Interview: “IdrA” Greg Fields

The Villain Commodity

Let’s start with the obvious: Greg Fields brings out the emotion in the StarCraft community. For nearly every forum post calling him an emotionally unstable player or a rude and tactless competitor, IdrA can point to at least one rude forum poster letting a video game crawl more than a few couple of inches deep under his or her skin.

His polarizing nature has rarely seen a brighter spotlight than in his Round of 8 loss to NonY in the TSL. The 100,000 and growing views, the thousands of posts and the unquantifiable energy – at once negative and positive and all over the place – evident throughout the thread and entire community is only one more piece of evidence of IdrA’s fame and infamy in each little corner of the StarCraft world.

How did this start?

“Well I think it started mainly because I sucked in important games,” says IdrA, a CJ Entus B-teamer. “Ever since I joined TmG I’ve been capable of beating top foreigners in practice games but it took a really long time for that to show through in games that mattered. That meant my ego was kind of disproportionate to my results, which rubbed people the wrong way. Along with that I tend to be fairly blunt in terms of saying what I think and not sugar coating it.”

This is the point which his detractors thrive on and that even his fans smile at. His many quotable phrases have, in several cases, entered the Brood War vernacular. “A useful skill toi have” replaces GG, the former phrase becoming an exceptional event whenever it does come from IdrA. After he typed ‘GG’ during his quick game 2 loss to NonY, IRC exploded in six hundred laughs and insults per second. The viewers worked at a staggering speed, fingers spazzing and breath short, to spam their emotions to a player many dislike in no small part for the way emotions figure into his personality.

Is his abrasive, honest and often self-superior attitude a boon or a burden for the scene? Is his often uneven play an irreparable Achilles’s heel, both in the game and out?

Without question, he is a boon. The atmosphere he brings to the game is positively electric. For every insult he attracts, he might bring in two viewers to our game.

“Idra is surely good for StarCraft,” says Artosis. “He makes the foreigner scene much more interesting. He is a cocky, arrogant player, and he doesn’t hide what he truly thinks. There are too few people like this in e-sports overall. Yes, it polarizes the view on him, but love him or hate him, I think you have to respect that he will always say what he is thinking, unlike so many other players. Giving the masses someone to cheer against – or in some cases, for – is great for entertainment value. Foreigner SC just wouldn’t be as interesting without him, I think no one can disagree with that.”

For all the hate launched in IdrA’s direction, there is never more energy in the air than when he plays a perceived rival. No one in the community can inject pure, unadulterated drama into competition quite like him. The adrenaline is undeniably flowing through him during the game and the emotion is worn on his sleeve and seen in his units. As if he’s following a comic book script in which he is cast as the archvillain, he always makes clear that a diplomatic sense of sportsmanship is certainly not high on his list of priorities. Least of all on that list of priorities is pleasing those who might have a problem with that.

“I tend to be fairly blunt in terms of saying what I think and not sugar coating it,” says IdrA, “and people on the internet love any excuse to get riled up so they just take that and run with it. So, I suppose I do deserve the hate in that I recognize what pisses people off and I don’t avoid it, but I think it’s stupid that they’re so sensitive in the first place.”

With the loss to NonY in the round of 8, the old problem of IdrA’s comes into play – his ego is disproportionate to his results and that rubs people the wrong way. After all, he predicted a 3-0 and gave NonY no chance.

Prior to the game, he was asked what he would do in the unlikely event that he did lose.

“I don’t know,” he told Team Liquid. “I’ve never really been a fan of thinking about situations that aren’t gonna happen. Seems kinda like a waste of time.”

The responses came quick, at machine gun speed, and fell into two camps:

“So much trash talk, so little time,” wrote an obviously amused first commenter, AssuredVacancy

“God, I love villains,” agreed the second, zerglingsfolife.

“This is what a pre-match interview is all about,” wrote commenter Two_DoWn. “If there isn’t any bulletin board material at the end of it, it wasn’t worth doing. Modesty does nothing but make a match’s hype boring.”

The second camp:

“He should lose the attitude and stop the charade,” wrote Singu. “This is not a boxing match IdrA. A humble personality suits you better if you would ask me.”

The second camp is boring, too sensitive and and ought to be careful what he wishes for: a lame children’s movie in which the greatest care is taken to not upset the babies in the theater.

In the mean time, the adult’s movie will continue into StarCraft 2.

“I definitely will be playing sc2 professionally,” promises IdrA. “I’d like to start playing as soon as possible. I’m actually sitting here refreshing my email waiting for the key right now. I haven’t talked to CJ yet about their plans for it, but it seems logical to have me switch over as soon as possible. ”

Long live the villain. Long live IdrA the terrible. Long live the passion.

Thanks to Greg for taking the time in between playing to answer questions. Thanks to Dan (Artosis) for tossing in his views. For full disclosure, I was rooting for NonY in the Ro8. Dissonance!