Hard at work boot camping for Dream Hack summer and coming off a fantastic Bo3 victory against Team Global (Former LGB), I managed to pull Markus 'Pronax' Wallsten away from his busy schedule to answer some questions that I've been dying to ask.

Pronax is a veteran in the counter strike scene playing at a professional level since 1.6 pulling off amazing plays and slowly developing his leadership and shot calling abilities to settle in to present day as the Captain of Fnatic.

Image courtesy of Fnatic.com

Currently there's a lot of talk that a team isn't considered a “real” top tier team unless they start getting LAN wins, regardless of their online achievements. Do you agree with people claiming this? Do you think LAN is the be all and end all when it comes to being considered the best?

Pronax: Yes, you have to perform on LAN to be considered "the best." Good online achievements are not bad to have because it will get your team out there, but the real competition are always on LAN events when all the best teams from all over the world clash.





What are the major differences between LAN and online?

Pronax: In my opinion the biggest difference is that most LAN tournaments have all the best teams, more prize money and more prestige, that puts another kind of pressure on the players that you cant get from playing at home.





Do you have any ritual when you join a LAN, to make sure your settings are as close as you can get to what you have at home.

Pronax: Not really, I just set everything up so that it feels as good as possible.





Often you see pro's using little MP3 headphones, does this affect hearing in game sounds like footsteps? Do you use those little headphones for things like your voice coms (team speak/ventrillo/mumble) and the other headset for in game sound?

Pronax: All pro players use mp3 headphones for stage matches or when it's a lot of noise at the event, mp3 headphones help isolate the sound so the background sound wont disturb you as much, and then you have the normal headset for the microphone.





Often when we see pro's at lans they have these black bars on the screen, why is that? Can't you guys feel the input lag on LCD's scaling the application like that? Or do you use the GPU to scale it to black bars?

Pronax: A lot of players that are pro's in csgo used to play 1.6 or source before, and in those games playing with lower resolution was very popular, so most players that still use it probably use it just because they are used to it, atleast thats why im still using 1024x768 (i used to play with 640x480 in cs 1.6.) And I scale the resolution with the GPU.





Does playing in front of a crowd affect your play at all? Do you think there is such a thing as “home crowd advantage” when it comes to Esports?

Pronax: I don't think playing in front of a crowd effects my play, not that I have noticed my self at least, and I don't really get nervous from playing in front of a crowd either, if anything it just makes it a lot more fun. But when you are playing you don't really think about the crowd when I play an important match.

About the home crowd advantage, I don't really know. I would prefer that the crowd cheered for me and my team, but I wont play any different if they don't. I think its very individual, some people maybe get a boost from the cheer, or maybe some players gets very nervous when they know that the crowd are against them.





When you know you've got a big match coming up that day in a few hours time how do you best prepare for that? Do you try look at VODs of the team you're playing against? Do you go in game and warm up with anything in particular like deathmatch, training aim maps, offline with bots?

Pronax: Before big matches I try to watch demos or VOD's, but that usually happens a few hours before the match, if I have 30-45min before the match starts I like to play deathmatch or aim_map(offline with bots.)





Ok ,we've covered some good stuff about LAN. I'd like to pick your brain on some things that perhaps would benefit those that are up and coming, trying to break into the professional scene.

When looking to make strats what is your general philosophy, do you look at other teams and try to copy and improve on what they've done? Do you make strats to hard counter a team you're coming up against, or do you just like to pick a strat you think is good and play your own game?

Pronax: Mostly I try to come up with my own stuff, and think about what would fit my team, but if I see a very good strat that another team is using I will obviously try to emulate that as well and make it fit my team. But I try to keep our tactics simple, since if my players have to much to think about when playing they will perform worse, and that can easily happen if you have to advanced tactics.





What are your thoughts on supposed roles in the game, people have been using names like “lurker”,entry fragger, shot caller,support. Is this something you guys talk about and label each player with or is it not really a thing.

Pronax: I am obviously the "shot caller" in our team, and everyone have a role in our team, but that does not mean that I am the only one that can make a call. I think roles is good if the role fits the players play-style, but you have to be able to adapt during the game a swell, the "lurker" will not always be the guy lurking, and the "entry fragger" will not always go for the entry frag, you have to adapt in-game, and most players can play any role anyway.





How do you guys deal with negative emotions in-game like anger and tilting. A lot of people maintain that CS is a very momentum based game, and claim that good moral can carry the game. Do you feel this is a problem at the professional level and if so do you actively have to keep the moral high if you've say, had a bad round you should have won?

Pronax: I do believe that moral is very important in CS, or any other game/sport. Because you will perform better if you feel good and are happy. And if you play with players that whine a lot or try to put you down, then you will start to perform worse because of that. I think any team can have bad days/matches, and we have had our share of that as well. In Fnatic its every ones responsibility to keep the moral high, to help motivate each other, and I think everyone is doing the best they can.





Streaming in the last 2 years has just blown up but we're still not really seeing many CSGO pro's streaming, recently we've had Pasha, Friberg and Forest but that's about it. Is there a particular reason for this with people wanting to hide strats? Do you think we'll see more pros streaming as perhaps it could be a good way to subsidise some extra money?

Pronax: I think we will definitely see more streamers in csgo soon. I will soon start streaming on Azubu, and so will the rest of my team as well. I think that the reason for so few csgo streamers is because like you said, players don't want to show thier tactics, and that's why they don't stream practice games when they play with the team. And also that a lot of players probably don't have a good enough computer to stream and still get a very good fps.





Often when players who join big organizations they are sent a bunch of merchandise and equipment. However if you've been using that Intelli 3.0 for 10 years maybe it's uncomfortable changing. Are you kinda forced to use sponsored gear or when you're used to it, it really actually is better?

Pronax: Yes, you are forced to use sponsored gear in most cases at least, but most companies have a lot of different options, so finding something that feels good is most of the times not a problem, and after playing with the new gear for a few weeks you get used to it.





Do you feel CSGO betting is damaging the game? There has been massive uproar lately with the amount of games being DDOS'd. Do you think that betting is entirely to blame or do you think it's organisations/players not protecting their IPs enough? Do you think it's something that needs to be addressed?

Pronax: I don't think CSGO betting is damaging the game at all, if anything it helps the game grow, and games gets more viewers because of it. And it's not like ddos was not a problem before the betting sites came around.





Thanks so much for taking the time out to do the interview if you'de like to do any shout outs or have anything else you want to say then the floor is yours.

Pronax: First of all, I would like to thank our fans that keep cheering and believing in us. And I would also like to thank our sponsors: Azubu, Steelseries, MSI, Eizo, Winamax, King of shaves, Avast & Fragnet.