Interview with Global eSports Cup caster Rage: “This is experience it’s been very humbling”

The schedule of the tournament itself was quite tight and everyone on the talent desk had put in a considerable amount of work. Although we would have liked to chat with everyone present at the Vilnius studio LAN and at the Dreamhack Moscow, in the very last day during the grand finals we managed to snatch Seve ‘Rage’ Bisogni for a short interview.

Hello, Rage and thank you for taking the time to talk to us in between games.

Thank you for having me

How was the whole LAN experience for you?

It’s been pretty excellent so far, a few hiccups along the way but everyone was really accommodating. The food’s been good and the studio was really nice. Production could have been a little bit more communicative with us but in terms of hardware everything was really smooth. I know it’s not much to compare with because this is my first experience but so far so good. I’ve talked to some of the players, even with some of the early eliminated ones and they all said the event was run pretty well.

Let’s talk about you. This is your very first LAN experience, how have you started?

A while back I was just watching some of the vigilante, the freelance casters and I was like “hey I know enough about the game, I think I can do this.” And it was Asia Best of Best my first tournament that I casted.

Back then I was young and broke and didn’t want to buy any Dota.tv tickets and it was actually Lili from DotaTalk who was organizing a giveaway tickets session. So this is how I got to cast my first game. After that I got to do Dota 2 Canada Cup on my own channel, they noticed me and they had me do some of their qualifier games and I ended up doing some more with SirActionSlacks and Maut from HighGround TV, all these under Dota 2 Canada Cup. I did one series in Dota Pit as well and then I met Hefla and most of my content from there on was under HeflaTV.

Are you now a HeflaTV employee or still a freelancer?

I’m totally free and that’s how HeflaTV community works. He is more or less our negotiator and he is trying to get us a good revenue deals so we did a lot of tournaments with him but not necessarily for him. So he’s been really accommodating with us, he’s been really loyal to us as well so I owe a lot to him and he is part of the reason I’m here.

Being here you had the chance to cast along GoDz, Winter and Lumi. How do you feel about working with them?

It’s weird. I mean you are at home and their voice is all you listen, you watch their cast, you take cues from them, you try to become better by watching and listen to them so definitely I’ve been nervous. They are people that I looked up for a long time but they’ve been really accommodating, all of them have been welcoming, you know, give you little tips that you need whether they’ve been full flaming or not but yeah, they’ve been awesome. It’s really nice to cast alongside them and kind of be validated in that sense that you were casting with some of the top talents.

We are almost at the end of the year, do you already have plans for the beginning of 2016?

This experience it’s been very humbling so I’m taking it in stride, one day at a time, hopefully I’ll have more opportunities. But I’ll just continue to work hard and I’ll try to be better at what I do and we’ll see where it goes from there. For now this is the first LAN and I’m just soaking all in and try to grab a few twitter followers on the way, but yeah that’s about it.

All right, I know you have to watch the game that is going on right now so we’ll end it here. Any shout outs?

I want to shout out to some of our loyal fans. No matter what game I’m casting, no matter how no worthy the teams are, they are always there in the chat so grumpy kitten, poker face, shoulder of giants, definitely some people I’m missing right now but you guys know who you are and shout outs to GoDz, Winter and of course Lumi for being so accommodating through the whole process.