Mark Dolven Interview

GGL’s David Taylor conducted this interview prior to recent CGS results (MEGA spoilers!).

Mark Dolven is no stranger to a hard fight. The general manager of the Carolina Core made his mark on the pro-gaming community as the leader of Team Pandemic before leaving his post to join the Championship Gaming Series (CGS). During the 2007 season, Dolven led Carolina to second place finishes in both the North American and World Finals. His franchise suffered defeat on both occasions to the Chicago Chimera.

The Carolina Core’s 2008 season started out well. Gradually, however, the franchise fell into a slump. As the season progressed, it seemed increasingly unlikely that the Core would make it back to the play-offs. Toward the end of the season their fortunes began to improve and with a little luck, the Core made it into the play-offs by the skin of their teeth. With the slate wiped clean, the team found new confidence and vigorously fought its way to the semi-finals with a victory over the Wuhan Dragon.

GGL spoke with Mark Dolven the weekend before Carolina’s semi-final match against the Birmingham Salvo. The winner of this match would go on to compete in the 2008 World Final. Dolven spoke about his team’s comeback, the influence of traditional sports on his management style, and expressed some criticisms of the CGS draft.

GGL: You must be riding high these past few days. How does it feel now that the Core made it back to the semi-finals?

Mark Dolven: It’s great to be back in the semi-finals. Last year we had an amazing match against Berlin in the semi-finals and we expect nothing less against Birmingham. The match-up with Wuhan was much more of a blowout than we expected. They are a great team with great players. They have a lot of respect for everyone they play. We thought that they were going to play a little bit better, but I think our team was just on its game.

GGL: What are your expectations going up against Birmingham in the semi-finals?

MD: Birmingham is going to be a really tough match. They’ve circled us as the team that they wanted to play the entire tournament. They got their wish. I think that the main game against Birmingham will be Dead or Alive 4 (DOA4) female. SarahLou (Sarah Harrison) is a great player. She’s held a close score with Vanessa (San Francisco’s Vanessa Arteaga) in every match they’ve played. Mystik (Katherine Gunn) is either hit or miss. If she’s hitting we should have an easy time with Birmingham. If she misses it’s going to be a long, probably up-hill road.

GGL: How do you explain the Core’s lackluster performance earlier in the season compared to its dramatic comeback in the last few weeks?

MD: We had a weird performance during the regular season. We started off the season with two huge wins. We were 2-0 and riding high. Then we lost to New York and all of the sudden things started to slip. We only won about two out of our last nine games. I don’t know if it was necessarily that we weren’t respecting the regular season, but I think that had a lot to do with it. The regular season is very taxing and last year we stepped up at the play-offs and then again at the World Finals. We were just looking forward to that and we kind of caught ourselves looking too far ahead. It almost cost us our season. Luckily we got into the play-offs by a fluke, a miracle, or whatever you want to call it. We’re glad we got in, but we probably didn’t deserve it.

GGL: Did you expect that last year’s world champions, the Chicago Chimera, would perform so poorly this season? In your opinion, what were the reasons for their poor performance?

MD: Coming into the season I thought that Chicago was going to be a wild card team. I knew that they weren’t going to be as strong as they were in 2007, but I didn’t expect them to fall as far as we did as well. I thought that we would both make it to the play-offs.

In DOA4 they had the 2007 World MVP, Black Mamba (Jeremy Florence), and then a strong player in Kasumi Chan (Marjorie Bartell). Neither of them really stepped up to the plate for them this year. I think Kasumi Chan was second to last and Black Mamba was at the bottom as well. In the CGS you really need to be strong in the two console games, both DOA4 and Forza 2, if you want to have any chance at winning. Their DOA4 team just let them down this year.

GGL: Did it take you by surprise that some of the other teams that were behind last season, like the Dallas Venom, achieved such success in season two?

MD: We expected all the other teams to get better. The draft system was set-up so that the Chimera and us got the second to last two picks every round. We were forced to give up half of our amazing teams from last year. We expected, just as a product of the situation, that the other teams were going to get better. I think Alex Conroy of the Dallas Venom took the most advantage of that. He got a great racer (Justin “Muffinman” Anderson), he got Phoenix (Michelle Pleet), and he got Counter-Strike players. He was drafting first every round. Slowly the math is going to catch up to the other teams no matter how good we are.

