Auguste "Semmler" Massonnat is one half of the explosive Anders and Semmler casting duo and one of the most well-known personalities in CS:GO.

On Day 1 of the ESL One Cologne 2016 Main Event, Semmler spoke to theScore esports about his formative career casting StarCraft II as part of the GD Studio and finding his place in CS:GO.

Before CS:GO, you were part of the GD Studio casting StarCraft and and as the "American in Sweden," it was a bit of a fish out of water situation, but you learned a lot there in your eventual transition over to CS:GO.

That was the whole point of the GD Studio, it was a formative period, right? We came into the scene and we were very much diamonds in the rough. I knew that I had it in me to be very good at commentary; I enjoyed it, it came naturally to me and people seemed to like what I was doing.

Even before StarCraft, when I started at BLC [Bloodline Champions], I'm thinking, "Right, OK, so I did that, now what could I do better, what did I do wrong," so you’re constantly questioning yourself and constantly putting yourself in check.

There was a big learning process [at the GD Studio] and James ["2GD"] Harding helped me a lot, because he had years of commentary experience with Quake, Counter-Strike and World of Warcraft; he had a pretty broad pallet to work with. So after most of the broadcasts at the GD Studio, Apollo [Shaun "Apollo" Clark] and I would go and talk with James and be like, "so what did we do right, what did we do wrong," and he would give us some pointers, then Apollo and I would talk. It’s always a fine-tuned process.

Shaun "Apollo" Clark during IEM Season X Katowice. He spent some time alongside Auguste "Semmler" Massonnat casting SC2 at The GD Studio

But I never really did go hard into StarCraft 2 commentary, because I felt like there were too many established commentators at the time. They had already built their brands in the space and did I really want to be one of those guys trying to compete with that? Not really.

I love StarCraft 2 because I loved to play the game, it was very demanding, but commentary and spectating-wise it wasn’t feeding what was in me. The StarCraft 2 phase at the GD Studio was really to just learn more about commentary and it was also to learn about hosting, because the only way that I was getting gigs back then was as a stage host. Dota 2 obviously started to pick up steam and so I did some Dota 2 work here and there, nothing really serious just some more GD Studio stuff, but then CS started to pick up.

I had looked at CS before when Global Offensive first came out, but I thought it was a pile of shit, like a lot of people did, and went back to Dota and StarCraft and just bided my time. Six months later down the road we came back into CS:GO, this time I had some Dota 2 friends that were playing who were ex-CS guys and we’re like "hey, let’s see what’s progressed over the past X months," and we just had so much f***ing fun playing the matchmaking system. I was like, "alright, I’m going to play CS now because this is giving me that adrenaline. I feel the challenge of having to learn a new game, to really sink my teeth into something.

It felt like a return to BLC where I got that raw, visceral action but there was also a lot of tactics behind it, à la Starcraft 2, and so it really felt like a perfect fit. I was basically addicted and a couple months after I started casting CS, hooked up with Anders [Blume] and we just went from there.

I definitely got a sense that, in StarCraft and in hosting, you didn’t feel like you were totally at home, but once you hit Counter-Strike, that’s where I felt like you really got into it.

I could just never relate with the players or the people. There was just massive, massive egos playing StarCraft and this elitism there that never really jived well with me. People took themselves too seriously and so I was just not interested.

As for CS, the players just feel a whole lot more real to me for some reason, I dunno. Maybe it's just the fact that it’s a team game, so you have to develop some social skills. And a lot of these players are older, so they’ve progressed in life, they’ve experienced things. I don’t know, it’s just like this whole different vibe when it came to CS events and it just felt so much better.

On all fronts, I just felt at home instantly when I came to CS. I enjoy StarCraft the game but I don’t really enjoy the culture or the community around it, so that never really progressed.

Talking about the top tier of StarCraft, like the Tastosis [Nicolas "Tasteless" Plott and Daniel "Artosis" Stemkoski] duo, I feel like where you’ve come in CS:GO, you’ve achieved that. You and Anders are the premiere casting duo in CS, do you feel the same way?

Yes, because we were the first to set the road, but I think that Sadokist [Matthew "Sadokist" Trivett] and Henry [Henry "HenryG" Greer] have made tremendous progress and are right up there with us, ddk [Daniel "ddk" Kapadia] and Bardolph [James "JZFB" Bardolph] as well.

What I really love about the CS casters and analysts is everybody’s got their own style. You can see Henry likes that 1920's gangster London look, while I’m a bit more of a popinjay. Everybody’s got their styles and everybody’s got their styles in commentary as well.

I feel like now we’ve got three really solid combos, where ddk and Bardolph are very much that British wit, levity and do very solid studio work, while Henry and Sado have this upbeat style.

For Anders and I, what we decided to do was try to just make it as appealing and broad as possible. A key lesson that I took with me in my career was, you have to be entertaining first, then you can focus on the rest. Throw some jokes in there, show your personality, show who you are. Always be true to yourself and always be entertaining.

Casting is always about how to be as appealing as possible to as broad a spectrum as possible, the hardcore and the noob, and how to be entertaining the whole way through. I think that’s the key to why Anders and I were able to grow quickly, because people didn’t want to turn off the stream when they heard what we were talking about.

What’s next for you?

Still the same thing, I’m still having way too much fun and as long as I’m having fun I’m going to keep doing it. For now it’s focusing on Room on Fire and what we can do with that.

There’s a bunch of directions that we want to take it, but the main one right now is to figure out how to get freelance commentators to work together in a more structured way. I’m not sure what the proper term would be for it, whether it’s an agency, a promotion company, a guild, a union, whatever, but right now I’m trying to figure out how we can start to work more as a team, rather than as individuals. So that’s my main project that I’m putting a lot of energy into, apart from the casting.

Last questions, and you can answer it with just a yes or no. FGC?

Yes. I’m kinda sad that I’m not going to make it to EVO this year, but I have to be home for a week or my girlfriend’s going to murder me basically, because I’ve been gone for three weeks. So yeah, unfortunately I’ll just be watching the stream.

Next year.

Yeah, next year.