“The climb is all that matters.” – Game of Thrones

I have thought long and hard about what is so compelling about competition. I’ve watched multiple esports to find the answer. I’ve watched multitudes of games across a plethora of genres. They could range from team shooters, MOBAs, RTS, fighting games, and 1v1 FPS. The forms, the limits, the rules, and the scene changes. However there is one constant that remains across all titles. It is the climb to the top and those who fall will trying to reach it. The desire and ambition to prove you are the best player or team at this game. The painful realization when you fail. And finally, the strength of perseverance it takes to get back up from the fall. It is the pursuit of improvement both as a group and as individuals and right now that is seen most immediately in the FACEIT Major London and the CS:GO scene in general.

The FACEIT Major system can be divided into three parts. The Regional Minors, the Major Challengers Stage and the Major Legends Stage. At each section, teams are eliminated and only the best who played on the day move on. It is an imperfect simulation of the entire CS:GO tournament scene, which is in itself an imperfect simulation of what life is about.

So the question becomes what is the meaning of life? What is the point of existence? Hefty questions that have befuddled people since time immemorial. There is no universal answer and that is because each person is a universe unto themselves. Meaning must be self-derived. However once that meaning is given form it changes our world view. People, places, events, and experiences are seen through those filters of meaning.

In competition and esports specifically the ultimate meaning we give is to the victor. For all of us, the fans, the viewers, the teams, and the players this is given the greatest value of all achievements. It isn’t the only value of meaning within the competitive sphere, but it is the foremost. It is the one that has gathered us all together.

And all value can is derived from the scarcity of it. How many people can truly be champions of any game? Among those how many can win a Major? Of those, how many can define an era? Among those only one lineup will ever get the title of greatest of all time.

In that sense, it truly does resemble a climb. The further up the mountain you get, the fewer can go on. By the time you get the top, only one will remain standing. It is also why the metaphor of war is so often used with the competitive discipline. For it is a war with important stakes on the line. But rather than economic or political, the stakes are all on a personal level. It is about the pride of the players.

For each of these players have decided that this competition and mastery of this game is what matters. They have made the decision that this is what they want to do with their lives, this is the thing that they will put their souls into. It is a cruel thing as unlike other fields, the premise of competition is to eliminate those that are unworthy of the title of the greatest. Not everyone leaves a winner, in actuality almost everyone leaves a loser.

Think upon the hundreds of thousands of people who play. Among those only a modicum have some level of talent to be good. Among those only some have the will to better themselves and try to make it a living. By this point, we have only hit the foot of the mountain and more than 99% of the world’s gaming population of CS:GO have already been eliminated from the competition.

That is what makes the CS:GO world so exciting. Ever since the end of 2014, the CS:GO world has entered an accelerated rate as teams, players, and interest has increased. Through that time we have seen the rise and fall of dynasties. The most famous was the rise of the Brazilians who went from KaBuM.TD to Luminosity to SK and won 2 Majors along the way. Their rise to power reinvigorated the Brazilian scene and this would eventually lead to even more Brazilians coming into the upper echelons of competitive CS:GO.

As the Brazilians rose up in power, the old gods have slowly faded away. NiP were the first as they refused to break up the core four players for a long time before it was too late. Soon after Virtus.Pro met the same fate as they have slowly declined over the years and have finally broken up the roster. Olof ‘olofmeister’ Kajbjer and Freddy ‘KRIMZ’ Johansson split off their legendary duo and have since separated ways. The same happened with Marcelo ‘coldzera’ David and Epitacio ‘TACO’ de Melo.

One player and team in particular has opened the path for all players in the world. The FaZe organization have pushed the idea of a multinational team to it’s very limits. And their leader Finn ‘karrigan’ Andersen has proven that it is not only viable, but that it can also win championships. This has seen a seismic shift towards team construction as we’ve seen players both new and old be given new life into this game. Mouz is perhaps the best example of this as prior to the creation of FaZe, the idea of having a team built around the likes of a veteran AWPer in Tomas ‘oskar’ Stastny and a young rookie in Robin “ropz” Kool would be considered implausible. Now it is considered the norm.

We’ve seen some teams dip their toes into trying this before. Virtus.Pro recruited Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovacs in their first iteration despite being being an all CIS squad in 2013. Mouz recruited Nikola “NiKo’ Kovacs in 2015 and gave him a chance to shine on the international stage in 2015. These were rare practices, but now they have become the norm.

This has created more roads to be open to all players. Before, if a player was from a smaller country or region, they’d almost never have a chance to shine. If you weren’t from one of the big Counter-Strike countries, then you’d have to hope that one of these teams took a chance on you if you ever wanted to play on one of the top teams.

Now? We have top 20 teams that have players from countries with little to no history in Counter-Strike. Look at the Major Circuit of FACEIT Major London. In the Minors we have a team like NRG who went out to find Cvetelin “CeRq” Dimitrov from Bulgaria. You have ENCE’s all Finnish roster giving new life to one of the old strongholds of Counter-Strike. In the Challengers Stage, compLexity have shown the skill of young NA talent like Brad “ANDROID” Fodor and Jaccob “yay” Whitaker. HellRaisers recruited Issa ‘ISSAA’ Murad from Jordan. Hansel “BnTeT” Ferdinand and Kevin “xccurate” Susanto played for TyLoo and showed the world how good they could be.

The climb is as difficult as it ever was, but now there are more paths and opportunities for everyone to do it if they have the skill. We see this on an organizational level and in the opportunities people are granted. We have multiple online tournaments that people can play for, more salary than ever, and smaller tier 2 tournaments like DreamHack Montreal that paid out 100,000 USD in prize pool. This was unthinkable even only a few years ago.

More than that, the ideas of how to become the world’s best team in CS:GO has expanded. In the past, team play and individual skill has been the crux of the earlier dynasties like NiP and Fnatic. The Luminosity Gaming and SK team were all-rounders. In the modern era, Astralis have conquered the world through team play and tactical Counter-Strike the absolute pinnacle in 2018. While we’ve seen this combination before, we’ve never seen it look this perfected.

Even with Astralis defining the meta, the old ways are still valid. Teams and players must still find their own path to the top. We have teams like Vega Squadron and TyLoo who rely on individual skill and chaotic aggression to surprise their opponents. There are teams like BIG who rely on structure and utility. Na`Vi play off of slow tactics and an ascendant superstar. North play a blitzkrieg style that overwhelms the defense. Liquid have proven that you no longer need an AWPer to be one of the top teams in the world.

The CS:GO competitive scene right now is a giant melting pot. We have more players from more diverse regions than ever. The competition and scene has made it sustainable to not only give these young players a chance, but it has also given new life to veterans. At DreamHack Montreal, Wiktor “TaZ” Wojtas led a young squad of Polish players to the title victory there. In the Major right now, old superstars Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund and Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg are playing alongside young Swedish talent to try to make their way back to the top. Even old veterans from years gone by have made a bid to come back like Martin “trace” Heldt or Keun-chul “solo” Kang.

The young and the old, the national lineups and international mixes, tactics and skill, teamplay and individualism, utility and intuition, fast pace and slow pace. Right now all paths are open for every CS:GO competitor to make their dreams come true if they are willing to make the climb. Right now all roads are open. The climb to the top is perilous and as we are witness to the rises and falls of countless players as they pit their lives and careers on the chance to prove that they are the best in the world. Through their successes and failures, they will carve a path that will forever enrich the growing legacy of Counter-Strike history.

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