JamezIRL: "Even if I take a month off of CS there's still a lot to keep up with"

After a tough opening loss against TheMongolz, Complexity fell into the elimination series where they would meet GamerLegion. Before that, Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore caught up with James "JamezIRL" Macaulay, who is standing behind the team during ESL Challenger Atlanta due to Tiaan "T.c." Coertzen not being able to attend due to personal reasons.

Mnmzzz and JamezIRL talked about what went wrong against TheMongolz, James' return to Counter-Strike and more. Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.

This is your first time on a CS main stage in four years. How does it feel to be back in the driver's seat again?

I really like it, I'm happy to help whether is on stage or behind, it doesn't matter to me, I don't care so much about the fanfare. I like being in the competitive element and working towards something as a team. It's about the players.

You are coaching because T.c. was not able to make it. Do you think the team feels his absence here in Atlanta?

Absolutely. Tiaan is an absolute pleasure to have around all the time, he is always cracking jokes and is a smiley guy. He is helping from afar with strats and prep.

You recently returned to the world of Counter-Strike after a couple of years on VALORANT. Did you feel you had a lot of catching up to do when coming back to CS?

Kind of, of course. I feel like it would be arrogant to say no because people are always coming up with strats and new meta, so there's always a lot to keep up with. Even if I take a month off of CS there's still a lot to keep up with but the basics remain the same. It took me a while to get to the point where I felt confident adding strats because I needed to know what the whole universe of possible strats was at the time, but it was not that big of a deal.