THIS IS THE ENGLISH VERSION OF THE INTWERVIEW TO FNATICMSI STEVY

Question: Hi Stevy, you are one of the very few players that everyone knows in esport. But please tell us something more about you.

Answer: Hey guys, i'm Stevy Verheyen, I'm the sniper of fnaticMSi and i've been playing for them for about 8 months now. Before that i played in buttonbashers and TEK9.


Question: You had a very glorious past in gaming, can you start from the beginning? I know a very corious story about you being introduced to netgaming, could you report it to our readers too?

Answer: It happened randomly, i just played once on my brother's pc and i got into it. After a year or so i started to play call of duty 1 a bit but call of duty 2 was already out, so i switched eventually aswell, when cod4 came out i started to play that ! Well i started playing cod4 in LowLandLions, we had a good line-up but we were too inactive at times to really make an impact. After our failure @ cdc4 the line-up changed and i felt i wanted to go my own way because this wasn't working for me. I joined up with team-coolermaster where I also met Neil Kirk our teammanager of fnatic.cod4. During my time in TCM i felt like i was the only one putting in alot of effort so when i got an offer from TEK-9 i joined up with them to develop the style of playing i have today. TEK-9 folded after the summerlans and i got another offer from Button Bashers, we dominated alot off LANS and i really felt comfortable in that team. When buttonbashers folded I had different offers from different teams, but I joined up with fnatic. It felt like home playing there and i enjoyed it alot and i still enjoy it alot. We really dominated the summerlans and we're looking forward to show it again on cc7 !


Question: You have been in some of the most successful teams in Europe, first ButtonBashers and then Fnatic, what was the main differences between these two team's playstyle?

Answer: The personalities of people. fnatic has players like kyo who played on a top-level in counterstrike:source, he's a really team-captain and he has alot of experience and he's more than capable of getting us through bad times and well that's the difference. In buttonbashers if we would lose there was alot of blaming on each other while in fnatic we just sit down and talk as a team and say what we need to fix and nobody gets blamed or so, so we're even more motivated after we lose and it's all thanks to the personalities of the players in the team, there hasn't been a single day where i didn't have fun with fnatic =).


Question: So what you think is most important in order to create a professional team?

Answer: Patience, skill & respect. You can't progress as a team if you have players in your line-up who think they are better than everybody else and don't feel the need to practise. You need to respect each other as players and as a person cause you're going to spend alot of time with your teammates, you'll chill out on lan together, go out together and stuff like that.


Question: When ButtonBashers disbanded, you were a goal of every notorious organisation, why did you choose Fnatic?

Answer: The atmosphere in the team was just amazing, they made me feel really relaxed and i met KyoChi & LINQAN before so it wasn't a hard choice and having Neil Kirk as a manager made it even easier, It felt like i was playing with people that i knew for a long time and it was just awesome. There was no whining, moaning or blaming on each other.


Question: Fnatic team, before your join, was struggling very hard to get in top10, when you arrived everything changed in a way that none could espect. What do you think oyu've done to fnatic's team?

Answer: I think i brought my own style to the team cause i'm an aim-based player and i just came from a team that pretty much dominated 2008 so the will to win everything with fnatic was big. We just clicked cause i had my own style that fit so well in fnatic, our teamplay & comms increased alot and it made it easy to fix our mistakes and become better every day.


Question: As you said before, Fnatic's team has a lot of different personalities, could you tell us the role of every player in the team and what good features he brings to the lineup?

Answer: First of all we got kyochi, the teamcaptain. He's a really good reader. He knows how teams play and addapts his style really quickly to it which is a good thing cause he picks up alot of frags like that. Linqan is a very aimbased player and is just sick in general, i don't think i've seen him play bad, he's a really agressive player with smg but has no problem switching to ak47 and play defensive. Odyx is just amazing with ak47, he has solid aim with the weapon and he brings alot of calmness to the team with his passive style of playing, but when he plays agressive it almost always work. Rivve was a more agressive ak47 player and played aim-based aswell, lot of agressive pushes from him worked really well in our team. And me well, I just cover my teammates and use my spawns to choose where i'm going to pick up the openingsfrag. With all that combined we got a really sick line-up


Question: You recently won Heaven Media's "best COD4 Player of the year", how does it feel? Do you think you deserved it or there is someone who deserves it more than you?

Answer: Well, it's not up to me if I deserved it or not. If community voted in this way I guess i deserved it.It feels great to win such an important award, this means a lot of what i did last year.


Question: We heard that Rivve has left the team, and for that reason you are looking for a fifth player to complete your lineup. How the hunt is going?

Answer: It's going really well, we should announce the new players in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned .


Question: I know, you can't release any further information about that, but could you tell us the nationality at least?

Answer: Haha, I can't , you'll have to wait and see because it's not for sure yet. If we know it for sure the rest will know it aswell


Question: From the "CiC7 Teams" Thread on Tek9 i see you (fnatic) have not paid yet, that's obviously because you don't have a full lineup. This means you are not training also... Do you think that the lack of training in these days will be a deficit for your preparation for CiC7?

Answer: We have paid. We payed a week ago and we're on that list now. We don't think our preparation has been influenced in a bad way after we were forced to look for a new player, we've just got more motivation to actually practise and make sure we win the event;


Question: From that Thread we can see also that the attendence list is very busy, why do you think COD4 community revamped in this way in 2010?

Answer: After seeing modern warfare 2 was the worst game ever made for competitive gaming it wasn't a hard decission to go back to cod4 where people like vanner are doing their best to revive the community so a big thanks to Adam Vanner & other people .


Question: A lot of team signed up for CiC7, who do you think will be your biggest ostacle in the road to the grand final?

Answer: The new dignitas line-up & reason-gaming for sure. Also NCE with vanner & choobie seem to be doing lately, surely can't underestimate them or power-gaming.


Question: As there will be something like 50 teams at that LAN, who do you think will upset the most the groupstage and the brackets? I mean, which underdogs team is underrated for you?

Answer: Hmm nce with choobie & vanner, the rest i don't know. need to play alot of teams before i can have an opinion since we didn't play for a long time


Question: Which are your plans, as a team, for the near future?

Answer: We're hoping to win every online cup & lan for cod4 that's coming up, anything less than that won't be good enough for us

Question: You seem pretty confident, our interview is over dear Stevy, thanks for your time, do you want to greet or thanks someone in particular? Good Luck for next months.

Answer: First of all, thank tou you OX-GAMING for the interview. Yes I would like to thanks MSI for providing us some greats laptops, thanks to SteelSeries for the great hardware and obviously thanks to BigFoot Networks for their great Network Card. A special thanks to Neil Kirk <333.