GGnet travel blog #1: Visiting iG gaming house

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After four days of intense G-1 coverage, me and dopeshow finally got some well deserved sleep. With the curtains down, we lost our sense of time and woke up in the afternoon thinking it's still 6 am. In any case, this is the first time we got to go out to visit Shanghai and the first place we dropped by for lunch was McDonalds (MURICA' FUCK YEAH!). Since we were locked up in JiangWan this whole time, this was the first time we got to see the Zerg Rush of people buying lunch in China. Took us nearly an hour just to get some food.

After that, it was time for us to get to work. With our laptops and cameras in hand, we headed towards the gaming house of Invictus Gaming. The journey there wasn't exactly rainbows and unicorns either. We hopped onto the first taxi we saw and immediately, we were one of the millions caught in the busy freeway of Shanghai. Despite being only 10 kilometres away, it took us a full hour before reaching the venue. Fortunately for us, the taxi driver lent us her phone so that we could call the guy picking us up.

We received a big welcome from VK, the VP of finance for iG. He walked us through the security gates of the apartment and told us that he hoped the boys cleaned up. As we stepped into iG's house, my first impression of the place was that it's quite spacious. The place where you would normally have your television set had been transformed into a gaming area and there was a lot of space to move around.

This was my first gaming house visit in my entire life and I think the place looked very Sparta. The apartment had three rooms, two bathrooms and a small lounge where the players could chill and talk about game plans. There was also a white board to write down their game plans but the only stuff I saw there was "WE CHUAN". Not sure what it meant exactly. I didn't walk into the bedroom though, I figured it'd be rude of me but from what I can see, if you can place two queen sized bed and still have a lot of space to walk around, the room is pretty big.





ChuaN, YYF and Ferrari watching Rising Stars vs LGD.cn

When I arrived, the iG boys were watching the first game between Rising Stars and LGD.cn. All five of them were watching it together and they talked a lot about what LGD could have done better and had plenty of laughs when Xiaotuji's Phantom Assassin started doing 1.6k crits on the Spirit Bear. This was the first time I saw Ferrari talk so much by the way.

After the game, we pulled them aside for an interview but that was an utter disaster, mostly because a lot of the players weren't as responsive as I'd like them to be. Ferrari and Faith did not say a single word throughout the session. Honestly, I was not really prepared nor built-in to interview five guys. It was really out of my comfort zone. After the poo-poo of an interview, the players resumed watching The International 3 qualifiers before leaving me in the house to get lunch.

During that time, VK brought us to visit the Starcraft 2 gaming house which was in the same building but on different floors. It was pretty much the same, the Starcraft 2 house, 5-6 guys sitting in front of their computers playing the game. The management of iG told us that Starcraft 2 is a dying game in China, most of the Warcraft 3 players have switched to League of Legends instead of Starcraft 2. They are the only-standing Starcraft 2 sponsor in China.





iG Sc2 team greeting us as we walked in

Then, we visited the League of Legends house, in a different building, but was told to wait outside the apartment so that they could put some pants on. After the players were all-dressed up, we stepped in and were warmly welcomed. They were all deep in training, so after some small-talk with the players and pictures, we left the apartment to return to the Dota 2 gaming house. The players were all back by now, munching on some fruits while playing a scrim against TongFu. We whispered to ChuaN in order to get a proper interview done and he agreed to it.

In the interview, we touched a little on their training regime, their loss in G-1 League and what caused it, and also their plans on going to The International 3. We'll try to upload the video as soon as possible and just to let you know on our itinerary ahead, we'll be visiting the two LGD gaming houses tomorrow (yes they have two now) followed by a visit to Dota 2 Super League studio on Friday. I believe it's iG versus LGD.cn.

Interesting events that happened today:

1. Haagen Dasz cost me $29 today. 2. We visited a tourist spot in Shanghai called The Bund. It was truly awesome. 3. There wasn't any instant noodles lying around in iG's house. (SHOCKER!) 4. Saw somebody on jD forums praising our match reports and using my nickname as a hashtag #MakeItReiNNNN 5. Thought I was gonna die in an accident 5,000 kilometres away from home. 6. Converted some of my Malaysian Ringgit to RMB courtesy of ChuaN. If I were to throw my money on the floor right now, nobody would even pick it up because they don't recognize it as a currency here. 7. Saw iG's TI3 invitation on a table. So tempted to take it

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So close to bringing it home







"Trophy"rack". They are building a proper one soon



iG LoL training schedule. Unfortunately Dota's whiteboard had nothing on it