It's not easy leading a desk of opinionated personalities, but somehow James "Dash" Patterson does it effortlessly. While in Chicago, Amanda had the pleasure of getting to talk to Dash about what it's like leading a desk, what makes him different from Eejfe "Sjokz" Depoortere, and the personalities a good desk needs.

Interview conducted by Amanda Stevens

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Amanda: We’re in Chicago. What is it like having to go from city to city? How draining is to to the process, compared to the regular season, where you just head over to the studio, and it’s familiar?

Dash: It’s incredibly draining. I’m not going to try and fool anyone into being like, ‘it’s so easy, hopping on a plane every couple weeks, and living out of a suitcase for four.’ We’re lucky enough that I’m staying in NA, and I would consider this much easier than say the China trip for MSI, or the European trip for last year’s Worlds; where I’m halfway around the world, in countries that don’t speak my language, I’m trying to communicate. Here, at least, I can get food if I need food.

The time difference is not that massive. Our first stop, we stayed in the same time zone. That’s wonderful. But at the end of the day, just simply being away from home for an extended period of time, that’ll take a toll on anybody. It’s definitely draining, and that’s where we have to be our own policemen in a sense -- of really taking care of ourselves. And I think that’s a challenge for some of us; we’re not necessarily used to having to say, ‘no, no... make sure you’re getting your 8 hours, drown yourself in water, take your Emergen-c. Eat well, even though it’s easy to go get deep dish 4 nights in a row, just don’t do it. Maybe sneak a salad in there somewhere.’ That is one of the challenges.

It’s a weird thing to say, but just being an adult when you’re traveling, can sometimes be difficult. You get swept up into the whole ‘I’m in a new city, I’m in a new town, and I want to do these cool things.’ Work comes first, we have to make sure we prioritize it that way. And it can be tiring, I’m tired. But I love what I do, and I’m okay with being tired while doing what I love, because that’s what drives me.

A: You’ve gotten to work with a very wide spectrum of people on the desk. You’re the host, so you’re the pivot for all the analysts. How difficult is it to switch up analysts for you? I know you guys do a bootcamp, to figure out the personalities and how they match up. But for you, it’s got to be more challenging, because you’re seeing more of the spectrum.

D: 100%. You hit a few of the notes, there, which is that it’s not easy. I’m not going to tell anyone it’s all sunshine and roses, that all 23 casters that we’re using for Worlds this year just showed up on day one and were like, ‘Oh look at this incredible synergy we have, everything will be okay.’

I’ve never worked with Froskurinn before, I’ve never worked with Rusty before. I’ve worked with Stress a few times but not a ton. I’ve never worked with Papa Smithy before. So a lot of that boot camp time for me -- on top of just familiarizing myself with the other regions, getting their expertise, and locking that info away -- more of my time as the host is getting to know them as people. Understanding what makes them tick. How do they think? What lights a fire under their ass? If they’re a timid person, how can I get them to be aggressive, how can I phrase questions to get them in, versus Jatt or Crumbzz who’s totally willing to get in? How do I temper them so they create the space for somebody else. I don’t really know what to make it akin to.

A: It’s almost like being a coach though, in a sense. When you’re coaching a team, you have to know...It’s like the Kubz statement, “Some people need whipped cream, and some people need poop.” You just need to find who needs a bowl of whipped cream, and who needs a bowl of poop.

D: Yes, as a crude analogy, yes. You need to figure out what motivates what person to do what. At the same time, if I had to give myself a blanket statement for what my role is on broadcast, I play very much air traffic control, or director. Not show director, because obviously we have a show director, but director in terms of ‘hey we have 5 minutes to get across as much information as succinctly as we possibly can. And if I let you guys police yourselves, we’re going nowhere.’

A: I’ve learned that from doing my podcast. I had a cast on that was Froskurinn, Gleeb, and a friend who was an editor with ONGamers. And if I left Frosk and Gleeb alone, we would be going for an hour and they’d still be going.

D: That’s the thing, for those of you at home. Imagine any conversation you’ve had with a league friend, in your life. And how you could have started out with a very simple idea of how this conversation could be about. Let’s talk about that one play, and then inevitably, it’s not just about that one play. You go from that play to what it’s affected, and then to this other thing, and tangentially it’s related to this, and it’s like, “oh…okay,” so you can see how it’s great how we have that passion and that fire, and the drive to talk about all these things, but it’s not fruitful unless someone can actually help guide the conversation.

And I feel that’s where my role it. Now to bring it all the way back to the front, yeah, for me the challenge here at Worlds is very much working with people that I haven’t build rapports with.

