Interview with the tournament president Blisstick

Here's an interview we did with our TP (tournament admin, not toilet paper) Blisstick.

Question: So who's this Blisstick guy? Tell us in short about the real person behind the nickname.
Blisstick: I'm a 27 year old (28 in 1 week) guy from just outside Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.  My girlfriend Skye and I have a cat named Manao... Skye's from Thailand and Manao is Thai for "lime".  Having recently graduated university with a BComm degree, I've just taken a new job and transitioned from the IT field where I've been for 6.5 years into Inside Sales.

Question:Explain your online handle, what does it mean? why did you choose it? do you use any other alias? How long have you had it?
Blisstick: Blisstick is actually short for "BLIStered STICKers".  Around 10 years ago, when I decided I needed a fresh, unique online handle, I created this because I was a new volunteer firefighter and was proud of blistering the stickers on my helmet after being in a hot house fire.

Question: What were you hoping to accomplish with starting up the AGW tournament?
Blisstick: AGW was created by a small group of us who came from a Battlefield 2 tournament called FFTF "Fight for The Future".  We loved organized tournament battles, but BF2 was limited to 32v32 games.  Tacho was an ArmA1 fan and showed us that game... like ArmA2 it had huge maps with potential for large battles and could be heavily modded, so we decided to form a new tournament based on the Armed Assault series of games - enter AGW "Armed Global Warfare".

Question:: How long did it take to develop?
Blisstick: We originally started with the concept in late 2007/early 2008 and I created the website June 2008.  It took a long time to get started because we had such a small group starting out, and it takes a lot of gamers to produce a successful war-game tournament.  Campaign 1 officially started a more than a year later in August 2009.

Question: What has been the biggest challenge running the online tourney?
Blisstick: By far the biggest challenge is managing/dealing with all the people and personalities, which are critical to the success of the tournament.  Naturally, no two people think alike, and having armies and so many people in different positions of authority who we depend on to perform their duties takes a lot of patience, people skills, and close management in order to push forward for everyone's enjoyment.

Question: How long have you been involved with gaming in general?
Blisstick: Since the days of Wolfenstein... that must be close to 20 years now.  Although as a kid I was into Nintendo a bit, PC - and especially multiplayer gaming has always intrigued me.  My first PC CD-Rom game was SimCity 2000 and my first PC multiplayer game was Duke Nukem 3D (via dialup modem connection).

Question: Which current AGW member have you known the longest?
Blisstick: Roybean and I were platoon mates in Wiskey Company of the 32RA Coalition Army of 21CW "21st Century Warfare" Battlefield 1942 tournament in Campaign 7.  This was my first experience with online tournament gaming and would have been somewhere around 2000 or 2001.  Looking back, we've been in 4 or 5 different tournaments together and often worked/played at similar levels; some as plain old grunt NCM's together, some as HCO's and Officers together, and some as Admins together.  My only trip to Europe was to visit Roybean a few years back.  If you ever have the chance to meet an online gaming friend, do it; it's amazing the friendships people can form online!

Question: Tell us a little about your gaming rigg?
Blisstick: My current rig runs an i7-920 2.67Ghz CPU with 12GB RAM, an ATI 4890 video card, and 4 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm harddrives running in RAID 10.

Question: What are games you play currently?  List your top 5 favorite games with a short explanation of why they are your favorites.
Blisstick: 1. ArmA2 AAS - Because of its capacity for large-scale first-person shooter battles, modifiability, and naturally because our tournament runs it!
2. Mafia 1 & 2 - Because of the great graphics and mission storyline... thank God it's not multiplayer or no one in my real-life would ever see me!
3. Team Fortress 2 - Because of its exciting, fast-paced action, continuous updates, and comical characters.
4. Tropico 3 - Because of the management of resources and strategy involved... I'm a big fan of tycoon-style games and this is the most recent one I've played.
5. TheHunter.com - Because I enjoy hunting in real-life and it has amazing graphics and equipment which are continually updated... again, I wish it was multiplayer!

Question: What other hobbies do you partake in?
Blisstick: I enjoy hunting and fishing, computer/web programming, driving/traveling and hanging out with my friends and family.

Question: Describe a perfect game night/day?
Blisstick: Some of my friends and I used to get together for LAN games back in the day... probably around 2003/2004.  A couple of us were officers in the local volunteer fire department at the time, so we'd invite 6 or 8 guys to the firehall and all bring our PC's and set up in the meeting room, order some pizzas, and game all night long.  IT WAS A GREAT TIME!

Question: Do you see yourself gaming when you are 75 years old?
Blisstick: Sure, if I'm still alive lol!  Can't wait to see the graphics and interface systems by then... virtual reality anyone?!

Question: What are you hoping to accomplish with the new Campaign 4?
Blisstick: My goal for C4 is to finally achieve the regular 50v50 battles we've been working to have since Day 1.  It feels great that the team we have in place on Staff and HCO level are functioning so well and advertising/word of mouth is finally making that possible after 2.5 years!

Question: Do you have a favorite AGW moment? Tell us about it.
Blisstick: Our very first AAS Scrim... I can't remember the name of the map, but it was amazingly fun.  AAS helped concentrate the action on our battlefields in a way that wasn't possible with regular ArmA2.  I can remember walking with a platoon in line-formation along the edge of a meadow and getting so many kills on our way to the flag.  In a sense, "you just had to be there", but I'm sure we have all had experiences like this in AGW battles by now.

Question: Anything else you would like to add?
Blisstick: It has taken a lot of time, work, and money generously donated by our members past and current to get AGW to where it is today - one of the premiere Armed Assault tournament communities on the net.  I feel a lot of pride and respect for all who have contributed to the community we've become and hope you all do to.  Thank you all very much!

Thank you very much for your time, Blisstick on behalf of the media team.