Team Sweden at the ENC Finals in Cologne, 2010

Excerpt:

You have already played tournament favourite 4K in the EC and lost by only a few frags on both Maps. Did you expect the match to be so close? And did this result give you confidence or frustration?
purri: I was very frustrated afterwards. It felt like such a waste from our side. I claim that our inexperience (How can you call a team inexperienced when we have more than 40 years of TDM in our lineup!!) did cost us the game. What I mean is that this particular game felt like ours to win, and to take. In particular the 2nd map where it felt that we were controlling the tempo and items/quad from start until last 2 quads. I think we were worthy to play a 3rd map. However we did not, and 4K won fair and square! I have to say they are a good team, and their caliber will never be easy to beat no matter what lineup you have! There is some good news though. I don’t know from 4K’s side, but I know for sure we could have had a better lineup and we have practised a lot since then. So they will have to play better next game to win, since we will and I’m looking forward to it myself already! Bring it plz!

Damiah: To be honest before the game I didnt expect much, but after the game I thought that we should have won it. Even that we were underdogs before the match it was really annoying to lose it like that ?
I think we have really good potential if we are just able to use it.

To enjoy the rest of the interview, click here.

Johan ‘tox’ or ‘toxjq’ Quick is one of the most revered Quake players of all time. He was kind enough to share some insight concerning Quake Live and his potential future as a competitive player. He also spoke of his feelings on being such a dominant champion of Quake 4, and what he must do if he is to continue to perform at such a high level.

nomadic: First, could you catch us up to speed on what you’ve been up to? Are you still into your fitness? Working / Studying? Do you still participate in Horse Race Betting?
tox: Gopher and I work for my father’s smaller business as sheet metal and ventilation technicians. And I still try to keep the fitness going, but nowadays I usually keep it to twice a week. On Saturday’s I do enjoy the major horse races that take place every Saturday in Sweden.

nomadic: Will we be seeing you come back and train Quake Live as hard as you did for Quake 4?
tox: I don’t think I will play as active as I did during Quake 4, since I was then sponsored and had more time for practicing and traveling. But things can change in the future with more events and so forth. I have vacation atm, so I have been playing some the last couple of weeks. Fazz came and asked me to participate against France in the TDM cup because Fox had holiday in Greece. I knew that they really wanted to go to the LAN finals, so I felt obligated to take part with them. I only practiced a bit before that game, and then I have just kept on playing for now.

nomadic: Speaking of TDM – It has become much more active in 2010. Do you or your brother have any interest in reviving a certain TDM clan?
tox: Gopher has been talking about starting to play a bit for fun, but he doesn’t have a proper monitor for Quake atm, so I think he might start to play some more for fun if he finally goes and buys a new monitor. But I don’t think we will play TDM for online purposes, it could happen that we would make a team again if there would be TDM lans as it were back in Quake 3 OSP. I rather prefer if there were more 2v2 events, maybe together with 1v1 so you had two types of a game at the same event. In my opinion it’s too much hassle to gather 4 people, and much easier to practice 2v2 then 4v4.

nomadic: But don’t you think 4v4 TDM is more fun than 2v2, both as a player and spectator?
tox: I would say that 4v4 is more fun when you travel to an event together with your team and play the serious matches with a lot of pressure. But in my opinion, 2v2 is more fun to play for practice purposes and also to watch online.

nomadic: In your September’09 Fragster interview you said, “I would like to decrease the hitboxes a lot”. How do you feel about the hitboxes now?
tox: I think they have been improved since they made the changes, but if you play an opponent that has a higher ping than you, there are many shots that go right through. It seems like it depends on what situation you’re in on the map, you really have to think about what height you are firing your shots from. But that’s probably more something that comes with experience.

nomadic: So for LAN play – do you think the hitboxes are perfect, or would you like to see further tweaking?
tox: I have yet to play Quake Live on lan, so I don’t know how the hitboxes work there, but most likely they will work better if both opponents have the same ping. I’m also interested to find out if there is the same amount of firing delay for the weapons on LAN. This is mostly what I feel could be corrected. If you look at plasma gun, for an example, it has a lot of delay while playing online. You cannot use the plasma gun in the same way as you used it in OSP and CPMA; like a close range weapon. It’s mostly for spamming corridors and just annoying your opponent now. In my opinion its way to risky to use plasma vs lightning gun in close range atm. So I would like to see some changes with plasma, so you had 1 more weapon you could use in the game.

