Ninja explains why his competitive Fortnite career has been \u201cso unlucky\u201d Fortnite professional career, and how difficulty balancing married life, streaming, and rigorous scrims means he may skip the game\u2019s 2020 World Cup entirely. As one of the biggest names in Fortnite, Ninja has become near-synonymous with Epic Games\u2019 global sensation, streaming his adventures across the battle royale to hundreds of thousands of fans every week on broadcast platforms like Mixer. While Ninja is no stranger to competitive gaming \u2014 the blue-haired star first made his name playing for teams like Halo pro scene \u2014 and holds the record for most duo wins alongside Reverse2k, success at Fortnite\u2019s highest has eluded him. According to the Mixer star, his struggles to really make an impact in the professional scene for Epic\u2019s title isn\u2019t so much that he hasn\u2019t tried, or can\u2019t find his rhythm. Instead, he explained, it\u2019s all come down to \u201cbeing unlucky so many times\u201d in tournaments. \u201cMy competitive career is a joke in terms of how unlucky I am,\u201d Ninja said. \u201cI\u2019ve had rules that have f*cked my out of a tournament placing, and out of a tournament, that everyone realizes how bad a rule or ruling it was, and the rule changes because of what happened to my team. It\u2019s a joke, it happens to me in every single game I play. \u201cThe tournament organizers say \u201cOh Ninja\u2019s team, that\u2019s against the rules!\u201d and kick us out, and the next event they\u2019re like \u201cWe\u2019ve changed and updated a rule,\u201d and it\u2019s the rule that got us kicked out of the tournament in the first place!\u201d Ninja unloading on his luck in the competitive scene came after server issues bumped the Mixer star out of his Fortnite Championship Series qualifiers yesterday, while many other pros were still able to play, and collect more points in the Week 2 event. The server problems, which known hacking community Lizard Squad claimed was them limit-testing their botnet\u2019s strength, all but ruled Ninja out of scoring any meaningful points in the second round of the qualifiers, and delivered a heavy blow to his early FNCS chances. \u201cThat\u2019s what happened yesterday,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were vibing, 30 points, just chilling, and then the servers go down for 30 minutes, and they come back up but they weren\u2019t down for everyone so some people have their points still\u2026 whatever dude.\u201d Ninja\u2019s luck isn\u2019t the only thing that\u2019s keeping him from diving head-first into the competitive scene, and potentially finding the same success that he did during his stint in Halo 4, where he scored four first-place finishes, and seven top-three placements in eight tourneys. There\u2019s also the fact that he\u2019s nearly 30 years old, and tied the knot with longterm sweetheart Jessica Goch in 2017. Between balancing his Mixer streaming career, his home life, and his competitive ambitions, he\u2019s feeling stretched thin. \u201cI\u2019m not going to be able to compete forever,\u201d he admitted when talking about whether he would be contesting the 2020 World Cup qualifiers. \u201cJess and I are already feeling the stress of competing when you\u2019re married.\u201d For mobile readers, the relevant segment begins at 1:54 below. Part of the problem they\u2019ve found is when he was streaming regular day-time hours, they would be able to spend time together from 7pm onwards, and \u201cgo get dinner\u201d or \u201csee a movie,\u201d to make sure they could maintain their relationship. Now, however, scrims begin around the same time as those plans would normally start for the Blevins, and while Ninja admitted he is \u201cstill having fun\u201d with it all, it\u2019s something that will put a strain on his relationship in the long-run. \u201cI had my schedule done, I would get off around 6 or 7, we would have the night together,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m competing again, and scrims start when I\u2019m supposed to get off, and I\u2019m scrimming for 4 or 5 hours. It\u2019s not fun for us together.\u201d For Ninja, however, the grind continues for the moment. There\u2019s every chance he may call it quits sometime in the near future, especially if playing in the FNCS qualifiers are putting stress on his home life, but for now, he\u2019s giving it his best crack. As long as he can avoid Lizard Squad server attacks, competitive rulings, and the regular stream-sniping he often suffers, maybe he can even keep the promise he made to his fans to make it to the 2020 World Cup \u2014 maybe even as a swan song for his competitive career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ninja explains why his competitive Fortnite career has been \u201cso unlucky\u201d Fortnite professional career, and how difficulty balancing married life, streaming, and rigorous scrims means he may skip the game\u2019s 2020 World Cup entirely. As one of the biggest names in Fortnite, Ninja has become near-synonymous with Epic Games\u2019 global sensation, streaming his adventures across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}