Dictated by: John "dearjohncarter" Carter
(ESEAnews) - As we kick season eleven of ESEA TF2 into gear, I want to call attention to some of the under-appreciated or lesser-known players hanging around in the Invite division. Each week, there will be a new My TF2 Story going up with each one centering around a specific player from one of the eight Invite teams. For the first week, I turned to the fourth place LAN finisher from season eleven: High Rollers Gaming. The roster is full of talent but nobody's name in particular jumps off the page at you. Rick is a solid demo, Omar had a coming out party at LAN, Tri is a silent assassin... but what does draw attention and perks up the ears is the laughter of one Charles "anonemouse" Fuhrman, the young boy with a golden heart and a giggle that spawns rainbows beneath the stars. We sat down for (slightly under) twenty questions and now you guys get to enjoy the result. I have but one regret with this interview - I cannot embed a looped audio file of his laugh.
MY TF2 STORY: CHARLES "ANONEMOUSE" FUHRMAN
The Facts on Snacks
Hey there Anonemouse, why not give the readers a bit of an introduction?.
Hello I'm Charles 'anonemouse' Fuhrman and I have no idea how to answer this question.
Ghetto livin' ain't easy
Off to an amazing start! When you aren't sitting at the computer with a bottle of your favorite gaming fuel, what do you get up to?
Other than chilling out, maxing, and relaxing all cool, I enjoy biking, hanging with friends, and walking dogs.
While most people know you as Anonemouse, I stubbornly insist on calling you Snacks. What's the story behind both of these aliases?
Snacks was just an alias that was chosen out of the blue and I stuck with after changing my alias multiple times a week on Steam. Anonemouse was picked because I played TF2 under the alias 'anonymous' which was super trendy and cool, but wasn't original at all.
The Adolescence of Young Charles
When you were still a young lad, a newbie to the world of competitive video games, and long before the Lord Newell bestowed you with his magical touch and made you play TF2, what games did you play?
After not being allowed to really own a game console while growing up, I turned to the family's computer as a source of gaming, and stuck with it through my youth. Before playing TF2 I mainly pubbed Jedi Knight 2, CoD2, Rocket Arena 3, and CS:S.
So you one day sit down at a computer and find yourself playing everyone's favorite cartoon shooter. What was your first time like?
A friend convinced me to try it on his steam account a few weeks after it's release and after only playing about 10 minutes on granary I was hooked.
You and I actually have a bit of Gamer History between us. Back in the good ol' days, you and I both used to frequent the Payload and Attack/Defense offerings of the PC Gamer servers.
Being a big reader of PC Gamer, I pubbed on their TF2 server a lot and began to make friends with the other regulars in the server. Everyone who played on the server were cool people.
When we were all revealing embarrassing TF2 stories on Mumble at 5 AM, you told me about not making the cut for the PC Gamer competitive team. Relate that story for the readers.
One or two months after the PC Gamer TF2 server was made, the people who worked at PCG and the better regulars made a TWL 7v7 team. During this time some friends and I were taking a bit of a break from TF2 and playing on a WoW private server. When I returned the next time to the server I felt a little left out when I found out I didn't make the cut, although it was probably because I was pretty bad back then.
Not being "good" enough for a 7v7 team must have been a strong reason why you are as good at scout as you are today. And speaking of, let's move on to some more current topics.
Charles and the Special Snowflake
You are currently playing for High Rollers Gaming in ESEA's Invite division. I know you're a bit of a Counter-Strike fan, so what are the chances we see you abandoning TF2 and tagging up for a CS:GO team in the near future?
Not much, just because CS:GO won't be as good as CS 1.6 is for a long time.
So HRG anonemouse will have many more days to come - what about the first days of the team? Who was involved and how did you guys come together?
HRG started out as a team Loronix threw together with a former teammate (MemphisVon), a former teammate's friend (MTF), a young but aspiring demoman (Rick) plus some kid he thought had good DM (me). The team's friendship just grew because everyone was nice and we were all around the same skill level.
I still have vague memories of my first match, being yelled at by some Swiss team for spawn camping as demoman on cp_well. What do you remember about your first match?
As Bright Gaming came together as all of the listed above and the competent medic do0t, our preseason scrims were pretty good. We were beating teams in intermediate like Spacewhales and Tony Hawk's Pro Skaters, so Loronix convinced killing to let us into intermediate. Our first match on Viaduct versus The Spacewhales came, and we soon found ourselves caving in to match time pressure and lost 4-0.
Starting off with some hardship is the way most teams do it, but you guys were lucky enough to come out of it and stick together for the long haul. Who isn't around now from your old rosters that you miss playing with?
Rick and I are the only members of Bright that remain on the roster. After playing with different people on the same team for a few seasons, I've missed playing with pretty much everyone at different times.
