Michael Santana, better known as Imaqtpie ( "I'm a "), is an American League of Legends player. Formerly a professional player for Team Dignitas, he retired from professional play in 2014 to pursue a full-time streaming career on Twitch. He is one of League of Legends' largest online personalities with over 2.6 million followers on Twitch. In 2017 in an interview with Rolling Stone it was revealed he earns $2 million annually from streaming.
Career
2011
In a Reddit AMA, Santana said the origin of his name came from his mom calling him "cute". At a young age, he played a lot of video games, particularly SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs. He first began playing League of Legends shortly after the game's creation because it was free to play. After a few months, he began competing in local tournaments, where he was noticed by other players such as William "scarra" Li, who recruited him in April 2011 as an AD Carry on the team Rock Solid. In September of that year, Team Dignitas acquired the team to venture into professional League of Legends, and with it acquired Santana, scarra, and Joedat "Voyboy" Esfahani. According to Santana, his parents were proud of his career. "Having them support me and want me to do my best was very helpful for me to really focus on improving and doing what I had to do to be the best." A month later, the team won 1st place at IGN ProLeague (IPL) Season 3 in Atlantic City, defeating Epik Gamer 2–1 in the finals and earning a $10,000 prize for the team.
2012
In 2012, the team won 1st place at the LoLPro.com Curse Invitational in San Francisco and earned a $20,000 prize for the team. Later that year the team placed 2nd at the MLG Summer Championship in Raleigh, North Carolina losing to Team Curse in the finals, but both teams were disqualified and not awarded a prize after an investigation by MLG found the teams guilty of collusion. In September, Team Dignitas placed 2nd in the Season 2 North American Regional Finals in Seattle, Washington at PAX Prime, losing to Team SoloMid in the finals but qualifying the team to compete in the Season 2 World Championship in Los Angeles. The team placed last during the group stage without a single win, but their participation at Worlds qualified the team to compete in the Season 3 Spring Split. TSM top laner Dyrus later publicly apologized for accidentally revealing Team Dignitas's secret strategy to their opponents prior to the group stage, and admitted that the strategy might have given the team the upper hand in the tournament. "[Leaking the strategy] put Team Dignitas on tilt and lowered their morale... For those who say they would have lost anyway, that's not true because [TSM] lost to [the strategy] four times..."
2013
In 2013, the team started off strong, going 16–5 during the Spring regular season in the first 21 games, before going 1–6 in its final 7 games, ending the Spring regular season 17–11 but qualifying to compete in the Spring playoffs. In the Spring playoffs, the team placed last. In the 2013 Summer regular season, the team finished 5th with a score of 13–15 and qualified to compete in the Summer playoffs, but finished 4th, failing to qualify to compete in Worlds but allowing the team to compete next spring. When asked about avoiding relegation, Santana said "I don't even know how that was possible. Against [Team Curse], I honestly thought we were going to get relegated that season, and we somehow beat them... it's sometimes like 'Man... is North America this bad?' We don't do anything special but we can somehow manage to make it to 3rd or 4th place in most things." When asked if players needed to be replaced due to underperforming, teammate William "scarra" Li said Santana was underrated by others in the scene due to his lack of publicity on social media in the past, saying he considered Santana and his partner Jordan "Patoy" Blackburn to be "the best bot lane in North America... they're just insanely good." Li also praised Santana's knowledge of the game, saying "He conceptualizes the game really really well, so he's like an AD Carry shot caller, which is very very unusual... He is one of the players [on the team] that would be very incredibly hard to replace."
