We sat down with Timo “Taimou” Kettunen, the hitscan and DPS player of Team EnVyUs to talk about himself, his team, the accusations of cheating and generally for Overwatch. Find out more.
So we had a small introduction, but could you tell me a bit more about yourself?
Taimou: I’m Taimou. I am 23 years old, I’m Finnish and I currently live in America, playing for Team EnVyUs, for about six months now.
Does your BattleTag have any special meaning or significance? How did you come up with it?
Taimou: It doesn’t really have a background story, it’s literally just my real name with two extra letters. This sounded pretty cool when I was eight years old, so I just stuck with it.
You are part of Team EnVyUs, one of the biggest organisations in the world. How did that opportunity come around?
Taimou: When we started playing Overwatch with my team, I think that was back in February of this year, we made a team named IDDQD. We started playing online tournaments, and we did really well, winning multiple ones. Then we had TviQ leaving the team and we needed a sixth player. The old EnVyUs team, the NA team, which Talespin was a part of, had some roster issues; they couldn’t stay together, and some people wanted to quit the game, so they ended up disbanding. Then Talespin came to us and said “Hey guys, I would like to tryout for the team” and we tried him out, liked him and then Hastr0, the owner of EnVyUs, said, “Hey Tales, you just joined a really good team and the old EnVyUs just disbanded, why not join us?” Mike had a really good offer and we said “Hell yeah, of course we want to join EnVyUs, it’s a dream come true.” And the rest is history. I love the organisation so much because Mike is so nice. Everyone working in the organisation is nice, and it’s been perfect.
What is your favourite hero and why?
Taimou: My favourite hero is definitely McCree. I’ve always been a player in games that I enjoy having a steep mechanical depth, even though in Overwatch, you don’t have to be mechanically super-gifted, for example, or you don’t have to have aim at all. You can just play Reinhardt and if you do everything correctly, you tank and ultimate at the right time you can be a really good player, but you don’t need aim. But I’ve always appreciated the aim part of the FPS games and that’s why FPS games are built like in First Person Shooter, you are a Shooter right? So I try to aim, I want to be really good at aiming. McCree, to some extent, and other characters in the game like Widowmaker, have the same kind of unlimited skill depth, so you can always be better at this and all. There is no player that will ever perfect playing these characters, since you can never have 100 percent headshot accuracy. You can always get closer to that point and you can feel like you are getting better at the game and stuff like this, so that’s why I enjoy McCree the most.
Did you play any other FPS games competitively before?
Taimou: I think it was 2001 when I started playing Counter-Strike, and I was eight actually, so 15 years ago. I started playing Counter-Strike, and my bigger brother was playing it. In Europe back then, you either played other games or you played FPS games. If you happened to play FPS games, you either played Counter-Strike or Quake, there was no other games to play. I happened to get sucked into the Counter-Strike group and I’ve been a Counter-Strike kid ever since I played the game so much for at least 10 years. I still love the game, I wish I could still play 1.6 but I can’t. I did play competitively, even when I was super young, I did play a lot, but it was on a national level and clan-based if you remember that, it was really fun back then. Then after Counter-Strike, I played Team Fortress 2, back in 2009, 2011 and I played that competitively. Then I played some StarCraft II. I loved that game too and then there’s been multiple games that I played that died out or just weren’t good at all and people abandoned them, like Shootmania and others, but I don’t remember those. I actually played some MOBA games as well. I played League of Legends for about two years, I started back in Season 3 and I think I hit Diamond 1 in one month or so after I started playing the game, but I never got into Challenger in Season 3. I’m still pretty salty about this, but I wasn’t good enough.
You are in charge of making some changes in Overwatch. What would you change?
Taimou: Right now, I think the game is pretty balanced and the characters are fun. I think there’s some numbers, especially in Ana right now, that make her a bit too strong. She heals more than any other character in the game, any other healing character. So you have a hero that heals so much, deals so much damage and provides a really strong ultimate at the same time. So it seems like Ana is way superior to other support characters like Lucio and Mercy. I feel like Ana is a tad too strong, and Blizzard will probably nerf her some more at that point. They already released that 20 percent reduce nerf on that ultimate shot, but other than balance in the game, I can’t really think of any. I really enjoy the game.
