DH Winter Finals

DH Winter Brackets

DH Winter Group E matches

DH Winter Group E standings

DH Winter 2009 Information

Finals

Brackets

Total visits: 24849

Visits today: 33

Total hits: 145370

read the article

Exclusive chat with H2K | Budkicker

Today I had a little chat with our friend Budkicker who gave us a little more insight on the gaming organization H2K-gaming.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself in general. What are you doing outside the game? School? Work?

Hej, my name is Gaetan Van der Eecken, I'm nicked Budkicker in esports. I'm already known for a big part worldwide but Ill tell a little bit about myself for the people who dont know me yet.

Outside eSports I'm currently studying Marketing at the Karel de Grote Hogeschool in Antwerp, Belgium. I'm part of the big BalderBals event organization who organizes a lot of parties in Belgium. For the rest I try to help out where needed.

I keep being connected to eSports though¡K since I'm CEO of Legend Networks. I'm partnered up with Game-Hosting.com, Excellent-Servers.se and clanservers4u.
Outside of all that I like to party and do crazy things. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to play Rugby anymore due to clap longues and a blessure at my knee.

I was & I still am one of the youngest CEO's eSports has known worldwide. Since I had my first company when I was 16 (with special permissions and the other permissions went to my parents, since I was not allowed to do the bookkeeping and so on)


2. When did you start first hear about eSports ?

I first heard about eSports when I was 12, my stephdads colleges from work came home for a drink and 1 of those guys was Joris ¡¥GW¡¦ Verbeke, an oldschool e-Sports manager who is as well one of my best friends. He introduced me to eSports on a more serious level then just play online.
I first played cs 1.3 with him in beta phase. At that time he was Manager at Legend


3. What games did you play before you decided to focus on being a manager?

Before I was playing on PC I was playing on PSX and PS2, I mostly played action games like GTA or The Getaway and so on¡K after I went on the computer I only played CS from 1.3 beta untill 1.6.

I started managing within Dfine and after some weeks I already found a t shirt sponsor, gamehosting & websponsor¡K I already felt great back then. I was noticed by Legend and well I stayed in there for several years, from being just a manager to CEO in 2006. (I'm not gonna tell all the stuff I did in myLegend since it can be huge: positive & negative things!)

I went inactive in eSports after closing down the organization behind myLegend. (Legend-Networks only operated non eSports anymore). Even if I received a lot of good offers.. I had no time. I came back in June to focus on managing again and I went active in LemonDogs which leads me to H2k after 1 month.


4.what is your current role in H2K-gaming and can you tell us a bit more about it?

Since September I'm contracted as PR & Communications Director. Which means I got a lot of work. All current organization changes that are being made are my task. As well as all incoming & outgoing communication is my task. Internal communication like meetings & other relative work is my job as well. (The job has a wide range of tasks). Because I do the communication that goes out to partners & the eSports scene I'm allowed to know every detail within H2k Gaming, so I got a very hard contract.


5.H2K-gaming started out as a COD4 team how did it evolve into a multi gaming organisation?

Ill be honest that I asked to answer this question by our COO (Rudy), since I do know H2k since when I was 15, but I don't know them in detail.

The organization Hard2Kill, at that time, started a bit earlier on Soldier of Fortune. After a long time playing the organization switched to Call of Duty 1. We got a lot of Clanbase ladders so we decided to contact some hardware partners and they gave us some headsets. Things started to develop and the people in the organization knew that we could develop the organization by adding more teams and partners. We dropped the name Hard2Kill and started with H2k and we grow in to the organization that we are now today!


6.How do you see the place of H2K-gaming within the CS- scene?

H2k Gaming signed a pro gaming CS team in august where we had a lot of winnings with and we were known directly as one of the strongest CS 1.6 teams there were worldwide.

With the announcement that's being rumoured a lot lately we confirm our new line-up will be legendary. So I think I can see our CS Team in the top 5 of the world for sure, but I personally hope to see them top 3 and beating SK as well.


7.You all got allot of attention when you where able to sign Face and KHRYSTAL to your CS-team. How did it feel to get 2 very skilled and talent players in your ranks?

Well, to be honest face & khrystal both were a good addition but in general the whole team was great, in which I mean: niko, threat, fyrrte, face & khrystal. So we felt like we had 5 very skilled and talented players in our ranks, not just 2.


8.After looking up a few things and reading some articles i find myself a bit confused by the position of face and KHRYSTAL now are they still fully H2K-gaming members or do they actualy belong to SK-gaming now ?

I quote : "Over the last couple of weeks the legal department of SK has been negotiating with the lawyers of H2K and we have come up with an agreement that satisfies all parties."

This is something were I can not state every detail about since it¡¦s a case between 2 legal offices of both H2k Gaming & SK Gaming.
But what I want to clear out is that the H2k contracted players were a little bit longer in H2k then SK stated. And at the time they quoted that news on their website.. that there wasn't ANY agreement yet. As of yesterday (Tuesday 06/10) the 2 players are fully contracted within SK Gaming
I can tell you¡K We don't blame any player (face & khrystal). We thank them for the time being in H2k Gaming.


9. What are the plans for the near future for H2K and their CS team?

For the moment there's a lot planned within H2k Gaming. We got several team announcements for both PC & Console teams.

We as well got the launch of the new websites for H2k Gaming, for H2kTV, for H2k.nl.
We are currently improving the management team within H2k Gaming too.
Then we got some new partners to announce very soon.

Then concerning the cs team, we will announce the team line up within a week & like I said before: It will be legendary!


10. Are there any big tournament in the near future, you guys really want to impress and show the world that H2K is a force to reckon with?

H2k Gaming will be attending several big events where they will compete.
I kindly invite you to check out our website, since which teams will be competing on what event will be shortly announced in there. I can state that WCG and Dreamhack will certainly be 2.

11.Shout outs?

First of all I want to thank you & 4DFX for this interview & the trust in Legend Networks as your partner.
My personal shout outs go to my own partners.
I don't know if I got fans, but thanks to them for supporting me & believing in me!

My general shoutouts from H2k Gaming are a big thank word towards our partners: ThermalTake, SteelSeries, SPAM Energydrink, Azerty.nl, Gamersuniform, i3D, Bouncer4you, Gigabyte, Lowpings. Thanks to them H2k Gaming has a chance in this eSports scene!

comments

post a comment

U need to be logged in to post a comment.

author

info

readers

advertisement