Humba — Howdy, guys. After a long week full of impressive tournaments, which is a great improvement for our lovely community I’d like to introduce you to something special. And I know that you still have no idea what I’m talking about. Holy cow, you saw the title? Jesus, you’ve ruined all the plans that I had for the awesome presentation of my new Summer Interview Madness episode, which is about Mike from Infused team.
When Chuck Norris will replace Barack Obama, why London is under attack and what the heck is going on in Africa – you can read it after a little jump (try to find it)
1 – Good day, Mike! Can you give us a little introduction of your team – Infused?
Good day indeed :). Uh we’re a fairly new team/reform of the old infused lineup that only contains 2 of the original memebers – Greg and boomeh, although they did a good job to win i42 I think Greg and boomeh were concerned with the bigger competition that is expected at i43 they would not be as successful and revamped the roster, recruiting rather quickly myself, Qun and Numlocked, I have met Qun, Greg and boomeh at lan so I think that made the trials easier, however numlocked was the hardest to persuade as he was pretty unmotivated, but somehow ( I really don’t know) he started trying hard, playing pickups and putting effort in the form of maincalls in our clan matches, the last and hardest part was picking our medic as we had a lot to choose from and needed one that fitted numlocked’s style, when it came to flushy’s turn, he stood out out in his first game where we played TCM, won granary 5-1 and he got 126 points, which numlocked said he had never seen in his 3 years of tf2 or something :D, flushy fitted the team really well with his perfect heals and also the fact he is from UK (and a nice guy, probably a cheater too). We are looking forward to i43 and I HOPE expect to be up on the stage again :p
2 – Tell us about your way to the top
It’s been pretty tough because I didn’t have that much respect for anyone, I didn’t like a lot of the top players and wasn’t afraid to say it, which undoubtedly made it harder, still, I got multiple chances but usually something happened and I became clanless, but after a while I finally got into a solid, proven division 1 team (that later went on to WIN PREMIER), I had learnt my lesson and stayed with them even when times got tough, although I kinda left the team before the playoffs I was unaware we still had a chance so I played the games with them thinking we’d have a little chance vs TCM and Tt. I was originally recruited into teams like rejects and vye due to my aim which helped me get noticed, there’s no secret about it as all I do is practice it a lot (not so much nowadays)
3 – You’ve been part of many high level teams including – k1ck eSports, The Devils Rejects, vye.tf2. Why did you leave them?
The first team, Rejects, well the story is quite strange, basically one night after our games Loco was saying that he was probably going to kick ups due to his performance, I was a bit sad about it, and I talked to ups and I said “unlucky man” assuming he knew, however Loco didn’t tell ups what he had planned for ups, so ups was unaware of what loco and the rest of the team thought, as loco had told other members, thus ups messaged loco saying “ok, it was good, c ya” and I got blamed for making ups leave, but in my opinion loco shouldn’t have told all of the team, but anyway I decided to leave/got kicked after that incident, but ups later rejoined the team so I don’t see what was the problem when I look back on it. vye wasn’t as dramatic a story, I guess at the time I underestimated how well the team was doing, still I always though AnimaL had a ‘can’t be arsed’ attitude and I displayed my annoyance at this but he didn’t change, so in the end I just rage quit, right after we got sponsored by rockit, the only reason I would’ve stayed would’ve been to wear that tag. k1ck was the least dramatic story, I only just “left” them because they can’t play at lan so I joined infused, I’m still with them @ ESL though, interesting to see what the members will do for the next seasons of etf2l and esl, as infused won’t be able to play with boomeh so we’re uncertain if we’ll participate or not. I stayed with k1ck the whole time, or eSreal really when I joined (just nameless) the first few games I played with them were the best as I got to play with the best medic ever, techtron, after that it went downhill.. ;p. we were doingok and becoming a low premier team, we had suni briefly but that didn’t last long as he rages so much, so so much, then came the high points, getting placed in etf2l and esl premier, recruiting royze, and then getting sponsored by k1ck, the actual season was ok, we had some good draws vs redCode and at the time Power Gaming, I enjoyed playing with them and even more so in the playoffs, they were a fun team filled with colourful characters, we always played good in officials as retsh0ck’s cheats are terrible and thus plays better when they’re not allowed, so out of all the teams I’ve played in, k1ck has been the best, and what a way to finish :p.