GGL: You’ve been a critic of the draft process. What would you like to change about it?

MD: I think that the draft process might be a little broken. They make us give up 50 percent of our team, which is a lot. Right now, if I had to choose 50 percent of my team to keep, I couldn’t do it. It’s going to take an entire off-season to make those decisions. Then, on top of giving away half of your team, you have to suffer all five rounds of the draft on how you did the previous year. If they were letting us keep seven or eight of our players, then I’d be okay with that. But they’re making us give away the majority of our team, and then get slowly get beaten up round by round in the draft.

My suggestion was to do it the way they had it this year for the first two rounds. That way Alex Conroy would have still gotten first pick in the first and second rounds. Then, at the end of the second round, they would start snaking it the way they did the previous year. When I ran the math and averaged draft picks, in that situation everyone averaged a draft pick of three point something. It evened out but it gave the lower teams an opportunity to get a sixth and seventh superstar on their team as opposed to the rest of us falling behind. But on those eighth or tenth picks it would be a little more even. I don’t have a problem with rewarding the teams that did poorly the year before, but I think the reward was a little too strong this year.

GGL: I recently interviewed Jason Lake. One of his criticisms of the CGS was that it turned coaches into talent scouts and there was not enough time to build up talent before they were thrown to the wolves. I essence, there is not enough time to fix problems that arise with one’s players. Do you feel this is a legitimate criticism?

MD: I don’t really agree with that at all. I think the two months this year was more than enough time to fix your players if they had any issues. In his case he’d been working with his players for almost two years because he had almost the exact same team from last year. You would think that would be enough time. Personally I think that you’ve got to draft who is good on the day of the draft because there really isn’t enough time. Last year was even worse. I think they gave us a one-week window. This year they gave us two months. That’s plenty of time to get the most from your team.

GGL: When you started season two, in what areas did you feel the Core needed the most improvement?

MD: Heading into the draft this year, I knew I definitely wanted a stronger pretense in FIFA. Peekay’s (Nicholas Depalmer) 1-11 regular season record last year was too much for the team to bear. It really didn’t kill us during any matches, but I like going into any game knowing we have a chance to win. So we wanted to get better at FIFA and we did that by drafting probably one of the best professionals in the game and that’s Anomaly (Andrew Brock).

We used our first pick on General E Live (Eric Earley) for Forza 2 because just like in FIFA, I wanted to know we could beat anyone on any given day. Last year we knew we couldn’t beat Jason X (Jason Exelby) and Ch0mpr (Wesley Cwiklo) with Phantom (Joe Tackett) and Rex (Brent Dimapilis). Nothing against them, but Jason and Ch0mpr were just too good. So I invested heavily in the first round this year to get a racer that I knew if I put him together with Phantom we could take on anyone. Maybe they wouldn’t be first, but our goal was to be in the top three with an 8-4 record. We ended up in an 8-4 record and just happened to be good enough for first. But we could beat anyone and we did during the season. That was important.

GGL: What’s your take on the criticism levied against FIFA 08 this season? Many seem to feel that it is too difficult to score.

MD: FIFA 08 is kind of a difficult game to judge because on stage it is actually lagging a little bit since they are pulling video directly from the machines. So on stage it is a little bit more difficult for the players to control their team. If we could fix that problem then I think we could see more scoring right off the bat. I watch the players in practice and there is a lot more scoring because there is zero delay. On stage there is some kind of weird bug that we can’t figure out right now. That would be a good start. But we can do some crazy things with FIFA 08 to make it more score-friendly. Some people say we should lower the goal keeper, but I don’t think that is necessarily the way to do it. I know some of the players have fooled around with different camera angles. If you can see from top to bottom instead of from left to right, you can see the entire goal and score with greater ease. We can do that or maybe give the players a perfect 99 rating in every category so it’s a real fast based game and if there is a chance to score they will. Things like that might make the game more score-friendly and skill based. The way it is now, even when a top player plays a lower player it is not a sure victory. That’s not a competitive spirit. If a top player plays a lower player they should be able to rack up some points.

