LeXeR: "Quake was an island of safety"
On July 22, Alexey "LeXeR" Nesterov held a community Q&A on his Twitch channel. The Quake veteran looked back at the defining matches of his career, explained why he lost the desire to compete after winning QuakeCon 2002, and discussed the games, players, and choices that shaped his life.
Editor's note: The interview was translated from Russian, lightly edited for clarity, and reorganized by topic. The questions, stories, and substantive details have been retained; only verbal repetition has been cleaned up.
Sections
Quake: then and now
Q: Have you played anyone from the current Quake scene or the 250 FPS League?
LeXeR: Honestly, no. The last time I played Quake Live was in Saint Petersburg about four years ago. I faced Cyber and one or two other strong players, but I have not met anyone from the current scene.
I also tried Quake Champions with baSe. It was unpleasant; I did not get anything positive out of it. (laughs) We barely played, to be fair - he mostly showed me the game. Later I spent about a week in Quake Live, playing duels on ztn.
Q: Did you also start with Quake II?
LeXeR: Yes. I was surprised to hear that Cooller did too, because he must have been about eight at the time. I remember him coming to watch me play Quake III tournaments before he started competing himself. He was only 12 or 13.
Q: Do you miss the old days?
LeXeR: I do. There was a particular romance to that time - youth, travel, competition. But every age has its own advantages, so I do not fall into deep nostalgia.
Quake still appears in my dreams from time to time. Yesterday, for example, I dreamed about an Italian friend with whom I lived in Italy and played Painkiller. At the time I was on a team with six Italians. We have not spoken for a couple of years, but he suddenly appeared in my dream.
That history is always somewhere nearby. I no longer play and I stopped following the scene years ago, but Quake is already built into my DNA.
Q: Which matches stand out, and which of your own matches would you consider essential viewing?
LeXeR: I have not rewatched my own matches since I was an active player reviewing demos. I cannot point to one in particular. All of my matches are decent. (laughs)
After my short, year-long Painkiller career, I played poker for a couple of years and then moved to Bali for eight and a half years. During all that time, I watched only two Quake matches: a QuakeCon final between rapha and evil, and another QuakeCon final involving cYpheR.
I do not have enough recent viewing behind me to recommend a full list. But if you have not watched rapha against evil, you should.
Q: Which version of Quake was the most successful?
LeXeR: Quake III. The most popular one was the most successful one. It had the right pace and balance.
Q: How did Quake shape your life?
LeXeR: That is a deep question. My friends and I grew up around Ladozhskaya in Saint Petersburg, in a rough environment. In the 1990s there was a lot of drinking, drugs, and street crime around us. I am very grateful that someone introduced me to computer games and that I disappeared into them. Quake became an island of safety in that environment.
It also gave me a way to discover my ambition and other qualities. The travel was the best part. At 16 or 17, going abroad on your own was almost impossible unless your parents arranged it. Quake gave me that opportunity, and I am very grateful for it.
My studies obviously went in the wrong direction once Quake appeared. I cannot know how my life would have developed without it. I probably would not have become an addict or an alcoholic; perhaps everything might even have turned out better. But I believe things happened as they were supposed to. Overall, Quake changed my life for the better.
QuakeCon 2002, WCG, and walking away
Q: A viewer said: "I watched the LeXeR vs. cha0ticz video before I even had internet. I remembered it for life, even though I did not know what Quake was."
LeXeR: Thank you. That is funny.
Q: How did you win the famous match against cha0ticz?
LeXeR: I was talented, but not disciplined. QuakeCon was the one event for which I prepared as thoroughly as possible. Every morning I woke up and went to the M19 club to practice with my friend T33*Koresh.
Koresh was a very strong player, probably top three in Saint Petersburg. He became extremely nervous at tournaments and failed at all of them, but as a player he was excellent and completely suited me as a sparring partner.
We trained for a month. At the start our games were close; by the end I was winning comfortably. Koresh told me I should win QuakeCon. I travelled there completely focused on first place. I knew my own level, I had seen the other players, and during the event I became convinced that I simply had to win. It was my dream, and I had prepared for it as well as I could.
