By: Jeremy Blye

 

Note: This series will again cover more of personal experiences and reflections within the Esports community. J is for Jeremy. M is for Max.

 

This week, I was able to speak with one of our Rainbow Six Siege players about Esports as a whole and within DePaul. This interview was extremely enjoyable and I have been loving gaining so much insight about our players and community!

 

J: Who are you?

M: Max Henley

 

Look at this guy above…what a good guy :).

 

J: What is your involvement within Esports?

M: I play on the Rainbow Six Siege Varsity Team

J: When did you start Esports in general?

M: I transferred to DePaul in January 2020, and it was right before COVID hit. I’ve been playing R6 for a few years now. I saw DePaul had an Esports program and the Discord server. Luckily for me they had tryouts about a week later so I got on the team.

J: I remember when I was joining an Esports team, I wasn’t really sure where to go. I knew I wanted to be involved within Esports, but I didn’t know where my talent could be used. I play all types of video games, and I was quite surprised how open the community was to a relatively novice competitive gamer like myself. Honestly, I was quite glad that I was able to find a spot within the community and I’m sure you are too. As far as tryouts go, how is Rainbow Six Siege handled?

M: With Siege, because its a smaller community, it required a lot of alumni to help out. We didn’t have enough people to make a lobby where it was the DPU squad versus the people trying out. We play it like a standard ranked match. In the past year with tryouts, we had it much more organized. This allowed us to have a general idea of how to get the players rolling into the flow of the team, and it also helped us realize how to help the org grow.

 

J: With COVID, Esports and gaming has had a lot of room to grow. A lot of people are recognizing the growth. How is DePaul allowing you guys to grow as a team and an org?

M: AdmiralSnackbar on the FPS board has been integral in getting the team recognized as an official team. We are now finally getting jerseys and a place on the Esports website. Not only has Snackbar helped out, DePaul has been and is the support system for the team’s growth. By having these attributes, real team structure has been established. There is growth with discipline. There are strats within the game being established. There is steady growth for the R6 team.

J: Basically there’s actual team structure.

M: When I joined, there weren’t any scheduled practices. There would just be a match day. We would have some notes over the VOD, but we did not have anyone to go into a detailed review. Now, this is how the team is structured: We have a match one every Friday night. Monday’s, we go over the VOD. Wednesday’s, we have just plain practice. We have improved so much as a team in the past 9-10 months due to the structure we have established.

 

J: Was it hard getting to this point when it seemed like there wasn’t much settled in the team’s infrastructure?

M: It was. With college kids, it is hard to have that discipline since some people don’t really want to have to listen to someone. You want to have autonomy in the way you play. You want to take charge of yourself. Yet, you have to listen to your game leads and go from there. I think once you figure out roles on the team and you write down certain things to make it concrete, it creates that sense of accountability. You know what you’re supposed to do in the game in all aspects. It is affected by how much time and effort you put into the game. You also have to factor in everything else you do outside of the game. 

 

J: One thing I know other Esports teams at DePaul have struggled to get past is creating that team discipline in a virtual landscape. How was Rainbow able to accomplish it so well?

M: Your age, experience, and time management skills are a big factor in getting the discipline down. If you look at the average age on the Rainbow team, you can see that it is about 20 years old. Because we have a little bit of extra experience in life, we can put together our practices and team structure much easier. The time management aspect of college is just another aspect of life you just learn and deal with. 

 

J: I agree that dealing with time management can be tricky and sometimes the best way to learn is to make a mistake. Do you feel that these mistakes are crucial to the learning process?

M: Some people in the moment may know they are making the mistakes they do, but then in a week they won’t know. A good example is that I went to Illinois State University, and then I went to Oakton Community College because I was slacking off. My parents would even question me how I changed so much to stay on top of everything. I just learned from my mistakes. It sucked in the moment, but I just learned from everything I failed from. 

J: I love hearing that you’re the type of person that tries to look at mistakes as positively as possible. You can always mess something up, but you never truly “fail” until you do not learn anything new. One aspect in gaming that could be represented within this idea of failure are the stereotypes that surround this activity.

 

J: Do you feel that the stereotypes that surround Esports sort of held you back when you were first interested?

J: I bring this up because everyone is a critic. I am. You are. It is impossible to say that you do not criticize some aspect of life. This is prevalent especially in gaming since everyone feels that they can blame gaming for a wide variety of reasons.

M: The percentage of people who have actually done something bad from gaming is minute. For example, when crimes happen, a very small percentage is driven by gaming. If anything, these Esport titles promote teamwork, communication, and accountability. These are the positives of Esports. The negatives are the trash talk and the violence that are “included” within the titles. Yet, these negatives are highlighted much more often than anything else.

 

J: Another negative aspect of Esports comes with the mindsets players have. A lot of Esports players say their games suck, why do you think it is? Why do you think it is from a R6 perspective?

M: People hate the game because the developers don’t listen to the community’s feedback. For so long we have asked for certain aspects to be added for a competitive community, yet it doesn’t happen. 

