Interview with Jeffrey – “We all felt Rivals deserved better and thought this would be the way to keep the game alive”

In today’s Interview we chat about old tournaments and the Rivals competitive scene with long time community organizer, audiophile and expert caster Jeffrey!

Q: Hi Jeff! Most people probably know you, since you’ve been involved in Rivals since prehistoric times, but introduce yourself a bit for some newer players!

Hey Kenny! Thanks so much for the interview.

I’m known around the community as Jeffrey (my real name) or also by ‘Jeffcats’, a nickname you gave me 😉 I started playing Rivals back when the beta became available for Canadians, which was about a month before official release. It was the first mobile game that I became hooked on and took me by great surprise.

However, I would say that more than playing the game, I enjoy supporting it. The community is an incredible place, filled with the most amazing skilled folks from tons of different backgrounds. More than anything, I’ve wanted to support that community and make sure it stays together because it is one of a kind.

To make that happen, I did things like run tournaments, I’m also a play-by-play caster, and ultimately tried to realize the vision that the developers of the game had for the game from the start, which was to be an e-sports franchise. I always felt it was such a shame that this amazing game never turned out to be what we all thought it could be, so I try in whatever way I can to make that happen. Especially for the community because the community is what has kept this game going.

Jeffrey's Casting headquarters

Q: Can you talk a little bit about the man behind the microphone? What do you do when you are not commentating?

I am big into audio and music. I have a studio at home that doubles as both my shoutcasting station and my space to listen to music. I really enjoy listening to music and since sound is scientific, I enjoy exploring ways to make music sound even better and more immersive, so it’s one of my hobbies. Part of that involves finding older stereo equipment that I’ve learned how to repair and restore over the years, and I’ve even made a little bit of money doing it! It’s a fun hobby.

Besides that, I do a lot of camping every year. My wife and I love the outdoors and here in Canada there are a lot of nature to explore, especially where we live, so it’s something we do every year. We have a dream that when we have finished paying off our house, we are going to live out of our RV most of the year and travel. We love road trips and travelling so for us it’ll be the perfect way to do that.

Workwise, I work for an appeal board where I support my local community, and I am also studying for a Business Administration degree.

Casting companion, Luna

Q: How did you find C&C Rivals? Were you a big RTS fan before playing it?

Rivals is the best mobile game I have ever played, hands down. The graphics, the coding, the team behind it, the community... it is all incredible. It’s rare that you see such a culmination of all these things come into one place, and Rivals is it. Personally, I don’t play the game anymore because I find it to be a difficult, stressful game, but I enjoyed my time playing it thoroughly. In fact, had I stuck with it and finally reached a level 15 collection, I imagine I would have kept playing.

Before Rivals, I played the Command & Conquer series (I LOVE Red Alert), Starcraft, Age of Empires, Dune, and some other old RTS games. Rivals to me was an exercise in nostalgia. I remember seeing it pop up in the app store one day and thought, no way, C&C on mobile!? I must try that! So, I would say that I’m a fan of the RTS series for sure, but Rivals was the only RTS that I tried to become great at.

Q: How did you find casting? Was it something that always interested you?

Casting was something I never thought about doing until Rivals. In fact, the Rivals community “discovered” me and pushed me to become a caster. It was early 2019 when I began streaming the game on Twitch, and at the time I was doing it directly from my phone, so no camera and only my mic. On top of that, the in-game audio was recorded through the external microphone, so it sounded bad. But people heard my voice and commented how much they enjoyed listening to me. This took me by surprise because I had never even thought my voice sounded good.

A little later, I was asked to be the third caster for the Flamer Festival tournament, the second community tournament in the game’s history. This was with FourCourtJester and Poochies. Really, I was the third wheel in this scenario, so I didn’t get to do any real casting but rather, commentary between games. But, from there I built a relationship with FourCourtJester and he was a huge reason that I even became a caster to begin with. I owe a lot of what I know to him.

It wasn’t until I joined the RIFLE organization that I really started to cast regularly. Up until then I had been dabbling in casting here and there, doing some custom games on YouTube and the like. But when I joined RIFLE, I knew this was my opportunity to put Rivals into the e-sports light that I always thought it deserved, and I began to take it a lot more seriously.

Q: The Rivals Iron Fist League (RIFLE) was an important milestone in the game’s life. What was that experience like?

