ApparentlyJack: “I always knew that at some point in my career I would be playing in North America.”
We sat down with one of the main characters of the offseason, Gen.G Esports’ Jack "ApparentlyJack" Benton, to discuss Dignitas’ demise, his move to North America, and his expectations for the remainder of the season.
ApparentlyJack at the RLCS 2021-22 World Championship - Image courtesy of Psyonix
You, Joreuz, and Scrub had a strong Fall Split as well as impressive online performances in the Winter Split, but were reverse swept out of the Winter Major by Evil Geniuses before the crowd days. Following that loss and throughout the ensuing off-season, what was the general energy like in the team? Were there any talks of a roster change or did you all believe in your ability to bounce back?
As far as I’m aware, which I’m pretty sure is 100% correct, there was no talk of a roster change. We just thought that we’d stick as a team. We didn’t talk about it that much. I think the general consensus was that we were just going to stick together the whole season because we did believe in the roster. We had seen it work at the highest level and we still thought we could make it work.
All we thought we needed was a coach. That’s when we started talking about coaching options and ended up bringing Nick in for the Spring Split.
What did Nick bring to the team that you were missing beforehand?
He brought a lot of structure to the team. We were a team that didn’t really try to look at our opponents too much. Perhaps we just kind of enforced our own playstyle on them which, in hindsight, could have benefitted us more. But Nick did a lot of planning on other teams and also fixed up some of our mistakes. It just helps having a fourth opinion on the team who doesn’t really have too much of an ego with how the team is performing because he wasn’t on it before, whereas when you’re a player, it’s sometimes difficult to point out your own mistakes and your own team’s mistakes. So, I think he was very useful, especially at the start. I think he also kept us motivated in times where perhaps we weren’t.
Spring Split is where Dignitas’ season started to unravel with two top 12s and a top 6, resulting in your team missing out on the London Major. Can you talk me through what that split was like?
Yeah, it was difficult. I remember I had quite a few personal issues going on outside of the game and it made me not really play the game too much; I wasn’t grinding and that showed in gameplay, and it kind of made the whole team not grind. I think everyone played a huge part in that. I think we all just made a mistake and you could just see it in our individual gameplay and team gameplay.
It was very tough, you know? It’s difficult when you don’t live up to expectations after you put so much work into it. Even if I wasn’t putting the work in at the time, I still wondered what went wrong. Two top 12s and a top 6 is still decent for a team, but even though the season wasn’t over, we had the feeling that the team was over. Everyone had that feeling. Everyone sensed it.
With the team being at that sort of stage, what was your mindset going into Worlds?
So, we had the Gamers8 LAN before Worlds, which was quite a big LAN. We just wanted to perform well. We genuinely still believed we had it in us because all it took was a few good days of performance. Although we had shown it in scrims, we just couldn’t do it on a consistent basis anymore because we just weren’t that team.
Gamers8 didn’t go as well as we had expected at times, and we went into Worlds, again, really motivated. I think everyone realised this was going to be our last tournament, even if we did very well. We just wanted a good last tournament that each of us could use to get onto better teams or to be proud of.
And we started doing well. We went 3-1 in Wildcard, which we were happy with. We were motivated, but then it just didn’t click again after that. So, we had a good few days but then, again, the consistency just wasn’t there.
Now, let’s talk about your move to North America. In an interview with Octane at the beginning of the year, you said: “…I want to be the best team, at least in Europe”. At this point, had you already thought about potentially moving to North America?
Yes, absolutely, though I didn’t consider moving to NA around that time. I didn’t have any options available to me and I didn’t enquire about anything either, but I always knew that at some point in my career, I would be playing in North America. I always grew up wanting to move here at some point for tennis, so it made sense for me. It’s not that I like the culture particularly, I do like it, but I just wanted to experience it and see if I actually liked it in person.
So, I knew I was always going to end up playing here but it became more and more of a reality as time went on and I started talking to other people, who had the ability to make it happen. Then it all kind of kicked off right as the offseason started.
Regarding the formation of the roster, when did noly enter the picture?
So, noly and I were meant to team for the 2021-22 season under Guild, but the offer just didn’t go through and I couldn’t leave the team. In hindsight, I think this was a good thing; I think I’m happy with the season I had with Dignitas. Obviously, I’m not happy with the ending but it was still a good season. Perhaps it would have been better on Guild, perhaps it would’ve been worse. Perhaps I could not even be a pro player right now if the Guild move had gone through, so who knows. The bottom line is that noly and I were meant to team. We always knew we’d play well together and that our styles would mesh very well.
When the offseason started, no one expected Karmine Corp to break up so I wasn’t even questioning it. They’d just had a really good Worlds and a really good Split with a top-four finish at the Spring Major. But then, the night before I went on holiday, just after I’d finished my tryouts for the day, noly was suddenly looking for a new team. So, we started messaging and I asked what happened and he just goes “do you want to look for a third?”. So, I went on holiday for two weeks - terrible timing for a holiday - and I was looking for a third with noly without even trying him out. Then we picked up Chronic without even trying him out, moved to North America without trying out with the whole team, and then picked up a coach [Allushin] without even trying him out. So, this was a very strange structure of a team, but Rocket League is a weird game. I think it’s a game where you can just make it work, and it is currently working so we’re very happy.
“I was looking for a third with noly without even trying him out. Then we picked up Chronic without even trying him out, moved to North America without trying out with the whole team, and then picked up a coach [Allushin] without even trying him out.”
You and noly solidified as a duo quite early in the off-season. What were your options over the off-season? Was it a close decision between staying in Europe or moving across the pond?
It comes down to a few things, but a big thing is the business opportunity side of things. It’s a lot more lucrative in NA. But it all comes down to the team. Unless you’re stupid, that’s the main thing. My view is that it should come down to who gives you the best team. For me, that’s where it stems from: I mainly wanted a good team. So, it was wherever the best player was available, that’s where we’d end up.
I suggested Chronic to noly and he didn’t actually know who he was, so he had to do some research, but I’ve thought this player has been great for a long time. I’ve watched a lot of his gameplay over the course of last season just to see what he was like. I knew he’d be a good player, so I suggested him and he ended up being our main pick. We had players in Europe but everyone was teaming up so fast so we didn’t have too many options, though I think Chronic would have been our main option regardless. He’s a very good player and I think it’s worked out very well.
So, it was close, but in the end it wasn’t, if that makes sense. In the end, we were certain NA was the right choice. I’d say we started really trying to push it through around three weeks before it got confirmed.
Moving across the Atlantic was always going to be a large undertaking that would require the support of an organisation. When did Gen.G enter the picture? Were there any other eligible suitors?
I can’t publicise a few of them but it’s been made public by the Williams Resolve COO [Jeff Simpkins] that they made an offer for me, so Williams were a possible option. I’ve personally made it public that staying with Dignitas was an option too. They wanted to move me to North America with this team. I can’t remember when Gen.G came in or who they contacted, but they got in touch and they were interested. To me, this was just far more exciting than a lot of the orgs out there. I think being able to represent such an established and successful org is very, very exciting to me and I just wanted a new opportunity and a new environment, so this was perfect for me. They came in and I was instantly hooked, so that’s how it ended up.
What can you tell us about the… ’negotiation issues’ between Gen.G and Dignitas?
It’s obviously difficult to keep everyone happy, but business is difficult. You have negotiations that are just tough negotiations. Someone will offer a certain amount of money which perhaps they [the selling party] would have accepted a few days prior but now their price has gone up, and that’s just the way it goes. The player isn’t too happy at the time because it doesn’t make sense to them, and it probably shouldn’t make sense to them. What I will say is that I just personally wasn’t happy with it as a player, how the negotiations went down. But, in the end, it did go through and all parties are happy.
What are your thoughts on Chronic and how he’s developed since you picked him up?
First of all, he’s a great guy. He’s a very good teammate and I think that’s most important. He wants to improve, he’s not afraid of admitting and pointing out mistakes, and he does it in a very good way. I really like him, he’s an incredibly funny guy although at times I don’t think he even means to be. As a player, he’s incredible. Whenever he’s on the ball, I just want everyone to watch him. He just beats two players every time and that makes it very easy to play around him. I think he’s one of the most naturally mechanical players that we see. The way his car moves is just different to everyone else and I think he’s going to be in the top five NA players by the end of the season if not by the end of the split, without question. I think everyone will recognise him as one of the best. He also handles pressure very well, so I can’t wait to see him improve even more.
