"I've never been more proud of ten people in my life"

Kat Hunter is General Manager of the San Francisco OPTX, one of two American CGS franchise teams left in the World Final brackets. The third place finish in the regular North American season was enough to take them to the playoffs where they'd fall to Dallas Venom. This left their season verdict hanging in the balance, with a 3D New York only the first hurdle they'd face for a chance to reach the World Finals. They powered past 3D, whom were the favorites by far and went on to crush Europe's hopes of a third team a the Worlds as they narrowly slid past London Mint.

They then went on to exact revenge on their North American playoff conquerors, the Dallas Venom in a match which saw the Source team come into their own to defeat the number one team in the world. This provoked the infamous walk off saga, questions on which Kat Hunter answers in this interview.

Kat Hunter next to Mike Hope at the CGS VIP Party. Photo; Max Silver - Cadred.org

You'll be playing against Berlin on Monday, how confident are you before the match?

I've never played against Berlin in a match, like Mark Dolven said in an interview, "We've never played China we don't know what they're going to bring". I've studied them, they've played top teams and match up incredibly well against us, but I'm 100% confident in my teams ability to win any match against any team at this point.

How do you line up game to game against Berlin? Obviously you've got Vanessa, but you also have one of North America's best FIFA players in Stermy.

I think the match against manyna will be interesting. I think our strengths against them are Dead or Alive male, and female obviously. Our Counter-Strike team is coming into their own right now so I think that'll be a strength too.

On the subject of your Counter-Strike team; they've had a poor regular season, but they've gelled together in the past weeks to win key matches in the North American playoffs and World Finals, do you think this was only a matter of time or has something shifted in the team?

Time definitely plays into it, I think the big part of it that the team I chose has a lot of heart, when you put their backs against the wall is when their best comes out. Once their best comes out you open a door, their confidence level, their own play and their team's play.

To get to the Semi-Finals you overcame Dallas Venom in the Quarter's, they had already sent you to the wildcard bracket in the North American playoffs and had beaten you at other times in the season, how did you prepare for the game?

It may sound bad, but a big part of it is just walking in pissed off at the fact that you lost. We've lost some big matches to them and it was "do or die", win or go home. We were not going to go home. We were not afraid, and we knew Dallas was going to go home, we never considered the other option.

Do you think that Venom went into the game overconfident?

I don't think they considered that we would win, I know they knew it was going to be close but I think us winning was a huge surprise to them.

There were a few Venom members who have said they were disappointed with the bracket tree and playing a North American team so early, do you think this on their minds knocked their focus in the match?

No, I don't think so at all. We knew we were going to have to play each other eventually, we just had to do it first rather than last. I think they were angry because it was a tough way to lose, it's tough to lose 8-1 on a side of inferno. I think they had the right to be angry.

When you beat Venom your team went wild as would be expected, Dallas then walked off the stage before the match had ended. What are your thoughts on this?

I'll tell you what I think, I'm tired of it being a topic, I wish everyone would just stop talking about it. Dallas are a fantastic team, I know they shouldn't have walked off the stage, although it isn't a huge deal. I have a new found respect for Carolina Core whom had to sit on the stage with confetti flying, twice, and they stood there and took it.

You're now one of two American teams left in the draw, do you think if you go past Berlin, Carolina can emulate your success to make a second successive all American final?

No I think Salvo has a good chance to win. They're both very strong teams but they have similar strengths in the game types, so we'll see.

Which team would you rather face in a theoretical final?

We'll play anyone. I really respect Mark Dolven as a manager and would love to see his team go all the way because I respect his passion for this organization and eSports On the other hand it would be good to have a non North American final, we'll beat whoever it is anyway. [Laughs]

Going back the North American draft, you decided to poach Garret "GRT" Bamborough off the Chicago Chimera, was this a spur of the moment "oh he's still available" pick or was it a pre-meditated decision?

I made that decision weeks and weeks before the draft. It was a process to sell the rest of the team on it but they came to an agreement.

How hard was it to drop Trevor "p0s" Randolph and Ryan "PHAMTASTIK" Pham from the team?

I was very emotional about it, Trevor and myself have had many conversations since then, and he's obviously very angry about it. I miss him, he's a great kid.

Stermy had a below par first season yet you included him in your protected players, a decision which has been proven to be a great choice. Was the protection based on form or the insane talent Stermy has at various games?

I'd been following his training closely ever since he picked up FIFA 08, he was training mainly with European players as he was living in Italy at the time. Obviously the American players play differently, until the combine I didn't know what to expect in terms of how he'd stack up. When he reached the finals I knew his training had paid off.

