In Part 2 of our interview with messioso, we zoom in on Complexity’s year so far. In his time at Complexity, messioso has developed a reputation as being open and honest about COL’s behind-the-scenes decision-making, and his interview with Esports News UK is no exception.
The Complexity Counter-Strike General Manager reflects on roster moves, what led to Tiaan ‘T.c’ Coertzen’s removal as coach, NA’s regional disadvantages, fan criticism, and their disappointing Stage 1 exit of the BLAST.tv Austin Major.
Part 1 focuses on messioso’s climb up the esports ladder, from tournament admin to Complexity GM.
Stay tuned for Part 3, where we discuss VRS’s implications, loopholes, and what is left to improve after one full season of the VRS circuit.
With Complexity, how would you reflect on this year so far?
I think this year has been a big learning curve for everyone, really. We obviously made some pretty significant roster changes towards the end of last year, with both Floppy and ELiGE leaving, which was a pretty big loss in terms of experience and personality. So figuring out how we wanted to transition into this year was pretty significant.
Ultimately, we went with two essentially complete rookies, one a little bit more experienced than the other, but ultimately, two rookies at the level we’re playing at.
We got sort of hit with a brick wall to begin with. The first few events were really tough; we couldn’t really figure out how things were going. As time’s progressed, we’ve made progress, they’ve made progress, the team has made progress.
We’ve spent a lot of time figuring out things about ourselves, both me as a person, the players as people, and the team as a whole. Add to that, navigating the whole VRS system now that we’re in the open system.
It would have been nice to maybe lose the partnerships without losing the players, or lose the players without losing the partnerships. Losing both at the same time has definitely been tricky.
messioso on roster changes and VRS
We’ve been very lucky in the sense that we had the partnerships for the past three years, which obviously gave us guaranteed events, guaranteed revenue, all these lovely things that people didn’t like.
I understand why they didn’t like it, so I’m not saying it was the wrong thing to happen. But, we’ve had to sort of navigate the new world with a new roster, and it’s definitely been an experience.
But I think we’ll be better off for it eventually. It’s just getting used to that transition has been, you know, I think we changed a lot.
It’ll be nice to stabilise everything and hopefully not be changing too much in the future. It’s been going good, it’s been a good experience, but, it would have been nice to maybe lose the partnerships without losing the players, or lose the players without losing the partnerships. Losing both at the same time has definitely been tricky.
What used to be a pretty thick and full calendar of events has become a lot more sparse, and we’ve had to think a lot more about what we’re attending, when we’re attending, and can we attend things.
It’s been a big, big learning curve, but hopefully we’ll stabilise where we need to be and things will be good from now on.
We knew it was going to be a big leap to begin with, but we thought that he was the kind of guy that could roll with it, and he would eventually develop into someone who was as good as the rest of the players on the roster.
messioso on Nick ‘nicx’ Lee
Just to zoom in on a couple of those aspects, you signed cxzi and nicx. As an outside observer, I was looking at players from what became Bluejays, BOSS, Nouns, as potential signings for Complexity. I wasn’t really expecting cxzi and nicx to be honest, so were other options just not what you decided to go for, or were they prohibitively expensive?
A bit of a mixture of all of that, really. There were definitely some prohibitively expensive players. There were teams that just weren’t willing to negotiate, which basically took away a lot of the talent pool that we were interested in.
The shortlist wasn’t that long; we had a few players that we had interest in, and beyond that, we were looking at sort of the free agent pool.
Ultimately, we looked at everyone in North American Counter-Strike, as you say, the Boss guys, Party Astronauts, and Nouns. I mean, ultimately, we got one player from Nouns, we got one player from Party Astronauts.
We were looking for players that we felt had potential to improve, but hadn’t fully shown it yet. I think Nick (nicx), especially, was one player that, when we looked at him, looked at the demos and talked to him specifically, we really felt like, “Oh, this guy can definitely improve.”
If you look at his career trajectory, he’s slowly moved up through the ESEA ranks, and he’s been posting better and better performances as he’s gone through. He’d just gone to his first LAN event with Nouns, and he’d done pretty well there.
There was a trajectory where we were like, “Okay, if we give this guy the opportunity, it’s going to be a rough start.” We knew it was going to be a big leap to begin with, but we thought that he was the kind of guy who could roll with it, and he would eventually develop into someone who was as good as the rest of the players on the roster.
