Krepo abandona Evil Geniuses

Hey guys just got back from worlds, it was an amazing experience. There were tons of fans out there both watching online and in the venues. Standing there in the middle of the Sangam Stadium looking around and seeing about 40 000 people going absolutely nuts made me realise i made the right decision dropping out of college (KIDS STAY IN SCHOOL). During the trip i got to know the production side even more and they truely are a bunch of experienced and fun people to hang around. Ranging from casters to producers to crazy stage managers. It was a blast but at the same time i'm so happy to be home again.
Now to get on point, I just wanted to add some context to the tweet that went out. It announced Me & Evil Geniuses parting ways. First of all i have a lot of respect for Evil Geniuses as an organisation, they've always treated me well both in taking care of me as well as paying me a fair wage and I respect that a lot.

However there were some things that ended up going suboptimal that lead to this decision being taken. Let me remind you that there are 3 sides to every story, mine, theirs and the truth somewhere in between. But I just wanted to share my side of things.
So where we begin. I guess at the start? Perhaps at the start of last year? After not making it worlds the old CLG.EU line-up broke up and was left in shambles, Froggen wanted to his own thing and the rest of us weren't sure as to what to do. Evil Geniuses offered to provide sponsorship/branding to a team owned by Brian Cordry in the states, a team we ( Stephen, Yellowpete & Me) would end up joining. Now in e-sports you have to make many tricky decisions, and this was one of them. To this day I don't really know if I made the right choice. Part of me feels I joined that line-up in an effort to stay "relevant" rather to win. Part of me knew that the line-up wasn't gonna make it to worlds, but we could try, right? I don't know. Should I have stayed free agent? All i know is going into next year it'll be 100% to win, or not at all.
We had a rough first split and the spark between me & pete slowly died down so we ended up replacing him with Altec. Johnny is quite possibly the biggest rough talent out there. I'm confident he'll be the best ADC in NA one day. However he has some hurdles to overcome before that.
I don't wanna dwell too much on the first split and just talk a bit about the second split. The scouting/replacing process was far too long and we barely even had practice with Johnny as the ADC (evidence is delayed paperwork forcing Pete to play a last "goodbye" match.) So we started the split on a false note. And I think that was the prelude to a lot of avoidable troubles.
In no way is this blog/vlog meant to single out persons but there were just so many things that could have went different. Our team owner Brian Cordry is an incredibly nice guy with his heart in the right place and a passion for e-sports. However he just didn't have what it takes to be a manager when it came to maintaining a healthy social atmosphere or guiding a competitive e-sports roster. He's incredibly talented at organising scrims/taking care of groceries or making sure the house stayed tidy, for that I would like to commend him. But for every area he excelled he was too inexperienced in others and it lead to an incredibly unhealthy and at times depressing in-house environment.

From my experience, managing a competitive 5 man team-game is like defusing a bomb. Wrong moves can only make it worse. We tried to not let shine through but it did affect us all. Because of the late switch, Pete still ended up living in the house (as well as Stephen later), and both ended up doing so for pretty much the entire split, in their own rooms forcing starters to share rooms (or in Altecs case, sleep at the bottom of a stairwell in the open entry area for about 2 months).
With Stephen gone, I tried to step as a leader for the team as well as trying my hardest on support. It's incredibly hard to combine leadership and playing at the highest level cause you're constantly trying to help others solve their problems. Mainly in communication. A lot of our scrims would start of by me asking "Hey guys what're we doing, what's the plan?" Hoping for a response. And this is where I feel the younger players can improve, and i've told them so and I really hope they take the advice. It's really disrespectful to be watching Anime/on skype/not paying attention while there's someone trying to improve the team atmosphere and communication.
It's impossible to lead if you don't have the respect from the people you're trying to help, and there I failed. I don't think i've ever had the full respect from the team, and then what's the point. I'm not perfect, I had bad weeks, bad streaks, some personal shit to deal with, but I tried.
But then when a teammate tells you " Yo it feels like these scrims are 2v5 this entire week" or I have to ask Altec if he remembers when the last time was he asked me to play duoQ, only to be met with " Uhm, I don't know". Well I knew, it was well over 2 months. I don't even recall him telling me "good job" in any of those last 3 months in-game. That's when you know you're no longer a team but just some guys playing together till the season is over. After every scrim near the end there would be a 10 minute long discussion in Korean between Pobelter and Helios of which we'd get perhaps a 30 second translation if we'd ask. There's about 20 other things that went wrong/could've gone better but it's no point dwelling on the past. Point is, the social atmoshpere wasn't healthy and it just wasn't fun anymore.
Ironically my best performance came when I said "fuck it, I don't care about the team anymore" and I went in to superweek wanting to prove myself rather than EG. We ended up going 4-0 after losing every scrim except 3 matches that week.. It was rather surreal.
The point is not that i'm trying to point fingers here, but that it had to end. I don't blame Tyson,Johnny, Eugene or Dong-jin for anything they did or did not do, they're 17-18. They're more mature than I was at 17 but still have a long way to go, and that's where management dropped the ball. They should call people out, educate and make sure the social environment in a team does not become a cess-pool like it did. Cause you can be as gifted individually as you want, this is a team-game, and it requires a team to work together and respect eachother, in some way, shape or form.
So what's next? Honestly I don't know. I'm a free agent now (publically) and i'm looking at the offers. I want to prove the world that I can still do it. I've found ways to train better, work on team atmosphere if the team wants to, and am just in a way better spot physically and mentally lately. At the other side, i'm very fortunate in the fact that I have a career ready for me after playing. And at one point i'll have to make the jump. What is one year more of playing gonna offer me? I don't know. It'll only be worth it if I get to worlds again. Another year of not making it to worlds would mean I wasted my time. As for post-player career, i've had a team approach to think about coaching & there's obviously the caster avenue. Both sound promising, I feel i can add a lot of extra value to in-game commentary and with my experiences of being in teams I feel i've learned a lot of things regarding coaching. But playing is still the dream, I really want to use the experience i've gained over the years and share it as a player with my team.
I have a firstworld problem regarding which job I want in e-sports, I think i'm very fortunate in that regard but it's still rather tricky. I'll spend the next few days talking to people about potential offers and meanwhile re-build my mechanics. I might start streaming somewhere next week again. I've had an offer as a player already but it has to be financially viable. I'm closing in on 25 next year and at that point I need to think longterm.
I try to have the mentality of seperating people from their E-sports persona's. I may have had my many differences & regrets with "Guitar", but I still wish Brian Cordry the best. Likewise me & Snoopeh used to argue a lot (for the benefit of the team) but Stephen Ellis is a lifelong friend. I hope other players adopt that mentality as well one day.

I wish my ex-teammates: Pete, Stephen, Tyson, Eugene, Johnny & Dong-jin all the best and hope they find something that makes them happy. I'd like to thank Evil Geniuses & their sponsors for their continued support.

Thank you for reading.