This week, Immortal’s graciously allowed me the chance to have a sit-down interview with two leaders in their own rights, George "Hyped" Maganzini and Stefano "Verbo" Disalvo. I had the chance to pick their brains on overall communication, what they thought of Korean imports on Western teams, and a little dive into what they do in their free time.

First of all, how are you guys doing today?

Verbo: “I’m doing well. Today has been packed with media stuff — doing interviews all day and video interviews, articles and written interviews, stuff like that.”

Hyped: “I’m doing great.”

Hyped, with you having more experience within esports coming from your background in Hearthstone and being quite a bit older than your teammates, does this affect how you communicate with your team? Does that change how you might word or say things? Does it affect what you do for Immortals?

Hyped: “Honestly, since Hearthstone is more of a solo game and you can kind of do your own thing and you don't really have to communicate ideas that often, it was not something i brought from Hearthstone. But, prior to Hearthstone, I did play a bunch of World of Warcraft primarily, like a lot of raiding as well as arena and it's the same thing. Just getting people to work together towards a goal and being familiar with the wrong ways to do it and the right ways to do it. That’s where I got most of my experience from.”

Now a very selfishly nerdy question, because I grew up around Blizzard games and played years of World of Warcraft. I have to know: what class did you play in World of Warcraft?

Hyped: “Mage, of course! Little Hunter, but mostly Mage.”

Awesome! Verbo, because you are so young, was getting into Esports intimidating for you at all?

Verbo: “For me personally, it has always been a dream of mine to be where I am today. To see it finally happen is surreal. In terms of it being intimidating, [I am] honestly not even sure why you’d think that. I’m not intimidated at all.”

That’s amazing that you finally got to see your dreams come true! Did you have any prior experience within a leadership role in sports or academia?

Verbo: “Basically, in Elementary school — I was around maybe eight or nine — I played Hockey for three years. I was also Assistant Captain for all the hockey teams I played for. Going into high school, my first job before esports was a swim instructor and a lifeguard. [It] was my job to make sure everyone was safe in the pool.”

No running, no running guys [laughs]. That’s awesome though! So, with that background of leadership, this was just meant for you, right? Becoming the shotcaller of Immortals?

Verbo: “Yeah, I mean I was playing Overwatch, I didn’t expect to be in this role. When I first started playing Overwatch, I had the intention of joining a team, but I didn’t like how people were starting up teams back then. So, I kind of figured if you're going to do something right, better to do it yourself. I just took it upon myself and have been in this role ever since.”

Now I know that Verbo is considered the “shotcaller” even though a lot of information gets passed through you, from the players. How much of a role do you both play on Immortals leadership?

Verbo: “Outside of game we usually have Hyped — like if we all want to go out for dinners, he’ll order the food or the Uber, if it something small. If it's something more big, we’ll have our manager do it. Also, once we’re in game, when it comes to knowing what team compositions we should be playing, Hyped takes that role, as well. And any strategies or in-game decisions that need to be made, that would be me.”

So, Hyped is the Colonel to your General, right? Hyped is the guy who gives the orders and Verbo directs the troops?

Hyped: "I don’t understand the military analogy, but it sounds good! But overall that's pretty correct. Like I said, I don’t fully understand the analogy, but it’s like Verbo is the captain… wait, is there Captains?"

… maybe like a Sergeant?

Hyped: “Yea! [Verbo] is the Sergeant who’s telling everyone on the field exactly what to do. I’m more of the guy who does all the strategy in the military. I mean we both do strategy a bunch, but someone has to be the one guiding people directly. And then that frees me up to think about what plays to make and when to use our ultimates, for example.”

Sure, so like the macro and micro strategy?

Hyped: “Yea, that's actually a really good way of putting it.”

Something interesting that I had read on Twitter was Cloud 9’s Grego’s tweet that read, “... there is way too much going on for all [communication] to be on one person. Stop being lazy, it's a team effort.” What is both of your overall thoughts on this concept?

Verbo: “Yeah, I 100% agree with him. In Overwatch, there is way too many things to keep track of and account for and make decisions off of. But, when he mentions how it can’t be a ‘one person thing’ in terms of [Immortals], everyone is talking, everyone is communicating everything they are seeing. All that information is passed to that ‘one person’ to make the decisions.”

Hyped: “Yeah, I think everyone is still figuring out the most optimal way to do it, but one thing that is interesting about Verbo is before we had him on the team, we did lack a bit of direction and our Coach convinced us that we needed a strict shotcalling role. In the beginning, I think we were a bit ignorant of this fact, but once we trialed Verbo we were all like “Yup, this is the guy.” Obviously there are times when people can’t talk and times when they can, so everyone tries to pitch in as much as possible to help him with calling.”

