We caught up with Vince Hill, who has been casting at DreamHack Marseille with HenryG, to talk about his casting and being at a top-tier event again.
The grand final of DreamHack Masters Marseille final, in which Astralis and Natus Vincere will fight for the $100,000 first prize and the title of DreamHack Masters champion at Le Dôme, is about to kick off, but we talked to Vince Hill ahead of the big match.
In the interview, the British caster who was already on the talent roster at the first DreamHack Masters in Malmö, runs us through his career, his aspirations as a caster, and gives some tips based on his experiences to those who are trying to make it up the ladder.
The first thing I'm curious to ask is if you find it a bit hard to cast without a duo, as most casters come in a pack. Would you be interested in finding someone to cast with long term?
I think it has its drawbacks because typically events will hire a duo as a package. It's much easier because they know what they're getting. They're getting high-level quality casting. When you're solo or you've tried duos but nothing has really stuck... like I've tried with dusT and launders, but they're from North America, so some smaller events don't want to pay the extra money to fly someone across from America. It can be an issue, for sure, and it's pretty frustrating. I've kind of just gotten used to it.
I try to look at the positives rather than the negatives in that respect. I get to work with really sick casters like HenryG at this event, who I ordinarily wouldn't have a chance to cast with. I learn a lot from each cast I'm on, I pick up a lot of feedback about things I'm doing well or wrong, and I can adapt as a result of that. I think if I just casted with one person all of the time I would be missing out on those opportunities and experiences, so there's definitely positives and negatives. Of course, if I want to get to the top level and go to the top events, I need to have a duo partner locked in, that's definitely correct.
So getting to cast with Henry, how is that going for you? I saw a couple tweets mentioning getting the chemistry right and so on. Can you tell me a bit about it?
Yeah, so the last time Henry and I casted together was at DreamHack Leipzig, I think in 2016, so a long time ago. It was one of my first CS events, and it was right after Richard Lewis had his issues and Sadokist jumped on the desk to host, so they asked me to fill in to cast with Henry. So it's been a long time, and it takes a little while to get used to the chemistry. Obviously, Henry is used to casting with Sadokist and he's a very different caster to me. How he approaches it, his personality is different, his casting style is different. I think it took us a while to just kind of get into the swing of things, but now I think it's way more balanced, a lot more solid, and we both enjoy it, so it's fine now. It seems that people are enjoying it, too.
Talking about Sadokist as a different kind of caster. Do you find it annoying that you're being compared to him?
Well, I actually made a tweet about this, and I think I didn't quite word it exactly as I wanted to, it was really late at night... Obviously, there are some frustrations there, because Sadokist and I are just different casters altogether. He's, correctly in my opinion, regarded as one of the best casters in esports. Not just CS, but esports overall. So to be compared to someone at the very top of their game, in a sense, is flattering, but at the same time, I haven't had the same experience with Henry so people are judging me from a place that is quite not balanced. So yeah, it's frustrating, but at the same time, I took this event knowing that there were going to be inevitable comparisons between Matt and myself. It's obvious. Ultimately, I'm here because he isn't. If Matt were able to cast I wouldn't be here, I would have been on the B stream.
The comparisons are inevitable, but in the context of working with Henry it's quite frustrating because we have very different experience working together, we're very different casters, and as you said chemistry comes into play. Matt and Henry have chemistry, bucketloads of it, because they have been casting for two or three years. So yeah, it's different circumstances.
Referring back to the second question, you talked about grinding to try and get more big events. Is that something you're trying to pursue?
Yeah, I think it was about a year and a half between DreamHack Masters Malmö, now two years ago, the first Masters, and when I did BLAST Pro Series at the end of November or beginning of December last year. It was a long time without any top-tier events and I was trying to grind, but there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes... health, etcetera, that have held me back to an extent. But yeah, I'm very focused on grinding and it's not lost on me how amazing the opportunity to be here is, in the first place. I wish it were under different circumstances, but when you're afforded an opportunity you have to take it with both hands.
