Robin ”Fifflaren” Johansson has switched his battle station for the analyst desk. Foto: Adela Sznajder

Even though Robin ”Fifflaren” Johansson have put his life as a professional gamer behind him, he’s still obviously active in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community.

Recently FACEIT and Twitch launched a new huge CS:GO league. According to Fifflaren, moving most of the competition to an online environment is probably the best way to go.

– There are too many LAN tournaments for the players. There’s something new each week. Players travel and are never home which makes it hard to actually see how they’re evolving, because they’re never home practicing, the Swede tells Aftonbladet Esport.

As Robin ”Fifflaren” Johanssons professional gaming career in Ninjas in Pyjamas came to an end, the Swede left his home country for a new job at the streaming giant Twitch. Now he lives a new life on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in the USA.

– I’m feeling great actually, Fifflaren says to Aftonbladet Esport.

– I get to experience a different culture, a new country and learn how people are over here. It’s a lot of fun.

So when are you returning to Sweden?

– I have no plans to return really, Fifflaren says laughing.

– We’ll see I guess, you never know what happens. Right now it feels great to be here and I see no reason for going back.

”Too many LAN tournaments for the players”

With Twitch as their partner, FACEIT recently launched a new huge online league with 3,5 million dollars in the prize pool, the largest ever in Counter-Strike history. The initiative is one of many hefty investments into the popular FPS game. According to Fifflaren, CS:GO has a bright future – at the same time he’s got some concerns.

– There are too many LAN tournaments for the players. There’s something new each week. Players travel and are never home which makes it hard to actually see how they’re evolving, because they’re never home practicing.

– With these leagues we get a lot more online play from home, which hopefully will give the teams more time to actually practice. Instead of spending three out of four weeks in a month traveling, perhaps they’ll instead get three weeks at home. I think the quality of matches will increase – plus we’ve recently seen many people getting injuries, so now they’ll have more time to exercise, practice with the team and individually.

As one of the leading experts in CS:GO, Fifflaren have been brought to some of the world’s greatest tournaments to provide his thoughts on analyst desks. Most recently he was seen during Dreamhack Masters, where Swedish fans filled Malmö Arena and showed why people call Sweden ’The home of Counter-Strike’.

– It’s amazing to see how much it’s all grown, even since 2013. Just look at the first major, Dreamhack Winter, when the final was held in just a small cinema, and now we’re here – and it isn’t even a major – but we still fill Malmö Arena. So many people here watching. Not only here, also in Columbus, Cologne and all these other arena events we’ve got. It’s incredible actually.

NiP magic on the horizon

Fifflarens departure from Ninjas in Pyjamas led the team into a long lasting slump. Despite starting off strong with Mikail ”Maikelele” Bill, 2015 overall became a rough period with bad results for the legendary squad. However, ever since Björn ”THREAT” Pers and Jacob ”pyth” Mourujärvi have joined, new magic seem to glimmer on the horizon.

– Coming from a slump like that, having had so many problems and still sticking together – the four of them – and try to make the best of the situation.

– I haven’t seem them play as good as they are now in a very long time. It’s so fun to watch them also, because their game is so innovative.

Even though NiP showcased new found strength at Dreamhack Masters in Malmö, another Swedish team came close to beating them. GODSENT, with players like Markus ”pronax” Wallsten and Andreas ”znajder” Lindberg, were merely a few rounds from defeating the ninjas and grabbing a spot for themselves in the grand final.

– I had flashbacks from Dreamhack Winter 2013, Fifflaren says.

That was the event where Fnatic – having just recruited pronax – made it all the way to the grand finals against NiP and won the first major title ever in CS:GO.

– I don’t know if it’s just pronax, but something happens with his teams even when they lack top players. Obviously they’ve got an experienced player in znajder, they have Simon ”twist” Eliasson. Mathias ”pauf” Köhler is a pretty new player and Jonas ”Lekr0” Olofsson was very unknown to me before now, but still pronax manages to the best with these players and they’re able to compete with top ten teams in the world.