Professional VALORANT is at its best when the stakes are at their highest, and there are no greater stakes than at Champions. In addition to the teams seeking to bring home a world championship, the biggest stage offers all the players an opportunity to prove why they belong on the tier-one VCT rosters.
Champions also provides a fitting setting to close chapters in this long-running story by answering some major questions. Is this the year of Fnatic? Can Paper Rex superstar Something live up to the hype? How soon is the China takeover? And when does Sentinels play?
Professional VALORANT and its partnership model is a saga made up of several stories, but Champions also provides the opportunity to tell new ones. A theme that’s reached the forefront of this event is the growing regional rivalries, one that’s been propelled by both players and even Riot to a degree leaning into the idea of trash talk. And it’s about damn time.
Let the Geniuses be Evil
Every story needs a hero, and every story needs a villain. At Champions 2023, Evil Geniuses have been leaning more into being the villain that competitive VALORANT needs. In particular, this new endeavor is being spearheaded by the new EG mouthpiece, the bad boy of NA VALORANT, Boostio. Here are a couple of highlights from Dark Boostio over the past month:
- Declaring China “will never be better than North America.” Though it seems he didn’t tell NRG about this one.
- Saying at the pre-tournament press conference that he liked Group B because it was “easy.”
- Saying before playing FPX that they’d only win eight rounds, and he absolutely meant to say eight rounds per map (Sources: trust me).
- Saying that every team from EMEA other than Fnatic was bad and that the region was fraudulent.
This man was firing shots before even getting in the server, and it’s gotten teams and players who would normally take the high road to fire back. Bilibili’s Knight responded to Boostio’s China comments by saying they would have more weight if Boaster had said them and added that maybe EG would have won Masters Tokyo if Boaster was their IGL instead.
Boaster himself came to the defense of both EMEA and the Chinese teams, saying he’d like to play EG in the playoffs and t-bag them back. “If they want to be the villains, I’m their white knight baby,” Boaster said. Even Paper Rex, who almost never go after anyone, got involved, with f0rsaken saying he wants to beat EG early in the playoffs because they are so arrogant.
Boostio may be the trash talker, but Demon1 has been the man of action for EG, going out of his way to shoot bodies and t-bag enemy players relentlessly. Many took issue with him doing it against teams like FPX who were considered below EG’s level, but real bad guys don’t care who they pick on. His actions really riled up some Chinese fans and have seemingly lit a fire under Fnatic’s Alfajer as well, who promises to t-bag Demon1 every chance he gets.
Other teams are chiming in as well. After their opening win against Giants Gaming, EDG’s superstar ZmjjKK fired a warning shot at Paper Rex: “To be honest, we don’t really care what strategies they’ll pull off. In our eyes, they’re basically just trash.” But even though EDG couldn’t get the win, that combined with EG’s antics could be what brought out the venom in typically tame players like f0rsaken.
Embrace the darkness
But why does any of this matter? Because it gets fans more invested. It’s not enough to see your heroes triumph, you want to see them do so at the expense of the ones arrogantly standing against them. Search through the competitive VALORANT communities on Twitter, Reddit, VLR, and other sites and you will see a tidal wave of fans praying for EG to eat their words in the playoffs.
If EG stumble and lose? Then they take it on the chin. Boostio and Demon1 know the risks, and the notion that you can only talk trash if you can back it up is lame. But even so, EG have backed it up already with a 2-0 start and a playoff berth. And if EG win the whole thing? Now you’ve got multiple global fan bases chomping at the bit for the next season to start so someone can knock EG off their high horse.
The best bad guys are the ones you can’t wait to see finally lose. The glory days of competitive Call of Duty can directly be attributed to heightened levels of trash talk, allowing multiple players to take on villain roles for different fan bases. A big talking point around esports right now is sustainability, and part of the solution lies in keeping fans engaged long-term.
It’s great when you find someone to root for. It’s even better when you have someone to root against. And as long as it doesn’t cross a line (stay out of DMs), then it’s all good.