Against cha0ticz, that confidence never left. He was not actually playing at an overwhelming level, but I made careless mistakes early in the game. Even then, I understood that I would win in the end.
I love watching the UFC, and the same principle applies there: you have to train so hard that the work changes your confidence. Poker is similar. If you know the theory, then no matter how unfair the cards are in the short term, you understand that your decisions are still correct. When you lose for a long time and begin questioning everything, that often comes from not knowing the theory well enough.
Quake practice can give you the same unshakeable certainty. During that match I was thinking, 'Fine, this nonsense will end now. I will get one frag, then several more, and I will win.' Of course, luck also played a part.
Q: Why did you fail to qualify for WCG 2002 after winning QuakeCon?
LeXeR: I was not playing at all. My great celebration after QuakeCon lasted right up to the start of the WCG qualifier. I had already bought a car with the prize money and went off to enjoy myself.
I arrived completely unprepared. Nothing felt comfortable, nothing worked, and I remember putting cushions under myself to fix the seating. That is what bad form does: everything gets worse, nothing works, and nothing feels right.
I lost to b100.Dracula, if I remember correctly, around the second round. I never even reached Cooller, uNkind or death in the bracket.
Q: Do you think you ended your playing career too early?
LeXeR: In a sense, I set the wrong goal. I had one objective: beat everyone. Once I did that, I immediately deflated. I had no motivation to continue playing, keep competing, or prove anything to anyone.
I made a few short returns - practice for a month, play an event, then stop. ESWC was probably the last tournament for which I made a real attempt to prepare. Everything after that was just occasional play; I no longer wanted a competitive career.
Looking back, 'win one tournament and quit' was not a good long-term objective, but that is how it happened. I still think everything worked out for the best.
If I had had a mentor or another wise person nearby telling me, 'Alexey, you need to continue your career,' I am still not sure it would have worked. The interest had already gone.
Q: A viewer joked that if you had not quit, you might now be coaching a Fortnite team.
LeXeR: Possibly. But I disconnected from esports completely and went in a very different direction.
Q: Did you ever play Fatal1ty in Quake III or Quake 4?
LeXeR: No. We crossed paths many times in life, but never met in a Quake III or Quake 4 tournament. I think we played once in Painkiller.
Q: Did success ever go to your head?
LeXeR: Yes, when I was about 18 and had won QuakeCon. The best protection is having friends who will push your face toward reality - and being willing to listen to them. One close friend told me directly that I had become arrogant and unpleasant. I heard him and tried to move in the opposite direction.
It is especially difficult when you are young. You move through life on ego, then victories appear to validate it. In Saint Petersburg, taxi drivers sometimes gave me free rides and people asked for autographs in the street. That was fame on a very small scale.
For today's young Dota or Counter-Strike superstars, it must be genuinely difficult. A young mind has a hard time avoiding that ego. You need someone who keeps you grounded and gives you values beyond your results.
Players, styles, and the Quake community
Q: Which Quake players do you admire most for style and professionalism?
LeXeR: Style and personal qualities are separate questions. In professional terms, rapha impresses me most. In terms of playing style, I prefer cYpheR.
I would put Cooller second behind rapha as a professional, and I consider him the most professional Russian Quake player.
Q: Who are the three greatest Quake players of all time?
LeXeR: By overall achievement, rapha is first and in a class of his own. I would put cYpheR second and Cooller third.
If we expand the question to competitive shooters in general, Fatal1ty has to be mentioned. I was never a major fan, but his performance on the 2005 CPL World Tour impressed me.
He entered the Painkiller league around the fourth or fifth stop and still managed to beat Vo0 at the grand final in New York. Vo0 was completely comfortable in Painkiller, and for the first few months nobody could offer him any resistance. He looked like an unbeatable final boss. Beating him was genuinely impressive, and I applauded Fatal1ty for it.
Q: Have you heard anything about PELE (PK)?
LeXeR: Not directly for a long time. I heard second-hand that he had gone on a retreat in nature to search for himself, in the positive sense. I believe Polosaty said he was somewhere in Poland.
