![shaftwhores only by [EXE]dann](/files/avatars/2007/51852-shaftwhore.gif "shaftwhores only by [EXE]dann"){kind=small}
Hi there, welcome. We’ll start with a brainteaser…
If you had to write a letter to your younger sixteen year old self what would you tell him??
What a way to start!
Believe in yourself more would be the theme of the letter, at school I wasn’t confident in my abilities a point that was backed up by the average social insecurities of any high school student. Schools lie to you in suggesting that they're there to help you, really they aren’t. They want to get you through the system in a manner that reflects well on them when really you need someone to mentor your transition from child to adult, a helping hand that doesn’t come.
I look back with regret the fact that I could have done a lot better with my grades and that’s something I rectified at university but its still a blotch on the CV I'd tell my 16 year old self to sort out! Keep playing sport! I am still to this day trying to kill off a stubborn bit of fat on my belly that formed in the later years of school, I will rejoice the day that its dead....so long as it doesn’t take liposuction to kill the bugger.
How have you changed since our last interview in 2006?
I've changed a great deal from 2006. In the past 3 years I have learnt so much, my priorities I have changed greatly too. I'm lucky enough to live an enormously happy life, I've done university and I've moved out of home and come out of those two chapters with some great friends that I find myself very secure amongst. The childhood fear of being hurt is gone.
Backed by that solid foundation of family and friends I have much more confidence going into new situations, something that translates well into business and that’s the biggest change for me, eSports, my hobby is now, business.
Back to every gamers shameful secret – given your position, you’re now more well placed than anyone to comment. Do you think competitive gaming is becoming more socially acceptable and are you proud to tell people you work in eSports? Is the concept of eSports [sic] an easy sell?
I'm sure I just said I was more confident?? Well all except in one part, if I get chatting with a girl I never mention eSports! TV Presenter is the line, which whilst semi-true! But eSports is not socially acceptable and its decades away from being so. I have female friends that will happily invest their Friday night playing guitar hero in the most competitive manner possible yet refuse to see the link between what they do and what I do.
The flip side is that there are many perks to working in eSports, the travel being the biggest part of it. Though I'm now immensely bored of airports, its still something other people think is hugely glamorous so that part is an easy sell.
You’ve recently been openly critical of other aspiring casters in the scene seeking instant gratification, what advice would you offer to them?
Rome wasnt built in a day and neither were djWHEAT, ReDeYe, Joe Miller or TosspoT (insert any other commentator you admire). Every one of the aspiring English speaking commentators that has come through the Crossfire community has failed to put in the hours needed to succeed at the job.
Go and look at the iTG database that GamesTV brilliantly saved, roll back to the days of saevus, DSKY and co and look how many casts I was pouring out week in week out to improve my game. Roll back a few years prior to RTCW and the ridicule I took in the shadow of Warwitch and see the steep learning curve you will face doing a game with benchmark casters and stop feeling hard done by for yourself.
Everyone of those 4 I listed did exactly the same! It’s not by chance that the 4 people that have been doing this the longest are the people who are making a living out of doing it.
Its got to the point when I seen too many hard done by comments of new casters and I've flipped. They just piss me off, this sounds very cliché but kids these days have no idea or desire to put in the hours that we did back in our day.
So dedication and passion is what made you successful?
My success came from a hell of a lot of hardwork combined with taking my chances. My first LAN event was WCG 2004, to put that into perspective WCG is the biggest eSports event out there pulling in 7 figure online stream audiences for last years finals. We didn’t have a WC3 caster at iTG and I said I'd learn it and do it, the management took a leap of faith in me (considering I'd never done anything outside WW2 shooters) and I put in the hours over the 6 weeks before the event to learn a game prior to that I didn’t even own. Off the back of that learning experience I now cast the majority of the major events in WC3 and got hugely complimented in a recent column on SK, yet I've still never played the game competitively.
Why so successful? Hard work combined with taking a chance.
Why did the iTG management take a chance on me? Because I was putting in the hours in ET, it was a reward for me as I was firing ET casts out left right and centre and pulling in huge listener figures. We got 1200 people on an audio only stream for Atlantic Battle 2, an event I ran and casted. So that goes back to my earlier reply about new casters, hard work does pay off.