I think we’re still on that trajectory. He’s learning a lot, he changed a few roles around, he’s got some different spots, and it will take some time, but he’s very focused on that, and we were focused on that.
There was never an expectation that everything had to click day one, and we had to be perfect, and we had to be at the same level we were at. I think that’s given him the sort of freedom to learn and to make mistakes, and the same with cxzi as well.
He’s a guy who I think has had some issues in the past, and he’s probably ruined a lot of opportunities for himself with his reputation, but in the past few years, he’s really put his head down... I think his development was almost stunted by the fact that he wasn’t getting the opportunities because people weren’t willing to take the risk on him.
messioso on Danny ‘cxzi’ Strzelczyk
He’s a bit more experienced; he’s had some experience at some of these more international events. The first time Nick ever left the country was to come to our boot camp in January. He got his passport at the end of December, and then he came to us in January.
So, he’s learning lots of life lessons. He’s learning to travel for the first time, understanding all that kind of thing. Again, that’s where I help him with stuff.
Getting back to Danny, he’s a guy who I think has had some issues in the past, and he’s probably ruined a lot of opportunities for himself with his reputation, but in the past few years, he’s really put his head down.
He was someone who I spoke to. So he went to Dreamhack Jönköping last year, the ESL Challenger, yeah, ESL Challenger at Dreamhack Jönköping last year. We won it, but his team, Party Astronauts, was there, and I sat with him in the crowd watching our games, and I spoke to him.
It was very clear that he’d had a sort of a mental shift in the way he was approaching things. I think then that gave me the opportunity, six months later, to think, “Hey, this guy is someone who has kept himself out of the limelight, he’s been trying to get his head down and fix the sort of reputation that he has.”
He fit the roles we needed; he fit the type of player we wanted. I think he’s stepped up, and I think there’s still a lot more development to happen. I think his development was almost stunted by the fact that he wasn’t getting the opportunities because people weren’t willing to take the risk on him.
So I’m happy that we took the risk, and everything’s working out good so far, and we should keep making progress.
We went there without being full strength. But it was what it was, we knew that would be the case for quite a while, actually, I think that we expected that would be the case. So it wasn’t like a shock to us.
messioso on the Austin Major
Speaking of VRS struggles, you did an end-of-year kind of review with DarfMike, in which you mentioned that the scary situation is dropping out of invites, and you faced that situation after Cluj.
What was the organisational thinking at the time? Were you going to have to go back to NA to grind? What were you kind of planning at the time?
Yeah, as you say, it was quite tough. After Cluj happened, we essentially had no more invites left. We were on the qualifier grind, so to speak. I guess you could say luck, I guess you could say skill, whatever it was, what really revitalised our season was winning the PGL Bucharest qualifier.
Winning that event gave us PGL Bucharest, but it also allowed us to go and play the Yalla Compass qualifier, which almost got us qualified to the major directly. I think we missed out by like 20 points in the end.
That, in combination with the performance of Bucharest, ended up giving us the IEM Melbourne invite, and then we managed to play the MRQ, the qualifier for the major, in between that.
So we had like a sort of three or four week period where we had like back to back to back to back events, which was nice because we’d had like a month of nothing, which is very rare for us.
And then obviously we attended the major, which was disappointing because of hallzerk not having his visa. So we went there without being full strength. But it was what it was, we knew that would be the case for quite a while, actually, I think that we expected that would be the case. So it wasn’t like a shock to us.
But that little stint in sort of like April, where we had like Bucharest, Melbourne, Yalla Compass, then the MRQ, that gave us the points to get a good invite towards basically the start of this season.
We obviously fell off towards the end of the season in the sense that we didn’t play anything during May because all the invites for the May events were done off of earlier invites. So we sort of missed a cycle in a way.
I think from this July invite that would have just gone out like a few days ago, we haven’t really got anything to show for that. But we got a lot in the May and the June updates in the sense of we got Fissure Playground, which the guys are already there, bootcamping there, and we got IEM Cologne, and we would have got the Blast Bounty invite.
So we sort of got a good springboard again to sort of kick off the next season, and hopefully that will get us more invites in sort of the September, October, November kind of range.
That should set us up to qualify for the major and to play some more events towards the end of the year. But it’s sort of a similar situation where we’re likely not really going to play much in August and we’re probably not going to play that much in September either, because, you know, we’ve sort of missed that invite cycle by not being ranked high enough.
