SEMPHIS: "You can't talk shit and act like you're the best when you've done nothing"

Nouns have kicked off their IEM Rio Americas RMR campaign in an unfortunate fashion, as the squad was thoroughly trounced by Evil Geniuses in their opening match-up. Following the loss, Nouns coach Kory "SEMPHIS" Friesen spoke with Dust2.us' Dafydd Gwynn about a wide range of topics, including the difficulties Nouns had in the match against Evil Geniuses, the logistics of transitioning to a coaching role, and the state of North American Counter-Strike.

Quite a tough loss for you guys. You were down big after the first half but you had a bit of a run in the second half. What's the takeaway from this game?

The main takeaway is that our CT-side plans that we made in the bootcamp are probably gonna work in the future. We have a lot of different protocols and setups that kinda developed because in NA Mirage is one of our weaker maps and we were doing a bad job at prioritizing having three good maps. We had our two good maps, but we needed that middle ground, a map that if it's a BO3 or the veto doesn't go our way we can still win on. We didn't really feel like we had that if that makes sense. We were trying to improve a couple of the other ones like Vertigo and Mirage, and we put in a lot of work on it, but the problem is T-side.

For some reason, we just had such a tough time on T-side, even in practice. It's not surprising to me; it's surprising that we got one round but if we got three or four, if we won pistol and won four rounds I think maybe we would have got it closer because also the nerves would have been higher on them. When you only need to win two rounds, you feel like, we're eventually gonna get this. In the back of your head even if you're losing you're like "We only need one round to bring it to overtime", so you have no wiggle room. You also can't save at all, you have no option to save. Once you lose a round you have to force, which is what happened to us, our money got put in a bad spot for the last round. We gotta go back to the drawing board on T-side.

We also kinda screwed up the veto in my opinion, we were kinda expecting Nuke or Inferno, and I had the opinion that I thought they were going to ban Inferno, but everyone else disagreed, and then they banned Inferno so... [laughs]. Live and learn, gotta go forward, but I told the guys after we lost they were playing better on CT and the first time LG picked up coldzera and TACO they got 16-0'd on Dust2, so it happens. It's Counter-Strike, sometimes you start off slow, this is their first big international LAN for a lot of them, so it's not surprising that I saw a couple missed shots. The first tac pause I took, because this is my first time coaching a big event as well so it's new for me as well, I couldn't talk for the first fifteen seconds, because I didn't realize the mic had to be literally right in front of my mouth because I was talking and they go "We can't hear you", and I was like "Is this thing on?". That's a little bit my fault, and it's just a learning experience. It's just one tac pause, so it's not the reason we lost, but it didn't help.

Quite a tough opponent straight off the bat as well. With this loss, have your expectations changed for the rest of the tournament?

Not really, because I feel like they're definitely one of the more prepared teams. I think they're one of the teams that do a lot of prep work. Everything they do has a logical reason to it, they're not just playing off talent or skill. On Inferno for example, if they're doing a setup, they're saving certain nades for certain scenarios. You can tell watching their demos because I prepped for them on maps, it's not surprising they had a good CT side because their protocols are so strong that if you don't have a way to pull their nades out and force them back into a position, you're going to lose, and that's what happened. It's definitely our fault and they played good.

You guys were recently picked up by Nouns. How does it feel to come to an event and not really have to stress about finances like you might if you were still orgless?

I mean it definitely helped a lot for the bootcamp. I started the GoFundMe, and we raised just under 3k CAD, which is just under 100 dollars USD [laughs]. Nouns saw that and contacted me and we worked it out that they pretty much covered most of it, a lot more than the GoFundMe covered so really grateful for that. It definitely took a lot of stress off because it's not like we were making bank with our last org either. It's one thing if you're making like 20k and then you lose your team and have an event coming up, you still have reserve funds. We didn't really have that on everyone, so it definitely took a lot of the burden off for sure, so we're really thankful to come and help.

