Humba — Howdy guys. It’s Friday, my friends! My apologies about the previous interview which I actually didn’t post. But this episode of “Summer Interview Madness” will make you forget about that. We’re going to talk with d2m, an awesome guy who has agreed to answer these questions. I made him cry about them, because they are full of gossip, heart-touching details and shocking revelations. It’s a little bit too long, be sure that you have time before you read it.
Why Russians suck at Worms Reloaded (maybe it’s true, I didn’t play it), why he left the ETF2L staff and how ThePledge plays golf – you can read (and watch) it all after a little jump.
REMINDER: ATTENTION! That’s a long interview, grab your patience and check the time.
1 – Good day, d2m! Can you give yourself a quick introduction?
Hi, good to talk to you buddy J My name is Matt, I’m from England (UK) and I’ve been playing various online games since 1998. I guess compared to a lot of the community, I’d be considered “old” now, but I think I still have a little bit of fight left in me.
I started online with TFC, and played that pretty religiously until 2005. I was in one team back then, called 7th-Med for the majority of that time – even Byte was a member! We had some really good days back then and I will always remember them fondly. I think it’s great to still see about 15-20 faces from the TFC days, playing TF2 now. Big shout out to you guys, always a pleasure to see you around!
After TFC, I took a bit of a break from games and then got into L4D, which I played competitively with some ex-TFC friends until early 2009. Then I finally got dragged into TF2, after resisting it for ages because I thought the graphics style looked horrific. Seems it hooked me in pretty well though, huh?
2 – You were ETF2L Head Admin for a long time – 2009-2010. How were you originally picked and why did you leave?
I originally applied to be an Admin in September 2009, as I was really enjoying playing TF2 and wanted to help out the community that I was playing in.
Around Christmas time in 2009, dAyKiLLeR announced that he was stepping down as he had other commitments that were taking up more of his time. Kop asked me if I would join him as Head Admin and help him to run ETF2L and I was very happy to do so.
Running a league is an incredibly stressful job and it was a great help that we had a solid team of Admins who were willing to dedicate their time to running ETF2L. However, there are so many small things that teams could do to assist the Admins, such as arranging their matches on time. It takes many hours every Monday for Admins to go through the unarranged matches and assign default dates – just doing something small like this would save a lot of wasted hours…hours that the Admins could put towards improving the league.
I left ETF2L at the end of July 2010. Essentially there were a number of reasons, but the first and foremost was that I was running out of time that I could dedicate to the league. Being a Head Admin was like having a 2nd full-time job and it was just too much stress for me to have that alongside my other work commitments. I suppose the other reason I left was because for a small minority of people I was becoming a target for their angst towards the league. The problem I had, was that I was the most outspoken of the three Head Admins we had (Kop, Racio and myself). When you’re the one who speaks out the most, you’re going to get flamed when people aren’t happy. Aside from my lack of time, I didn’t want to continue putting myself in a position where people thought it was ok to just be rude to me or my fellow Admins, without having any consideration for the effort that the whole Admin team were putting into running the league.
Since I’ve left, I’ve kept an eye on the league and I always watch new announcements with interest. I was a bit disappointed that there seemed to be a distinct lack of progress with the league until early this year. We had some great plans being put together but I think the league stalled a bit in choosing the right approach for the future. They seem to be back on track now though and I’d like to wish all of the Admins, especially Snowie, Racio, Crasp and Canfo all the best for the future.
3 – You also managed Team Vertex for a long time too. I know there were a lot of Vertex squads and teams. Did you have a role in managing them all and was it hard?
Haha. I think at one point we thought it would be funny if we could get a Vertex team into every division.
Vertex started out as a breakaway team from a lovely old gaming organisation – Malevolent Monkees, [MM]. I was friends with a lot of the guys there since the TFC days and they were the ones that showed me the ropes in TF2 and graciously took the time to let me play with them. Essentially, our team went from being a community side to playing competitively and within a couple of months we went from losing to Division 5 teams to holding our own in Division 4.
I loved the first days of Vertex, leading our team with Captain Ginger (one of the old timers like myself). We had some amazing guys in our team – obviously we weren’t world beaters, but the passion and humour we shared made every night an absolute pleasure to be part of.
As our team advanced in skill, we recruited new players to replace our fallen friends and I thought it would be great if we could add a couple of additional teams and help newer players with the game. It’s really pleasing to see so many of the players from Vertex 2 and 3, going on to greater things. I hope Imperium and Davidd win the Ultiduo Cup again – I’ve got my fingers crossed for them!!
