Team Liquid’s Broxah: “We need to value treating others the right way higher in the League of Legends community”

Hailing from EU, Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen was well known during his time as Fnatic’s jungler for over two and half years. 

His move to NA and Team Liquid was a big deal during the offseason last year, but with Visa issues, he was unable to come to NA until week four of the Spring Split. With that plus other issues, Team Liquid ended their Spring Split in 9th place. 

After their win against Dignitas, Broxah discusses having Joshua “Jatt” Leesman as their new head coach, and how his play-style meshes with Team Liquid’s goals.

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First of all, congratulations on the win, although this may be more of a bittersweet win. Talk to me about the draft matchup. Lee Sin was picked last, what was the rationale, is it a team oriented champ or was it picked as a counter to something else?

Most of all, with the team comp that we already had and with me having last pick, I wanted something that could help us get through the early game and that could try to match Olaf, and Lee Sin works really well in that regard. 

Olaf is a bit stronger than me in the early game. Eventually, I can try and match him and make plays, and we have pretty aggressive lanes, and with Lee, it’s pretty easy for me to follow up and help them try to push the early game forward.

Broxah plays for Team Liquid (Picture: Lolesports) 

This is such a difference from the last split, which I’m sure you’re happy about. What is it like having Jatt as coach? What kind of flair does he try to give to the team?

Having Jatt as a coach has been really beneficial. Definitely a positive change for us coming into the Summer Split so far. 

He has been bringing a lot in terms of structure, coming in with an outside perspective and a new view, like, being a new coach and how everything should run inside a team and how he wants everything to function. He has changed our structure and helped a bit with daily routine; how we do everything on a daily basis. 

It’s a huge positive having someone like him, who has been following Team Liquid for many, many years now coming into the team and being able to influence things after seeing what went wrong last split and what the team could have improved on. 

I think having some fresh eyes from someone with a really analytical perspective who has been watching the team for so long has been really huge as well.

Since you’ve only recently come to NA, do you find that the team atmosphere and how the coaches are is different from EU, and how so?

Honestly, I don’t feel that the team atmosphere here is different than what I’m used to in Europe. I have a feeling it depends on what team you’re on and what the ambitions of the team are. 

When it comes to Team Liquid in particular, the philosophy is very similar to what I’m used to being on Fnatic in the past, where anything other than first place is basically a disappointment and is unacceptable, meaning that we do everything we can throughout the week to make sure we are the best we can possibly be. 

The organization is doing a lot to help empower us players to play our best once we do play the LCS games. There’s a lot of pressure on all of us to perform, which I certainly don’t mind; it’s the exact way I want it to be. So in terms of that, it’s pretty similar to what I’m used to, honestly.

Broxah in the Spring Split earlier this year (Picture: Lolesports)

I’d love to get your perspective on working with your teammates on Team Liquid. How do the individual play-styles mesh with how you play?

I feel like we mesh pretty well as a team, or we have the potential to mesh really well as a team. Team Liquid has been playing a very specific style in past years, which has been playing around the bot lane with Jensen and Impact taking a step back and having more scaling-oriented roles.

Both of them are also able to play more aggressive and snowball if they’re being put in the position to, so right now, with me coming onto the team, my personal goal is to push the team in the direction where we’re able to, or where I’m able to, put all of my teammates in the position where they can carry, rather than where they have to take one for the team and play the supportive role or tankiest champion rather than being on a carry. 

So far, I think we’ve shown a bit of that already; a bit of everyone having that chance to carry the game and push the game forward and have it being played around them, but it’s definitely something we can still continue working on.

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You recently made a Twitter post about people being really uncivil and rude about another pro player. Toxicity seems to be a problem in gaming, and the League community is no stranger to dealing with it. What are your steps that you take in trying to be a more positive person in the community whether in game or outside of it?

I think, in the League of Legends community, we need to value treating other people in the right way a lot higher. 

I feel like often, people find it really entertaining to trash talk others, or just say something mean and destructive to other people, and that’s fine to a certain extent when it’s done with the right meaning or with a good intention. But oftentimes, what can happen is that - and let’s say, here that Eika is the main person in focus because he has been having a pretty rough time around social media this past month.

I feel like what happened with Eika is he really didn’t have the greatest start when he came to the LCS and eventually, it just snowballed out of control to the point where even if Immortals lose and he does fine, like, goes even with his opponent, he’s going to get flamed to the ground because his team is losing. 

Oftentimes, I feel like all this toxicity and negativity can spiral out of control to the point where people are kind of bullying people online, whether that’s content creators or pro players or just random people that you meet in solo queue. 

I definitely think it’s important to think about the person sitting on the other side listening to this and, most of all, just try to treat people the way that you want to be treated yourself. This might not necessarily be the easiest thing to change; I feel like it’s been this way in the gaming community for so long and it’s gotten worse and worse over the years. 

But at the point when those lines are being crossed, I feel like it’s important that someone speaks out and tries to make it stop, because otherwise it’s just going to continue snowballing until at one point.. I don’t know, it’s just going to be so bad.

Right, and I think it was really nice of you to speak up and say something because I don’t know that many people would have, not necessarily because they don’t want to, but because they don’t know how to. There’s a level of trash talk that’s accepted.

Yeah, I agree. To some extent, trash talk and speaking negatively about others can be funny, but at what point if it gets too extreme, it can put the person who is being talked about in such a difficult position. 

Not only is that person already on a team that is doing poorly which is already really stressful to deal with and really hard mentally, but then you open social media and you see everyone saying some of the most mean things possible about you, then that’s something that’s almost inhuman to deal with and I wouldn’t want that for anyone. 

Generally speaking, it feels like these things are being ignored too much and I’ve seen people say these kinds of things and it doesn’t necessarily have to be about Eika. Maybe next month, it’s going to be me or someone else; the person just keeps changing. Most of all, I feel it’s important that once these things start to spiral out of control that someone speaks up. 

I decided to do it this time. I honestly had no idea how people were going to react; luckily enough, most of the community seems to be agreeing with me. I kind of put myself in a bit of a risky situation because there was a chance I was going to be getting so much backlash, but I couldn’t accept sitting there and watching this happen without at least trying to do something.

Speaking of positivity, you’ve been known for being a generally positive person, especially when you stream, which is so refreshing. How do you stick to it especially if, in a solo queue game, things get tilting?

Just like anyone else, I also have periods of time where I can get really frustrated and annoyed and stressed out. I know that there’s a lot of people out there that - especially with quarantine and everything going on around the world - often, when I would be streaming there were so many people coming into my stream and complimenting me for being positive and trying to light up their day in a way. 

Therefore, the past months, especially, I’ve trying to put as much emphasis as possible - even more so than before - really emphasising being a good person and being kind to other people and trying to showcase that even here in the gaming community, it’s possible to come a long way by treating other people right and just being a good person.

You can catch more of the LCS Summer Split on 3rd July. You can catch it on YouTube, Twitch, and lolesports.com. Be sure to catch more League content here on GINX Esports TV.