If you could please introduce yourself and what you do at complexity.
My name is Jason Bass and I am the Chief Operating Officer at Complexity. I handle the day to day marketing activities and the financials for the company.

How do you feel complexity will help shape the future of North American E-Sports?
Alex, Jason and I have been in this community for a very long time. As such we are trusted advisors for a lot of people and they for us. These relationships in the background help to shape a lot of things and will continue to shape things in the future. Complexity’s actions as an organization will hopefully give up and coming teams a road map and a place in the sky to shoot for and in that sense many teams in the future may follow a similar model to us. The events that Complexity chooses to support or not support can be greatly affected by our decisions. I am a big fan of supporting the community as a whole but sometimes we simply may not have the game that the event is using.

What sort of future does complexity have as a team organization? Can we expect you to pick up new squads in the near future? Are there any new markets which coL wishes to get into? Possibly an RTS or fighting game or QL division?
There are lots of games and teams we are actively looking in to. I am not really in a position to divulge what those games, players or teams might be but look for Complexity to be adding more divisions in the future.

There seems to be a growing rivalry with the EG CS team lately, what is your opinion on the rivalry, and what future events, tournaments, leagues, etc. can we expect to see coL attend/compete in?
I believe we are the best two teams in North America and therefore a natural rivalry will exist. Of course there is history with that squad but as far as I am concerned it is history. Our goal is to be the best and EG has the same goal, we will consistently knock each other around trying to achieve our goals.
Complexity will be attending any and all events we have the opportunity to attend. Our next events are MLG Dallas for WOW and then GameGune in Mexico.

Your CS team recently competed in the offline ESEA grand finals, are you pleased with your teams performance?
The team had a real good tournament. They lost a heartbreaker in the finals. EG played the better Counter-Strike in that tournament. We will get them next time.

Do you feel that your CS team has hit a plateau in terms of skill? Or is there still a lot of room to catch up to the European teams, and that the conditions, etc. just need to change? –conditions meaning, more international events with all continents, more stable skilled teams in North America, more bootcamping with foreign and domestic teams-
This is a difficult question to answer. As of this point, I really don’t know how we stack up internationally and frankly I don’t think the players do either. We really have no basis of comparison and hopefully we will get a taste at Gamegune. I certainly don’t think anyone ever hits a “plateau” of skill. There is always room for improvement. Hopefully we will see more international events in 2010 and we can start seeing the American/European rivalry that existed for so many years pre-CGS.

If you were to go on record who do you think are the top 3 CS teams in America, and then the world?
NA
1. Complexity
2. EG
3. Gravitas
WORLD
1. Fnatic
2. SK
3. Mousesports

I mean 2 and 3 are so debatable it is hard to even put it on paper. MTW, Wicked, etc. There are a lot of good teams out there.

Complexity is one of the only top ‘American based’ organizations to have a team attending the MLG Dallas stop; Gravitas, EG and Pandemic won’t be sending a squad to MLG, how does it feel to have that spotlight on your organization, and how do you think your squad will fare at the event?
It is a real honor to be invited by MLG to compete in this event. I think our team will turn some heads in this event and do really well. The addition of Reckful has made us a lot stronger in my opinion. I will be heading to Dallas for the event so I look forward to watching the guys play.

What makes a team attractive to complexity? What makes coL want to pick up a new game/team/player?
Obviously a top tier team is going to be attractive so performance will most likely get them noticed but we at Complexity look for a lot more than just skill. They need to be able to properly present themselves to the media. They should be passionate about what they are doing and have a strong hunger to win. We have all seen plenty of teams over the years with a ton of talent but they are not winning events and I believe because top teams in many cases go on cruise control. They just don’t have that fire to win anymore. So that is a very important trait.

What do you think it will take for North American CS to reach its former status/glory?
This is a real simple answer.. Time and a lot of practice.

What do you think it will take to sort of ‘revive’ the North American scene? We have seen almost every major event depart from our borders and either move to other continents, or just die off completely; what do you think it would take for North America to start moving forward again?
I believe it is going to take a shift in business model and a much higher confidence level in this demographics ability to give a company return on investment. It is a real fine line that has to be walked. MLG is one of the few companies that has walked this line successfully to this point. You need to start on the grass roots level much like MLG and even CPL did but in order to be profitable you need to be able to shift your model to appeal to a wider audience all while not alienating the hard core community. This is where CPL failed and MLG thus far has succeeded. CPL took a standpoint of the community will do whatever we tell them too and that will never work. The CGS started out of the gates with that mentality in mind and that is why it was doomed to fail. MLG is expanding outward with their deal with EA which will provide them a much broader exposure all the while leaving their core like Halo alone.

North American Sponsors are also going to have to have a higher level of confidence in this form of entertainment and competition before they are willing to sign on the dotted line again. Too many times they have been burned by unscrupulous people or just simply not being delivered what has been promised to them by good intentioned event promoters.

