Interview with slow - THESPIKE.GG

We had the opportunity to talk with Valorant analyst Matthew "slow" Amuah and ask his opinion about the recent changes to the Riot Games official championship format and the important role of staff and analysts within teams.

He recently produced analysis for Pittsburgh Knights, who had a good run during VCT 2022 - North America - Stage 1 - Main Event but failed to qualify for the 2022 international championships after losing to XSET in the same event.

In addition to the reviews for professional teams, "slow" also makes some of his analysis available to the community, which you can check out on his Medium page.

THESPIKE.GG: First things first, how is an Analyst's job done in esports, especially in the Valorant pro scene?

slow: What an analyst does varies a lot from team to team since an analyst's job is usually to cover areas the coach and/or IGL do not have the time to cover or lack expertise in. For example, I did a lot of anti-stratting, VOD review, and playbook creation on Knights, but other analysts in the scene use a lot of data and stats to do their jobs or exclusively do anti-stratting. The tools I used the most outside of just watching VODs was certain tools for heatmaps and a bit of stats-related stuff.

THESPIKE.GG: How important is having an analyst on the team?

slow: I think having an analyst or just additional coaching staff, in general, is pretty important for teams as it brings another perspective on team decisions and helps ease the workload for the rest of the team.

THESPIKE.GG: We are moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to building a staff team. We are used to seeing coaches doing all the work and this is gradually changing to more complete teams with competent people in each area doing their work. Do you think this is true, that the scenario is becoming more professional in that sense, or is there still a long way to go?

slow: I can agree that the staff on teams is getting more thought put into it as the scene continues to grow. It just makes sense to put more resources into staff from an organisation standpoint if they have the budget to do so.

THESPIKE.GG: For someone who wants to become an esports Analyst, in your opinion, what are the first steps? Something you have already done or would have done differently if you could start over.

slow: First, I put a lot of time into studying what teams do and why, and to do so I VOD reviewed a lot of the top teams on their best maps. From there I started to try and see if my own ideas were good by making composition ideas and articles with my ideas on the game. I admittedly got lucky in getting picked up by a team pretty early from when I started to get into valorant analysis, but that's pretty much all I did before that happened. One thing I would have done differently is just try to be more open with my ideas, such as how a map should be played or if an agent comp worked or not. I also would try and keep my work more organized at the start.

THESPIKE.GG: Finally, in your opinion, how do you see the Valorant scenario in the future?

slow: I think the Valorant scene is looking very promising since there seems to be a lot of support and opportunities outside of international leagues in Tier 2. The Tier 1 league itself also looks amazing since Riot appears to have learned a lot from the issues other esports have had in their own franchised leagues. Overall I’m very excited about the future of the game and for my own personal future in it!

This interview has been edited for clarity.