Posted by Penguin on
Thursday, 08 November 2007, 15:00
First off, congratulations on joining the
professional side of Fnatic. For everybody who isn't quite sure of what
this means, could you please explain the implications and benefits of
this move?
In the simplest terms it basically means that from now on we will be getting a salary for playing for Fnatic. The academy gets the same kind of support as the professionals do, but they don't get the financial backing.
Are any of the Fnatic squad still in education or jobs? We often hear of people quitting games for jobs and education, but has anybody in the CSS team quit their education or job in order to play in Fnatic?
Most of us put our education on hold for the CGS, as chances were pretty good for us getting drafted. Now we all just have some small things going on the background, Milan will be resuming his parttime education in 2008, AirRaid is working for his father and so forth. We all make sure that we have enough time to invest in Fnatic, but we also want to be doing other stuff around it.
What does this move mean for Fnatic and the CGS? One could safely assume that you guys will be happy where you are, and if so will this exclusion from the CGS utimately have a negative effect on the team?
We were disappointed not to get drafted into the CGS, but in the meantime many good things have come to us. About Fnatic and the CGS, I can't say much about that yet: it hasn't come that far yet. We will be looking how this CGS season goes and what will happen in the next season, also what happens within Fnatic or maybe even our team. It's simply too early to say.
What are your views on the CGS? As you’re aware, the first season was blighted with problems. Many also argue that it is detrimental to the game and eSports as a whole by glorifying the whole thing, choosing the regions based on ‘TV audiences’, and so on. Do you share this cynics view of the CGS?
I think the CGS made a good choice by trying to make it more viewable for the audience, CSS isn't a game that is easy to view if you don't know anything about the rules or the way it's played. I think CGS made a few major mistakes in their design, such as the system of drafting individual teams/players for a game into their teams.
But this is all just made like this, simply to be able to monopolise the gaming industry.
Do you think (the reports of) the CGS teams being disallowed to go to the CPL is a reasonable one? Do you think this is for the market? What do you make of it?
I can see the reasoning of the CGS behind this decision. But I think that CGS should've allowed their teams to attend the CPL for several reasons. One is that the CPL has taken over some of the CGS rule sets, to give the CGS a reason to allow their teams. Another is that the CSS squads of the CGS barely have any competition outside of the CGS. The American teams are allowed to some of their events, but the Europeans barely have any events to go to. Also for the non-CGS teams such as ourselves, it would've been good to play against the CGS teams (especially the American ones) to be able to see the difference between the CGS and the 'normal' professional teams. One more thing is that the CGS teams don't play each other that often. Only the teams that were able to qualify for the world finals will be playing the other CGS teams, for example the Berlin Allianz will never be able to play LA Complexity.
What does this news mean for online competition, we often see teams sliding out of these in order to "prepare more for LAN"? What can we expect to see in terms of LAN attendance and practice? Will the Fnatic organisation be happier to fund LANs in, say, America?
We've always tried to keep the amount of online leagues we participated in, to a minimum. Unfortunately we haven't been doing that so well lately (we're currently in about 4 or 5 online leagues!). So we will have to see how that will work out with our LAN preparations/performances. As for America, it's always been a matter of prize money if we would be send to the US or not. You can imagine that a trip and a roof for 5 players is expensive and so the prize money for an event in the US should be high enough to support.
Many are praising the CPL Winter $50,000 Source competition. Others are saying the CPL are simply "doing a CPL", betraying the eSports scene, and that the Winter event is a last-ditch attempt at getting back to their former glory. Furthermore, the event dates are not good for American students, and ends a few days before Xmas, making everything cost a lot more. Do you think this is the last CPL we will see?
Yes, I think that this is a last attempt from the CPL to regain it's former glory. They made a huge error on the date they picked for their event, which made it impossible for many and many team to sign up for this event. I'm sceptical about this CPL Source Tournament happening. Yes, I'm a very, very sceptical person
Going back to the Source team, we've recently seen a side of Fnatic we haven't seen in a while: a Fnatic that doesn't come first. To add to that, a few of your critics are beginning to believe you guys are weaker. How would you respond to them?
