- Hi! Of course… Nathalie Ek is my name, 19 years old and living in the football metropol Degerfors way out in the Swedish forests. Here we eat pizza all day, cut our hair and – of course – watch football.
I play in the team Les Seules together with two crazy Norwegians, one insane Dane and another crazy girl from Sweden.
- Line “MissHyper” Haug (Norway): Line and I got along very well when I joined up with Les Seules, and we always have fun together. Line is our AWP:er in the team and is very important to the team as she often picks the first opponent.
- Louise “Aurora” Thomsen (Denmark): Well, you can’t always keep 100% focus on your own screen, so it’ll happen that you miss an opponent (referring to AurorA’s infamous miss on Train in the game versus BTB – editor’s remark), but God what a great player she is. Louise is an all-round player who handles all weapons equally well. A tactical player with a logical reasoning has earned her awards such as "Best Female Player of the Year 2005" and positioned her where she is today.
- Anette "Cazzidy" Skarderud (Norway): Anette is our ingame-leader and she does a great job at keeping the rest of us under control. Cazzidy is an agile player with a very varied playing style – defensively and offensively. A key player who doesn’t have any problems handling a 1vsX situation.
- Sofi “Sophie” Byström (Sweden): Sofi is the girl who started Les Seules right before ESWC 2004. Sofi is a calm player who rather waits for her opponents than challenge them head to head. It’s a playing style which suits her very well.
The interest for your teams has increased the last months, why do you think that is? - I thought it was the other way around – that the interest had declined. But I guess it’s since Seules was nearly inactive after ESWC 2005 up until mid February this year. During the past six months two players quit for different reasons and Seules basically only had four active players left.
That the interest, or the attention for Les Seules, has increased once again is probably mostly because we’ve tried to attend as many events as possible. We’ve participated in open tournaments such as the SHG Open, Netgamez and Rendezvous. And by the way, I don’t understand when people will stop whining about our performance at SHG Open and what a fiasco it was – Seules won 2 matches, tied 1 and lost only 1 match, but didn’t move on to the second round anyway… So no, that wasn’t a fiasco, many teams lost two matches and advanced, end of story :D Seules has also participated in Hobbytronic (Dortmund, Germany) and Dreamhack Summer.
Les Seules own reality show also launched its own website with new fresh pictures á la Tomb Raider… So, it’s probably because we’ve gotten so much publicity that the interest is increasing again.
We recently found out that you wouldn’t be able to visit ISC due to your TV production. Shouldn’t you have known that earlier? - ISC has been planned for us since way back and the information that we wouldn’t be able to attend came as a shock to us too. We’re recording our TV show during these dates it’s impossible for us to be on two continents at the same time. You might think that we should’ve known this previously, but Bringiton, which is the company producing Play Us, keeps such information secret to us. Now it turned out that there had been some changes in the planning and to make sure us girls (who never can keep quiet about stuff) don’t spread the information, they had chosen not to tell us in advance about what will happen during the filming.
Tell us some more about the TV show and everything behind it, what is it really that you’re going to do? - Play Us is Les Seules own reality show, and as most people know a reality show is a series where you follow people “in real life”. This is nothing along the lines of Big Brother, but more like The Osbournes. In other words we’ll be followed by a film crew 24/7 during a couple of weeks, were you as the watchers will see everything from preparations leading up to big events to big and small catfights right during the seconds when we’re losing a game and emotions burst, but also the screams of joy and the tears when we’re winning.
Which of the upcoming events will we see you attending? - It’s hard to tell since we’ll be recording the TV series, but you’ll be able to catch us on several events, that’s for sure. I know that we’ll be travelling to different continents, but I have no clue where we’ll be at any given time. As soon as we know, you’ll know.
How much do you play in Seules each week? - It varies a lot like with any team. Sometimes we are more laid back, and sometimes we go by our normal practicing routine. Normally each player plays about 3-4 hours a day on their own (aim maps, CSDM and/or pugs) and after that it’s 4-5 hours of play with the team on the evenings. Before events and tournaments it’s each player’s own responsibility to feel 100% prepared, that is every player takes the responsibility herself to play several hours a day to bring up her standard and her own game.
What do you consider to be the weakest point in your game and how will you improve on it? - Our weakest point is probably our communication. That is something we know and something we’ve worked a lot with the past couple of months. Some talk too little and other’s talk too much. When the situation is like that it’s easy to disregard the wrong information during a match.
During ESWC I think we were the only team, both in the male and female competition, who played all matches (except for the stage matches of course) without Ventrilo. We yelled as much as we could. That is something that is very important for us since we can cheer on each other much better after a nice round, and the “real” energy and feeling spreads among the players in another way. During ESWC I had the time to sit in the stands and watch one of the males’ games, and I thought they lost the game, when in reality they won the game and moved on to the semi finals… No energy and no joy with Ventrilo…
You have players from several countries in Seules. Does that create any language barriers, and how have you solved it? - No, we have no language barriers. Everyone speaks English with each other, but everyone understands Danish, Norwegian and Swedish if for some reason someone would switch over to that in a conversation. Of course you feel pretty stupid when you’re two Swedes walking around talking English to each other and suddenly notice it and start laughing at it. But we’ve all gotten used to talking English, no matter where we are or what we do.
What does a perfect bootcamp look like with Seules, what do you need to get done? - Wow, a perfect bootcamp… A bootcamp can be so much more than just 100% gaming. The point with a bootcamp is to build team chemistry and of course the ingame teamplay. But without a team that gets along well IRL it’s impossible to play well together. So, a perfect bootcamp with Les Seules probably contains:
- Individual training – aim maps, CSDM etc
- Studying demos
- Tactical conversations – sit in the sofa with a glass of wine and discuss new tactics
- Teamplay – practice matches a few hours each night
- Free nights – Friday Night out!!
- Free hours – Go out to a café if you feel like and just hang out, go to the beach and have a nice day in the sun together… Build up the friendship and the bond between the players.
One of the female players that is most widely considered a skilled player is Queen. Where did she go? - I don’t understand all the fuzz about Queen*. Sure, she was a good player a couple of years ago when she played in A-laget. Today almost all girls who play on a serious level have passed the level she achieved. But anyway, Queen* just got bored with CS and chose to leave that part of her life behind and go back to her “normal” life again… Though she’s done what many other CS-players has done and gotten caught up in WoW.
BTB Ladies - 6-16
SK Ladies - 16-14
Ladies - 16-14
Megapolis - 16-14
XLODA - 24-6
FFB - 25-5
Femin Aim - 27-3
DS - 16-14
Seules - 67 000SEK
Hacker.Victory - 44 000SEK
x6tence.women - 15 000SEK
aurora.gaming - 15 000kSEK
