Gaming Lessons

Down with Prototype: An Interview You Need to Read

Every competitive gamer’s goal is to become known and recognized by the gaming community. To get there requires skill, dedication, and teamwork. In an effort to help rising players and teams, we decided to start approaching solid teams that haven’t quite worked up to the top 8 quite yet, in the hopes of providing additional perspectives on situations and concerns you yourself might have.

With that, we got a chance to interview Ziljian and Amplifye from the team Prototype. They have just come off of a 29th place finish at MLG Columbus and is a shining example of how a relatively unknown amateur team that works hard and practices can accomplish great things. So sit down, start reading, and try to draw parallels to your own situation along the way.

The Interview

GL: Alright, thanks guys for getting online to talk about your team’s performance at MLG Columbus. You guys did a phenomenal job and walked away with your first Top 32 placing. Before we start, I want to get a little more information on your lives outside of Halo. What kind of activities or hobbies do you guys participate in?

AMPLIFYE: Alright, well besides playing Halo I am on my school’s basketball team. Besides hat I just like to chill at my house with friends.

ZILDJIAN: Outside of Halo I pretty much just hang out with friends and do whatever. You know, like go to movies and hang out with my bros.

GL: Before Columbus, and Meadowlands for Amplifye, did you guys participate in any MLG Tournaments?

ZILDJIAN: I attended MLG Dallas in 2008 because it was really the only event I could travel to because of school and what not. I ended up getting 4th round with some local Texas players. Before that I went to another event in Dallas, but I don’t really want to talk about it (laughs). My first event was actually Anaheim in 2006 for Halo 2.

AMPLIFYE: Pretty much the only event I had gone to before Meadowlands was Orlando in 2008. I wasn’t much of a Halo 2 player so all my experience is from Halo 3.

GL: Amplifye, you teamed with Krunchy and Obi at Meadowlands. Tell us about that experience and how you guys did.

AMPLIFYE: Well, we hit 7th round in the loser’s bracket. It was kind of a dissappointment, we were looking to hit Semi-Pro at that event. We definatly had a few team problems and didn’t get a lot of practice in so we defiantly aimed to get a lot more practice in as a team for Columbus. Meadowlands was a good warmup for Columbus though, it really showed what we could do with the three players that we actually kept after the event.

GL: You said that you guys wanted to get a lot more practice in for Columbus. Did you have any LANs or…?

ZILDJIAN: Ampliye and I both live in Texas so we get a ton of practice in with each other and work on our chemistry. Amplifye and I got to LAN four or five times before Columbus. Krunchy was getting in some LANs as well where he lives. When we weren’t LANing though we were playing and practicing online with eachother. We scrimmed a few teams online before the event like Sector 7 with Ms Beretta and then DEADicated.Pretty much just practiced online and LANed as much as we could.

AMPLIFYE: Pretty much what Zildjian said, everyone tried to LAN as much as possible. Online we pretty much practiced at night because Zildjian has to work.

GL: You guys talked about how you LANed a lot individually before the event. Did you guys get a chance to get a LAN in as a team before the event?

ZILDJIAN: We all got to Columbus on Thursday and setup a LAN with Sector 7 and with DEADicated. Those were pretty much the only LANs as a team we had setup before the event.

GL: Now lets start talking about the actual tournament. Going into the tournament, did your team set a goal as to what place or round you wanted to get past?

ZILDJIAN: We went into the tournament wanting the best. We wanted top 16, top 8 if possible. You always have to go into a tournament with confidence. That’s one of the main factors of how you place but I know that we everyone wanted to do better than Meadowlands and we did way better than that.

AMPLIFYE: We defiantly didn’t want to set a particular goal. I mean, we wanted to do better than what we did at Meadowlands but we didn’t want to set a particular goal because if you limit yourself you can’t get any higher than that. We had to just play our best, especially when we got knocked into the loser’s bracket after Round 2. We just took everything one game at a time, you never want to look too far ahead.

GL: I wanted to talk about how you guys got knocked into the loser’s bracket. You guys had a bye the first round and then lost in Winner’s Bracket Round 2, so you actually had to play the entire tournament in the Loser’s Bracket. What went wrong that series? What did you guys think you could of done to change the outcome and win?

ZILDJIAN: I guess you could say that we actually went into the series a little too confident. We watched the kids play before and said that we easily could win this. Split screen didn’t help us out too much either though. We are used to playing on full screen just like Xbox Live at our houses. Besides that, we weren’t playing too well as a team. We were making individual pushes and not really playing how we practiced.

