You might also like to see Bologna by scooter, since i’m here now for the Alienware Challenge:

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

Firstly for those of you who don’t play xbox live, i’ll quickly explain the rating system to you. Once you play against someone, you have the option to go into their profile and rate them. You can rate them on trash talking, inappropriate behaviour, ragequitting etc. If you have rated someone badly, you tend not to be matched up to games that they are playing in.

Anyway I was playing some clan arena last night and now I remember why I left the game uninstalled for several weeks (that’s actually part of another story). While some of us are playing Quake Live, others are playing Stats Live. While I love that all the game statistics are kept, i’m sure that many people don’t share that sentiment.

Stats Live differs from Quake Live where players are not playing the game of Quake but simply doing whatever they can in order to manipulate their Quake Live statistics to make it appear that they’re a good player. This can involve doing the following:
1. Cheating: Flat out cheating, not much explanation needed
2. Switching teams in order to be on the winning team
3. Quitting or going into spectator mode if they lose

Quake Live does have some systems put into place to try to prevent this, such as not being able to stack teams (if it’s 3v3 and you join, you will automatically be placed on the losing team). But of course these Stats Live players find a way around it. For example they will stay in spectator mode until someone else joins the losing team, thus enabling them to join the winning team.

Quake Live already has a very easy system where you can view your most recent opponents from your startpage. My idea for the rating system would be this:
All you’d have to do is click on your opponents profile and there you’ll be able to make an easy judgement through a checkbox system. Of course you don’t have to rate everyone you play against, I myself would probably use it just for the people who are being lame as fuck unsportsmanlike.

My ideas that I stole from Xbox Live for what the check-boxes could be:
Communication:
- Excessive flaming (don’t get me wrong, I love flamers but when they start telling me that i’d be better at Quake if I stopped sucking so much dick, it gets a little old)
- I’m mad because I got owned

In-game conduct:
- Stacking teams
- Ragequits
- I’m mad because I got owned

Skill:
- Too good
- Too bad
- Doesn’t even know how to fire a weapon
- I’m mad because I got owned

For duels as well, it would be cool if you could have an option to avoid certain players with the match finder.

Then some servers should have some kind of restriction (much like the skill level restriction) where people with shit ratings can’t enter. Then have open servers where all the shitty bad-attitude players can play with each other. Kind of like what the English colonial guys did with Australia.

Of course this idea isn’t perfect but it’s what it is; an idea. I know that a lot of high level players will receive low ratings from people they’re spanking just because they’re pissed about getting owned.

What do you think? Would a Quake Live rating system fly with you or is it just another thing that’s good in theory but shit in practice (like BDSM)? Let me know in the comments or tweet your thoughts @HelloLiefje

An oldie but a goodie. Move over spart1e strenx!!

Something which did strike me as a little bit strange however was the presentation of the sportsmanship award to the fan-favourite Anton “Cooller” Singov. The reasoning behind the award was for his behavior at the IEM European final in his match against Maciej “av3k” Krzykowski. For those of you who don’t know, in that match Cooller got a great start on the first map (T7) and av3k had ragequit after 3 or 4 minutes. Cooller offered to give av3k a restart of the map which resulted in av3k winning. It could also be argued that Cooller was mentally thrown off at this point which caused him to lose the rest of the maps against the av3k, losing himself a spot in the final.

At the IEM World Final, cooller met av3k once again in the semi-final. But before the match was played, IEM Product manager Michael “Carmac” Blicharz presented cooller with the sportsmanship award. Firstly I’m wondering why this award was presented before the semi-final and not during the prize ceremony after the entire tournament. Wouldn’t it take away from the purpose of the award if Cooller were to do something un-sportsmanlike between that moment and the final prize ceremony?

The act of offering a restart to av3k in the European finals was very gentlemanly. However his behaviour afterwards was not, as he pretty much whined about regretting his decision afterward. In fact the whine was too much for av3k since he mentioned in a recent interview (in Polish) that:

“Cooller complains about everything that’s possible. Cypher is lucky, this one is lucky, that one is lucky. I am the best, but you’re lucky, lala lala, so for now I enjoy the lack of conversation with him, because I got tired of it. Yes, he’s the best, Russia owns, let him live in his dreamworld, but at least behave normally then. I didn’t want any rematch. He persuaded me, and then cried that he could [should?] have not given the rematch. Then a wave of complaints onto everyone that beat him, those with who he managed to win are the future champions, because they played so genius, that he beat them because he was smarter, and me and Cypher play so stupid, that he is too smart for our style of play and can’t predict what we want to do”

frenemies

Any human would have reacted the same way Cooller did though after losing that match and you can see his frustration in the post-game interview. While his initial gesture was that of incredible sportsmanship, his following behaviour was not.

