Martin “Deficio” Lynge has been around the League of Legends competitive scene for a long time. Starting as a pro player in 2013 for the Copenhagen Wolves, Deficio would join the EU LCS broadcast in 2014 as a caster. Over the course of the next four years, he went from an ex-player who was rough around the edges as a caster, to one of the more respected analysts in the scene. Now, Deficio is involved in the European LoL scene from a different vantage point - as the general manager for Origen.





Upcomer sat down with Deficio at the end of Rift Rivals to talk about if he misses being on the broadcast, the weight of the name “Origen,” and what the organization does to keep the players mentally healthy.





You’re a little while removed from being part of the broadcast team, but you know every time an event happens and your team is involved, you get to visit home. When you watch the broadcast, are you ever like ‘man, I wish I could do both’?





Deficio: (laughs) Sometimes. There’s a lot of times where I really just enjoy being able to be with the team. It’s a lot of fun both before and after games, but there’s also a lot of times where I would love to cast again. I’m luckily on the analyst desk from time to time, got to do that as well here at Rift Rivals so that makes me very happy. Honestly, both things are actually great. I really love being on trips with the team but I also really love being on a broadcast and being with the other casters so it’s a bit of a luxury win-win situation really.





I feel the way to describe the LEC broadcast is a lot of fanfare and camp, whereas the NA broadcast goes for that meme/cringe humour. We’ve got the great MediVedi combination. When you see those two goofing off, do you want to run in and join in a bit?





That one specifically, no! The MediVedi cringe show that they have going, that’s for them, 100% for them, I do not want to be a part of that. However, I have obviously done my fair share of things with Quickshot in the past and Drakos with EUphoria and so on, so I can’t really say that, you know, I’m far away from what they’re doing now but I think they have a very unique thing, I don’t want to be part of it.





I think very last split I got to cast, they started the MediVedi thing. I do remember we went into a semifinal or quarterfinal, like a serious game, EU playoffs, tosses to the casters ‘cause I’m casting with those two and they literally started with the MediVedi thing for like a minute. I’m just like ‘wow, this is like a playoff game’, you know, and we’re starting like this. I’ve been on the outside, almost sucked into it, but that’s for them.





I do however love a lot of the funny stuff they’re doing and actually think one of the best things about LEC or EU LCS even last year was that their producers they have now are all really, really good at allowing people to explore these different things and they’re really good at kinda checking along the way, ‘OK, are we going too far or not? Is this actually funny? Should we be doing this?’ They give a lot of freedom to people and honestly if you just come in as an EU caster with a good idea, people are gonna be on-board and help you with it and they will push it. I think that’s a super good thing for the broadcast as a whole and I’ve seen the community react well to it as well. I love that and I love that the playstyle of the EU teams is promoting creativity and the broadcast, the meta there is actually also promoting creativity coming up with things like MediVedi.





You’ve brought up the creativity that exists in EU that you don’t really see in a lot of the other regions. Why do you think consistently EU seems to be the region that’s willing to try what seems like crazier ideas versus NA which seems to have more weird lane picks?





I think, first of all, we’ve always had a lot of very creative players. I also think it actually helps us that we have a very large region with a lot of different people from different countries, we have a lot of teams in different leagues from national leagues up to the LEC, so there’s just so many people who can try these different things in these specific regions or in solo queue that, typically, if it actually ends up being a pretty smart idea, will end up eventually make its way up to other teams and you will pay attention to it.





In our case, we talk a lot with the Origen BCN guys, obviously our talent team. We have in the Spanish league a lot of teams who are actually willing to try a lot of things and we obviously do a lot as Origen as a whole with the Copenhagen team and Barcelona team. You get to share a lot of ideas there so that’s us just [inaudible] with other teams. In North America, you’re kinda stuck with 10 teams you have now, so there’s less room for innovative things from a lot of different people. So I think that’s been a huge part of it.





I also think it helps that our top team, G2 in Spring and to some extent last year, has really been pushing the envelope and pushing that further. It’s a lot easier when your top teams are doing good for everyone else to start doing it as well and pick up on it and learn from it than if your top team is just playing super slow, super standard, choking you out in every game and you feel like you can’t do anything. The moment you pick differently and you lose on it because the other team is just so much better, people just flame you like ‘oh, why would you do that, that’s terrible.’ It doesn’t really promote that style, but in Europe, doing it is actually something you see from the best teams and it promotes the fact everyone can do it all the way down.





What’s something that you do as a very public person to shield yourself and handle a lot of the criticism that you get because, unlike most people, everyone has an opinion on what you do?





I mean, I try not to let social media dominate my life. I think I’m pretty good at filtering when I’m like on Twitter or something, I can look through a couple of things without really letting it impact me or feel like this is my life and I must be looking at this or interacting all the time. I think that’s always been a good thing for me and I also try not to engage in too many things at the same time.





A lot of people want to be very vocal about, let’s say, North American teams in this tournament, on Twitter and want to type ‘Oh my God, why are these teams so bad at all these things’ and then a big argument starts, 20 people are in there arguing, "is it because this Jungler is bad or is it because of the region" or whatever it is. I’ve always kinda been like, I’ll let these people have this discussion but I don’t feel like I need to join and spend my time on it and that has also helped me not let social media dominate my life or me as a personality.





I let the work I do on the broadcast speak for itself and the work now we’re doing with Origen without feeling the need to jump on and engage with every fan who wants to tell me OG sucks or something. I don’t feel I have to jump in, say they’re wrong and explain to them why and then have an hour long conversation with like twenty tweets going all the way down.





Don’t let it dominate your life and don’t jump in and engage in every conversation you see possible. As a personality, you are more out there and it can take up a lot of time and create a lot of stress as well.





Last split, you guys did not have a very strong start-





Slow starters!





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Slow starters! You’re having a little bit more of an accelerated start this time around. A tiny bit. What do you think it is about the five players you helped put together that has made them somewhat of a slow burn compared to some of the other top teams that we think of in the LEC?





It’s actually funny because I think in Spring, it was a completely new lineup, living in Copenhagen and flying in. We were the first team to do that since M5 or Gambit back in 2013, a completely different setup. There were a lot of things there, one for the team to click and figure everything out on stage which is always a bit different than scrims and also the travelling. There were some scheduling things we had to learn in the start and I think very quickly we picked up on it.





One of the goals we had with this lineup was to get experienced players who we knew could be vocal both in the game but also outside of the game. People who tried a lot of things so they could quickly be part of saying it doesn’t work if we’re doing this when we’re travelling, we need to change to doing that and instantly make the change, not spend a full split on it. That kinda explains the Spring start which was really I guess expected on our side.





For Summer, it’s actually really interesting because while I don’t think we’ve been playing perfectly by any means, I think we have raised our level compared to the start of Spring, of course. We are following a bit on how we played in playoffs in Spring and that’s kinda our bottom level now, which is a very good side for us. The two games we lost against Fnatic and G2 were actually really, really close games that could have swung in our favour if one or two things had gone different, and then we could have been sitting here at 5-1 and we would have been saying ‘What a great start, you play so well now’. It’s always kinda weird for me with the start, I think we’re not in a rush and we’ll take one game at a time. We know there are always things we want to work on, we have players where if we lose a game, they literally go straight backstage, put up the game VOD and just sit there and watch the game and talk about what happened.





So even if we haven’t gotten all the wins we wanted yet, I think Rift Rivals we got a 3-1 score, got to beat TSM twice, got to test a lot of things against TL, which didn’t work, but I think overall we had a good tournament here combined with the three wins we have picked up and I think we’re play Rogue and Excel in the following week. Hopefully that is two wins then we’re 5-3 plus a good Rift Rivals then maybe it’s gonna be considered a good enough start, right? I don’t want to call us slow starters just yet, sample size is too small for me! It’s a good question though.





Do you feel any sort of heat from the teams below you pushing you to make sure you’re at Worlds or do you guys think ‘Nah, we got this, we’re going to make Worlds ez clap’?





Definitely not saying the last part! I think it’s a really positive thing that we actually have quite a lot of teams who are very competitive and we were actually talking about this during Rift Rivals here. You could have SK and Splyce and these kind of teams here and the games we play against them are actually almost harder than the games we play against TSM, for example. That’s not to really flame TSM but it’s more to praise that they have quite a lot of competitive teams in Europe now, which is amazing because it should mean the three teams we are sending eventually will be really, really strong teams. We won’t have, like we always have, one team that feels like they’re kinda just getting in, but are they really good enough compared to the number one team?





