The World Cyber Games Champion of 2007, well known as Daniel "hero" Schellhase, will participate on our SEC event of course. He is playing for SK-Gaming and answered a lot of our questions. Please find our next interview below. Enjoy!
1. Hi Hero, roughly 2 weeks from now the Samsung Euro Championship will be happening at CeBIT once again. You’ll be baring German colors as usual, so has it all become routine or is there still some excitement in it?
You’re always excited. This year I’ll try to recoup my loss from last year. I think I’ll be well prepared. I´m a bit worried about the Vista machines, but I’m still confident in winning with my new German Adidas jersey.
2. You’re a definite favorite in the FIFA-Tournament. What are your expectations and how are you preparing yourself for the tournament?
I will go through intense training because I’m playing to win. This of course won’t be easy, because the competition will be prepared as well. I hope that my experience will help me bring home victory.
3. How would you judge your competition?
I can’t really comment much on that now but I know I don’t really have to worry about too much. If I just have a good day I can basically beat anybody. If I happen to have a bad day, it could all be over just as fast. I think that Spain, the Ukraine and Russia will definitely be strong.
4. The SEC are the first hint at the course of the running WCG season, which will end with the Grand Final in Cologne this year. What are your plans for the WCG season?
Of course I would like to win the World Cyber Games this year. In front of the home audience in Cologne. That would really be grand. Additionally, I could be the first player ever to win the World Cyber Games three times, which is a large motivation all by itself. The National Final is going to be intense. If I pull through there, you can look forward to seeing much more from me.
5. You’ve taken part in almost every WCG Grand Final and therefore know all of the differenct locations they’ve taken place at so far. Which one was your favorite Grand Final?
South Korea was the best one so far. It was almost unnerving. The World Cyber Games are so huge over there and actually matter to the media. You could pick up any news paper on any day and find all the relevant information on the daily WCG matches. The way things were ran was really the best I’ve witnessed so far as well. The entire staff was always making sure everything was the way the players needed and wanted it, like how they would immediately switch out your computer no questions asked if it wasn’t running too well. Nowadays, you’d have a network error or something and people would just look at you and shrug. Back in Seoul that really was a highlight.
6. What about this year in Cologne?
I hope we can surpass previous Grand Finals. I’m expecting huge crowds in Cologne. It’ll be a huge spectacle. These World Cyber Games are going to dwarf all others just from the mood alone. Even if it just turns out half as good as I’d expect it to. I’m really looking forward to it a lot and I hope I can be a part of it as well, that is, if I qualify. I think it’s a shame that compared to how it usually is, the current champions aren’t automatically qualified for the finals.
7. For some time now, there have been rumors about you quitting the active eSports scene. Any comment on that?
Yeah, those rumors have been going around. But from the looks of things, we’re going to be in the ballgame until at least 2010 and hopefully win a lot more titles. At this point I want to thank our sponsors for making all of this possible in the first place, with whom we want to celebrate a lot more parties in the future and do great things to bring eSports forward. There’s a lot left to be done and we’ll be a here for a bit longer :>
8. It’s 2008 and you’ve been at this for so many years, what motivates you to keep up eSports? The community, the money or is it still the joy of playing?
Basically you have to love your game if you want to compete for the title of World Champion. Money doesn’t motivate you to train or give you that decisive spur before reaching your goal. In the long run, you would go under in the large amount of mediocre players. But it’s also about the partnerships we’ve established that drive us. For example Adidas, usually not involved with eSports. But it’s going great with them and that just makes it all so much more fun and rewarding if you can live it out like this and do as many cool things as we’re doing. Soon there’s going to be a “Schroet Collection” from Adidas. These kind of things would’ve been unthinkable a few years back. If you have “family bonds”, you really want to give it your best, because in a way, you’re doing it for your “family” :>
9. A hypothetical question that I want to ask you as well: If you could change anything about the WCG Tournament rules, what would you change?
First of all give us back throw-ins. Recently they’ve banned throw-ins, which is really getting on my nerves. There are no bugs in the mechanic, it’s all defendable. If it weren’t defendable, the players themselves would report that to the leagues and demand a ban or new rule. It doesn’t shine a good light on a league if they ban something prematurely. You should try to liberate the players as much as possible instead of just posting rules everywhere.
10. In a passed interview you stated that, considering the on-going debate on violent videogames, FIFA would be the “perfect game“ for everybody. Has this opinion changed or rather confirmed itself?
It confirms itself more from day to day. Just take a look at the tournament scene in Germany. There are more and more tournaments and they expand beyond the “scene” and onto casual gamers as well. With what other game could you just walk into an Adidas Store and just attract and entertain people like that? It’s a game simply everybody knows and has possibly even played at some point. It’s not that easy with games like Warcraft or Counter-Strike. Politicians just love hearing themselves talk and posing in public as they declare war on shooting-games. FIFA is simply clean. There are so many great online tournaments or even championships. Whether it’s the EPS, eSportBL or even the FIFA Interactive World Cup. You can even qualify for the latter in any Saturn market or Adidas Store. There’s even going to be a National Final in Berlin. How many other games enable something like that?
11. You’re said to be a big soccer-fan. Who’s going to be German Champion this year?
I think that Bavaria is going to pull through. It would be embarrassing if after so much money spent they couldn’t at least come up with some wins. And most importantly their new players are really kicking in. Sure, they have their own slumps here and there, but in the end they’ll make it… sadly…
12. I’d want to make this last question a personal one. What was the best prize you’ve won in your very successful career?
The OPEL TIGRA TWIN TOP I won during the WWCL!!!! :> Easily the most beautiful prize to date… thanks AOL :>