4 – You also joined Wales National Team a long time ago. How were you picked?
It was pretty simple really, I just kept asking n0va for a spot, but it’s all irrelevent anyway as there hasn’t been a nations cup in ages and most of the players (nearly all) are inactive. In the next etf2l nations cup I’m fairly sure it will be team UK instead of the individual countries. I don’t think much about the squad at all, as even if they did play in the last cup they refused to play england, for rivalry reasons I suppose :s, or maybe ’cause (no offence) honestly even if all the good welsh players came from inactivity and played (absolute cook) and we got santa and wai to play we still have no good scouts so it’s a shame really especially that the wales tf2 scene is so tiny, but I guess I am actually a bit happy to just sit on the roster :p
5 – How were you picked in Team Infused?
Hmm although they won i42 it seems they didn’t think the team could do it again at i43 and their old roster was not motivated at all for practicing online so I think they decided they needed to get in 4 new motivated players and get practicing. I already knew Greg and boomeh prior to joining as I met them both at epic.FIVE LAN and seeing as k1ck was inactive and I thought we had finished the playoffs, I agreed to play a few games for them and I didn’t think much of it, but I quite liked it and decided to join, it wasn’t hard to as josh (boomeh) said that after the first game I could join if I wanted which was nice to know, after staying in k1ck for the amount of time I did (was a long time for me) I have an increased tolerence for teams and although the beginning was kind of rough in infused we just stuck it out and now that flushy’s back from vacation its going pretty damn good. The other trialees either didn’t fit the roles well or didn’t communicate enough so it wasn’t that hard of a choice for both sides :)
6 – You know that Qun is hosting a youtube channel, when he uploading your team’s PCWs gameplay and comms as well. What are your impressions about it? Do you think it is good?
I really like his channel, it’s good publicity for us! Qun is really into his e-stuff, he has facebook and twitter pages about video games (http://www.facebook.com/QunTV)+(http://twitter.com/#!/Qun) sometimes i watch the videos as it’s useful to me to see how he and our team plays from his POV, his YT channel even made me wanna make mine look the same (http://www.youtube.com/user/Fasterthanamaster?feature=mhee). These days I see more and more people streaming and uploading videos like these (longas + martn) I think lots of people should do this, especially top players as it is entertaining and useful for “lower” players, I think it just generally shows a sense of community participation too which is always good.
7 – You also won the National Cup on ESL under the UK tag. Was it hard?
Hehe thank you, although I thought we had yet another bo3 to play as we came from the lower bracket, if we won then great, fantastic! =D. Some of the games were hard, to be honest only due to our own teamwork, we hardly practiced/did practice for some reason, the game vs germany was the only genuinely tough one, luckily we learnt from it and with Greg (no offence ziggy!) it was easier and comfortablely won, the whole thing has been enjoyable, and to be fair the were some games were tough, although really all of them psychologically were hard due to the pressure of representing your nation, and the ever present possibility of losing.
8 – You have played with Byte in it, and we are all know that he is a beast. Have you enjoyed playing with him?
Haha no it does my head in really, he reminds me of loco sometimes, whiny bitch.. but really he’s a cool guy and yeah we have had fun so I guess I have enjoyed playing with him, but he’s super serious in-game, so I’d say it’s been more due to that he has been a great leader and picked the team well (no randa) and of course when the time is right he can have a laugh and make a few too :P, although he’s a terrible medic..
9 – Can you wish something briefly to our readers?
Lots of love to IsF` (MTF.px red Also shoutout to GibbZ (so he’ll stop crying) and snuke! for being my first proper team and memories :)
10 – Thanks for interview! I wish you and your team good luck in future.
Thank you! My pleasure!
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2011-08-09 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.