GGL: OffbeatNinja’s performance somewhat mirrored that of the franchise as a whole this season. He started off poorly but gradually improved as the season went forward. How do you explain this?

MD: It’s no secret that OffbeatNinja’s downward spiral began last year when he lost WCG to SkatanMilla (Niklas Lagerborg). For some reason that removed all of his confidence. He won a bazillion matches in a row and was riding an amazing winning streak, but for some reason that match just took it all out of him. When we got to the World Finals, he focused most of his energy on the Itagaki Challenge against Vanessa. There was a lot of personal stuff behind that match and he knew he had to win. Unfortunately it took a toll on his overall performance. He almost lost to SaraFan (Yong Hyeon Baek) from Seoul. He beat Paddaman (London’s Avtar Padda) pretty easily, but then he lost to TACTICAL (Berlin’s Rudolf Fischer), a player that he had beat 5-0 a couple days before in the individuals competition. He had lost his confidence and focus. That definitely carried over into this year.

He’ll be the first to admit that at the beginning of the year he just didn’t have it. I think it was the eleventh match of the season when we played L.A. and he defeated Perfect Legend (Carl White). I could see from watching him in that match that he was back. He was playing his style again instead of some weird style that other people were trying to force him to play. He was listening to too many people. I sat him down and was like, “Ryan, you’re the best player in the world, you have the best instincts in the world, why are you listening to other people?” It started to slowly sink in and then when he beat Carl it all turned around. He beat Master (Emmanuel Rodriguez) in the next game, then Cheppelle (New York’s Cardell Thomas), and then Master again. He’s back. He’s playing the way he knows how to play and with an insane confidence that he’s never had before. It’s just like anything else, if you’re not confident you’re not going to win and that’s basically what happened to him.

GGL: What was it about the Itagaki Challenge that was so stressful? Was it a rivalry? The prize itself (a trip to Japan)?

MD: Vanessa and OffbeatNinja dated before season one. They had broken up and that was kind of lurking over their heads. The whole male community was like, “Ryan you either win, or we’re going to hate you forever.” No one wanted the male community to lose to the female community. So that was a lot of pressure on him. The timing of the match was also very odd because it immediately followed our match against Berlin in the semi-finals. OffbeatNinja had to play TACTICAL before the Itagaki challenge, but his mind wasn’t even on that match. He was thinking about the Vanessa match that was about to happen in an hour and a half. It was just bad timing and Ryan at the time was a bit weaker mentally. It’s a lot of pressure for a young man to handle.

GGL: In a recent YouTube video you mentioned how you were reading a book called, “Built to Win.” How have traditional sports inspired you as a manager?

MD: I am a golfer by nature. I played golf in high school and I was the captain of my state champion team. I even went toward the PGA at one point in my life. Golf has done a lot for my gaming career because golf is all about psychology. It’s about positive thinking and visualization. It definitely applies to gaming at the highest level. It you don’t have a good attitude and aren’t confident you’re not going to be able to get a head shot, pull off a counter, or score a goal. My background in traditional sports has helped a lot because I’ve been able to educate my players on things that they might not know. Sports psychology is a very powerful thing and I believe that if you don’t have a really strong mind then you aren’t going to be good at all.

That book you are referring to, “Built to Win,” was an autobiography of John Schuerholz who was the general manager of the Atlanta Braves. He’s a good leader but he also knew how to pick talent. That’s why I read that book right before the draft last year. He had won a crazy amount of divisional championships with the Atlanta Braves, so he had to have known something. The book talked about how baseball wasn’t all stats and you had to trust people’s judgments. Finding yourself good scouts was a really big deal and I kind of applied that at the draft. It wasn’t just myself scouting. I had one of my really close friends and former Call of Duty teammates there. I also had another guy who I trusted with everything. The two of those guys each had distinct jobs. One followed around the other GMs and tried to figure out what they were doing. The other’s job was to scout out DOA4 female because I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get Mystik back. I didn’t have to think twice about the scouting reports they gave me. You have to trust the people below you. That’s something that has been very difficult for me in the past and the book helped that.

