Our Interview Series from Katowice continues with a short chat with Sean ‘Gratisfaction’ Kaiwai about their stay in Poland, the tournament, and the future.
Jamie: Jamie here with Gratisfaction of Renegades. How have you been doing today?
Renegades Gratisfaction: Pretty decent, I guess.
You guys had a hell of a run here. Extremely long; 21 maps I believe over 11 matches, you did something only one other team has done this year and that was take a map off of Astralis. How has that been?
It is kind of hard to describe, hasn’t really sunk in yet, but it’s just been a grind really, basically been living in Poland. I actually updated my Facebook status to lives in Katowice Poland because of being here so long. It’ll be good to get away for sure.
You guys have been here since early January, haven’t you?
Yeah, since we arrived on January 8th, and now it’s March 2nd or 3rd or something (Editors Note: It was March 2nd).
That’s a long time to be in another country. You’ve been with the team since late September, in Counter-Strike terms that’s actually not a whole lot of time. But you guys have really seemed to gel together really well, whereas other teams sometimes have, you know, clashes back and forth for quite a while. How’d you guys manage that?
Everyone’s from the same kind of culture, their Australia and I’m New Zealand, which is basically a similar thing, I’m not going to say the same thing ’cause everyone else already says that. Everyone’s kinda chill on the team, no one really rages or anything, so problems get fixed a lot faster than maybe other teams. I feel like some people would just rage too much, you know, in other teams that I’ve been they rage at the idea of having criticism. But in this team everyone just takes it and just tries to improve their individual game.
Speaking of criticism, it had to be asked, the map pick against MIBR. What was the thought process that went into that?
They haven’t played it in the past three months at all, on their match history, and we were expecting them to think we would pick Mirage, or as they said Inferno. Yeah, we thought we’d just throw that in as a curve ball and then beat them on it and then take their map as well, but neither happened.
It’s unfortunate they are definitely one of the best Dust2 teams, but like you said, you hadn’t seen them play it in a long time. Going forward, what is the next big tournament you’re attending?
We’ve got StarLadder Shanghai in a month I think. That’s a $500k with some decent teams there as well.
Between now and then are you going to head back to the US and just relax a bit or going straight back to the grind?
We are stuck here for another week or something, doing visas and stuff and then I think we are having like a mini-holiday here, like a week long break. Then we’re gonna have a bootcamp back in America and then go to Shanghai from there.
Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it and I wish you luck in your future games, matches and tournament.
Chur cuz.
Interview transcribed by Grady Hooker.