Q: Did you see the video in which uNkind talks about building a perpetual-motion machine?
LeXeR: I saw something like that, but I do not comment on it.
Beyond Quake: Mortal Kombat, Unreal Tournament, Painkiller and poker
Q: What did you play competitively besides Quake?
LeXeR: The story starts in seventh grade, when I had top marks in every subject. Then my mother brought home a Sega Mega Drive 2. The very next month I had four mediocre grades and one failing grade.
That is how I first became competitive in Mortal Kombat. I was extremely good and probably could have played in tournaments.
I also played Unreal Tournament. A computer-club owner in Saint Petersburg loved the game, and we represented his club as a team. Every week or two, he and his friends organized Unreal Tournament events with about $200 for first place and around $20 for fifth. I regularly finished near fifth. I could not challenge the top players, but I consistently took my small piece of the prize pool.
Painkiller came later. After ending my first esports run, I moved to New York. My aunt, cousins, and a large second family lived there, and I stayed to pursue something like the American dream.
Six months later, Painkiller appeared and a heavily funded circuit was announced. An American manager immediately contacted me: 'Alexey, we are building a team. Do you want to join? There will be 12 stops, one every month. We will cover travel, hotels, accommodation, and bootcamps, and pay a salary.' I think the salary was around 1,000 euros.
This was 2004, and the prize pool for the circuit was around $1 million. At the time, that sounded unbelievable, so of course I agreed. I spent the whole year travelling and playing Painkiller.
The first three or four months were genuinely competitive for me. Then the visa problem became decisive. Travelling on a Russian passport, I repeatedly had to return home, apply for the next visa, and wait two or three weeks for an answer.
The international players could leave a tournament in Italy, travel directly to a bootcamp in Germany, set up 20 computers, practice through the night, and go straight to the next event. Naturally, their skill grew at an incredible rate.
Meanwhile, I kept persuading m19*cas to practice with me. Eventually I improved enough to need a stronger opponent, while cas also lost interest in playing those sessions. By then, catching the international players had become impossible.
At some point I gave up on the competitive chase. I decided to play, travel, and enjoy the year. Near the end of the Painkiller era I became interested in poker and started playing it with the other competitors during events.
As an experience, the tour was excellent. As an esports career, it was almost impossible. And the game itself was strange. When the 2005 CPL World Tour ended, I think everybody deleted Painkiller from their computer within two days. It did not feel like a lasting game; it felt like madness.
Q: Could Painkiller succeed as an esport in the 2020s?
LeXeR: No - not now, not later, and probably not even then. (laughs) It was an extremely difficult game.
Imagine every Quake Champions match being played by two Slash players. The difference is that Slash reaches speed immediately, while Painkiller had a special bunny-hop system. You needed six or seven jumps to reach maximum speed, and touching anything made you lose it.
Touch a corner and you stopped. Lose your speed and you were immediately dead. To begin playing at a serious level, you had to be able to run through every map backwards without touching anything.
That made the game very demanding and not especially watchable for an unprepared audience. It was hard to understand what was happening. Modern players generally prefer games that are more casual and accessible. Painkiller was too hardcore.
Q: Do you still play poker?
LeXeR: I have not played for two or three years. The competitive level keeps rising, so if you do not study continuously, you constantly fall behind.
The future of Quake and duel esports
Q: If you controlled the Quake franchise and had a strong development team, how would you grow the game and its esport?
LeXeR: It is a difficult question. I disconnected from esports after I stopped competing. I did not follow Quake Live's rise and decline closely enough to understand exactly how high it climbed, why it faded, or what should have happened differently.
There are no widely popular one-on-one esports now. The world changed: players want team games, and very few want that level of hardcore competition.
At the same time, tennis, boxing, and the UFC remain extremely popular, even though they are one-on-one sports. So why did that format collapse in esports? Perhaps it simply needed to be presented differently.
With Quake Champions, I would not have launched a $1 million tournament around an unfinished game. I also would not have introduced so many champions.
If I had been developing Quake Champions, I might have built something closer to Team Fortress. I would develop a strong team mode alongside duel, then use the team game to bring players toward one-on-one competition. Sacrifice was not compelling enough, while a Team Fortress-style direction might have worked.
Asia, friends and life after esports
Q: Do you live in Saint Petersburg now?
LeXeR: I live in Phuket now. Before that, I lived in Saint Petersburg.
Q: A viewer told you: "Enough running around islands. Come back to Russia."
LeXeR: I wanted to visit this summer, but for now I have changed my mind. Maybe I will come next summer.
Q: Do you like living in Asia?
LeXeR: Mostly, yes. It depends on the person; everybody has different interests and priorities.
I like Asia and stay here because I love summer, sunshine, nature, and blue sky. Those are the things that make me happy. I am slightly dependent on sunshine.
Q: Could you move back to Russia?
LeXeR: Of course. I have never considered any move permanent; Thailand is simply where I live now. I do not expect to stay here forever.
I miss Russia constantly, especially when summer comes and I see the landscape. Every summer I want to visit, but I no longer have much practical business there.
At the same time, I enjoy daily life in Asia. If I have children, that will be the point when I need to think more seriously about where to settle.
Q: You and M19*KALbI4 spent years together in Bali. Are you still in touch?
LeXeR: We did not merely hang out in Bali - we effectively lived together for eight years. We are very close friends and speak regularly.
He now lives in the Caucasus and organizes his own small-group tours to unusual destinations. He has done trips to China and Japan; he is currently in the Altai, and before that he was in Chile. He puts a great deal of care and heart into the work.
Q: What do you do for a living?
LeXeR: I provide training in poker-adjacent fields, and I have a couple of other poker-related projects.
Q: Did M19*KALbI4 ever suffer from the same kind of ego after success?
LeXeR: Maybe a little.
Fitness, combat sports, and longevity
Q: When did you become serious about fitness? Do you use any pharmacological support, and what advice would you give people over 35?
LeXeR: I started training seriously in Bali in 2008. My friend M19*KALbI4 and I arrived with two backpacks and a PlayStation 3 that I had received for my birthday. I travelled with the console still in its retail box.
At the time, there were only six Russians living in Bali, all connected to the same surf school. We went looking for it along the beach. The stalls around us were selling spears, bows, knives, and similar things, while we were walking past with this PlayStation box.
By the end of the walk I told KALbI4, 'They are either going to shoot us with a bow or stab us with a knife and take the PlayStation.' Everybody was staring at the box as if it were a time machine.
We found the surf school, settled in, and within a week I noticed that the local men seemed huge, tanned, and about 100 kilograms each. I told KALbI4 that next to them we looked like two scrawny guys from Saint Petersburg. So we began training seriously every day.
We were also surfing, which demands strong conditioning. You may spend two or three hours paddling without stopping just to catch a wave. Training became part of that routine, and I have never stopped.
I do not use pharmacological support. I take protein, creatine, multivitamins, and casein.
My basic advice is to train as often as you can. I mostly use bodyweight exercises and a system assembled from several sources. I have a gym on the roof of my house and train almost every day.
Squats, push-ups, pull-ups, and a kettlebell are enough to train the body almost perfectly. As you get older, sleep and nutrition become the two things you must watch most carefully. I would also emphasize bodyweight work and avoid very heavy loads that put unnecessary stress on joints and tendons.
Q: How much does a month in Bali cost?
LeXeR: I would estimate at least $2,000.
Q: Have you trained in Muay Thai?
LeXeR: For many years I trained in Muay Thai, boxing, and kickboxing. I enjoyed it for a while, but I stepped away because I no longer want to be hit in the head. (laughs) If you want to compete, you have to spar, and that means taking those shots.
Thailand is a good place to train because Thai sparring partners are usually very controlled. It is different from some boxing gyms in Russia, where you arrive and people simply try to take your jaw off.
The only boxing equipment I still use is the heavy bag in my rooftop gym. A heavy bag gives you an honest measure of what you can do. These days, I cannot beat the bag anymore - old age. (laughs)
Editor's note: The interview was translated from Russian, lightly edited for clarity, and reorganized by topic. The questions, stories, and substantive details have been retained; only verbal repetition has been cleaned up.
Sections
- Quake: then and now
- QuakeCon 2002, WCG, and walking away
- Players, styles, and the Quake community
- Beyond Quake: Mortal Kombat, Unreal Tournament, Painkiller and poker
- The future of Quake and duel esports
- Asia, friends and life after esports
- Fitness, combat sports, and longevity
Quake: then and now
Q: Have you played anyone from the current Quake scene or the 250 FPS League?
LeXeR: Honestly, no. The last time I played Quake Live was in Saint Petersburg about four years ago. I faced Cyber and one or two other strong players, but I have not met anyone from the current scene.
I also tried Quake Champions with baSe. It was unpleasant; I did not get anything positive out of it. (laughs) We barely played, to be fair - he mostly showed me the game. Later I spent about a week in Quake Live, playing duels on ztn.
Q: Did you also start with Quake II?
LeXeR: Yes. I was surprised to hear that Cooller did too, because he must have been about eight at the time. I remember him coming to watch me play Quake III tournaments before he started competing himself. He was only 12 or 13.
Q: Do you miss the old days?
LeXeR: I do. There was a particular romance to that time - youth, travel, competition. But every age has its own advantages, so I do not fall into deep nostalgia.
Quake still appears in my dreams from time to time. Yesterday, for example, I dreamed about an Italian friend with whom I lived in Italy and played Painkiller. At the time I was on a team with six Italians. We have not spoken for a couple of years, but he suddenly appeared in my dream.
That history is always somewhere nearby. I no longer play and I stopped following the scene years ago, but Quake is already built into my DNA.
Q: Which matches stand out, and which of your own matches would you consider essential viewing?
LeXeR: I have not rewatched my own matches since I was an active player reviewing demos. I cannot point to one in particular. All of my matches are decent. (laughs)
After my short, year-long Painkiller career, I played poker for a couple of years and then moved to Bali for eight and a half years. During all that time, I watched only two Quake matches: a QuakeCon final between rapha and evil, and another QuakeCon final involving cYpheR.
I do not have enough recent viewing behind me to recommend a full list. But if you have not watched rapha against evil, you should.
Q: Which version of Quake was the most successful?
LeXeR: Quake III. The most popular one was the most successful one. It had the right pace and balance.
Q: How did Quake shape your life?
LeXeR: That is a deep question. My friends and I grew up around Ladozhskaya in Saint Petersburg, in a rough environment. In the 1990s there was a lot of drinking, drugs, and street crime around us. I am very grateful that someone introduced me to computer games and that I disappeared into them. Quake became an island of safety in that environment.
It also gave me a way to discover my ambition and other qualities. The travel was the best part. At 16 or 17, going abroad on your own was almost impossible unless your parents arranged it. Quake gave me that opportunity, and I am very grateful for it.
My studies obviously went in the wrong direction once Quake appeared. I cannot know how my life would have developed without it. I probably would not have become an addict or an alcoholic; perhaps everything might even have turned out better. But I believe things happened as they were supposed to. Overall, Quake changed my life for the better.
QuakeCon 2002, WCG, and walking away
Q: A viewer said: "I watched the LeXeR vs. cha0ticz video before I even had internet. I remembered it for life, even though I did not know what Quake was."
LeXeR: Thank you. That is funny.
Q: How did you win the famous match against cha0ticz?
LeXeR: I was talented, but not disciplined. QuakeCon was the one event for which I prepared as thoroughly as possible. Every morning I woke up and went to the M19 club to practice with my friend T33*Koresh.
Koresh was a very strong player, probably top three in Saint Petersburg. He became extremely nervous at tournaments and failed at all of them, but as a player he was excellent and completely suited me as a sparring partner.
We trained for a month. At the start our games were close; by the end I was winning comfortably. Koresh told me I should win QuakeCon. I travelled there completely focused on first place. I knew my own level, I had seen the other players, and during the event I became convinced that I simply had to win. It was my dream, and I had prepared for it as well as I could.
