The nineteen year old American Quake player is making gradual progress. At id's event in Dallas he placed fourth and only lost to the players that took first and second place.

Rapha will now be focusing on the Electronic Sports World Cup finals in San Jose at the end of August. We caught up with him when he was waiting for the QuakeCon final to start to ask him a few questions about the event.

Are you happy with your performance at QuakeCon?

Considering the amount of practice I was able to get for this event I'm pleased with my fourth place finish.

Do you think you could have done better, though?

Yes, of course I think I could have done better. I think a lot of players here would say the same but I don't know how much practice most had for this event so I can't speak up for anyone besides the core Americans I practiced with.

After the first "pro" tournament can you make any prediction as to how far QLive will go in esports?

If it gets backed by the right people I think it could be a huge success. I like the approach that id is taking to get this game into the public's hands by getting it to everyone for free. Also, by having developers continuing to do their best to improve the game and making it easy for new players to this game to stay updated with maps and versions so that people aren't discouraged when it takes forever to update and having to find eveything manually like they've had to in the past. Something that frustrated a lot of beginners.

Will the same people that won tournaments in Q3 be winning in QLive as well or will the balance of power shift a little bit?

I think for the most part, the top Q3 players are going to be on top but it will be neat to see which new stars rise up and challenge those who've had success.

Will we see new styles develop in QuakeLive?

I think there will be different playstyles, there's going to have to be with how the weapon balance has changed. Old maps in particular it's going to be interesting to see how the players choose to play without the influence of xerp in QLive. I feel for the beginning the overall playstyles will be a bit on the slow side but I think that eventually after about a year maybe some players are going to learn how to speed up the game with the different balances in weapons and the new spawn system.

How are you going to prepare yourself for the ESWC Grand Final?

I haven't figured that out yet for the remainder of August. I have a few options as far as who to LAN with but I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that. So it's going to be interesting what approach I'm going to have to take with the remaining 3-4 weeks that are left until the finals.

What do you expect to achieve there?

My goal is to do my best to achieve first, aiming for anything less is pointless in my opinion. No sense defeating yourself before it's already begun.