I don’t want to ever see us dropping below 20 after we get back in again, because I think that’s where we need to be from a perspective of like invites and just generally, I think we need to say like we’re at least a top 20 team and then we can work on developing that further.
messioso on guaranteeing invites
I think that’s an issue with the VRS in general. I think there’s a lot of sort of cyclical… the same teams are going to go to the same events, and the whole world is going to revolve around these cycles of the same teams at the same events.
Then there’ll be another big invite list where there’ll be a few changes, but nothing much changes. And then the world’s just going to go around again. So I think there’s definitely issues to resolve.
But for us, we haven’t had too many events, which I know some teams have felt like they need to, but I would definitely be remiss if I said we wouldn’t like a few more events.
Back a little bit to Bucharest, you were coaching too.
Yes, yes. I’m a very high win-rate coach somehow. (laughs)
I think for the first like, three or four matches at PGL Bucharest, I didn’t say a word. If the other team took a timeout… There was no input from my side. Like, I think calling myself a coach during that period is, potentially a disrespect to the actual coaches out there who are doing a great job.
messioso on his coaching stint
I felt maybe the team got confidence from playing qualifiers and going, “Actually, we’re really good for our region,” and then coming into Bucharest with that confidence. Did you feel that on the server?
Yeah, I think so. I think we were on a pretty big win streak by the time we got to Bucharest because we’d won like seven, six games in a row in the PGL qualifier, which realistically only two of those were against serious opposition.
So it wasn’t like we were on a proper six-game win streak, but we were on a decent win streak. Then we won all five BO1s at Yalla Compass, and that was always the goal, was we knew we needed five wins. We knew we weren’t going to qualify for the major with anything less than that.
In the end, we didn’t qualify for the major because M80 played the Astana qualifier, which we couldn’t play because we were in Europe playing Yalla Compass and they did the business there.
They won all their games, and they qualified, and that’s completely fair. We took every opportunity to qualify and had to hope on other teams failing, which is the best we could do at the time.
So yeah, it was definitely a confidence thing. I think that we sort of had that confidence that we knew we could play well.
I think to some extent, the mixture of the confidence we’ve built up from finally winning some matches, add that to the fact that we don’t have a coach, I think a little bit of the pressure was sort of eased off some of the people…. where it allowed us to sort of go out there and just sort of play our game and have, have, have some freedom.
messioso on COL’s PGL Bucharest confidence
To be fair, the Bucharest event wasn’t the strongest. It didn’t have MOUZ, it didn’t have Spirit, it didn’t have Vitality. I think they didn’t have Na’Vi even. There was a lot of teams missing from that event where, had they been there, would have made the matchups significantly harder.
So, we benefited from it being a slightly weaker event, but it wasn’t a weak event. We played Falcons, we beat them. We played FURIA, and we beat them. We played FaZe and beat them.
We lost, we lost to G2 twice and FaZe once, which for a team in our position… I think you’d take that, right? So, you know, those are the kind of teams we were losing to last year when we had what people would argue to be a better roster.
So, you know, I don’t, I don’t think we’re disappointed by losing to those calibre of teams. I think we’re disappointed because we actually felt like we should have won some of those games, and that’s a really good place to be in.
We took that confidence with us to the MRQ. We did win both our games there,e and we did qualify, but they were definitely laboured wins. We definitely didn’t play as well as we can do.
I don’t want to make excuses, but some of our players, well, all of our players actually travelled. So we played the third-place decider (at Bucharest) on the Sunday, we travelled on the Monday, and we played our first match in North America on Tuesday.
So we were not in the best place from a rest perspective. You know, the matches were tough on the guys’ sleep schedules, and it wasn’t the most ideal situation, and people were tired and whatever, but ultimately that was the choice we made.
We knew that would be the case going into that, going into that qualifier, we believed we could still qualify, which is ultimately what we did. So, you know, for that, I put it down as a big success, but it definitely wasn’t the cleanest of matches.
Then we had the same issue, basically, when we went to Melbourne. The guys had to leave basically the day after we played the qualifier. And some of their travels were quite lengthy because of where they were and what countries they could travel through.
