Early Morning Interview - Morg

What have been your main challenges so far at i33?

There was an issue on Friday morning about how the Turn up and Play feature would be played out for the Call of Duty 4 competition. I was informed that the there would not be enough time to play groupstages in conjunction with the TUP feature because of clashes with the Counter Strike: Source TUP. This meant that the tournament organisers were planning on doing one group of TUP for Counter Strike: Source and Call of Duty 4 with the top four from each group going through. Thus giving the TUP teams from both Counter Strike: Source and Call of Duty 4 exclusive right to the TUP PC's once they were through - however they had also planned to not use a group stage for the rest of the BYOC teams in both tournaments. After having resolved the issue of having groups for everyone we were not allowed to change the fact that all TUP teams had to be in the same group. Unfortunately with CoD4 this meant we found ourselves with three top seeded teams in the same group. Due to Multiplay using clan forge to organise their tournaments we had a problem with getting the automated feature and the seeds working in conjunction with each other. This meant we had a delay of getting the groups done by about an hour.

On Friday afternoon we had a problem with the Turn Up and Play feature as it had proven problematic with regard to scheduling the matches for CSS and Call of Duty 4. The Counter Strike: Source matches on TUP should have been finished by around 6pm but due to whatever reason the TUP Call of Duty 4 participants couldn’t get on to start playing their games until around 9pm. Basically meaning we were running around two hours behind for the group stages. This has left us with a situation where we will be playing catch up this morning with games from last night - before starting the bracket stages at around 12.30pm.


Is the i33 Call of Duty 4 tournament as hard to run as it was at CDC4?

Well the i33 tournament is a different kettle of fish to CDC4. At CDC4 we had a situation of everyone being on TUP and on all the same machines. It was also run in a relatively small area. i33 is run at Newbury Racecourse with teams and Call of Duty 4 players spread out over a pretty large area and in different buildings. This makes getting to them, informing them and generally running the tournament, especially with the addition of TUP, a lot more challenging.


How do you think people perceive you as a Call of Duty 4 admin?

When thinking about adminning LAN's for eSports i draw strong similarities to referees for other sports such as football and rugby. We do a job that’s pretty thankless and often means your on the end of a fair amount of flame. But I think people appreciate its a tough thing to try and keep everyone happy and you have to make decisions that aren’t going to go down well with everyone. I don't know I hope people think I do a good job as that’s what im trying to do for the community.


You recently took on 4Kings CoD4 as a team to manage, how well do you think they will do in the i33 playoffs?

The line-up has a lot of potential, with some very strong Call of Duty 2 and even Call of Duty players in it. They have a good wealth of LAN experience as well, which should never be discounted. So I think that they will surprise a few people with what they are capable of later on in the high pressure situations.


You were a full-time gamer yourself in the past, what made you go into managing?

Well I used to play a lot of the original Call of Duty, not on a particularly high level, but I left gaming to do my GCSE's and A levels. When I came back in early 2007 and started playing some Call of Duty 2 it didn’t really get me as interested as CoD1 had. While having an interest in gaming and what goes on with the Call of Duty scene I didn’t really have the motivation to play for much more than the odd mix with friends. And when Adz asked me to join infusedGaming after helping him at i31 I couldn’t really say no. Having done it for a while now I do actually find it very rewarding and hopefully I can carry on with it further into my future.


What does the future hold for Morg? Will you be returning to i34 to admin the next CoD4 tournament... or maybe the next CDC?

Well I’m not really sure, there are a lot of Call of Duty 4 LAN events coming up this year and I will hopefully be going to all of them. i34 is a maybe in terms of adminning, I’m sure I will be making an appearance however.


Any last shoutouts?

Just to thank TEK9 for their work in keeping everyone in the know with what's going on here at i33. Also want to thank the other two Call of Duty 4 admins Timmyy and Harribo for their work this weekend. And to you Mike for the lovely 5am interview.

Morg and sCARFACEEe, 5am picture time.