Against cha0ticz, that confidence never left. He was not actually playing at an overwhelming level, but I made careless mistakes early in the game. Even then, I understood that I would win in the end.
I love watching the UFC, and the same principle applies there: you have to train so hard that the work changes your confidence. Poker is similar. If you know the theory, then no matter how unfair the cards are in the short term, you understand that your decisions are still correct. When you lose for a long time and begin questioning everything, that often comes from not knowing the theory well enough.
Quake practice can give you the same unshakeable certainty. During that match I was thinking, 'Fine, this nonsense will end now. I will get one frag, then several more, and I will win.' Of course, luck also played a part.
Q: Why did you fail to qualify for WCG 2002 after winning QuakeCon?
LeXeR: I was not playing at all. My great celebration after QuakeCon lasted right up to the start of the WCG qualifier. I had already bought a car with the prize money and went off to enjoy myself.
I arrived completely unprepared. Nothing felt comfortable, nothing worked, and I remember putting cushions under myself to fix the seating. That is what bad form does: everything gets worse, nothing works, and nothing feels right.
I lost to b100.Dracula, if I remember correctly, around the second round. I never even reached Cooller, uNkind or death in the bracket.
Q: Do you think you ended your playing career too early?
LeXeR: In a sense, I set the wrong goal. I had one objective: beat everyone. Once I did that, I immediately deflated. I had no motivation to continue playing, keep competing, or prove anything to anyone.
I made a few short returns - practice for a month, play an event, then stop. ESWC was probably the last tournament for which I made a real attempt to prepare. Everything after that was just occasional play; I no longer wanted a competitive career.
Looking back, 'win one tournament and quit' was not a good long-term objective, but that is how it happened. I still think everything worked out for the best.
If I had had a mentor or another wise person nearby telling me, 'Alexey, you need to continue your career,' I am still not sure it would have worked. The interest had already gone.
Q: A viewer joked that if you had not quit, you might now be coaching a Fortnite team.
LeXeR: Possibly. But I disconnected from esports completely and went in a very different direction.
Q: Did you ever play Fatal1ty in Quake III or Quake 4?
LeXeR: No. We crossed paths many times in life, but never met in a Quake III or Quake 4 tournament. I think we played once in Painkiller.
Q: Did success ever go to your head?
LeXeR: Yes, when I was about 18 and had won QuakeCon. The best protection is having friends who will push your face toward reality - and being willing to listen to them. One close friend told me directly that I had become arrogant and unpleasant. I heard him and tried to move in the opposite direction.
It is especially difficult when you are young. You move through life on ego, then victories appear to validate it. In Saint Petersburg, taxi drivers sometimes gave me free rides and people asked for autographs in the street. That was fame on a very small scale.
For today's young Dota or Counter-Strike superstars, it must be genuinely difficult. A young mind has a hard time avoiding that ego. You need someone who keeps you grounded and gives you values beyond your results.
Players, styles, and the Quake community
Q: Which Quake players do you admire most for style and professionalism?
LeXeR: Style and personal qualities are separate questions. In professional terms, rapha impresses me most. In terms of playing style, I prefer cYpheR.
I would put Cooller second behind rapha as a professional, and I consider him the most professional Russian Quake player.
Q: Who are the three greatest Quake players of all time?
LeXeR: By overall achievement, rapha is first and in a class of his own. I would put cYpheR second and Cooller third.
If we expand the question to competitive shooters in general, Fatal1ty has to be mentioned. I was never a major fan, but his performance on the 2005 CPL World Tour impressed me.
He entered the Painkiller league around the fourth or fifth stop and still managed to beat Vo0 at the grand final in New York. Vo0 was completely comfortable in Painkiller, and for the first few months nobody could offer him any resistance. He looked like an unbeatable final boss. Beating him was genuinely impressive, and I applauded Fatal1ty for it.
Q: Have you heard anything about PELE (PK)?
LeXeR: Not directly for a long time. I heard second-hand that he had gone on a retreat in nature to search for himself, in the positive sense. I believe Polosaty said he was somewhere in Poland.