Does that mean you can just focus on coaching instead of having to be a manager and a coach?

That's the one difficult thing. I felt like I was getting pulled a bit thin in the last couple of days just because I'm trying to do both roles. We didn't really have a manager, on the org side of things they have that down but we don't have a CS manager. This is my first time doing the coach thing, and I honestly just underestimated how much messaging back and forth and having to go and do different things and figuring things out, it's definitely beneficial to have a manager for these bigger events. A Fragadelphia, whatever, you go there for a weekend and you go home and it's not a big deal, but bootcamping, logistics, flights, taxis, media days, making sure people are up, sleeping on time, sometimes you feel like a dad a little bit.

When I was a pro and was playing before my eye thing, I was one of those guys that always prioritized the game fully where it's like, I want to sleep at the right time at bootcamp, I want to make sure I'm not drinking caffeine too late so I can sleep properly, and a lot younger players don't always think about these things, and it's something that I'm trying to ingrain in people that if you want to be a professional you gotta act like a professional. But it's a work in progress, I'm not expecting people to start out there, but I'm trying to push them in that direction.

Would you say as a coach it's equally important to do stuff in-game as it is out-of-game like you were saying about almost being a dad?

I think so. If you had a more experienced team like, let's say, prime Astralis, I doubt you have to do much, they're all taking it super serious. From what I heard, they all worked out, did cardio, made sure they were eating healthy. So it probably depends on the team, and when you skew younger it becomes more work, and as they get older they smarten up a little bit. I also think it's some mental too. Some people take losses really hard, and I get it, because you're at a Major qualifier and you want to make a Major, it's everyone's dream. I get the stress is high, but people just need to sometimes relax and realize it's just a video game. If you lose, you lose, and you always have another chance.

Your team has become a place of redemption for some of your players. Does that give you guys extra motivation to go out and win games?

We definitely had not the greatest rep back in the day, but when we removed nosraC it took away a lot of that; I think he was the one people didn't like the most. cynic, I honestly think people misinterpreted what happened with the whole bootcamp situation. It wasn't 100% his fault, and it also wasn't 100% not his fault. There was a little bit of blame on both sides, but he's not the type of person to really come out and defend himself, he'll just take it. I think people are a little bit harsh on him. It didn't go down exactly the way that it was said. I think people should cut him a little bit of slack.

Party Astronauts and Carpe Diem have joined Evil Geniuses and Bad News Bears have closed up shop. That leaves a spot for the grassroots NA team that has always been the hometown favorite. Are you guys ready to take on that role of the American sweethearts?

I would like to think so. I think it's us, ATK, and both the EG academy teams were kinda all tied, and one of us needs to come out on top if that makes sense. Maybe people disagree, I don't mean to sound disrespectful or anything, but ATK can beat us, we can beat PA, PA can beat ATK. None of us are leagues above, some of us head-to-head might defeat each other more often, but at the end of the day none of us are consistently beating Liquid and none of us are consistently placing at big tournaments, we go to Europe and get slaughtered sometimes. Anyone that has egos on these teams, just start working harder, you're not good yet. I say that from experience, people are cocky, and it's good to have confidence but you have to be realistic. You have to put in the work, and you can't talk shit and act like you're the best when you've done nothing. I don't like when people just assume they're good, you have to work for it.

Would you say there's a slight friendly rivalry between you guys, ATK, PA, and CD?

Yeah, I think some players don't like each other. I don't know if the whole teams hate each other, but there's definitely a little bit of like ex-teammates cutting each other, typical NA drama, FPL people getting titled, and that kind of stuff. At the end of the day, I just want NA to get better. That's kind of why I came back, NA was in a really bad spot. I think EG is helping out a lot with rosters and supporting them. It does suck that they can't play at the RMRs, and some of our players will never join an academy team because of that, which is respectful in my opinion, it means you're not playing for money, you just want to win the best tournament, so I get it. I think the resources, long-term that EG are providing will help them.

It'll outweigh not being able to go to one event.