Wow! I’m flattered you think that. 😊

RIFLE started out as a small group that wanted to put on high quality, high production tournaments for the community. I wasn’t involved at this point, rather it was between about 5 or 6 other people from one of the alliances within the game. Eventually, they held their first tournament which was a 32-person single elimination format. A lot of people gave them critical feedback, and I could tell that there was a lot of room for improvement, especially with casting. Seeing all the complaints, I decided this could be an opportunity to do something, and so I approached the organizers and said if you would like some support, I would be happy to be a part of it and do casting for them. They gave me an interview where I provided some examples of my casting, and they brought me on board.

From there, things really took off. Once I was on the team, I was able to provide input and feedback and ultimately, it gave me a platform for my casting. I became the main host and caster for them. My first real event with them was RIFLE 2. RIFLE 2 was a lot of fun to do, even though there were some stressful moments! Right before RIFLE 2 started, I lost all the assets for the stream due to an issue with the way Streamlabs handles its accounts. I had to rebuild the entire thing from scratch literally 10 minutes before it started. But we got it done, because we had a competent team with committed people helping us out and had a great tournament. This set the stage for us as a group and demonstrated what we were capable of.

And then there was our ultimate event – RIFLE 3. I’ll never forget it because this is when we were able to acquire in-game prizing support directly from the Rivals team. I don’t know how it happened, but CommanderGoat worked his magic and was able to secure it for us. What some may not know is CommanderGoat was a major reason why RIFLE was successful, so he deserves a lot of credit for his efforts. When he secured the sponsorship, this gave us HUGE motivation and so, with that, we were able to create one of the largest tournaments that Rivals had ever seen. We really went all out! We even developed a trailer for the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQxjnEPykgo

I consider that to be our crowning achievement as an organization and, ultimately, our goal was to put Rivals on the esports platform it deserved from the start, and also, to try and breathe some life into the game. You see, during that time, that is when the original Redwood team dissolved, and a new EA team came on board. We could see that it was up to the community to make the game worthwhile for people to stick around, and that was a huge reason we did what we did.

RIFLE 3, the very fist tournament series sponsored by EA, with some familiar faces playing.

 

Q: RIFLE ended quite abruptly, shortly after announcing a collaboration with another e-sports organization. What happened behind the scenes?

You’re right, it did end abruptly. Basically, we tried to expand further beyond what we were capable of, and it ended up taking apart the entire organization. I’ll explain.

During my time in Armajet, I made connections with another tournament organization, The Forge League (TFL). They were impressed with my casting and brought me on board to cast their major tournament for the game. It went well, and I gained a lot of valuable experience about how to use Streamlabs to make better tournaments.

After that tournament, they approached me and asked if we wanted to work together (TFL and RIFLE). We would bring Rivals content to add to their catalogue of games, and they would provide their experience and skills to bolster our own tournaments, all the while we would be working together on other projects they had going. Basically, it was the best thing to happen to RIFLE because what we were lacking, they could provide (things like AAA quality production and a much better system for running the tournament stream).

Unfortunately, it turned out that my partner at RIFLE (The Real Kratos) couldn’t keep up with their needs. At this point we were doing things well beyond our imaginations, it was truly an amazing opportunity for us. Our goal with RIFLE was to give Rivals an e-sports platform it deserved, because of how EA advertised the game (saying it would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their biggest e-sports platform, FIFA), and how the game was designed. We all felt Rivals deserved better and thought this would be the way to keep the game alive. And now, this was our opportunity to fully realize that dream. But it was too much, Kratos was involved in other matters and didn’t have the time to commit to make it possible. I tried but couldn’t do everything myself because I was already busy with other matters in my own life, and so the execs at TFL made the decision to cut ties with us seeing that it wasn’t going to work out.

Once that happened, it became difficult to continue with RIFLE as is because it truly was heart-breaking, and I felt I had already done a lot up to that point. It’s a shame, really, because let me tell you – some of the graphics we had in the works for the TFL-RIFLE series were going to be incredible! However, having said all that, I am elated that Legion has come together because the level of talent is, in my opinion, as good as what TFL-RIFLE would have produced.

Q: After RIFLE you got involved with another mobile game, Armajet. How did your experience from Rivals help you in building the Armajet community, how do the two competitive scenes compare?

It’s quite an interesting contrast. Armajet is a smaller, more tight knit community. Armajet has been around since about 2016, and there are quite a few “OG” players that have been a part of the community since they began playing. Because of the love for the game, they were running tournaments for a long time. In fact, they even had some very high-quality tournament organizations get involved (such as Hammers, Tribe, 4 Elements) and produce tournaments that could be put alongside the likes of some of the higher ticket tournaments I’ve seen in major titles.

Overall, I would say that there is more competitive history with Armajet, and as a result, it was easier to depend on the players because they had more familiarity with being a part of events.

