Looking back on his career, retiring e-sports legend TenZ considers his final time playing with Sentinels in Valorant Champions as one of his most memorable matches.
"That was the last dance with the team and we were kind of like giving heart and soul for that game, so we were able to step up our energy…" the professional gamer recalled. "Coming back we were able to pick up our energy a lot and play a lot better and so I was really proud of my team and also myself for that.”
Following the tournament, 23-year old Tyson Van Ngo, better known as TenZ, announced over social media that he was retiring from competitive gaming, and focusing instead on content creation.
The L.A.-based gamer may be known for Valorant now, but his career started as a competitive Counter-Strike player in Nanaimo, B.C., while still in high school. By 2019, his graduating year at Nanaimo's Dover Bay Secondary School, he was playing A tier with the team Cloud9, and soon after joined the premier S tier, which features the best players from around the world.
In 2020, with the release of a new game called Valorant, he shifted his focus, becoming Cloud9's first official Valorant player. The change, he said, was due to a chance to start on a level playing field with a newly released game.
"It was something brand new that was coming out and through my time playing professional in Counter-Strike, I was always playing catch-up to players playing with 5-10 more years experience than me," TenZ said. "So I kind of thought of it as a way I could start on an equal playing field with everyone else, start from brand new and be ahead of the competition that way.”
From there his career only grew. In 2021, Cloud9 loaned him to the Sentinels to fill in for one of team's suspended players. In 2023, he became a full-fledged member of the team, and in March of 2024, the Sentinels took gold in the S tier of Valorant Champions Tour Masters Madrid, with a grand prize of $250,000. Following this was the fateful Valorant Champions tournament in Seoul in August, when the team finished fourth after an intense match against the Spanish team Heretics.
Moving into the content creation world, TenZ said fans can still expect Valorant streams with other content creators.
"Another thing, I’m wanting to experiment more with [in-real-life] content. I did it with my fiancée Kyedae before in Japan once, where we were able to explore," he said. "The set-up we had was a little bit more makeshift and so I think now we’re able to research how to get a good [in-real-life] livestream going and set it up properly so viewers can have a more enjoyable experience.”
Outside of content creation, he plans to become more physically active, as in the professional gaming world he said he feels he neglected his health for "a long period of time" while focusing on e-sports. He's also learning Japanese to speak with some members of his fiancée's family.
“I think for me, right now, I feel like it’s a time I can keep improving myself and to become more responsible. I think sometimes as an e-sports player you’re kind of disconnected from reality just because you’re fully focused on the game and you’re practising day by day to be the best that you can be, so you kind of forget some stuff of being an actual adult."
While he may live in L.A., TenZ hasn't forgotten his Nanaimo roots and says he still intends to keep regularly visiting. Fans might bump into him at Woodgrove Centre or one of his favourite restaurants – Nori Japanese Restaurant, Horang, Nanda Chicken or Huong Lan Vietnamese Restaurant.
"Thank you to everyone for supporting me through my time as a pro player, I hope you continue supporting me as a content creator and hello to everyone on Vancouver Island. It’s a beautiful place to be and I’ll definitely be visiting again shortly.”
As for gaming, professional or not, TenZ won't be unplugging anytime soon.
"As long as I’m living and breathing on this Earth, I’m probably going to be playing games, as long as I can hold a mouse and keyboard, or hold a controller in my hands," he said. "I just love video games. For that reason I don’t think I’d ever step away from playing.”
TenZ's streams can be viewed at http://twitch.tv/TenZ or http://youtube.com/channel/UCckPYr9b_iVucz8ID1Q67sw.
