Source XNY coach Jasper “yuris” Yue: Without Oceania, I don’t think APAC South would be here. Oceania has produced players like Zer0, Wxltzy, Emtee, etc. They’ve produced some of the best players, they just have an unbeatable track record compared to any region.
With XNY being one of the top Chinese teams from APAC South, they’re now at the ALGS Championship for their second LAN appearance. Dominating the LCQ, they qualified as the second seed through having the most points in the lobby. Today we’re speaking with Jasper “yuris” Yue, an esports and Apex veteran who’s helped propel the Chinese team over his two-year tenure with the team, and how he’s helped build the bridge between Chinese Apex and the APAC South region.
Alright, starting for the people who aren’t familiar with who you are. You’re a player that has originally competed in Overwatch and Apex Legends for an extensive amount of time, having represented the Singaporean national team in Overwatch, and competing through the early years of the ALGS Pro League, but ended up moving to coaching, what made you make that move to go from competing to now coaching a team.
One of the biggest reasons that made me move to coaching is that towards the second year of playing professional Apex, I felt like Apex was a really intimate game. You had to have two other players that shared the same vision, direction, and passion in order to make it to LAN and win something.
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It’s a battle royale, if you don’t have people who share the same dreams, motivation, and passion as you, the results aren’t going to come in. Towards the tail end of my career, I felt that it became too hard for me to find like-minded players in APAC South. And I was also at a point where it felt like it was my responsibility, to give the new players I was seeing coming up a good shot at doing something with their careers. Because I believe Apex has a really short career lifespan. And in APAC South it’s even worse. You could be a LAN-winner or you could have won a Split a couple of months ago, and three months down the line you lose your job.
Another one of the reasons why I moved to this coaching was that I had the offer from XNY back then thanks to Sven from Luminosity Gaming. Sven was actually the one that connected me with XNY, He told me about these three young passionate players coming off just grinding ranked, which was unheard of in quite a while. It was a long time since we’ve seen ranked players make it to Pro League, and I thought they deserved a shot and an honest chance at making it somewhere in professional Apex. That’s why I took the offer and moved to coaching.
Jumping to XNY, you’ve coached them for about two years —
Yeah, yeah. I’m going to trust the numbers the liquipedia statistician brings up.
— I wouldn’t dare get my numbers wrong, but what do you think you’ve done to help this team over the two years tenure?
A big part of it is outside of Apex, and outside of just like competing in esports. I’ve felt that a big part of my time together with them was helping them mature into responsible adults that not only cared for the people they were playing with but cared about the direction they were heading as friends and as teammates. So that was one of the big things that I felt like I’ve contributed because XNY just used to be a team that initially qualified to Pro League and then just tried to see how long we could stay there. We realized we were making an impact, we were making waves and we tried to take it more seriously over time.
It’s interesting because you’re one of the few coaches that’s not from from China that stepped in. Do you think you’ve through this move that you’ve created a bridged between APAC South and China as a region?
Yeah, so from my understanding China for however long it has been part of competing in APAC South has been its own like little bubble, a little microcosmos. So China played the game really differently and that’s the one thing that I brought. A bit more structure into Chinese Apex. Because Chinese Apex, as a slang term, called a band of brothers kind of Apex. Everyone’s there just for a good time. Not a long time, just a good time. If it lasts a long time, then so be it. It’s good, you know? And that’s one of the things that I offer. I offer more professionalism, and more structure towards playing the game.
Because Chinese Apex, for the longest time, has been monkey see, monkey do. So the best team would figure out the best possible way to play and the next few teams in line would just copy what the best team in doing. And at that point in time, it was Dreamfire just running everybody down in lobby. Mechanically outmatching everyone else and that’s why Chinese Apex slowly evolved into it.
I would say the last couple of splits of comp Apex and APAC South, we were starting to see Chinese teams play their own style, figuring out where they stand in the meta and things like that, which was very interesting and it’s something that I noticed after I stepped into Chinese scene. I realized it’s a big change I wouldn’t say it’s because of me, I think it’s just them opening themselves up to change.