Since your takeover from Raza Crossfire has changed exponentially. What makes Crossfire what it is?
crossfire.nu/?x=journal to be short. Here is where you can see the heart of a community, you can see the worst of Crossfire and you can see the best of Crossfire in the Journal section. It separates Crossfire from every other eSports site out there as nowhere else is there the same level of activity and originality being posted. In black and white the journals are a forum by a different name, but in colour they are something different.
You could argue that CF may have done this with or without me, however I've deployed many tactics to grow crossfires userbase and hense feed into the journal section.
Has this popularity lead to an income?
Yes and No, eventually anything that comes in gets reinvested regardless. Though I've a plan in the pipeline that I hope to lead to an income that I will dance around in a later question!
Large organisations with multinational sponsors, such as WSVG, have not long since collapsed. What happened to former challenge sponsors Devotii and who now finances the CC events?
Devotii itself is dead or becoming dead, its apart of the TNWA group which owns Enemydown (the uk's largest league site). Each CC event has pretty much had different backers. 1 had Prizefight backing it and Quakecon money, though this didn’t arrive until after CPC2 so it was basically me backing it. In hindsight 1 was a bad event financially, it made a big loss. 2 & 3 if I recall right were barely backed at all and I covered the shortfall after the Qcon money, this despite having PF and Devotii in their names - you may ask why? Well this good will gesture was repaid when Devotii sponsored the CoD tourney at CDC4. 5 was backed by Heaven Media and 6 was sponsored by YCN-Hosting. Its a very hard product to sell, CoD is the only game you can sell (PF and Devotii weren’t interested in sponsoring the ET tourney for example) and Enschede is not an easy location to sell either! Particularly if you're in England trying to get English budgets for a dutch event.
Has the weakening £ effected the viability of the CC events?
HUGELY on CC5. To begin with I cocked up, when I receive money into the CF account its instantly changed from Euro into Pounds. Now if you think about it money comes in 3 months before an event and you don’t pay it out until about 1 month after an event if all goes well, in those 4 months the pound went from being worth 1.28 Euro to being worth at point over Christmas 2008 1 Euro. So effectively 28% of the value of the money I received would have been wiped out. Fortunately I stopped that about 2 months into the process, but I still lost maybe 10%? However of the amount Heaven Media was paying for to back the event, that money depreciated from the agreement to the payment by about 20% (the pound recovered in January to around 1.10)
After that shit storm, not really - it makes QuadV more expensive as they're a British company, but other than that not really.
It’s nearing six years since ET was released and you covered RTCW before that, do you still have a passion for casting Enemy Territory?
A Passion? Yes, the same passion? No. There was a time when I'd orgasm over those three words "prepare to fight" and they are gone now, even for a big final. The game has become in many ways far too predictable, and if a guy who hasn’t played in years can predict what’s going to happen then its bad news. For ET to become compelling viewing again as it was at CPC2 then it'll require new maps that have less stages.
I fully understand the players perspective on why Supply & Bremen are the best maps, and if I were still playing I'd say the same thing. However there are 5 stages on those maps which remove the element of excitement should something go wrong as there are too many opportunities for the better team to recover. On Radar for example, there is always excitement because one cock up at west and the map is all but lost, or an even better example, in RTCW there are no 3 stage maps!
On 28th November 2008 in the news post announcing your position at Heaven Media you stated “Forward from that this whole project should see some real tangible rewards for everyone involved here on Crossfire, whether that's more money in your game or a better community experience, the goal of this project is to deliver it.” Considering this, have you failed in your role to ensure a better future for Crossfire? And if not, what have you achieved?
That role didn’t last long to be honest! I've stepped back from my position at Heaven Media. One of biggest parts of that role was delivering the future of the Crossfire events and a profitable model for the upscaling of those events. I am convinced in my heart that it is possible however I wasn’t able to do that at heaven without great risk, risk that would kill the reputation of anyone involved should Rome fall. When the risk factor is that high, and not only yours but other companies reputations are weighted onto it you have to sometimes step back and say I failed.
