Dictated by: John "dearjohncarter" Carter
(ESEAnews) - So we enter week two. Mihaly's Flow have won both of their matches, each against another top four team, each in very quick and close 5-4 Snakewater matches. Everyone is still sitting in awe of Ruwin, or criticizing Shrugger and saying he was not good enough to jump from a bottom IM team into Invite, or fantasizing about how good wonderwall and Harbleu will be together given time. Nobody is really talking about Cameron "soup" Studd, who might be the most important component in a Mihaly's championship run. So when I look at the Mihaly's Flow roster, I know I can get an amazing interview out of PYYYOUR or a good one out of Harbleu or an awkwardly silent one out of Wonderwall – but I knew that I could get the most interesting one out of soup. Hopefully, you agree. Enjoy!
MY TF2 STORY: CAMERON “SOUP” STUDD
Chlodnik or Perigord?
Alright, so let's kick this interview off, Soup. Why not introduce yourself to the readers?
Hello all my name is Cameron “soup” Studd I'm 19 years old and I am a Electrician and I go to a local community college but I'm not really studying a certain field but just going to get an associate degree, I have two badass dogs and I play TF2 for a awesome team :D
A dog so badass it wears steel-toed boots
When you aren't putting up 400 damage per minute against the best teams in North America, what hobbies do you occupy yourself with?
Well outside of TF2 I like to do a lot of outdoors type of stuff; lately I've been putting a lot of time into helping a friend build up a old 1979 Toyota pickup and its coming along great. I've always been into the outdoors during the summers I hike quite a bit with my parents around parts of Washington State, and recently I starting skiing again after taking a good six year break from it and boy did I miss that haha. And now with summer coming up I've been doing a little bit of working out you know nothing serious but getting ready for summer I guess ahaha. Back in high school I did a lot of wrestling and most recently I just got done doing a little bit of freestyle wrestling trying to get back into that, but the season for that is now over and I guess it's time for the TF2 season to begin. Other than that I guess I'm more than likely doing something to my Toyota or beating on one of my friends lol.
So you play in ESEA under the name soup and your Steam name is souptaco. What's the story behind that name?
Well about five years ago or so I was at a restaurant and I forget what I ordered but I remember that the waitress asked me if I wanted a soup or salad, and from that I have no clue why but I thought it would make for a funny name. But over the years it changed and I dropped the salad part of the name (R.I.P. Salad :( ) and it was soup for quite some time and around a month ago or so I felt like it needed a facelift and with my obsession with Toyota's I thought it would be cute to through in taco (nickname some people use for Tacoma's :D) and so today it now reads as souptaco.
On Wrestling and Counter-Strike: A Philosophical Treatise
My understanding is that before you started playing TF2, you played a bit of competitive Counter-Strike. If that's true, what league/level did you play at and how'd you get involved in it? If that's not true, have you played anything competitive outside of TF2?
Well I started playing Counter-Strike at a friends house back when it was still in beta and I only played it when I went there but after it came out on steam I finally I got my own account and was playing it daily. I didn't start playing it competitively until around late 2004/early 2005 with some friends from school and from what I remember we were all pretty bad and I do not recall if we ever made it out of CAL-O. I then took a little break from the computer for around a year or so and me and a friend got really into BMX bikes. One day me and a friend were out at these trails we had and I was testing a new Easton bike from another friend and I cased this double really hard broke the forks and nearly lost my two front teeth thank god I didn't lol. So after that incident I was back at the computer the next few days trying the new Counter-Strike Source game out and then I got back into it and me and the same group of friends from school are back playing CS:S in CAL and I stuck with it for some time and from there I just started to really like playing competitive video games. In CS:S the highest I level I got to was a CAL-M team but after that I kinda slowed down on playing video games because I was going into High School and was busy with some other stuff. Then winter comes along and my first high school season of wrestling is here and it is a lot longer than the Jr. High ones so I found a new game called Team Fortress 2 and from there it was like love at first sight and I started playing it and this is like in 2008 or so and a few months later I started playing 6v6 with some people from a pub clan.
Thanks to UNF for making this family friendly
What made you actually play TF2 for the first time? What appealed to you about the game when you started playing it?
My little brother got the Orange Box for the Xbox 360 and I was like “oh what is this game” and he was playing Demo on a Dustbowl server and just killing a bunch of people with a sticky trap in the enemy spawn and I thought to myself wow that looks kinda funny and fun I wanna try this game. So a few days later I went and bought it and the rest is history :D
Did you get into 6v6 TF2 right away or did you play it on pub servers for a bit before? How did you actually wind up playing 6v6?
I played in a few pub servers for the first few months and some guys from a pub I played in asked me if I would like to join them in playing in Cevo and TWL, and at the time I was amazed that people played this game competitively and from there I just stuck with the game and have loved it since then.
You're in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive beta; what do you think of it so far? Is it good enough to pull you away from TF2? Can you see yourself trying it out competitively right now?
