After winning the Six Invitational Open Qualifiers I caught up with MrB to discuss the playing against T1 teams, the new pickups, breaking into the T1 scene as an IGL, and of course, Parabellum.
You and RTV have faced the first T1 opposition you have since like the team’s inception. Now that you’ve faced off against three NAL teams, Astralis, Parabellum, and Mirage, what’s the difference between these T1 teams and the normal T2 opposition that you usually face? Or is there not much difference at all?
I would say that there’s levels to it, right? I think the top Tier 2 opposition. If I’m playing against the teams I was playing in playoffs, like Luminosity Gaming and all that kind of stuff. The difference between them and most of the [T1] teams is not so drastic. It’s actually quite similar, the level of strategy and the kind of talent is on these rosters.
I think the biggest difference is mostly just kind of the amount of talent. Typically, these Tier 2 teams and such, they have like one or two really talented players, and they have a couple ehh players or whatever. When I’m looking at these [T1] rosters and I’m playing against them, it’s like, wow, every single one of these players can pop off and they can shit on me. But at the same time, I know every single one of my players can do the same.
So it’s really just a matter of gunning in that case. When you talked about OXG in the SCS video, you kind of said when you face them, it’s always scary. You never feel safe, because you can take a fight that is a 50/50 or sometimes even in your advantage, and you lose it. And it’s just one of those moments where you turn around and go, “that’s on me,” right?
Yeah, exactly. I think the gun skill difference is pretty massive. As you get onto playing the better and better NAL teams, you look at Astralis and honestly what Mirage is starting to look like, the strategy is significantly better than most teams. I think Luminosity Gaming keeps up in CL and we can keep up but otherwise, the level of strategies is a lot deeper. You can’t just be like, “here’s the opening, let’s abuse this.” There’s always something, you can’t just walk on in.
Talking about Astralis, because I think at least if you’re looking at name brand, that’s probably the biggest victory that you had over any NAL teams. You beat Parabellum and Astralis. With that match going into border, what were your thoughts? Was it a one off? Was it replicable?
It was definitely replicable. We played well that day. But I think also, it was absolutely replicable. Before I played the game I just said we just need to play our game. If we play our game, we will win. And we did. We didn’t make massive mistakes and stuff. And so we won.
Me typically, I think, as long as my team isn’t making mistakes I expect to win almost every game. And of course, that doesn’t always happen. I think the Mirage game we actually played really well. And I was genuinely proud of how we played. I think individually, I needed to play a lot better. And honestly, that was the difference maker for that game. But in general, that’s just kind of the thing, if my team does what they need to do, I expect we will win the games. And it typically is the case. Mirage it was a bit of an exception.
Even when you know you say “I underperformed,” you look at that Mirage match, it went three maps. Even on map three on Oregon, there were a few key moments where you know, it was a misplay, a miscommunication, or whatever of a situation, there were key rounds that just went Mirage’s way where if they had gone RTVs way we we would have seen to have closed qualifiers. Like that post plant.
Yeah, I know you’re talking about and I agree that was important. But I still think at the end of the day, best comes best we lose in overtime on Oregon. The moment we went to Oregon we had basically lost that game. Of course we’re still putting 110% in because you never know, but we should have won Bank. That’s really where we should have won that game. We just didn’t do what we needed to do there and we had some silly mistakes on Bank.
You brought on two new players to fill the shoes of Packer and Gaveni. Packer, we know, is off to Parabellum where he’s starting his NAL career, but we don’t know where Gaveni is officially.
Absolutely unknown. Nobody Knows.
Nobody has any clue. But he’s somewhere, he’s somewhere we swear. And you picked up Hat and Valorr to fill their shoes. Why these two players and what did they bring to the team? Because they both went huge throughout Quals and throughout SCS that we’ve seen so far.
