Ben Woodward, or "AphexTwin", as he's also known, has been involved in eSports for the better part of 10 years. Having volunteered for the earlier Multiplay iSeries, competed at the CPL in Team Fortress Classic, written for 4kings, managed 4kings, been part of the marketing team for Steelseries, a...

Ben Woodward, or "AphexTwin", as he's also known, has been involved in eSports for the better part of 10 years. Having volunteered for the earlier Multiplay iSeries, competed at the CPL in Team Fortress Classic, written for 4kings, managed 4kings, been part of the marketing team for Steelseries, a General Manager for London Mint and most recently, the Business Development manager of CrackClan. His list of eSports associations is impressive. Very impressive when you consider he is still only 25; although he calls himself an "old man now".

He started playing TFC "many moons ago and ended up in some of the top teams at the time" which eventually opened his eyes to the competitive gaming community which now supplies his job. Although he finished second at his first CPL in 2002, he didn't win any prizes as the sponsors had pulled out, but he did walk off with a much better contact as this is where he first came into contact with 4kings. He says: "I met up with the 4K guys while I was there almost by accident, got to know them and what they stood for, I was impressed. It didn’t take long until I was part of 4kings as “Head of content” – As the new 4K site came out and more squads started joining I ended up moving into Management along with Toby/Protex. It was a fun ride although frustrating at times, it taught me a lot."

From 4kings, Ben found himself in contact with Steelseries which led to a job in Copenhagen for a year, working on their Marketing team, but this also meant he had to step back from most of his 4k duties. However, his stay was "cut short" and he continued working with 4kings until "I got an offer from CGS I couldn’t refuse, I was extremely lucky to get offered a job at CGS. Prior to CGS my only eSports team had been 4Kings."

Simon "bidy" Bidwell had a chance to interview Ben Woodward in the run-up to this weekends action at the UKeSA Grand Finals, giving insight into one of UK eSports longest serving community members as well as asking about his new organization. Read on for the interview.

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So you found yourself at 4kings, looking back, what was your best moment with the team?
Not sure I can pin point one, it would probably have to be the Intel summer event in 2006, forcing fnatic into overtime(after being ahead and throwing it away) and ending up finishing 4th, it was one hell of an achievement for us. Obviously having a very successful WC3 team who kept winning major events kept a constant smile on all our faces!


On the flip side, if you could time travel, what would one thing would you change from your time with 4kings?
I’d move the team back to 2005-2006 when 4K had the best support and players, that was an immense time. I cannot think of one thing that I’d change as it would be brutally unfair of me to say stuff in public on this matter


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Since your time with 4kings, their reputation has deteriorated to say the least, what would you say has been the cause of the sides downward spiral?
In 2005/6 several high profile deals didn’t come off for 4Kings, this with hindsight really hurt the team and has put them in the position they are in now, it’s quite depressing to think about really.


There are always rumours about the organization owing players money, but is there any truth behind them?
Yeah there is, although it depends on who you speak to. Grubby knows he’s owed a lot of money but should you ask someone who’s currently in 4Kings they’ll tell you it’s the company that now own the “4K” brand who owes the money. If you speak to that company they tell you they are not liable for paying anything. It’s a vicious circle and ultimately the victims of the finger pointing are the players/staff who are owed a substantial amount of money.


You've been seen to have a few criticisms of the team’s new management but mostly you've been quiet on the subject. Is there anything you'd like to get off your chest?
I’d say that’s wrong. I don’t publicly criticize anyone, or I try not to. I’ve been personally attacked several times by some of the 4K management which is disappointing. However I’m still on speaking terms with Javax and have spoken to Toby(although he’s stepped down?) in the last few months; those are the two most important people in 4Kings really.