So we got to Melbourne like 24 hours before we had to play The MongolZ, and we should have won the game against The MongolZ. I feel that that game was all ours if we’d had like, two or one day extra to recover from the jet lag. I think we would have won that game.
I think if we’d been a bit more awake, we would have been fine, but it was what it was. Then we ended up beating Pain with a coach, which doesn’t say that much really, and losing to GamerLegion again in another game where, you know, uncharacteristically we played really, really terrible on our best map, which is Train, and then we smashed them on Ancient.
I think if we’d just been a bit more awake at the start of Train, we would have won that series as well, and maybe then had a rematch against FaZe and qualified for the playoffs.
So, you know, I think the Melbourne, the Melbourne result was very disappointing because I think we knew that we could have played a lot better there.
At the same time, you know, we also understood that we were very heavily jet lagged. We’ve gone from Europe to North America to Australia in the space of six days or something. So that’s like just the craziest travel schedule.
We had to be mindful of the fact that, like, ‘Hey, we’ve just put our bodies through crazy amounts of stress to try and make this all work. We’ve played good teams to really close matches, and that is also something that we should be happy with,’ even if we didn’t get the fruits of the labour in the sense that we weren’t getting the wins, we can still show that we could play to a good level.
That was the end of my coaching career after those three tournaments or four tournaments. Technically, I wasn’t the coach for the MRQ because you’re not allowed coaches online in the MRQ. So I wasn’t coaching.
I think officially, I was listed as the coach. But because I couldn’t be in the team speak, and I couldn’t watch the games live, and I couldn’t have any input during the games, I wasn’t coaching.
So yeah, strictly speaking, my win record is really good, but to be completely honest, like I wasn’t providing what a coach would provide. I was basically just the manager as normal, but with the added ability to just take a timeout and be like, “Guys, just chill,” whatever, you know, just say a few words here and there.
But it wasn’t something that I was doing on the regular. Like, I think for the first like, three or four matches at PGL Bucharest, I didn’t say a word. If the other team took a timeout, I was like, “Come on, guys, keep it up.”
There was no input from my side. Like, I think calling myself a coach during that period is, potentially a disrespect to the actual coaches out there who are doing a great job.
So I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes and pretend that I had this incredible impact, because I definitely didn’t.
I think to some extent, the mixture of the confidence we’ve built up from finally winning some matches, add that to the fact that we don’t have a coach, I think a little bit of the pressure was sort of eased off some of the people.
There were maybe slightly relaxed expectations, because people didn’t expect that much from us, where it allowed us to sort of go out there and just sort of play our game and have, have, have some freedom.
So maybe I should just never hire a coach again.
Well, I mean, there’s no official announcement…
Yeah, there is no official announcement.
N.B.: Complexity has since announced Torbjørn “mithR” Nyborg as a temporary coach for Fissure and IEM Cologne, but COL have made it clear that it is not a permanent move.
Would you like to say a little bit about T.c’s removal? Was it a case of the coaching getting a bit stale, and you felt like you needed new ideas or?
No, so to be completely honest, and we’ve, we’ve touched on this before, so it’s not something that’s new.
Some of it was financial, definitely was financial. We were paying a good amount of money for Tian, and that’s not to say that he wasn’t worth it but it was out of what the budget that we were willing to spend.
And I think Tiaan (T.c) is a great coach. I think he’s gone to Passion UA and shown that. They’ve instantly had a pretty big uptick in form.
I think Tiaan is a great coach. I think he was, again, a little bit, out of the budget that we wanted to spend moving forward, moving from the partnerships era, where we have this guaranteed revenue,e to where we’re at now.
There were certain things that we needed to think about, like where can we operate in a more sustainable way? And that was one that we chose to be one of the things.
I think another part of it is that T.c and JT had been playing and working together for so long that there was a thought that maybe we can open up new possibilities with JT by having someone else come in and give him their input.
He can work with someone new who can think in a different way, and maybe we could benefit from that regard as well. So it was sort of two-faceted, but the primary reason was to reduce our operating costs.
Again, that’s not to say that TC was not worth the amount we were paying him because he most likely was, and that probably was the market rate for a coach of his experience and everything else.
It was more us changing the direction or the level that we were willing to spend. And yeah, as I said, he’s gone on and he’s done really great with Passion UA and I’m really happy for him.
We still remain good friends. We talk about the cricket all the time. Well, I talk about the cricket and he listens. He’ll always be a friend of the team.
