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DeKay Scope: Candid Interviews Like ALEX's Should be Lauded, Not Criticized

By Jarek "DeKay" Lewis

Vitality's ALEX gave a recent controversial interview that should be lauded instead of criticized.
Vitality's ALEX gave a recent controversial interview that should be lauded instead of criticized. / Photo courtesy of DreamHack

Following Complexity’s 2-0 victory Saturday against Team Vitality in the BLAST Premier, in-game leader Alex "ALEX" McMeekin was criticized heavily for his comments in an on-stream interview after the match. When asked about the way Complexity played, he said “I think they are in a honeymoon period right now…they’re literally just running around head-shotting people.” He then went on to say, “They are just super confident and they are all trying individual stuff that’s working for them. I don’t think it’s a play style that will last long.” Many users on social media -- and also players on Complexity -- were quick to call ALEX salty and/or proclaim the interview “wasn’t a good look.”

But that type of candid interview should be lauded, not frowned upon. It was one of the few times in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive history we got an honest take, yet people wasted no time giving him flak for it. Even if you think his analysis of Complexity wasn’t accurate, that doesn’t take away from the value of how transparent he was.

When you are one of the better teams in the world, losing to a lineup that has hardly played on LAN together is a huge blow. So when it does happen, it is only natural to assume the opponent did it in somewhat of a gimmicky way, especially when you consider how much individual talent Complexity has. I don’t personally believe Complexity won on individual skill alone, but I can totally see how it might have appeared that way to one man out of 10 on the server. At that point in time, he hasn’t had the time to review the match from a typical viewing perspective. Instead, he was fresh off of a loss with emotions at an all time high.

A valid counter-argument to the way ALEX handled the interview is that he could have waited until he had more context to make a statement about how Complexity beat them. While reasonable in a sense, I don’t like that idea because it panders to the boring “PR answers” players regularly give and fans hate. That type of interview -- as it often is -- would have been borderline meaningless, so I’m appreciative of what ALEX did. He didn’t call Complexity bad or say anything disrespectful and instead gave his honest perspective at that moment in time. Why is that such a problem?

Fans hate “boring PR answers,” but simultaneously attack a player in one of the few instances of them saying something honest? You can’t have it both ways.

The best part of the entire situation is that I am now more excited than ever to see these two teams face off again in the future. One small interview has now created an entertaining storyline for the future tournaments to come. Complexity will be determined to prove that their run in the BLAST Premier group stage wasn’t a fluke, while Vitality will want to back up what ALEX said. Perhaps this is the start of an amazing rivalry between two teams that are structured entirely different from each other. A real rivalry, not the manufactured one that people believe exists between Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev and Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut.