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The FACEIT London Major marks a turning point for Counter-Strike
The younger generation of CS:GO players are improving all the time, and we’re seeing a change in the status quo – moses, Sadokist and James Bardolph weigh in on the evolving competitive landscape.
Astralis capped off an incredible run at the 2018 FACEIT London Major, taking home the trophy to become two-time Major champions with a sweep over Natus Vincere, but even though the Danish org are seasoned stalwarts in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive scene, there’s a sense that teams and orgs and the scene as a whole is shifting.
“For me, the one overarching story at the start of this Major, it feels like a turning of the tides,” Jason ‘moses’ O’Toole tells us. “The older players and teams aren’t fading away or anything like that, but the younger players have caught up,” he continues.
“It’s a Major where the inexperienced teams have put more efficient work into preparing, and it’s put the old guard on notice. You can no longer get by on individual skill. It seems we’ve finally ushered in a new era, where it’s not holdovers from Source or 1.6 as the reigning badasses of the scene. It’s been obvious which teams worked really hard during the break and which teams slacked off and rode in with the status quo.”
It’s the start of an era of teams comprised of players who've mostly started their careers in CS:GO, rather than coming over from an older Counter-Strike game. For the new players, it’s exciting to be at a Major. The older players have been around so long, however, that maybe they’ve become immune to the magic.
“You see players tweeting about the Major not being as exciting as it used to be and not having the same feel,’ moses tells us. ‘They tend to be all the players who’ve been to five or more. The young players have come and are like ‘OMG, I’m at a Major!’ You hear stories of compLexity bootcamping for 10 days. Issa ‘ISSAA’ Murad and Özgür ‘Woxic’ Eker, we know the struggles they have even attending events because of visa issues. It’s a huge opportunity to perform on the big stage.”
Matthew ‘Sadokist’ Trivett agrees that younger talent is catching up to the players who've been dominating CS:GO for so long.
“We’re getting a lot of players specifically coming up on the CS:GO skill set,” he says. “People think ‘Oh, it’s been seven years, the old guys have figured it out by now,’ or ‘It’s all the same game,’ but it’s not. There’s a lot of habits you’ve ingrained into your playstyle for years and years. These guys, rather than coming in with that bias and preconditioned learning, they’re just going to learn it at face value, and it shows. They’ve got such incredible mechanics now.”
The reason it’s taken so long for the younger talent to really make a name for themselves, Sadokist says, is partly due to the older generation hanging on – for better or worse.
“The old guard sticking around for so long has limited talent coming in. It’s a stubbornness to work with certain people in a scene in a country, or it’s a reluctance to take a chance on new talent. I think that’s changing. International rosters are showing up like ‘No one in my own country is going to take me, let’s just make our own team.’”
Old, established teams have started to struggle, and it’s this stubbornness to change that Sadokist says is partly to blame.
“A lot of the countries that were dominant for so long roster locked themselves in a way. Poland is a great example. Virtus.Pro had the longest active lineup in Counter-Strike, and because of that, they were the dominant Polish team that got all the invites to events. Rightfully so for a long period of time. Because of that you didn’t have a lot of young players getting opportunities, because where would they go?
“One of the things North America did well, much like mousesports, they took a chance on not using the same recycled talent,” he says. “Now there’s a lot of North American young talent going ‘Wow, okay, that can work.’”
Of course, young teams need to work hard to catch up to the old guard who have been doing this for years and years – the best young teams are willing to put the work in, and it’s already showing.
“These young teams realise that they don’t have all the skill and experience the top players and teams have with their big contracts,” says moses, “So they have to find other ways to win. You saw Rogue take on North with great tactics, and North are considered a tactical team.
Teams are starting to take chances on younger pros
© Joe Brady Photography
“People are starting to put together teams much more efficiently and properly, focusing on fundamentals, which is allowing some of this talent to rise up,” he continues. “Some of the old guard, teams and cores that have been together so long, haven’t put in the work to fix things. It’s not easy mentally when you’ve been playing this game for so long, to have the same focus to just sit down with five guys and talk things over, figure things out and not actually play the game.”
“A lot of players detest doing that because it’s boring, and it is, but you have to do it at this level of play. We’re seeing many more younger teams with hunger to do the boring work that other teams aren’t,” moses explains.
There’s been a conversation for a long time now surrounding the CS:GO tournament schedule, and both moses and James Bardolph believe it’s time for some of the big teams to make a change there too.
“If you look at a team like mousesports, they’re struggling at the moment. Are they attending too many tournaments?” Bardolph questions. “I’m sure with their sponsors, they want to get maximum exposure, but at the same time you have to give your team time to develop new strats. Otherwise you’re going to be doing the same thing people have seen hundreds of times, and it gets easier to react in tournaments.”
“How can you be adequately prepared?” asks moses, talking about teams which have such busy schedules. “FaZe is one of the teams that attends every tournament they can. They’ve said in interviews ‘We don’t necessarily like to practice, we use our officials as practice,’ and I don’t think that’s a very good strategy.”
“If you don’t change your identity, it’s only going to get harder,” Bardolph tells us. “It’s a trap a lot of teams fall into. You might see one player struggling individually, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that player is bad. If they can’t change the expectation of their opponents because they’ve got no time off, how is that person expected to play better? We’ve seen VP exit. You just don’t know whether if they took two months off or did one tournament a month instead of four, would they be winning championships again?”
The changing of the guard isn’t going to happen overnight however, but at the same time, up and coming players haven’t had a better chance at breaking through than now; a sentiment shared by Bardolph. “At the moment, there’s never been a better time or environment or ecosystem for people to come through,” he explains. “It’s a lot easier to break the barriers than it has been before.”
Astralis are on top of the CS:GO world once again, showcasing their current dominance of the game, but how long will they last with the youngsters snapping at their heels?