As we’ve seen over the past seasons, There’s more and more teams coming from China to compete in APAC South, and them also gaining their own regional qualifier. Do you think it’s helped elevate the region as a whole, in terms of level of play?
One of the things about Chinese Apex that probably other members of the community, Such as “foreign” players that don’t play in or watch APAC South. They don’t realize that China has been an integral part of Apex. They have been here for a long time. The only difference is that in the last year and a half, we’ve seen Chinese teams and Chinese coaches open up. They’re more receptive and they’re more keen to listen to what the other, the wider Apex community has to say about how to play Apex, especially from other coaches. But the largest issue is still that there’s a prominent language barrier. They wish to do more, and that’s what I get from talking to a lot of players and coaches, but the resources are limited. And it’s interesting how they do it.
In a case like for me with XNY, we have me as an English speaker being able to study English resources, but for other teams, most of them get their resources from fan sub-videos. It could be a 10-minute video of ImperialHal’s highlights and they’ll eat it up and they’ll use that as coaching material, which is dubious at large. It’s not a proper VOD, it’s just a 10-minute highlight reel.
Speaking on that, APAC South, even without China is quite a big diverse region where there are a lot of different cultures and language barriers. Do you think each these smaller regions, like Oceania, Southeast Asia, and China, view the game differently?
Definitely. Apex is a different game from region to region. Before competing internationally, if you are still a regional team that hasn’t made it to LAN, you play to the style best to your region, whatever that might be. So in APAC South, that was what it is. On a regional level they play the game differently but at the end of the day APAC South is still known as a very mechanically strong region. Everyone wants to fight each other you know?
But there are niche pockets where even in like Oceania, before Guild became successful, Guild was also playing Hard Zone, we have MDY Black back then also playing Hard Zone in the Chinese region. In Indonesia, we had Heroez as a strong zone team. So there are pockets where they play their own meta but generally most teams just play their very aggressive style of Apex. For example, Mkers also played aggressive Apex before, they made it to international events, and there they realized it wasn’t working that way.
Do you think there’s also differences between the main regions like APAC North, EMEA, and North America?
For sure, A prominent example in APAC North is that, most people in their pro career learn to play the game, in like hard stable zone type of play. And NA is a bit more diversified, because the level of play in NA is slightly higher than every other region. So you kind of have to learn and have a touch of the different styles before settling on the one you’re good at. But in general, I would say that teams in NA know the game slightly better and play the game a bit more sensibly than the other regions.
I’m not too sure what EU’s meta is, but the last time I watched EU, they seemed to be a very passive region. Where someone would pick off a player in a fight and only then capitalize on it. So there’s a little difference in meta here and there.
In the past, we’ve also talked about how cultural differences can help in approaching the game, or how teams work to evolve as a team. Do you think there’s a certain region where their mentality to grow stands out?
You’ve got to give it to Oceania. Oceania has an “I’ll keep tabs on you even if you’re my friend or my enemy” kind of mindset. There’s a social pressure in Oceania to be good if you’re going to compete from that region. So they hold each other to high standards Even if you’re my nemesis, you’re a guy I’m competing against I’ll talk down on you just so you pick yourselves up and play better.
At the end of the day, Oceania is a region that oddly enough, for what they are, culturally and structurally, they develop talent and it’s part of the culture that they have over there. And you can tell because a lot of the English-speaking APAC South players that interact with Oceanian teams also tend to go down a path of success. There’s a close correlation there. Which I find Interesting because I think the rest of the world thinks they are a very “toxic” region, they hold everyone responsible for every single bit of detail. But them being meticulous and holding people to higher standards is what makes the region better as a whole. Without Oceania, I don’t think APAC South would be here. Oceania has produced players like Zer0, Wxltzy, Emtee, etc. They’ve produced some of the best players, they just have an unbeatable track record compared to any region.
With all of the previous topics we’ve discussed, is there a superteam you think you’d want to create, language issues aside, what’s a combination you’d want to see?
I’ll try the experimental roster. I want to see what Chinese players can do under extremely prestigious IGL’s. I’m thinking, let’s put Emtee with, NoName (IHateTheWorld) and JR together. Imagine this roster where language isn’t a thing and Emtee gets two extremely talented people that just shoot big guns.