How has Allushin been as a coach?
As a coach, Allushin is really, really good. I like him. I think it’s difficult to come by good coaches in Rocket League because there’s not too much experience that you need to have to get to the top level of coaching, but Allushin does have that. He’s been a pro player for so long and has had a lot of success. He understands how to handle pressure and he understands what it’s like to be a pro. He was also a smart player as a pro so he wasn’t overly mechanical, which is very good to have in a coach because those players understand the game. He doesn’t overcomplicate things, which I like the most, and I think he just points out everything correctly. I think he’s so good. The whole team dynamic is just so great. Everyone just fits with each other. It’s pretty perfect, at the moment.
As you mentioned, Allushin has tons of experience as a player. Having also worked with a coach that doesn’t possess that experience in Nick, what can you say about the importance of having high-level player experience as a coach?
I don’t actually think it’s important. I think that coaching is very subjective. A coach that may work for one player will be the worst coach in the world for another. What I mean is that perhaps coaches that were previously players work better for me personally. I don’t know for sure because I haven’t tried enough coaches yet, and I hope I don’t have to because I really like Allushin.
I think prior playing experience can be useful but a coach has to have the qualities a coach needs for it to actually be useful in the first place. There’s some players that are amazing players that would make a terrible coach. It just takes a different skill set. Just because they have previous playing experience doesn’t mean they’re a good coach, but if they are a good coach I think having playing experience can add on to that and amplify their attributes.
Dignitas at the RLCS 2021-22 World Championship - Image courtesy of Psyonix
We now have Complexity and FURIA in NA, James Cheese in APAC, OSM in APAC, you and noly in NA, etc. Overall, what do you think of teams and players moving regions?
I think it’s completely fine. I think that people have a tendency to jump on things when they’re not actually thinking about it. I’ll talk about James Cheese in APAC because I think that’s the one everyone is most upset or intrigued about. It’s the most exciting roster move of the offseason in my opinion, by far.
They can do it, like, they’re allowed to do it. There’s no rule saying they can’t do it and so they should use that. If they think that it’s going to be benefitting them, whether it’s financially, whether it’s in winning ways, whether it’s in both: they’re going to the region and they’re going to be improving the region. Teams are going to get to play against them and it should push the region as a whole. Yes, they’re going to take the Major spots, and yes, they’re going to take the Worlds spots, but is that a fault of the players or is that a fault of the format? So, that’s what I think. You can’t be criticising the players for doing what’s best for their own lives. People just want to take a moral high ground and say that they would never do the same, even though it’s competition and the whole point of competition is to win.
I just think that everyone is going at them and it’s completely unfair because what if they move to the region just to live while also wanting to play professional Rocket League? Because we’re not just players, we are people, you know what I mean? You’re allowed to move to a place just to live there. Of course, I don’t think that’s what they did. They went with the idea that they were going to dominate the region. But what’s stopping someone from wanting to move to another region? What if I wanted to move to America to live here? I mean, that was part of my decision. I did want to experience this. Does that now make it better? Because I want to live here and not play first and foremost? It’s just silly, I think. There’s so many loopholes in this topic of discussion that it’s just not even worth criticising the players over because they’re doing well, you know? Let them be.
As for other regions, I think it’s exciting: players moving from Europe to North America or South America to North America or wherever it is. All these regions at the top level are very close in skill. I just think it makes things more exciting, it makes for more rivalries, and it just makes it better to watch for the viewers.
You’ve now completed your first North American Regional. Your team seemed to look shaky in both qualifiers but came alive during the main event, especially in the playoffs. Can you talk us through that first event?
It starts off with the Top 16 qualifier. I’m not going to put this as an excuse, but it is an important factor: we arrived in Canada very late on Sunday. Monday was basically our first day of playing and practicing as a team properly. So we had four days’ worth of practice from Monday to Thursday and then we had to play the qualifier on the Friday as our first tournament. Now, I would love to sit here as a player and go: “ah, I’m the perfect player, I have full confidence in every single tournament”, but I’m not. I’m a person, you know, I’m the same as everyone. We all experience uncertainty and the feeling of “this might not go well”.
