As we approached week four of the NPL Regular Season, roster royale was in full swing. Friday offered us our first look at the recently adjusted squads, one of which garnered a little more attention than the others. On Monday it was announced that Ghost Gaming released ‘Frolicer’ and added ‘Shrimzy’ from NPLC team, Overconfident.
The announcement came as somewhat of a surprise, seeing as how ‘Frolicer’ had only been on the team since October when he replaced ‘Turtle’. At the same time, it’s been clear that Ghost Gaming isn’t afraid to make changes to their roster when victories are evading them. And as of late the team has been struggling, placing dead last in week three of NPL action. The season as a whole so far has certainly been up and down. If we were going to see a change in rosters, we knew it would come before week four of NPL when the rosters are locked for the remainder of the phase. The news alone wasn’t necessarily enough to attract the attention it did, the overall reaction from the scene was to congratulate Shrimzy and offer some support to Frolicer in what is a less than ideal situation. But it wasn’t until late Tuesday night, when a member of Ghost Gaming decided to pour gasoline on the fire.
The tweet read “Oh also another stone acquired…”, which was sent out by Ghost Gaming’s longest tenured player, Miccoy. He’s the only player that has been with the team since its inception in September of 2017. The tweet was met with PLENTY of criticism, almost immediately. Ranging from fellow NPL and PEL players to casters to the average fan.
It seems the overall reaction towards Miccoy’s tweet was, “too soon”.
An interesting part of this situation is the timing. Like I said, the rosters for NPL are locked entering week four of the regular season. But when asking 'Frolicer' about the situation, he was adamant that he hadn’t been made aware of this move until last minute. Meaning he isn’t given time to find a new role on a NPL team. He’s practically left out to dry mid-season in hopes to find a contender team willing to add someone.
During one of Frolicer’s streams shortly after the announcement, he shed some light on the situation. When asked “was there any writing on the wall?” regarding the team's decision to release 'Frolicer' and pick-up 'Shrimzy', he answered, “no, not at all.” And when that question was followed up with “so this was a blindsided thing?”, he answered “yeah, pretty much”.
*EDIT - 3/6/19 10:30am EST
The idea that this decision was made on short notice has been challenged by Matt Dillon, CEO of Ghost Gaming. In a response to this story, Dillon tweeted "We gave the team (all players) at least a week’s notice that if play did not improve we would make a change. And that was on top of regular meetings and 1 on 1s to discuss performance & concerns." Based on the initial reaction from 'Frolicer' mentioned in this article, and the comment from Ghost Gaming's Matt Dillon, it's clear that everyone wasn't on the same page. What that means in a literal sense, we're not sure, but obviously things were not going as planned and Ghost Gaming made their decision.
It’s unfortunate to see teams release and replace members, but at the end of the day if the team isn’t getting the results they expected, changes must be made. I’m all for some NPL rivalries being born, so if/when 'Frolicer' is picked up by an org, I expect this story line to make the rounds.