D1ablo from Reason Gaming speaks out at the UKeSA Grand Final

I managed to find the dressing room, the only air conditioned room in the whole building by the feel of it, and spent a while speaking to him about the event. Here is what he had to say:

OK Welcome to the UKeSA Grand Finals Tom; what do you think of them?

Probably the worst event I've ever been to, well the worst introduction to an event. I think most gamers here will agree, well apart from the 2 hour, no 3 hour delay so far, it's been, ok.

So what would you say is the main thing that is making it such a bad event in your opinion?

Its a really bad venue, probably the worst venue they could have choice. It seems really based on televising it rather than looking at what the gamers want and actually looking to host a good event. I don't know if it's been really badly organised or if there are funding problems or something.

But tournament wise, do you think it will still live up to expectation?

Yeah, well now I have seen the computers are actually functioning, it could show some good games.

Lets talk about your game with TCM in the semi finals. How confident are you going into it?

We should take it in 2 maps, maybe 3, but yeah, you never know, they are a good team.

Do you think your new player, sLWx is going to "lan crumble" as such?

I don't think he cheats. The only reason he would crumble will be because this is his first LAN with big names here, not because he cheats online. But we'll try and ease him up a bit.

A lot of people have been saying that the winner of the Reason vs TCM game will most likely win the whole tournament. Do you think this is a fair assumption?

Not really, people seem to be writing off dig, just because they have had a s**t streak recently, which to be fair they have, but if there is a time to come back, then it could be now. If they like carry on for a bit longer without getting the results, I don't know.

What about ButtonBashers? Are they going to be able perform this event without nreo?

I don't think they are going to perform well. They might beat dignitas but that's because dignitas perform badly, rather than them performing well. They won't be able to perform well without nreo, he is a hugggge player, a really good part of their lineup, I think they will struggle without him.

But who would you rather play in the final?

I think dignitas probably. It will be a really good final, dignitas vs Reason, the UK conflict.

Will you take the fact that the mix team you played in were able to beat an almost full strength dignitas on Thursday as a confidence boost? Can you go out and beat them again if you play them again?

Not at all, one thing the streams and the casting did not show was that the computers that everyone had to play on were horrendous. You basically had to play on a thirty inch TV with a 10 sec response time from the mouse to what the screen showed. It was so bad it almost looked good, like motion blur.

From the stream you could at least see that you were having a good time. Do you think it was a worthwhile evening?

Yeah, I think for gamers who just wanted to come down, have a few drinks and watch a game it was brilliant.

But how do you view the EPS UK as a whole?

The EPS as an organisation are really well run, really well structured. They know where to put the events, when to put them, blablabla. The only problems at the moment that everyone is bringing up is the prize money, the lack of payment with them which from what you can see is probably because of all these events they are hosting. But I don't know about all the financial situation etc.

But do you think this will continue into Season 3? Will Reason be taking part in season 3?

Um, we're not really sure what is going on after the summer, some people are going to university, some people are doing other things. So not because we are bad players or anything, just people move on. We are just looking to finish the summer events.

How do you think you will do at these summer LANs?

I don't think we will make the mistakes we did in the last summer events, and let it all go away. We should do well. I think because of the competition, with everyone coming back onto form, that we will hopefully be top 3.

At the end of the summer do you think CoD4 will carry on up to MW2, possibly beyond MW2?

I think the only thing that will stop people from switching to MW2 is that they have introduced some tweaks and additional stuff to the game, like CoD5 is using and from what MODers have been saying, these are frankly un modable. I think if that all sticks, it will be really hard for people to move across to the game, not because it is a bad game, just because you can't do it.

But will people then move back to CoD4 or will people use that as a chance to move on to another game?

I think that will either reduce the CoD4 community in size or people will move onto other games, like the new Wolfenstein, or maybe even Quake Live which is building up a little bit so you could see some people branching off a bit.

Time to move onto the QuickFire round, you know the drill

Thanks for the interview, but before we go have you got any shoutouts you would like to make?

As always to all the sponsors, Dallow being a great manager, helping out loads especially with the source team, and helping getting all the foreigners in the team here, great guy.