When you’re moving to a different region and not used to playing against any of the teams on four days of practice, there are doubts, and they’re not even unrealistic doubts. We went into the tournament thinking, and I literally said this to the team: “use this day to prepare. Use this day to get all the nerves out and to make sure we’re actually comfortable in a tournament setting, and if we lose, I couldn’t care because we have Sunday [Closed Qualifier].” So, we lost. We had some good showings at certain parts, we showed some strengths, and we showed a lot of weaknesses, which was good because it allowed us to improve. Scrims were going very well, but that’s just scrims. There’s no pressure. So, we finally saw what we had to work on and we worked on it. I played horribly on the Sunday in the Closed Qualifier and we still made it 3-1, so that went fine. It wasn’t a fantastic showing but it was fairly smooth. It was smooth enough to qualify 3-1 which is a decent result as the eleventh seed coming into the main event.
I’m going to point out that anyone who says our Swiss stage wasn’t that great is very badly mistaken because even though we lost to FaZe 3-1, we were very dominant in all of our other series. We played AXLE, beat them 3-1, and we finally figured out the style we wanted in that series in particular. We were happy with how well we played. We went on to absolutely annihilate Dignitas. That’s not an understatement; we ran through them. Then against NRG, we were very comfortable. We went 2-0 down in two games and you might say: “oh Jack, that’s not comfortable at all”, but it just felt comfortable. It was good gameplay and we beat them 3-0. So, when people go “oh the Swiss stage was bad, the playoffs were amazing though!”, it’s just not true. We were actually good in the final three matches of the Swiss stage.
Then we get to the quarterfinals and I don’t think it’s rude or false to say that we destroyed V1 as well. Then we got to the semis and, again, I don’t think it’s rude to say we destroyed SSG. In terms of gameplay, we were comfortable all the time. I don’t think it’s rude to those teams because if they did the same to me I would have held my hands up and say they absolutely battered us. Then we come to the finals and, again, I could sit here and make excuses but I will say that FaZe were better both individually and as a team and they just outclassed us, but I think we didn’t show all of our skill in that final. I think it was quite a disappointing show and I think we learned from that. A part of me thinks we were a bit complacent, we were happy with the top two, and we didn’t push as hard as we could. Perhaps that’s down to exhaustion. I know it sounds silly but even playing just one series, especially a high-intensity series like the one against Spacestation which meant so much to us, did take it out of us a bit. Nonetheless, we could have given it more so I’m disappointed about that but I’m confident in saying that I think we can get FaZe next time and we’ll learn from that final in particular.
Part of the reason people glossed over your run in the Swiss stage may be due to none of the teams you beat making the playoffs, so it was easy to simply say you had a free run.
If we had been struggling against those easy teams who didn’t make the playoffs, I don’t mind people saying that we had an easy run, and that we didn’t actually play that well. But we won 3-1, 3-0, 3-0, very comfortably. It wasn’t a struggle, which is why I didn’t like everyone saying we played bad in Swiss, because we really didn’t and we’re actually quite happy and quite proud of the way we played in Swiss.
“I’m confident in saying that I think we can get FaZe next time and we’ll learn from that final in particular.”
With you and the team looking good for qualifying for the Major in Rotterdam, what do you expect from the rest of the Split and from the rest of season?
I want two top-four finishes, as a minimum. Of course, we’re still a new team so we still have consistency to prove, even to ourselves, but I know that we can do it because we have been doing it in scrims. We’ve had one bad day a couple of days ago. Our bad days basically consist of losing a scrim because we’ve been winning like 90% of scrims and we’re very proud of that. So, if that’s our bad day, then we can show that consistent top-four finishes should be in place.
I’m not sitting here and saying that there’s no competition. I think that every team is going to get better, but I just think that our room to improve into is greater than it is for a lot of other teams just because of how new we are and the way that we are improving, especially with a player who hasn’t played on this sort of level before in Chronic. Players like that tend to have very big breakout weeks in the first six to eight weeks where they usually improve a lot. So, I think we have a lot of room to grow into. I do want a Regional win, but I’m being realistic.
Final question: EU food or NA food?
Well, EU food has multiple countries, of course, so I think I’m going to have to go with that. EU is far better, NA food just seems to be about how much stuff you can put in something and make it a burger. It’s a bit weird, but it’s still good. Food is food, so I’m happy.
