Coming into Pinnacle Cup, Evil Geniuses were the talk of the town as their recent 15-man roster announcement put them on everybody’s radar. Their attendance in Lund was already under much scrutiny and unfortunately, their performance didn’t ease the suspicions of many ruthless fans as they left Lund without winning a game. However this experience for EG.PA is vital and after their losses, Freddie “GrimyRanarr” Pritchard was able to catch up with Jonathan “Jonji” Carey who was still very confident going into the future while also commenting on the current state of the NA scene and its comparison to the EU scene.
Firstly, how do you think your time in Europe has been?
Our time in Europe has been good, we came here really prepared but sadly we did not get to show how prepared we were. We have been practising today, watching our games and scrimming against top EU teams, we have made sure we go over our stuff and implement it into our practice.
So did you have any expectations coming into this tournament?
Sadly as a team, we did not talk about goals which we should moving forward, whether that be winning a map or making it out of groups to playoffs. But personally, this is my fifth/sixth time in Europe and it is getting hard not winning maps even though I put a lot of time and effort into individually before coming here. When you fall short a lot it really sucks, but my personal goal was to make it on stage or to at least win a map.
So would you say you are disappointed with your results?
Yeah, it is pretty annoying when you feel like you have done a lot of preparation, and things do not just work out when it comes to match day, when it comes to energy, or the vibe of the whole team. I definitely was a little more nervous, there was no direct pressure from Evil Geniuses but being under an org like that for the first time was a little overwhelming.
Talking about that pressure, now you have that 15-man roster, do you find there is some competition between the three teams?
I think that is why they are doing it, we put pressure on the main roster to perform and Carpe Diem puts pressure on us. Not pressure, but you know if you don’t play good there is potential for your spot to be filled.
Looking at the spot, how do Evil Geniuses decide who goes to which event?
For this event, we asked if it was okay for our roster to play a week or two in advance, and then they said it was okay. They are still working stuff out I would say, for now, I personally don’t know about the main roster currently, we have not talked to them or gotten to know them. That might be happening soon, but for now, we got chosen to come here as we have experience because we went to Germany and Romania and we played well. This was another stepping stone for us to get more experience. Carpe Diem is a very good team but with very limited experience, this is a pretty high-tier event and maybe they just wanted us to get a foot in the door early. However, there is no real picking as to who will do what. We got the opportunity to come here and as we cannot play in ECL while we are here it makes sense if they just play the season.
Do you have any idea how it will work in the future, for the major only one of you will be able to play there, and does this affect you guys?
I think everyone knew that there was going to be a conflict of interests, that we cannot all go play at the major, but then at the end of the day they want the best group of players to play at the top events, so if maybe someone on the main roster is not performing, and come the event, they decide to try and slot us in they might try that. Everyone knows that it could happen.
So do you guys practice with the Carpe Diem team and going into the future are you doing boot camps as a group?
So we are going to Seattle to go and do a small boot camp/meet and greet. I think the interesting thing is that it’s cool we will be in the office together, so that means the problem we sometimes have in NA where scrims are not always used properly. So being able to scrim against Carpe Diem in the same building, playing retakes and executes if needed, and VOD review with the other players from a different perspective will really help. We can just instantly fix problems as a group and get better together as we are in the facility together. Nobody will be messing around and we will actually have good practice, whereas in NA you try to practice something and the other team goes “oh they are trying to practice this and they play to counter what you are doing” and it makes it hard to properly practice certain things. It will be really beneficial to be around each other and learn together.
Talking about the preparation, you were saying you felt like you prepared loads, because you prepared in NA and playing scrims that are not as high quality, do you feel like you are at a disadvantage to the EU teams?
It is not that we are at a disadvantage but the scrims here are just at a higher level in EU. Even in the practice today, they are throwing new smokes and new mollies, that stuff we do not see. The game is constantly evolving here and when we watch what they are doing and take stuff from them. But the problem is when we take something from them they are already making the next two steps forward. We do not have many innovators within North America which is one main problem. You can watch to prepare against Astralis but then if you practice against Astralis or a NA team it’s just not the same calibre of players. There is no blameF in NA.