As for my time with Rivals, it helped me with putting together tournaments. For example, I learned a great deal about different formats and how they play out thanks to RIFLE, Blade’s weekly customs, RTL, and other groups. I was able to introduce some different ideas to the Armajet community thanks to that.

The flamer festival at the end of 2018, where Jeffrey first tried out his casting prowess

Q: Nowadays you are back to casting the Legion’s Arena tournaments in Rivals. Was it easy coming back?

It was and it wasn’t. It was easy in the sense of people wanted to hear my casting again and get my voice on Rivals game-play. After all, my love for the game and the big reason I cast is because of the community. Without them, I never would have discovered this talent of mine. It’s a talent that has cascaded to other parts of my life, even in my working career. And most of all, it gave me a sense of purpose within the community. So, in that sense, it was very easy for me to come back.

Additionally, you must love what Legion is doing. This group is full of some of the most talented community members. I’m humbled to be casting with Legion again because they are helping realize the dream that I’ve had for this game from the start.

The part that makes it hard is since I haven’t focused on Rivals at all for the past several months, I’ve forgotten so much! Things like deck compositions and the way games play out. Certainly, I remember a lot, but my goodness I felt the rust on that first event. 😊 But I know that with casting, it’s not so much what you know, but how you say it and the energy you bring. That I can always provide!

Jeffrey casting Legion’s Arena May last year.

Q: Is there any specific game that you remember was your favorite to cast, or maybe a favourite player to watch?

Yes, there is one that stands out in my mind. It was a game between StrikerVX and Agent Shadow, at the time when Agent Shadow was still cutting his teeth and was considered the new “Striker”. Some may not remember StrikerVX but he really was a sensational player, who quickly climbed the ranks and was on the path to becoming one of the best in the game. Out of anyone, he was touted as being the person who could take down Alicia Destiny. He was that good!

During one of my streams, both were there and offered to do a game on Open Water with me casting. It was an intense game where they played the same deck (might have been one unit different), and for me was one of the most enjoyable games to cast. It was full of back-and-forth action with some of the best micro in the game.

As for players, I would say Mav, Snipes, 13lade, and Alarak are/were my favorite players to watch. OK that’s not one. but all of them come up with unique styles of play and cool micro tricks that you didn’t really see from anyone else. To me that makes for exciting games to watch.

Q: What do you hope to see in the Rivals tournament scene in the future?

I’ve always wanted to see more unique and interesting formats. The game is going to be the way it is, likely forever. So, in order to keep the game interesting, new and fun formats need to be developed to change the way the game plays out. And thankfully, that is happening. Legion is an amazing group with very creative ideas, with some of the best community members in the game. I’m happy to see the new tournament ideas come out, such as the No Scout Unit and Sudden Death format. It’s clear this is what the game needs.

Basically, keep doing what you’re doing. 😊

Q: No harv MG seems to be a trend on ladder recently, how happy does that make you?

Hahaha well, I would have to say the deck is a toxic style of play. It’s very binary, either you win hard, or you lose hard. Sometimes there are close games but not often. So, in terms of the game health, not so much, but I am happy to see that the idea I came up with for that deck is still around! Goes to show that it is still somewhat of a viable way to play the game. And I guess for me, I like to see variety in the game, so hearing it is still around makes me a bit happy. 😊 

That said, I am currently ducking under my desk avoiding all the tomatoes being thrown my way because I know how much people hate to play against it!

Jeffrey playing no harv MG shortly after the unit’s release, casted by FourCourtJester!

Q: If you could change one thing about Rivals, what would it be?

A tech unit rework. I’d like to see some of those units in the tech lab fit into other roles, like making Zone Troopers a Tier 2 missile trooper. The game is lacking in certain unit roles and the tech units, if properly adjusted, would fit some of those roles well. Most people despise tech units and I think this would be a great way to make them healthier while simultaneously introducing new unit roles into the game, which is how you can increase deck diversity and game-play variety.

Q: Any last words?

Thank you for this interview Kenny. I hope the readers enjoy it!

Most of all, I want to say THANK YOU to the Rivals community. The impact you’ve had in my life is profound; not only has Rivals been a huge part of my life, but the experiences I’ve had and skills I’ve gained are all thanks to you pushing me and encouraging me to do what I do. I cannot tell you how many wonderful comments I received for my shoutcasting – and not just kind words, but genuine sentiments. This set me on a path in my life that has given me a greater sense of purpose not just within the Rivals community, or any online gaming community, but also my future career. On top of that, it helped me overcome a lot of my mental health struggles and gave me confidence that I have never had before. Without your love and support, I would never have reached this point in my life and for that, I am eternally grateful.

Written by: kennyemmy
Editor: Entsorger