Interview with kRYSTAL: “Godsent will be worse without me”

We sat down with Kevin “kRYSTAL” Amend to talk about his current situation. Before his recent benching he had been the in-game leader for Godsent.

kRYSTAL has had a long and winding career in Counter-Strike, which includes several appearances in Majors during years past. He played for Berzerk, PENTA, Sprout, Rogue and more teams. It is quite telling that his team history is a long one. In all of his changes he was always removed from the roster or benched before moving to the next station. Just recently he was once again benched by his team Godsent.

CS:GO-Profi kRYSTAL. | Image Credit: Instagram @krystal_kevinamend
Disclaimer: This interview was conducted in German and has been translated. The German transcript can be found here.

esports.com: Hello Kevin, thank you for taking the time for this interview. You have recently been benched for the tenth time. What was the main reason behind it and where are you headed to next??

kRYSTAL: I honestly did not keep track of the benchings. Main reason this time was that the team thought I did too many personal mistakes. While I can comprehend their decision, I do not agree to 100% with the explanations offered by my team. I believe that I do not have much room to shine because of the way I play to enable my teammates. In strategies or even in defaults I am always the entry. Obviously there are exceptions, but I believe it has also hindered me mentally, since I sometimes lacked the “fire” to just go for the kill. And that is very important in Counter-Strike. The recent months had been much better in terms of my personal performance, thanks in part to our team psychologist, but here I am once again. We will have to see how they perform without me. I think they will be worse without me.

esports.com: How do you recover after each setback? How do you motivate yourself to keep going?

kRYSTAL: Counter-Strike is and always has been my passion. I think my greatest strength is my mentality. I confront negativity and try to learn out of mistakes. Looking forwards is the most important thing in moments like these. It is actually quite simple – you can always choose how to react, when something negative happens. Naturally there are different behaviour patterns for every player. Each player handles stress differently and confronts his mistakes in a different way. But if you want to be a good player, you need to learn to turn off the tilt or control it. Know yourself and be strict to yourself, especially if you notice yourself falling into these patterns.

esports.com: In the past you were known for taking it personally when fans criticized you. Nowadays you seem to be much more at ease with it. On social media you took your benching in stride. How did you manage to ignore negativity?

kRYSTAL: Obviously I also struggle with negativity occassionally. Especially this bench at Godsent hit me hard for the first two weeks. But I know better to get too down because of it. I know what I can and who I am. Naturally I am glad to read positive things about me, but I have also noticed, that there is one thing pro players in esport need to learn: EVERYTHING written on Counter-Strike sites is in 99.9% of cases written by people, who only know a fraction about the game in comparison to yourself. So there is no need to listen to what they say, when they talk about what is good and what isn’t.

Noone will even come close to knowing the whole context as you do. Nobody knows what happens on voice during matches, Nobody knows which internal issues you might have. All they can see is just the surface. So let them rate the surface, but you yourself know how it really is. It is the same with positive comments, they should also not influence you too much.

esports.com: In an interview with HLTV you once said, that you played for a year without earning any salary. How did that happen and how did you manage to make it through that?

kRYSTAL: Back then I built a team called NoChance, which consisted entirely of players that had been kicked or benched. Subsequently many orgs had no interest in us. Their interest came only after we had proven that we are not just five bad players.

esports.com: There are rumours that you might become Godsent’s coach. Is there any truth to that? Your experience as in-game leader seem to make you a good fit

kRYSTAL: That is in fact just a rumour. It never was an option. But in general I could see myself as coach after concluding my active career.

esports.com: You had some coaching experience already with BIG’s academy team. What do you think of German esport?

kRYSTAL: Unfortunately I have a very bad impression of German esport. Many players have a very unprofessional mentality and lack ambition. But I have not been part of the German scene for four years by now, so things could have changed. BIG’s academy team was also an exception from my usual experience. The time I spent with them was very educational not just for the players, but for me as well.

esports.com: You have not uploaded to YouTube for a long time. What happened to your Vlog?

kRYSTAL: I actually still have lots of footage on a harddrive somewhere. Filming those videos and making them is a lot of fun and in general the videos were met with a good reception. But personally it took too much time for me since I always cut and edit everything by myself. But people often ask me if and when I will upload again. So recently I have started looking for helpers to breath back some life into the YouTube channel. We will see what happens!

esports.com: One final question: What is worse? Getting benched or losing your players to buyouts by other orgs?

kRYSTAL: I don’t think there is that much of a difference at least for me personally. Usually you would think that getting benched is worse, but as a captain and in-game leader I often lose players to buyouts so it is just as bad.

esports.com: Thank you very much for the interview and good luck for your future endeavors!

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Image Credits: Instagram, Godsent, YouTube

 

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