Q: Did you see the video in which uNkind talks about building a perpetual-motion machine?
LeXeR: I saw something like that, but I do not comment on it.
Beyond Quake: Mortal Kombat, Unreal Tournament, Painkiller and poker
Q: What did you play competitively besides Quake?
LeXeR: The story starts in seventh grade, when I had top marks in every subject. Then my mother brought home a Sega Mega Drive 2. The very next month I had four mediocre grades and one failing grade.
That is how I first became competitive in Mortal Kombat. I was extremely good and probably could have played in tournaments.
I also played Unreal Tournament. A computer-club owner in Saint Petersburg loved the game, and we represented his club as a team. Every week or two, he and his friends organized Unreal Tournament events with about $200 for first place and around $20 for fifth. I regularly finished near fifth. I could not challenge the top players, but I consistently took my small piece of the prize pool.
Painkiller came later. After ending my first esports run, I moved to New York. My aunt, cousins, and a large second family lived there, and I stayed to pursue something like the American dream.
Six months later, Painkiller appeared and a heavily funded circuit was announced. An American manager immediately contacted me: 'Alexey, we are building a team. Do you want to join? There will be 12 stops, one every month. We will cover travel, hotels, accommodation, and bootcamps, and pay a salary.' I think the salary was around 1,000 euros.
This was 2004, and the prize pool for the circuit was around $1 million. At the time, that sounded unbelievable, so of course I agreed. I spent the whole year travelling and playing Painkiller.
The first three or four months were genuinely competitive for me. Then the visa problem became decisive. Travelling on a Russian passport, I repeatedly had to return home, apply for the next visa, and wait two or three weeks for an answer.
The international players could leave a tournament in Italy, travel directly to a bootcamp in Germany, set up 20 computers, practice through the night, and go straight to the next event. Naturally, their skill grew at an incredible rate.
Meanwhile, I kept persuading m19*cas to practice with me. Eventually I improved enough to need a stronger opponent, while cas also lost interest in playing those sessions. By then, catching the international players had become impossible.
At some point I gave up on the competitive chase. I decided to play, travel, and enjoy the year. Near the end of the Painkiller era I became interested in poker and started playing it with the other competitors during events.
As an experience, the tour was excellent. As an esports career, it was almost impossible. And the game itself was strange. When the 2005 CPL World Tour ended, I think everybody deleted Painkiller from their computer within two days. It did not feel like a lasting game; it felt like madness.
Q: Could Painkiller succeed as an esport in the 2020s?
LeXeR: No - not now, not later, and probably not even then. (laughs) It was an extremely difficult game.
Imagine every Quake Champions match being played by two Slash players. The difference is that Slash reaches speed immediately, while Painkiller had a special bunny-hop system. You needed six or seven jumps to reach maximum speed, and touching anything made you lose it.
Touch a corner and you stopped. Lose your speed and you were immediately dead. To begin playing at a serious level, you had to be able to run through every map backwards without touching anything.
That made the game very demanding and not especially watchable for an unprepared audience. It was hard to understand what was happening. Modern players generally prefer games that are more casual and accessible. Painkiller was too hardcore.
Q: Do you still play poker?
LeXeR: I have not played for two or three years. The competitive level keeps rising, so if you do not study continuously, you constantly fall behind.
The future of Quake and duel esports
Q: If you controlled the Quake franchise and had a strong development team, how would you grow the game and its esport?
LeXeR: It is a difficult question. I disconnected from esports after I stopped competing. I did not follow Quake Live's rise and decline closely enough to understand exactly how high it climbed, why it faded, or what should have happened differently.
There are no widely popular one-on-one esports now. The world changed: players want team games, and very few want that level of hardcore competition.
At the same time, tennis, boxing, and the UFC remain extremely popular, even though they are one-on-one sports. So why did that format collapse in esports? Perhaps it simply needed to be presented differently.
With Quake Champions, I would not have launched a $1 million tournament around an unfinished game. I also would not have introduced so many champions.