At the moment I would say it looks like it can be a fun game but it's still in beta and full of bugs and glitches that make it hard for me to play. I think it has the potential to be a great game and if the developers keep working at it they might just make a very awesome game. I don't think it will pull me away from TF2 right now and it's honestly going to have to be an amazing game for me to want to switch because I honestly think TF2 might be the most fun I've had in a video game.
The Tragedy at Area 51
The roster that made up Area 51 first played together back in season eight, with you, Tragic, blaze, Loronix, MemphisVon and Roland. How did that roster come together? Who of that group were you friends with that pulled you into the team?
Well this season orginally started with me and Vhalin wanting to make a team together and so with that he went around and gathered up some players he thought would make a great time. Shortly after he found four other players he was offered a spot to Medic for I believe it was Complexity but he did not get the spot for that team and he then joined Check6. So now we were down a scout and I believe we then picked up Blaze. So at the very beginning I didn't know any of them but we formed the first time and went by the name of Hood Rats.
Moving into season 9, you guys picked up the A51 sponsorship and tragic also made his rather “famous” move of cutting his way to the top, getting rid of Loronix, roland, Alfa and Solidsnake from the old roster to bring in ryanr and ender. What was the actual reason behind removing all of those players?
Well not all of them were cut, as for Loronix he really wasn't on good terms with Tragic and I'm not to sure if this is true or not but a little birdy told me that Loronix had Tragic muted in mumble for the last two weeks of that season lol, and he ended up leaving right before playoffs I believe. That caused us to use our backup Alfa and I remember he was a little nervous playing in his first playoff match and he accidentally hit his kill bind right when the round started on grannary hahah, love that guy though funny little Russian. As for Solidsnake he was just temporraly playing for me while I was busy doing some other stuff for a few weeks and I believe he left to go play for a different team at the end of the season. Then Roland was cut because Tragic did not like his play style or something along those lines so and the end of the season it came down to cutting Roland and Alfa for Ryanr and Ender.
During that same season after about three weeks, you guys picked up TheFragile on medic. What happened to lead to you guys changing medics? Do you think you would have made the LAN if you had kept Tragic on medic?
Well Tragic ran into some internet issues and he couldn't play for quite some time, so we had to find a backup medic that could play in his down time and Blaze ended up finding The Fragile :3. After we played with him for two weeks or so we decided to say we'll keep him starting for here on out because he was really good, and Ryan and him have played together before so it might workout even better because of that. I think we would of made LAN still with tragic but I think over all it was a good choice picking up The Fragile.
Soup, before Tragic-dy struck
After making the nice run to LAN in season 9, you guys saw another set of major roster changes – blaze left to go play roamer in IM and ryanr quit TF2. You replaced them with carnage and justin respectively, and you wound up finishing just shy of making it to LAN again. How did you guys decide on picking up carnage and justin? Did Justin want to make the move to pocket or did it come about because there really wasn't anyone else available?
Well we first picked up Justin because he's just an all around great player, and The Fragile wanted to play with him and everyone was fine with it and so we decided him could play pocket and after a few scrims it looked like it was going to work out. After looking around for a scout and time being short we picked up Carnage who was playing with Justin the season before on The Experiment. I was fine with these roster changes at the start because they looked pretty well at the start but sometimes just did not workout as played.
I've always heard rumors that playing with the season 10 A51 team was pretty frustrating, with lots of rage coming through from certain players and the mood just being generally pretty poor. Do you think that was the ultimate reason why you guys finished just shy of LAN, or did it come down to just bad play?
Well there was never any rage, everyone kept pretty cool for the most part; yes there were sometimes when it did get some what frustrating. As for not making it to LAN that season I think that came down to us as a team just breaking down and not performing at all to what we should have been doing.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Now the current roster you're on is the TF2 equivalent of a dream team. You've assembled former LAN winners Harbleu and Pyyyour to go with veterans Ruwin and wonderwall, and throw in an Invite first-timer in Shrugger to round out the mix. I know that Pyyyour started trying to build a team with Ruwin in the middle of last season; how did you end up involved with these guys?
Well I was brought to this team by Vhalin towards the end of season 10 and we had plans on playing together for season 11 with a well built team. So after Vhalin talked to Ruwin and Pyyyour they came together with the idea of us four playing together and then finding two other top level soldiers to throw into the mix. I believe Pyyyour was the one who went and gathered Harbleu and WW. After a week or so of playing Vhalin decided he didn't want to play this season and had some other things he wanted to focus on, so now we were down a scout but we had plenty of time to thoroughly find a new scout. After about a week or two of looking at scouts it came down to Justin and Shrugger and Shrugger was the scout that fit a better play style to work with Ruwin and that is basically how we became a team.
So far in the preseason, you guys have looked like the most dominant Invite team since x6. Right now, it feels like anything short of a quick and easy LAN win will be a disappointment. Is that how you guys are approaching the season??
Yes I've heard that from a lot of people on how well this roster looks and how well we perform but I know it is not going to be a easy season. You can see from the first week that this season's Invite teams are all pretty evenly skilled, as both of our first matches came down to 5-4 scores with us having to come from behind. Then you have last seasons Intermediate champs beating last seasons Invite Champs, so yea this season is looking like anyone's game to be honest.
