Interview: Interview with fnatic Manager and Legend 09.07.2016, 16:00

99Damage: You have been a long time Counter-Strike personality. First as a player, now as a manager. You have been a part of one of the most successful teams of all time and now you are managing one. Do the big events, the hype and the euphoria still get to you or is it business as usual for you after being on the very top of eSports for a decade now? Does the stress get to you sometimes?

Patrik ' cArn ' Sättermon: Certain things are surely business as usual, We kind of know, more so than before I'd say, what kind of events are going to happen. But at the same time its evolving and fast changing environment and industry, were some games can pop up and become super popular and than in a year or two later they are going to fall in favor of another new title on a different plattform, be it console or a new game type, such as Overwatch coming in and being something like a merger between MOBAs and FPS. But yeah of course its stressful to be in this industry in general I'd say. Everyone I meet be it in the broadcasting business, tournament organizer business, team business, whatever, a lot of people seem to be a lot of stressed but they are working very hard. I think that kind of derives from the passion we all feel towards this that eSport is obviously more than a decade old now. I've been involved pretty much since 1996 I suppose as a player primarily and then eventually I organize some local tournaments, and then Counter-Strike came, but yeah there are a lot of similarities but also we have to understand that we've come a long way since the earlier days. Now we fill out stadiums, players earning big salaries, prize money and the winnings improved. We feel additionally excited and pressurized both to keep the legacy of fnatic up and remaining competetive and remaining relevant across the board. So right now we have five divisions but in the future I'm sure we will activate more regions and more games.

Olof was injured not long ago and had to take some time off in order to recover. Can you tell us what the specific injury was? What was the treatment, is he at 100% physically or is there another potential break for Olof somewhere down the road?

All I want to say on that topic is that for now Olof is fine as in he is getting there. He has done rehabilitation, he has rested, he has exercised and now we have to figure out how is the best way to approach his injury. I wouldn't say its perfect today, he has still a bit of way to go, but he is working really hard and is very serious and motivated to get back into the team. I think its now with ESL One that we are seeing the fruit of that. We are not super consistent yet but obviously we ended up in the group of death. So far so good. We are now up 1-0 against FaZe and hopefully going to beat them to qualify for the playoffs.

Back in the day you had to deal with contract disputes with SK Gaming yourself. Whats your opinion on the whole Luminosity / SK Gaming situation?

My opinion is quite simple: I know to little to have an educated opinion, although I find it a bit sad that it became public and that it was a shitstorm essentially. From what I understand there was a lot of confusion on both parts and communication wasnt like what it should have been. In my ideal eSport world players, teams and organizers are going to figure it out themselfes rather than speaking about it online.



Despite time constraints cArn takes some time to answer questions for 99Damage

I think it's fair to say that fnatic und SK always had some kind of rivalry going. Now that SK have signed the reigning major champions, is this the next chapter of fnatic vs SK and are you looking forward to it?

I mean SK hasnt been around, well they have been around obviously. They are a brand that have been around over a decade now and had a lot of success but lets look at past three years. They havent been that successful in CS:GO and they dropped out of League of Legends. I know that they worked really hard on all that, but its not that they can subscribe and overtake that rivalry from day one, it would be different. I'd say if they would remain a top team at top four in CS:GO in the past year, but that has not been the case. All respect to the players and organisation but I don't see it that significant but allthough I'm happy to see them having worked it out with Luminosity and that the players have a new home and I hope they are motivated and I wish them the best of luck.

eSport is going big, taking the world by storm, now more than ever, with high class production, mainstream media, TV and Football Clubs expanding into eSport as well. Where do you think eSport is heading?

Well eSport is heading forward in a sense that its going to continue to grow, its going to continue to become more global than its today. More people involved, more regions activated, its going to be more games to play and you have seen that the past five or six years are quick and a rapid refocuse of game developers for example. TV stations as well, but game developers back in the days they obviously they developed games that you can compete in but they werent really supposed to be for competitive purpose, aside from a few exceptions. But today game developers have eSport as a focus, they develope eSport related features: Matchmaking, Rankings and other features.

Speaking of Football Clubs, do you fear that they might come in and push out smaller organisations or even more established ones, like yours, who built up eSport from the ground?

I think its going to depend very much on not only the size of the investment but also the intention by these sport teams. Do they just want to flirt a bit with eSport and the young audience or do they see eSport as a very serious and concrete sport franchise for them? Will they diversify into more titles? Most of them are investing into FIFA what is fairly native for the football audience, it makes sense and is easy to understand it, the game has been established over a hundred years. Other go into League of Legends which is the most save route when it comes to a Tier 1 eSport title, as CS:GO is a bit more fragmented and is not as concise as LCS for instance. So I think they are playing it quite safe going into League of Legends. But yeah its another threat or another source of competition for us so we obviously need to pay attention because they know a lot from the sports world and more about practices, sports psychology. But what we know more about is eSport. We have a contact network, we have the processes set up and all that and thats something they just cant learn over night.

Last year you did a lot of asian Counter-Strike tournaments and you were there as an expert and commentator. Where do you think the asian scene is heading, especially considering the recent signings of Project KR and Vici Gaming / CyberZen?

I been out in asia quite a lot and fnatic more than the most western eSport organisations have been out there, having teams, attending tournaments, studying whats going on there and trying to embrace that in our strategy. Last year I have been based there and have been there on and off since 2012, jumping from London to Sweden and Taiwan primarily. Basically last year we conciously decided to pick up a local team, and what I mean by that: one of the regions leaders. We identified that Dota makes a lot of sense in the southeast asian region. We had the former Malaysia team headed by Yee Fung Chai "Mushi", a very legendary and successful Dota player. And here we are now more than one year into that collaboration and its been a joyride, its been exciting to follow this guys and help them as much as we can, hopefully have increased the standard in the local scene with higher salaries, gaming houses and whatnot. We are there to learn from them and teach the local scene and gamers what eSport could be about. For us its important that we have competition. We talked about SK earlier for example, we were fierce enemies but at the same time now as a businesses and teams in the world of eSports we share the same opportunitys and threats. We need each otherwise it wouldnt be exciting for the fans if they cannot watch those legendary rivalries and matchups that we seen now for decades.

Do you think the new MVP Lineup around Solo and Termie can succeed in the long run?

I thinks it is going to be really though for them. If they would have headed back to Counter-Strike right away after dropping out of CS 1.6 2012/2013 it would have been a different story, but now they have to learn a new game that has similarities but a lot of differences as well. I think its going to take time for them and by own experience its not super easy to pick up a new title at the age I guess they are at. But I am happy about their reentry into this field and I really appreciate more asian teams that have ambitions to compete globally because that has been lacking in the space. This is the 7th or 8th Major and we still severly lacking asian teams and why is that? Look at the history of CS, there have always been TyLoo, WeMade Fox and other asian teams that used to be really good.

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