Despite not reaching the heights of season one Vanessa Arteaga has been key for the team's success. Photo; theCGS.com

Vanessa, while having an insane season again with an 11-1 record, hasn't had the same impact she had in season one with a 12-0 record and more importantly almost every match being a blowout. This season we've been seeing 5-2/5-3 wins, is this down to poor form on her behalf or the overall standard of Dead or Alive female in the league being raised?

I think both, I think that the bar has been raised across the board, I think that Hitomi was one of the perfect characters to use against opponents just learning the game, the girls have now figured her out so we don't have the advantage we had year one. We're definitely going to have a character change next year, but we decided to stick with Hitomi this year rather than picking characters based on an anti-strategy, a ploy we used at the start of this season. I didn't feel that was going to be the best way, as when she gets in a stressful situation she knows exactly what to do with Hitomi. If you watch her matches against Michelle [Phoenix of the Dallas Venom] you'll see that she got in her head, and she wasn't playing her best, that's no secret. She let Michelle get in her head and she stopped playing, it's very clear when it happened.

Was the first loss a relief in some ways? There was no pressure left to maintain that crown of a "perfect record" and giving Vanessa more motivation to bounce back.

[Laughs] It was a relief to me, it wasn't a relief to her. It's tough to have your first loss. I think that it was important as it resets your training and approach to the game anytime you lose.

With Stermy really having a great regular season [8-4 record], did you feel this is good but almost irrelevant as there are such low point margins in FIFA?

Just because we're only looking at one point here and there I don't think we should look at FIFA not being important. The biggest part of what CGS represents is the team structure and what Stermy brings to the team is well and above working with one point advantage. If the games switch and we don't have FIFA I need to train Stermy in one of the other games because he's an important part of my team, he's the captain and backbone in many ways.

The new trend for this season seems to be mixing up old talent from Counter-Strike 1.6 with "new" players from Counter-Strike: Source. Do you think this is the best way forward?

I'm a big fan of all Source teams, obviously apparent by picking up EFG and then adding Paradox, I like the source players. I'm kind of tired of the 1.6 is better crap. GRT definitely brings a lot of experience to the table and a different mental attitude that we didn't have previously. The 1.6 player addition was deliberate.

If we had to go and ask one of your players what you're like as a General Manager what would they say?

That I'm too mean. [Laughs]

What's the motto that you strive to imprint in your players minds?

That everyone here is a winner, that's why they're here. We're here to be champions. Being a champion means doing things that you don't want to do in order to win, showing up 15 minutes early for practice, putting in that extra two hours of practice. Being a champion means not complaining when you don't have a day off in ten days, it's a different mind set and you say it in professional sports players that have that mind set.

You're currently the only female General Manager across the league worldwide, do you think there are any other strong candidates who could become a second?

Absolutely, I feel Amy Brady, who was in Fragdolls with me would be a fantastic GM, I'd love to see her manage a team.

Do you think we'll always see the GM spot being male dominated, or will we eventually see more and more women coming into the role?

I think it will be mainly male dominated for a long time. Most of the franchises that exist pull managers off existing teams for obvious community reasons and you don't see female leadership in those existing organizations. In 20 years maybe, but I think for now it's going to be a boy's club. [Laughs]

What do you think of the current games in the CGS, do you think there's anything that needs changing or do we need to stick with these four to enforce consistency and help TV audience's follow the league?

All the games in CGS are fantastic and I like them, however I'm a big fan of Professional Evolution [Pro Evo] Soccer and I wouldn't mind seeing this game in the league as well.

Let's go off the rails for a second, if CGS dropped Source and added a one versus one deathmatch, such as Quake 4, would we see Stermy staying with FIFA or would you move him back to the Deathmatch role he made his name in?

Quake, absolutely again. He'd love a chance to play a one versus one shooter again, he'd love a chance to play a team shooter. If Quake ran I'd definitely lose him to it, hands down.

Let's say you get past Berlin and get to the final, what would it mean to you to win the whole thing?

I don't even know the words for that emotion, for what the feels like. To have fought as hard as we've fought to get where we are, to start off the season poorly and have to fight as a team to not fall apart, which is easy to happen, instead of falling apart we continued to get stronger and didn't give up. We've had to send the number one and two teams in the United States to get to this point, at this point winning would mean everything to the team.

You're now one of the strong favorites for the title, do you think this is a fair assessment?

I think it's a fair assessment only because we have a powerful momentum behind us. Our biggest strength as a team is that we don't look for game wins, we fight for every point we play. When you put us in a stressful situation we really play our best. I think that just because of the nature of what the world finals is we have a large chance of winning any match we play just for that. However there are strong teams remaining, Core's strong, Salvo's strong and Allianz are strong. Just on sheer talent yes we can be taken out, but I don't think anyone has more talent than we do.

