Wintersss bringing Warmth into the Malaysian FIFA Online 3 Community

To his classmates, Ahmad Nazreen is just a fellow student majoring in Computer Science in Multimedia University, Cyberjaya. However, what many of his peers do not know is that Ahmad Nazreen had just made a name for himself and in the EA Champions Cup held in Shanghai Expo Center, recently. Ahmad “Wintersss” Nazreen, a Malaysia Tigers team member who had done a clean sweep of the Vietnamese team in the Bronze finals which resulted in a 3-0 victory for Malaysia Tigers and they brought home a whopping USD 30,000 for their efforts. Many people tend to associate an eSport career with a not-so-good education background. Wintersss has proven doubters wrong with what he is currently pursuing, a career in eSports and a Computer Science degree. We spoke to Wintersss recently to get his two cents on what he needed to go through before achieving success in this field. If you think playing video games is easy, think again. Wintersss spends about 6 – 10 hours a day training, 3 – 4 days a week. He says this sort of commitment is necessary, even during examinations week because if he does not at least keep the feel of the game going, he will be left behind as other top players in the game will continuously improve. Wintersss started his life in eSports by playing in FIFA Series tournaments. However, he decided in 2014 that the scene in FIFA Series does not offer much future if he were to pursue it more seriously due to the lack of international tournaments organized for this game. Wintersss made the jump to FIFA Online 3 (FO3) right afterwards after realizing that FO3 offers better infrastructure, tournament and prize pool.

Now, it seems that Wintersss had made the right choice. With the clean sweep of the Vietnamese team as his clear highlight, Wintersss actually believed that if things were to go their way in the semi-finals match against , where the Malaysia Tigers actually had more chances to close out the match as compared to their Thai counterparts, Malaysia Tigers could have won the tournament and made an even bigger impact to the Malaysian eSports scene. Let’s not forget that they did beat eventual champions Team adidas from in the group stage, which was also Team adidas’ only defeat in the tournament. Now, Wintersss may not be the most glamorous of players. He might not even consider himself the best player in the server. What Wintersss pride himself on was the fact that his teammates could count on him to get the job done, doing whatever was necessary at that time to do it. Wintersss credit the amazing performance in Shanghai to the team’s commitment to keep each other focused and motivated to deliver results. If you told anyone in the field before the tournament that Malaysia Tigers will beat Team adidas in the group stage and finish 3rd, most will scoff at you and ask you to be checked for narcotic use. Well, Wintersss said that what everyone did not see was the fact that the team stayed in their hotel room the whole time they were in Shanghai to practice bar meal times, press calls and grocery runs. To them, this was not a free vacation. This was about bringing pride back to the Malaysian FIFA Online 3 scene. We all know, deep in our hearts, they succeeded.