Prior to LAN I managed to talk with Mick of Perilous Gaming about the upcoming event, his role in Perilous and how he can still bring himself to support Newcastle. Along with this Mick has also been taking part in the new UK eSports chat show Phoenix, hosted on the epic.LAN twitch on Sunday evenings, at 7pm. Phoenix can be watched Here.
How are you and your teams preparing for the upcoming EPIC Lan?
PerilousFURY have been a bit up and down in terms of their practice, and have mainly been in GameFace cups for the ease of having organised matches. It’s essentially a hobby for the guys and can only get on together for a few hours each week. After their decent showing at i56, they lost abiii as she wasn’t really sure what lies ahead for her in terms of ‘real life’ commitments. They stumbled across L0renzo who attends the same Uni as Speedy but the short time between the break after the new year and Epic, it was looking a little shaky, but within a week to go long friend of ours in quiver came available, so the guys jumped at the opportunity to play with him again. Merely with a week to play though it’s difficult, but the calmness and experience he brings could hopefully level out some of the stress within the team.
Thoughts on why more teams aren’t attending LAN events, and how more teams can be attracted to compete at LAN events?
The issue with more teams being at Epic is slowly becoming a non-issue, certainly in terms of the CSGO scene. It used to be about a lot of the tier 2 and below teams thinking there wasn’t enough competition for them and then those who couldn’t afford to attend all events, picking the bigger ones, but now thins are bigger, people are making sure they can attend all the events on the circuit. There are a lot more voiced concerns about the cost of attendance elsewhere now too, and with the CSGO scene being a little more grown up I think we understand money and hold ourselves up to a higher standard, certainly in comparison to cost. Honestly I feel Epic this time could’ve sold out even if there was another couple of hundred seats available.
Not picking yourself, who do you think is going to take the crown at EPIC Lan?
I don’t think it is anyone’s tournament in particular, but I’d love one of the teams to win over one of the mixes, purely to try and help convince folk that teams are better in the long run. CeX, UFrag, Barrage Mix & The yet to be named Weber mix will likely be the top 4 in my opinion, really is anyone’s game from there though.
My role within Perilous is something I really had to sit down and think about last year, not in terms of leaving, but making it manageable to progress things off my to-do list rather than trying to do it all and never really getting anywhere. I’ve since brought in help to make my day to day involvement with the teams less crucial, so I can begin to focus more on the marketing and business side. It doesn’t mean I keep away from the players and the teams, because they’re representing the brand I began creating in 2007, and I love each and every one of them for that, but hopefully it frees me up to get things done. My day to day is mostly the boring admin style things, lots of arranging, discussing, writing, reporting and recruiting, it’s by no means glamorous, but I feel like these next few months will hopefully be a testament to the work that I do.
With the announcements of Contracts for UK League players, how do you feel about the relevance of contracts in UK eSports?
Contracts are something I’ve always championed, but only if it’s done right. I still think we’re in a position where a contract is relatively useless in most cases. What is the cost/benefit to pursuing breach of contract? We never really hear anything good coming from them unless it’s at the top, but if it makes people feel more comfortable with the placebo effect, I’m happy with that. It’s certainly something I’m looking into myself, and maybe when starting the second half of the year, we’ll have some in place.
How can you still be a Newcastle United supporter, even though they’re bloody Terrible?
As far as being a fan of Newcastle, I’d love to give you some cliche about it being in my blood, but I honestly don’t know. I get frustrated every weekend watching them play, shouting and screaming at my TV and end up pissed off but then watch again every time! When it works though, I’m happier than a pig in shit! I suppose in a way, it’s the same as UK esports, when it works, it feels good and we’re all happy, but every now and then we just show ourselves up.
I’d like to say a huge thank’s to Mick for his time, our epic.LAN coverage has already started and is on the main page of the website with more to come, you can follow the streams for the weekend over on epic.LAN’s twitch.
We also have a viewers guide available here.Â
