Former Professional Jungler, League of Legends Analyst, and Prophet; Alberto "Crumbz" Rengifo has done it all. Formerly playing for Team Dignitas and Renegades, Crumbz has frequently been invited by Riot Games to the analyst desk due to his game knowledge and expertise when it comes to League of Legends. Other than that, Crumbz has entered the world of casting working with Riot Games in their Collegiate Scene. Novalas caught up with him at BlizzCon 2016 to discuss the League of Legends World Championship, a player representation organization (APE), and his hopes for the future.

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Hey YouTube and Team Dignitas fans! I'm here at BlizzCon 2016 and here with me is Crumbz, former Dignitas and now a League of Legends analyst mainly with brief stints into another things. So, first of all, this is your first day at BlizzCon correct?

Crumbz: Yes, it is. And I haven't even gotten a chance to go inside so I have no idea what to expect.

Have you been to many BlizzCons in the past?

Crumbz: Nope! First time!

First BlizzCon! You're about to experience the wonders of this event. It's going to be a great time. Are there any eSports that you're interested in?

Crumbz: Yeah! I mean, I didn't make it in time to catch the finals for Overwatch. I did see them on stream so that was pretty cool. I'll check out that section but I'm mostly interested in getting posters. I just want posters to decorate my room.

Question then! Do you play World of Warcraft?

Crumbz: No. I don't play World of Warcraft. I play Runescape.

I can respect that. So do I!

Crumbz: What's your combat level?

Oh, my combat level! I am 138... er on Runescape 3, I think. I haven't played much OSRS.

Crumbz: Oh. I only play Old School.

Anyways! You're planning on getting a bunch of posters to decorate your room. Other then that, do you have any plans for today?

Crumbz: No. I just want to meet people. There's a lot of people that I know here as well. I'll just hang out. That's really it. I just came here for the experience and I look forward to it.

Let's take a couple steps back. So - last week was the end of the League of Legends World Championship with SKT winning over Samsung. Very impressive series. What did you think of the atmosphere; the Korean atmosphere of SKT vs Samsung as well as the series prior to that with SKT vs ROX? What'd you think of it overall?

Crumbz: Just the games in general?

Yep! Just the games in general as well as the results.

Crumbz: The first series of ROX against SKT was excellent. I really liked that one. The storylines for it, the celebration, the excitement; that was probably the best series of the tournament by far. And then the Samsung games... It should've been a 3-0 under SKT but they wanted to put on a show for everybody. They threw that baron fight and it dragged on for those extra 2 games which is exciting from a fan's perspective as we got the first time a World's Finals was not a complete stomp. Which is really exciting considering the final game was also quite competitive. Overall, the tournament was really good. Probably the better one to this date but, to be honest, I don't even think that's such a good statement at this point because every single year tops itself. You kind of expect that.

Were you at the event itself?

Crumbz: Yeah. I was at the event itself and I was at the desk for ESPN.

What did you think of the new take that Riot took on the event at the Staples Center with the floor having that altered reality look to it?

Crumbz: I thought there was going to be more. I thought we might see the champions pop up from the floor and start fighting with each other or maybe more incondescent lighting. But, overall, the idea was still pretty cool. You have those booths where nobody's ever seen something like that before (or half-booths if you will). Overall, my expectations were set way too high so I was a little like "ehh, I don't know about that." If you remove that, it was awesome.

So now, you're casting the Collegiate Scene for Riot. How did you get into that and what're your expectations to go forward with that?

Crumbz: Well, they just messaged me and said "Hey, are you interested in this?" I was like "Yeah, I got the time. Let's do it." My only expectations are just to practice and see how I do in casting. All this time where I've been doing stuff on the desk for Riot; it's usually just doing analysis and nothing of an actual casting capacity. So getting into it is an easy environment for me to get good experience, practice, and start building a repetoir so I can not just do the analyst desk and they'll be like "Hey, we want you to do casting" and I can be like "Yep! I can do it now. This is my work before!" and start working on that. I think so far, it's going great even though it's been one week. I feel really comfortable doing it. I really look forward to improving.

So casting is something that you're interested in. Expanding from not just being the analyst prophet but also going into casting in the future?

Crumbz: Yeah. I try to do as many things as possible all the time so, absolutely.

That's definitely a respectable thing to do, yeah. Recently on Twitter, you announced that you are doing something with player relations. It was basically a tweet that asked players to message you for more information. Can you talk about that?

Crumbz: The idea is not necessarily to help a lot of people who are like "Hey, I dream of becoming a pro. What can I do?" I'm fine helping people like that. I've messaged hundreds of people saying "Hey. This is what you should do to become a pro." But the idea is to help out guys that are in the position where they in negotiations with teams already. They have offers and they're unsure of what to do with their pass. You don't want to be a 17 year old kid that just committed into a team and is struggling to negotiate a contract. So the whole purpose is to represent players in a way that they're able to not only grow in the future, have stability, and have a lot of the weight taken off their shoulders so they can feel comfortable doing whatever they want, putting all their time into their practice, developing their brand, and pretty much having all around stability within what they're trying to do. It's a team of four people that are all extremely experienced. While I don't have any legal experience, we have people that are other agents, other managers, people that develop software. Just all around a team that's basically designed to make the players do as little as possible while making more money at the same time.

