An interview with Rage Gamings obama - Page 1

With the Antwerp Esports Festival behind us, we talk to Roy "obama" Godschalk of Rage Gaming, who finished just outside the top 3 at a respectable fourth place two weeks ago.

In the interview, Roy about his team's performance at the Belgian event, their recent roster changes, what went wrong at the FatLAN event earlier this year and their plans for the upcoming LAN events.


Hey there Roy. Thanks for joining me and congratulations on your fourth place finish at the Antwerp Esports Festival. Could you introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a bit about gaming history?

My name is Roy Godschalk, I'm 20 years old and I live with my father, mother and sister in Zevenaar, a small place near Arnhem. My first online game was Call Of Duty 1, where I played for darkEvolution and core89, but the game was already inactive back then. In 2007 our team switched to CoD2, but I had some problems with Clanbase and since everyone cared about Clanbase it was hard to get a decent team in CoD2. I think I'm the first person who ever got banned by Clanbase. Funny thing was that it wasn’t even for hacking, but I played for 3 teams in both the Nation Cup and the Open Cup, so they gave me a 3 month ban. I then made another account and they banned me for 20 years I believe.

When CoD4 came out I joined the Swedish side DruidZ and with them I also attended my first CoD4 event: Multiplay i33. We finished 9th after losing 13-10 to EG and 13-10 to Exabyte. After i33 they removed me because they wanted a fully Swedish based line up, but I believe lrs from wave-esports contacted me during that same week, so I joined them and played the Acer Challenge with them. We finished 5th after losing to KomaCrew in overtime and the team folded in the weeks after the LAN. I went inactive after that, like many others, and in December 2008 we created PKRSTRS with aerox, vince, versay, ayokato and saintje. We played some LANs and shortly after mean and fatal joined us we won FATLAN, ahead of ButtonBashers and Serious. The lineup and the organisation changed a couple of times and almost 2 years later we still have the same core.

Looking back at the Antwerp Esports Festival, what are your thoughts on the event in general and your performance in particular?

The only preparation we had was Gamersject with prophecy so we just wanted to get through the groups and see what happened after that. The group stage games were pretty boring but I think everything was reserved for the 2nd day. Ending up 4th in such an event, beating zeroPoint and MondialServers in such a close games, feels so good and for me that's the reason I play this game. The game versus Power Gaming was good on strike, but some people in our team lost their concentration. Still, besides that, we should have won strike, but with nades exploding inside the bomb haha there is not much you can do when it's 11-12. Crossfire was just a walkover. I think Power Gaming is the best team I ever played on crossfire (paradox is bullshit).

Before playing YoYoTech in your final groupstage match, did you know the winner would end up in the hardest part of the bracket?

Yes, before playing YYT, we did know that the winner had to play Dignitas the next day, if they would beat Imperial of course, but that was not really a surprise since Dignitas is one of the best teams on lan. Robin from Dignitas is my neighbour and we didn’t want to send him home in the 2nd playoff round, so losing to YYT was the best for everyone.

On a serious note, we did know the bracket but we didn’t lose on purpose, YYT was just better.

Did this influence your performance in any way or cross your mind that losing might actually be the smartest thing to do (given that 4 of the top 5 seeded teams would end up in the upper part of the bracket)? Or was YoYoTech just the better team on mp_crash?

To be honest yes, it was in our mind, we knew before that winning this LAN is hard, so we wanted to go as far as possible. So, yes, ending up 2nd in the group would be the best option to reach that goal, but I think everyone just played his normal game and YYT was just better. It’s really hard to say if the result would have been different under other conditions.

Where would you have ended up in the final standings if you beat YoYoTech in the groupstages?

Hard to say, we never played this Dignitas line-up in official games, but they are of course a great team with a lot of individual skill. But beating the best of the best in a best of 3 is even harder than beating them on 1 map, so I don’t think we would have beaten Dignitas.

In the Quarter Finals you went head to head with Team MondialServers in a game that could’ve gone either way and ended with a triple overtime on the deciding map. Could you describe how the overtime situation went down and what decided the game in your advantage?

Crossfire is the map we always veto if we have the opportunity, but everyone wanted to win this game so badly that we just played like 5 myzz’s: keen as fuck till the max. Raigeki was hitting everything with his M4, so there was not much we could do. We never had really problems with playing overtimes. I still remember our game in the H2k Thermaltake Cup last year where we beat mTw on strike after 9 overtimes, so we don’t have any problem playing them since that game. However, if you play for a place in the semi final of the biggest LAN in the history of CoD4 other aspects come into play. We had to start defence all the time and defence is a little bit harder, so they had match points every time. After the 2nd timeout we finally managed to win defence 2-1 and finished it on attack. We just closed the rounds a bit better than they did, that was all I guess.

Your team, RAGE Gaming, faced the number one and two of Europe, fnatic and Power Gaming, in your two final games of the Antwerp Esports Festival. Although both teams ended up beating you, who left the best impression and why?

We should have beaten Power Gaming on strike, like I said before, but we didn’t and on crossfire they raped us. Fnatic is in my eyes a better team, because we have more problems when we play them. Our game versus fnatic at AEF were not that serious, both teams just played because we had to and Sander even killed Stevy with scope, so that says enough. At Gamersject we faced a serious fnatic in the groups and in the playoffs and even with the power problems they played pretty strong and they have some amazing team play. Power Gaming is of course a great team, beating H2k in the final, but we would rather play Power Gaming than fnatic. Still, I’m sure Power Gaming can beat fnatic aswell.

Rage Gaming in action at Gamersject in Split, Croatia.

Your solid performance at AEF was recently rewarded with a 7th place finish in July’s European Rankings? A realistic position? (with teams such as TCM, PGS, MondialServers, YYT, Imperial, zP! behind you).

Yeah, the ranking is about the results in that month and with a 3rd place at Gamersject, beating MondialServers and TCM and a 4th place at AEF, beating zeroPoint and MondialServers, I think we deserve a 7th place.

Do you expect to be able to challenge the top five at any point this year?

Sure, why not, with Danny in the team we can aim for the top 5 and we will take our online practise more serious and we will do everything to bring our game to a higher level.

Which team and player surprised you the most during AEF?

Power Gaming surprised me by winning the event. They are a good team, but I expected that fnatic, H2k, Reason or Dignitas would beat them, but they played strong and deserved the title.

It's hard to say which player surprised me the most because I didn’t watch any games during the event. So if I have to choose I will go for Raigeki, who played 3 sick maps versus us. He is one of the few players using the M4 and the things he does combined with the LAN reg is pretty scary.

With H2k drawing Anexis and losing to PGS Gaming, Power Gaming losing to RAGE.ru and Team Dignitas losing to both Derailed and Team Thermaltake, is the main conclusion you can draw from AEF that the top teams are not unbeatable?

All these games were played on just one map, so that already makes it easier to win a versus a good team, simply because it’s a little bit more random. The lack of concentration and underestimating teams could be a factor, but sometimes things just don’t go the way you want. And some teams just hate group stage games and prefer to play when the pressure is on.