Mick is the biggest star in Call of Duty history, but through his highs and lows what has he learnt? I talked to Mick about everything from winning to losing, from kicking to recruiting and even about having a girl under the table! Read on for through this huge interview with the CPC 1 champion!
Please go ahead and introduce yourself
Hello my names Mick Bradshaw, I don’t have an original alias, just Mick. I used to play UT a few years back and then I moved to CoD because UT2003 was really shit. When I first started playing CoD1 I used to play until about 6am with some UT friends, and won some stuff until I moved onto CoD2 and I’ve been in Dignitas for around a year and two months!
How does it differ being Dignitas Mick to being a regular noob? (At this point Mick paused, because his mum came in to complain that his bedroom was messy)
I got experience from being a noob, which I was for quite a while in CoD1. I’d say that the advantages are that if a really good player comes along but doesn’t have the reputation they will struggle to build a team or get recognised by a good organisation (digntias). Most teams recruit people based off their reputation because of the safety factor.
When I was at my old job, I could be on irc and msn all day and if anyone pm’d me I could answer them about configs, computer work etc. But in my new job I cant, I don’t have the time to answer them now because I’m either work, playing or out and they just get my bnc. By the time I see it, they’re gone so I just don’t get to see it. If there’s a post on the site I’ll see it and reply, or email them. I suppose its quite good that some people might look up to me, but at the same time it means that you get a lot of crap that you don’t wanna talk about. I mean who wants to go on about their config everyday, or have to prove that their config is real. It is good to be known in a way, because whenever I’m playing CoD I’ll always be in a good team because of how I’ve done, but the flipside is the hassle you get every day.
When you win an event there’s an ecstasy what is it like to lose the next event just one month later, knowing you could have beaten them last month?
Obviously it doesn’t feel great, but you gotta take the good times with the bad times. And I wouldn’t even say it’s the bad times, we’re in Dignitas we’ve got support, we’re not wasting money. Take Eurocup, we lost but we know we didn’t get raped, its not like we’re upset. When you lose you know you’ve gotta learn from the defeat, but when you’re winning you tend to lose focus thinking you’re the dogs bollocks but in CoD2 you gotta keep going.
Take CoD1, we won EOGC as supermen but went to smaulip and lost to victum, there was Frog who took it really badly and was distraught. Back then we paid for everything ourselves, when we won 2.5k it wasn’t bad, but it only just covered our own costs. With me being at college/school I didn’t really have anything that would pay for my spending money, these days if it wasn’t for dignitas I wouldn’t be going to any of these events because I couldn’t afford to. So Smaulip was different, and sure I was upset, but it was upset because instead of losing a small difference in prize money the difference between us in third we lost 8k in total.
Now though, if we lose, it doesn’t hurt so much, dignitas is a strong team, we virtually play for fun. If we didn’t have dignitas backing us we wouldn’t have been as stable as we are now. If people are paying outta their own money and not winning then they’d just leave cause it might not be worth keep playing. If we’d have won smaulip I don’t think frog of bmbr would have left the game and the supermen team would have ever died.
Its amazing in CoD2, they start losing events and they start to talk about quitting. Take Speedlink, they came 4th at Eurocup and they talk about quitting, its kinda immature to me, but that’s what everyone is doing at the moment. I guess its different in dignitas because we’re always close if we don’t win, I guess we’ll have to see if we take 5th and then see what happens, but I doubt it will change anything.
You’re good friends in Dignitas, what is it like when u gotta kick someone?
The only people I’ve had to kick was
qwerty and lars, I think we rushed our decision in recruiting them. The problem with lars was, he was great in his trials but a few weeks down the line he wasn’t doing so great although that wasn’t the reason to kick him. He wouldn’t take another gun on other maps when he wasn’t playing good, which as a sniper is only ok if you’re playing great all the time, like trainee.
I had to kick qwerty because we felt he had a bit of an attitude problem, because when we’d lose he’d start getting down and maybe blaming other players, not badly but when you’re in a team like us who are all non-mad and non-screaming (apart from me) it has an effect.
Take EC, important game losing to serious (12-1), Ralph (qwerty) Ralph starts going on and on, if he hadn’t gone all depressed and arguing maybe we could have got a few more rounds rather than arguing. Even though we pulled it back to 15-15 we could have maybe got more rounds when he was arguing. I had a problem because qwerty didn’t wanna stay at the hostel at EC and everyone else did stay there, but without him it didn’t seem right.