nomadic: Would you favor plasma or shotgun at close range in Quake Live as it stands now?
tox: Online I would definitely prefer to have a shotgun instead of plasma atm. But it might work perfect on LAN, I really can’t have an opinion about that since I haven’t tried Quake Live on LAN.

nomadic: We haven’t really seen you play T7 or T9, what are your thoughts on those maps?
tox: I have been playing more and more of these new maps lately, and I think T7 is a balanced map so far. You can play the map very different if u want, both super aggressive and also very slow and safe as well. T9 I haven’t been playing as much as T7, but it feels like there can be so many spawn frags on that map. In my opinion, that’s a weakness, as I think luck should be involved as little as possible.

nomadic: Do you favor any maps over others?
tox: I would say that ztn, dm13, and T7 are good maps for competitive play. Dm6 doesn’t work as well in Quake Live than in Quake 3. As for T9, I can’t say there is much you can do on that map. You are kinda forced to play a certain way and it’s hard to find out a different way to play that map. Then again I haven’t been playing it as much as the others have. But I’d rather not see any Quake 3 maps in Quake Live map pools. I think we’ve had enough of that already, and it should only be new maps for competitive play.

nomadic: Would you be opposed to the addition of Hub?
tox: Yes, even dm6, phrantic, ztn, t4, hub, edge etc. I believe there has to be changes to get some new blood into the competitive scene, and since Quake Live is a new game, they should not use maps that have been played for years and years. There isn’t much to explore and it’s hard to come up with a new way of playing each map.

nomadic: Understandable, so in this way you favor T9 to be included in tournament map pools?
tox: Yeah so far I would. As long as they make new maps, it is important they are tested thoroughly. But you can’t announce new maps 1 week before an event like Quakecon, that’s really bad of them and unprofessional. There has to be some kind of organization that decides a map pool, and that map pool should be used for all the events of that year. If people wanna change maps, or add maps, it should be announced at least 6 months ahead of the tournament.

nomadic: What about other changes or additions you would like to see in Quake Live?
tox: I would like to see what happens if machine gun makes 6dmg instead of 5dmg. Its way too hard to defend yourself with machine gun atm, but then again I think 7dmg is way too much. And as I said earlier, I would like to see some changes with the plasma gun. Maybe it should fire a bit faster or the bullets should be a bit larger, because the hitboxes are smaller atm.

nomadic: I think it was obvious to everyone that Quake 4 suited your play style best. Do you feel your game can be adapted to suit Quake Live like it did in Quake 4?
tox: I think the key is to always find a new way of playing, and it’s all about making your opponent unable to play as he is used to, or how he has been practicing to. It doesn’t really matter if you play aggressive or defensive, just if you make your opponent off his game style and his “plan” he brought to the game.

Quake Live is mostly about timing and controlling the items like RA, MEGA, YA. But if you look at Quake 4, it was just as important to control the weapons of your opponent as it was to take armors and megas. Since the weapon respawn is 5 seconds in Quake Live, it’s impossible to keep your opponent from getting the weapons he wants after a period of time. You can be successful for a while, but in Quake 4 it could be better to give your opponent an RA if you could take the lightning gun or rail or rocket. Because then you would win the next fight without any trouble at all. But in Quake Live you are pretty much forced to take all the fights at all armors and megas. And since Quake Live doesn’t have as much dodging involved as Quake 4 did, you almost have to get more armor and health than your opponent if you wanna win the next fight. Sure you can win certain battles if you position yourself a bit better, but in general you pretty much have to be equal or have more to win a fight in Quake Live.

It’s just another way of playing a game, and you do what you have to do to get better at the game you are playing. But that’s kinda the guideline for Quake Live, only control armor and health and get the best position you can for the next fight.

nomadic: Does this guideline favor or hinder you?
tox: In the beginning it most likely would not suit me. I like when I have more options I can choose from, but I do miss that there isn’t as much weapon controlling with the fast respawn of the weapons. That way if you play someone with a strong rail, it could be better to control rail as opposed to taking all the YA’s on the map when you already are 200-200, but its just 2 different types of play.

nomadic: Let’s go back a few years to WSVG finals vs. Fatal1ty.
After you won, and silenced the “99% Bias Against Toxic” room, you said you felt like you had something to prove; that you were the best Quake 4 player. Do you still feel like you have anything to prove?
tox: No, I mean you can always look back on players as they’re talked about on the shoutcast, “Do you think this guy would beat this guy etc.” It’s just speculation and ultimately a waste of time. Everyone who wins tournament after tournament is already the best at that moment, and I guess these players have the potential to be one of the greatest.

But you cannot take a player from 10 years ago and compare him with someone today. I’m sure that player would have been as good as all the rest if he had his prime today. For myself, I already won a lot in Quake 3 TDM, and I think I placed 5th in almost all major Quake 3 events I attended. In Quake 4 I won a lot of 1v1 tournaments and the Quakecon Quad tournament as well as every 2v2 tournament with whomever I teamed with.

I think the difference between me and the other players is that I don’t talk about winning as much as they do. I don’t feel like its any surprise for me, and I’m always aware of every good player at a top level. It’s important never to feel like, “Yes I made it,” because that should be just an average day for you if you want to stay at the top for a long time.

nomadic: When you were dominating Quake 4, everyone was very curious about how you practiced. You said you didn’t like to train with other top players, but that you instead preferred players that were of a “mid tier” range of skill.
Can you tell us the advantages of this type of training regiment as opposed to training with your peers?
tox: I felt that I already knew how to play the map and opponent when I was attending a tournament, so I already knew how I was suppose to play my best game at that point. If you play someone that’s equal in skill as you are and make 1 mistake, you usually end up losing the game, or not getting any items or weapons for a long period of time during the game. In my opinion, you don’t get to practice all the situations as much then. If you play a medium skilled player, you can always get back control much easier then if you’re playing a top player.

So my thoughts were – if I play vs a medium skilled player I get to practice all the situations over and over, many more times during a game then I could if I played a top player. Of course now and then you can also play someone of your level, to improve your tactical game and also see if these things even work against someone at the same level as yourself.

nomadic: Is this your preference for Quake 4 alone, or would you apply it to Quake Live also?
tox: I definitely would use this in Quake Live also, but probably a bit more games vs equal skilled players to first find out how to play a serious game. When you get that right, you can go off and find out different ways to play a certain map or different ways to attack or play defensive etc.

nomadic: Are you planning to attend Quakecon or any other events in 2010?
tox: I’m not going to attend Quakecon this year, but I have been practicing with Stermy and Cypher before this event to help them get in shape. Cypher and I made a deal – if I helped him to improve his game and found out his weaknesses, and if I gave my view of his game to help him, he would give me advice and help me improve on ztn for an example. So Cypher and I have been playing a lot this past week. We had our warm up session; talking about positioning and some things I know about the opponents he is going to play and so on. Stermy and I have also done the same.

I don’t know if I’m going to attend any events in the future, I hope I will but I don’t know when it will happen. Atm I’m trying to get a feeling for the game, and I will see what tournaments come up. But I want to be sure of knowing all the maps before I attend a tournament.

nomadic: That’s a nice trade off, have you found anything on them yet?
tox: Yes, I think we both have learned from doing this. Maybe he got another view of things he hadn’t previously considered, and I have seen things that I hadn’t thought so deep about either. Anyway, since I’m good friends with both Stermy and Cypher, and if I’m not participating in a tournament, I’d like to see them go as far as possible.

nomadic: Last time I spoke with you, you were planning to buy an apartment. Where are you living now?
tox: I’m still living in the same city that I grew up in. There hasn’t been a good time for this kind of market since the crash.

nomadic: Is there a significant other in the life of The Toxinator or is he looking to acquire a target?
tox: Nope, not at this moment.

nomadic: Thank you very much, I really appreciate you taking the time. The final words are yours.
tox: You are welcome, it will be interesting to see if there are new maps being played at Quakecon and let’s cheer for Stermy and Cypher.

Thanks to Nomadic for the much-needed interview from one of the all-time Quake legends.

Disclaimer: All thoughts expressed are the opinions of the individuals and were said without reference to id software/Quake. The talk of maps which are not currently available are simply just speculation.

