Graduate of Texas Tech University - Journalism,
Head of Marketing for @myztrogaming., Student Media Supervisor @urecttu

Hi Dylan, thank you for inviting yourself to The QUAKE PUB. I am very glad to have this opportunity, to have an insider that had so much to do with IRONFIST LAN.

Before I start with tough questions, can you please introduce yourself a bit for everybody in the Quake Family. 

Hey there! My name is Dylan “SuRpLu5” Winn, and I’m the Head of Marketing at Myztro Gaming.

I’ve been a part of Myztro for almost 3 years and a part of the Quake community for 4 years.

What is your gaming history? What games did you played as a kid?

Honestly, I didn’t do much gaming as a kid. My parents kept me away from anything new, so I mainly played Mario on my dad’s NES, and played Halo 3 and Call Of Duty at my friends' houses.

I really started gaming when I was in Middle School,  where I played Team Fortress 2 on my laptop. I played CS:GO in High School, which got me into esports and started my journey in the industry.

Is working in gaming your dream comes true?

Esports is my dream industry, and Myztro was the first org to see my value. As I graduate and I head into the job market, I’m looking to work with more companies in esports, but I intend to stay with Myztro as long as I can.

As a Head of Marketing, what is your main job description? What do you take care about  in Myztro Gaming?

I oversee most of our marketing and social media, including our Twitter and TikTok accounts. Most of the posts you see on Twitter I was behind. I also assist a ton with the heads of the company and do odd jobs for them, including but not limited to communicating with sponsors, getting giveaways sorted for fans, and talking to the press.

Myztro Gaming prepared what I consider the best event in 2021.

How does it feel to be part of a team that pulled such an event over? 

If you could change one or two things, what would they be?

It’s exhilarating. Being part of a team that pulled off a great tournament with such a small staff really shows that we can do this again, and that we can do it better than before.

I wouldn’t change much, to be honest. I would want to get to London a bit earlier so I could get better sleep and to adjust to the time zone a bit better, and I would have moved observer PCs to a desk.

Other than that, I think we did a great job, and the minor tweaks we did over three days would be put in place for Day 1.

When you see your teammates playing in such a high stakes tournament, what were your feelings?

I’m a very passionate person, and these guys are like family to me. A lot of my emotions were actually held in since I had to remain professional, but it was a huge range from very happy and super crushed, especially after Rapha hit that last shot on RAISY in the Grand Finals.

The one emotion that stands tall is Pride. I am so proud of how all our players performed, and I cannot wait for the future.

You were in charge of dispatching stream and coordinating players to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible. When actually started all preparations for you and the production team prior to the event?

We had little prep before the event. My preparation included being a tournament admin for a Gears of War tournament that one of my friends set me up with so I could become more comfortable with directing players. However, this only set me up for online tournaments, and LAN tournaments are a whole different beast. Players need to set up, warm up, get their pick-bans done, and while all that’s going on, our production is asking if the players are ready, and I have to come up with content for the stream on the fly.

We actually practiced a bit the morning of Friday the 26th. So a ton of the technical issues were smoothed out in real time.

How tough is it to hold your concentration and focus on such a massive event, like IRONFIST was? 

Not gonna lie, it was difficult. I’ve done Sports Broadcast and Production before at Texas Tech University for football, basketball, and volleyball, but this was the first time I really took a big production job in esports.

A team of 7 (6 on site, 1 remote) putting on a production that was comparable to other Quake broadcasts (which have a staff of up to 50 or more) was quite the undertaking. On top of that, I had to put in results on Toornament, tweet for Myztro, clip the best plays of the tournament, and other jobs that were assigned to me.

The fact that we had only minor issues and issues that were out of our control (re: Twitch) on our very first broadcast as a team was nothing short of phenomenal, and shows that we’re more than capable to do this again and do it even better than before!

Original plan for IRONFIST was to bradcast exact players set up to the stream.

What was the issue here from a production point of view? I know you tested this setup for several hours on DAY 0. Would you be able to for the next event to somehow incorporate this feature to broadcast? 

I believe we can make Player POVs work for the next tournament, using sound from a spectator PC and the image from the player's PC. There are a few limitations, but I believe we can possibly make it work for the next tournament. We'd have to workshop it more!

Can you tell us something more about IROFIST #2? 

All I can really say is stay tuned. ;)

Thank you very much for what you, your team and Myztro Gaming prepared for Quake Family and Iam looking forward to things to come. Take care! 

If there’s one thing about Myztro that I know for certain is that we’re in Quake until the end. I know for a fact the Quake community can rely on us to put on great events and field amazing players.

Thanks a ton for the interview, and I hope to see QUAKE.PUB at more events in the future!

If it is possible, and I find time and means to get there, bet I will do maximum to be at LAN. Thank you <3