M: No creative piece of work exists in a vacuum. Views are informed by experiences and everything that a writer produces has the echoes of their own views and more importantly, the derived experience or views of others. Who or what are the things that you draw upon most in your writing? Do you selectively block out certain streams of information to prevent their influence in your work?

W: Stuchiu and Thorin and the two people in CS:GO who I follow the most closely, but I definitely listen to a wide variety of voices in the scene such as Moses, Luppis, Janko, Richard Lewis, Anders, Semmler ect. I definitely draw from their ideas, but if you follow my content closely you’ll probably notice that if I mention any one of these names or one of their ideas specifically, I’ll usually only bring it up to disagree with it. Obviously, all popular narratives will have degree of truth to them, but I’ve always thought repeating commonly held views, in a interesting way or otherwise, is less engaging than exploring your own specific take. While I sort of run the risk of being just some petty contrarian who disagrees with the consensus opinion regardless of the viability of that opinion, I think developing your own narrative helps “model” the game and the scene more accurately and helps me have a nice cohesive point-of-view.

But more to your point, where people “get their ideas” or “draw inspiration” is pretty hard for anyone to say really. Most of the time, I don’t write an article with a specific person or piece of media in mind with some exceptions. I remember, I wrote something a while ago, “The Value of Insider Reporting” where I actually drew pretty heavily on some specific ideas discussed Michael Lewis’s, “Flash Boys” which is a book that details the abuses of high frequency traders in the post-2008 period of Wall Street. Another time in the first paragraph of another article, “Online Matches are the Fast Food of CS:GO” I tried to copy the “voice” of this song “I Don’t Fight” which is by this nobody Icelandic musician called Gisli. And I came up with the idea to write one of my better early articles, “North American Counter-Strike is Tragic” by thinking about “The Great Gatsby” after I finally saw that Woody Allen Movie, “Midnight in Paris.”

It can be anything really. I think if you read a decent bit or you actively try to understand or think about other people’s content or ideas you’ll eventually have a larger pool of ideas and maybe even styles to draw from in your writing. Stuchui actually wrote something recently along the same lines now that I think of it.

There are no people whose opinions I actively try to avoid or ignore, but if someone doesn’t seem interesting then I won’t follow them on twitter, or watch/read their content. But I guess I should say I don’t follow that many people on Twitter and very few of the people I follow are pro players with the exception being native-english speaking in-game leaders, who I am more willing to follow. Too many of them just post stream links, pictures of food, memes and other stuff like that which is pretty useless to me.

There was small graphic focused book I read for a creative writing class a while ago that deals with this topic called, “Steal like an Artist.” It might be helpful.

M:The process of idea creation is something that fascinates me intensely due to how little I know or understand about the mechanics of it. For me, most of my ideas come through watching VODs, looking through past tournament results and focussing on how the story of a specific moment affects the greater timeline of CS:GO history. However, your writing isn’t necessarily about historical stories as much as it’s about challenging the views of the status quo and explaining your own model of how you view CS:GO. With this in mind, how do you see the process of idea creation, and how do you, if at all, actively influence this process?

W: I’d say it’s not an “active” process, and when it is an active process it usually doesn’t turn out well. I usually just try to write down whatever I’ve been thinking about lately. Actually, most of my best ideas or articles are things I have been stewing on for a while and have eventually converted into written form. If you look back I made a tweet months ago about how the history of Counter-Strike to alternatively be understood with Valve’s changes in mind, which I finally got down to writing a couple days ago (Dust2’s removal gave me a good finale/exit plan which convinced me to write it).

The problem I have is that sometimes I convince myself that an idea is not “good enough” for me to spend the time/energy to write. I trying to be better about having the “grinder’s mentality” that Thorin sometimes talks about, but there is this difficult trade off for me where I feel a bad or not great idea is a waste of everyone’s time, but I know it would be helpful for me to get the practice or “exercise” in. It’s a work in progress on that front.