I think every player that or coach who leaves the team is generally a friend of the team. Like we, we never have any bad blood or anything like that, and he understood that. It is what it is. We all sort of move on.
That tied with the fact that we saw an opportunity to get some fresh ideas, and again, not necessarily better ideas, but just fresh. Change something up.
I think we can say that we maybe have been a bit stagnant as well. So, just the idea of having something different or whatever, it gave us the opportunity to make a change, and we took it.
We touched on the major, missing hallzerk, who has been your standout player in this year. Going into the major, I felt Grim had to deliver. How do you feel the individuals performed at the major with Junior standing in?
It’s tough because, obviously, knowing hallzerk and how much input he has on the team, I knew we were going to be losing something, but it’s hard to quantify what you would lose.
I do put a lot of the onus on the players who stayed, our full-time players, because I think they needed to shoulder some of that responsibility as well, but it’s also hard to ask them to play without a player who’s so integral to their team.
messioso on COL’s poor Major showing
If I’m going to be completely honest, I was very disappointed that we did not make it through the first stage. For me, that was something that should have always happened. We should have always made it through the first stage. I was, I was pretty shocked at how poorly we played.
I think it’s a twofold thing. For one, it highlights just how important having a guy like hallzerk is, both from his output—fragging and everything else, but also from his communications, his rotations, and the way he plays. The way the guys sort of work around that was clearly something we missed, so it was a nice sort of highlight of that, if that makes sense.
I think that we, regardless of that, should have been in a position where we could qualify for at least Stage 2. I honestly thought we were capable of going to Stage 3. I don’t think the gap should have been that large from where we were to how we played.
I’ve said this before, I do put a lot of the onus on the players who stayed, our full-time players, because I think they needed to shoulder some of that responsibility as well, but it’s also hard to ask them to play without a player who’s so integral to their team.
So there’s a certain level of understanding that we were asking them to do the impossible, but we also expected the impossible. It wasn’t easy for anyone involved, really. It was disappointing to play so badly at essentially our home major, but also to play so badly after having shown some quite significant promise.
I think the main thing is that we don’t see it as a huge setback, and we pick up sort of where we left off before we had to switch the players out and everything. Hopefully, we start this season with a bang to sort of make up for that, which is the goal, obviously.
We looked at what options we may have, and the honest answer is we felt more comfortable sticking with what we have.
messioso on roster changes
Were roster changes considered?
That’s a tough question. Roster changes are always considered in a sense that I’m not just going to sit there with my finger in my ears going “la la la” while everyone else is making changes.
The market will always be explored, and we’ll always see what’s available and whether that can make a change for us, or if we can improve by getting X player who happens to be out somewhere else or something like that.
But it wasn’t a break where I was like, “Okay, I need to replace this guy” or “I need to make a change somewhere.” Whereas last winter, I felt like that was the case because the roster had been together for 18 months. For whatever reason, we weren’t able to make that next step, so we made changes.
Obviously some of it was not forced. EliGE expressed that he’d like to explore his opportunities, we allowed him to do that, he found one, he left. Some of it was like, ‘we need to make a change’. So yeah, definitely a different experience to that.
We looked at what options we may have, and the honest answer is we felt more comfortable sticking with what we have. Some of that is a signal to the players that, “Hey, we believe in you, and we want you to continue development, and we do believe that you can continue making these next steps.”
But, to go into any transfer window and basically say like, “We’re not going to make any changes,” unless you’re Vitality right now, I don’t really think any team can do that outright. At a certain level, there’s only a few players that will make your team better.
So there will be teams at the very top level who need to make changes but can’t, and there’ll be teams that need to make changes and can. And we were a team that arguably didn’t need to make changes. But I’m very much against making changes for the sake of making changes, if that makes sense.
We’re all developing, performances were improving. If someone said, “Hey, you can have EliGE back,” I’d have to consider it, right? Because a guy of his calibre, can he improve the team? Maybe he can, there’s discussions to be had there.
But when you’re looking at sort of trading one player for another player who hasn’t shown any distinctive more promise, what is the purpose of making that change? The argument is there probably wasn’t much purpose in making any changes.
So did we have opportunities? Yeah, we probably did. Did any of them really make sense? No, not really. And I think that’s how every transfer window is approached. There’s never a “never say never,” because we will always look into what the options are, but they have to make a lot of sense for it to actually happen.
