Hi Mark, thanks for taking the time to speak with me today.
Firstly for our readers who may not know you, could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hello, I'm Mark 'boomah' Boon. I'm 18 hailing from a little town in Western Australia. I'm a long time player of 'MOBA' games, hopping between WC3, dota and HoN (sadly, I've even tried LoL) until Dota 2 had finally arrived. Gaming is my passion, I'm a very determined and goal oriented person and sometimes that makes me a little whiny and stubborn (sorry team). Also I'm proud to say I have the privilege of playing in syf.dota2 with my team-mates.
When did you first begin gaming? Was there a certain spark that ignited the flame?
I suppose I would have started around 1998 playing on my Dad's old Mac 128k, those were the days. As a kid growing up on a farm I was always very active and unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) a riding accident and a hospital trip later I landed 7 weeks in a cast to heal a broken arm.
Being a young kid without a functioning left arm is quite limiting and naturally, I spent alot of time on the computer playing some great old titles; Blobbo, Rodent's Revenge, Lost Vikings (and other snes games thanks to an emulator). When my cast finally came off the gaming stuck with me, I was hungry to overcome digital environments and play the best anyone could play. Mac 128k turned to Windows 95, 98, N64, Xbox and finally back to PC after a long period of console gaming.
Love for gaming is just inherent for me, the taste of victory is pretty damn sweet.
What interested or persuaded you into playing MOBA games such as Dota primarily over other gaming genres?
I'm not sure, I started to venture into dota in highschool when my friend Brad and I (Cao_Monk) decided to pick up copies of Warcraft 3 and install them on the school computers. To be honest it was mostly luck that I ever played dota, we were just casual custom-map scrubs playing anything from Vampirism to Sheep Tag. I ended up downloading a Map-pack in search of decent customs and ended up spotting an old Reign of Chaos dota map.
I spent alot of afternoons at a local Netcafe at this point, playing mostly DoD:Source and WoW and had from time to time heard some of the gamers I knew mentioning something called "DotA Allstars". Needless to say we loaded that badboy up 1v1 and truth be told, when I first played the game I hated it. To be fair it was a ridiculously outdated version and I was a complete noob at comprehending the game, I did not see how anyone would find it enjoyable. Somehow, I kept playing it. I'm assuming Brad managed to enjoy it and asked for some games.
Eventually leading on to Battle.net games, the purchase of The Frozen Throne and the realization that TFT DotA was on a whole different level to the game I originally found boring. This was a polished map, complete with the possibility of fine-tuning my failure against AI opponents. At that point I spent most of my time shared between DotA + WoW, both games offered me a way to connect with my friends despite living so far away from the city.
As most do, I grew tired of WoW and decided it was time to focus my efforts on the strategic masterpiece that is DotA (and much later, HoN). There's something about DotA to me that makes it infinitely more rewarding than other games, even now years down the track It's instantly gratifying when I outsmart and outmanoeuvre an opponent. Because of it's many aspects DotA is a really difficult game to master, being a perfectionist by nature it's more than I could ask for.
I'm still constantly learning the game, new heroes and items keep the meta-game ever interesting, the possibility that your thinking could (in terms of draft or execution/strategy) revolutionise how the game is played is a really nice opportunity for any gamer.
Very interesting indeed. Now in regards to teams, as the only current original member from the initial SYF lineup, what is your overview on the existing team and how things have been progressing recently?
We're quite a new team on the scene but it was obvious to us that we have a really similar mindset and our chemistry in game is quite promising for 5 players that previously haven't played together. As individuals I don't think we have a weak link and I'm confident we can achieve victories over some of the bigger names in the dota2 community.
We're all committed to obtaining good results and forging a reputation for ourselves and it's really visible looking back over when we first banded together. We've improved immensely as a team and I personally can't remember my personal skill being sharper.
That's really great to hear, on that note what is your most recognisable role / hero in the team and why do you prefer playing this position?
I usually don the support mantle and I suppose it's notable that bocky drafts me Shadow Demon every game! I would say that I have quite a strong understanding of the meta and acting in the support role allows me more space to judge the flow of the game and make strategic decisions such as when to push, gank, swap our lanes, back or man-fight and communicate to my team accordingly.
Technically, I believe I'm well suited to the support role because it requires a sound understanding of advantages / disadvantages in team-fights and the ability to read how the play will unfold and react accordingly. Simply, my play is quite positional and consistent.
Your team has been playing extremely well this season presently sitting in second position on the Australian CyberGamer Dota 2 Ladder. What do you think has helped you achieve this and do you believe you can improve as a team in the future?
Presently, I think one of our biggest assets is how keen everyone is to play together, getting along - or liking the team you play with is one of the most important foundations for good results. We're playing most days of the week, although some of our players are dealing with study and real life circumstances but even with the obstacles we're steadily adjusting what needs to be adjusted and practising hard to improve.