For example, When other people said did I wanna go for a drink, I didn’t go, not because im anti-social, but I wanted stay with the team because some don’t drink. The fact ben was English and had more of a team presence it just felt that he was the one that had to stay, even if people felt Ralph was better.
The fact we won crossfire with an all UK lineup meant we had the potential to do anything. Kicking Ralph came down to nationality and him not being perfect, nobody is perfect but you can get pretty damn close and this team now is. Its really shitty, when I kicked lars it was really hard to do, I told him on vent that we don’t think its working out, I felt bad because he was a nice guy. I had to do the same with Ralph and it was hard, they both took it well, but its never an easy thing to do. The fact I didn’t want either of them to go was hard, but when you need to do something you’ve got to. The other change was Dale, but that was work based, all this week he was in Scotland all the time, so it wouldn’t work and that’s where palmz came in who is one of the best UK players. I think we’ll stay all UK for the time being.
How do you feel representing the Dignitas business model? Representing sponsors and such.
I see it like this, us gamers are the target customers for these hardware companies. A lot of teams seem to be “oooh omg they get so much money”, but really do we get so much money? When you think about it, we are the target market, when people see us they see our brands, when you shoutcast us they see our brands and people see the advertising going out to hundreds of thousands of people. Its hard to explain, but I’m sure sponsors waste money on advertising that doesn’t get them jack, but if a sponsor gives you a thousand pounds that might not be much for them, but a lot to a team and I think that they get a lot back from it. The movie did a lot for us, even now 40 new accounts a day and the hits are still going up. Thousands of people saw the movie who are target customers for creative and abit, it did a lot for us as a team and for our sponsors.
How do you tie work with gaming, and does gaming ever feel like work itself?
My new job, I have to get up at 7 to start at 9. Set of at 7.30 to drive there, it means I gotta go to bed earlier, I wont get back until 6.30 in the night. Instantly I got a team whining at me to play before I even take a breather, I would say that it kinda does feel like work at times.
Especially when you gotta do a lot of PR work aswell as playing all the time. I get in and I don’t get anytime to myself, but I am the leader I could just say we’re not playing until such a time, but then we’d have to play later, meaning going to bed later.
I get no time to myself, cause I gotta go to bed or have a bath. I usually go to bed at 12, which means just 6/7 hours sleep which is no good. I'd say that work is effecting the team, when I was at college I could play a lot more. I’d love to see cod pay me to play but unless magic happens, and maybe wsvg, but maybe that’ll be CS:Source next year.
Our CS 1.6 team plays from 6 until 12, we play nearly 2 hours a night if we even do play that night. Now I don’t have the time to do tactics like I did in cod1, now we’re operating on a rush like fuck kill what u see scheme.
What does it mean to be Dignitas Mick?
I am very proud of what I’ve acclomplished, the only thing that gets to me is that with all of them, top 3 at every event dosent make me get a lot of money. What I don’t like is that a game like FIFA gets hundreds of thousands even though its totally random. Thats all because of developers backing, something I think IW and Activision should be doing for CoD.
The fact that I’ve had to play so many over-times, and 2 hour long matches, it kinda gets to me that I haven’t got much to show. I might have more than another player, but that’s not a great deal. Theres a big hole that I wanna fill this year.
I’m not bothered to tell my friends, they don’t think its geeky….well maybe they do, but I’m not ashamed of playing video games, I’m not arsed.
Would I tell a girl? Of course I would, I’d have her under the table whilst I was playing cod2!!!. Both palmz, and ben have girlfriends, trainee does but he never talks of her so I dunno whether shes real. Bens girl watches his games, so yeah I’d tell her, it might be strange at first but eventually I’d have her playing cod2 in dignitas with me!
Quickfires
Man utd or Arsenal tomorrow?
Man Utd all the way. (he used to be a leeds fan!!!)
Cod1 or CoD2?
CoD2, though I liked the cod1 maps, better choice and weapons, like the Russian maps.
To smoke or not to smoke?
To smoke! Though not in real life, I think shg is being drastic when its being removed and being playing at lan, just watch them? I mean how rare is the bug.
Trainee or Razz?
Hard question, but trainee cause he always does as I tell him. Razz used to do as I tell him, but now he isn’t shotgun all the time.
Speedlink or Ocrana?
Ocrana, though I think they’re a bit gay for kicking their teams, because fps games are what made them!
RTCW or ET?
