ImperialHal talks Red Bull Gaming and ALGS Split 1 Playoffs: “Other teams are not really an issue”

Phillip "ImperialHal" Dosen has joined the Red Bull Gaming team ahead of the Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) Year 4 Split 1 Playoffs! He sat down with esports.gg to talk about what being a Red Bull Gaming player means for his content. The player shared his thoughts on the ALGS Split 1 Playoffs as well.

In an interview with esports.gg, ImperialHal revealed his excitement about collaborating with Red Bull Gaming, noting the company's reputation for creative projects. He added that Red Bull Gaming provides the resources to explore content ideas, which he believes are lacking in the Apex Legends community. Additionally, the fact that Timothy "iiTzTimmy" An is already part of the Red Bull Gaming family gives ImperialHal confidence in joining the team.

"I wanted to kind of try to combine the physical aspects of Red Bull and the esports side," ImperialHal said. "So things like skydiving or just stuff like that. Just crazy things like jumping out a cargo ship. We're planning on making tournaments, but making them cool. We don't want to make it just like standard ALGS — you know, just six games or eight games and that's it. We want to get creative and do things that Apex hasn't done."

ImperialHal then noted how he likes Red Bull Gaming's approach in terms of open and honest communication. To him, it isn't just about following Red Bull Gaming's lead. Instead, ideas are discussed and planned out together.

The ALGS Split 1 Playoffs will kick off on May 2 and will feature 40 teams duking it out for the Year 4 title. As a player for TSM, ImperialHal will fight alongside Jordan "Reps" Wolfe and Evan "Verhulst" Verhulst against teams such as Fnatic, Legends Gaming, and more.

ImperialHal told esports.gg about his team's preparations going into the tournament, highlighting how practice typically involves daily scrims, ranked games, and streaming. TSM also does video-on-demand (VOD) reviews, though not as frequently.

"Probably the second most [important activity], outside of just playing the game, is also doing contest practice outside the game — like off stream," he explained. "We're right now contested by two teams — one at each POI. So we're trying to practice and get better at that. The majority of the time when we do play, it's kind of like, we fix our mistakes and we talk about it in the moment."

ImperialHal continued, revealing that he sees DarkZero Esports as TSM's rivals. He's also not concerned about the other teams.

"In the majority of the LANs, we're always just going against DarkZero. In the last five years, it's just either been us or DarkZero that has won a LAN. So if we had an enemy, it would be DarkZero," he told esports.gg.

"But right now, I personally think that we have our own issues. You know, I could care less if DarkZero was the best team or not. We just have to worry about these contests that we have right now. Because even though we're winning the contest overall, like these guys just don't want to leave. So it might be an issue on LAN, but I want to focus on ourselves. Other teams are not really an issue. There's obviously rivals and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, we got to forgive ourselves first."

The player also shared his thoughts on the current meta and how that affects TSM's approach to the ALGS Split 1 Playoffs. Apex Legends Season 20, in particular, altered the meta considerably.

"We used to play Horizon, Seer, and Catalyst or stuff like that. But now it's more so playing Bloodhound, Caustic, and Bangalore. So it's a lot different. I don't really like the meta, personally," ImperialHal said. "Just because it's a very heavy smoke meta and the majority of the fights like in 3v3s and stuff like that is heavily reliant on your Bloodhound, which is me."

He then continued, recalling previous metas. "There wasn't only one player that can visibly see anything because there wasn't always Bang smokes every single fight," he said. "So when we fight every single player, the team can actually see what they're fighting and they can be involved. Now, it's kind of just like one player the majority of the time fighting and trying to carry the team."

As mentioned, Year 4 ALGS Split 1 Playoffs will commence on May 2. ImperialHal and TSM fans will be able to catch all of the action on Twitch and YouTube.

That's all for now. Stick around on esports.gg for more news, interviews, and updates!