SAGE: Interview with nevo / FrosteR - 1/3

Admittedly, this interview has come up a bit late, I simply forgot I had already finished most of the transcribing on Sunday and with all the delays and urgentness of the final phase of the SAGE COD4 tournament and the hurried subsequent leaving the venue as soon as everything was over, I forgot to post this.

So therefore, I present you an interview with Erik "FrosteR" van den Biggelaar of Next Evolution which was taken before the team's first Playoff rounds on Sunday and discussed in detail what the team felt like and how they expected to perform in the matches to come.

- So hey Erik, how have you been, how has the tournament progressed so far?

FrosteR: Well the group stage was pretty easy, we had two easy matches and we expected a hard match against Epsilon, but I dunno, we played really well and especially paradox just completely raped them I guess. He had something like 22 frags at halftime and we won something like 13 - 04 or 13 - 06...something like that, but ye, it was much easier than we expected. So ye, went pretty well so far.

- Your team ran into some problems when Power Gaming decided to not support COD4 anymore, what exactly happened in the management to cut support? Budget problems or do they think COD4 is simply not profitable enough anymore?

FrosteR: The investor decided that he wasn't interested into PC gaming anymore so he just wanted to support Console gaming and some European Console League event or something, he's going to invest into that and that means he didn't have any money left for us, unfortunately.

- After many weeks of waiting, you ended up picking perhaps one of the most unexpected organisations to join, Next Evolution. How did you end up talking to them?

FrosteR: I got a PM on TEK9 by rik, one of the managers...well he left now, but he was one of the managers anyway. That's how we got into contact. We had made a TEK9 thread after we contacted like Mousesports, SK-Gaming, MYM, etc..they all didn't have money for or weren't interested in COD4 and then we just decided to make a TEK9 thread, to see if we would get any response at all. We got a reply by them and we started talking and it was done pretty quickly, actually.

- On another note, what is their support going to be like, because some two weeks ago, it looked like this Summer would only have one major event, therefore quite a cheap affair. However, in the mean time, we've heard about the Adroits event in August, the Czech event in September and the Crossfire Intel Challenge in London in September. Will you be able to attend all of those?

FrosteR: Yes, that's the plan, we want to do all of them. We will need to talk to the management of course, but it shouldn't pose any problems to be fair.

- Talking about LANs in general, it's been since the Gamersject Winter Challenge that we saw your team as part of a major COD4 event, why weren't you able to attend for example Outpost on Fire or Dublin Esports Event?

FrosteR: Ehm Outpost on Fire wasn't possible, because he had some trance festival in Holland which he couldn't get out of. It wasn't possible to go to the Dublin Esports Event either, because it was a bit short-notice as we just joined up with Next Evolution the day before the event.

His team mate, Luboshmir, was looking forward to the Playoff Round 1 game

- As you are a team who have won many events and subsequently a lot of money, was it not possible to invest your money into going to the Dublin Esports Event and make sure to attend it?

FrosteR: Well Dublin was really expensive for us, it was about €300 a person for flights only, so we decided to attend the SAGE event in Holland out of our own pocket, we had bought our tickets and were about to book the hotel when we joined up with Next Evolution. Which is why we also had to sell our tickets, to the old Next Evolution team, but for a better prize, so it's all all right. 

- Whilst you have been the most stable team in perhaps the last 2 years and the most consistently top performing team, it was only since the Summer that you finally pushed to win events and secure solid Grand Final performances. So what's your take, have you just steadily made it to that next step or were you just unfortunate in the events before that, barely missing out on the top 2 spots?

FrosteR: Well I think, after we replaced Mazarini with king, which was like one month before Antwerp Esports Festival #2, then we started winning events, basically. I'm not saying that Mazarini is a bad player or anything, but I think king fits better in the team, gamestyle wise. So maybe that's why and after playing together for a long time, you get used to each other's playstyle etc and you work better together and tactics improve...so you just get better over time.

- king is probably the most criticized or thought of as being the least important player in the team, but you rate him higher than Mazarini, a player who, back in the day, was considered to be one of the best players in Europe, so do you think it's less about having the skill and more about finding the right piece to complete the puzzle?

FrosteR: Ehm, king has a different gamestyle compared to Mazarini, as he is a lot more keen, whereas Mazarini is more aggressive and he didn't really fit in. I mean, it's kinda hard to explain, but ye I think that king shouldn't be underrated, he's a really good player and I don't think he's less than anyone else in the team, if anything, I think he's stronger than me for example.

- So do you think that king is one of the best players in Europe, or just Czech Republic or? To be perfectly honest, people don't really know king and maybe that's why he gets overlooked a lot when it comes to looking at who is the top at anything plus everyone likes to find like one scapegoat in each winning team and criticize him, and it seems as if in your team, king is that player; do you agree?

FrosteR: I don't think any player in our team is like bad or worse than the others, well okay, maybe paradox is a bit better than the others, because, well ye, he's just one of the best players in Europe. I also think that king is definitely one of the best players in Europe. I mean, maybe ye the reason that people don't rate him that highly is because his English is pretty bad, so he doesn't really communicate with people outside of the Czech Republic and ye, maybe that is why people don't know him.

Next Evolution, Power Gaming at the time, winning Gamersject Winter Challenge in January..

The interview continues on the next page...