Yeah, so Valorr is a super flexible player. He had a really good Stage 2, he looked like a really solid pick up and then he was our analyst for Stage 3. So he knew our systems. And so with that, we basically played with him one time. We were like, yeah, this works. And we immediately picked him up, we really didn’t do much to decide that we wanted him. We kind of knew he was going to be a replacement for Packer almost immediately. And then for Hat, we wanted to try him out anyway. So we tried him out and he fit the system pretty well.
I think the big thing we’re kind of missing right now is we don’t really have a proper spearhead. Like, nobody on our team is super aggressive. There’s certain something that some players have, right, such as Gavin or whatever. But even with that, I think we’re still able to be super successful. And I think Hat does a really good job on that entry role. He always is able to pop off and make things happen where we need them to.
Tristan isn’t a new pickup at this point. But we’ve also seen he effectively picked up where Gaveni left off. We saw Gaveni be the superstar and then he’s gone. How does RealityTV adjust? They just have Tristan step up and effectively go, almost one for one, dropping insane numbers. Is this the structure? Is it Tristan? Is it both? How does this just keep happening? Do you just have an endless list of fraggers? What’s going on?
So I think it’s a bit of both. Our system is very good at enabling players so I think Tristan is able to do super well because of our system. But if he wasn’t also incredibly talented, he wouldn’t be able to, right? It’s a two pronged thing. And honestly, we were starting to see it towards the end of Stage 3. When we were in playoffs he was our number one rated player. So I think it was just, he was just taking some time to find his footing and figure out where he wanted to be on this team. And then once the stage ended and Gavin left, he took up Gavin’s role a lot more. Taking initiative and doing all that. He’s not the same player that Gavin is. He plays that role very differently. But I think we just had to switch our playstyle slightly and as you can see, he’s doing fucking great.
You said that he plays differently than Gavin and you also kind of hinted at it by talking about the entry on your team and how Hat filled that gap. Is Tritan a bit more of a passive player and that’s how he fits that role that Gavin used to fill differently, or is there something more that he’s doing? Or just different ops?
Yeah, so Tristan is not nearly as aggressive with an entry as somebody like Gavin. If you’re looking at those kinds of entries, you’re thinking Rexen, Silent, Gavin, Rampy. It’s like there’s certain people that, they just get in there. They just make things happen. And I can’t really explain what it is, but you can see it. And it’s a certain characteristic that certain players have. And I don’t think either Hat or Tristan has it, and that’s fine. But that does mean we have to playstyle adjust to be a little bit less entry based.
Because previously it was like Tristan would follow up on Gavin, we would just get in the building or somebody followed up and we would get in the building, that’s how we got our initial entry. From there, we spread out and did what we wanted, but that was how we got in the building. And now we have to play a lot more of the lurks and just a slow pace to find our footing to get in the building. And there’s advantages and disadvantages to both playstyles but we did have to adjust and it took us a couple of weeks.
We saw the start and end of an entire – I wouldn’t say beef, but the start and end of the initial story arc if you will, between you and members of Parabellum. Where you got to play them in the playoffs in a Best of 3. So there’s no excuses of “it’s a one off,” there’s no excuses of Bo1, bad map, etc. Beef aside drama aside, what are your thoughts on Parabellum? You have to have some opinion about the team and the potential there otherwise, you wouldn’t have considered going there. Especially since you said you’d rather win CL than go to a bad PL team.
So Parabellum has a lot of talent. But talent doesn’t make a good team. The first day I tried out Parabellum, I immediately said Blaz is a terrible player. Like I went back to my team I was like, yeah, this guy should not be in NAL. Because he just doesn’t work with his team. His team works around him because that’s the only way they can do it. And he wants them to work around him.
But there’s certain other teams that have done that in the past, BDS used to do that with Shaiiko. Honestly, I think they don’t do that nearly as much anymore. But when BDS was first forming, it was like you played around Shaiiko. And he got it done. And they were super successful, because Shaiiko was one of the best players in the world and mechanically, he might be the best.