It’s not even moral, it’s not ethical—it’s just from a standpoint of pride, I guess, is that something we want to do? It wasn’t something we wanted to do this time around.
messioso on adding another European to the roster
Dipping our toes into the war of VRS, during this rostermania transfer window period, the rule changed, which meant that JT can essentially choose his region.
Yeah, I mean, he can’t choose it, but a team can pick him up knowing that he will be a certain region, which does help him a little bit. He will always be the region that is the weakest on the team, which for us is North America.
Obviously, that has an effect on your options. I know Complexity has not really had the 2-2-1 situation that a lot of other teams have had, because you guys have had three Americans, but that rule was initially the other way around, teams like Wildcard were effectively EU. Now that rule has changed, affecting Sonic, who’s also South African.
Did you consider an EU player as an option, as that opened up the opportunity for you to have potentially another EU player?
Yeah, we’ve never been 2-2-1. You know, it’s very hard for me to say as a British person that I’m proud that we’ve done that for North America, but there is a certain element of pride that, you know, we are trying to stick with North American talents.
JT puts us in a bit of a weird position there, because obviously he is South African, and he will not be considered North American but for me, at least, I consider him slightly North American, because you can’t really be a South African player in Counter-Strike without being in some other region.
His team, Bravado, moved to North America in like 2018. He’s been in North America since 2018. I consider him to be a North American status player, but obviously, when you put the roster down on paper and the flag and whatever, he’s not.
We’ve always been pretty clear that we want to retain a three North American core, so right now, we obviously have cxzi, nicx, and Grim. hallzerk, I consider a necessity, in a sense that I think that the AWPing talent in North America, the depth is so shallow that you almost need a European AWPer.
And beyond that, you know, JT, again, I consider him North American, but he’s obviously not. So, you know, we’ve tried to stay true to maintaining that, and that was always the goal going into this transfer window.
To be honest, at the start of the transfer window, there was never an option, right? It was only right at the very end that they actually ended up changing that, and, you know, it sparked a conversation, because it has to. It’s my due diligence as the guy in the know to say, “Hey, these rules have changed, this is what it means for us, this is what we’re now capable of doing.”
And whether we act upon that is ultimately the result of that discussion. Yes, we technically can add another European player in place of a North American player, and we can still receive all the same invites, we can still receive everything, we can continue playing essentially as if nothing changed.
So the real question is, from a—it’s not even moral, it’s not ethical—it’s just from a standpoint of pride, I guess, is that something we want to do? And it wasn’t something we wanted to do this time around.
I can’t say whether expectations will change in the future, and whether we say, like, “Hey, we’ve exhausted all North American talent, we want to perform better, go out and find a European player.” Whether that becomes the case, I can’t tell you or not, but that might become the case in the future.
I can’t tell the future, but certainly for this transfer window, it was something that we discussed, and ultimately it wasn’t something we wanted to pursue this time around. We’re happy with the North American talent we have; we think there’s still possibilities to progress, and to develop, and to keep playing better.
So yeah, for now, sticking with the three North Americans, we’re very happy. Is it nice to have the opportunity to switch? Sure, I guess, if that’s the way you think about it. But to some degree, it sort of throws more questions in the air.
I didn’t mind being stuck having three North American players. That is generally something we’ve always been pretty proud of, that we want to stick with these North American players, we want to develop North American Counter-Strike. You can also see that in the PrizePicks Revival Cups that we’re running, along with Mythic, and as I said, PrizePicks.
We’re trying to provide opportunities to players to play in North America, to earn some prize money, to earn some, you know, a living, essentially, because we want that next generation of talent to develop. nicx was one example. He played in two of those cups last year, at the end of last year with Nouns, he made a bit of a name for himself, and we were able to benefit from that.
So there are multiple facets to that pipeline. One is providing them with the sort of the end goal, which is joining the best team in North America, which I think we are. The second part of that is obviously giving, if we can also give players opportunities to develop at the tier two end of North American Counter-Strike, then that’s good for us as well.
So, you know, if we’re going to sit there and field mostly European players, it doesn’t really fit the narrative of also trying to develop North American Counter-Strike. So, whether that becomes a discussion in the future, again, I can’t say.
That’s ultimately down to Jason and how he wants the team to be perceived. I will do my best to provide the best roster within the parameters that I’m given. But, yeah, certainly for now, happy with our three North American players, and we’ll continue on.