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Do you agree that the team should have been shut down when the problems started? And now they’re claiming to have funding again, do you think the team has a moral obligation to pay off their past debts?
I think the CPL/ESWC have a moral obligation to repay debts, so of course 4Kings do, that doesn’t mean they will though. Shutting the team down? Possibly a little excessive, they did look in very bad shape not too long ago but if the investor is now funding everything then that’s a plus, things might finally be looking up.
From 4kings you joined up with London Mint to take over as their General Manager from season two. What was the experience like, living in America to film a TV Series about gaming?
It was amazing. Spending 3 weeks in LA was quite an experience. Although we obviously didn’t do well as a team we ended up having a great time. A usual day would consist of getting up around 10-11, going for a swim and some bathing before hitting the practice rooms for 4-6 hours a day, end the night with a few beers around the pool. If we had filming, the schedule was ruthless, we’d spend 8-10 hours at a TV studio to film a 1hour show, it was quite painful!


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There must have been many different stories from America, but what is the funniest?
Most of them cannot be repeated, what happened in LA stays in LA! Only one I can repeat I which is ritch cutting his foot on glass, it was a tiny cut and he was adamant he’d have to get his foot amputated; way to be dramatic ritch! :P


While out in L.A your CSS team had some well documented problems, do you still think that trying to change out Url for Mx was the right decision?
Still a gray area, I had mixed signals from the CGS about whether I could go ahead and do the player swap, I was given the green light but ultimately decided against it as players having overall power on who they play with was wrong, it was my decision.


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Unfortunately, the CGS suffered from an untimely death at the end of Season 2. If you’d been in charge of the league from the beginning, how would it have been run that would have saved the league from going under?
I’d of done what they originally planned. Just have an American season in season 1, have EU teams attempt to qualify to the world finals (winners get salaries, losers get nothing much like the Asian qualifier) – It would of literally saved millions.


So if the CGS had survived till Season 3, what changes would you have made during the draft?
I’d of had the ability to steal players from the world champs, I’d of had a much better team more than likely. Not that I'm saying the guys I had were bad(our worst result was vs the eventual world champs, we had the game vs optx and threw it away) but the array of talent available to draft was immense, ODEE couldn’t have protected his entire team.


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After the CGS you found yourself without a team for a while, what did you do in your time outside of gaming?
I took a good 2-3 months off and literally did nothing but relax and enjoy my self. I started playing poker again on a daily basis and was hardly online and was quite successful with my sports betting. Getting a job wasn’t in the back of my mind until I started speaking to Baldrick from cc//.


Eventually you were to be found in the ranks of CrackClan, or CC// as they prefer to be called now, what attracted you to the new organization after having worked for illustrious organizations in the past?
With the financial crisis a lot of teams had found it immensely difficult to secure sufficient funding from sponsors. And out of nowhere cc// turned up with a multi millionaire owner who’s insanely passionate about eSports and gaming as a whole. After speaking to the cc// guys it was decided I’d be brought on in a business development role, the company behind cc// has several exciting projects we’ll be launching soon which will help the community as a whole :)


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It’s no secret that CC// has a lot of funding, but to what extent are you ready to use that funding? Will you be the next MYM who spend big and then disappear or are you hoping for a more sustainable growth?
We do have a pretty big amount of funding, but we’re not the mega spending power MYM was, I didn’t agree with such excessive spending and look where they are now. We’ve got more than enough money to be comfortable as we are right now, we’ll be growing gradually over the next 18 months instead of going crazy and over spending.


Despite the ‘bigbucks’ so far, CC// have strayed away from conventional eSports titles, preferring to focus more on console games and ones featured by leagues such as UKeSA. What’s the reasoning behind this, do you feel those games will have better growth in the future or are you just biding your time for a good move into games such as Warcraft?
I’d say we’ve done the direct opposite. We have obviously had CSS and CoD4 teams in the past but we’re not bending over backwards to make sure we have a team in every division of UKeSA/ESL. Over the next few months you’ll see us expand in the more mainstream games, we’re already back in 1.6 with our Finnish guys, we won’t end there.


The one big eSports title you have moved into so far is Counterstrike 1.6, what’s the story behind your near capture of the ex-MYM team?
It’s depressing to think about. To cut a very long and potentially boring story short this is what happened. Salary and support was agreed between both parties, they agreed to join us and we’d got contracts ready to be sent to a lawyer for approval. In the space of them agreeing to join and then telling us they had a better offer we’d already told the current 1.6 team they were surplus to requirements.