During the semi-final match (20 minutes after he got his award) he participated in some small trash talk against his opponent, presumably a response to his recent interview. Would you call this kind of behaviour particularly sportsmanlike?

I pretty much just think that while it was nice to have that award, if it really was for that moment, it should have been given at the IEM European prize ceremony, not before the semi-finals at the World Finals.  If there was to be such an award at the World Final, they should have given it at the end of the tournament. I still can’t understand how you can give out an award before the end.

What do you think? Should cooller have gotten the award? If not who would be more deserving? Reply below or tweet your thoughts @Helloliefje

Images via ESL.eu

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.

Today he’ll be heading off to Germany to compete in the Intel Extreme Masters World finals at CeBit. But before leaving, he had a lot of things he wanted to get off his chest about Quake, the competition and excuses and certain players.

On professional gaming:

I’m laughing about the word “professional gaming”. How can you consider yourself a professional? A professional gamer is a man who lives with gaming. Only Warcraft and Starcraft players are professional gamers because they live for it. CS players: 60%. I just laugh when a player says “I’m a pro player”. I just wanna say “do you live only through Quake?” He will say “no”. Then you are not a professional gamer. I’m not a pro, I’m just a player who has fun with games. I have luck, I can travel. But I don’t consider myself as a professional.

About people taking gaming so seriously:

I will say ‘Why do you take the game so seriously? You want money? Get a job’. Really that’s what I think. I don’t really understand people like that. I am a student and I prefer to party. Just one day before [a tournament] I partied and drank so much. I was so hangover. That’s how players should react. They should just come for fun.

For example if I’m playing Zotac, it’s for €100 because on a Sunday there’s nothing to do. With that €100 I can buy alcohol for a party. I don’t take the game as seriously as some others do (like DaHanG…).

I’m not playing quake to make friends. Others only think about being “professional”. It’s just a game and you don’t make a living from it. They want to prove something; look I’ve the best brain, look I can be number 1. Every normal guy would say “what the fuck, I prefer to party than play Quake”. You can do both, but to reach the top u need to have no life and I prefer to party.

I have proven that it is possible to reach the top level without training (for example, IEM Europe).

On crying after losing DM6:

Ah, well… of course I don’t like to lose. Who likes to lose? But I forget about it the same day. I only care when I’m playing. If I do badly I don’t care – there is always a party afterwards.

DaHanG’s attitude:

DaHanG takes the game seriously. Quake Live is his life. I hate DaHanG since he said this to me; He watched my games vs Stermy all the time. I asked him the server password when he played cooller.

He said no.

I said why?

He replied: STFU, private server

He told me that 2 days ago. I really don’t like this attitude.

Do you know Buzz Lightyear? It’s DaHanG. He looks like him, exactly the same. DaHanG = Buzz Lightyear.

The Europe vs North America rivalry:

Americans are more no-life than Europeans. They are putting in more practice hours than the Europeans. OK, they win tournaments but let’s look statistics: if you train A LOT for a year you are not sure to win prize money. If you work hard for 1 year you can earn more than [the equivalent of] 50 1st places in a tournament.

So what’s the best? Play a geek game to win only $10000 in a tournament? Or work 1 year and earn a lot more WHILE playing at the same time. I just mean it’s stupid to train a lot all the time. I played IEM Europe without training.

If I evaluate the skill between chance and cypher, it’s a world of difference. Cypher plays less than Rapha. Av3k plays less too. Cooller I don’t know.

Europeans are more humble and more realistic than Americans, I guess. The mentality of Americans is strange. I don’t mean everybody, Rapha is a nice person – I have no problem with him.  But they [the rest of them] are in their dream world. They all think they can reach the top; they should be a little more realistic. I’m realistic; I know I have a small chance to go through the group.

Dkt is also in his dream world. He thinks he can reach the top but he should be a more realistic about what he can reach or not. I mean he did top 7 during IEM in USA, so please

Who he wants to beat at IEM:

I want to beat people who spend their lives playing, those who takes it seriously. Then if I do that, I will just prove that its bullshit to train a lot. I will just say “that’s bad, you wasted your time for nothing”. When you do perform badly and you know you trained 24h/24h for months, how do you feel?

About Cooller:

I think [on av3k’s recent interview] av3k is totally right about Cooller. I was so pissed about the 3rd place [IEM Europe] game. He had no respect for me. He only said, “I didn’t play my best because of my game against av3k”. He said I was lucky on dm6. 6:6, he does a kill at the last second and he is left on 6 hp. He should stop thinking that people are all lucky, because he is lucky as well.