That’s a superstar player, that when you build a superstar you’re guaranteed success to a certain extent.
Exactly. And Blaz is solid. But he’s no Shaiiko. Like, even just in the NAL, there’s many other players that are better than him and can work within a system. It’s like, you have to be so over the top talented to be able to have a team built around you in the current year of Siege that there’s just no way that the team should be doing that with a solid, but not over the top player like Blaz. And so as soon as I started trying to bring in systems trying to make things work, they’re like, no, no, this is the way we want to do it. Because that’s the way Blaz likes it or whatever. That’s just not sustainable. And the way he acted is just pretty unprofessional. I think in many ways.
So it was a situation where you wanted to bring in your structure and the team and Blaz didn’t want to do so. And that’s kind of where the breakdown was?
Well, it wasn’t just Blaz that didn’t want to do it. But the reason they didn’t want to do it was because of Blaz. My most obvious example is we were going over this aviator attack, and it was just straight up bad. It was a bad attack. They would smoke a wall and they would Ace so they could do that. And that’s a common thing that Parabellum like to do. I think they stopped because I hope, I assume its because Packer said this is dumb as rocks.
They were the only team that was doing it, at least consistently. And so we do this, and then the rest of their game plan of how they would execute this was that, almost always Blaz would hop in the aviator window on study, and then he would win the round. And that was their game plan. He would just walk into the site. And I was like, Well, what if they just hold them from top red? And they’re like, no no no, Blaz just makes it work. I’m like, that shouldn’t be our game plan to win a round. Our game plan shouldn’t be: It just works. That’s not consistent. That’s not successful. That isn’t something that we should be doing as an NAL team.
When I was trying out for them, I felt this with a few different NAL teams but especially Parabellum, I was like, why am I going to the NAL to play for a significantly worse team? Some of the other teams I tried out for I was like, I think my team might be better, I think we have some things that are better about us. But like, there was always like, Okay, I could see the potential here. I could see whatever. With Parabellum it was like, this team is just flat out worse in every way. And I don’t see them moving forward. When you’re a CL roster and you’re looking at this, you’re like, I should be in Pro League with my roster. And it’s kind of frustrating.
On that topic then, since you’ve gotten to see the new reward for winning Challenger League going forward will be; the advanced placement in the Open Qualifiers where you got to play in the semifinals of the open qualifiers to go to the closed qualifiers. Comparing and contrasting to relegations, do you think this is a better or worse reward for winning Challenger League, especially with the new circuit in mind?
If I’m talking as a straight up reward it’s significantly worse, right? It’s like, hey, you can have a job or you can have a chance to qualify for an event and still not get paid. It’s not even comparable. But I think the biggest problem with it is just that the people that are getting these rewards are the best team. And the best team is getting poached unless they go to the Pro League. Even when these teams go to Pro League and they’re being given money to play the game, still players often get poached. Look at Parabellum, Spiritz got poached by Xset.
So you’re expecting these teams that won Challenger League to now not get paid and still practice just as much as the pro teams. Not only that, but be better than the pro teams to qualify for these events. And then people are going to be taking their players because they qualified and they can’t -what are they going to say to the players? “Oh, please stay. We’ll, you know, be friends.”
We’ll not pay you
Yeah, exactly. It just doesn’t make sense. And so I think that’s like the biggest problem, I think being able to qualify for events doesn’t really matter if you’re just losing players left and right. Even though we built up another pretty successful roster, as soon as we’ve done this, all the [NAL] teams are going, Ooooh, we should probably take some players on RealityTV again. It’s like, I could do this as many times as I want. I’ll never actually make it to the point where we’re at the event, almost certainly. By the time we’re in closed [quals], I almost certainly will have lost at least another player. If not more than that. And so it’s a little frustrating.
