Even after a 4th place result in Stage 1 of the 2021 R6S NAL, Disrupt Gaming made some roster changes, bringing on Matthew “Dpfire” Macway in replacement of Mark Arismendez. We had the opportunity to speak with Disrupt Gaming’s newest prodigy, who gives us his insight on his transition to NAL and what he hopes to improve on in the near future.
Below is the transcript of the interview with Dpfire. The bold text are our questions, while the standard text are Dpfire’s answers.
Having recently made the shift to a new team, not only that, shifting to tier 1, you seemed right at home in the top tier of siege, how have you found the NAL so far?
Coming from only one season in CL, this is my first season in the NAL, it’s been a huge, huge change from the past teams I’ve been on but so far, like you said I’ve been fitting in super well so far, I personally have been playing very well in my role and I love these guys on this team and the NAL’s great and I’m just having a good time so far.
Who do you think is the best entry fragger in the NAL apart and what do you think you can learn from their game?
Obviously in this stage, the best entry that we’ve seen so far isn’t even from an entry player, it’s from Hotancold, who plays a flex role. But I’d say probably the best entry and just how it’s setup is another player from SSG, Fultz, because SSG is all about drone work and their team play and co-ordination is just next level and that allows Fultz to do his job really well entering the map and finding frags.
That’s one thing that I can take away from that is that keep working on good communication with your droners, always be talking, looking for openings and strats in sites and just working for those opening frags.
If you had to make an ideal player – a super player of sorts, which players would it be a combination of?
On a purely mechanical and skill level, for my first player, you probably know who I’m gonna say- Beaulo, that guy is just crazy mechanically, I’ve never seen anybody better. Game knowledge-wise, somebody who’s been playing for a super long time and he’s on his way back, it’s Canadian, he’s been playing since the game came out and that guy is just super smart and really talented.
Another player I’d choose is Paluh, he’s just been so dominant, especially in the invitational, he was just absolutely owning everybody, I’m pretty sure he had 10+ kills every single game he played in the invitational which is just insane. I’ll do one more, I’d have to go with ThinkingNade, he’s been such a strong support player for as long as I can remember, that guy has been consistently playing super well around all stages of the NAL, all seasons.
On your debut, you went 11-9 against TSM, can you walk us through your thought process in different stages of the game and do you think you, personally could have performed better on debut?
Coming into Disrupt, I only had 2 weeks of practise since I landed in Las Vegas with them, so coming in, the main thing we were focusing on for that TSM game was just working on our basics, teamwork, communication and working out the strats.
Going into that game, we knew that it was gonna be a rough game because TSM has consistently been one of the best teams in the NAL, the scoreline ended 7-3, but a lot of the rounds were a lot closer than the scoreline showed and you could see that on the scoreboard too, we just made a bunch of small mistakes throughout that game, especially on defence.
On attack, we just couldn’t close out some rounds, we let Chala clutch a 1v3 and that just comes down to, personally my lack of practice with these guys and lack of synergy and coordination on closing out those rounds because I feel like if we had a few more weeks of practice we definitely could have closed out that game a lot easier than the scoreline showed.
You have been consistently performing for Disrupt Gaming, which was not the case in your last few games at Orgless, what was your sudden motivation which made you up your game so drastically?
Coming from the CL to the NAL, you really have to be dialled in and have to be giving your all at any given moment and in CL, you could make the argument that there isn’t as much competition, you could be more laid back and don’t have to go 100% but coming into the NAL, I don’t wanna let these guys down. I will always be trying to give my best that I can possibly play and that just comes down to how much you want to win and how much time and dedication you wanna put in.
Seeing as playing videos games for money can be a dream job for a lot of people so why not make the most of it and give it your full 100% at all times when you can. At the end of the day it is just a video game but this is m,y life right now so I’m gonna give it my all.
How would you describe the team’s mentality regarding overcoming losses and coming back strong after defeats? For eg. DG came back from defeats against TSM and DZ to win 7-4 against XSET and 7-2 against Beastcoast respectively.
With Disrupt, we’re all super close as players and off-stage, we’re all really good friends and we hang out a lot and we just put those losses behind us and every time we lose a round or a game it’s a big learning experience, it’s something that can be used in our favour afterwards.
When we lose, we really just take that and learn from it, we VOD review and see what screwed is over and what we could do to fix that and come up with new stuff. We don’t really let losses get us down, we’ll push through it and get better from it and it showed in our recent Beastcoast game.
What, according to you is the aspect your game is currently lacking and you wanna improve upon to become a complete player?
One thing that kinda bugs me right now is my ability to stay focussed 100% during a game because matches in the NAL are really intense and sometimes, for example- callouts that are being given, sometimes I won’t hear them the first time and somebody has to repeat them, that comes down to me being too focussed myself and on what I’m doing in the round and cancelling out other people’s callouts.
I’ve been getting a lot better at it coming into the NAL, in CL I didn’t have this problem as I was more laid back and chilled but it was a problem that started when we were first practising, I was tunnel visioning but I’ve gotten a lot better at it so far.
Along with your frags there is a somewhat low survivability rating from you. As an entry player, that is justified, but do you think it should be better?
I think that is completely situational, obviously, there are a lot of deaths that can be played out better, by not over peeking, pausing during the round and just getting out of dangerous situations but as I said, it’s completely situational because sometimes you have to die in order to take map control.
Siege is just doubling up with somebody and trading out those kills, I think my survival rating could be better because I’ve died first a few times due to just random stuff but I think my survival rating makes sense for what I’ve been doing and how I play.
Your next three fixtures are OXG, Mirage and Soniqs, how do you think DG fairs against these teams and which team of these 3 are the strongest opponent according to you?
I think we match up very well into all three of those teams, Oxygen was looking great in stage 1 but I don’t know what is going on with that team right now but their performance has been lacking. They are currently in 7th place, I think for our Oxygen game, we’re gonna obviously be doing a lot of VOD reviews and going over their tendencies and stuff like that. I think our hardest game is hard to say because it really comes down to what maps we end up on, but team-wise, Oxygen or Mirage will be our hardest game.