GGL: Are there any other sports-related books that you recommend?

MD: A lot of golf and sports psychology books. There is a book called, “Golf is Not a Game of Perfect.” It applies to golf but also to real life as well. It’s all about visualization and routines. Anomaly also recommended to me a book called, “Mind Gem.” It’s another book along those lines that tells professional athlete’s stories and how they got to where they are just by improving their mental game. It’s kind of a theme of professional athlete’s. They all have a lot of raw talent, but the difference between a starter and a super-star all-star is usually that they think a little bit differently. Reading books like that where there are a lot of real life examples are really important.

GGL: In the past you stated that you wanted to be an “evangelist for professional gaming?” How has your participation in the CGS helped you in this goal?

MD: Being an evangelist for professional gaming isn’t as easy as it sounds. I thought joining the CGS would put me at the forefront so I could convince people that pro-gaming was the thing to do and the place to be. But since joining the CGS, I’ve been fighting the war from within our own community. We have people that don’t like the CGS and we have people that do. So we’ve been fighting the war to be pro-CGS instead of pro-professional gaming. I wish we could change our focus from trying to win over people already in the community to winning over people outside of the community. Anyone who I’ve ever introduced to this, whether it’s a friend or just someone I randomly meet on the street, they are always converted. But it’s so hard to convert the 1.6 players or even the hardcore DOA players because our rules are a little bit different. That’s a war we probably shouldn’t have to fight. I’m surprised that the rest of the world doesn’t see that professional gaming is professional gaming whether it’s the way we’re doing it, or the way ESL is doing it. We’re all fighting the same war. We’re all trying to get gaming to the forefront. I’m hoping in the future that eventually the mini-war in our community will be over and we can fight the big war together. Until that’s over I just don’t see how that’s possible.

GGL: How do you think that the CGS has propelled professional gaming?

MD: I think in the two years we’ve been doing things with the CGS, professional gaming is starting to get the spotlight it deserves. I think the G4 distribution deal is huge. The CGS is more what G4 expected professional gaming to be and they’re excited about the show and the competitive aspect. G4 going back to their roots of hardcore gaming is a big move and that means the mainstream is moving in that direction as well. I think that with the potential sponsors we are looking to sign and the ones that we have now – it’s no secret that when Mountain Dew puts their name on something that it is going to be big. I think our television coverage and the broad media exposure we are getting through our strong public relations firm is something that these other leagues don’t have and when you have as good of a competition as we do combined with the infrastructure behind it, you can’t help but think it’s going to go mainstream really fast.

GGL: What would be your advice to a player who wanted to participate in the CGS?

MD: My recommendation to anyone who wants to be in the CGS is to start competing now. Don’t wait until three weeks before the draft and combine to pick your game. You have to go to the combine and you have to impress me or any of the five other North American GMs if you want to get on a team. Even if you are to win the combine, if you don’t impress us somehow, we’re not going to draft you. It’s all about getting your name out there. It’s amazing to me when I go to the combine how many gamers don’t have the guts to come up to me and introduce themselves. That’s a big thing. If they don’t have the guts to introduce themselves, they won’t be able to do the big stage. I’m not an intimidating person, and the other five GMs aren’t intimidating.

Overall the CGS is aiming to announce our games very early in 2009. People will have 4 or 5 months to get ready for the combine and draft. So when the games are announced I suggest you pick the game that suits your talent the most and then start playing in every league and every match you can. Then get to know the GMs and make sure you reach out to them.

GGL: Do you want to thank anyone out there who may be reading?

MD: Thank you to my fiancé who is very lenient when it comes to all my travels. I have lived in California now for 4-5 months in the two years that I have been in the CGS. That’s a long time away from home, and that doesn’t even count all the other traveling. A shout out to my team for doing an amazing job this year and really stepping up when they needed to do so. Also to my former team, Team Pandemic. I learned a lot working with them and I think they are doing really great things without me. I am really proud of the things they have done since I moved on.