Interview: RL Pro Awards

Dano: What's your name? and where can people find you?
I go by Atom, some people call me Atomcore, but I prefer just Atom. The name came to me from a text editor called Atom that I used in my first year of university, and since my real name is Adam, it made perfect sense. The best place to find me is on Twitter (@atomcoreRL), but I'm also online all the time on Discord, Atom#3660.

Dano: How long have you been in the rocket league scene?
I started playing Rocket League in January of 2019, I think it was on sale on Steam, and my friends told me to get it. I was hooked pretty much right away, the earliest memory I have was not knowing how to powerslide, I also missed like every kickoff, but I loved it. I hit Champ in the summer of 2021, so about 2.5 years, but over the past 6 months or so, I haven’t been as motivated to play the game, I’ve mainly been focusing on the esports side of things.

In terms of RLCS, the first video I ever watched was Cloud9’s S6 Worlds Run, and so they became my favourite team for a while. S7 was my first true exposure to RLCS and I absolutely loved it.

Dano: Who’s your favorite rlcs team/player?
To be honest, I’m a fan of the esport in general, and I like a lot of teams, but my top 5 would have to be G2, Version1, Dignitas, Falcons aka ex-Sandrock, and the Pioneers. My favourite player has got to be Torment, been a fan ever since watching Cloud9’s Worlds run and appreciating his role on the team.

Dano: So what are the RL Pro Awards? And how did you come up with it?
The RL Pro Awards is essentially an awards show to celebrate the outstanding performances of RLCS players. I always thought how cool it would be for Psyonix to have their own official awards, but I figured why not just do it myself. I used to run an RL league (Rocket League Metallic Cup) for about 2 years, and we had awards at the end of every season. I also took inspiration from The Streamer Awards which took place last month, as well as Johnnyboi’s Players Choice Awards.

Dano: What can we expect from the RL Pro Awards?
I would say that fans can expect a ton of different categories of awards, covering pretty much every aspect of the RL Pro scene. I’ve received a lot of feedback on the project, and I think that everyone will be really satisfied with how it turns out. As I write this, we have just finalized the judges’ panel, and the nomination process has started. Voting will begin on April 13th, and the winners of each award will be revealed on April 23rd, although there are very few details about that right now.

Dano: What's the goal of the RL Pro Awards?
The goal of the RL Pro Awards is to bring the community together to celebrate why we all watch RLCS every weekend. These pros that dedicate all their time to improving also deserve some recognition, and I wanted to highlight that as well.

Dano: Will the award winners be given anything besides recognition?
This is our very first awards show, so there’s nothing else at the moment, but hopefully in the future, if we get sponsors, we could award prizes, or even physical trophies.

Dano: What are some of the challenges that come with this show?
The behind-the-scenes aspects should come with no problem, as I’ve done similar things in the past. I don’t have a ton of experience with streaming events such as this, especially to as many people as I’m expecting to get. The main challenge will be organizing the live show for sure, but there have been so many people reaching out to offer help, so it definitely takes some of the pressure off.

Dano: Who’s been the biggest help getting this together?
Well, to be honest, it’s been pretty much all me so far. I’ve always preferred to do things myself since I usually have an idea of how I want something to look, and if too many people get involved sometimes the initial goal is lost. I first presented this idea to my friend Doc (@SlayzDoctor), and he said if it was well constructed and executed, the idea could really take off. I also sent my idea to Lawler, and he gave his opinions, so I made a few changes based on that as well. I gotta give a huge shoutout to Lawler, he was the first one to ever use my prediction spreadsheets on stream, and it all took off from there.

Dano: What are your future plans for the awards?
I want to grow this as much as I can. I think that the community has been waiting for something like this for a long time, and I’m going to do my best to deliver what we all want to see. We’ve got a pretty stacked lineup for the judges’ panel, and I think the direction we’re headed is really positive, so I’m hopeful, and really looking forward to what’s next.

Dano: Anything else you wanna say to the FanRL readers?
Thank you to everyone who’s been supporting me and my prediction spreadsheets, and thank you to the community for believing in my new project, I really hope that we can make this a big thing. Thanks for the questions :)