A common saying is that history is written by the victors. There is a certain truth to this in CS:GO as the different eras of CS:GO have been defined by the best teams in the world. Teams like NiP, VeryGames, Fnatic, and SK all come to mind. When there was no dominant force in the world we either called it a parity era or an uncertainty era. Both of those terms could be applied to the modern era of CS:GO, but I disagree. No team defines the modern era, but there is one player who stands heads and shoulders above all others for the last 4 months. I posit that right now, this period is the Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev era.

That is a bold statement, especially as I’ve never heard of an era named after a player rather than a team. However, I think naming the modern era after s1mple makes sense when we consider what an era is and why we name them.

Let’s look at the basic timeline first as this will explain both concepts. Here is a basic timeline of the eras: NiP (2012 to the first half of 2013), VeryGames (2nd half of 2013), a period of uncertainty in early 2014, Fnatic (2014 to the summer of 2015), EnVyUs (August- Nov. 2015) neo-Fnatic (end of 2015 to early 2016), LG/SK (mid 2016), Uncertainty Era (rest of 2016), The Triumvirate (first half of 2017 where results were divided between Astralis/SK/FaZe), FaZe/SK (latter half of 2017), and now 2018.

The first definition of an era is that a team is the best in the world for a significant amount of time. The minimum is around 4 months, though the stretch of time has to also have enough LAN events to prove the team’s level of consistency and results. Some eras are larger than others with the NiP of 2012-2013 and Fnatic of 2014-2015 being so much greater they could be called dynasties.

To go deeper though, the reason these eras are named after these teams is because they stand out and dominate that particular time’s play. The Korean Starcract community had a term for this which they called “bonjwa”. That is a player who was above the best for a period of time. Someone at the pinnacle of their game for a period of time. It is also a landmark. When someone goes back through CS:GO history, I think dates (as in month/year) are secondary to actions. Someone may not remember who won what LAN at the beginning of 2013, but if you say the NiP era, they can instantly recall the general time period and tone. At the same time by marking CS:GO history by the eras, a casual viewer will instantly know that the team we give an era too was the best team of that time period.

If we take that reasoning, I see no reason as to why we shouldn’t call this “The s1mple Era”. There is no rule that an era can only be named after a singular team. The only consistent rule I’ve seen is that a team gets an era if they were the best of that time period. There is no single best team right now, but there is a clear single best player. S1mple is heads and shoulders above the rest of all the other players and has been so for the last 5 months.

Additionally, there has never been a need to denote player eras as almost every era of time had the best player be on the best team. NiP had Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund. VeryGames had Richard “shox” Papillon. Fnatic had Olof “Olofmeister” Kajbjer. LG Gaming/SK have Marcelo “Coldzera” David. FaZe have Nikola “NiKo” Kovac.

There are a few examples where this isn’t the case such as Kenny “kennyS” Schrub when he played for Titan. The only other example I can think of is during the EnVyUs era where I considered Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovacs to be the best player in the world. However for both of them, there was a best team that defined the time period rather than their individual play. For kennyS it was Fnatic and for GuardiaN it was EnVyUs.

Not so with s1mple. Let us look at the LAN results from the time I consider to be the beginning of the s1mple era. The tournament I believe this starts is at ELeague Boston Major (though an alternative is DreamHack Winter 2017). From that point on, here are the LANs and the winners:

ELeague Boston Major: Cloud 9

CS Summit 2: Liquid

Starladder i-League StarSeries Season 4: Mouz

IEM World Championship: Fnatic

WESG: Fnatic

V4 Budapest: Mouz

DreamHack Marseille: Astralis.

In the last seven tournaments there have been five different winners. If we’re talking about consistent results, FaZe has the most consistent results and are the best team of this time period. However they cannot have an era without victories backing up those results. As for Fnatic and Mouz, they have tournament victories, but both of theirs amounts to: one premier LAN win and one good LAN win.

So why call it the s1mple era rather than another uncertainty era or parity era? There are a few reasons. When we look at the previous eras of uncertainty (as in there were 2 or more teams vying for the top with none of them able to secure the prime spot), there has never been a single dominant player so far clearly above the rest. At the end of 2016 leading into 2017, you had players like: Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz, Janusz “Snax” pogorzelski, and Coldzera. When we go into the period where Astralis, FaZe, and SK vying for dominance. While the overall consensus was that Coldzera was the best player in the world for this entire time period, there were players that were comparable to him for long periods of time. There was dev1ce, NiKo, fer, kennyS, and AdreN throughout the various moments of time.

That is not the case in the last months with s1mple, no one compares to him. S1mple is the complete package. He has both awe-inspiring skill and game IQ. He is both the best AWP player and best rifler. He also has some of the best pistols. He can play with any type of economy, at any range, in any position. He plays perfectly well with teammates. He has created a style that let’s him break open rounds and close impossible clutch situations. As a player, he is probably the most creative in the world as he understands how to use his skills and IQ to create plays that no one else could imitate. And he has reached a level of consistency that no one else can match. If that wasn’t enough, he is doing it on a worse team than every other candidate for best player in the world.

Finally, and I believe this to be the most important reason, we are seeing the highest individual peak of any player in CS:GO. I don’t know that much about CS 1.6 or CS:Source, but for CS:GO at least, I’m certain no other player has ever reached this level of skill in it’s entire history. When we see a player reach the levels of best in the world, we praise them as Gods, but that devalues what s1mple is doing because he has broken the ceiling set by the greatest players CS:GO has ever seen.

On that argument alone, I think naming this era after s1mple bears consideration. After all, every era is named after a team because they were the best of the best at their respective times. For however long they held the throne, they could say definitively that they were the best and no one could challenge them. While this time period has no such team, we do have such a player. That is why it I think it is fitting that this time period be called the s1mple era because we may never see something like this again. We will likely never see another 87-0 NiP, likely will never see a stretch of dominance like Fnatic’s, likely never see a team win two consecutive Majors like what LG/SK did. We may likely never see a player ever reach these heights again and that is my argument for why we should call this the s1mple era.

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