Frodan spoke to Battle of Boars Champion, Team Liquid’s Slysssa. She talks about the gender equality and difficulties bring a variety streamer. Finally she touches upon the differences and similarities between Teamfight Tactics and Battlegrounds.
Post-championship win, Slysssa continues speaking to esports.gg's Frodan and the topic of representation was touched upon, based on Slysssa's informative video she posted in April.
The latest Battlegrounds event organized by Blizzard boasted an astonishing turnout of over 50% women. This was seen by some in the community, as Frodan pointed out, as a case of "overcorrecting." And Slysssa agreed.
"Yeah, I was a little afraid when I saw," she concedes. "It felt slightly like an overcorrection. A lot of these women who were invited to the tournament didn't have a lot of big screen experience yet. I've been trying to talk to them behind the scenes to make sure they were ready."
Need of the hour: equality for men and women
Optimistic about the future, Slysssa hopes time will provide the growth needed for the newcomers to thrive and be more prominent in the scene. And while she is completely supportive of Blizzard's efforts, Slysssa stresses that she supports equality for both men and women in Hearthstone, as that would promote a thriving community for everyone.
Speaking of support, Slysssa is also a big supporter of her teammate Sunglitters, who is a perfect foil to her because of her outspoken views and incredible skillset. Known for sticking up for her friends, the Battle of the Boars Champion believes she is one of the most entertaining content creators out there.
"She's vocal, she's loud, and she's funny. She has all the qualities of a great streamer," Slysssa explains with a grin. "We have a really good dynamic and friendship."
Along with Sunglitters, Slysssa cites up-and-comers Bofur and Nina, and Liooon, the first woman to win the Hearthstone Grandmasters Global Finals in 2019 as big influencers. However, longtime fans of Slysssa also know her for playing standard and constructed formats in the past. This is a format that she is reluctant to go back to due to the negative reactions on her YouTube channel about her skills.
If I'm gonna play a game, it needs to be streamable - Slysssa
Even now, despite winning a championship, she sadly finds herself still having to prove her skills to earn respect. She believes standard player's mentality is much more "aggressive" than she is comfortable with. She very much prefers the Battleground mode where the community is more supportive and allows her to thrive.
"I think Standard...I don't love the pacing of the game for streaming, and if I'm gonna play a game, it needs to be streamable in my opinion, as that's my job. But if Hearthstone did some sort of decathlon event, count me in!!"
Outside of streaming, Slysssa notes that it is really difficult as a variety streamer in the card game space. There is a high level of monetary involvement and depth of knowledge required to really invest in order to enjoy them as compared to FPS and MOBAs is very high. She tried a bit of Teamfight Tactics, but does so more off-stream for fun. However she points out that if she hits a certain rank, she'd consider streaming it--but only if there is no backseat gaming, a practice notorious during TFT streams.
"This one guy stopped streaming for a week cause he couldn't mentally take the backseaters anymore," she explains. "I've been watching TFT and realizing there are a lot of one-trick ponies there and you CANNOT be a one-trick pony in Battlegrounds, that's for sure. You can't force the same comp every time because there's so much variation that's offered."
"The problem with being a strategy game player is that you either have to be super confident and take no crap from your chat or viewers or you have to be able to take the backseat gaming while you're learning--and that's tricky for me."
Can TFT and Battlegrounds coexist?
Finally, Frodan asks Slysssa if TFT and Battlegrounds can coexist competitively in the future, given their comparisons. She says that it's interesting since despite both games coming from different gaming companies, they share similar, passionate fanbases, and casual players will learn more towards Battlegrounds while high-tier players will go for TFT.
"It's kind of like Magic vs. Standard, right?" she says. "Magic is the high tier while casuals go more to Hearthstone. And I can see that with TFT and Battlegrounds."
"Thanks to my team for being awesome. We all worked really well together to win it. I had good games the first three games and bad games the last four, but Sunglitters and Collins were just super on par all through the mid. And Sho picked it up at the end too. We were just a really awesome team together and I just want to thank them for helping me win that money!"
We can't wait to see what trophy Slysssa and her teammates add to her collection next. With her skillset and her dedication to making Hearthstone continue to be a welcoming community, she can only keep going up from here.
Hearthstone fans can check out part 1 of Frodan interviewing Slysssa for esports.gg here.
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