I don't think you can consider us weaker right now. You don't just beat a team such as mYm in a grand final, coming from the lower bracket, if you're not 100% on top of your game.
It's just a simple matter of the other teams looking to finally beat us, the counter-strats are immense and it's hard for us to keep up. The ancient cliché of "getting to the top is easy, but staying there is the hard part" is what I think is happening here
We're the target.
As the only European regular at the i-series, what do you make of the increased prize pot at i32? If you lost would you come back next time for that money, contradictory to interviews before the prize change? Or would it be too expensive? Do you think it will entice more Europeans to the sunny lands of the United Kingdom?
I'm very happy that the i-series have decided to increase the prizepot. One of the reasons we try to return to the good events we've attended (slap/i-series) is to show our support to the community and the companies that CSS is a good game to invest in, because it has international teams attracting it.
I think it's a great way to attract the European teams, especially with this new TUP feature. Although I still have to see how that will work out with both BYOC & non-BYOC teams.
Do you see Source being as big as 1.6? As much as I don't like to admit it, Source isn't quite there yet. But it is growing, the last year is evidence of that. I was reading one article on gotfrag that 'proved' coL would be much better off playing 1.6 and not in CGS. Then I read another article 'proving' the gotfrag article was a load of bull, so the debate is still pretty much all opinion. Where do you stand on the whole pro 1.6 v pro Source argument?
I hope that both 1.6 and CSS will keep existing together, I don't see why events can't host both tournaments. Source is definitely still smaller than 1.6 is, because it lost it's support in the early stages of the game (when it still had alot of bugs). Almost all of these bugs are now gone and this game is ready for real competitive play, with prizepurses as big as in 1.6.
And finally: any closing words?
Just a big shoutout to the guys over at Fnatic and Everglide and Razer for their support! And we welcome all the UK guys over at our table at i32! Just leave some room for us to breath during our games.
In the simplest terms it basically means that from now on we will be getting a salary for playing for Fnatic. The academy gets the same kind of support as the professionals do, but they don't get the financial backing.
Are any of the Fnatic squad still in education or jobs? We often hear of people quitting games for jobs and education, but has anybody in the CSS team quit their education or job in order to play in Fnatic?
Most of us put our education on hold for the CGS, as chances were pretty good for us getting drafted. Now we all just have some small things going on the background, Milan will be resuming his parttime education in 2008, AirRaid is working for his father and so forth. We all make sure that we have enough time to invest in Fnatic, but we also want to be doing other stuff around it.
What does this move mean for Fnatic and the CGS? One could safely assume that you guys will be happy where you are, and if so will this exclusion from the CGS utimately have a negative effect on the team?
We were disappointed not to get drafted into the CGS, but in the meantime many good things have come to us. About Fnatic and the CGS, I can't say much about that yet: it hasn't come that far yet. We will be looking how this CGS season goes and what will happen in the next season, also what happens within Fnatic or maybe even our team. It's simply too early to say.
What are your views on the CGS? As you’re aware, the first season was blighted with problems. Many also argue that it is detrimental to the game and eSports as a whole by glorifying the whole thing, choosing the regions based on ‘TV audiences’, and so on. Do you share this cynics view of the CGS?
I think the CGS made a good choice by trying to make it more viewable for the audience, CSS isn't a game that is easy to view if you don't know anything about the rules or the way it's played. I think CGS made a few major mistakes in their design, such as the system of drafting individual teams/players for a game into their teams.
But this is all just made like this, simply to be able to monopolise the gaming industry.
Do you think (the reports of) the CGS teams being disallowed to go to the CPL is a reasonable one? Do you think this is for the market? What do you make of it?