I've gotten some great best-of-threes and hopefully I can put myself in a position where other event organizers are like "maybe he's someone we can hire in the future to do a top-tier event, as he can work with most people." Again, going back to what we said before about me not having a duo, one of the positives of that is that people can see that you can pretty much work with anyone, and that's definitely a good thing to have, to be very adaptive and versatile. I'm hoping this event will open some eyes and lead to more things.
You mentioned the behind-the-scenes things, like health issues and so on. Is that something you're still worried about or are you more available?
So I've been losing weight and really looking after myself a lot more these last two or three months. I mean this has been going back a year or so but these last two or three months I've really been seeing progress. I do still have some issues and it's going to take... I mean some of them are going to be for the rest of my life, but at least I can minimalize them, which is possible. Some stuff to do with my heart and my blood pressure and these kinds of things. If I were for example offered to go to IEM Sydney, which isn't likely, but I would have to really think if it's something I can pull off because it's crazy long hours of flying and traveling, and if halfway through I start to feel really sick I'm kind of screwed, right?
European events I'm absolutely fine to do, and very soon once my blood pressure goes down a bit, I'm going to be in a position where I can do NA events. Before, unless it was like a top tier event like a Major or something which was worth it for me to potentially risk my health, I wouldn't have done it. Now, I'm getting to a point where I can take the DreamHack Opens like the Austins and Atlantas and so on, so it's improving, definitely, but there's still some ways to go.
So you want to keep grinding, to keep working. What are the next steps for you to keep growing? Where does the journey lead you next?
That's a really good question, and that's the question I've been asking myself a lot. What is the next step? It's one thing to highlight that having a duo would really help, but it's another thing to get to the point where you actually have a duo, right? To find the right person, the right circumstances, to get a bit of luck. As I said, I have tried in the past and things have happened one way or another or events didn't want to hire us both or only offered one of us the event and not the other, so that makes it very hard to get it to work.
For me, right now, it's just a case of focusing on my health, first and foremost. If my health improves, then I can do more events, and then these opportunities allow me to work with NA people. So for instance if I'm doing NA DreamHack Opens it's much easier for me to work with the likes of dusT or launders or these kinds of people again, whereas if it's always just European events I'm going to, that's not really in my hands as much. I mean, it's not like I get to pick who it is I cast with, that's a misconception that some people may have, often I'm just told "we'd like to have you at the event, this is the other talent that's there and we'd like to match you with this person." Maybe one or two times I'll get asked "would you recommend anyone else?" but that recommendation often falls on deaf ears, so it is a case of getting the health better, getting to more events, grinding a lot more, and hopefully everything will click into place although there's definitely an element of luck to it, it's often about right place and right time.
To wrap it up, for people who are trying to get into the casting grand and making a name for themselves, is there anything you could share with them on what to do or what not to do based on your own personal experiences?
I would say, first and foremost, get into it for the right reasons. If you're getting into casting for the money and the travel and these kinds of things, in all honesty, CS in particular... it's so stacked with great casters even down in tier2 and tier3 that in other games would be near the top, that it's going to take a long time to make it. You have to do it because you like to do it, because you have a passion for it, and then it will keep you through the grinds, through the times of not getting paid, when you have crazy long days and you're the only caster or you're casting teams no one has ever heard about. It's all about the grind.
Then just be good to people, be kind to people. Don't be a dick. I'm not even sure if I can say that [laughs], but just don't be a dick, because if you're the kind of person that's going to rub people the wrong way and irritate them, they're not going to want to work with you in the future. Again, it's not a case that casters can block you, but when it comes to the recommendations part if you're an upcoming caster that can make the difference. Semmler, to start off with, recommended me to DreamHack and to Gfinity, my two first events. Without his recommendation, I wouldn't have gotten those events and I wouldn't be sitting here right now. I'm almost certain of that. So when you have these interactions with other casters, production, and everyone, be nice to them. It doesn't cost anything to just be a good human being and it drastically improves your chances of actually making it.
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