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10 Competitive Gamer Questions - Josh Merlin Hoffman

AUSTRALIAN COMPETITIVE GAMER Q and A - 10 Questions with Merlin aka Matt Hoffman

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Fullname: Josh Hoffman

Nickname: Merlin

Gender: Male

Age: 24

E-Sports Organisation: SQL Gaming

1. Who are you?

My name is Josh "merlin" Hoffman. I am 24 years old and reside in Sydney's, Sutherland Shire. I am one of 4 managers with Australia E-Sports Organisation - Sequential Gaming.

2. What is your competitive gaming experience?

In Early December 2006, Sequential Gaming was formed with 4 core founders, Nathan "Nateus" Walton, Fabrizio "ver0n" Bottaro, Sam "Zephyr" Williams and myself. Sam and myself were playing top level Call of Duty 2, with Team Zero Effects when we decided we would attempt to try and create a multi-gaming organisation. Sam introduced two members of the Enemy Territory community, Nathan and Fabz to me, whereby we struck up an immediate friendship as a unit and embarked on this journey.

3. Can you give us some details on how the organisation was formed?

The organisation was initially formed with the mindset of creating the best of the best organisation, moving in small steps, hoping for success over a 2-5 year plan.

I personally Captained/Lead the Call of Duty 2 clan, which enjoyed heavy success in the Auscod scene, whilst Nathan/Fabz, both headed the Enemy Territory team which also had success in their field.

From there we built up a strong reputation, worked hard on creating a marketable website, formed a relationship with Mercness (Ventrilo/Hosting/Game Servers) and also managed to pull sponsorship from Recycyled Office Computers in South Australia.

This allowed us to look at supporting a LAN team. The obvious choice being South Australian based LAN team, Team Euphoric.

4. What is the best achievement the clan has accomplished so far?

The best accomplishment would have to be supporting our former 1.6 team in winning 3 consective Nationals, including bootcamping them in Seattle and seeing them compete at the World Cyber Games.

They didn't make it out of groups, but took wins against Kazahkstan, New Zealand and Colombia. Losing to both the eventual Grand Finalists, NoA from Denmark and winners emuLate from France.

Picking up, an amazing company such as Razer, as a head sponsor has been also a pretty major achievement for the organisation as a whole.

5. What games are Sequential competitive in?

Currently SQL has teams in:

PC Gaming - Counter-Strike 1.6, Counter-Strike: Source, Call of Duty 4, Defence of the Ancients (DoTA), World of Warcraft/Fury and to a lesser capacity Quake 3/Quake 4.

Xbox360 Gaming - Halo 3/Call of Duty 4, F.E.A.R and to a lesser capacity Guitar Hero 3.

6. Where do you see the competitive scene in Australia growing?

Its a very good question and one i enjoy answering.

I believe that competitive scene in general will continue to grow, particularly in the similar international trend of Console Gaming.

In saying that though, i believe that Australia has enjoyed a wealth of success in Console Gaming. In recent times, Haxxx0r from SQL, 3rd at CPL World Finals in F.E.A.R; Malice, 4th at WCG in Gears of War etc.

I feel that the competitive scene has the most room to grow internationally in the FPS genre. I think for a long time, we have been daunted and under experienced on the international arena. I feel that progressively we are closing that gap with our CS and CSS teams via WCG, ESWC and CGS, competing a lot more commendably against huge, huge teams/lineups. Python always lead a strong example as proof, our duellers could match it with the world.

7. What titles do you see having a big impact on competitive gaming?

Counter-Strike: Source - CGS involvement. Gradual progression from CS1.6 to CSS appearing to become far more prevalent. Prize money evening out, more opportunities presenting in CSS.

Call of Duty 4 - Potential. Amazing game, encapsulates Battlefield, Enemy Territory and Call of Duty communities. Needs CoD4TV to really progress, however 1 big tournament (ESWC/WCG etc.) is all this game needs to go huge and really take on the CS's as the major team-based FPS.

An unknown 1v1 FPS - The missing game. Quake/Unreal tournament/Painkiller. I personally believe is the best form of competitive/professional gaming. I'm very surprised the CGS did not pick up Quake 3/4 or UT3 players.

Guitar Hero 3 - Guys meets Girls - Marketing +++ as Gaming meets Society. The game where entertainment/showbiz comes to competitive gaming. Hugely popular in the US, i feel it paves a very interesting path to which the average joe can easily interact with the pro's. > Halo 3 - Console goes professional. Consoles have always traditionally not been associated with the "geek" tag. I feel that a game like Halo 3 and the MLG circuit in the US, allows the casual/social console player, to first hand see the skills of these players. Too often a CS1.6 game is happening of the highest calibre, but the skill is lost on the public, as they really have NO idea how skillful the players are. Halo 3 is a step closer to showing them this.

8. What direction is Sequential Gaming taking?

We set out with the mentality of being the best and working over 2-5 years to be the best. We're only 1 year 4 months in, and have achieved above and beyond what we expected.

From here, we push forward and aim to continue to write our names into Australian E-Sport history. We want to take Australian Gaming to the world. We hope to continue to get the support from Australian and International Organisations, so we can continue to push the best of our country into the International Arena, and hopefully achieve at a World level, consistantly.

9. What can we expect from Sequential Gaming in the future?

The future is uncertain, but definitely not unplanned. We hope to continue pushing as hard as we are and growing as fast as we are.

We have an amazing team of people behind our organisation. We aspire to as stated above, continue to gain the support and admiration of our fan's, our communities and hopefully consequently sponsors. With this sponsor help, we aim to consistantly have teams competing not only all over Australia, but all over the world.

A small insight into the immediate future, will be our recent announcement of our Counter-Strike 1.6 team. We have goal's of sending them to Asia to represent our region in a LAN throughout the year and aspire to take them to a win in the WCG/ESWC to get them overseas representing Australia. Complete with the 1.6 team comes the DNALAN.com sponsored "Kill House" - very similar to the Complexity house, the team will be training, eating and to some extent sleeping in preparation to big tournaments. We hope to provide coverage including Webcam, Video Footage, Interviews, Photos all from inside the Kill House, something we hugely look forward to.

10. What would you like the Sequential Gaming legacy to be?

Personally, I would like to look back on Sequential Gaming, as being the first truly internationally integrated Australian E-Sports Organisation.

I have an overwhelming admiration for Team Immunity, as being the first truly professionally run organisation. But i would like to think SQL will go above and beyond that. I hope that Sequential will pave the way for future generations of professional gamers. I hope that through our success, Australian Gaming in general will benefit, with big companies, knowing they can show faith in the Australian market and prize money, team support etc., sky-rocketing from it.

I hope that Sequential Gaming, will take Australian Gaming to the World. I hope Sequential Gaming will succeed against the world and i'd like to think Competitive gamers across the world when thinking of Australian Gaming, will become synomynous with the name Sequential Gaming.

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