When the LCS made the switch to remote games due to the coronavirus pandemic, most teams likely had to make some adjustments to help players stay locked in while playing from home. Cloud9 made sure things didn’t just feel like another scrim day by moving the team to another house on LCS game days, according to superstar AD carry Zven.
During the first week of remote play, Zven said that the team played their LCS games from the same place that they run scrims. As a result, multiple players said that they felt comfortable during game days—way too comfortable.
The 22-year-old said that because the players felt too comfortable, they “couldn’t turn into their stage version” and it didn’t feel like the games mattered as much. Although they still won, C9 decided to switch things up this past week by moving the team to a different house for their stage games.
“I think moving the location really helped us a lot here,” Zven told Dot Esports. “We feel more in the zone now. We have everything we need—all our gear is here, the PCs only have League on them, and nothing else. We have hand warmers, Red Bulls, all this kind of stuff we have on stage, [and] the lights are the same.”
Since the setting was completely different from their scrim location, Zven said that the C9 players were able to shift into that specific gear that was reserved for on-stage games. It was something that the talented veteran praised C9 for doing since other teams might not have seen this problem or made an effort to fix it.
Now, the lack of a stage atmosphere and audience will be most apparent when C9 start to play in the upcoming 2020 Spring Playoffs, which is also going to be played online due to COVID-19.
All of the live elements add to the urgency of the situation and help players lock in their mindset for a do-or-die series. Making sure that the location emulates this experience ensures that the players will play as if they were in front of thousands of League fans in a packed arena.
You can catch Cloud9 in action when the LCS Spring Playoffs begin online on Saturday, April 4.
Henrique DaMour contributed to this report.