Do you see E-Sports more as a global scene, or more as a domestic one? Meaning, when you look at E-Sports, is it one global entity, or are there many ‘models’ of E-Sports around the world -Europe, Korea, China/Asia, North America, South America- ?
Obviously there are many different models. I am of the opinion that this is fine. I would love to see a unified type circuit like Golf or Tennis but even something like that does not preclude the need for other models. These can all exist in harmony and can be domestic and worldwide in nature. The more the scene has going on the better it is for the growth of the industry. This goes back to something I have said time and time again if you want this to grow you should be a supporter of all things in this industry. All the CGS haters should have supported it for nothing other than the fact that it was good for gaming in general and the failure of it was very bad for gaming in general. PC gamers should support MLG because again it is good for gamers in general and its failure would be devastating for North America and world-wide gaming. If it is a gaming competition put on by a legitimate company we should all do our best to support it and not be so polarized as CS 1.6 vs Source or PC vs Console or whatever other segmentation game we like to play. If we could be unified demographic we have a lot of power and a lot appeal to sponsors and event organizers. As it stands now we take our relatively small niche market and create small little niches inside of it. This will never work in the long term. Just because you don’t play a game does not mean you should hate on the people that do or the organizers that support that game.

Be a fan of competitive GAMING. Not just a fan of YOUR game.

Complexity is obviously a unique sort of organization, how does complexity operate in terms of staff and production compared to other professional E-Sports organizations? –production, etc. meaning website content development, relations with the fans, promotional events, giveaways, etc.-
I cannot really say how other organizations operate. We have a staff of mainly volunteers that are giant fans of Complexity. Without them we would have very little content. I feel as though we are very in touch with our fans. The owners at Complexity realize that they are the only reason we have sponsors. This is an ecosystem we have here. We all need each other and we feed off each other. Without Complexity there are no fans, without fans there are no sponsors, without sponsors there is no Complexity, without our volunteer staff we alienate our fans and have no sponsors and there is no Complexity. This ecosystem is what keeps us alive at this point and we will always recognize that and never become bigger than our ecosystem. Meaning we try our best to listen to the volunteer staff and fans and act upon that information we receive from them and that will never change.

Our management structure makes us unique. Jason, Alex and I all have very diverse backgrounds and all handle different duties as it pertains to the company. Alex is the sales guy and team manager. He is the one out talking to the sponsors, recruiting players and managing those players. Jason Lake is the guy at the top calling the shots and also managing the website and website staff. I handle all of the financial and marketing aspects of the company. I work with the already signed sponsors on plans to further their marketing efforts with us.

How often are you involved with the daily lives of the coL players? Many teams tend to take a stand back approach, and hire squads more like mercenaries than players, how does coL operate?
I am not all that involved with the players but Alex Conroy is very involved. His job is to be the manager of the players. I book their travel and pay for everything. Jason Lake gets involved with them as well. He is mainly still doing the motivational speeches that he has always done but Alex is the guy that is with them at all of the events and talking to them on a daily basis.

What is the most important event to win for complexity? -For CS, as well as WoW-
I think each event is equally important. I would like to win them all. I realize that is not always possible but that is the goal. You really have to take these an event at a time or you risk over looking something to one that is “more important” and losing due to lack of focus. Fortunately the event structure makes this process easy for us as we don’t know what event is coming up most of the time. They kind of just spring up ie GameGune Mexico.

From a team standpoint, what do you feel is missing in terms of E-Sports media in this era of E-Sports?
I come from the media myself. When I ran GotFrag we strove to cover the news in a manner that was as unbiased as possible. I am not saying they don’t do that today but due to the fact that almost everywhere we go for our news today is owned by someone with their own agenda it is hard to say that anyone is truly unbiased anymore. I think we need a site that is dedicated to covering this industry because they are passionate about it and have no one above them pulling their strings or the appearance of someone above them pulling their strings. Regardless of whether or not MLG is pulling GotFrag’s strings the appearance of it puts them at a disadvantage right out of the gate.

If you could give advice to a kid wanting to be a professional gamer what would it be?
At this point in time, I would suggest to stay in school and make this a very active hobby. There is just not a lot of long term stability in this right now. Luckily, the current environment is very flexible and you can be a professional gamer while attending school. To get to the highest levels you have to practice really hard and befriend someone or some people that compete at that level and learn from them. Watch videos and demos wherever possible. There is so much more to these games than just good hand/eye coordination. You need to learn the strategies behind why top players do what they do.

What type of mentality does the complexity staff/management have when it comes to E-Sports and professionalism?
Professionalism is one of the key qualities we look for in our players. Without it we are nothing. We look for gamers that are passionate and get excited when they win but they should be great sports when they lose. It is hard to do that. They should also be respectful of their opponents and not shout at them when they are playing or use other similar low class, unprofessional things. The gamers are always representing the Complexity brand as well as by extension the brands of our sponsors and we ingrain that point in their minds.

Any last words for your fans, any shoutouts?
We want to always thank our sponsors. Without them there would be no Complexity and no Esports. Thanks to Creative, XFX, Fame Networks, PureTrak, G8 and NationVoice.