We’re at a competitive disadvantage because of the region we’re from, but that is also compounded by the fact that the region we’re from is so, essentially, anti-gambling and that means that we don’t have access to the same pot of gold that a lot of the European teams do.
messioso on Complexity’s regional disadvantage
I watched Jason’s “State of the Org” last year. One of the things he talked about was picking partners with honesty and integrity. You’ve touched on like COL’s finance as being restricted in certain areas. Do you think that kind of has given you a kind of competitive disadvantage to not have some of the sponsors that we might see on other orgs’ jerseys, for example?
Yes and no. If you were looking at player talent right now, the only thing we could do with significantly more money, the logical thing you’d say is, “Oh, you could go and get Twistzz or NAF from Liquid,” right? Or maybe we could have kept EliGE or brought in one of those players to keep EliGE.
But other than that, having more money wouldn’t really change the ultimate level of performance of the team. You could maybe consolidate some of the players from the other top North American teams now, maybe you could get a player from M80, a player from NRG or whatever, but it’s not going to drastically change anything.
It would just be a buyout essentially. The salary levels are going to remain pretty consistent, so it’s mostly just like paying a team a big chunk of money to let them give us the player.
I think where it would hit us more so would be in the operating costs to allow us to spend more time in Europe, for example.
Everyone knows that North American practice is not the best. Would it be ideal to have a 10-day bootcamp instead of a five-day bootcamp? Absolutely, but that costs money, right? So, we are at a competitive disadvantage.
We’re at a competitive disadvantage because of the region we’re from, but that is also compounded by the fact that the region we’re from is so, essentially, anti-gambling, and that means that we don’t have access to the same pot of gold that a lot of the European teams do.
So the European teams who already have access to the best practice also have access to the finances as well, which is tough to deal with but it’s not like we’re alone in our region as the only team that doesn’t have access to those same funds.
We’re all stuck with the same issues, and ultimately, it hurts the North American region as a whole, rather than us specifically as a team.
But obviously it would be good to have a partner to help us break even and being not be a financial burden, if that makes sense, but ultimately, I don’t think it would change that much with the performance levels, except for just purely being able to spend a few more days in Europe here and there.
Something we’ve learned from the last team is that spending too many days away can be a problem as well, right? So there’s a limit to how far that can take you before it becomes a negative effect as well.
I don’t think it’s too significant on the performance side of things. Obviously, it would be good from a financial perspective; stability for the organisation is ultimately the most important thing. But I don’t think it would affect the performance of the team or anything like that too much.
I think it’s just nice to have money, right? A lot of those kinds of things are not things that I’m tasked to deal with. I’m told, “This is how much we want to spend on the team this year, make it happen,” and we get it done.
Those things are for Jason and for Kyle (Bautista, COL COO) and the team back at the headquarters. Obviously, having more money is good, but I don’t think it’s like a thing that’s holding us back in terms of performance.
Like, yes, a few extra days here and there in Europe would probably make us better in some way, but it’s not going to change us from a top 15-20 team into a top five team overnight.
We want the fans to be proud of the team and we want the fans to be excited about the team playing. Jason [Lake] listens to all that as well, and he doesn’t like disappointing the fans.
messioso on fan criticism
I have seen you be active on stuff like Reddit, Twitter and community Discords. You must see quite a lot of criticism or frustrated fans. Considering your disadvantage as a region, your financial constraints, do you think that a lot of that criticism is harsh?
I mean, I think a lot of it is fair, to be honest. As I said before, I think we should have performed better at the major, and I will stand by that. I definitely think we should perform better, and I think we did let ourselves down.
I think we did let the fans down. So I’m happy to agree with criticism where it’s valid. I think where people lose me is when people just say like, “Oh, they should have just bought this guy and they should have bought this guy.”
I’m like, we may have tried that, and the team may have just said, “Absolutely no way are we selling to you under any price, under any circumstances.” I’m not going to go out and say that on who it was and what it was, but that is something that has been said to me before.
ultimately, you know, there are certain things where the thing that irks me the most is when it’s like people just being unrealistic about what’s possible or what’s realistic.
At the end of the day, it’s not their job to be in the know. You can’t expect the average guy complaining to understand the systems at play and what’s going on in the background because it’s not relevant to them.