We shot ourselves in the foot with that, we got ahead of ourselves which was pretty disappointing. It’s not every day a team such as MYM, 4 times world champions, agree to join your team. A gamble had to be taken and it ultimately didn’t pay off, we were so sure it would come off after Neo turned down an offer from a pretty well known eSports organization(who offered a bigger salary) to play for cc//.


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After the disappointment of marginally missing out on Wicked, you returned to your ‘rootz’. Why pick up the Finns?
We had many teams contact us to join, we’d shown the world we had enough money to support MYM with salaries and event travel. We literally had the pick of 10 or so teams (some of whom were still in high profile organizations) and after a month of deliberating we went with rootz. The main reason was that they all posses great skill and a long list of achievements between them. Natu coming back to professional gaming was another big plus, we have a great relationship from our 4Kings days and he’s someone I can trust to run a team and make sure we get the best out of everyone.


Are you upset at falling out during the group-stage of Dreamhack?
I’d be lying if I said no. The event itself we qualified for with free travel and entry, so it was a pretty cheap event for us to attend. It was the guys first event for us and I honestly didn’t know what to expect, the guys had only been a team for 6 or so weeks, in 1.6 that’s a very short space of time.

The guys know they are a long term project of ours and I know that over time they’ll prove to be a great addition, a team gelling together takes time.


One CrackClan team that have been performing well is your Halo3 team, coming off the back of a lot of roster changes, they’re still considered favorites for both UKeSA and i37. What do you think of the young Brits as a team?
They are great! It’s flattering to see us tipped as potential UKeSA/i37 champions, they’ve obviously had a few changes though so we’ll see. If they can retain their iseries crown I think they’ll be a force to be reckoned with.


If we see them win at UKeSA and then i37, is there a chance you might take a risk and send them to fight it out versus the best America can offer at MLG Dallas?
It’s possible, the MLG is a tough nut to crack for any team that tries to place well, if it was a fact beyond any doubt that they were the best Halo3 team in Europe, we’d have to strongly consider sending them over for an MLG event.


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Your (ex)CSS team are also competing at UKeSA under the CC// name, do you regret how that team fell apart? Or is there anything you think you could have done to prevent them splitting?
I do, we had something special going. They were a team we decided to invest time and money into by giving them what they wanted and out of the blue they self imploded. There was no warning of what was going to happen, I got online one day to be told we’d folded, it was over that quickly. It leaves a bitter taste In your mouth when you’ve put so much time and effort into a team only for them to go their separate ways one day. They decided (sort of) to stick together for UKeSA and EPS which is cool I guess, hopefully they can sign off from cc// with a tournament win...


Crack have a strong representation at UKeSA as you also have a TF2 team in attendance. Do you expect the Finns to finally break Dignitas’ TF2 dominance?
I do not follow TF2 much but I’ve been made aware of Dignitas making a scout change recently, if that affects their game-play then it would be interesting. I’ve seen the day that we beat Dignitas.. and it’s not that far away, trust me. :)


In February 2010 you’ll have been with CrackClan for a year, where do you hope the team will be by then?
The aim is to obviously become a globally recognized team, not just another UK team. I fully expect us to branch out into games like WoW/WC3/DOTA/QL by this time next year, but we’ll take it one day at a time, anything can happen.


Thank you for your time, do you have any last words or shoutouts to make?
Sure, big shout-out to everyone at cc// and to Power gaming (the company behind cc) – I wonder if I can give a shout-out to our new sponsors although they aren’t announced yet? Probably not a good idea!

Last but not least every gamer has to thank his/her family. I wouldn’t be involved in eSports today if I didn’t have a supportive family who understood I was following my dream even if they didn’t understand much about it. Special shout-out to my dad who picked up an OBE off Prince Charles not long ago :)


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Ben's dad picking up his OBE

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