Most franchises seem to have a minor divide socially with Counter-Strike and the console players, your team seems like one that breaks the mold, can you explain this to us?

In any standard management process , for example if I'm building a team for an advertising project, you pick people that work well together. That's what I look for when I draft someone, I look for someone who is going to add to this ten person team. It doesn't always work out as hoped, I expected the Counter-Strike team to gel much faster than they did, and they did at first. After the draft they played incredibly strong as a team, and then the honeymoon period was over and it was a bit struggle and it's something that we've had to fight through. Every single person who's on the OPTX is here not only for how they play the game, but for how they work together as one of ten.

You stole GRT from the Chicago Chimera, do you think next season we're going to see more players "stolen"?

I think we will, there's several reasons to do that, one reason is to have a hole that you're looking to fill, another reason is that you want to weaken another rival that's very strong. If you have a spot to fill pull someone off the Venom and would they be as strong, would that clip the wings of the team. I have no plans to do that, but I think we'll see it.

On your point of a player steal to weaken a rival, theoretically a General Manager could draft a rival, and then taxi them out days before the regular season start, is this something you'd be against?

I would never do it because you're taking away a player's chance to be paid, I would never take another job. That's the absolute dirtiest thing you could ever do in CGS in my opinion.

Kat crouches down to give wise words during the last day of the regular season. Photo; theCGS.com

To get to the World Finals you had to battle through the wild card bracket of New York 3D and London Mint, what did you think of these games?

When we lost to Dallas we were standing on the stage to Dallas and everyone just sat there. They didn't leave, the stage was done the lights were off and they were still sitting there. There was the moment of, "is that really it, does that mean that it's over." even though we had a match tomorrow. We just stopped and had a meeting right there on the stage and I said, "Ok, I know exactly how you're feeling right now and I feel it to. Stay here and feel it as long as you need to feel it but when you leave this stage you have to leave it behind, we don't have much time until tomorrow,". So when we walked into 3D it was with that attitude of "Do-or-Die". The 3D match was actually not as hard ironically as the London match for us.

You went through the wild card bracket to earn the spot. The world "wild card" seems to fit you perfectly as your a team that can be erratic at times, do you agree with this?

Yes, I think that we definitely still do not have the consistency than we need on the Counter-Strike of things. I think that Dead or Alive, Forza and FIFA is consistent. Source is to be expected, we have two new people on the team whose play styles radically differ from what the old team was used to and it's going to take time to learn each other, but it will come.

What did you think of LA Complexity's poor performance this season?

It was always going to be an uphill battle for Complexity, they didn't have new people or fresh blood. There's something that's really intangible about the type of energy that brings to a team, Jason's take on it definitely was he'd be able to get that motivation by keeping the family together, which is something you see a lot in his management philosophy. It was hard, it took them a long time before they had that type of energy that you saw last year. However their losses were only by a couple points so they didn't do that badly.

How hard was it as a female in eSports to get to where you are now in a male dominated environment?

I don't think it was difficult at all. I don't think the industry is chauvinistic, I think it's very open minded and no-one cares if I'm a woman or not a woman. It's never been an issue and I don't even think about it anymore. I know that earlier in my competitive days when I was playing Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six it was a huge issue when I was playing in tournaments. Those days are gone, the story now is co-ed gaming and that's the story we're telling in the CGS.

How have you applied your previous experience in work into your management style?

In every project endeavour I've had in my past, ranging from advertising to video journalism in gaming, I've always pushed everything with the same effort and intensity to never give up whatever it takes and I think that's one of the most important things you can pass on to your team. That's the one thing I hoped they've learned from me, I know I'm strict and so-forth but discipline and mental toughness are two of the hardest things to completely maintain throughout this long season. I think that's what I bring to the table more than anything else.

Do you think there's another GM out there like you?

I think it's fair to say that I'm unique, I think that all of the General Managers are. Every one has a very different management style, everyone has a different relationship with their team and that extends to my team.

What relationship do you have with your team, are you their friend or their boss?

I'm the boss, but they also can joke around with me and tease me a lot [Laughs] I don't hang out with them or go out with them on the evenings and that's for them to bond together, but after a big win I'll go out and we'll all have a good time together. It's a little bit of both but I would say I'm more on the boss side than the friend side, but I care for them all very much.

I'm completely out of questions, thank you for a superb interview, is there anything you'd like to add?

Just that we've waited two years for this, since the very first draft at the playboy mansion, this is what everyone in my team has been working for. A) We feel very lucky and very privileged, and B) I'm very proud of them, I've never been more proud of ten people in my life.