I can imagine. Talking about the sense that you’ve kind of built up this successful team and you have the successful structure. Do you think that various NAL teams are willing to invest in up and coming IGLs to kind of have that full control over a roster that you would effectively need to replicate this kind of thing in Tier 1, especially since you can’t bring your team up to Tier 1? Or do you think these NAL teams are just too cautious or too hesitant to lend that much control to up and coming players that are giving a shot?
I think the problem is that typically, from an organization standpoint, they’re not that involved. They’re gonna trust their players, they’re gonna trust their coaches, they’re gonna trust their staff. And so even if a team’s super underperforming, look at the current Beastcoast, they’re not removing their current roster. They’re gonna make some changes, and you know what, sometimes they might even move the whole roster. But if they remove the whole roster, they’re not going to build around an up and coming talent. They’re gonna build around an already existing player or a veteran player or something like that because otherwise, they can’t trust that it’s going to be successful. It’s too big of a risk for them. I think that’s at least the way they view it.
And for many of these orgs, they’re just not that involved. They’re really just there to provide the support and make some money off of it while the players and the management handle it. And from their [the players and coaches] perspective, if they wanted to bring me on, they’re like, Oh, well if we bring this guy on, he’s gonna get rid of us. [laughs] So it’s like that for them. It doesn’t make any sense to bring me on. And it’s so it’s kind of this infinite loop. There’s no way for me to progress as an IGL.
I have tried out for teams as an IGL, but the teams that I tried out for and actually made it to a decent step in the process of are not super unsuccessful teams. they’re teams that have had success, teams that know their systems work and all this. And they’re just trying to bring in the extra vocality and trying to bring in an IGL along with their system and along with the players. They’re not trying to make huge changes to everything. And in fact, some of the teams don’t even try me out as an IGL. They just think I’m a really good player. Because as soon as you bring in IGL it changes things a bit. Right?
We’ve seen that proven in other esports where you can’t bring in an IGL and not expect things to fundamentally change and you can’t remove an IGL and expect things to not fundamentally change. When you know we can just turn around and look at CSGO and go hey, FaZe Clan before and after Karrigan. Compare and contrast, one almost had an era, the other one was really really struggling with Niko trying to IGL and be a star player at the same time.
Talking about the general lack of org interaction and how it’s hard to break in[to T1]. We don’t have a lot of details, but do you think that going into 2023, the situation will change a little bit? Because those circuit announcements were pretty big, even if we have a lot of details missing, it’s pretty sweeping changes, right?
Yeah, I think that’s all super exciting. The game itself is in such a good state right now. But I do think our esports is a little bit, there’s some problems with it. It’s solid. But with these changes that can really potentially blossom into something much larger, especially if we can get some really solid advertising for it. One of the biggest problems right now is like, you’ll occasionally see a little something in game advertising the matches, you’ll see the odd thing if you’re in the esports space on Twitter, and that’s about all you’re seeing.
But if we could really start to advertise for our events, bring in a lot of public attention from other esports, because the idea should not be that we are getting Siege people to watch these events, it should be you’re getting spectators because they love the competition, they love the rivalries, the level of this that and the other. And that’s one thing I really try to push as a player. I need to be a personality, I need to be entertaining. My job is not to be a good player. My job is to be entertaining. Being a good player is part of that, but I have to be entertaining to be successful.
And that’s in line with what you’ve already been doing. Obviously, you’re having this interview now, you’re more than willing to go on those postgame interviews and be a personality. Issue those open challenges, be open with your problems with players rather than pretending everything’s hunky dory. Which might not be the best professionally, but you know for damn sure everyone eats up the drama. Right?
So even with all the problems that SI quals had, like server issues, our match took, I think, four and a half hours for two maps.
I didn’t have power from like, 1 till 3:30 and I still only missed the first map.
Yeah, it was insane. And yet, even with that, streams like Supr that normally get, you know, 1-1.5k viewers, he was at nearly 3k viewers. People want to see this stuff. Now my most liked tweet is shit talking Blaz after we won. This is what people love. This is exciting. This is stuff on the line, emotion, right? That’s what people want to see. That’s what it’s all about.