For us, there’s no fire yet by any means because all we’re looking at is step one, make playoffs; step two, end above Fnatic; because if we do that, based on championship points, we would be the second seed seeing as we got to the final in Spring.





I think if maybe Splyce or something goes all the way, they can do it but I think for us it’s like there are a few key steps we can take to secure first or second seed. Even if it’s a third seed we’re fighting for, I think our team in best-of-five are super, super good, like we have really good prep, we have experienced players who can handle playing the big games and won’t struggle under pressure or after one loss in a best-of-five, crumbling completely, changing everything and panicking. We don’t have that kind of stuff.





Whether or not we have a first place finish in the regular season, we’re going to be extremely confident in the best-of-five playoff gauntlet. I’m very confident in our team, but at the same time, we have to just show it and we have to win the key games, especially if we play someone like Fnatic in a best-of-five later.





As an owner, what do you think the base goal of your team should always be?





I think it depends a lot on your lineup. If I take Rogue as an example, their Spring Split obviously wasn’t great by any means. They did make a complete roster overhaul bringing in the Ultraliga team, a lot of young players now, Rookie mid-Jungle setup. I think if you’re them and you are the team, you’re going to be saying "guys, a competitive split where we make playoffs and we see development in our players, that’s a great split." It’s actually been, if we just look at Summer, a successful adventure.





If you are Fnatic and you have the lineup you have and you see the start you had in the Spring Split, you’d say this isn’t okay at all, what is happening? We need to be a top team in Europe every single time. We have to make finals.





I think for us, because it is year one, the most important thing for me was that we actually perfected our performance model and our way of approaching the game, both as staff and players, that we had a successful relaunch of Origen into franchise with RFRSH Entertainment and that we succeeded with the Copenhagen-Berlin thing. When we started the season, I was looking at those things as the key ones because that is what builds everything for the future.





Now after Spring Split, where we make the final and we know we have a really strong lineup that’s clicking and they’re really benefiting from playing with each other and everything we’re doing, I think it would be really weird of me to not say that we want to go to that final again. We want to be the best team in Europe. We want to represent Europe at Worlds 100%. We have the team to do it, we have the organization to do it, we have a lot of fans who want to see us do it as well. For us now, I’m looking at going back to that final. I’m hoping to face G2 again in that final and create a different result.





Were you worried about having the Origen and Astralis legacies potentially weighing on anyone in the organization and creating a lot of pressure?





We knew that there would be a lot of eyes on us and I think that the players knew that as well. It was again one of the reasons we wanted to build a lineup with some players who have been in the spotlight before. I really believed in having a roster with some vocal, seasoned veterans and then one or two young players who can really grow with this team. When we brought back Mithy to Origen, we got Nukeduck who’s played since 2013 and he’s been on a lot of different teams, we knew we had players who could handle this if it actually became a problem.





We also have a lot of people internally who have been working with Astralis and they understand how it is when you work with Astralis and the players and the fans and they very quickly could help build the same setup with Origen and make sure that we take care of these kinda things. We have a very open environment, everyone is allowed to voice their opinion and talk about certain things that are affecting them. We have great sports psychologists who can assist with these kind of things, we have Kasper as well who has been a goalkeeper on the Danish national team and played all the big tournaments, been in this situation where all eyes are on you and a lot of pressure, he’s done it before. He can assist with this kind of thing. I feel like we had all the tools to handle it but I also think it almost feels like there were more eyes on the organization specifically in the start because a lot of people were really excited to see what is Origen going to do now in the LEC, like what kind of Origen is this.





For us, it was so, so important to show to all the fans instantly, "listen, this is an organisation team you can be proud of, this is an organisation team you want to follow." We’re here for many, many years and we’re gonna do a lot of really cool things and we have a lot of plans for what we want to do with the competitive team but also with the organization and fan base itself.





For me, it was super, super important that this first split, we instantly became a team that people could like and follow. I think it was very successful and I think also that kinda helps everything we want to do in the future and I think our players have been handling the pressure really well. I actually don’t think now it affects them, at least not in a negative way, I hope in a positive way, because sometimes it is awesome to feel that there’s a lot of people who are looking at what you’re doing.