So to answer your question, yes I've failed to deliver a better future Crossfire SO FAR, I still have every intention bringing Crossfire to the promised land and am busy working to that goal.
If you had to write a letter to your younger sixteen year old self what would you tell him??
What a way to start!
Believe in yourself more would be the theme of the letter, at school I wasn’t confident in my abilities a point that was backed up by the average social insecurities of any high school student. Schools lie to you in suggesting that they're there to help you, really they aren’t. They want to get you through the system in a manner that reflects well on them when really you need someone to mentor your transition from child to adult, a helping hand that doesn’t come.
I look back with regret the fact that I could have done a lot better with my grades and that’s something I rectified at university but its still a blotch on the CV I'd tell my 16 year old self to sort out! Keep playing sport! I am still to this day trying to kill off a stubborn bit of fat on my belly that formed in the later years of school, I will rejoice the day that its dead....so long as it doesn’t take liposuction to kill the bugger.
How have you changed since our last interview in 2006?
I've changed a great deal from 2006. In the past 3 years I have learnt so much, my priorities I have changed greatly too. I'm lucky enough to live an enormously happy life, I've done university and I've moved out of home and come out of those two chapters with some great friends that I find myself very secure amongst. The childhood fear of being hurt is gone.
Backed by that solid foundation of family and friends I have much more confidence going into new situations, something that translates well into business and that’s the biggest change for me, eSports, my hobby is now, business.
Back to every gamers shameful secret – given your position, you’re now more well placed than anyone to comment. Do you think competitive gaming is becoming more socially acceptable and are you proud to tell people you work in eSports? Is the concept of eSports [sic] an easy sell?
I'm sure I just said I was more confident?? Well all except in one part, if I get chatting with a girl I never mention eSports! TV Presenter is the line, which whilst semi-true! But eSports is not socially acceptable and its decades away from being so. I have female friends that will happily invest their Friday night playing guitar hero in the most competitive manner possible yet refuse to see the link between what they do and what I do.
The flip side is that there are many perks to working in eSports, the travel being the biggest part of it. Though I'm now immensely bored of airports, its still something other people think is hugely glamorous so that part is an easy sell.
You’ve recently been openly critical of other aspiring casters in the scene seeking instant gratification, what advice would you offer to them?
Rome wasnt built in a day and neither were djWHEAT, ReDeYe, Joe Miller or TosspoT (insert any other commentator you admire). Every one of the aspiring English speaking commentators that has come through the Crossfire community has failed to put in the hours needed to succeed at the job.
Go and look at the iTG database that GamesTV brilliantly saved, roll back to the days of saevus, DSKY and co and look how many casts I was pouring out week in week out to improve my game. Roll back a few years prior to RTCW and the ridicule I took in the shadow of Warwitch and see the steep learning curve you will face doing a game with benchmark casters and stop feeling hard done by for yourself.
Everyone of those 4 I listed did exactly the same! It’s not by chance that the 4 people that have been doing this the longest are the people who are making a living out of doing it.
Its got to the point when I seen too many hard done by comments of new casters and I've flipped. They just piss me off, this sounds very cliché but kids these days have no idea or desire to put in the hours that we did back in our day.
So dedication and passion is what made you successful?
My success came from a hell of a lot of hardwork combined with taking my chances. My first LAN event was WCG 2004, to put that into perspective WCG is the biggest eSports event out there pulling in 7 figure online stream audiences for last years finals. We didn’t have a WC3 caster at iTG and I said I'd learn it and do it, the management took a leap of faith in me (considering I'd never done anything outside WW2 shooters) and I put in the hours over the 6 weeks before the event to learn a game prior to that I didn’t even own. Off the back of that learning experience I now cast the majority of the major events in WC3 and got hugely complimented in a recent column on SK, yet I've still never played the game competitively.
Why so successful? Hard work combined with taking a chance.
Why did the iTG management take a chance on me? Because I was putting in the hours in ET, it was a reward for me as I was firing ET casts out left right and centre and pulling in huge listener figures. We got 1200 people on an audio only stream for Atlantic Battle 2, an event I ran and casted. So that goes back to my earlier reply about new casters, hard work does pay off.
