Interview – MadneSS

As most of you know, TrackMania Nations was the first and still the only game to be created especially for the Electronic Sports World Cup. This obviously lead to a lot of great TMN players seeing the light, and today you get an interview with one of those guys: MadneSS.

MadneSS, currently a 19-year-old member of the professional British Team Dignitas, can be considered a professional player as he has earned money on playing in three different games. He gets to travel around Europe to attend various events, and last year he was one of the few skilled enough to actually play Nations in the ESWC.

The TMU Blog asked MadneSS a few simple questions, which you get to take part of today!

The Interview

MadneSS, how long have you played TM? Did you play any of the games before Nations, which is where your current fame lies?

I played TM Nations since it came out. I noticed it was going to be on the official games in the ESWC 2006 and that was the reason why this game caught my attention, I had never heard of TrackMania before this.

How long have you played on a professional level?

Well I wouldn’t call myself a “professional” just yet, even though I make most of my money playing games since I am still in school, however the money I have made so far is not nearly enough to live on. If we are talking about gaming in general I’d say the step to the “professional” scene was when I joined the Team Dignitas Battlefield 2 team back in the autumn of 2005, so that would make it almost 2 years. When we stopped playing Battlefield 2 I started teaching myself TMN.

You were in the Electronic Sports World Cup last year. How far did you make it, and are you participating again this year?

Last year was a bit of a disappointment to me. I came there with expectations to get top 8 and I was very confident after winning the Swedish qualifier. Well there I happened to be in the “group of death”, a significantly harder group than any of the others. Sure if I was good enough at that moment it wouldn’t have been a problem, but I wasn’t really of 1-4 quality. I considered myself to be of 5-8 quality, though I went out in groupstage.
 
This year I was very motivated to take revenge and I had improved so much that I could see no significant skill difference between me and any of the other top players. I also went to The Gathering 2007 LAN in Norway to prepare and get some warm up for ESWC 2007. I successfully won this tournament beating the finest Norway had to offer. Now in May my hopes for ESWC 2007 were crushed by the hosts of the Swedish ESWC organizers, E-Sport Entertainment Group. They decided not to include TMN in their qualifiers. Instead they chose two CS 1.6 teams, one CS women team, one PES 6 player and two Quake 4 players. To me I could only call this pure stupidity not to include a game where we have two players in the very top of the world.

Tell us a bit about your team, Team Dignitas.

It is a professional gaming team consisting of many different squads in different games. We are currently sponsored by Intel, Scan.co.uk, Creative, XFX, Corsair and abit and they sponsor us financially so that we can go to events around the world. It is a very friendly atmosphere and all sub teams interact with each other on ventrilo, a voice over IP communications software and it is really great to be in this team, not only because of the financial support.

What exactly does it mean to play on such a high level as you do? Any money in it? Where/what events do you participate in exactly, also outside the TM limits?

It means that you have to put in a lot of time into playing. For me it means doing something I really love and sometimes win some prize money. I have participated in different events across Europe. I’ve been to i27, i28 and i29 LAN at Newbury, UK, also as previously mentioned The Gathering 2007 LAN in Norway and ESWC 2006 in Paris. I’ve won money in Battlefield 2 (i27), Need for Speed: Carbon (i29) and Trackmania Nations (TG 07) with a total amount of 25 000 SEK (2500 EURO).

This summer I will go to three different events, first of all I went to Dreamhack in Sweden last Saturday to play the CPL World Tour, my first FEAR tournament. Two weeks after that there’s the XL Party in Porto, Portugal where I will play a TMN tournament. Then at the end of the summer I will go to i31 in the UK, which is a big Team Dignitas gather, but I’m not sure what tournament I will play there or if I will even play a tournament there, however the i-series LAN is really great to meet up with so many team members and have some fun and possibly do some stuff together with the sponsors at their booths.

Any thoughts of upgrading to TrackMania United?

I got United just when it came out. I enjoyed goofing around a bit with the game but unless there is some major tournaments coming up for it I doubt that I will spend a lot of time playing it.

Any final comments?

Thanks to the sponsors of Team Dignitas, and I hope you’ll be seeing a lot more of me on events not only in Europe but also worldwide.

Thanks to MadneSS for taking the time to do this interview. Good luck with your tournaments