After playing in the Fragbite Masters for the very first time, Bad Monkey Gaming now return to fighting against more familiar opponents when they enter ESWC tomorrow.
And it’s a more confident team than ever, having faced some of the worlds’ top teams, that’s defending the title in Paris this year.
”We feel a lot better now than we would have if we hadn’t played in the Fragbite Masters”, says Julia ”Juliano” Kiran.

One year ago, they stood victorious on the ESWC stage under the name Druidz. Now, Julia ”Juliano” kiran and her teammates in Bad Monkey Gaming once again travel to the french capital, where they can claim a 5000 dollar first prize if they defend last years title.
And this year, the Swedish/Spanish lineup have had a solid preparation, since they played in the Fragbite Masters against some of the best teams around only weeks ago. Strengthened by that experience, Kiran is confident in their success this weekend.
– After playing such good teams and performing well it feels even easier playing at a lower level, so to speak. We feel better now than we would have if we hadn’t played in the tournament.

”People say we have potential”

The team has dominated the female scene for quite a while, but their rookie performance in FBM wasn’t a success for the lineup. Still, the tournament proved a great experience for BMG.
– We’ve had a very positive response, a lot of people that say we have potential. As for the games, they didn’t quite work out the way we planned. We’re satisfied with our performance, but know we can become much better.

How do you feel you were received by the other teams in the tournament?

– They started out hard but when they noticed we’re not quite ”there” yet they might have given us less respect. A lot of it is because we’re girls, it’s always that way. But we accept it and don’t really care. We just play our game and once we’ve evolved further, we’ll show them.

You even had an ace against Titan, how did that feel?

– It feels great of course. Not many players can say they aced Titan, wether they played serious or not. I was nominated for Play Of The Day and that was kind of a recognition. It gave us a confidence boost, showed us that we really can play if we only dare to.

”Women need role models in eSports”

Bad Monkey Gaming are now in a situation where they dominate the female tournaments but can’t quite compete with the absolute top teams. According to Juliano, they wanna keep playing tournaments like Fragbite Masters, but she still feels that the female tournaments are important to help grow the scene further.
– They’re needed to get more teams into the game and show them they have to put down the time, which most female teams don’t really do. I’ve noticed that more and more teams are starting to play more, maybe not full time but they still make an effort to reach our level. In that way, we’ve taken a step for all girls who play.
– If the possibility to play these tournaments wouldn’t exist, there would never be female players who can measure with the guys. And the guys have a big part in how much the women evolve. It’s become more accepted to play with girls now that it was before. And on the news sites it’s the same thing. Earlier, they didn’t even write about the female teams. To get more women into eSports they need role models and if more women were interested the audience would become even bigger. I don’t really think the players realize how much that can do.

You’ve mentioned earlier that the top teams didn’t even wanna practice against you. Has that changed now?

– Yeah, it has. For example, we’ve been invited to a Facebook group where we can meet better teams and it’s gone really good actually. Fragbite Masters was like a key and even though we didn’t perform great we still evolved a lot from game to game.

As reigning ESWC champions and with the latest tournament in mind, they’re viewed as heavy favourites in France this coming weekend. Something Juliano doesn’t even wanna brush off.
– I don’t wanna sound cocky but at the same time we are. We can’t say ”we’ll see how it turns out” because we feel really confident in what we do and that we’re on a higher level than most of the other teams. The reason is because we put down a lot of time, focus more on structure and communication. Some of the other teams don’t really understand how they can develop their teamplay.

”Want to make a living playing”

Leading up to the tournament, the players in BMG have had a longer bootcamp for the first time. For 11 days they’ve been sitting in a office together playing, and in the future they wanna focus even more on making a mark on the CS:GO scene.
– We want to make a living out of playing and we’ve decided to start practicing a lot more and to qualify for larger tournaments. Our sponsors want us to climb for the top and they’re working hard for us to be able to do so. A lot of teams who are paid for playing have a better focus on the game and if we wouldn’t have had daytime jobs I think we would’ve taken a huge step.

Who are your toughest opponents in Paris this weekend?

– I don’t really know but hopefully we’ll have an edge even on our weaker days. I think it’ll turn out pretty good, but anything can happen.