Since your takeover from Raza Crossfire has changed exponentially. What makes Crossfire what it is?
crossfire.nu/?x=journal to be short. Here is where you can see the heart of a community, you can see the worst of Crossfire and you can see the best of Crossfire in the Journal section. It separates Crossfire from every other eSports site out there as nowhere else is there the same level of activity and originality being posted. In black and white the journals are a forum by a different name, but in colour they are something different.
You could argue that CF may have done this with or without me, however I've deployed many tactics to grow crossfires userbase and hense feed into the journal section.
Has this popularity lead to an income?
Yes and No, eventually anything that comes in gets reinvested regardless. Though I've a plan in the pipeline that I hope to lead to an income that I will dance around in a later question!
Large organisations with multinational sponsors, such as WSVG, have not long since collapsed. What happened to former challenge sponsors Devotii and who now finances the CC events?
Devotii itself is dead or becoming dead, its apart of the TNWA group which owns Enemydown (the uk's largest league site). Each CC event has pretty much had different backers. 1 had Prizefight backing it and Quakecon money, though this didn’t arrive until after CPC2 so it was basically me backing it. In hindsight 1 was a bad event financially, it made a big loss. 2 & 3 if I recall right were barely backed at all and I covered the shortfall after the Qcon money, this despite having PF and Devotii in their names - you may ask why? Well this good will gesture was repaid when Devotii sponsored the CoD tourney at CDC4. 5 was backed by Heaven Media and 6 was sponsored by YCN-Hosting. Its a very hard product to sell, CoD is the only game you can sell (PF and Devotii weren’t interested in sponsoring the ET tourney for example) and Enschede is not an easy location to sell either! Particularly if you're in England trying to get English budgets for a dutch event.
Has the weakening £ effected the viability of the CC events?
HUGELY on CC5. To begin with I cocked up, when I receive money into the CF account its instantly changed from Euro into Pounds. Now if you think about it money comes in 3 months before an event and you don’t pay it out until about 1 month after an event if all goes well, in those 4 months the pound went from being worth 1.28 Euro to being worth at point over Christmas 2008 1 Euro. So effectively 28% of the value of the money I received would have been wiped out. Fortunately I stopped that about 2 months into the process, but I still lost maybe 10%? However of the amount Heaven Media was paying for to back the event, that money depreciated from the agreement to the payment by about 20% (the pound recovered in January to around 1.10)
After that shit storm, not really - it makes QuadV more expensive as they're a British company, but other than that not really.
It’s nearing six years since ET was released and you covered RTCW before that, do you still have a passion for casting Enemy Territory?
A Passion? Yes, the same passion? No. There was a time when I'd orgasm over those three words "prepare to fight" and they are gone now, even for a big final. The game has become in many ways far too predictable, and if a guy who hasn’t played in years can predict what’s going to happen then its bad news. For ET to become compelling viewing again as it was at CPC2 then it'll require new maps that have less stages.
I fully understand the players perspective on why Supply & Bremen are the best maps, and if I were still playing I'd say the same thing. However there are 5 stages on those maps which remove the element of excitement should something go wrong as there are too many opportunities for the better team to recover. On Radar for example, there is always excitement because one cock up at west and the map is all but lost, or an even better example, in RTCW there are no 3 stage maps!
On 28th November 2008 in the news post announcing your position at Heaven Media you stated “Forward from that this whole project should see some real tangible rewards for everyone involved here on Crossfire, whether that's more money in your game or a better community experience, the goal of this project is to deliver it.” Considering this, have you failed in your role to ensure a better future for Crossfire? And if not, what have you achieved?
That role didn’t last long to be honest! I've stepped back from my position at Heaven Media. One of biggest parts of that role was delivering the future of the Crossfire events and a profitable model for the upscaling of those events. I am convinced in my heart that it is possible however I wasn’t able to do that at heaven without great risk, risk that would kill the reputation of anyone involved should Rome fall. When the risk factor is that high, and not only yours but other companies reputations are weighted onto it you have to sometimes step back and say I failed.
So to answer your question, yes I've failed to deliver a better future Crossfire SO FAR, I still have every intention bringing Crossfire to the promised land and am busy working to that goal.