Sadokist's rise to fame and his partnership with Henry "⁠HenryG⁠" Greer originated in the PGL Studios in Bucharest, where the duo worked on the Romanian company's first CS:GO event, the CS:GO Championship Series: Kick-Off Season.



Sadokist feels that exclusivity isn't necessarily bad—if done right

In the place where it all started, we had a talk with Matthew "Sadokist" Trivett about work, life, and future projects.

What is it like to be back in Bucharest, where it all started?

It’s awesome, it’s like a second home. I think part of it is like… you get run down with work, so every place I go to has some work connotation. But back then it was still new and fresh and I was excited. I mean, not to say I’m not excited now, but there was just a higher level of excitement. I wasn’t used to traveling before, I had only been to Europe once before in my life so the first time I came here it was just good memories and every time I come back here it all comes back, so I really like coming here.

I like the architecture, I think it’s really cool. There’s a neat mix between the communist era and the French influence that’s here, and so you walk around the city and you see splendor but also power being displayed. It’s a neat contrast. It’s always good to be back, and obviously the PGL staff is really friendly and I get along really well with them.

Yeah, they treat you well here...

They try to!

With all this traveling, and everywhere now having these work connotations, how hard has it been on you?

It’s getting there now. Last year I tweeted out once that I needed a break, whatever. I was in Korea and we were all partying and I was like “uuuuh, yeah I need a break soon, yada, yada…” This year I’m actually pretty worn down. I’ve only been home once in like five months, and just for a day, or actually two because I got snowed in. Typical Canada.

This last stint in Germany we had a bunch of weekends off and if I would have known the weather was going to be milder I would have brought my mountain bike over to distract me. I’m usually the kind of guy that likes to do other things but it turned out we kind of just sat around and didn’t even have any ambition to get a car and drive around Germany which you would think I would have done.

You’re to the point where you have a weekend off and instead of being like “yeah, let’s do something!” you just want to decompress because it’s so much travel and so much CS and seeing the same games night in and night out it definitely wears on you.

As far as travel goes, I can definitely notice it. My metabolism is a lot slower than it used to be, drinking takes a much larger toll on me now so I have to weigh out the consequences of that... although I guess that happens to everyone at some point. But yeah, it’s definitely catching up with me.

I used to not mind traveling and I still don’t if I’m on a plane and have my space and there’s no one to bother me, but if I have a full plane or a kid crying—which is part of life or whatever—, I mean you’re not mad at the kid, obviously, it’s not his fault, but you go through it so much that it’s just like “ugh, you gotta be kidding me.”

And the stress accumulates.

Exactly, and the people next to me talk to me and I think “ugh, I don’t want to talk just let me listen to my music and sleep, please” but then again you get into the conversation and it’s fine. It’s just different, you’re not as joyous about the whole thing. It just becomes another flight, and it definitely wears you out. I think last year I did 107 flights and this year I’ve already done… actually, this year I’m behind schedule if you want to look at it this way, I’ve done 34. But yeah, it builds up.

I've heard from several people and even felt it myself to a lesser extent, that it accumulates and then explodes. I think that could be what has happened with a few of the casters who said they’ve gotten a bit burnt out. Do you think that’s the common sentiment? I know Semmler has been vocal about it lately.

It depends, I think it depends on how long you have been grinding. I think Semmler has been doing this now for like four years. Henry and I have been grinding super hard now for a year and I was thinking “this is gonna catch up with me, this is gonna catch up with me,” but it doesn’t until it just hits, and then you’re like “ok, whoops!”

I think it’s true because I used to be very clever and witty with my words and now I find myself struggling to think on my feet the same way during games. I think it’s more like I’m going through the motions. I’m still getting excited, still getting amped up about plays, but I don’t have those clever wordplays because my mind is just like “nah, I’ve done this too many times now.” So yeah, I need a little bit of a break in that sense. An event like this is kind of challenging, too, because we have to be witty and funny but my brain is just like “nah, I want a break.”

I joke about it quite a bit and stuff, but I am very close to my dog, for example. I was inseparable with her when I was home and being away just builds up. It’s definitely tough. It’s a bit different with my family because I talk to them every day, I can Skype with them, but can’t really do it with my dog. But that’s just an example, right? There’s all kinds of stuff, friends at home, eating mom’s food, biking, I have the car now…

Yeah, which you haven’t even seen yet despite getting it a few months back!

January 13 was the date I got the registration! It just eats away at you over time. If I just take some time to refresh and restore I’ll be back at it in no time, but Semmler is right in saying there is burnout. There are times when I walk into the EPL studio and I see the docket for the night and I’m just like “I don’t even want to cast these games, I’m over it,” and it sucks because it’s an amazing job and we’re extremely lucky to be doing what we’re doing.

The hard part for me is that I tend to be quite clear in my mood. If I’m worn out I tend to rub off on others, just because I’m impatient, which I think my colleagues have had to learn to deal with as well. I think I’ve been a lot harder to deal with. I’m not as cheery, I’m kind of stressful because I’m stressed out and that puts tension on the situation.

You know, we talk about the comradery among the casters, and since we’re getting burnt out we’re being less patient with each other in general and I think there have been some instances lately in which we’re all kind of walking on eggshells. I think some time off for some of us, not all, but me definitely, would be good to bring the friendship back as well. We see each other so much, right? But yeah, I think burnout is very, very, very real at this point.