And I think it’s been quite lackluster in Siege esports. Siege esports has been all lovey dovey, “oh, we’re all friends,” whatever, whatever. And when people argue it’s like, oh well, this is unprofessional or whatever. It’s like, no, that’s the point. We got to argue we got to have these emotions, this is what makes our esport exciting. Of course, the game is great. And I think that those kinds of personalities, those things could show off a great game. But without it, none of that really is that important. That’s the core baseline for entertainment.
We’ve been missing that spectacle, I think. And there’s been a few creative decisions that have led us here. But one thing that stuck out to me is that BLAST is doing the production going into 2023. Have you seen their CSGO tournaments? They look pristine.
I haven’t seen much, but I’ve heard that they’re very, very good.
They are exceptional events, some of the best production in esports, period. So they know how to make a spectacle of a tournament for international events. So what I’m kind of hoping is, people like you bring that spectacle in the match with their personality and create for lack of a better term, just drama and fireworks in and out of a server and then somebody like BLAST runs a damn good event. And what that does is it brings more eyes to our events because frankly, no no dissing FACEIT production because they probably have a bunch of constraints they have to work around like budget and all this stuff, but they ran really bland international events. I’m sorry, like that’s just another that’s just how it is. It was the same rinse and repeat stage setup effectively. It’s the same, production B roll all that stuff. It’s all super cut and dry. Super boring. BLAST brings that spectacle and I think that will drag new eyes onto our game, especially with this new circuit. So I’m excited for it.
Even with Challenger League production and just basic stuff, with the game in its current state, my friends who haven’t played this game in years are starting to go, “Oh, Siege just looks fun. I kinda want to play again,” or ”Oh, I want to watch your matches,” And of course, part of it is my success and all that, but I’ve been winning events for the last year. They would keep an eye out and be like, “Okay that’s cool, He’s winning,” but they’d see the score lines. Now they’re sitting there, they’re watching the matches, they’re getting excited. I think BLAST and all that is only gonna help.
When it comes to branding, we’ve touched on it, with the spectacle part and the drama, but what do you think a personal brand does for players that people aren’t taking advantage of, particularly in Tier 2? We don’t see a lot of players with brands, we see name plates on a server, but they can swap between 5-10 ops in the game. So there’s very few players that have a brand associated with that name. As one of those people that does, what does having a brand do for you?
First of all, it’ll get you better contracts. It’s more valuable as a player. And of course, you’ll get more fans and engagement. And if I stream, I’m immediately gonna get way more viewers than I would if I didn’t. That kind of stuff. But on the flip side, if I wasn’t being super successful, if I was losing my matches and all, I’d just seen as a fucking shithead, right? And I wouldn’t be desirable as a player. And I, in fact, would be getting no recognition.
So you’ve got to be really careful with this stuff. You need to be aware of what you’re saying and what you’re doing. And if you can’t back up your shit talk and all that, it is gonna make you a less desired player. You can’t just go out there and be like, I’m just gonna start being a fucking asshole for no reason. It’s like, well, then you’re just an asshole. And, you know, there’s, of course, a market for that.
To a certain extent, yeah. It’s also, if you end up not being able to back it up. You get something like the llevron effect named after you and nobody wants that.
Yeah, exactly. There’s absolutely a balance to it. And so I think building a brand is important. It’s very hard to do in T2. I’m one of the exceptions to that rule and I’ve only really been able to do it because I’ve been so successful. For the most part, you kind of got to get your job first and then and then you can start creating your brand.
And a lot of these guys, it doesn’t have to just be shit talk. Although I don’t think he’s really pushed this brand hard enough, Dream, he’s a super nice guy. And he’s well known for it. That can be your brand, but you need to push it. And I would love to see players like Dream push that and I think he absolutely could. I think you’re gonna start to see more of that.