Maps are probably the biggest issue right now. I hated control maps earlier but I’ve started to like them now. There’s 14-15 maps and every map is being played competitively, and it’s a bit too much. There are many maps in the map pool that you have to practice, so it takes a lot of time for a team to get really good at some. I think what Counter-Strike does well is that they have an active map pool. I think they have around 10 maps right now and they are rotating them, or take one out, like they did with Nuke; they reworked it and then put it back in the pool. So I would like to have a system that Blizzard enforces and then you have this many maps that you play competitively, and they could change every season. It would be much more convenient for all the teams and players, because they don’t have to worry about practicing all of them. In the future, there could be like 30 maps, and if you practice all of them, it’s too hard. There’s not enough time for a human being.
A few months ago you were accused of cheating. Can you tell us a bit more about this incident?
Taimou: So the accusing of cheating, the video, that came out was from a scrim and the enemy team that leaked it out didn’t even want to leak it. They just put it on plays.tv and then some people thought it’s like inhuman and there’s no way you can do that, so they started posting it everywhere and then I got a lot backlash from it. But I didn’t really care because if I was cheating then I’d probably lay low. I would be like, “Yeah, that happened, I won’t do it again,” but I know personally that I never cheated. I don’t care, I just embrace the memes, you know. If people think that you’re a cheater in the game and you already know yourself that you’re not cheating, it’s the biggest compliment you can get, right? I used to let it get under my skin a bit too much, because I wanted everybody to like me, but that’s not possible in this world. So, I just said, “whatever, let them waste their lives thinking that I cheated, I don’t mind, go ahead.”
Up until ESL Overwatch Atlantic Showdown, you were the absolute kings of the game, and pretty much the big favourite to win every tournament. What do you think has changed since then in the last two tournaments?
Taimou: I feel like we have some problems with nerves on LAN, especially in LAN, and we haven’t performed as well as we could have. On top of that, I feel like other teams have caught up, especially European teams, like Rogue, Misfits, NiP and in some lesser extent LG, FaZe and teams like these. There are multiple teams that have become really good at the game, and they beat us. Offline, Misfits beat us, Rogue beat us and I think that even though people say that we are still the best team in the world and we had like a sick online run, yeah it is cool to have an online run, but in the end, all that matters is LAN right? That’s what I tell myself personally. So I think it would be good for us to redeem ourselves, especially now at the OGN. We are playing our first OGN game tomorrow and we are really thirsty for the win. We want to win the whole tournament and it would be a really good redemption, a boost to our confidence, that we are still good and we still want to be the best and we want to show it too.
What are your goals for Overwatch this year and maybe the first months of the upcoming year, both as a team and as a player?
Taimou: So for the rest of this year, I just want to win OGN of course. Then I am gonna go to BlizzCon, have a good time there, and then I will hopefully have a few weeks, at least a week or two, with my family back in Finland. The Overwatch life has been so hectic, you just have to practice all the time, so that would be really nice. Then, next year, I hope there will be more tournaments. I know there’s going to be a lot more, but I just hope they start early next year, so that we can get back to the grind.
Do you have any advice or thoughts you’d like to share with your fans or other aspiring competitive players?
Taimou: Inspiring words, hmm. I’d say that if you want to go down this path, of becoming a pro, if you got the financial backing for it, just do it. It’s once in a lifetime; don’t give up, you’re going to get beaten down multiple times. If you make it, it’s going to be worth all your failures by far. Just keep going.
Time to proceed to the serious part of this interview. You have to choose your favourite sandwich ingredients. What do you put in there?
Taimou: Because I’m European, I’d put butter in it. then I would have some grilled cheese, ham, of course, and pickles. I’m a bit odd, so I like pickles. I would probably add pickles in that and it would taste like a McDonald’s burger.
You can spend a day with any person on the planet. Who’s your pick?
Taimou: I would need some time to think about this question, but what would be really good would be some of my favourite band, like not a person but the whole band. I like those people so I would like to hang out with them for a day. I love metal music so much.
You are a castaway on a remote, isolated island. You have to choose one Overwatch personality to help you survive. Who would it be?
Taimou: I would definitely not have anybody from my team. That’d be like instant death. I would probably take my manager TazMo there because he works hard to keep us in line and we don’t have to worry about other things outside from playing the game. And even though he’s Irish, or whatever Scottish, he’s a really nice guy. He is literally the number one person I would entrust my life to.
Ok, I think we can wrap it up. Any final shoutouts?
Taimou: Shoutouts go to Team EnVyUs, Hastr0, everyone working in Team EnVyUs and to our sponsors: Monster Gaming, Hyper X, Zowie Gear, Elgato Gaming, SCUF Gaming, DXRacer and NZXT, and I’d like to thank you for this interview, VampAurora.
What are your thoughts on what Taimou had to say? Let us know by commenting below or tweeting us @GAMURScom.
