Joeyyy: “My third-ever official was against Anonymo”

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Royals, the retirement home for UK players, chills out in Main, UKIC and always shows up big at LAN. EPIC.LAN 41 was no different. They brought names such as Kyle “Swaggy” Wilson and Javier “Ping” Griffiths, Grosvenor Esports Season 3 winners, and French player Jérémy “jeyN” Nguyen, previously of GenOne. However, this time they were joined by a new face, Joe “joeyyy” Thomas.

Unknown to the majority of the UK scene, joeyyy joined Royals in December last year, representing them in ESEA Main and the HATOR Games #1. Since then he has refined his spot on their squad going 8-6 in ESEA Main and unbeaten in UKIC Division 2 Season 1.

Heading into EPIC.LAN 41, this was the first time joeyyy would play on LAN… and it didn’t go too well. The team did well placing #6 but joeyyy struggled individually boasting a 0.86 rating.

Regardless, the newcomer takes this as a learning experience as he sits down with UKCSGO after the LAN total about his performance, how he joined Royals and whether would he ever consider taking Counter-Strike more seriously.

Reflecting on the LAN. What was your experience at your first LAN and how did it go for you?

It was a lot. I had been warned before joining that it had a busy schedule. It is a lot of CS. But that was the most glaring obvious thing to me, you are playing all day and not sleeping. You get there at 9 am or even before preferably. Games start at 9 am and finish at 11:30 pm, power cuts for 2 hours in the middle and you manage to get some food somewhere. It is busy.

I actually felt quite claustrophobic almost, you are quite close together. But other than that it is amazing. You don’t struggle to focus because you are all in on CS while you are there. Even though it is loud and so much going on around you. It is so easy to focus on the game when you have the guy calling next to you. You can just zone in, and that is really cool.

I wish I had played better, I lacked a lot of confidence. I don’t feel like I showed what I am capable of. I can imagine people are looking at that event and wondering why Royals bother to play with me. I have come to terms with that already because it is my first time playing LAN. Confidence issues are something I can overcome. It was bound to happen the first time playing LAN.

Overall, super positive experience and I loved it.

I wish I had played better, I lacked a lot of confidence. I don’t feel like I showed what I am capable of. I can imagine people are looking at that event and wondering why Royals bother to play with me.

Talk about that confidence issue. What were the issues that made you not so confident?

I think a little bit of it was a lack of ego. I don’t believe in myself and trust my ability. That came out more when I was playing surrounded by people who knew each other and everyone was somebody. It is almost like I had a point to prove and I had pressure on myself to prove it. Also just the uncomfortably of it. The desk is not quite the right height, you don’t have as much mouse room. The monitor you cannot get it just the way you want it at home. It comes down to unfamiliarity.

It took me a while to warm into it, I think I did get into it more towards the end of our playoffs run. The unfamiliarity of it was a big cause.

I think a little bit of it was a lack of ego. I don’t believe in myself and trust my ability.

Do you play with confidence online? Did your playstyle change going into LAN?

I have a good caveat here. I played an official yesterday, we were playing around entz. I think we were in con I was baiting for him. He said to me in the round “You don’t need to be so loud about what you are doing.” I realised I was thinking too much, I was worried about this, I was worried about that. JeyN turned around and said, “Stop thinking, just go kill like you are capable of.”

I think sometimes I overthink the CS because it is an official or because I am playing with better players. I expect that I need to think harder about what I am doing. Whereas, in reality, I have players around me who are more experienced, a lot more in tune with what is going on and are calling the rounds for a reason. If I just listen to what they have to say, and then go, and then do. I will perform a lot better than if I am taking my time to think through what I do. You know how CS is, by the time I decide what I want to do, the time has gone.

Online, where it is less consequential as it is just an online game at the end of the day. It is the same as every other game of CS I have played. Maybe it is a Main game or a UKIC Div 2 game, or maybe it is just a pug. It is all online. It is the same experience as all the other 7000 hours of CS I have had. I can just go and play the game as I would

Whereas, comparing that to LAN. If I slip up or do something stupid I overpeek and lose us the round. I look down the row and I just see the boys’ heads in their hands, that is the worst-case scenario. I am a little bit more reckless online but in a good way.

JeyN turned around and said, “Stop thinking, just go kill like you are capable of.”

Do you want to bring that recklessness to LAN next time?

I would love to, I would love to be running around giving it. 25-5, I would love to.

You touched on your inexperience, you have come out of nowhere in the last three months. Talk me through how this all happened.

So I have been friends with Ping let’s say 10 years at this point. I have been playing CS for as long as he has, played matchmaking with him at the start.

I started playing uni cs when I came to uni a few years ago. After a while, I was the most experienced player on the uni team and we needed someone to call and take charge, so I did. Ping was helping me through that as he is obviously a very experienced player. Learning through Ping would be good for anyone who is less experienced than him because he is a good teacher and is experienced.