So, I don’t think I get frustrated too much. At the end of the day, my sole responsibility ultimately is to Jason and to the team and to ensure that they’re happy with the direction that we’re progressing in.
I’m sure if they weren’t happy, they would tell me. Generally, they’re very the opposite way around. Generally, they have more good things to say about how happy they are than anything else.
I’ve done my fair share of screw-ups, whether that’s cost us money or whether that’s just cost us a relationship or whatever. We’ve been fined by ESL for saying dumb stuff, and that’s come back to Jason. He’s like, “You know, you can’t be saying this kind of stuff. You can’t be doing these kinds of things.” I’m like, “Yeah, I agree. We messed up,” and we’re all adult,s and we move on.
But for the most part, Jason’s very happy with how the team’s been run. There’s always disappointments, and you can’t win every single match. But I think it’s generally been very good.
Secondary to that, obviously, we want the fans to be proud of the team, and we want the fans to be excited about the team playing. Jason listens to all that as well, and he doesn’t like disappointing the fans.
He wants the fans to be deeply invested in the team, and we all want that. But, for me, my sole perspective is, at the end of the day, if Jason’s happy with how the team’s going, then I’m happy with how the team’s going to some degree, because he’s ultimately the decision maker.
It’s his baby. I’m sort of just childminding it, you know?
Continuing to see the development of the players and sort of get ourselves back into a position where, in an ideal world, this team would develop to the point where they are a top 10 team in their own right.
messioso on goals for the second half of the year
Looking to the future, the second half of the year with Complexity, what does success look like for the second half of the year?
Yeah, always a tough question because the obvious answer is qualifying for the Major, which is always the benchmark for basic levels of success. Qualifying for the Major brings so many financial incentives that it can’t be ignored, and we want to be at the biggest and best events, and the Major will always be one of those.
I think we want to stabilise ourselves a bit more in kind of the top 20. It would be nice to say top 15, but certainly stabilize within the top 20.
I don’t want to ever see us dropping below 20 after we get back in again, because I think that’s where we need to be from a perspective of like invites and just generally, I think we need to say like we’re at least a top 20 team and then we can work on developing that further.
I’d like to see us making some playoffs at some events. It’s not easy to make playoffs at a lot of these events, especially the ones where they only do like 16 playoffs. Cologne coming up has 24 teams. We start in the first stage. We’ve got to get through two stages to make top six.
It’s hard to make top six at Cologne; it’s not easy.
So, making some more playoffs would be good. We obviously made playoffs back in Bucharest, and that was nice. It would’ve been much nicer if we’d made it in an arena event.
You know, we ended up playing in the studio, which may have been to our benefit. Maybe we don’t win the match against Aurora in the quarter-finals if it’s in front of a crowd, I don’t know. But we’re not just in it to make playoffs.
We also want to get the experience and play in front of a crowd, which is one of the best experiences, I think a player can really experience. So yeah, I think we’d like to sort of see ourselves making some playoffs.
We’d like to qualify for as many events as possible. I think that’s just being in attendance at events to some degree is a goal this year, coming from last year, is a very different aspiration.
I think the main goal, as always, is just to see the team making improvements. As long as we’re making progress.
It feels like we’ve had a bit of a reset. Back in 2022, when we first started this team, it was all about making progress. It was all about developing the team. It was about giving the guys who hadn’t had the opportunity to play every single tier one event the opportunity to play every single tier one event.
Obviously we had the partnerships and everything else, which made it possible. Now we’ve got to go out and earn all those opportunities ourselves. So, goal one: earning those opportunities.
Two: Continuing to see the development of the players and sort of get ourselves back into a position where, in an ideal world, this team would develop to the point where they are a top 10 team in their own right.
That would be the ultimate goal. That’s not a six-month thing; that’s more of a longer-term vision. But yeah, we’ve sort of hit the reset button at the start of this year and we’re building ourselves back up again.
So it feels like sort of going back three years when we had that original team, or original North American team.
Yeah, and it’s been a good experience so far and hopefully we can continue that trajectory. That’s the goal really, just to continue developing and continue making our way up the rankings and ideally, stabilize somewhere where we’re happy with, and where we can continue getting invites and continue competing.
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Darragh Harbinson is an esports writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK, Esports Insider, UKCSGO, Dexerto, and Rush B Media.
