Reigning South American WCS Champion, Perennial IEM Competitor. Our newest addition to the Clarity Family is a player who has already traveled the globe to compete, and needs almost no introduction. Felipe "cKiLLeR" Zuñiga is a South American icon when it comes to Starcraft 2 and a powerhouse player all around. We're extremely excited to welcome him into the family!
Our primary goal in bringing Felipe into the family is to offer him the chance to attend more events around the globe and show off his tremendous talent worldwide. As such, Felipe will soon be making the trip to join the other members at the Clarity Training Facility in New York. We hope you can join us in offering him a warm welcome to the team, and cheer for him around the globe!
Before we get started, I would like to take a moment to congratulate you on your move to Clarity and express our excitement at having you on the team.
Can you give us a little about your esports background, for those people who might not know you yet?
My name is Felipe Zuñiga mostly known as KiLLeR, i'm from Chile, i used to be a SC:BW player since lots of year ago, later on i started to play a little bit the beta SC2. when SC2 came out i tried to become a more popular player so i could play more international tournaments, between my best achievements were: 3rd place at IEM New York, 2010 and 2012 Panamerican Champion, 8-7th place at Blizzcon Goblal.net 2011, 5-8th BWC 2012 and of course a lot of tournaments, besides that i had the chance to classify for almost every single IEM which i couldn't play a couple of them, cause it was too expensive for me to go
What about your personal background? Any funny stories that you want to share?
Well most of the people doesn't know about this, but i use to have a band in my country where i'm the vocalist/bassist but lately we haven't that much time to practice cause of my SC2 career but its like my 2nd passion after SC2 of course haha, besides that i really dont know what kind of stories i should talk about just right now the only thing in mind is that i had the worst trip of my life when i qualifier for IEM Kiev (when it happened wasn't funny at all) , the thing was that i didn't really realized that i needed visa to get in so when i arrived, after like 25 hours, i had to come back inmediatly and besides somehow i lost 2 of my suitcases, i had to stay in londres for a couple of day with no clothes which was funny cause i had to buy some at the supermarket, later on i could get my suitcases back so i was really happy about it but the journey was really bad in general
Back to esports, what makes you different from other players?
In my opinion i am a player with a lot of potential, but never had the motivation to play that much like most of the top players cause i never had the chance to play many tournaments for being so far away from every single tournament so i used not to practice so much even though i always did ok in most of the tournaments that i played, so i think having a good environment and practicing a lot i could do it better than i did before
What were some of the major factors behind your decision to join Clarity?
Like i said, i saw this team has a lot of potential growing up, all players in Clarity seems like they practice a lot and they are really friendly with each other so this totally will help me a lot to keep me motivated so in that way i could improve my game quite a lot by practicing with them and talking about the game with someone it always helps
Clarity is a New York based team. As we grow we have the opportunity to offer more and more of our players a spot in our world class team house. As one of those lucky few, how do you feel about being so far from home for such long periods of time? How do you plan to make the best of your time there?
I dont know yet how am i gonna do it, but this is the opportunity to do big things, so i just want to stay motivated and excited to be part of the team house to meet everyone in there and start practicing a lot, for me it seems really cool cause i never been part of one, so i just want to improve my game and at the same time being close to the events will be easier for me to travel around to play most tournaments than i did before.
I think training and sharing knowledge will be the base of my stay in the training house, beeing far from home is always difficult, but when you are busy doing something you really like, I think the time will go really fast, and at the end, I hope it will be good experience.
+ Show Spoiler [More Interview] +
2012 was a great year for e-Sports, seeing massive growth throughout the industry. 2013 is shaping up to continue the trend. How do you see Starcraft’s role in that growth and, more specifically, how will HotS change things for better or worse?
i hope we get the leadership again, cause we all know League of Legends has more attention these days, so waiting for HotS to help us with more viewers and maybe/probably new pro players coming out who are probably practicing a lot since beta came out, so i'm just excited cause it seems like a really entertaining game with a lot of new strats even though i haven't played it much cause of WoL still has some nice tournaments coming on
How do you seek to grow in this coming year of e-Sports action?
Well first of all, i really want to become a more popular player this could help me so i might get invited to more events, starting from little things that will help me to get a little bit more involved with the community, being more participate in social networks, I'm always updating my facebook page, but I think I will be using Twitter more often to interact a little bit more with other pro-gamers and the community in general, I really want to keep participating as a strong player on world championship events like WCS and WCG, as I'm going to be on US, I hope I can actually compete in more e-Sports events, MLG, IPL, NASL, to keep playing on IEM's. With the practice I'm getting I will put the biggest of my efforts to get good results there.
Let’s talk technical skills. If you could improve one thing about your play, what would it be? How do you plan on fixing that?
I think that I have good mechanics, is always a good plan to keep improving them and practicing more consistently will totally help me on that. But one of my weak points is that I never had someone to chat about the game, to check, and test and re-test strategies, someone to actually practice games on a serious way, and in Clarity I will be able to have does teammates to help me and to share this knowledge. I need to know more about the game, and also the game is always changing, with more people paying attention to these changes will be easier for me, to modify and practice new strats.
Clarity has a weekly show where we give lessons to help our fans grow as players; what piece of advice would you give to aspiring competitors (or casual players) seeking to improve their game?
First of all, to be patient, and not just for a specific game but for the meaning of playing Starcraft, and eSports games in general, results don't show up from one day to other, it's a matter of time, to play constantly. Being patient on understanding the game, understanding the why I actually lose, being patient on the engages. So for me, that's the key on Starcraft at least, be patient, understand the game and put that on you strategies and playstyle
Felipe, thank you again for your time and welcome to the Clarity family! Is there anything you'd like to tell your fans?
I just want to thanks those fans that supported me when I was teamless, always there, I just hope all of them keep supporting me now that I'm a Clarity member. I will do my 110% to make 2013 a better year than 2012.
Thanks to Clarity, and to my fans, thanks for everything!
Felipe's first performance under the Clarity banner will be this week at IEM São Paulo where he will take place in a series of show matches hosted at the event! The other players will be Grubby, White-Ra, and Strelok
If you'd like to keep up to date on Felipe, as well as the rest of our players in the future, as well as receive immediate updates to exclusive content from our players during, before, and after events check out all our social media platforms below!
Website: ClarityGaming.com
Twitter: @Clarity_Gaming
Facebook: Facebook.com/ClarityGaming
Twitch: Twitch.TV/Clarity_Gaming
Youtube: YouTube.com/ClarityGamingSC2