AMPLIFYE: We defiantly went into the series with a lack of warm up. Like you said, we got a bye the first round so we hadn’t played for about five hours before that match, so that’s never good. If a team is ever in a situation like that be sure to find somewhere in the venue to practice and at least play a few games.

GL: When you got knocked into the loser’s bracket, what were your initial thoughts going through your head? I mean, you guys were pretty successful at Meadowlands, making it to the 7th round so obviously this wasn’t what you were expecting to be knocked into the Loser’s Bracket in the 2nd round.

ZILDJIAN: We were defiantly demoralized. I got picked on a lot for getting knocked down in the 2nd round, especially since it was a 2-0. Our coach was one of Krunchy’s locals and he was just trying to bring up our spirits because he knew that we couldn’t play with a negative attitude. We kind of came up with reasons why we didn’t play so good but we didn’t rely on those reasons, we knew we just had to keep playing hard. We knew what we did wrong and we just had to build on it. It was defiantly an eye opener for our team though. At least we got knocked down at the end of the night instead of on Saturday because we had a night to build up some moral and get back into the tournament.

AMPLIFYE: It defiantly pushed down our confidence and showed us that we had to step up our game and we ended up doing that from that point on. It was unreal.

GL: You guys actually had to play Vanish Point, the team that knocked you into the loser’s bracket again that tournament in Loser’s Bracket Round 6. What did you guys do differently that helped you win that series and continue on in the tournament?

AMPLIFYE: Its funny you mention that because when we got knocked down in Winner’s Round 2 we were talking and said, “What if we played them again.” We wanted to play them so bad because we knew that if we did play them again that we could defiantly win. We were actually down in the first game against them (Narrows Team Slayer) but we came back and won that first game, so that pretty much anchored it. After coming back from that much we knew we couldn’t lose, we were just on fire.

GL: That’s amazing guys. You defiantly were on fire throughout the tournament, especially in the later rounds of the Loser’s Bracket. You actually had to play two teams that could have been competing in the championship bracket, Reunion and VG The New Order. What was going through your heads when you heard you had to play Reunion, a team with four Top 16 pros: Elumnite, MudVayne, Severince, and TC Fear?

ZILDJIAN: We actually just got finished with Loser’s Round 6 when they were announcing our stations. So we had to sprint over to our next station. We sat down, plugged in our controllers, made our profiles. We really didn’t know who we were playing. I actually stood up and looked over the monitors to see and I saw Elumnite and his team. We were just like, “Oh crap dude. Four top pros.” We knew that we could win, we just had to keep our teamwork up and we did. The first game was 50-49. We knew that if the games were that close then we could beat these guys and we did just that.

GL: The series after that you had to play VG The New Order, another team that consisted of experience pros, Naded and Karma. This was in the last round of the Loser’s Bracket, so you had to win this series in order to advance to the championship bracket and secure a Top 32 placing. Did winning the series against Reunion help you guys realize that your just as good as a Pro Team and boost your confidence going into this series against VG?

ZILDJIAN: It defiantly did. Beating them was just amazing, and going into Round 8 we asked ourselves who else could we play? And it was VG, so we were pretty excited. I heard about the Golden Ticket Contest on the forums, so it was exciting to play these guys and see if they lived up to the hype. They beat us the first game, but it was really close. Our coach kept us motivated the whole time though. We ended up winning the next two no problem. To see their reactions after we won was incredible. Naded wouldn’t shake our hands, Karma wouldn’t shake our hands. They just had the worst look on their faces, I don’t know how to explain it. No one was rooting for us that series, we had about five fans. So when we won they just started screaming our names. It was just a sick and amazing feeling to finally make it out.

AMPLIFYE: We were defiantly underdogs coming into this tournament, not really against a certain team but just in general. People were saying we were going to get hit out in Loser’s Bracket Round 4 and we were getting some bad comments on the forums. I remember saying to Zildjian that this would be the hardest way to get out of AM and we defiantly deserve it out of most of the teams that talked bad about us. Just to see everyone’s reaction was unreal.

GL: I can just imagine what you guys were feeling after that victory. That series put you guys in the Championshjp Bracket though, so you were competing for a Top 32 placing. Have any of you guys ever come that far in a tournament?

AMPLIFYE:Zildjian actually made it out in Halo 2 FFA, he got Top 32 in that. Team-wise, none of us had ever made it that far. So it was a new experience.