Earlier in the offseason when the team included vhalin on scout, there were several mentions made of this team being made specifically to attend the European summer LAN, i46, assuming the eXtelevision fundraising efforts proved successful. Are you guys still planning or hoping to attend i46? How do you feel you stack up against European competition?
I remember hearing about this a while ago but I haven't heard of any updates on it. If the eXtelevision crew does receive enough money for that I'm positive this team would go and compete at that LAN. This team wasn't really built for one specific LAN or event but it was built to be an all around great team with some awesome nerds on it. I don't really know much about the European scene, Harbleu's the expert on that but from what I know their top teams would give us quite a challenge, and a trip to Europe sounds pretty wicked.
While there's a ton of talent in the Flow roster, there's also a perception that there's a lot of egos clashing with each other there. How well do you guys get along when it comes down to match time?
Well I wouldn't say there's a lot of egos but I will agree there is a few. I would say 90% of the time everyone gets along really great but some nights when ww- isn't on his bombing game he tends to get really cocky and start being a little nasty towards others and believe it or not Harbleu is the one who normally calms ww- down. Overall though everyone keeps a great attitude when it comes to matches.
What team do you think presents the biggest challenge to you this season: Quantic or Mixup?
To be honest I think they both give us the same amount of challenge, like I was saying earlier this seasons invite teams are just all evenly skilled and they all will give us a challenge. I mean you have teams like srsly br0 which weren't supposed to do good at all this season and they come out in the first week and give us a 5-4 game and the next day they go and beat a team that placed 4th at the last ESEA LAN. So to sum that up I think both of those two teams will give us the same amount of challenge.
CamLAN 2010
Had you attended LANs before you went to ESEA's season 9 LAN? If so, how did it compare in terms of atmosphere and pressure?
I've been to about three other LAN's before and they were all in the Washington area and they all quite small, except one of them back in 08 I was playing Source at and there was about ten other teams there and that one had some great competition but it wasn't anything like the ESEA LAN. As far as the atmosphere the ESEA LAN by far had the most competitive atmosphere and pressure and I had the most fun at that one as well.
I remember casting the S9 LAN and noticing that you were playing a different style than you normally did online; you were playing more of a “clean-up” role, following in your team's damage rather than being the big damage dealer and the initiator. You still played very well, but what caused the change in style? Was it nerves at work, forcing you to play a little further back, or just a change that you felt would help your team?
Ya I was kinda playing all over the maps at that LAN, we had a little miscommunication at some parts that I would get in the wrong place or wasn't with everyone at a push. I wasn't nervous about playing by any means I'm just going to go ahead and say it was all from bad communication and leave it at that haha.
On a similar note, your teammate blaze struggled pretty badly at that LAN and people have started using the phrase “pulling a Blaze” to refer to someone who chokes on LAN. What do you think contributed to Blaze's poor play that LAN?
Hahaha I've never heard of that phrase before but I'm going to start using it. Well I know that one our first map against eMg (Quanitic) his cfg was totally broken and his monitor was at like 60hz and the screen was tearing badly but being a little champ he said screw it and played like that and I believe he was out fragged by a medic that game. Other than that I think he was just extremely nervous about being there and not having Daniel by his side like he has at home.
What was your personal favorite moment from the LAN weekend?
My favorite moment would have to be meeting everyone in person, people who I was playing with for the last two seasons and finally meeting them in person. Or when Experiment and 51 were pounding on Blaze's room for 15 minutes to get him to open the door so someone could throw ice cold water on him and he didn't open the door and we had to go into the room because some people thought he was dead; But it just turned out that he was passed out from doing nothing all day.
A Fond Farewell
Last season, there were talks that your interest in TF2 was pretty low and I remember your hours dipping pretty low as well, to the point where you had been playing more CS than TF2. How do you keep yourself interested in the game at this point? Do you foresee yourself losing interest in TF2 this season, playing on a new roster?
Well towards the end of last season I was getting busy with some other stuff with school and work that was kind of eating up my tf2 hours, and after we didn't make it to LAN there was a good month or so of time that I didn't have a team to play with because 51 pretty much folded after the last match. So when I would get home I would just maybe pub TF2 for a little bit or I would go PUG some CS with a friend for a little bit before I went to bed and that's the main reason my TF2 hours dropped. To be honest I think TF2 might be the most fun I've had competitive wise out of all the other games I've ever played it's just so unique and just awesome lol. I don't really see myself losing interest in it but I could see myself having to slow down in it for other stuff such as school and work but I hope that doesn't happen anytime soon.
Anyone you'd like to give a shout-out to?
Ya shout-out to Community Fortress for being our awesome sponsor, MemphisVon for being awesome and for being quick on his feet with trashcans, Ezekiel, Toyota for making badass cars, but mostly trucks, and lastly Visitor for finally hitting the gym.
Originally published on ESEA on 4/19/2012, 5:19 AM by djc-.
Archived from My TF2 Story: Cameron "Soup" Studd 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.