Once everyone's free there's definitely nowhere to go but up, I wonder if our team now could manage a win against our team in 4 months.
That's certainly a prospect well worth thinking. Speaking of progression in competition, your team is also currently competing in the Alienware Dota 2 Elite League against some of the best Australian teams today. How does your team prepare for these important matches and are there certain teams you consider to be a real threat in the league?
Obviously, Absolute Legends is a world class team and it'll be quite difficult to take a game off of them at the current stage. Aside from aL I'm wary of Sequential Gaming as they've proven they are a very competent team capable of producing good results (1st place CG ladder, jeesports tournaments, etc).
Our practice is a little different for this tournament as we consider the heroes these teams like to run and the style of game they play. Usually we'll practice a certain strat/draft and see how effective it is at combating the heroes we'll likely be facing.
Sounds like quite an articulate planning schedule is involved! Now with all this talk of competitions and leagues, do you have any personal favourite moments or highlights from your gaming experiences thus far?
Sure! Most importantly my first victory in DotA, sadly it was an AI game and I didn't know how to mode properly - I was playing Twin Head Dragon.. humble beginnings.
Secondly our very own CoD4 Asian sensation SYF.Kizmmit played 1v1 as Crystal Maiden against Birdman's Antimage and won, that man deserves a medal. Not strictly related to MOBA but Cellybear and I made 1750 with Holy Pally / Rogue (Get on our Breville).
Seriously though, I have had many great games, there's too many moments to list and surely many more to come.
Definitely, I'm sure there will be many great moments ahead! Now onto a subject our readers may also be interested in hearing. What is your opinion regarding Dota 2 development so far? Are you satisfied with the new hero additions and overall gameplay compared to its predecessor?
I think it's very promising, there are still a few very important issues that need to be fixed such as hearing spell casts through fog, seeing animations through fog. However, provided valve reacts to these problems I think I can say dota2 will be the perfect eSport. Porting an entire mod into a standalone game will of course bring about unavoidable changes to the play, even if it's something as small as how quickly aggro calculations are finished in the engine.
So far I think I am quite content with Icefrog leading the dev team at valve and enforcing the game stay true to wc3 dota. It's quite likely the community will get a game that resembles the original as closely as possible. The biggest change to impact the game-play when switching from dota to dota2 was the limited hero pool. I still find it odd that valve have left some prime candidates for the current metagame so close to the largest tournament of the year, The International 2. I know there are teams that would have used say, Meepo but instead we saw Visage - not to say he doesn't have any potential.
Aside from the choice of heroes the rate at which valve are implementing content is quite phenomenal and of course, expected of such a prominent corporation. My biggest concern is how valve are changing things outside the game-play such as the hero picking system, which in my opinion was absolutely fine, and replacing them with some odd impractical card-sliding hero selection screen. Still it is only in beta, there's still hope for me yet.
We've seen the game have great success recently overseas with large tournaments and as you mentioned The International. However, how well do you think the competitive scene is progressing currently in Australia? Where do you see it heading in the near future?
It's hard to say, Absolute Legends are proof that a talented Australian team can make it internationally but with so few strong Aus teams and such little opportunity to play the the Europeans due to latency issues (even USW servers are quite laggy for us) our scene is quite stagnant. Gaming is not as prominent in Australian culture as it is in somewhere like Korea, which means generally there are less players willing to sacrifice other opportunities to play games on a serious level.
Being able to play on the SEA servers is quite promising though, I imagine once all the world class Chinese convert completely to dota2 we'll see a rush of interest through the region and a revitalisation of the smaller dota communities in places such as Singapore.
Any increase in interest for our game is something we should be thankful for. With any luck we may have a handful of strong teams in the next couple of years - although I doubt we'll see 100% Australian rosters.
Lastly, are there any future goals for the team in the months ahead or anything we can expect to see from you guys?
We'll definitely be looking for victories against the stronger teams in the region and if our current schedule is anything to go by we'll be signing up for any tournaments with promising competitors. We are currently privileged enough to have friendly scrims against a couple of well known teams and we will be practising our game with sights set on the international scene.
Sounds great, thanks a lot for your time Mark! before we conclude this interview do you have any final shoutouts?
Shoutout to baal? the Ursa who doesn't need Fury Swipes to lvl 1 Roshan (IT WAS BAIT). Shoutout to Cpt. bocky, shoutout to m0ng m0ng and trapp <3. Shoutout to Cellybear - the wielder of the cinderblock, shoutout to CMD - Alchemist will never be a good hero. Big thank-you to syf.Spud for the opportunity to play for SYF gaming and a thank you to our sponsors; STIPE, Bitdefender and GameSpeak.
Youtube: www.youtube.com/SYFGamingTV
Facebook: www.facebook.com.au/SYFGaming
Source: http://www.cybergamer.com.au/forums/thread/411529/SYF-GAMING-Dota-2-Captain-Interview/
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