I did the entire summer split with Mark and Crumbz on my desk almost entirely, the occasional Dyrus, or the occasional Zirene. For the most part, I did all weeks of Summer with those two guys. And I think if you go back and watch week 1 to week 9, the growth we had as a trio is pretty spectacular and that’s really cool. I’m not alloted that same amount of time with these people. So Frosk, I got to see her for a week. And you know what? It was so cool just going and sitting down with her and talking about our pasts. How many siblings do you have? What’s was your family like? How do you think? What makes you tick? What did you study? She asked me a bunch about my acting process, and that gives us a deeper connection in a way that when we step on the desk we trust each other. Because more than anything, you have to trust.

A: I definitely feel that when I host, the people I know more closely are definitely easier to pivot and bounce things off of, versus the person who I asked,  ‘can you be on this show at this time?’ That person is super rough to work with. It’s really hard if a question goes off the rail, and I have to ask a new question, I can’t go to them, but if somebody just answered, I can’t go to them either. So you end up locking yourself up.

D: I’ve got to build a trust so that if my producer needs to hop into my ear, during the segment, ‘hey, something’s going on,’ technically, we need to buy another 2 minutes. That means I’m not listening to my co-casters, so I need to trust that while I’m doing that, and giving them a signal to lengthen, that they’ll go. I know that they’ll find a new topic. They’ll take the leap, and say ‘okay, he can’t help me on this, or I’ll take the lead on this,’ and then I’ll find my way back in, and take the reins back, and now we’re riding again at a steady pace.

A: This might be a tricky question, and I don’t know how well you’re allowed to answer this, but if you could build your ideal desk to host, who would be your three?

D: So, I will not answer the question with names. What I will answer is what I think a good desk can require in terms of personalities or roles that people need to fulfill. Because I think having three people of identical personalities will be a failed desk. If you got three people who are all super meek and timid, don’t want to fight, and want to play nice, how the heck is the desk ever supposed to work?

I ask you a question, and you answer, and I turn to the next guy, and they say, ‘I agree with what she said’, and I turn to the next person and they agree with what he said. Well okay, I’ll ask a new question now. So, what I think is that a desk need to have somewhat of a villain. A villain is integral to everything and it can’t be the host. I can be an antagonizer at times, I ask you a question, you give me an answer, and I might prod you, “What do you really mean by that?” An example would be the YamatoCannon thing from last year where he gave me an answer, and I was like, “I’m not satisfied with that, you need to go deeper.” But at the same time, and this is where I do think the easy one to pick out will be Monte.

Monte can very well fulfill the role of the villain. He’s very okay, and some people may take this an insult, but no. it’s very much a compliment. He’s entirely capable of saying “What this segment needs is fire. We need to have discussion, we need to have disagreement.” Sometimes for the sake of disagreement, he will make an inflammatory statement, or a grandiose statement. He might take the truth, but inflate it a little bit, so that you will rise to the occasion.

I need someone who is able to fill the role of the villain; I need somebody that is able to basically give me some sense of the player experience. I think that’s super valuable. You look at any successful pro or traditional sports desk, you’ve got Charles Barkley, you’ve got somebody that was involved in the scene, deeply, from a professional level -- be it a coach, be it a player. For example, I don’t fill that role, Monte doesn’t fill that role -- well, he does as a coach, but not as player. And so you look at someone like Crumbzz or Mark and they can recall instances, and they can come in and say, “I can easily tell you from first-hand experience the mental fatigue a player experiences in a best-of-five because I’ve had to coach players going into that fifth game, who are tired, falling asleep, they’re unmotivated, and I have to refocus that.”

And I think it’s important to have that perspective. And I think beyond that, the third person, If you have those two things, that third person could really be anything as long as they’re capable. And that’s where the uniqueness from every desk can come. You don’t have to have the same personalities every time. That last person could be a floater of sorts, but they need to have improvisational background for a lack of a better word.

I’m not saying they have to be an improve sauvant, because lord knows, most of us aren’t. Improv is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do in your life. But having the ability to be flexible, and say, ‘I’m going to take that point and I’m going to disagree,’ or ‘I’m going to take your point and slam dunk it for you,’ or ‘I’m going to set you up.” I’ve got guys who are very good at that, who maybe aren’t going to be the ones to drive the point home every time, but they’ll be the ones to do the foot work, the ground work on the desk and say, ‘I’m going to set up this whole scenario for you,’ build you through this replay, and when the replay is done, analyst two comes in and goes, ‘and here’s why that’s important.’

And succinctly gives you the reason why that affected the game. It’s kind of a long winded answer, and I don’t think that there’s any one correct irritation of the desk, but in my opinion, having some sort of Villain or instigator, having a player perspective, and then a wild card.

A: And as a last-ish question -- both you and Sjokz are hosts for the desk here -- you for NA obviously, Sjokz for EU. What do you think is difference between your hosting styles?

