2010:

This article was originally published on February 4th, 2010. It was written in German and has now been translated into English. Author: Lari ‘D.Devil’ Syrota.

Play hard, go pro. Who doesn't dream of traveling around the world as a pro-gamer, competing for exorbitant amounts of prize money? Ambitious gamers from Iceland know what matters most: talent, passion, dedication - and the right place of residence. Despite enormous efforts, Icelanders so far were unable to make the jump into the world of professional esports. What remains is the hope for better times.

The whole nation of Iceland barely has more than 300 000 inhabitants which is about the scope of rather unremarkable German cities such as Mannheim and Bonn. With a population density of only 3.1 inhabitants per square kilometre, it is one of the five least populated countries worldwide. Despite this, Icelanders are pretty remarkable when it comes to esports - as evidenced by the country's Counter-Strike flagship seven.

The line-up was largely unchanged since 2005: Andri 'andr1g' Gunnarson, Guðmundur 'roMim' Jónsson, Brynjar 'Deno' Jóhannsson, Birgir 'Spike' Ágústsson and Arnar 'Vargur' Hólmgeirsson. The five Icelanders entered the international arena for the first time in 2006, at the shgOpen LAN in Denmark. They placed #17-24 after being defeated by the Swedes of Team Speed-Link.

Half a year later, the seven roster celebrated its greatest success to date at the WSVG stop in London. After defeating ID Gaming and mTw amongst others, they finally lost 10:16 against SK Gaming in the Lower Bracket Final. By finishing 4th, they raised quite a few eyebrows, but due to the special prize money distribution of the World Series of Video Games, they were not compensated financially. seven also missed the qualification for the WSVG Finals by a whisker.

After that, things got quiet for a very long time. Only in mid-2009 – yes, that is three years later – they made another appearance at the GameGune LAN in Bilbao, Spain. Despite a group stage victory against TBH eSports from Germany, the upshot was rather sobering: Placing #13–16, the team around andr1g missed another opportunity to cause a splash in the Counter-Strike world.

Despite the poor training conditions

The accomplishments of seven are particularly remarkable if you consider the conditions under which they were achieved. Iceland has a very small national scene and it's necessary to mainly practise against opponents from abroad. Sadly, Reykjavik is more than 800 km away from European soil - the northernmost tip of Scotland, to be exact. The players have to deal with pings of 60-80 ms. In addition, routing to Scandinavia is particularly bad, so Icelanders must resort to British, French, Dutch and German servers only. "You get used to the high pings eventually." says andr1g, but he admits: "Online and offline are completely different worlds for us."

Others are affected even stronger. In Quake Live, the ping is known to be even more important, but nonetheless, Eyþór 'linkoo' Kristjánsson and his colleagues have still managed to become competitive at a high level. linkoo not only qualified for the main round of the Intel Extreme Masters with a victory against the former SK player fooKi, but he only missed the LAN finals due to tremendously bad luck: In the decisive game against Benjamin 'calipt' Jakob, he led on the third map by 6:0, but had to admit defeat in the end with a score of 7:12.

linkoo links the Icelanders' surprisingly good performances to the high standard of living and the high affinity for technology, but andr1g doubts that: "I don't think it has anything to do with the living conditions, but with the fact that there are people here who are willing to invest a lot of time, effort and money in order to become the number 1. Dedication is what counts." linkoo meets these requirements without a doubt: "I personally try to get better in all the things I'm passionate about. That includes the computer games".

Asked for the secret of his team's success, andr1g says: "The first and foremost reason is that we have had the same four key players for ages, and that we are not just teammates, but also good friends in real life. In addition, we are always preparing intensively for all our tournaments, bootcamping for 1-2 months at a time."

seven’s line-up

It all falls through due to money

Their biggest problem is not even their geographical location or the small size of the country. It's simply the lack of sponsors. The trips abroad were financed by seven completely on their own: "We have paid for everything ourselves: flights, hotels, etc. So it really hurts us if we perform poorly. Especially last summer's GameGune has been painful. After all, we have to see each event as an opportunity to market the team and its players."

The players are very serious about what they do: "We always strived to play professionally, of course – and we actually still do. After London 2006, we were hoping to get some form of support, but the offers that we received were not very interesting."