Week one is over and the submissions for each challenge is in. My stories of interest were the interview I made with Justin Wong, plus I have also interviewed Hawr1x, an incredibly passionate Czech gamer. Check it out below:

If you liked what i’ve done and think that it’s good enough to win, please take 2 minutes of your day to vote for me. You go into the draw to win the Alienware M11x. I’ve been using it for the past week and once I got over the disco lights, I actually realized its a beastly machine! It’s better than my desktop

Anyway, to vote for me, click here (psst, I’m Livia!).

On a side note, i’m really sorry but i’ve had to make it so that you must register to post comments on my website. The spam is currently overwhelming and I can not deal with it when I am on the road.

Without further ado, here are the interviews.

Fazz:

Justin Wong:

Rapha:

Today, Draven is still studying at University and also working, “I was studying to become an accountant, but I already had some internships. I kinda found it boring so I might try something else”. Before being sucked into the gaming world, Draven was actually a martial arts champion in Taekwondo. I’m also not talking about local gym champion – Draven boasts an impressive amount of victories in both national and international Taekwondo tournaments. Just a small peek into his enormous trophy cabinet speaks for itself:

Despite being a top player in Quake who has travelled to many different tournaments, Taekwondo still has taken Draven to more places than video gaming. He attended World Championships in Korea, Greece and basically places all over Europe. However despite being the national champion, he didn’t manage to win the international tournaments, “I didn’t win, was too jetlagged and too nervous on those podiums as 15-16 year old kid”.

3 years ago (when he was 19) Draven stopped Taekwondo as he didn’t have a lot of free time. At the time he was in the Netherlands national team so they were training a lot, “Sometimes we trained 3 times a day in the weekend”. Since there wasn’t any prize money offered in these tournaments, “going pro” wasn’t really an option.

Gaming is something which Draven has always enjoyed, “My brother, my cousin and I were really gamers, we played a lot of Super Nintendo and Playstation 1. We could play for days and not get bored.” But of course in those kinds of environment there is always rivalry, “We all wanted to be the best. For example in Super Mario or Tekken we wanted to prove who is the best ”

Then he discovered Quake. “Around 2001, I found out about Quake2, in 2002-2003 I started to play Quake3 single player, after that I found about mods and stuff so I downloaded RA3 and I totally fell in love with RA3. Actually I didn’t like duel at all, I was more a team based player ra3&ctf.”

Like with a lot of gamers, Draven was introduced to Quake first by his brother, “My brother brought a cd with quake2, so he installed it and started to play, but he got bored of it so I started to play the single player, and later on found out about multiplayer and irc. He then found out that Quake 3 was already around, “my brother borrowed quake3 cd from a friend who didn’t play it anymore so we installed it and I never looked back to Q2 again.”

Preferring team games over duel, Draven currently plays for the Dutch national team in Quake Live for both CTF (blad3, solar, draven, sc00t, forever) and TDM (draven, forever, sc00t, silencep, and tua). He started to get into duel in the Quake 4 days (2005 / 2006), “When Xhep from Tek9 asked me to play Q4 TDM for Tek9 I was like ‘sure why not’, but my pc was to shit to play Q4 TDM so I started playing Q4 duels. After that I kept playing duels in Q4/Q3/QL.”

Draven considers himself as kind of a “new” player on the duel scene, as he didn’t really watch the oldschool players play; “I started following duel scene after I saw the hub3aeroq game at ESWC [2005] fox vs czm where fox won in the end classic and awesome match. I started following it then, but did not play. I wasn’t really into the pro gaming scene. I was training 5-7 days week (taekwondo)”.

Obviously since a young age Draven already had the competitive edge in him but is yet to take a podium finish at a big international LAN tournament. He believes that; “If I could stop working and school I think I could focus a lot more and I would be a lot better. I’m busy with school, work. When I was at taekwondo I was really young, I could focus a lot on it. School also wasn’t that hard and I didn’t really need a job back then”. For a lot of University students events also come at bad times such as during or after exam periods. This makes it a little more difficult for those who are studying to fully focus on the tournament.

Currently we have seen a lot of the European Quake stars participate in the Saturday / Sunday Zotac and G-Data online cups. However Draven has never been able to play in those as his schedule only permits him to play mid-week and after 16:00, making it too late to make the tournament on time. He basically feels that what he needs to catch up to the current top players is simply more time to be able to practice. But he also feels that practice can’t really get you everywhere, “for a lot of people yes [practice helps], but a lot of people are so talented. For example burned – he caught up with a lot of people in short amount of time, even though he’s very young. He has loads of time and no responsibilities”.