RTCW
UT or Quake
UT99 owns them all
Thanks to mick for his super long answers!
Please go ahead and introduce yourself
Hello my names Mick Bradshaw, I don’t have an original alias, just Mick. I used to play UT a few years back and then I moved to CoD because UT2003 was really shit. When I first started playing CoD1 I used to play until about 6am with some UT friends, and won some stuff until I moved onto CoD2 and I’ve been in Dignitas for around a year and two months!
How does it differ being Dignitas Mick to being a regular noob? (At this point Mick paused, because his mum came in to complain that his bedroom was messy)
I got experience from being a noob, which I was for quite a while in CoD1. I’d say that the advantages are that if a really good player comes along but doesn’t have the reputation they will struggle to build a team or get recognised by a good organisation (digntias). Most teams recruit people based off their reputation because of the safety factor.
When I was at my old job, I could be on irc and msn all day and if anyone pm’d me I could answer them about configs, computer work etc. But in my new job I cant, I don’t have the time to answer them now because I’m either work, playing or out and they just get my bnc. By the time I see it, they’re gone so I just don’t get to see it. If there’s a post on the site I’ll see it and reply, or email them. I suppose its quite good that some people might look up to me, but at the same time it means that you get a lot of crap that you don’t wanna talk about. I mean who wants to go on about their config everyday, or have to prove that their config is real. It is good to be known in a way, because whenever I’m playing CoD I’ll always be in a good team because of how I’ve done, but the flipside is the hassle you get every day.
When you win an event there’s an ecstasy what is it like to lose the next event just one month later, knowing you could have beaten them last month?
Obviously it doesn’t feel great, but you gotta take the good times with the bad times. And I wouldn’t even say it’s the bad times, we’re in Dignitas we’ve got support, we’re not wasting money. Take Eurocup, we lost but we know we didn’t get raped, its not like we’re upset. When you lose you know you’ve gotta learn from the defeat, but when you’re winning you tend to lose focus thinking you’re the dogs bollocks but in CoD2 you gotta keep going.
Take CoD1, we won EOGC as supermen but went to smaulip and lost to victum, there was Frog who took it really badly and was distraught. Back then we paid for everything ourselves, when we won 2.5k it wasn’t bad, but it only just covered our own costs. With me being at college/school I didn’t really have anything that would pay for my spending money, these days if it wasn’t for dignitas I wouldn’t be going to any of these events because I couldn’t afford to. So Smaulip was different, and sure I was upset, but it was upset because instead of losing a small difference in prize money the difference between us in third we lost 8k in total.
Now though, if we lose, it doesn’t hurt so much, dignitas is a strong team, we virtually play for fun. If we didn’t have dignitas backing us we wouldn’t have been as stable as we are now. If people are paying outta their own money and not winning then they’d just leave cause it might not be worth keep playing. If we’d have won smaulip I don’t think frog of bmbr would have left the game and the supermen team would have ever died.
Its amazing in CoD2, they start losing events and they start to talk about quitting. Take Speedlink, they came 4th at Eurocup and they talk about quitting, its kinda immature to me, but that’s what everyone is doing at the moment. I guess its different in dignitas because we’re always close if we don’t win, I guess we’ll have to see if we take 5th and then see what happens, but I doubt it will change anything.
You’re good friends in Dignitas, what is it like when u gotta kick someone?
The only people I’ve had to kick was
qwerty and lars, I think we rushed our decision in recruiting them. The problem with lars was, he was great in his trials but a few weeks down the line he wasn’t doing so great although that wasn’t the reason to kick him. He wouldn’t take another gun on other maps when he wasn’t playing good, which as a sniper is only ok if you’re playing great all the time, like trainee. I had to kick qwerty because we felt he had a bit of an attitude problem, because when we’d lose he’d start getting down and maybe blaming other players, not badly but when you’re in a team like us who are all non-mad and non-screaming (apart from me) it has an effect.
Take EC, important game losing to serious (12-1), Ralph (qwerty) Ralph starts going on and on, if he hadn’t gone all depressed and arguing maybe we could have got a few more rounds rather than arguing. Even though we pulled it back to 15-15 we could have maybe got more rounds when he was arguing. I had a problem because qwerty didn’t wanna stay at the hostel at EC and everyone else did stay there, but without him it didn’t seem right.
For example, When other people said did I wanna go for a drink, I didn’t go, not because im anti-social, but I wanted stay with the team because some don’t drink. The fact ben was English and had more of a team presence it just felt that he was the one that had to stay, even if people felt Ralph was better.