On top of this, some people get extremely toxic because they think the game is for money . By winning in a normal game, no one actually wins or loses something. It’s just a game. People need to take a deep breath and relax. In my own gameplay, I try not to rage in any way. In gaming, literally anything good or bad can happen in an instant. I just try to keep people calm and level headed.

In the R6 community, toxicity is a huge thing people have always dealt with. The developers have done a bunch of little things to help out find the people that are the problem. From the start of the game though, you can figure out who is toxic or not and it is something you cannot escape. 

 

J: What is your way to control tilt/rage for yourself and the team when people do things you can’t control?

M: The worst thing for us is when we have a map we are very good at and our strategy is blown up. Panic then settles in. We end up questioning everything that we are doing. One of us may die a minute in the round and then we think we are screwed. When it comes to that tilt, we can’t put it onto one person. Like I said earlier, I try to keep everyone calm. 

J: So you are the person who tries to keep everyone on the same page.

M: Basically as close as possible. 

 

J: How do you deal with the tilt when you have to scrutinize yourself?

J: When you look at high level players, you can come to the realization that to be able to improve, you must look at every little detail under a microscope. It must be so mentally taxing. I understand this from experience. So how do you get through this?

M: With these situations in mind, I learn from my mistakes, and I look at how to change myself for the future. I could always pose the 20 questions to myself as to what I could do better. This is not beneficial in any way. I have to learn from the moment and keep it in the back of my mind so I can avoid it in the future. If I make the same mistake, it gets to me since I’m like, “How did I let that happen?”. It’s not tilting, but it’s more aggravating than anything. I don’t think I’ve ever slammed my desk from raging.

 

J: How do you keep yourself so composed in gaming? I have struggled in the past with holding in rage due to the fact that I sometimes can’t handle losing complete control of the game.

J: I think one thing Esports players tend to struggle with is the control aspect of gaming. In any game, you have complete control of what you do under your fingertips. I understand from anyone’s perspective that this is frustrating since you think you can do whatever you want. Unlike traditional sports, gaming has very few external factors that may affect what is going on. Lag is one significant factor. This is not a huge problem most of the time though.

M: It gets to me at times, but it affects me in little ways. Lag may come in the worst possible times, but I don’t think it’s a huge issue with games. Being able to know what you’re supposed to do is all that matters. You can blame the game as much as possible, but it does nothing for anyone.

 

J: Why do you feel people deny other’s happiness when it comes to certain aspects of gaming? 

J: Joking about this is one thing, but why do you think people actually care?

M: I don’t know, but it may be the stigma behind certain communities. With communities like R6, people just put labels on the game just because they can. People don’t understand the time commitment required to get good at the game. For example, teaching new people can be extremely frustrating since they don’t know anything at all. The learning curve can affect the communities as well. Look at Mario Kart for example. It is super easy to just pick up and no one truly cares about the results of the game. Then people can look at Overwatch or R6 and then realize the competitive level of it. 

J: So they just amplify the main issues to make the game how it “should” be.

M: It amplifies the stigmas that go around gaming.

J: One thing I think that holds newer players from any game is the amount of events that can go on within a game. Within R6, there is so much one must learn to be able to succeed in any way. There are operators, their abilities, their guns, map callouts, map knowledge, strategy knowledge, and opponents to study. I feel this has pushed me away from certain games in the past.

M: I agree, the steep learning curves in games can be discouraging.

 

J: Before we end today’s interview, what do you think the potential you see out of a program like this at DePaul?

M: I think Esports as a whole has a lot of room for improvement. Since I’ve joined, there has been an increasing amount of interest in it. There are a lot of big titles for it as well. 

As a team, in the past few months we have made a designated schedule. We have improved a whole lot. It is important for teams to have the tryouts to be like a real sport. It helps bring out the idea that this is a tangible thing and that it is more than just a club. It is a team to help represent the school. 

 

J: You may have all of these ideas and data to help prove your points, but what is a feasible goal you can see the esports center accomplish?

M: I want to have everyone play in the gaming center. We would be able to see one another, and we would have that personal and physical connection between humans. 

Not only this, I would like to see more support for one another in the program as a whole. If we had some type of way to bring the community together more that would be fantastic. People know about the other games and teams, but there is not much more than that. A lot of people are segmented into the different groups, but no one really crosses over the different games that often. I wish we had a large Esports community instead of the segmented community it seems we have.

 

Just wanted to say thank you to Max for taking some time out of his day to sit down with me and let me interview him. I find it quite fascinating the different views of some of these general topics. Obviously, a lot of these players share similar values, but it is great to see how they can vary as well. Like I have said in the past, I would like to represent this community as much as possible and also help educate those who are and aren’t involved whatsoever.

Stay tuned for our upcoming events in DePaul Esports! Our Animal Crossing event is occurring tomorrow at 6:30 PM CST at the DePaul Esports Discord Server! Come swing by and check out the islands or enter for yourself. The winner will receive a pretty neat trophy!

Not only is our Animal Crossing event going on, we have our DePaul Summer Showdown going on August 19th starting at 7:30 PM CST. This will be streamed on twitch.tv/depaulesports.