As time goes on we have seen the top players come and go and new talent has emerged on the scene. Draven believes that soon this generation of top players will also need to concede to the younger generation; “The older you get the more priorities you have, cause you cannot have this lifestyle when you wanna get married and have kids, maybe if its Korea or MLG. But simply the last years of quake you cannot keep this lifestyle when you’re old and fat ”.

Despite winning the first eSports Heaven Quake Live tournament, Draven still remains modest about his skill, “Not a lot of good player signed up for this cup, but if you look at the last QL tournaments (Dreamhack & IEM Europe) I had one of the toughest groups. Both events I was kinda disappointed. It didn’t give me confidence at all, when you play QL you need confidence to win. Even though I came out my group at Dreamhack I had to face av3k right in the first round what was really bad too”.

Rumor has it that MLG is very interested in picking up Quake Live for their competitive circuit. Like most other competitive Quake Live players, Draven would love it if MLG chose it as a game. He’d participate; “but it also depends on prize money and if it’s in Europe or America. If the prize purse is like a CPL world tour then I would go cause it would mean that I have to make free time from work and school what costs money”. Like other top players, Draven is sponsored by his team LowLandLions but even if sponsors do pay the trips, time off from work and school is still needed to go to these tournaments.

Draven is actively involved in the Benelux Quake community and has often been seen spamming messages on IRC trying to get people to participate in the ESL Benelux amateur series. The more participants means that the more likely it is that next season the game will be fully in the ESL Pro Series. He seems a little disappointed at the Benelux scene, but not because of its size, “There quite a lot of Benelux players but most of them just play CTF, but we simply cannot make a Benelux only CTF league cause there’s not enough teams, so we have to start with duel then maybe try 2v2 then TDM/CTF if there’s enough interest”.

That said; it is quite difficult to get people to try dueling for many reasons. Draven believes that “Simply a lot of people don’t even wanna try duel and improve in it, because they get so bashed by good players they just give up on it”. But Draven encourages those who perhaps are interested in trying to not give up, “I think EPS is a big step, I see a lot of people trying duel. By playing better players, and seeing what you’re doing wrong and keep improving your game you’ll enjoy duel. If you keep improving you cannot stop playing ”.

In closing, he submitted the following words:

Thanks for the interview, I’m also really happy LLL picked me up. They supported and believe in me 100%. I’d also like to thank all the sponsors: asus, sennheiser, puretrak, easport, hostbasket

First of all, I would like to apologize. The interview was made at 2 – 3 am. I had just got home from a party and I didn’t know what I was saying. Normally I wouldn’t be so rude and I aplogize a lot. Everybody is free to do what they want and I didn’t have to say anything. I don’t understand why people didn’t ask themselves ‘why is Strenx so mad, there must be a problem’. Nobody asked themselves ‘how could he write this, he must not have been thinking straight’. Everybody just said ‘he’s a stupid kid’. I can’t blame you guys for thinking this, that’s normal. But I apologize for everything. To DaHanG, I hope you like it that I think you’re Buzz Lightyear.

He laughs and claims he likes to mess with the students by taking their pictures.

“They don’t even know we’re watching”.

In the video, it seems like the software being demonstrated is only able to see remotely what the students themselves are seeing on their desktops. However allegations have been made that the software is actually able to turn on the webcam without the knowledge of the students.

The FBI has now opened a criminal investigation over this issue.

Firstly, WTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTFFFFFFFF?! Is it even legal to be able to spy on peoples desktops remotely without their knowledge? It seems like these students had no idea that it was happening. Do these guys have no lives at all that they’re watching what some young kids are doing on the PC? Come on, thats what those net nannies are for.

I can totally imagine that this is also happening in the workplace. People are all up-in-arms about it because they’re afraid that the schools are spying on their children getting dressed and in the shower or whatever (watch this girl try to get attention by accusing her school of spying on her in the shower). If I was a student and I saw someone was taking my picture from the webcam, i’d cover it up with black tape right away.

But what about those in the workplace?

If the job had gone the legal route and let me know that everything could be watched and recorded, it would be a little better. But i’m still not a fan of all this digital spying. I don’t even like to look on other peoples computers, it’s often that you can stumble on private things without meaning to.