If you think about it now, with all the traditional sports coming into the scene, that means that traditional practices are going to come into the scene. Which means that the standard of agency, player relationships, and management is going to become mandatory as League starts getting localized as we've seen with the Overwatch League. Which just means that the approach towards agencies is going to become that much more important. I think that it's taken the first step into the right direction towards a future where eSports players are going to need that kind of representation and we're just making the first move.

It is something that a lot of veteran/former players have been taking large steps in; Snoopeh in the past and you're also taking the leap as well to help cultivate the scene and the industry itself. The other question I had is, you're working with other people on this project as well. Is there an organization that you're working under?

Crumbz: Right, I mean, it's an organization we just made. It's called "Agency for Professional eSports" so... "A.P.E." Go APE if you will. Of course, there's multiple people. It's not just me. It's not something that one person can do on their own. Yeah, of course there's more people.

Recently, you put out a YouTube video talking about how you got to where you are. I think it's "How I became a Pro" or a variation of that. It's a really, really high quality video. Actually, all of your videos are pretty high quality.

Crumbz: Yeah. But there's no memes so nobody watches them.

The content itself is very sound. There was a period of time where the content was slow to come. People are huge fans of your content. Is that something that you'll be aiming to produce a lot more of as well?

Crumbz: Absolutely. I think the lack of frequency just comes from lack of ideas at the time. The lack of ideas comes from having other things at the time that I feel less comfortable with. If I'm not around the scene for awhile, it's hard to develop those ideas. After Worlds ended, I'm not doing the preparation anymore cause I don't do casting. I'm not doing the analyst desk. I take a seat back and focus on other aspects that maybe in a video, it'd be different and the audience that I have may not receive it as well. So now that I'm back into things and trying to set up everything to be as autonomous as possible, I think that I'll have more time to dedicate towards doing that. As long as ideas coming like "Hey, I want you to talk to me about this. Tell me this." and I start being more creative and brain storm more, more content should come on a regular basis. Maybe once a week should be a good standard.

Going back towards where we were talking about Koreans and the World Championship. A lot of people have been stating that, and it's almost borderline a fact, the reason Koreans are as ahead as they are in comparison to the other regions in competitive League of Legends is due to their infrastructure. What's your opinion on the fact that many teams have decided that instead of attending IEm, that they'd rather just call out or call it quits and just take a break. I think that Splyce was the first one to officially announce that they're not attending and they'd rather focus on other things. Do you think that it's bad that teams are deciding to take breaks rather than rigorous practice?

Crumbz: To start things off, I don't think it's a matter of solely infrastructure. It's the culture that's already ingrained inside of the country that is not really replicable that easily. The other aspect is that for teams that are choosing to not attend IEM, personally I always attended all the IEMs possible. I think that the international experience is extremely valuable. I don't think that teams should take not attending it as lightly as they have. So by that notion, I would've liked to see more of them participate. On the other hand, these teams do need a break and we don't know the internal struggles that they're going through. Maybe they feel uncomfortable going to a tournament if they're not sure of the roster that they have already. It's a two-sided coin that we don't really get to see so I think we can respect both choices.

The other thing I want to talk about is the recent video produced by Team Liquid, "Breaking Point", have you seen it yet?

Crumbz: Yep!

That video gives you a lot of insight on the internal team struggles that team may go through. Do you think that all teams should have that level of transparency?

Crumbz: No. Not at all. Nope.

A little too much?

Crumbz: No, it's fine but I don't think all teams should do that.

It did give a lot of insight and allievated a lot of troubles that the community has had in regards to Team Liquid. Let's talk expectations. The 2017 North American LCS split. It's already gotten a lot of interesting changes and, I mean, my organization is back and we're back and ready to go after merging with Apex. How does it make you feel knowing that the former team that you played under is back in the LCS?

Crumbz: Oh, it's fine. It's nice to see that the refreshing, old faces that I worked with before are coming back. I'm excited for them to do work and I'll always cheer for them.

We haven't gotten too much information but do you have any other things that you're interested in, in regards to the 2017 split that we know of so far?

Crumbz: Ahh, nothing that I could share!

Fingers crossed that we get Imaqtpie as the TSM AD Carry. I'm sure you've seen that around...

Crumbz: We'll see about that!

I've been following your social media very frequently and I've noticed... You've been having adventures with a cat.

Crumbz: Yeah. I don't have a cat anymore. I'm giving it back. I'm tired of it. Nope. Not doing it anymore. Not happening. It's over.

17 days was too much?

Crumbz: It's over. No more cats. I'm giving it back. Somebody is taking care of it right now. By this time, hopefully next week, it's gone.

It was that much of a struggle?

Crumbz: I mean, if somebody tries to shi* on me, I'm not going to want to see this thing again. It pissed on my bed. I'm not going to take it.

Asserting your dominance on that cat. Alright! I'm not going to hold you for much longer. I just want to ask; do you have any shoutouts for anyone out there right now?

Crumbz: Oh, just to all the fans that have followed me throughout all the years, all the guys that are yet to come, and pretty much all the eSports fans. Even though they might be fans of me or fans of somebody else, the fact that they're supporting eSports growth is everything and does good for everyone so keep it up!

That's going to be all for the interview with Crumbz. Thank you so much Crumbz. Check out Crumbz on all of his social media, check out his YouTube channel and his Twitch channel!

Crumbz' Twitch
Crumbz' Twitter
Crumbz YouTube