play, I underestimated you."

If one headline could be written about your career when it is finished, what would you want it to say?

There's a fairytale by H.C. Andersen called The Ugly Duckling. I think that would be a great headline and a good name for me if I manage to reach my goals.