This digital age has made stalking a whole lot easier but the gross part is that it also seems to be accepted. It takes away from the fun of getting to know people too. Embrace the mystery!

What do you think? Is it OK to watch what other people are doing on their computers? Is it correct for the school to spy on their kids? Should they REALLY care what they’re doing if their school work is getting done? Leave a comment or tweet your thoughts to @HelloLiefje.

They had been dating for 1.5 years and from the get-go, it this guy was dangerously obsessed with Alba. He plastered her pictures all over the walls, had pictures of her on his cellphone and did his best to morph his insecure girlfriend into a mirror image of the actress.

The man demanded 21-year old Xiaoqing do her make-up as Alba does  (even when she slept) and gave her a blonde wig for Christmas, which he asked her to wear all the time.

How in the world could she break it off with such a gem? She told a Chinese newspaper they broke up last month when she threw her wig and fake eyelashes to the ground after people laughed at her.

But afterwards, she said she reconsidered:

“I love him very much…. that’s why I always followed his opinions. I don’t want to lose him,”

She got the idea to get plastic surgery after she wasn’t “getting over” her ex. Her friends must have been sick of her bitching because it was them who recommended she get the surgery.

The news of this surgery caught wind because of a video posted on Youtube:

Word of the crazy woman actually reached the actress Jessica Alba, who was less than flattered with the news. According to the NY Daily News, Alba responded saying:

“I think you should never have to change yourself like that, If somebody loves you, they’ll love you no matter what.”

This is just insanity, Xiaoqing is already a very pretty girl and she isn’t thinking about the consequences of such surgery. Can’t she just open up a magazine and learn from people like:

Octomom

Heidi Montag

Donatella Versace (via wireimage.com)

And most importantly, Jocelyn Wildenstein?

Wildenstein ended up this way from numerous procedures she made in order to keep “youthful looking” for her husband.

Another gross part to this story is that a plastic surgery clinic in Shanghai offered to do the work for free in order to “showcase their skills”.

What do you think? Does the world need another Jessica Alba? Leave a comment or send a tweet to @HelloLiefje

The Beginning:

How did djWHEAT discover professional gaming and tournaments?

Unlike most people who are introduced to professional gaming through friends or family, Graham discovered it simply through playing. “I think that when I was playing Quake 3 back in the day and I was trying to compete in the US in Q3 TDM. I think that during that time Europe had seen some success in pro gaming tournaments and we hadn’t seen anything.” Back in those days Graham was still playing ladders with his team and going to tiny tournaments where maybe the first place prize was something like $800. “I sort of just got into it through Quake 3. Quake 2 is what got me into a clan and what made me start clan 519 but it was between Quake 2 and Quake 3 is what made it for me. That’s when I got my prize for the first time or saw another team win money.”
Like with most professional gamers, once Graham had the taste of competition he wanted more; “They [gamers] smell blood and they go for it.” Today though, most people do see Graham as a broadcaster and only the true old school gamers knew him as a professional player. His humble beginnings came from the early professional tournaments.

Did playing in professional tournaments help djWHEAT with his game commentary? Graham doesn’t think so: “I don’t think it’s fair to ever say that if you’ve never played you could never shoutcast but I think it does help in certain situations, or at least break down certain situations better for spectators as a player.” His experience as a player really does bring you ‘inside the game’ as he can talk about how the players in those situations would be feeling as he would have felt the same thing himself during his time as a competitor.

How djWHEAT fell in love with gaming
A lot of people just have this one game that they can pinpoint that made them realize that they were in an intense love affair with gaming. Like me for example, it has always been the original Unreal Tournament. For Graham of course, it’s a different story: “I think that quite frankly gaming for me has just been an addiction.” The addiction was present for as long as he can remember, “I think back to being in elementary school, middle school and high school and even my mom would tell you that when he would get in trouble we would ground him from video games because that’s where it hit him the hardest.” Of course, did that stop the determined djWHEAT? No way! Even when he was grounded he would find ways to play video games; “I would take all of my money and go to the arcades, I would buy everything that I could possibly buy… that’s just where it has always been a sort of an addiction and it still is today.” Of course, it’s not an addiction that’s a bad one, it simply meant hours of enjoyable entertainment.

How did “djWHEAT” come to be?