Anonemouse's old pal, Remington
For about two seasons now, nobody can mention HRG and cp_snakewater without succumbing to peer pressure and calling it cp_snackwater. Who came up with that?
cp_snackwater was the title of a youtube video by short, giving a shoutout to our win over 51 on cp_snakewater. It became a phrase just to express HRG on snakewater.
After watching your Snakewater match against Experiment on LAN, I can definitely see why people call it your best map. However, the rest of your team seemed to struggle in that same match, especially Trekkie and TechDude, both of whom are now gone from the starting lineup. Tell me a bit about what happened there.
After LAN we had to reevaluate our roster to make sure that we wouldn't pull a season 8 x6 to a season 9 x6. Trekkie was having a bit of an issue playing with TechDude throughout the season, but when TechDude left, Trekkie still played the same way. We had to do something about it. It was a hard decision after going to lan and playing with Trek for such a long time, but we had to find a new medic as our performance as a team was beginning to suffer.
Your new lineup features Asian sensation sash on medic and former-Experiment scout Dante on roaming soldier. With this new group, what expectations do you have for the upcoming season?
I want us to finish in second or third place during the season so we won't have to play matches at 9am at the ESEA LAN. But personally, I'll be happy if we can place fifth or above.
A good number of teams are formed with the express intent of winning. This season, Mihaly's Flow seems to have come together to try to get that sweet eXtelevision Eurotrip money and attend the i-46 LAN in England over the summer. What was HRG's plan when you got together? Were you hoping to climb the ranks and make it into Invite or just be six chill dudes having a fun time?
After winning a total of one match in intermediate season 7, our goal was just to improve all together and achieve a higher seed in intermediate the next season. After coming in 5th in the regular season and getting boned in playoffs, our goal was to not get destroyed in playoffs the next season. After every other better team than us broke up or was moved up, we won intermediate and our goal for invite was pretty much just not to go 0-16, being the newest team in invite.
With the hope of just not losing every map, what was the mood like as LAN started coming around and you guys were in the hunt for the fourth spot?
When our team was 2-5, the mood was pretty bleak for us to make it anywhere, except a 7th place above the dead Spacewhales. After our very close win over Snooplicity on gravelpit though, we knew there was a possibility of us going to LAN, we just needed a few more wins. Come snakewater week and we demolished the 4th and 5th seeds, we knew we had a chance at lan if we did the same thing again, and it was quite easy with our attitudes after that.
What kind of "style" does HRG play with? Do you have lengthy tactics session, come up with set plays and focus on the timing and intricacies of the game? Or are you more "hey guys, let's shoot things in the face and see what happens"?
Every off season we spend a few days going over maps, general strategies with our roster, and kind of informing each other on what we should be doing differently to help the team. Other than that, if we aren't getting rolled every scrim, we generally don't go over many strats and stuff, except for minor things here and there.
Charles Packs His Bags
You went to and played for HRG at the season ten Invite LAN. You had previously attended a few smaller venues for LAN, even winning first place in one if I recall correctly. What is different about the atmosphere at the ESEA LAN? Is it more difficult to play there as opposed to at the other venues?
Playing at LAN wasn't really that different to me, my friends and I host monthly LANs, and playing at Intel Lanfest last year in Folsom kinda prepped me for everything that was going to be at the ESEA LAN. The only challenging thing was playing a TF2 match at 9am, with no scrims or dm to really warm up before hand.
What was the personal highlight of LAN weekend for you?
Personal highlight of LAN, was sitting outside by the pool late Friday night, chilling with omar, Rick, tri, mo0se, and Loronix, just talking about TF2 and the LAN. The setting and mood were just perfect. [Ed. note: THEY SMOKED SO MUCH WEED.]
Marijuana fans assemble for video game convention
What in the world do you do to your hair to make it so magnificent and perpetually windswept?
Not having my hair cut since November had quite an effect on my abilities to flip hair, and after doing it for a couple of months my hair kind of just grew into the style.
Final Comments
You've been playing TF2 for about three years now. Is the game still fun for you?
After playing TF2 for such a long time, there have been periods of time much funner than others, and how for how dynamic the game is, it makes sense. Really, nothing much has changed in TF2 that has specifically made the more or less fun from a competitive viewpoint three years ago and now, but pubbing just after the release of the medic unlocks was the funnest experience to be had pubbing TF2. After the pyro update, playing public TF2 games became more and more of a joke until this time, where its devolved from it's Quake like roots to hat stimulating free to play garbage.
Any shout-outs or closing remarks?
Shoutouts to my team, the jerk, my friends, and everyone who plays this game competitively!
Originally published on ESEA on 4/5/2012, 1:59 PM by djc-.
Archived from My TF2 Story: Charles "Anonemouse" Fuhrman as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of ESEA's TF2 coverage. All rights remain with the original author and ESEA; reposted for historical reference.