I can see the reasoning of the CGS behind this decision. But I think that CGS should've allowed their teams to attend the CPL for several reasons. One is that the CPL has taken over some of the CGS rule sets, to give the CGS a reason to allow their teams. Another is that the CSS squads of the CGS barely have any competition outside of the CGS. The American teams are allowed to some of their events, but the Europeans barely have any events to go to. Also for the non-CGS teams such as ourselves, it would've been good to play against the CGS teams (especially the American ones) to be able to see the difference between the CGS and the 'normal' professional teams. One more thing is that the CGS teams don't play each other that often. Only the teams that were able to qualify for the world finals will be playing the other CGS teams, for example the Berlin Allianz will never be able to play LA Complexity.
What does this news mean for online competition, we often see teams sliding out of these in order to "prepare more for LAN"? What can we expect to see in terms of LAN attendance and practice? Will the Fnatic organisation be happier to fund LANs in, say, America?
We've always tried to keep the amount of online leagues we participated in, to a minimum. Unfortunately we haven't been doing that so well lately (we're currently in about 4 or 5 online leagues!). So we will have to see how that will work out with our LAN preparations/performances. As for America, it's always been a matter of prize money if we would be send to the US or not. You can imagine that a trip and a roof for 5 players is expensive and so the prize money for an event in the US should be high enough to support.
Many are praising the CPL Winter $50,000 Source competition. Others are saying the CPL are simply "doing a CPL", betraying the eSports scene, and that the Winter event is a last-ditch attempt at getting back to their former glory. Furthermore, the event dates are not good for American students, and ends a few days before Xmas, making everything cost a lot more. Do you think this is the last CPL we will see?
Yes, I think that this is a last attempt from the CPL to regain it's former glory. They made a huge error on the date they picked for their event, which made it impossible for many and many team to sign up for this event. I'm sceptical about this CPL Source Tournament happening. Yes, I'm a very, very sceptical person
Going back to the Source team, we've recently seen a side of Fnatic we haven't seen in a while: a Fnatic that doesn't come first. To add to that, a few of your critics are beginning to believe you guys are weaker. How would you respond to them?
I don't think you can consider us weaker right now. You don't just beat a team such as mYm in a grand final, coming from the lower bracket, if you're not 100% on top of your game.
It's just a simple matter of the other teams looking to finally beat us, the counter-strats are immense and it's hard for us to keep up. The ancient cliché of "getting to the top is easy, but staying there is the hard part" is what I think is happening here
We're the target.
As the only European regular at the i-series, what do you make of the increased prize pot at i32? If you lost would you come back next time for that money, contradictory to interviews before the prize change? Or would it be too expensive? Do you think it will entice more Europeans to the sunny lands of the United Kingdom?
I'm very happy that the i-series have decided to increase the prizepot. One of the reasons we try to return to the good events we've attended (slap/i-series) is to show our support to the community and the companies that CSS is a good game to invest in, because it has international teams attracting it.
I think it's a great way to attract the European teams, especially with this new TUP feature. Although I still have to see how that will work out with both BYOC & non-BYOC teams.
Do you see Source being as big as 1.6? As much as I don't like to admit it, Source isn't quite there yet. But it is growing, the last year is evidence of that. I was reading one article on gotfrag that 'proved' coL would be much better off playing 1.6 and not in CGS. Then I read another article 'proving' the gotfrag article was a load of bull, so the debate is still pretty much all opinion. Where do you stand on the whole pro 1.6 v pro Source argument?
I hope that both 1.6 and CSS will keep existing together, I don't see why events can't host both tournaments. Source is definitely still smaller than 1.6 is, because it lost it's support in the early stages of the game (when it still had alot of bugs). Almost all of these bugs are now gone and this game is ready for real competitive play, with prizepurses as big as in 1.6.
And finally: any closing words?
Just a big shoutout to the guys over at Fnatic and Everglide and Razer for their support! And we welcome all the UK guys over at our table at i32! Just leave some room for us to breath during our games.
gl