Many people always have interesting or amusing stories behind their alias and in my opinion (although it differs from his) Marcus Graham is no different. Back in the days of playing competitively, Graham used the nickname ‘Styles 519’; ”In the early stages of e-sports I sort of tarnished the name of ‘styles’ through gaming websites like cached.net where I was very vocal and I said things that today my mom would wash my mouth out with soap for. I even said things and wrote posts about the CPL and directly to Angel and this and that and I was totally fine with that.” The name of Styles 519 came to an end when the team was training for the Cyberathlete Professional League. A teammate (Bitchslayer) wanted everyone to practice under alias and Graham picked ‘WHEAT’; “I had a little Pikachu (yes the Pokémon) doll that was named wheat and there was no particular reason he was named ‘WHEAT’ other than the type of beer that I like (which is wheat beer).”

Most I guess would assume that the ‘dj’ was just tagged on to the front of his name once Graham started shoutcasting. Wrong! Actually, Graham used to do a lot of dj-ing (and had a large amount of vinyl in the closet at his place). When he spun he spun using djWHEAT. So basically, the alias went from gaming, to dj-ing, then back to gaming, all stemming from wheat beer!

Going Full-Time

Life before commentating video games and hosting a gaming show for Graham still involved gaming. Before being able to get a full-time salary within the gaming industry, Graham managed around 250 servers for a company that managed bank sercurity and bank data storage servers. He was heavily into IT and managed 3 guys. They would go to 9 different states to manage banks. Graham actually got the job because of the Y2K bug. Doesn’t that bring back memories? “During that time they were just looking for people because they were like ‘Oh my God we have to update and patch everyone’s computers because it’s Y2K’. So I quit school and found a job because they were just everywhere. So I quit school, I was a sophomore on college (and all I was doing there was playing video games anyway) and found a job and worked my way up into a management position.” His day didn’t end there though, when Graham got home he would get online and broadcast some Quake III or Unreal Tournament. He couldn’t get enough of it; “I would sometimes do 10 hours a week (of commentating) back then just because I loved it.”

Family Support

To pursue your dreams, there is always some kind of risk involved. For the Graham family, it was moving from Nebraska to Los Angeles. Marcus knows more than anything that he has 100% support from his family, because if his wife thought he was crazy to do this, they wouldn’t be out there!

However if there was one thing that could be totally eliminated from the line of work it would be all the time away from home, travelling to various events. “Each situation is different: during the year there will be a lot of time off during this period and during another period there will be a shitload of time on and that’s really the hardest part.” Marcus also has a 2 year old son (who was napping angelically the entire time I was there) and he doesn’t really understand what happens when daddy leaves for a week; “then she’s got to deal with him for a week and she’s already going insane and with me not being here that part is really rough.”

Epileptic Gaming however doesn’t involve as much travel and all the other projects that Graham is working on that has come from game broadcasting, he gets 100% support from that; “I say things on the show and do things on the show that obviously I’m not doing in my own home but they support it because I think that they know that that’s always been my dream.”

The ups and downs of video game broadcasting

There hasn’t really been anything super surprising about being a video game commentator to Marcus. To him, the most surprising thing is where we are with professional video gaming today; “There are like 5 or 6 guys that can say they are fulltime broadcasters but I think that each of these 5 people do that still have some other role or responsibility in gaming. I think that’s great to see”. Another thing that is surprising to him is the politics that exist in gaming behind the scenes, not just in broadcasting but in everything. Other than that though, for Graham it has been nothing but pure, unadulterated fun.

To Graham, the most satisfying thing about commentating professional video game tournaments is when you get to really see an awesome game; “For me broadcasting and video game commentary… it’s just really what I’m thinking in my head anyway if I would be watching it by myself. So for me commentary is just like, I open my mouth and it comes out. Exactly what I’m thinking is everything that comes out. The biggest satisfaction is just being able to express that.” Anyone who hasn’t heard Graham cast but has ever watched the show Epileptic Gaming can agree with that, he simply screams his thoughts into a camera.
For Graham another thing to provide job satisfaction are the people in gaming. “Some people don’t understand how great the people in gaming are. Some of my best memories, whether it be with clan mates or rival team members, or other gamers, or coaches, or managers, some of my greatest memories have been at events and in gaming”. He has made so many friendships over the years that Marcus could literally travel all around the world and have someone to visit in almost every place! All the friendships he’s had the opportunity to make and all the friendships he knows will come in the future is a fantastic thing for him about working in gaming.

