During WESG World Finals we ran into Counter-Strike veteran, former fnatic player and current coach of B.O.O.T, Harley "dsn" Örwall. We decided not to pass up on the opportunity and caught up with the Swede to see what he's been doing since he retired in 2011 and found out more about his tenure with the Chinese team.

Having garnered countless victories under the fnatic banner in over six years, Harley "⁠dsn⁠" Örwall has his place in the books as one of the most successful players of Counter-Strike 1.6's long history.

After retiring from the game in 2011, the Swede took an extended leave from the scene and came back only a few months ago, as a coach of BOOT.



dsn stopped by WESG and gave us an interview about the last five years

The veteran was present at WESG, which gave us the opportunity to catch up with him and find out what he's been doing in his five years of absence:

Let's start with you joining B.O.O.T as a coach, how did that come together? I was studying Mandarin in Taiwan, in Taipei, for nine months. While I was there, it was pretty random you know, one old friend hit me up like "We're doing this sort of new Counter-Strike team, we know you're studying Chinese", it was really really random. But then again, I'm the kind of person who likes to do random things, I guess, I'm not really comfortable with staying in Sweden, living like a nine-to-five life, I like to do the random stuff that nobody likes to do. I thought like this is a little bit strange, but I am studying Chinese, this could be an opportunity for me to go to China and see what happens. I guess I thought it through a little bit, but then again I wasn't sure what would pan out. After you retired from Counter-Strike, it's now been about five years, so what have you been doing in that time, was it just studying or did you have a job? Not really, simultaneously while I was playing Counter-Strike I was also a poker player, so after I retired from CS I did the poker thing that a lot of gamers did I guess back in the days, just grinded poker for a long time. Was it any successful? Yeah, pretty successful, but you know, poker is like social darwinism, survival of the fittest, it got harder. If there's something really easy, like a lot of money, sooner or later people will begin to realize that hey, there's a business opportunity here. So eventually, it got a lot harder, and I sort of realized that it wasn't really worth the time. I would have to put in a lot of time to earn less than what I did before, sort of a negative income curve or whatever (laughs). In the end, after doing that after ten years, I wanted to do something else in life. Then I moved to Taiwan and started learning Chinese, which is sort of related to Counter-Strike, since back in fnatic we used to work with MSI, a Taiwan-based computer company. They took us there for PR trips and I thought hey, Taipei is a really nice city. I know it seems like a random decision to go there and study, but then I sort of fell in love with the city, so I stayed there for longer than intended. It's a lot of things not so related to gaming, I obviously kept an eye on the old guys I knew in 1.6, and of course I'm very happy to see Counter-Strike evolve from sort of like the 1.6 smaller events to this big phenomenon with big stadiums and matches. And obviously, you know, in my heart, I envy these players that now get to play those big matches. When I retired, I was pretty tired from playing Counter-Strike in a way, because I did for a lion's share of my life. But then I sort of got an itch when I saw these people playing, so when I got this offer, I just said yes. I didn't really know what to expect, but here I am I guess. In those five years, or I guess especially in the past couple of years when the scene got much bigger, have you ever thought about coming back as a player, not just a coach? Nah, I think my playing days are over, I don't really think I have it in me to be a player. I would give myself maybe like a 5% chance or even less to even succeed in the comeback attempt, because obviously the competition is more stiff now, there are a lot of really good teams out there. Sure, you can see some old players having great results, but it's because they've been working really hard since day one, like Virtus.pro and NiP, they put in a lot of hours, so obviously I would be so far behind I wouldn't give myself good odds to come back. But then again, as a coach, it's a little bit different I guess, especially with the Chinese teams. It's quite obvious they're lacking in the teamplay department, the sort of basics, actually, and you can see that even the best Chinese teams, the number one thing that could propel them to the next level is very basic things that European and American teams do very well like communication and mid-round decision making. It's not about aiming, it's about all of the other things pretty much.



dsn retired in 2011 with IEM V European Championship being his last title