It got to a point where I was frustrated with uni cs. I was playing with people who were not as good as me or not listening to me. No disrespect to those people, they just hadn’t played as much CS as me. It was frustrating for me because I was not as good as I wanted to be.

Ping said to me as a joke “Well you should come play with us.” At the time Royals were Ping, Swaggy, oskvr, entz and Mythix, they didn’t have a full five, they were playing with a coach. He said as a joke that I should come to play some games with them. I messaged him after this thinking it was a joke, “Seriously if you wanted to give me a chance to play, I would love to.” What an experience it would be.

Ping said to me as a joke “Well you should come play with us.”

He spoke to Swaggy, vouched for me and said “I have someone who can play and knows how to listen, doesn’t have experience but is quite good at the game.” Ping is always nice enough to vouch for me which I appreciate. I think I played 2 games towards the end of the Main season last season, so that would have been December time. After those games, I thought “They were okay, I didn’t do anything outstanding but they were okay.” I filled a hole.

Swaggy turned around and said, “Get him in for the rest of the season and we will play with him next season.” I was thinking “Wow, okay. I didn’t do anything outstanding but it is pretty cool.” Here we are kinda thing.

We got an invite to HATOR Games in December and that was the moment I thought “wow”. Playing Main is already a massive jump into it. Most people would start Open, and maybe if you are lucky an Intermediate team. Jumping into a Main team is already a lot, and then bam straight into this event where we had Anonymo, MOUZ NXT and Nexus in our group. My third-ever official was against Anonymo who was #47th on HLTV at the time, that was wacky.

As you can imagine that is a very fun experience. To come out of nowhere and to be in there. I am very grateful for the opportunity and seem to be doing okay because they are keeping me around.

Jumping into a Main team is already a lot, and then bam straight into this event where we had Anonymo, MOUZ NXT and Nexus in our group. My third-ever official was against Anonymo who was #47th on HLTV at the time, that was wacky.

Did you have the aspiration to play team Counter-Strike?

I think there were ups and downs with my motivation. We had a season with the uni team where we did quite well, we qualified for the UKIC Varsity. We were top 5 or 6 uni teams, which at the time was pretty cool. It is rewarding to win. I felt like I was getting quite good at what I was doing, I thought that maybe I could try and find a team, and try to get some experience.

The one thing I always feel about the UK scene, everyone seems to know each other quite well. It is a very interconnected community. There are other factors, I didn’t exactly like the idea of practising that much. Learning nades was not exactly my forte. The main thing was that I didn’t have a way in. If offers came I might have tried it, but I didn’t have a way in.

I didn’t think about it too much. It was not like I was trying and nothing was working. Royals was more of a lucky break than something I was looking for.

The one thing I always feel about the UK scene, everyone seems to know each other quite well. It is a very interconnected community.

Royals have loads of experienced players, and if you practice there isn’t much of it.

Oh I can assure you there is no practice [laughs].

So there is no practice at all [laughs]. You still are learning, but is there a thought process that you want to join a team that might be a downgrade but you are grinding with them?

I have definitely considered both sides to it. On the one hand, staying with Royals where you have this ‘for fun environment’, we are clearly not taking it that seriously otherwise there would be scheduled practice and a consistent five. We notoriously have a six-man roster. People talk about the notorious ‘Royals revolving door’. Everyone has been on this roster at some point. It is quite casual in that sense. For most games, I don’t even know if we have five for it [laughs]. People are busy doing their own thing, that is how it works. We will eventually get five people, which five, you will find out when you turn up.

The pros of it are that I am really comfortable with the people at this point. Ping is one of my closest friends outside of CS. Being on a team works brilliantly for me. I have these massively experienced players with whom I can learn a lot but without an entirely overwhelming schedule. I am a student so I have lots of spare time, but I don’t have to dedicate all my time to CS because no one else is. I get the good from it without having to commit too much.

At a point like you said, do I want to consider taking CS more seriously? Maybe, but right now the answer is no. I have a really comfortable environment where I learn and I am improving drastically. I keep saying every game I feel like I improve expediently, from one official to the next I can see actual improvement in how I am playing. It is massively motivation, but comes from the wealth of experience that the other boys have.

It would take a lot for me to give up that comfort and go somewhere else right now.

At a point like you said, do I want to consider taking CS more seriously? Maybe, but right now the answer is no.

However, are we still going to see you at the next EPIC.LAN?

On the way out, on Sunday, Swaggy says to jeyN, – it is the most difficult for him to get to LAN from France – “You want to come again in Summer”, he goes “Yeah, go on then.” Swaggy says to me “You coming in summer?”. “Yeah, go on then.”

So we will see, it’s in the pipeline, I think we will make it.