The fact we won crossfire with an all UK lineup meant we had the potential to do anything. Kicking Ralph came down to nationality and him not being perfect, nobody is perfect but you can get pretty damn close and this team now is. Its really shitty, when I kicked lars it was really hard to do, I told him on vent that we don’t think its working out, I felt bad because he was a nice guy. I had to do the same with Ralph and it was hard, they both took it well, but its never an easy thing to do. The fact I didn’t want either of them to go was hard, but when you need to do something you’ve got to. The other change was Dale, but that was work based, all this week he was in Scotland all the time, so it wouldn’t work and that’s where palmz came in who is one of the best UK players. I think we’ll stay all UK for the time being.
How do you feel representing the Dignitas business model? Representing sponsors and such.
I see it like this, us gamers are the target customers for these hardware companies. A lot of teams seem to be “oooh omg they get so much money”, but really do we get so much money? When you think about it, we are the target market, when people see us they see our brands, when you shoutcast us they see our brands and people see the advertising going out to hundreds of thousands of people. Its hard to explain, but I’m sure sponsors waste money on advertising that doesn’t get them jack, but if a sponsor gives you a thousand pounds that might not be much for them, but a lot to a team and I think that they get a lot back from it. The movie did a lot for us, even now 40 new accounts a day and the hits are still going up. Thousands of people saw the movie who are target customers for creative and abit, it did a lot for us as a team and for our sponsors.
How do you tie work with gaming, and does gaming ever feel like work itself?
My new job, I have to get up at 7 to start at 9. Set of at 7.30 to drive there, it means I gotta go to bed earlier, I wont get back until 6.30 in the night. Instantly I got a team whining at me to play before I even take a breather, I would say that it kinda does feel like work at times.
Especially when you gotta do a lot of PR work aswell as playing all the time. I get in and I don’t get anytime to myself, but I am the leader I could just say we’re not playing until such a time, but then we’d have to play later, meaning going to bed later.
I get no time to myself, cause I gotta go to bed or have a bath. I usually go to bed at 12, which means just 6/7 hours sleep which is no good. I'd say that work is effecting the team, when I was at college I could play a lot more. I’d love to see cod pay me to play but unless magic happens, and maybe wsvg, but maybe that’ll be CS:Source next year.
Our CS 1.6 team plays from 6 until 12, we play nearly 2 hours a night if we even do play that night. Now I don’t have the time to do tactics like I did in cod1, now we’re operating on a rush like fuck kill what u see scheme.
What does it mean to be Dignitas Mick?
I am very proud of what I’ve acclomplished, the only thing that gets to me is that with all of them, top 3 at every event dosent make me get a lot of money. What I don’t like is that a game like FIFA gets hundreds of thousands even though its totally random. Thats all because of developers backing, something I think IW and Activision should be doing for CoD.
The fact that I’ve had to play so many over-times, and 2 hour long matches, it kinda gets to me that I haven’t got much to show. I might have more than another player, but that’s not a great deal. Theres a big hole that I wanna fill this year.
I’m not bothered to tell my friends, they don’t think its geeky….well maybe they do, but I’m not ashamed of playing video games, I’m not arsed.
Would I tell a girl? Of course I would, I’d have her under the table whilst I was playing cod2!!!. Both palmz, and ben have girlfriends, trainee does but he never talks of her so I dunno whether shes real. Bens girl watches his games, so yeah I’d tell her, it might be strange at first but eventually I’d have her playing cod2 in dignitas with me!
Quickfires
Man utd or Arsenal tomorrow?
Man Utd all the way. (he used to be a leeds fan!!!)
Cod1 or CoD2?
CoD2, though I liked the cod1 maps, better choice and weapons, like the Russian maps.
To smoke or not to smoke?
To smoke! Though not in real life, I think shg is being drastic when its being removed and being playing at lan, just watch them? I mean how rare is the bug.
Trainee or Razz?
Hard question, but trainee cause he always does as I tell him. Razz used to do as I tell him, but now he isn’t shotgun all the time.
Speedlink or Ocrana?
Ocrana, though I think they’re a bit gay for kicking their teams, because fps games are what made them!
RTCW or ET?
RTCW
UT or Quake
UT99 owns them all
Thanks to mick for his super long answers!
ET > RTCW Though ^-^
"trainee does but he never talks of her so I dunno whether shes real" - RL LOL
...
cya in denmark micky! :)