Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett is not only capturing the minds of Valorant fans worldwide, but he’s now winning over their hearts too, thanks to a mix of musical talent, lively personality and witty charm.
The British Valorant player and team captain of Fnatic’s Valorant side, who recently reached the final of the Stage 2 Masters LAN in Iceland, was very much the face of the tournament.
Whether it was his crazy post-game celebrations with the team, lively vlogs, enthusiastic face reactions when the camera panned to him or his politeness in press conferences (“first of all, thank you for the question…”), Boaster really made a name for himself at Valorant’s first international LAN.
Now his following of around 50,000 on Twitter is just growing further after a stream that saw him singing songs – in Mandarin – while playing the ukelele in some.
He performed songs with Ran, who produces content around the Chinese League of Legends LPL, and this one particular video racked up some 2.34m views on Chinese video sharing website Bilibili.
It’s not the first time Boaster has shown his musical prowess. He’s performed other songs on social media and streams over the years.
He also helped come up with the ‘Excel Esports la la la la la’ chant during his time with the UK esports organisation, where he worked as a vlogger and also a sub for the League of Legends team.
Last year, Boaster formed SUMN FC with other UK talent including Mistic, with the Valorant team being picked up by Fnatic earlier this year.
Prior to this, Boaster was a high-level CSGO player and won tournaments like Insomnia with CeX.
Now leave us as we try to learn Mandarin so we can actually understand those sweet-sounding words he’s singing.
Further reading: Why UK talent is shining in Valorant compared to CSGO
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