For sure he isn’t the best at quake like he thinks he is.

I can’t accept it when Cooller said to me for 3rd place that I got lucky many times. It was him who was lucky… [As an afterthought] There isn’t any luck. I don’t know why I’m talking about luck. Luck is for losers.

On being arrogant:

The more you are honest, the more you think that person is arrogant. Look at Cypher for example. He can say what he thinks. He is very good. He can be honest saying, “this player is easy”. But he knows that if he says that, everybody will think he’s arrogant. But he’s right, he’s better than him. I really like this player [cypher], he just plays and that’s all.

If you ask me what I think about quake attitude: average players are nice (all nearly) but about the top players… it’s another world. There are a few guys who are very nice. The others are not. They only think about winning, winning and winning – being the best and having money. If they want to win money, enough money to live, stop playing. Just get a job.

But really I don’t mind, it’s their life, they do what they want. I enjoy my life, I play and I go to parties, I study etc. Some players hate me in Quake. I don’t care, they are not my friends. They can think what they want. I don’t mind at all.

Do people get the wrong impression from you because of the language barrier?

Well when DaHanG tells me “STFU” when I ask the password to the server, I don’t need a language barrier to understand this attitude.

The player he hates the most:

Winz. He’s arrogant, and a geek. I don’t like him at all. Even his face… really, he doesn’t look good. I think he’s the perfect representation of a geek. I’m sure all his friends are only players. Winz is a bitch. He sucks. He’s such a geek he will read this interview.

He said to me one time “If you do what I did [win 2 ESWCs in 2 different games] you can speak. But you never will. So now, STFU”.

I feel sorry for him though. I hope he at least finds some friends. But who would want to be his friend with the kind of attitude he has?

On being accused of cheating online:

I only did 2 good LAN tournaments: DreamHack and IEM. Online my results are OMG (laughs). It’s because I cheat of course. I am yuka. Of course I cheat, on each tournament online I use aimbot + autoshoot + wallhack. It’s very important.

Really, people think whatever they want. You will never meet a guy who leaves bad comments on ESReality at a LAN. That’s a fact.

No Excuses:

There is a thing I hate as well – excuses. I lost because; I slept in bad conditions, I didn’t play good… blah blah. No it’s not that you didn’t play good, it’s that he raped you, that’s all. Look at me against av3k at DreamHack, I found no excuse. I just said he raped me.

Image from ESL.eu

It’s ok to find excuses when there is a real reason. Against madix at Dubai I have an excuse. I was better than him for sure. My fucking headphones were fucked up. He dares to say that I was playing my best. That’s exactly the attitude I hate. He doesn’t even want to admit that I was better, that I improved. Come on. Madix is better than me? No way. It’s arrogant to say that, but generally honest guys are arrogant. Every player finds excuses all the time. They never say “He was better than me”. Never.

I don’t care about egos. If I see for example DaHanG raped by Cypher I will tell DaHanG, “Don’t find an excuse, he raped you, that’s all”. Of course if on t9 he lost because of 3 telefrags at 200-200 – ok its luck. But it happens rarely.

I just hate people who talk shit about luck luck luck. It’s the truth but nobody says it. In each interview after a game if you don’t see/hear the word luck, there is a problem. I can bet my balls, with my eyes closed, that I will find the word luck in each interview I watch.

It’s stupid. There is 10 minutes in a game. If you are better you can out-play him or out-aim him. For example if you play an average player, you can have the worst starting spawn but you will manage to win the game.

There is luck sometimes of course… if he survives 10 times at 1 hp. But players should stop thinking there is luck everywhere because if you want, you can always find an excuse for why you lost:

• I lost because I was sick
• I lost because I played with my feet
• I lost because I didn’t time
• I lost because he was lucky

In 2 seconds I found 4 reasons already. You can be sure tomorrow during the tournament a player who didn’t go through the group will find an excuse.

For me it will be funny. I won’t go through and that’s all. If I go through group I will laugh. We will see, I will just try my best, but I won’t pretend that I will win.

Lost brothers: Nathan from "Misfits" and Strenx

**Please note that these quotes have been edited to make the English easier to read and understand.

Following this interview, strenx has issued a public apology. View it here.

Aside from being a top Quake TDMer, he also is a huge Street Fighter fan. I thought this video was lost forever when Youtube deleted it and my HDD crashed but someone else had uploaded it, woohoo! Watch the madness of ProZaC talking about Street Fighter at CPL Nordic (DreamHack Winter) 2006:

If you like this video and you’d like to see me make more at upcoming events, email me to find out how you can help make this happen.