The lack of a financier was also the reason why seven showed no international LAN activity in 2007 and 2008. "We had no money. That is why we have not played as much as we otherwise would have. We stayed reasonably active the whole time, but in the first place, we are waiting in the background until we discover an interesting event that we can pay for. For GameGune, I only started playing seriously a month before the tournament."

In 2010, andr1g will keep his eyes open once again; he doesn't rule out that seven will take part in another European tournament. However, the economic crisis makes things difficult for the players. The largest banks in Iceland went bankrupt and had to be partially nationalized. The currency - the Icelandic krona (ISK) - has lost about 70% of its value compared to the Euro and it is still unclear whether a national bankruptcy can be averted. Under these circumstances, the 4000 Euro that had to be spent on the GameGune participation lie particularly heavy in the stomach.

Players and investors in one

This is also the reason why self-financing is no option for linkoo: "I think I speak for all of us Quakers when I say: We don't have the money! That damned crisis makes us crazy. Everything here is so expensive for us, but inexpensive for the tourists." His trip to the DreamHack Winter event was paid by Intel since he had qualified for the final of the Scandinavian GameOn tournament where he finished second right behind fox. Now linkoo is eagerly waiting for another opportunity to showcase his skills on LAN.

andr1g has no doubts that funding is the limiting factor for Icelandic esports: "There is no question that it all fails because of the money. We need more stability and more LAN experience; we already have all the other key factors to play on the highest level. If we participated in more events, we could celebrate more achievements for sure. London is a good example. We played at our very best." London, that is more than three years ago. Back then, WarDrake played instead of Vargur – besides that everything has remained the same. Time goes by slowly in Reykjavik.

Besides seven, there may be two or three other CS teams in Iceland that are more or less serious according to andr1g. National tournaments are rare. Only the reoccuring Gamer LAN with around 350 participants is somewhat noteworthy. This very weekend, the first event of the new year takes place. In CS: Source, 25 teams have signed up, also 11 teams in Call of Duty 4 and 7 Starcraft players. In Counter-Strike, an impressive number of 37 teams signed up. The winners will get 50 000 ISK (approximately 280 Euro) as well as 5 cinema tickets and 5 tickets for any party organized by Techno.is. It should go without saying who the winner is most likely going to be.

Qualifiers for events such as the World Cyber Games or the ESWC do not take place in Iceland, and never have. There has been contact with the organisers, but the cost of hosting a qualifier and sending players to such an event would have been too high. andr1g finds that the scene would benefit a lot from such qualifiers. While he believes that one specific team would continue to dominate the competition, "the competitors would surely train harder when it was about a journey to the World Cup instead of a box of energy drinks".

In the current state of things, he sees no real prospects for the Icelandic scene. Besides his team, no one is currently able to play successfully on an international level.

“I would just ring them up and tell them that we were going bootcamping”

When asked if seven would pull up again if they found a sponsor, andr1g does not hesitate for a second: "Definitely! I would not even have to ask the guys. I would just ring them up and tell them that we were going bootcamping. It would not even make difference if someone funds us 100% or 50% - we are ready at any time."

linkoo playing poker

It's the same for linkoo: "I have recently spoken with xrebzy and serak about it. We all agree that we would practise a lot and would be fully committed to gaming. We would put esports above everything else if we could only get a sponsor."

Towards the end of the conversation with the 18-year-old, things start to sound as if it was a job interview: "It's cheaper by as much as 100% for foreign organisations to support us because our currency is so weak." You can feel his despair. "I don't want to mention any names, but there are many players who are worse than us four and have sponsors anyway." Moreover, he is convinced that Iceland is the second strongest Quake nation within the Nordic countries, only surpassed by Sweden.

Whether linkoo would move to another country because of esports? "The first country that would come to my mind is Norway. I would be very reluctant to leave behind all the people I know, but if there really was no other option financially, I would do it." At the moment, it doesn't look like it: "For that, I would first of all need to find a sponsor to get new motivation to compete. I don't just want to be the best in my country, but to do well in international events. Otherwise, it's probably about time for me to quit. I have played Quake far too long and I see no point in training that hard if I do not get the chance to prove myself in foreign LAN events." Gloomy prospects.