What About That: Jason Lake

 


About a year ago you and Craig Levine from Team3D announced it: Complexity and Team3D would be going into the Championship Gaming Series circuit as franchises for respectively L.A. and New York. Where did that move come from? Did CGS come to you or … how did the idea come up?

Yes, CGS approached us about brining our brands on during the Fall of 2006.  After some consideration, both Craig and I felt it was the right move.


The big “thing’ was that you needed to make a very important switch: the switch from Counterstrike 1.6 to CounterStrike Source. How did the players of the team react on that at first? Did it cost you a lot of time to think about moving to CGS?

Honestly, they were ready for the next step, and we all think CGS is that step. We prefer 1.6, but we’re very happy CGS has Counter-Strike at all, so we’re happy to play Source.


What arguments convinced you to choose for CGS instead of staying in the original circuit and keep competing with the likes of SK, Fnatic and others?

I feel CGS is going to be the dominant league in the future, and everyone in compLexity wanted to get in early and make an impact.


According to Gotfrags money list a whopping amount of more than 1,060,000 dollars was to be earned with Counterstrike 1.6 in 2007. L.A. Complexity only managed to bring home 50k in winnings the past year. If you kept on playing CS 1.6 and continuing upholding compLexity’s 2006 performance you could have won over 100,000 dollars last year. Do you still think that, after making this comparison, this move to CGS was the best move in every way, also financially?

We actually made a good bit over $50,000, and if you include the larger salaries our CS players made a bit more in 2007 than 2006, so in my opinion it was a good move.


Did the move to CGS include financial benefits for yourself?

Yes, absolutely. Now I get paid to run compLexity rather than spending money every week.  It’s a nice change!