“Our door is in Asia”

CS:GO ORDER team IGL Chris “emagine” Rowlands gave an interview at IEM Katowice 2018. During the interview, he talked about the team’s experience in Poland, the difficulties of competing in the Australian region. and its preparation for tournaments with the above difficulties. In addition, the team is also considering moving to another region to find development opportunities.

Talk about temperature change here with Australia – how have people adapted?

It’s really hard to say. I didn’t think I was going to be outside, I just stepped out and almost froze to death. I almost shivered. [cười]

You guys have a pretty short tour in Katowice. However, how is everyone’s experience when this is the first time attending a big event as an ORDER team?

Katowice is very interesting. These experiences are precious. With a region like Australia, this is an opportunity for us to gain more experience, to practice with the best teams.

Obviously, with their ping so different, we didn’t get a chance to play against them before, so people wanted to try bootcamp. In this tournament, we did that, the team had a week of bootcamp before the event. This is a valuable experience, it allows us to train with the best teams. And you know, if you’re in Australia, this is going to take a lot of time.

Let’s talk about the team. ORDER recruited you as Kings Gaming Club. In your opinion, what are the differences between these two organizations and what has been your experience with them?

I think professionalism is the biggest thing. ORDER truly has a voice in the region. They already have a League of Legends team and really want to recruit us. ORDER has abundant resources and lots of support people. We are very confident in ORDER and are happy to be able to accompany them.

Would you like to see organizations like ORDER join the Australia region? And do you think that with organizations with similar financial capabilities like ORDER joining the Australasian region, could Australia become one of the more formidable regions in CS:GO?

Of course, I think having big organizations in attendance will push the level of the region up. They work differently. Our organization has a history of being active in sports. The CEO of the team has worked with many football teams, AFL (Australian Football League) teams. He used to be the coach monitoring the performance of these teams, so he has good vision to make sure everything goes smoothly. To answer your question: if such large organizations get involved, it will certainly improve the level of the region.

Moving on to the Australia region, what are the main difficulties you guys face when preparing for events, or is it simply the training aspect?

I can talk about geographical difficulty: we can’t play with anyone because of the ping problem. The west coast of Australia can play with Singapore, but the vast majority of people in Australia are on the east coast, so we have to practice internally, with teams within Australia. This means we are limited with who we can practice with. In addition, the amount is not enough for them to play full-time. That leads to all training starting from 6-7pm, whereas in Europe, people train from the morning. So, when it comes to training frequency, we are too little compared to other regions.

You mentioned the lack of finance in the Australasia region. A lot of people can’t compete full-time, and this was stated by SPUNJ during an interview at the EPL Season 6 Finals in Odense. What makes you different from those things? How did you guys get over it?

It’s been a slow process for every player in Australia. You start with a small amount of money and slowly increase it bit by bit as you grow with the team. I don’t think there is any obvious way. Since the interview with SPUNJ, a lot of money has been invested in the area, but that amount is still not enough. For many people, this amount is not enough, especially for teams that are not in the top 2, they do not receive much.

Putting aside the Australian theme for a while, Perfect World has just released CS:GO in China. Do you think the presence of this game in China will partly affect the Australia region? Perhaps more bustle, more teams competing, more capital poured in?

Of course, it will affect Australia. Our gateway to the world is through Asia, so if Asia grows, so will Australia. We competed in many tournaments in Asia. For example, ZOWIE eXTREMESLAND was held in China and featured several Australian teams. China is probably the place where we can compete. When China develops, it will certainly boost Australia’s level.

He is the IGL of ORDER. Due to the lack of strong competitors in Australia, I think you guys prepared for Katowice mainly by watching a lot of demos. Don’t know if I’m right?

We have coaches who watch a lot of demos from other teams, but in Australia it’s completely different. We can make mistakes in the game but we can fix it, whereas in other areas you will have to pay the price. I think it creates a bad habit, because there is a big clear difference between the current regions when it comes to skills. So when we train here, we can practice something and not realize it’s not working, until people bootcamp here. Bootcamp gave us a chance to really appreciate and realize, “Our training isn’t right.”

So how will you learn these things?

By being ‘eaten’ [cười]. We ‘eat onions’ and then determine that we need to change and ask, “Why isn’t it working?” Yes, you have to fall to get up, that’s how people grow.

How do you guys stay positive after losing so badly? I don’t mean it, but the team’s results shouldn’t be a big surprise, especially when we’ve taken into account the differences in training quality and resources across regions.

It was difficult, quite disappointing, especially since we had bootcamped before. We’re up against a lot of top teams, including Ninjas in Pajamas. NiP is the team that we play the most. GeT_RiGhT hinted at the post-match interview that we scrim with them well, but of course scrim doesn’t say much. We thought we played really well and it felt like we didn’t have everything. That’s how we feel, that we still have a lot of things left to unfold and what we did in that tournament didn’t really reflect ORDER’s capabilities. That’s what we are thinking right now and trying to fix the mistakes at the upcoming IEM Sydney tournament.

Finally, I’d like to know your thoughts on moving to another region. Take Renegades for example, they were also locked up in Australia, but then decided to continue their dream in North America. Have you thought or plan to do that in the future? And what does it take for you to decide to follow that path?

Yeah, I mean it’s not something we’re going to consider. It is something we will definitely do. I think the problem with that team was that we needed to have something to do in other regions, not just bootcamp. We want to participate in something, like in the Pro League. With us, if everyone gets a Pro League spot or something like that, everyone will definitely come together. We are not for money; The team just wanted more experience and the chance to play against the best teams.

Source: Cybersport