Sonic: "It was interesting to see how [Complexity] grew as players"

Complexity were dealt an unfortunate blow as they headed to IEM Dallas as they announced that they would be unable to use Norwegian AWPer Håkon "hallzerk" Fjærli for the event as a result of visa issues. In his steed, Complexity called upon Aran "Sonic" Groesbeek, a former teammate from the Complexity core's time as Extra Salt. Despite a respectable performance from Sonic, Complexity faltered in their opening match to European side ENCE, sending them to the lower bracket early on home turf.

Following Complexity's loss to ENCE, Sonic spoke with Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore regarding how being a substitute came about, his near signing with Davenport University, and his thoughts on the current state of the South African scene, among a number of different topics.

Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.

Despite the loss, you had a firecracker of a game. How did you go from having such a long break from tier-one play to being completely on fire in that match?

Like you said, I had a pretty long break, about a year, but in between that I was still playing, obviously not at the same level. I don't think you quite lose your knowledge and your understanding of Counter-Strike at what it takes at a high level of play. I had a bit of nerves coming back in, but I watched a couple demos and I just thought to myself, 'I could still probably play at this level". I went into the game with not really high expectations, I just came in to have fun with my team. Obviously, since I'm a sub nothing's really riding on it for me. I just played my game, and I played well.

When they tracked you down and asked you to sub for them, was it a pretty quick turnaround in terms of wanting to play and practice?

Right now I'm actually studying full-time, so we haven't really practiced at all; the first time we practiced was yesterday. No prep really coming into this event. T.c just asked me a couple weeks back, hallzerk might not be able to play because he had visa issues and if I'd be willing to sub if it came to it, and I said yeah, it's no issue, because I can do some of my university work online. I'm just juggling a lot at the moment.

Since leaving Extra Salt, with your former teammates going on to play for Complexity, what have you noticed about changes in style and calling since that shift?

I've noticed that there's been an improvement on how they practice, and probably I'd say communication is a bit more sharper. Even in Extra Salt we were still at a pretty good, high level, but in their time on Complexity T.c has changed his coaching style a bit, JT has grown quite a bit more as a caller, a lot smarter about how he does his work and his prep. I was pretty impressed to come back on and it was really interesting for me to see how they grew as players in the time I was gone. I stayed the same (laughs).

For a brief period, there was a chance you were going to enroll at Davenport University as part of their collegiate CS:GO program. Ultimately that did not come to fruition. What happened that made that arrangement not work out?

The arrangement was actually set to go through. I was prepared to go to the US, but my family actually moved to Canada, and I just sort of thought about it for a second time. I left pro CS because I wanted to focus on something else in my life, and I just figured why am I going to a university and just throwing myself back into Counter-Strike? I took a step back and spoke to my parents about it, and I kinda also missed my family living overseas for five years, so I decided, in the end, to move to Canada instead and let Davenport know, I was honest about it, probably not what I wanted to do in the future.

Watch the full interview below: