PS3 vs PC - MaThY spills the beans - The Interview

Today, we interview up and coming SMG player Mathias "MaThY" Spiessens. Regarded as one of Belgium's best young talents, MaThY is not new to competitive gaming, despite his relatively short career in CoD4. In fact, he has an illustrious history playing the CoD series on console, having represented a number of top organisations. He's just come back from AEF, and after putting in numerous top performances, big things are expected of the young man. We enquire about his LAN experiences, his hopes for his new team and discuss his surprisingly decorated career in gaming.

So then Mathias, as a less well-known individual within the CoD4 scen, would you take the time to introduce yourself to our readers?

Hello, my name is Mathias Spiessens, also known as MaThY in the cod4 scene. I'm 17 years old, live in Belgium and i'm going to university this year.

You're just home from AEF, your second major LAN experience. From a personal perspective, what was it like? Did it live up to everyone's expectations?
 
It was good, much better than fatlan! The organisation was great, the competition was amazing and I really enjoyed the matches. My travel was good and I didn't have many problems to deal with there and had no problems in the hotel either. I have only been to 1 other LAN, and compared to AEF I doubt any LAN could be run better. Big shout-out to the admin crew for a truly amazing job, everything ran so smoothly. The only thing that was a bit of a let down was H2kTV.

Many people have had similar complaints. What do you think was wrong with H2kTV? How could they improve for their next event?

Well i never really enjoyed the shoutcasters of H2kTv, but what really bugged me was that they didn't seem to have enough experience casting CoD4. It was a real let down in some situations, they always tended to be favouring 1 team or player which got annoying.

NCC put in a good performance at AEF, the only matches you lost were against top teams; suffering narrow defeats at the hands of eSuba and TCM Gaming, and a tough loss against Reason Gaming. However, after the event you decided to leave in search of pastures new. What drove you to this decision?

The team chemistry wasn't quite right, we had some trouble gelling over the last month in the run up to AEF. In the end we made the mutual decision for me to part ways with the team. I wish them the best of luck in the future.

After you left NCC you joined up with ambient pretty quickly. What made you choose them? How are you fitting in so far?

Well i wanted to join iQPAD 2 months before AEF becuz it was going bad in NCC but we decided to bring in raven and i decided to give it another chance. i bootcamped and played with all of iQPAD before and they are really sound guys and like them alot and after AEF myzz asked me if i wanted to join them after they removed stuwow and i liked them all so wasn't a hard choice for me . i'm enjoying myself so far, they are all sound and good players and we can definitely go far.

Sounds fair. What do you see as the next chapter in you and ambient's gaming history?

Well first we are going to work on teamwork and tactics with this team and of course searching a new org for our team. We hope to go TEX if the date falls right. In the mean time we'll be in all the upcoming Esports Heaven cups, and anything Vita Nova throws at us. We hope to make a name of our team on LAN and keep on improving our teamwork.

You've come a long way in the short while you've been active in the CoD4 scene. But what got you into gaming in the first place?

I started gaming at the age of 8 on the Nintendo 64 on the epic game James Bond Golden Eye. In 2002 I got myself a Playstation 2 where i made my first appearance in online gaming, on Battlefield Modern Combat and Socom: US Navy Seals. I didn't really know about competitive play because I was still a young kid so I just played casually online and offline. My first appearance in Competitive Gaming was in 2007 when the Playstation 3 was released. I joined up with a team called OPM Killerz, the team of the famous Official Playstation Magazine from Belgium. The first game I played with OPM was Rainbow Six : Vegas which was the first time i played competitively. I immediatly knew this was my kind of thing after winning the ConsoleGaming RSV Tournament Final, a prestigious tournament with the best teams of europe. We had to fight our way through 64 teams but did it flawlessly. After Rainbow Six, Call Of Duty 4 came out and I decided to part ways with OPM Killerz and make my own team together with fellow members of OPM and joined the Organisation KaoS Contingency MGC. We played COD4 and COD5 under this organisation winning various online and offline cups coming out top 5 of COD4 and nr1 team of CODWaW. After all these games console started to bore me and I was looking for a new challenge, My ps3 team who I was still with but was inactive in got offered by the famous organisation H2k Gaming. I took a risk and decided to go back to console and play with H2k on MW2. We started off great on the game winning all the online ladders and making it to the finals of the most famous MW2 Tournament in the world, the Gamestop Challenge. We were given free plane tickets, hotel tickets and 200 dollars to spend there on food to go to San Fransisco to the play the finals of that tourny. Unfortunately, I couldn't go because the whole tournament was sponsered by Gamestop and Gamestop didn't distribute games in belgium. Consequently, belgian players weren't allowed and a mixer had to go in my place. The winner walked away with 10.000 dollars, however we didn't manage to beat the Americans and went home with nothing but the experience. I was really disappointed I didn't get to go but the experience of playing in the tournament and reaching the finals was a trophy enough for me.

Given your prowess on the PS3, what made you decide to switch to PC gaming?

I decided to switch to PC after that Gamestop tournament finished. I didn't enjoy MW2 anymore, the competition was dying out. It was just playing the same old teams again and again and there weren't enough events to keep it worthwhile. So i decided to get back into pc gaming and have no regrets so far!

Now you have extensive experience playing at the top level in both the PC and console scenes, can you tell us what it's like comparing the two?

Well PC is of course a lot more competitive than PS3 because of promod and the extra freedom you have by wielding a mouse and a keyboard. In terms of pure fun, I would say I still prefer some 6v6 domination on CoD4 just because it's so hectic which makes it so fun. Search and destroy is a lot more serious but the spawn-modes are much more fun in my opinion. The community on Tek9 is probably the same as the PS3 community: 50 percent good and friendly people, 40 percent fanboys and 10 percent trolls that have no goal in life it seems.

A lot of people say that it's a lot easier on console than on PC. Would you agree? What can you tell us about the different levels of gameplay on the two platforms?

PS3 is more involved in individual skill than teamplay and tactics whilst PC is more about tactics and teamplay. It's harder to get really good on PS3 than on PC I think because its harder to aim. On PS3 there are only about 20/30 really good players, whereas on PC there more like 100. PC is harder to get good at becuase there are so many top players it harder to be better than the rest.

You've played CoD4, MW2 and CoD:WaW competitively now. Which game fits the competetive style best, in your opinion?

CoD4 definitely, both on PS3 and PC. The maps, the weapons, its all laid out perfectly. Even though PS3 doesn't have mods they still have rules wHich made CoD4 as competitive as it could be. People would only use Bandolier, Stopping Power and Deep Impact as their perks. These type of things were put into the competitive rules for CoD4 PS3 and they actually worked quite well. The maps on MW2 and the weapons on CoD:WaW are just not fit for competitive gameplay.

And what do you think of the upcoming CoD: Black Ops? Will the inclusion of dedicated servers allow for true competitive play?

Not if it's going to be like MW2. Unless there are mod tools and a lot of changes in the maps it just won't work. In my opinion the MW2 guns aren't evenly balanced, and they have hardly any recoil. This removes one of the competitive aspects that CoD4 has. The maps aren't designed for competitive play either. I've seen some trailers of Black Ops and it looks alot like MW2 and from personal experience on the PS3 playing MW2 competitively I doubt it will become competitive with only the inclusion of dedicated servers.

Right, that's just about it. Before we go, some quick fire questions:

Best Scope: Fredrik "qLimAxzU" Idh
Best Assault: Hampus "mySpyS" Karlsson
Best SMG: Erik "Froster" van den Biggelaar
Most overrated player: Mark "phantasy" Pinney
Most underrated player:  David "ono" McConnell
Rising talent:  André "Rezet" Sanguinetti
Fading star: Mark "mark" Horner
Team to look out for: Imperial eSports
Nicest gamer: Geir "gizzor" Wivelstad (Offline), Lee "Blackout" Parsons (Online)
Best looking gamer:  Boudewijn ''aerox'' Verleg

Thanks a lot for your time Mathias. Any final shoutouts?

Spacid, Steveybrown, Hammerskid, Rhys, Dualblades, ArQula, Blackout, Bnkz, rcKlzz,W1zard,dabba, Baitbuscrew, my team, JPN football crew, the whole ps3 community, euEsports and of course all the people I know and talk to a lot on xfire <3.