Starting the audio recordings has been good for my productivity. In that space, I like to tackle ideas that I’ve been thinking over recently, but maybe aren’t suitable to become great articles.

I understand the concern you seem to be having though. Sometimes I will have a “drought” period where I can’t think of anything “worth” writing about. When that’s happening, you can always just write about a recent news event, such as a player transfer, or a “X storylines from Y event” piece. Those tend to be lazier and less worthwhile exercises in my opinion though.

M:One of the reasons your work has success in my eyes at least, is that it runs counter to the echo-chamber that most pieces of work in CS:GO exist in. Also, you focus largely on topics within North America — something that many writers do, but they always end up contributing to the aforementioned echo-chamber. I know that you probably don’t see this as the reasons for your success, so outside of just your capabilities as a writer, why do you think your work is popular? What separates your pieces from others?

W: First, I hate to say it because it’ll sound like whining, but I actually don’t think my pieces are “popular.” The “Valve Meta” piece I released yesterday, which is one of the first pieces I’ve written in a couple of months which I was more-or-less satisfied with, got just two upvotes on reddit. I do better on Twitter, but I can’t help but be disappointed with my lack of success on Reddit thus far. I honestly can’t tell you why my pieces don’t do well there either, which is probably a huge failing on my part. I been trying to think more about titles, thumbnails, and the best time to release a piece, but I haven’t made much headway on that front. Also, there’s always that lingering, painful possibility that I’m just not good enough yet, which certainly could be the case.

Now, I will agree that I do appear to be slowly winning people over, and increasingly becoming respected by the people I respect, but it’s hard to answer why I think that is without seeming aggressively self-assured. I’ll try to answer with the most humility I can muster.

There are two things that stand out to me, the first of which you already hinted at in your question. As I mentioned in my first answer of this interview, I tend to be more interested in and will naturally pursue ideas, perspectives, or ways of thinking that don’t agree neatly with the general consensus. While some people may be turned off to ideas that challenge their preconceptions, I get the sense that my peers tend to enjoy my perspective in a “food-for-thought” sort of way.

To bring in the North American scene mentioned in your question, when I first started to write about Counter-Strike I decided to hone in on the NA scene because I thought it was an undercovered space, and that I could find a sufficient niche audience there. But over time, I came to the realization that the whole “write the thing only you can write” idea wasn’t some hokey thing said by older more successful people . Even if someone more experienced or popular than me wrote about Cloud9, my thoughts on Cloud9 would fairly different and I’d want to write my own article in a completely different way. And, of course, I’d be very convinced that my article was “better” once I’d written it.

I’ve been trying to move more away from North American topics recently because I think my niche now is “WallabeeBeatle” rather than “mid-tier North American Counter-Strike writer” Though, because I’ve gotten to know the NA scene fairly well, it’s much easier to write about, so the transition away from it will probably be somewhat protracted .

The second part is impossible for me to say humbly, so I’ll just say it: I think the quality of my prose is quite a bit better than the average young esports writer which I think has also helped alot. Most of the other guys starting out are pretty young, and haven’t studied writing much yet, while I’m a bit older and have already done my four years at university already, so I have a big advantage in that sense. Also, I think working as peer-tutor in my college’s writing center for a couple of years has helped a good bit in terms of style. While we all might have some intuitive sense for how to write a “cool” sentence, trying to explain how to that that over and over has helped me create explicit “techniques” for a lack of a better word, that I can always fall back on. Also, I think working there made me better understand good diction, structure, and editing which is obviously very helpful as well.

M: As a follow-up question, describe in the shortest way possible what your style of writing is.

W: A well-edited transcription of my perspective.

M: There are hundreds of tips and pieces of advice about improving the process of writing out there, however due to the subjective and highly personalised nature of writing I find most of these to be redundant. In saying that, it’s still interesting to see how others go about putting words on paper outside of ‘just doing it’. How is the standard article put together for you?