Do you think it may be time to get some new talent on, then?

Well that’s always the fear, right? I didn’t get a chance to watch what Semmler said, so I’m not sure what his opinions are, but we always have that fear that if I don’t do a job someone else will take it. Like Thorin said about me in one of the videos we did, you may not be able to overcome the best but you can outwork the best, and last year that was my goal, to outwork everyone and eventually become such a known name that even the people that didn’t like you at first warmed up and you then become sort of a necessity at events and people put pressure on organizers. So the more opportunity you give to people to do the same there’s always that chance that they can slip in, and, not necessarily take over—maybe they do—, but get more traction in the scene.

At this point I think a lot of us grinded so hard because… I mean look, we all want to make money, and we make decent money doing this, and the more you work the more of it, right? At this point the idea would be to lock ourselves into better situations with employers that will potentially pay a little bit more due to content that we do with them, but then get more time off as well, which would open room for talent in other facets. Let’s say we lock into ESL or we lock into PGL if they had something more long term, or DreamHack or whatever… then there’s more room for other talent.

The issue is the more you work the better you get, and a lot of talent just doesn’t get the chance to work right now so they don’t have a chance to refine those skills. It was right place, right time. Go back to 2014, 2015, I was terrible. I’m sure there’s tier two talent right now that’s better than I was when I came up, but because of the timing there was space, and it’s really hard to break through now.

Going back to what you were saying about getting locked in, though, do you think talent should try and look for exclusivity deals and not keep the open circuit?

I mean I like being freelance and working with everyone for individual LANs, but I do think there is some beauty in the long-term stuff. Locking into the EPL seasons has given us at least comfort in knowing that we’re going to have work, so you can pick and choose some of the other events. We wanted to go to summit because it looked like a really fun event, but we couldn’t due to the EPL regular season. I mean, look, exclusivity is kind of a buzzword. It’s not necessarily a bad thing if it’s done the right way, and every caster is going to have a different opinion on that, but I think if you can get something stable it could be better.

I think if we stay stable with EPL, for example, I need to bring more of my life to Germany. The obvious one is the mountain bike. I mean the obvious one is the dog, but she’s her own person and very much has her own kingdom... She’s a diva! But yeah, if you can find a way to create a lifestyle and not just pigeonhole into CS, I think it’s important to have some sort of stable location.

What about Drop The Bomb, what’s happening with the show?

Yeah, we did make a small announcement in a few spots that we would be back on March 17. That was supposed to be the plan. We dropped a few of our sponsors and we were looking to recreate our budget, get set and rolling, and then an offer came in. I can’t say who, but a large company, and we’re still going through with negotiations and if it goes through as we think it should, or will, that will enable us to have a budget that’s almost three times what we had, and it will enable us to do more of what we really want to do.

Which is?

A better production in the live environment. The features were already great, I think those are excellent. We want to enable our producer to focus more on the features and then hire a second person to run the live shows and create a better studio environment, a better setup, keep it a bit more consistent, and maybe even, if we can, try and work on doing a few shows at events with a small audience.

There are a lot of plans we want to accomplish. We want this to be the benchmark for a talk show in CS. We don’t want this to be another webcam show. We never did. We think we were beyond that already, but we want to take it to the next level.

If we get the budget we are working on, then we’re in a position to do that, and then it’s just about timing it. One thing I made very clear is that with the amount of work I’m doing, especially building the racecar, is that I want some time home. I mean if I’m going to spend all that money on it and then not drive it, it would be a crying shame.

Like during the player break, for example, I don’t want to be in Europe. That’s my three weeks to be home and shut off my twitter notifications and just be home. That being said, if the budget were to go through tomorrow, we probably still wouldn’t start until September when we’re rolling again in Europe.

I remember when you started last year Henry was a bit upset at some of the ratings because he felt, as did I, that the content was pretty good but not getting the attention he expected. Do you think there’s a place for the show and the features? Why do you think people weren't that receptive?

It’s about eyeballs. Part of the new budget, a lot of it, will be in promotion. We learned that by the end of the season when we brought in a social media girl who did a lot of phenomenal work. She did all the things we knew we should have done but she just did them in a better and more structured way. Timing our tweets so more people see them, getting trailers done the day before, getting posts on HLTV forums—even if they gets watered down they there for a second—, getting something on Reddit, etc.

We knew it was going to take some time to grow the channel, the twitter, and arguably we still are. It’s a fairly small twitter account all things considered, but we agree. We think the content is awesome, and I can understand Henry’s frustration because there were a couple shows where it was just like “Jesus…”

Looking back at those shows they were supposed to have Twitch front page, but they needed 48 hours’ notice for that and there were some shows we didn’t give them it, so we didn’t get front page, and we didn’t have a set time each week because of travel, etc.

Our VODs did reasonably well based on my experience from the show I did previously with mOE, but our live show sucked because we just didn’t have a push. That’s something we’ll fix next season if we do it right and Henry will be much happier with how that goes.

Are there any other issues or thoughts on your mind we didn’t touch?

No, not really. I’m just super excited for the Major. I think the PGL Major is going to be sweet. Seeing some of the stuff here, it’s looking really, really good!