Us and Asteria don't get any interest from orgs, says Mythica: Couldn't Care Less (CCL) participated in the VCT GC Elite wildcard qualifiers. Two teams from the qualifier were to make it to the VCT GC SEA Elite. CCL was placed in the 5th-6th position. Another South Asian team Asteria is also participating in the wildcard qualifiers. Team Mad Army has already qualified for the Elite and Asteria is in the lower bracket finals. If Asteria wins the LB Finals, they will also go to the VCT GC FSL Elite.
m1mosa of Gamzo had sat down with Ayesha 'Mythica' Samman on 30 September 2021 to talk about her team, Game Changers, and her future plans. Here is an excerpt from the interview.
People who have been following South Asian CS and Valorant for a long time very well know Mythica. But can you please introduce yourself to our new readers?
I used to be a CS:GO female pro and caster for a few years until I switched to Valorant a year ago and fell in love with the game.
I started off by playing for some mixed teams in Pakistani tournaments and then one time signed up as a substitute for my teammate Sway's () team a few months ago. It turned out that my teammates ended up having great chemistry with me and wanted me to play as a main player with them. That's where our journey started with Couldn't Care Less (CCL) into Asteria and then back home to the original team again.
What is your role in CCL?
I fill for my team. Any agent someone else can't play, I take it as my responsibility. I have played Controllers, Initiators and Sentinels for my team. Currently, I am playing Sova on all maps except for Haven where I play Cypher. I'm actually a Sentinel main but I know how to play every role so it's easy for me to fill the gaps.
Riot Games is trying to create new opportunities and exposure for women and other marginalized genders within VALORANT? How do you feel about it?
I think it's an amazing step from Riot and I couldn't praise them enough for it. While a lot of people would argue that there should not be separate leagues for women because that way they won't grow as a player, I disagree. Before big female tournaments like Game Changers came into the picture, there wasn't enough competition coming to the top from women because they had never been encouraged before to participate or had felt like they had a place in esports.
Women were mostly discouraged from esports by numerous men, their families because of the way they were treated for merely playing a competitive game. Events like VCT Game Changers give women hope. It brought in a lot of support from big shot esports teams as well which opened a path for so many talented women to take professional gaming up as a career.
We have also seen the community come together, Galorants is the biggest example of it. What are your thoughts on it?
I think communities like that are very important for the growth of female esports. Heck, a lot of the regular communities made up strong connections between players and average views.
It's also something I plan on doing for the South Asian women very soon along with a bunch of people I know.
You, Sway, and Eluwu are representing South Asia in VCT GC. Your performances do matter for the whole region. Are you feeling that pressure?
I think I perform great under pressure. I love competing and I don't think anyone would understand to what extent I love playing competitively. I get a rush from playing against the best of teams.
Your confidence level on a scale of 0 to 10 going into the tournament?
Always high. I never want to go into a tournament with low confidence. We had a lot of ups and downs until we settled on our roster since we were in Asteria before and things didn't work out, but we overcame things even with the fewer days for practice together.
We scrim a load of T2 teams actually and perform well but it doesn't translate that well to when we play female teams since most of them have a very puggy playstyle which we're not used to. I'm glad however that my team is very good at adapting and even though we lose a few rounds in the beginning, we always pick things up.
Whom are you most looking forward to play against?
Mad Army. We've played against them before and lost at Overtime when we were up 12-7. We choked back then and we want to set the record straight this time.
What are your future plans? Are you going to stick after the VCT GC? Has any ogranisation shown interest?
I am going to stick to the team until I move out of Asia which will be in a few months hopefully.
As for org interest, unfortunately, teams like us and Asteria don't get any interest from orgs as we're a heavily South Asia based team and most of the bigger orgs that can afford a secondary team/female team are more interested at picking up teams from countries like Singapore, Thailand or Malaysia etc.
We weren't a direct interest of any org even when we were under Asteria and had place top 6 in the main VCT Game Changers open qualifiers, unfortunately.
You have been pretty vocal about issues going on in the community. What do you have to say to the people who doubt you?
I'm very vocal about things that nobody likes to speak up about, the harder things, because nobody else is willing to. If I have such a large following over so many platforms then why not use it for some good? I want to bring change and I want to be someone that inspires people to do the right thing.
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