I think so. Resources help a lot more than people think, quality bootcamps not having to worry about financing. You come to Europe, you don't have to worry about food money. I remember back in the day when I was on Area 51 with DaZeD, tck, Hiko, and seang@res, we went to Europe with like $500 in our bank account. We didn't have a lot of money. It was pretty bad, we were eating coffee and bread in McDonalds. I don't think people realize how good they have it now with some of these events. Even ESL, they pay for flights, they pay for hotels, they pay for shuttles, they have food vouchers. My girlfriend is like a makeshift manager because we didn't have one, so she came to Stockholm to take pictures and stuff just to help out; she also wanted to come to Europe because the COVID pandemic canceled a lot of travel and she loves traveling, so it was a win-win type thing for us and now they've helped pay for a little bit of her flight. Not completely, but they helped out a bit since she's helping them out a little bit, running the Instagram and Twitter and stuff. I think it's one of those things where the accommodations are so much better now that when I hear people complaining about things it kinda makes me laugh. Even back in the day, the Virtus.pro lineup drove like 14 hours to events and stuff. It's just different now.

How do you feel about the current state of NA CS?

I think people need to work harder in terms of taking practice seriously, I think that's the biggest thing I notice. Including my team, I'm not just complaining about everyone else, I think other than Liquid, EG, and some of the Brazilian teams, I honestly feel like a lot of people get frustrated that they don't win scrims but scrims don't matter. If you get 12-3'd and you get tilted because you lost a scrim you're an idiot, just learn from the mistakes. Losing actually helps you way more than winning. The bootcamps that we went to with C9, Quantic, Area 51, Complexity, our best performances at big events were bootcamps that didn't go well, we didn't win most of our scrims, we lost most of them, or they weren't easy wins. Because we could talk about problems, fix them, and improve, we weren't just playing to kill people. Sometimes you play scrims in NA and it feels like people are flying through smokes and stuff and they just don't care.

I will say though that in Europe the ping helps a lot, and I don't know how you could ever address that in NA other than making maybe the area where people play more central, like moving players to a more central location. I would say LA but I don't want to go to LA [laughs]. Maybe Texas or somewhere like that. I think just putting it in a more central location where our ping is lower because the way you kill people here is insane. It's not the same game, it's quite literally a completely different game. People jiggle-peek you and your head gets snapped off. In NA you can wideswing with an AK versus an M4, and you always have an advantage because the M4 can never crisply kill you. It's really hard to two-bullet someone with an M4 with 60 ping, so the AK feels like it always has advantages. Then obviously there's people in NA that just live in the location where they ping five everywhere, and that's a huge buff as well.

You just went up against a former teammate, autimatic. How was that?

autimatic is a super hard worker, I've always respected autimatic. I'm not one of those people that gets mad when someone beats me when I'm friends with them, it's never like that. When he won a Major I was happy for him, so it's never like that for me. I just hope that we can do well and they can do well.

What would you say to a player or team that was in the situation you guys were in when you didn't have an org when you were competing?

Keep your image good. Stop being so toxic. Try to brand yourselves a bit, orgs definitely care a little bit more about social media these days. Stream a bit but don't stream too much, it's kinda like a middle ground. If you're one of those people, I think you can hurt yourself if after you end prac you just stream pointless pugs for ten hours, you still gotta watch demos and stuff. I do think having some branding helps, especially getting picked up by orgs, if you have zero personality and zero marketability there's not a huge reason for people to pick you up when you're not super good. You can even see that with people like Tenz for example, why did he get on teams? I'm not saying he was not talented, he's super talented, but I think the stream definitely helps you get noticed in a way. It's complicated though, there's not a right answer I don't think.

Anything else you want to say?

Shoutout to Nouns, and I hope we can do better.

SEMPHIS and the rest of Nouns will be looking to patch the holes in their gameplay before their match in the 0-1 pool, where the squad will face off against LATAM side Infinity for a chance to even their win-loss record.