The Stinson edition and the Soviet edition came around because we were really good friends with each of those clans and we thought it would be a great idea to work together in the same organisation, playing together a lot and helping each other to improve. This friendship also showed us just how bad the Russians were at playing Worms Reloaded. Irfy is quite possibly the worst worms player ever, closely followed by Moneta and D1egos.
I guess I could talk for hours about Vertex and I’m genuinely sorry if this bores anyone. It was just a fantastic place to be, with people playing all sorts of games together. I feel honoured to have played with so many fantastic people and I love every single person that was part of a Vertex team at one stage or another.
4 – Tell us about your way to the top of Team Fortress 2. You are a very good scout, I saw your demos. It was impressive.
This sounds like a bit of a troll, but I appreciate the comments, thanks.
With regards to improving through the game, I think anyone that wants to play competitively and puts the effort in, will become a better player. I’m by no means a fantastic player, but I like to believe that I offer something of value to my teammates. Currently, my DM skills are a little on the weak side – mainly due to a lack of practice and being a bit rusty. I think my strongest asset is good game-sense and positioning, along with the ability to be a pretty useful sniper when we need a medic pick. I’m also quite a defensive player sometimes, which can work quite well when you have an aggressive scout partner – as you can both keep each other in check. If you are playing against me, you can pretty much expect me to be trying to get behind you and back-cap whenever possible. I like being sneaky!
TF2 in general has seen a large rise in the number of quality scouts around. Quad has proven himself to be a very good player and his pistol aim is ridiculous. Credit to him for coming back from having a tarnished reputation and proving to people that he is a fine player. I also have a lot of respect for players such as Stefan, Greg and Norrlääänningen. These are players who have worked exceptionally hard and proven themselves at high levels. I hope that it shows players that no matter what your level, if you work hard and believe in yourself – you will get better.
5 – Tell us about TF2TV. You co-founded it and it became a very successful idea.
It was a weird old afternoon back in October 2010. Pledge, Comedian and I were sat in a mumble channel, discussing coverage of TF2 and how we thought it would be awesome to have a casting service that covered all levels of TF2 on a regular basis. I think it was one of those moments when you realise that you have a gem of an idea and you all just want to take action and get something moving – thus TF2TV was born.
Within 24 hours (and not a lot of sleep), we had a domain name, a website, something resembling a plan and we quickly built up an awesome team of people who all added great value to the project.
It was great to see how quickly people took to the idea and I don’t think we can ever thank people enough for the initial support we received. It was really heart-warming to know that we were offering something that was being enjoyed by many and it certainly gave us great encouragement for the future.
Arie, Exfane and Fakkelbrigade were invaluable at the start – pretty much single-handedly supporting our project with hardware and giving us the ability to show people what we could do. I know their contributions to TF2 have been discussed before, but I think out of everyone who has given something to TF2 in Europe, they deserve the highest praise of them all.
I left TF2TV in January as I felt I wasn’t giving the guys enough time and support to do my job properly. I wish I could have carried on, but I think they were at a point where people such as ShoX were able to offer great support and thus I could step out of the picture without causing too many issues.
I was a bit sad to see TF2TV “die” as a project, although it’s nice to see that a lot of it has carried over into Vanilla TV. Comedian did an excellent job of keeping things going and his dedication to his work is insane.
The only thing I’m not so keen about was the way that Pledge seemed to be treated [with TF2tv]. I don’t know all of what has gone on, but I think it’s a huge shame that he is not casting any more. I know very few people who have a bigger understanding and knowledge of the game than him and I’m hugely disappointed that he seems to be frozen out of what is going on now. In the (in)famous words of Pledge: “I’m not so sure I agree with that”.™
6 – You’ve been part of many high level teams including – Team Vertex: Retired Edition, Team Stinson / Paradigm. Why did you leave them?
The main Vertex team pretty much died at the end of Season 7, when we all decided we would take a summer break. Mar and Anderson were going to be away over the summer and some of the other guys in the squad decided that they wanted to carry on playing, so looked for some TF2 elsewhere. It was a huge shame as I felt that team had some great chemistry, although it was rather nice to beat most of them at i40 with a golden cap on Gullywash. (Shout-out to: Pledge, Dusty, _Ben, Traxantic and Chubbsta for that).
Team Stinson was a lot of fun and we got completely carried by Dusty, most of the time. He’s the best demo that I’ve ever played with and as you can see by his recent frag video, someone that is sorely missed now he’s inactive. After i40, where we finished 7th and won an exciting £75.00 in LAN monies, I think we lost our way a bit. The team was unstable for long periods, due to replacing players that moved on to other teams. I was actually kicked from Stinson in the end, although we parted in good spirits. I was not playing very well and since I am very much a confidence player, I didn’t really have the belief to get better at that time – sounds a bit lame, I know.
Team Stinson, then renamed to Paradigm but I don’t think they really managed to get any cohesion and most of the players ended up moving on to new teams or new projects. I still wonder what might have been, had we not lost our way after i40 – too many “what ifs” in this game!!
7 – A few hours ago you joined the unRestricted e-Sports team. How were you picked? Was it ThePledge’s idea?
I’m delighted to have joined them! Although Sonny is terrible at getting a new computer, it has been great fun playing with them over the last week. There are some great players in this team and I think with some hard work, we can achieve some excellent results. It’s really down to believing in our play, trusting each other and working effectively as a team.
Being in a team again with Pledge, who is a great friend of mine, is very exciting for me. I’m really looking forward to i43, where I’ll see Pledge again and also all of my new teammates. Konfy and ipz are great soldiers and they’ve certainly impressed me in the games I’ve seen them in so far. Pledge has switched back to medic now, which I think is his best class, purely because of his insane knowledge and clever tactical ability – some of his calls are genius! Säm is a player to watch for the future – his DM skills are very good, if he can tweak his positioning and aggression a little, he can easily perform as well as Stefan has done. They have a very similar play-style.
I think they picked me because I offered experience to them and in our games so far, Säm and I have started syncing well already, which is exactly what you need as a scout pairing.
8 – What are you doing in real life? Any hobbies or jobs?
I run a marketing consultancy in the UK, so the majority of my day is taken up with helping small and medium sized businesses generate more customers and revenue. It’s something that I love to do and it’s incredibly rewarding when you help a business go from a bad position, into generating a lot of revenue. Plus they pay me more too!
With regards to hobbies, aside from playing pretty much every multiplayer game with my teammates and friends on Steam, I love football and golf. I’m a member at a local golf club and try to play at least a couple of times a week. I also enjoy Geocaching (www.geocaching.com – if you want to know more). It’s kinda like a 21st century version of orienteering, with GPS receivers – a hi-tech treasure hunt.
In fact, I’d also like to share with you a video of Pledge playing golf from just before we travelled to i40 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE2eZG5Pi10
9 – Your stint in the Blood is Good team wasn’t very long, much like huhy. Were you there as a mentor or did you just play with them as a regular player?
After leaving Stinson in January, I took a bit of a break from TF2, just playing the odd double mix with guys from Overdrive, BiG and WDG ( My intention on joining was to mentor the team and help them with tactics. They had some great individual players, especially Møøg. He carried the team a lot with his very aggressive scout play. It was just a huge shame that we never really got going with tactics as we often went into maps without a plan B, plan C or usually even a plan A!
Unfortunately, the team wasn’t overly active as some people had other commitments, including myself when I had meetings in the evenings with clients. Although we tried hard to make things work, Reload ended up taking a break and that led to Vince deciding that the team should go inactive for the summer. I wanted to carry on playing, so I decided to look for a new team.
I will miss them as we shared a lot of humour every evening, but I’m sure they’ll all have a good future. I think Reload is addicted to APB now, Vince loves Starcraft II and making cp_grack (which is an awesome map!). Møøg is playing a lot of Starcraft II and making people mad and Wildfire looks like he will continue playing as medic in a new team. I hope I get to play with them again in the future.
10 – Finally do you have any words for our readers?
Well, seeing as this is about 7 pages in Word (over 3000 words lol) as I type this, I guess I’d like to thank anyone that managed to read this far. I’m sorry it was a bit long; I just wanted to answer the questions openly and honestly.
One of the main things I’d like to say is thanks to anyone that has supported me when I was a Head Admin, part of TF2TV or whenever we’ve played TF2. I’ve made a lot of great friends through this game; I love and respect every single one of you.
On a more serious note, I think teams need to stop folding so often. If you form a new team, think a little more about who you recruit and how you play together. If your teammates do not get on well with each other, you are exactly the sort of team that will fold after a couple of defeats in the league. We’re pretty much all adults here – it’s not hard to get on with other people! The best way I think that people can avoid folding/dropping, is to actually be friends with each other and play other games outside of TF2. When you do this, you will form a much better bond with each other and you will play a lot better as a team.
Finally, I’d like to wish everyone all the best for the future and I look forward to seeing what the future holds for TF2.
11 – Thanks for the interview! I wish you and your team good luck in future.
Thanks for asking me to take part – it was a pleasure to talk to you. I hope you keep up your awesome interview series as they’re great fun to read.
Editor: Shrike and Krimson.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2011-07-22 by despair.
Recovered from the Internet Archive (archived copy) as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of VanillaTV's TF2 coverage. The original site is no longer online. All rights remain with the original author; reposted for historical reference.