My Gamer Life is an AsiaOne original series where gaming professionals and aspirants in Singapore share the highs, lows, successes, and failures through personal stories on how gaming has defined the course of their lives.
Every student needs a teacher — in esports, that teacher is coach Seetoh "JohnGalt" Jian Qing.
In an interview with AsiaOne for our video series My Gamer Life, Overwatch 2 coach Jian Qing shared how he adapted to his role as an esports coach, utilising the skills he picked up from his studies.
Overwatch 2 is a five-versus-five first-person shooter game by Blizzard Entertainment.
"It's kind of like engineering, it's kind of like science, because when you coach, you take notes — you analyse players, you analyse current working strategies," Jian Qing, 29, said.
"Because I enjoyed coaching the university team so much, I decided, 'Why not help out a couple of local teams…' and that became my hobby."
During the day, he would study engineering at Nanyang Technological University. At night, he would take on the mantle of a coach for these local teams.
[[nid:636419]]
From there, Jian Qing found success and began to branch out — first, he coached an Australian team and even went to Australia for a week after that team made it to the finals of an amateur league.
Then, international teams from the Overwatch League — the highest level of competition for Overwatch — reached out to him, inviting him to join them as part of their coaching staff.
The first team, the Los Angeles Gladiators, hired him as an assistant coach in 2019, and a second team, the Washington Justice, brought him on as head coach in 2020.
He added: "If you just play without being introspective about what we do and about the mistakes that we make, then you can only lose."
Watch our video for the full interview with Jian Qing.
[[nid:634677]]
editor@asiaone.com
No part of this article can be reproduced without permission from AsiaOne.