Do you think the lack of innovators can be the consequence of there being a lack of orgs and money within NA?
It could, at the same time I feel like being orgless for the amount of time I have been, going from Bad News Bears to Party Astronauts, it is not like we are not showing up and trying to learn. It is just in Europe they have smarter people, these IGLs we just do not have. There are no legendary coaches that have big brains. We lost all of our major coaches and IGLs who have been there for a long time that have faded away. There is nobody to bring up the next daps or our own gla1ve.
Do you think VALORANT divided the NA scene?
I think in my opinion a lot of the players who switched were quite stagnant within CS — [players] who never took that next step. Not by any means were they lazy, they just went to a different game and it is what it is. I don’t think it was a big reason, a lot of the players who switched aside from the Chaos guys were not playing at a super high level.
Looking at the players coming up though in the NA scene, is there anyone that is bringing something new to the table?
I am really excited to be able to talk to Stewie2k and autimatic, I know from seeing them play and talking to them that they are just smart humans. They are major winners and know how to play the game at the highest level. It is all about doing the proper things and I want to be able to hear from them what the proper things are. One big thing about our team is that when we are down, we don’t have that pause moment to take a mental breath. These teams have a way back in the game every time instead of getting stomped so it would be interesting to understand how to get out of a hole.
A team like Finest on day one almost mounted a comeback against Imperial, and one of the main reasons is because of their hype and ability to reset, do you guys struggle to maintain that energy in EG.PA?
For sure, our energy is something we have to work on. We get quiet and when we get quiet we play bad. When things go bad we do not say things that need to be said, do things that need to be done. And that just comes down to us stop being silly and when you have fun in this game you win. Every team I have been in, when you have good vibes you just win. Talking to the Finest guys they just have a very good environment, when someone makes a mistake, they don’t get frustrated, they laugh it off, learn and move on. They do not get stuck on things and I think a lot of NA teams get stuck on things instead of accepting people messed up. It is always paragraph-long responses on why they did what they did, sometimes it is just best to accept what you did wrong and move on, and learn from what your teammates say. We need to be better at just talking to each other.
You mentioned that this is a problem with other teams, do you think there is a culture between NA and EU?
I mean it is just a person-based thing. On Chaos, we were really good at shrugging off mistakes and knowing we can be better and move on. It just comes down to getting time with people and learning how people react to certain things, and what to say or do. At the end of the day, it is just five guys spending all day every day with each other, almost like brothers. People can get on each other’s nerves, but finding those little things you can and cannot do makes everything easier.
Does having that org help with stability and make things easier?
Having that stress taken away that every tournament we were playing in aside from this one, we were trying to play for money not playing the game like Finest. They are playing to have fun, obviously to win like everyone else but to have that pressure of playing to make money to pay the bills is a very big burden lifted. It adds a lot, especially when I was on Chaos and we were salaried with backing, we were just playing, no frustrations about anything because we were there to play the game and have fun. When you need to win, it makes everything a lot more stressful.
Have you struggled with motivation when you had to play to pay the bills, and not because you loved the game?
I personally I have never struggled with motivation, when you are losing a lot, and you are putting a lot of prep in, it can be a little hard to stay motivated, but at the end of the day we are playing CS for money and we getting to go to many different countries, I do not think there is any motivation lack.
Lastly, what are your expectations with this 15-man roster for the future?
Looking at a year, this is a whole new project, no one has done this before, I expect there to be a lot of road bumps to pop up. If the main team had an invite to a tournament, and Evil Geniuses asked if our team could go for instance, but the event organizer just said no, there is nothing we can do and the spot might have to be forfeited. It is really hard though to see how it will go. We haven’t met anyone from the organization bar some discord messages and meetings so I think our roster purely will have an analytic team to actually tell us what they think is wrong, we have different perspectives, and have an outside looking in which our coach can do but this will be more, it will be a nice fresh pair of eyes, being able to figure out what we have been doing wrong. If we need to do work on something, we will have the resources in-house to nail certain aspects of the game.