If I had been developing Quake Champions, I might have built something closer to Team Fortress. I would develop a strong team mode alongside duel, then use the team game to bring players toward one-on-one competition. Sacrifice was not compelling enough, while a Team Fortress-style direction might have worked.
Asia, friends and life after esports
Q: Do you live in Saint Petersburg now?
LeXeR: I live in Phuket now. Before that, I lived in Saint Petersburg.
Q: A viewer told you: "Enough running around islands. Come back to Russia."
LeXeR: I wanted to visit this summer, but for now I have changed my mind. Maybe I will come next summer.
Q: Do you like living in Asia?
LeXeR: Mostly, yes. It depends on the person; everybody has different interests and priorities.
I like Asia and stay here because I love summer, sunshine, nature, and blue sky. Those are the things that make me happy. I am slightly dependent on sunshine.
Q: Could you move back to Russia?
LeXeR: Of course. I have never considered any move permanent; Thailand is simply where I live now. I do not expect to stay here forever.
I miss Russia constantly, especially when summer comes and I see the landscape. Every summer I want to visit, but I no longer have much practical business there.
At the same time, I enjoy daily life in Asia. If I have children, that will be the point when I need to think more seriously about where to settle.
Q: You and M19*KALbI4 spent years together in Bali. Are you still in touch?
LeXeR: We did not merely hang out in Bali - we effectively lived together for eight years. We are very close friends and speak regularly.
He now lives in the Caucasus and organizes his own small-group tours to unusual destinations. He has done trips to China and Japan; he is currently in the Altai, and before that he was in Chile. He puts a great deal of care and heart into the work.
Q: What do you do for a living?
LeXeR: I provide training in poker-adjacent fields, and I have a couple of other poker-related projects.
Q: Did M19*KALbI4 ever suffer from the same kind of ego after success?
LeXeR: Maybe a little.
Fitness, combat sports, and longevity
Q: When did you become serious about fitness? Do you use any pharmacological support, and what advice would you give people over 35?
LeXeR: I started training seriously in Bali in 2008. My friend M19*KALbI4 and I arrived with two backpacks and a PlayStation 3 that I had received for my birthday. I travelled with the console still in its retail box.
At the time, there were only six Russians living in Bali, all connected to the same surf school. We went looking for it along the beach. The stalls around us were selling spears, bows, knives, and similar things, while we were walking past with this PlayStation box.
By the end of the walk I told KALbI4, 'They are either going to shoot us with a bow or stab us with a knife and take the PlayStation.' Everybody was staring at the box as if it were a time machine.
We found the surf school, settled in, and within a week I noticed that the local men seemed huge, tanned, and about 100 kilograms each. I told KALbI4 that next to them we looked like two scrawny guys from Saint Petersburg. So we began training seriously every day.
We were also surfing, which demands strong conditioning. You may spend two or three hours paddling without stopping just to catch a wave. Training became part of that routine, and I have never stopped.
I do not use pharmacological support. I take protein, creatine, multivitamins, and casein.
My basic advice is to train as often as you can. I mostly use bodyweight exercises and a system assembled from several sources. I have a gym on the roof of my house and train almost every day.
Squats, push-ups, pull-ups, and a kettlebell are enough to train the body almost perfectly. As you get older, sleep and nutrition become the two things you must watch most carefully. I would also emphasize bodyweight work and avoid very heavy loads that put unnecessary stress on joints and tendons.
Q: How much does a month in Bali cost?
LeXeR: I would estimate at least $2,000.
Q: Have you trained in Muay Thai?
LeXeR: For many years I trained in Muay Thai, boxing, and kickboxing. I enjoyed it for a while, but I stepped away because I no longer want to be hit in the head. (laughs) If you want to compete, you have to spar, and that means taking those shots.
Thailand is a good place to train because Thai sparring partners are usually very controlled. It is different from some boxing gyms in Russia, where you arrive and people simply try to take your jaw off.
The only boxing equipment I still use is the heavy bag in my rooftop gym. A heavy bag gives you an honest measure of what you can do. These days, I cannot beat the bag anymore - old age. (laughs)