Breaking into the CGS

With a lot of things in e-sports they simply happen by chance. Graham got involved with the Championship Gaming Series also by chance. He happened to be in the right place at the right time and that was the World Cyber Games event in the Kodak Theater – the qualifier for the 2006 season. The tournament itself was actually really poor; there weren’t any spectators at all. But of course, in typical ‘djWHEAT’ fashion, that didn’t matter. Graham was there with Jeff “Smeagol” Dickinson and they were casting some Counter Strike. At that time it just happened that Mike Burkes came by (the producer for the Championship Gaming Series). Graham met with him and at the time didn’t really know who he was but all he did know was that Burkes was impressed and wanted to get involved with gaming; “What you guys did there was just the fact that the room was empty but we could have put u guys in front of thousands of people… that’s the kind of energy you were bringing. I have dealt with people who could do that for sports but I never thought it could be the same thing for gaming.”

Well within three weeks Graham received an email from Burkes about a project called the ‘Championship Gaming Invitational’. A week later, he met up with some of the other people involved with that and went on to do the first two CGI’s and then moved on to the Region 1 season of the Championship Gaming Series. We didn’t see him however at the CGS World Finals but Graham didn’t want to comment on it in the hope that it would work out in the future.

The future
In the foreseeable future, you will not see Graham take a bow from the gaming scene. In fact, he plans the very opposite: “I actually see myself doing a lot of things. First off as much, if not more, than broadcasting Epileptic Gaming is really my biggest project right now. Just because I’ve been doing the shoutcasting and broadcasting for a while and it’s not necessarily something I could on a daily basis anymore.” This does not mean that he is stopping it completely though; “that’s not because I personally can’t do it it’s because the face of gaming has changed a lot. You really now have to focus on what you want to do, you have to pick and choose.”

So with that said, he believe that with Epileptic Gaming he can change the face of gaming journalism “I really think that gaming journalism in general (specifically in consoles) is really in poor shape right now. We are trying to bring a more honest and real opinion on that so I want to do more programming that follows that same line. It’s no different than sites out there that report on music, TV and the various aspects of that. I think that gaming journalism is really losing focus. At the same time I really like doing everything from making all kinds of content. I think that web content is huge and I think that it’s really the future, less people are watching TV and more people are watching shit on the web”.

Graham has many things planned for gaming in the future and his ultimate goal is to create an ESPN style “Sports Center” for gaming; “Everyone’s thought of it, everyone wants to do it, people have attempted and tried to do it and I don’t want to speak for the competition out there but I’m sure they’re all in their secret laboratories trying to figure out how to make it work”. I’m sure that if anyone can make it work it would be Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham.

“It’s hard to think that when I’m 50 years old I’ll still be broadcasting but I’m 30 years old now and I’m still doing it so why the fuck not? I don’t see any reason why, just like some of the guys who are the great broadcasters in sports of today are older guys who have just been there throughout the years.” To Graham though, the future of video games commentating looks a little bleak; “One of the things that scares me about the future of broadcasting is that you haven’t really seen a whole lot of talent. It’s really awesome to see Paul “Redeye” Chaloner, Stuart “Tosspot” Saw, Jeff “smeagol” Dickinson… these guys who really start to take it to the next step and get jobs doing what they love but where are the new guys / girls? Back in the day I used to get demos upon demos and so many ‘I want to do this’ emails and now it’s just crickets. It scares me because there’s got to be new blood. Just like in gaming, there’s got to be new players that come in and challenge the top dogs (and that’s why gaming continues to be exciting).”

In closing, Marcus has some last-minute advice for all of those that would consider commentating video games: “All I can say given in terms of advice is fuckin’ get off your ass and do it”. You heard the man. The future of competitive gaming doesn’t solely rely on players, there’s more people involved in it than that. Let’s see some new faces at events. Like Marcus and other figures in the e-Sports industry, you have to take a risk. You’ve got nothing to lose from simply trying.

Links:
djWHeat.tv
@djWHEAT
@HelloLiefje (let me know what you think via twitter!)

The interview in English is not available, but it basically covers the female gaming, the gaming house and my time in CGS.

If you can read japanese, click here to read the interview!