readmore.de: The majority of the Counter-Strike community is surely glad to see your team in an auspicious organization after a long period of time where you had that much problems. How do you feel right now?
Wiktor ‚TaZ‘ Wojtas: It’s a huge relief. We were in a very hard spot for a long time. I think I won’t lie, that this team showed a lot of resilience from the start. We had a really rough time in our organizations during whole 2013. For us it’s like a new beginning with two really promising young and talented players who are hungry for success. From this point I’d like to thank Virtus.Pro for putting their trust in our team, in the end. (smiles)
Prestigious lineups played for VP back in time with some big achievements like the first offline loss of NiP in CS:GO at SLTV StarSeries Finals. Does this give you some kind of pressure you didn’t have in Universal Soldies for example?
I will be totally honest in this case. For me „first offline loss of NiP“ is not a big achievement, so I don’t feel any kind of pressure of that. People really can’t imagine, what kind of pressure we had to deal in Universal Soldiers or in our whole carrier, so us joining Virtus will not create more pressure than usual. Even though Virtus.Pro has high expectations from their players, we were always aiming for these goals and now with their support, it’s time to win.
Polish team – Russian organization. It’s not that common. Therefore a lot of people in the community were surprised about this cooperation. Can you say something about the conclusion of the contract?Both companies were happy to negotiate and talk with each other. We don’t hold to such barriers as nationality, I believe eSports is way over that barrier.
Another oddness is the fact that you have got a German manager, Christian ‚PsYcHo‘ Lenz, who worked with you before in ESC Gaming and was part of the n!faculty direction. What’s the story behind this?
Haha, now it’s starting to look pretty crazy, right? Polish team with German manager in a Russian organization. We know Christian since we joined ESC Gaming back in 2011. Even when we were in another organization, or without them, we were in touch. He was always a good friend for us and we enjoyed his company a lot. He is very positive person with a lot of passion. Every top class team needs to have great spirit and I feel like Christian will bring tons of positive energy and of course he is helping us with all the travels, servers, interviews etc. Things that players tend to forget!
Organizational cornerstones seem to be set. In an interview with readmore.de in October 2013 you said that the mood inside the team with Snax and byali would be perfect, nobody freaks out if something isn’t working and you have always someone by your side with whom you like to play. Would you still confirm this today?
Nothing changed, I still enjoy playing with these guys – I think, more now, than before. We evolve as a team and people, with each day we understand each other better. Currently it means less problems, no fights. If we can hold to it, future looks bright.
So what are the main reasons in your opinion that your only international achievement has been SLTV StarSeries VIII?
It’s hard to explain. The team was young and we had some complications with organizations and real life issues that had to be taken care of. Our first international event was EMS. We took 3-4th place after we lost 0:2 to VG (after first map OT). It wasn’t perfect but it was a start. Next LAN was Techlabs in Moscow. We came to the final from winner bracket and faced Astana. One night before the final we got the information, that even though we came from the winners bracket, the game will be played in best-of-three without any advantage for us. We won first map and lost two next, so it felt like we got robbed! Still we were crushed on the two last maps, so we knew that there is more room for improvement in many areas. Next was Dreamhack. Well, it was impossible for us to perform on that event. We had a really crazy time with the organization, also what’s worth saying – we played inferno two times, on which we underperformed twice. It was also due to lack of research from our side. Imagine my face when we played All-Star game and I’m asking the guys if we can play mirage and kennyS was like „wtf, I’ve never played mirage“, and yes, vs. Recursive we removed mirage. (smiles) It just feels that we are getting better with each event, but we need to keep on working on small things, do proper research and I hope we will be able to qualify for EMS One Katowice and do our first good boot camp. (smiles)A chance to do better will be EMS One in Katowice like you said. You qualified for the national polish online finals in the first cup. How big is the anticipation for this event in the team? Also due to the fact that the event will take place in your home country.
It’s huge for us. We will do our best to qualify and show us from our great side on our home soil. We need to have a polish team on such an event, I can’t imagine otherwise. From my point of view, it’s stupid that for each big event the invitation system changes. DreamHack was one way, EMS One had its own, but it got changed. So I just hope that even though it’s an online qualifier we will manage to push it to the LAN finals. At the moment we practice in normal way, but with each week closer we will put more and more hours into it.
How do you rate the long qualification? Is it appropriate based on the huge prize pool?
I will tell you after it’s over! One thing I don’t like is that we have an invite system for American and „World“ teams, but we don’t have an invite for a home team. (smiles) Many people always say that we are lucky that Carmac is in ESL etc. but honestly, it feels like it’s harder because of that! We never get any special treatment or stuff like that. I would even say that polish teams/players are the last to get any advantage. (smiles)
One week ago a trailer showed up, starring Golden Five: a documentary for 2014 hopefully financed by a successful Indiegogo project with a 30.000 US-Dollar value. Can you tell us some details about the content that is planned?
Well, this movie will be about our team, it will be our history, from inside of how we managed to always overcome the obstacles and win the biggest competitions. I honestly don’t know what to expect, but I really like the idea and I hope that we will be able to get the financial support that is needed.
Do you see such journalistic work like this documentary and the TV show starring Ninjas in Pyjamas as the future in eSports media?
Definitely. I really like the NiP TV show and I hope that we will have more stuff like that, just like we have tons of small videos in League of Legends from Riot. We need more content like that!
It’s well-known that you have no problems in interacting with the eSport media. But there are of course players who aren’t that familiar with that, in your team too. Do you estimate that filming and interviewing can have a negative effect on their mood at events?
It all depends on how you perform at the current event. When players lose they tend to find excuses or problems. It is obviously harder to focus when you have a camera in your face all the time, but I think that we will have to get used to it. At least if we want eSport to grow. Players need to understand, that if there is a team, all players need to be ready to speak up, to make interviews. When you don’t do it, you just burn the material, having only the same player in every interview becomes pretty boring.
Normally this interview would end here, but Valve just released a new update including changes in the Deagle accuracy and a new firemode for grenades. Will those changes influence the gameplay in a drastic way?
Since it got out only today, it’s hard for me to make any calls, but I like the new grenade fire mode, deagle fix and some small air acceleration fix. Things I’m afraid of are AUG and Sig. I spoke about these guns with Valve, but I proposed to maybe make them cheaper, not lots stronger. (smiles)
Thank you for the interview.

