AEF: Interview with Reason D1ablo - Article

Reason Gaming crashed out to H2K earlier in the tournament and were bitterly disappointed at their finish. Many saw them as dark horses and some even talked about them making it to the final. Instead, they fell at the second hurdle in a tough bracket that will rank as one of the toughest routes to a CoD4 final. For some reason they just weren’t at the races.

Tom “D1ablo” Newman is an outspoken and often candid player, who was in reflective mood as he watched the rest of tournament from the bar. We had a chat about what exactly went wrong and what it meant for the future of the team.

So, another eventful LAN for you and your team. What went wrong in your opinion?

Individually we just didn’t play as well as we usually do. We normally have really good aim and everything but not at this event. Sometimes the teamwork was there just individually we slacked, especially in the H2K game. The groups were a lot different.

I was watching and thought everyone was on form apart from Danny (SoCLoN). Lighters had one of the best tournaments I’ve ever seen him have, even you managed to have a good LAN after being critical of your own form. Could the loss not be attributed to a lack of practice?

People will say lack of practice but come on… not at this stage. Not when you’ve been playing the game for four years or however long it’s been out. You should just be able to come in  and pick up where you left off, run the strats and if you have the aim it will work. Danny had a pretty bad LAN and he’ll be the first to admit that. It happens that everyone has a bad weekend, I know I have in the past, but not this time though. He just couldn’t hit his shots for some reason. I don’t know why… He’s still one of the best snipers in the world and we’re not going to doubt him in any way. Whatever happened the practice issue wasn’t a factor.

At the end of the game you guys looked really down, which is something I’ve not seen from you before. What prompted such a reaction? Is it a milestone for the team in some way? Did this event mean more than others?

I know I’m definitely going to miss some of the big LANs soon and there’s a big, big chance that I won’t be playing for Reason in the near future because of my university and that. I guess we thought this would be the event where we finally win and we all thought we were going to do really well coming into it. I don’t know, on the day we just played individually bad, which is worse than when you play well and lose. The core stuff just wasn’t there on the day and that day was the day the big games came around.

How did the new recruit nreo do? I saw you guys giving him a bit of hosing and abuse during group stages, which I was told was the norm for him in Team Dignitas. Has he fitted in well?

He’s a quality guy, we’ve all played with him before so he was an easy slot in. He played well at the event, as well as anyone did. Of course we give him digs – look at our line-up. We were born to give digs, racial slurs and whatnot. It’s not an issue, if that’s where you are going with it.

Well, I don’t know if you saw Trigger’s comments but he said he found it hard to adjust to being in a UK team and the word he used to describe some of the antics was “whiney” – do you think maybe if he’d stuck in the line-up you’d be further forward as a team?

We didn’t have a problem with Trigger in game but he really didn’t get the UK sarcasm at all. I mean, if you start stuff like what Duff says seriously you are going to be offended, so it has to be seen as non-serious. We just knew at times when we were talking and giving him the usual banter about him being German and the war he didn’t really appreciate it. I don’t think many nationalities get the humour, like when we played with the Finnish guys. It took two years for them to adjust because he had no idea why we were insulting him all the time. Trigger was a really good player and that’s why we had to let him go because it wasn’t working out of game when we were on the town and stuff.

What have you made of the tournament as a whole?

Dfb definitely runs the best events for Call of Duty and it’s always been that way. They always look good, always run on schedule even with major problems. Only thing I could grumble about are the prices for food etc but that is always the way at LAN. It’s been great. I couldn’t fault anything apart from the Vita Nova ruling.

Which one would that be then?

The one about Dignitas. You know.

The head-to-head thing? Well, what would you be implying?

Everyone will think it’s a dig at the Dignitas boys and it’s not at all. I like a lot of them. It’s just it’s not right. If you are going to follow a format, as they have at every tournament where head-to-head has been used, but it looks like a big team benefitted from a decision. I doubt a lesser team would have got the benefit. I think there’s been an input somewhere.

Who are you routing for in the final… If H2K win you could at least say you went out to the eventual winners.

I never take a grudge against teams. I mean, even after the H2K game we’re all cuddling big miRACLE and all that. I’d want fnatic to win because I played with zENITH for a long time and he’s a good friend of mine. It’s always good to see your mates do well. The other reason I’d want fnatic to win is because I’d want to be the one to take them down.

With university looming then what involvement will you retain in e-sports? Still playing casually, moving into other areas or quitting altogether?

I’m doing media at university and I will be all over e-sports besides playing. Commentary, coverage, I’ll be everywhere. As for playing, God knows. Maybe play a bit but the next two events, The eXperience and some other event by Jens a week later, that coincides with freshers week so I doubt I’ll be there. If I sacrifice those events I’ll probably be sacrificing my place in the team and it’s hard to come back from being in a top side and going straight back to the sack even if you’re a big name. I know I won’t get picked up quickly again in future.

So if it was to be the end of your career how would you assess it? Any regrets, anything you wish you had done?

You learn so much everytime you lose, stuff you can take from this and out into the real world. You learn so much from playing games at such an early age. As for regrets? Millions. Infinite amount of regrets but that’s life. You have to learn stuff and you only learn that from the bad times.