W: It usually starts as a single sentence or idea in my brain, “These changes by Valve really do seem to affect the competitive scene, or “Online matches are a worthless predictor of a team’s strength,” or “Equal access to information creates a more equitable trading environment.” Then, I try to create three ( it can be less or more that three but usually settle on three for whatever reason) different sections that either help me get to my original thought or support my original thought. Then when that’s all firmly settled, I pound out the introductory part in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way onto the screen that I hope ends up being interesting. If the intro doesn’t work, I will try again or edit it really heavily. After that, I go about writing my main points and hope I prove or get to my original thought eventually. When I get there, I’d just try to end it as soon as possible. Fully fledged, “In conclusion” conclusions feel like useless windups to me.

M:Most successful content creators are spread out across multiple mediums, whether that be audio, video or otherwise. The same can be said for people that spread out their writing across multiple titles in order to tap into multiple communities and always provide a source of content — regardless of an offseason. How do you view the expansion of content creation outside just the written format, and a single title?

W:I’m still very new to audio/vlog style content, but I think there are some advantages to it. You can prepare heavily beforehand, and basically make the recording into a written piece spoken aloud, but minimal prep is much more interesting to me because then the recording somewhat simulates thought or stream-of-consciousness. Ideas come together freeform, humor happens more naturally and spontaneously, and you get more of a “raw” insight into that person’s perspective.

Talk shows are also interesting/usefull for some of the same reasons, but I think it’s much harder to convey your ideas fully and articulately in person, so arguments or disagreements tend to be more common and more shallow than conflicting written articles.

As for other games, I’m all for it. I’ve written a little bit about League of Legends in the past, and I’d like to come back to it a bit at some point in the future. If another game catches my interest , I’d try my hand at that as well. Counter-Strike obviously has my full attention at the moment, but I definitely think it’s not the only game in the world worth covering/contemplating.

M:I find that when I sit down with an argument and points of justification, I usually finish with a slightly altered version of both as I challenge my own viewpoints while writing. How do you make sure your opinions and models for viewing things are solid? Do you have processes outside of just active thinking to challenge your ideas?

W:This question has been on my mind a lot as well. The thing I have more-or-less accepted recently is that pretty much every time I finish an argumentative piece, it’s not perfect. There will be a nuance I’ll think of right after I publish, or someone will find a hole in my argument which will pop up later on twitter or in reddit comments. You’ll notice though, I’ve been asking for people to send me their objections at the end of my audio recordings. Even though it stings when you realize you wrote an article with a mistake in it or there was an hole in your logic, learning what you did wrong or what you forgot will bolster your understanding in the long run, so you can’t complain.

M: Are there any pieces of content that you’d like to see, but don’t have the capabilities or means to create?

Fionn, who writes League of Legends content for ESPN, does these true “feature” pieces where he integrates his own narrative alongside quotes from a player and/or his teammates and coach into a single piece. These sorts of pieces do tend to focus more on outside the game elements, but I think they can interesting in their. It’s sort of a mini-documentary in print form. If you have ever read ESPN the magazine, it’s full of articles like this this which is obviously quite different than the sort of feature I write.

When I get more established or have better administrative means to do so, I’d definitely like to try it. Getting a text interview from even a single player has been fairly challenging the few times I’ve tried it, so that sort of article probably won’t be possible anytime soon.

M: What are the biggest problems you see in written work within CS:GO today?

As I mentioned before, when I read a newer writers’ work, I’m usually very disappointed with the quality of writing. Many times I have struggled to get through the first sentence. Their writing is usually too cliched or too “clunky” or just have too many poorly thought out ideas which are communicated less than fluently. With more middle-level writers, I often find stats are completely overused, which is an especially big problem if you ever read reddit self-posts. I’m still trying to figure out how to properly integrate stats into my articles without the stats seeming too cherry-picked or too final, but, yeah, stats are generally overemphasised and poorly integrated. For the best writers in the scene, I’m not really in a position to judge, but I do often wish there were more high-level, professional writers in CS:GO.

M: If you could have every CS:GO content creator in a room, what would you say to them?

W: Just follow me on Twitter already.