Within that same realm, I wanted to talk about where you both think the most optimal position for shotcalling would be. Is it something a Reinhardt could do in the future, should it always be designated to the Lucio, or does it depend on the player?

Verbo: “I think both the Reinhardt and the Lucio, either or works. The reason for the Reinhardt is that he has the most vision, being [positioned] in front of your whole team. [Reinhardt] might be best for calling an engage, but the leadership would fall under a Lucio as well, just because, before the current patch, you could put your mechanics on autopilot while focusing on game knowledge or any decision making in game.

Hyped: “Yeah, oftentimes, I kind of want to be the one initiating a play, but without my Reinhardt or Lucio there I’ll just be pushing up as a hero I’m not supposed to be pushing on, just because I want to try to signal to everyone that we should go in and that doesn’t always work out the best. So definitely a Reinhardt or Lucio, for sure.”

Again, staying on topic here, what are some of your thoughts about foreign imports on Western teams in esports?

Verbo: “I think there are some strengths and weaknesses to that. I mean, if you look at Cloud 9, they just imported two Koreans as well as a Korean coach. Some strengths of [importing] are that the new players could come with better skill or game knowledge than your previous player. But the downside to that is how [effectively] can they can communicate that game knowledge or whatever to the rest of the team.”

Hyped: “I’m not too optimistic about the idea myself but I am interested to see if other teams can make it work. For example, I wouldn’t want to be the team who tries to make the communication work, but if someone can make it work, more power to them.”

During the Rivalcade Tournament, what were some of your first impressions of the new Cloud 9 with Selly and Xephyr? Did you guys feel like they were pretty cohesive, from what you could tell?

Verbo: “Yeah, I think they felt pretty cohesive. Both the Koreans are playing roles that don’t need to communicate too terribly much. It would be a different story if they were playing a Reinhardt or Lucio. Personally, I don’t think they played too disconnected. I think they were grouped up. I think they just need more time to really sync up and I think they’ll be strong.”

Hyped: “Yeah, again, any tricks with the communication that they can learn is probably going to go a long way. Maybe there's something that they’re struggling to communicate now, but in the future, that should be ironed out pretty well.”

With the conclusion of OGN’s APEX Season 2, how do you all feel about the Tactical Timeouts? Is that something you think would be interesting for Western tournament organizers to test in the future?

Hyped: “It does seem like a weird idea but sometimes you do need a pause. But I think the idea is that you are limited to one so that you can’t abuse it.”

Verbo: “I definitely agree with what Hyped just said. Any edge a team can get on their opponents, they’ll definitely leverage. For example, you could pause to get the enemy team mentally out of the game.”

Hyped: “Of course, if [a] team is super tilted and down and out, or something is wrong, then you need a pause to fix that. Overall, that will provide a higher quality match and higher quality entertainment for the viewer. Also, with this, you could come out with some form of higher level of strategy. Let’s say that the enemy team is doing something uncharacteristic and you need to take your time out to asses the situation — this could lead to you as a team finding a nice counter to what they brought. I think that could be really cool.”

Verbo: “Yeah, even in the NGE Winter Premiere in San Antonio, there were multiple times where we could have used a time out and just regained some of the mental fortitude that we had lost.”

I’ve heard through the grapevine that you all, as a team, are practicing mindfulness. Is that something that you could see other teams doing in the future and how is it working for you?

Verbo: “I think teams would definitely benefit from mindfulness. Every esports player wants to hit that peak performance and learning how to flip that switch on command, learning how to do that while playing the game and being able to always play at your best is always a good thing.”

Hyped: “Yeah, it’s really awesome. Our first LAN after [starting mindfulness], we were nervous beforehand, but once we got on stage we weren’t worried about the crowd at all. It was pretty unanimous that we were all fairly calm on stage.”

Thanks so much for the fantastic interview, guys! I wanted to end on a more lighthearted note. What are you guys listening to music-wise right now? Anything special?

Hyped: “I don’t really listen to music when I play Overwatch. I mean, in my free time I normally don’t just want to put on a song. I just like listening to podcasts and stuff.”

What podcasts have you been listening to, Hyped?

Hyped: “My favorite podcast right now would probably be Hidden Brain.”

And what are we listening to, Verbo? Anything fun?

Verbo: “That is a tough question. I don’t really have a favorite song either. My favorite genre right now is, like, chill music — low BPM nice melody, stuff like that.”

Written, transcribed and conducted by: @Volamel

Images courtesy of Immortals, NGE, and Blizzard Entertainment.