ZILDJIAN: I actually made it to the final round in AM at Anaheim ’08. We lost game 3 50-48. I’ve been close, but this is was the first time I made it out with a team. It felt like all our hard work paid off.

GL: How did it feel to finally make it out of AM and overall place 29th in the tournament?

AMPLIFYE: We were defiantly excited for the potential of us getting a lot of acknowledgment obviously. That’s what every player wants, they want the glory.

ZILDJIAN: We defiantly were happy and excited to place so well. It felt like all of our hard work had finally payed off and we were getting some recognition for it.

GL: Do you guys feel that placing 29th could be considered a bad thing, especially if you place worse in Dallas?

ZILDJIAN: I don’t think that there is a downside at all with placing 29th. People are still saying that it was lucky and that we had an easy bracket. So we are getting some bad comments about our placing, but we’ll let them keep talking.

AMPLIFYE: We obviously want to do better but we aren’t really focusing on what other people say. We have our own expectations for ourselves, we’re not going to set our standards by what other people say. We have people that call us bad, and if we set our standards to that then we’d be a bad team.

GL: What are your plans for Dallas? Of course you want to place higher than 29th but what are you doing team-wise? Are you guys putting in more hours of practice? Are you planning on staying together and improving as a team?

AMPLIFYE: Sticking together wasn’t really a hard decision. Zildjian got offered by Elumnite to start up a team with him because he saw his good sniping at Columbus but he declined the offer because he knew that we wanted to stay together and improve as a team. We had come that far at our first event together, so we have potential to place higher for sure.

ZILDJIAN: Like Amplifye said, we have a ton of potential to place higher, especially when we didn’t get to practice the Pro Gametypes that much. We just need to practice those and improve on a few little things and we could defiantly make a push for Top 16. There is no stopping us, especially when we catch on fire.

GL: You guys talked about catching on fire, was there ever a point in the weekend where you felt unstoppable and had the crowd on your side?

ZILDJIAN: We didn’t want to think that we were unstoppable, because that’s what happened in Winner’s Round 2. At Loser’s Bracket Round 5 people started coming up to us and telling us good job, and rooting us on. It was defiantly motivating to know people were supporting you.

AMPLIFYE: We had a couple people that came with Krunchy that were keeping us motivated and going crazy after every game. Stuff like that kept us motivated and helped us come back and tell ourselves that a series wasn’t over, even when we lost the first game. It was just great to have people cheering us on, our coach especially. He was always motivating us to play our best and telling us that we were still in this.

GL: Yes, its always important for a coach to keep a team motivated, that’s the main reason that they’re there besides for timing power weapons. Your coach was actually a friend of Krunchy’s. What was his responsibility throughout the tournament for your team?

ZILDJIAN: He was obviously there to time everything. That was one of his main responsibilities because for some reason we could just not time when rockets were spawning. It was the hardest thing ever, I mean two minutes in and we couldn’t even do it. So he was mainly there to time rockets and that’s how we came back in a few games because of those rockets.

AMPLIFYE: Timing was defiantly a huge factor but we mainly called pushes by ourselves, so we weren’t really worried about him doing that job because timing and power weapon control is such a huge factor in this game. He gave us a ton of moral support in the game and out of the game too though.

GL: Alright, well thanks guys. Is there any advice you want to give teams that are reading this or is there anyone you want to give a shout out to?

ZILDJIAN: My advice to all amateur teams is to stay together and work on your flaws. Its honestly pointless to break up right after an event because you can only get better with practice, there is no way your going to get worse by continuing to practice. Just a shout out to Slippin’ and Vipe, just some local guys who have helped us LAN and get better.

AMPLIFYE: I just want to give a shout out to my main man Cubby because he captures all of our stuff and tries to get us a little more out there. Those film clips do help us get our name out there. My advice would be to get as much practice with the same people as possible because switching teams is like restarting every time you do so its defiantly not helping you out.

Final Thoughts

Gaming Lessons would just like to thank Zildjian and Amplifye for giving up their time to talk with us and answer our questions. There is a lot to be learned from their responses, so analyze them and learn from some of the best players in the game. We wish them the best of luck at Dallas!

And, with that, we have a request to other teams with MLG experience: leave a comment below describing what you think was a unique part of your experience that can help other teams. Whether it’s a challenge that had to be bested, or just some random observations, we want to hear from you! Those that we find to be particularly interesting will be contacted for an interview in the coming days, and will be offered a free 5% discount coupon for lessons.

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About the Author: Kaybesee