Interview with the General Manager of NRG Jaime “Bikeage” Cohenca

“The opportunity to add Squishy came around and we felt it was the best decision for all involved. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, Turbo was an amazing player for us, but I think it was the right move.” — Jaime Cohenca

So lets start! Could you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do at NRG?

I’m Jaime Cohenca, General Manager and Chief of Staff for NRG, SF Shock, Chicago Huntsmen. I work on a lot of different aspects of our business, but my main responsibilities revolve around building/managing our competitive esports rosters. That would include Rocket League, Fortnite, Apex Legends and I help out with the Huntsmen and Shock from time to time.

NRG Esports has been a part of the Rocket League Esports ecosystem ever since the inaugural RLCS Season back in 2016. What did you see in the game that made you invest so early and stay for so long?

I started with NRG in February of 2017, so I can’t speak to the reasoning behind entering the scene initially. I can say that we’ve continued to stay in Rocket League due to the great growth in terms of player base/viewership the game has seen over the years. We simply love the game and how easy it is to watch for people unfamiliar with esports. We’ve been fortunate enough to field a top tier team for pretty much our entire run in the RLCS as well, so that’s made things a good bit easier.

Your organisation has gone through massive growth during this time. What role did your Rocket League team, with big names like (SquishyMuffinz, Turbopolsa, Jstn, and GarrettG), play in your organisation’s massive growth?

GarrettG is THE longest standing player on any roster across the NRG organisation, so he’s certainly been a huge part of our growth over the years. He’s been an amazing player and ambassador for almost four years at this point.

Overall I would say that the Rocket League team has become one of our marquee teams along with our two franchised teams, the Shock and Huntsmen. Our success in the RLCS helped give us some legitimacy on the competitive side, but the main reason for the massive growth has been our focus on content in Rocket League and games like Fortnite and CoD.

We’ve done more content in the last year with our Rocket League team than we did in the first 3 if I had to guess. Adding JZR and Squishy really propelled us to a new level in that sense, and we hope to give the fans a ton more fun and engaging content to consume in the near future on YouTube and in our Grid broadcasts.

We’ve also made an effort to set our players up to have success on their personal YouTube channels, which at the end of the day also helps us as an organisation. And don’t forget about Sizz, he’s the king of content.

Back in July of last year, you added a serial winner in Turbopolsa to your roster. What does it take to make a transfer of such magnitude? Would you say it was worth the investment, considering he helped bring NRG their first World Championship title?

Turbo’s contract was actually up I believe, so we didn’t have to pay any kind of transfer fee. Garrett and Turbo have been friends for a long time, so when Fire decided to retire as a player, Turbo was the first option. Bringing on Turbo was a massive step for the team, so the investment was certainly worthwhile.

You won the Season 8 Worlds in Madrid with Turbopolsa on your roster and in Season 9, a season without Worlds, you finished 3rd-4th in the Regional Championship. This was followed by a rather “controversial” move to take Turbopolsa off the starting lineup and adding SquishyMuffinz. What was the main driving force behind this move?

We felt the team had really stagnated. We were still placing decently, but it was pretty clear to us that we weren’t playing well and probably winning off of teams showing us too much respect and playing scared rather than beating them outright. The opportunity to add Squishy came around and we felt it was the best decision for all involved. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, Turbo was an amazing player for us, but I think it was the right move.

A lot has changed with the format overhaul of RLCS X. What opportunities does that create for NRG?

We love the new format. The Grid is a huge opportunity for us as an org. We’re very content/media focused, so to be able to host our own broadcasts is a major win. The fact that the system is more open now will hopefully be good for the health of the scene in the long run as well.

NRG has shown to be a strong team, but they didn’t manage to win a series in Week 1 of The Grid. The RLCS X format requires teams to be consistent throughout the season. How do you deal with inconsistency?

Since adding Squishy we’ve been extremely hot. It was only a matter of time before we had an off day. Our record coming into the Grid with Squishy in the lineup was something ridiculous like 26–2 or something… so we aren’t worried at all about those two losses. However, we know that consistency and burnout might become an issue, so we’ll have to monitor that and make sure the team is in a good spot mentally as we navigate these more intensive splits.

There have been calls for more in-game esports items from the community — mainly for secondary team decals and team goal explosions. What do you believe needs to change?

We’d love to see more team items in-game for sure. Any additional opportunities to get our branding in-game would go a long way. I think being able to incorporate team sponsors somehow would be huge for us as well. I’ve always thought it would be super cool to incorporate team/team-sponsor branding into the in-game stadiums.

Rocket League is coming to the Epic Games Store as a Free To Play game. What do you think that means for the esports scene and the Return On Investment (ROI) for the organisations in RL?

It’s definitely a positive. More players and more eyeballs on the game is always a good thing. I’m super excited for Support A Creator actually. I think that will be a huge factor in growing the audience of content creators in the scene and ultimately the game as a whole. You can see how great SAC has been for the Fortnite community and it’s creators, so hopefully we see some of the same for RL.

A letter of grievance surfaced a few months back that was “signed” by a lot of organisations, including NRG. How has the communication been, starting from when Twitch was handling RLCS to after S4 when Psyonix took control?

I’ve only been working closely with the team and with Psyonix going back to Season 6 I would say, so this one is tough for me to answer. Right now we are feeling great about things though. We’re super happy with the direction RL Esports is going and we’re proud to be involved.

We recently heard a lot of comments from different organisations that the communication from Psyonix’s Esports team improved massively after the letter. What changed?

Communication with Psyonix has definitely been better. There’s always room for improvement, but it’s clear to us that they are working towards creating a sustainable ecosystem for both players and teams. In general we feel really good with the trajectory of the league and game right now and we’ve invested accordingly. Murty has always been a pleasure to work with, so I just would like to give him a shout out as well!

Thank you to Jaime Cohenca for taking time out of his day to answer some of our questions!

Author:

Achilleas Fotiou (@achilles_xf)