D: I think the difference in our hosting styles lies primarily in… It’s a good question because it really makes you think. We work closely together at these events. In my opinion, where I have the most to learn from Sjokz is her ability to live in the moment. Sometimes I struggle with being able to abandon my own idea of how we’re going to get from point A to point B. It’s something I think I’ve improved greatly on in the two and a half years I’ve been working with Riot, but I still have light years to go. Which is that, when I first came in, my process was, ‘What’s the story of this segment? Great, okay. What are the five questions I’m going to ask my analysts to paint that picture?; And really no matter what happened on the desk, I would move from question ‘a’ to ‘b’ to ‘c’ to ‘d’ to ‘e’.

Now, I’m more into: okay let me think of the larger story, but within the moment, I’m going to let Krepo just go go go, and then I see Jatt wants to talk, and I’m now directing. I’m living in the moment, of just directing. I do a lot of pointing on my desk that you don’t see on camera, ‘cause I’m just literally [like], ‘Krepo’s going, then Jatt’s going to go, then Papa.’ I think Sjokz is a much more loose host, and I think that she at times can have much more fun then I do. And it’s something I need to learn how to do.

A: Yeah, her desk can be a little more comedic than yours. Not that your desk doesn’t have moments for laughs, but she seems to be the joke teller that gets everybody loose, where you’re the stronger handed…

D: I think we both know and are very much aligned and agree in terms of what the goals of the desk are. We have different process of getting there. I’m a little hard handed, a little bit more buttoned up. “Answer my question, so that I can move on to the next guy. Hey if you two are arguing I’m going to put my foot down, PapaSmithy goes first, Jatt goes second. No Jatt, you’re done, now I want to get Krepo in for a third point of view.” She’s definitely going to be play more with jest. She’s going to get more out of people because of building a rapport with them that is maybe a little more conversational.

And that’s maybe the biggest difference between our desks. Her’s is a little bit more of that kicked back, ‘I’m with my friends talking about that awesome game of League of Legends we just watched, really shooting the shit,’ where mine is a little bit more of a prescribed, ‘let’s get in there, more traditional sports esque.’

And that’s where I take all my queues, because I started in the esports industry here [as a host]. Sjokz started in the esports industry well before me. So she is more ingrained in a little bit in that gamer attitude, that little colloquial-like conversational attitude, with jibs and jabs, and ‘Sjokz fired’ meme.

She’s definitely a little bit more in tune with that then I am, I can admit that. And for me I came from a traditional sports background, where I was a competitive runner; I love watching football, as much as my Chargers pain me every season, but I love them anyway. I’m a big Duke basketball fan, I’m big into sports, so all my references for what a successful desk was were all from traditional sports. So that’s when I got this job, I was on Youtube, on the internet just watching half time reports, what do they do, what’s the process? And that’s where I took my learning from.

A: So my very last question, What do you think you could do -- and you’ve kind of touched on it -- But what do you think you could do to grow and improve as a desk host? Cause I know that talking to you before, and talking to Jatt, you both always tell people, if you want to get into Casting or Desk hosting, take improv, but you already do that. So what do you think is something else you can do to elevate yourself to another level?

D: Let’s see... what can I do to get better? Asides from all the things I already do in terms of betterment, which is like, I watch my VODs back, I’m constantly in 1 on 1s with people in terms of what we can do better, what worked, what didn’t work? For me I think, in all honestly, you can’t take too much improv. I’m awful at improv, and it terrifies me. Improv terrifies the shit out of me. When I have to get on a stage in front of people without lines, without knowing where I’m going, that’s a problem. I came from a theater background and a TV background, I always knew what I had to say, that was never an issue for me.

So here, not knowing what I want to say is what trips me up more than anything. You’ll see it on the desk, if you ever hear me flub a word, in conversation, it’s because I didn’t fully know where I was fully going with that sentence, and it’s probably because I’m wandering. And again, so much of it is about comfortability, and so therefore, it is kind of a cop out answer, but it’s about building those connections, and building those relationships with those people that I work with. And I think that’s where, it might sound funny, but I think we could do a better job at times, as a team, to getting to know each other as humans. Go play golf, or go bowling.

A: CLG tried that, with the basketball, going to the gym together, and what not.

D: We started working out together this year and honestly it was some of the most interesting stuff I’ve ever done with a group of casters. Because I learned so much about people when they struggle with things. You learn so much about people when you struggle together and you have to work through a barrier together. Doing that kind of boot camp training we did together for three months, I learned a ton about these guys, and supporting them and building them up, and having them support me and build me up, also built that trust. That trust that now when I step out on stage with them, I go, “Hey if all else fails, and my mouth stops working, I’m pretty sure they can carry the desk without me.”

A special thanks to Madeline “PinkRambo” Richer for transcribing this interview. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/DWAIPinkRambo.