Today compLexity is excited to announce that coL.DOTA will be traveling later this week for a five week boot camp in sunny Los Angeles. The team will fly from around the world to train in person, participating in online events like The Summit 2, DreamLeague Season 2, WePlay Season 3, Dota Pit Season 2, and more! We had a chance to talk with coL.DOTA captain Kyle “swindlemelonzz” Freedman about the move.
Hey Kyle, thanks once more for taking the time to answer a few questions, especially in these busy times. The news is out, coL.DOTA is going to move into a team house. How excited are you about that?
Pretty psyched. Honestly, as awesome as LA is at first I wasn’t even thinking about the benefits of the area, I was so pre-occupied with how much this would help us as a team. Having players in four time zones really makes aligning scrim/sleep schedules difficult, not to mention major ping disadvantages. A team house was the catalyst for our first real success in HoN; with luck we’ll have the same result in Dota.
Your history and appreciation for these team projects is well documented in HoN, now you attempt it in Dota. How long was the move to a team house in the planning phase?
Umm probably a couple of hours. Most of the major changes in my life have happened at the drop of a hat, so I’m not surprised this decision was so abrupt. One afternoon during scrims Beef talked with me about the idea. We liked it, everyone else confirmed they’d be down by the end of the day, and within 24 hours we had flights booked.
With everything happening so quick, do you already have some sort of plan what the practice schedule or general schedule will look like?
Eat. Gym. Dota. More Dota. Team-building exercises. Sleep.
Fair enough, let’s get back to the benefits of the team house. You’ve experienced it in HoN already. What are the areas in which a team house has the biggest impact?
Discipline for sure. Even though we might spend 8-10 hours a day on “Dota” we might only glean 4-5 hours of real practice. In a team house you spend less time on the computer but more time actually improving. Specific to us, I’m sure Moon will be happy to wake up at a normal time versus 7-8 am, and Limmp won’t miss his 3am matches. I’m personally thrilled to (almost) never need to play on EU.
Speaking of the different players, despite having already had a team house, only one of the players you’ve roomed with in that instance is returning. How do you think the different personalities and characters will mesh in the house?
I honestly think it’ll be a stark improvement. Unlike my last team house, each teammate will be perfectly comfortable completing tasks some might call simple, such as doing laundry, washing a dish, eating steak no more cooked than medium, etc. Again that doesn’t seem difficult, but you’d be surprised what some gamers are incapable of. Much bigger house too so I don’t think we’ll be sharing bedrooms as we did previously.
You say it’s a big house. What other impressions do you have of the venue thus far?
It looks fantastic! I’ve lived in each of the big 3 in the US (sans LA), so I’m really excited to check out the west coast. Heard many good things about the W’s, and the move has been part of my recipe for success for quite a while, so all that’s left to do is play Dota and see if it helps us as much as I think it will!
When is the whole squad going to arrive at the house?
We arrive on Wednesday and we will be in LA for about five weeks.
Alright. Awesome to hear. To close this interview, what tournaments in the near future is your focus on? And is the short time in the house enough to tip the scale in your favor?
The Summit 2 and DreamLeague for sure. Both will be VERY hard to qualify for, but with luck this decision can be a butcher’s thumb on our side of the measure. Personally I want to go to DreamHack above all, but that’s going to be VERY difficult. Not only is that event awesome, but this magical place named Trouw closes down January 5th FOREVER, and I’ll never make it back unless I hit Sweden first.
Then I wish you the best of luck for another trip to Sweden. Any final shoutouts before I let you go to explore the new environment?
Shoutout to all the family and fans that have followed me for so long, to compLexity and our sponsors for making this move possible, and the team for being awesome.
Photo by MARK L. STEPHENSON / CORBIS