The Culture and Community Impact of Esports - Counter-Strike
The Culture and Community Impact of Esports - Counter-Strike
by Caden Granger
Originally intended for the LBCC Commuter, finished months ago, never greenlit, so I’m self-publishing it, full of all hyperlinks because I would've had to explain this to people not into any of this.
Media access for DreamHack Dallas 2025 provided and organized by ESL DreamHack and Partners
Huge thanks to Katarzyna Małecka, Sarah Alharbi, and Sean Morrison for being incredibly kind and helpful on-site and coordinating interviews.
Press access for the BLAST.tv Austin Major provided by BLAST.tv and assisted on-site by various team members, including Ryan Chapman.
Thank you to featured interviewees Mike “DarfMike” Winnick, Jason Lake, and Ayush 'mzinho' Batbold for their answers and time.
Finally, thanks to Nardwuar and Richard Lewis for getting me interested in good journalism.
Video games are played and watched around the world by millions of people every day, ranging from all different types of ages and genres. From single-player games to team-based tactics, from watching your friends play in a call together to being one of thousands of viewers for a streamer, video games are a part of a lot of people’s daily lives and have only continued to grow in popularity over the years.
For a large chunk of these people, they play or watch a game where there is some level of competition, from a simple race for fun between friends to the equivalent of a tournament compared to the Super Bowl of their game series. But esports expand beyond this to a much more casual level, where anyone can participate with a chance to reach the top. The Classic Tetris World Championship was something that was held for about 10 years in our very own state of Oregon (now being moved to Pasadena to be hosted earlier), and provided an easy opportunity for local participation and competition. There are games and chances for people at every skill level to watch or play.
I went to DreamHack Dallas to observe the IEM Dallas and ESL Impact event to interview organization owners, team members, and whoever else we could to learn what we could about fostering an esports community and the benefits of having one may bring.
I went into this as a fan, so I have my own biased perspective on how I viewed esports despite remaining neutral in this article, but I perceived esports as helping build a sense of community, something to engage with or participate in, and something to give a local sense of pride, as well as have fun cheering for, just like a normal college sport like football or other forms of competition.
What is Counter-Strike?
Counter-Strike started as a mod in 1999 by Minh Le, or “Gooseman”, and Jess Cliffe as a mod of Valve’s game Half-Life, and was purchased by Valve for an official release, launching on November 9th, 2000. The game is a first-person shooter with two teams, Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists, with the primary goal of planting and blowing up a timered bomb, or preventing the other side from setting off the bomb by eliminating them or defusing the bomb. The game is round-based, and individuals are rewarded for kills and other actions at the end of the round, giving them funds to buy weapons, armor, and grenade utilities. Counter-Strike is one of the most popular shooters of its time, selling over 72 million copies and peaking at over a million players every day.
Community Pride and Participation
In traditional sports, people have a variety of reasons to pick a team to cheer for, and it’s almost the exact same for esports. Whether it’s because of where the team is from, like a lot of Brazilian fans, or they’ve got a player you like for personality or skills, or you really just want to see that underdog success story from the team people thought had little to no chance.
Regardless of who you cheer for, fans are always able to unite under the love, culture, and enjoyment of the game. This is shown in person through all the different team jerseys, flags waved, and, importantly to me, the signs. The best way to get a message across a noisy and crowded arena and get yourself some attention from the camera operators is to create a sign with something funny or interesting on it, words or pictures, and I think this is significant enough to call it part of the culture.
Pictured: A fan's sign referencing the iconic olofmeister "burning defuse"
People can participate in other ways, too, besides just jerseys and signs, some professional players choose to stream to help them grow fans and support, as well as interact and grow a small community. Streaming is important because it gives a way for fans to watch their beloved game from any location, which is why streamers apply for permission to co-stream tournaments to have watch parties with their audience, which also boosts numbers for the tournament organizer. This has become a lot more prevalent in recent years, even leading content creators to be invited to stream in person at large-scale events with their own setups.
Online, it’s easy to find esports communities to interact, Liquipedia, founded by Team Liquid, is one of the largest and primary wiki sites for finding out esports history or current tournaments for almost any game. Their goal is “to preserve and document all of esports history as an unbiased and factual source of information, to present this information in an accessible and easily digestible way on our own site and make it available to be shared with and across all esports communities” which is achieved through a lot of amazing and hard-working volunteers maintaining things.
If you’re looking for something more “in the moment” for Counter-Strike, HLTV.org (and their North American subsidiary Dust2.us) is where you would look for the most current information and news, as well as a thread area where you can debate, argue, and do whatever else with other users, as well as check up to date player rankings, team rankings, upcoming or ongoing matches, transfers, interviews, and other statistics.
Pictured: IEM Dallas 2025 crowd.Since 2021, HLTV has also hosted its own invite-only awards show, aptly named the HLTV Awards, which has continued to grow to be able to highlight the variety of talent and honor some of the best players, and share the legacy of some of the best retired talent with their Hall of Fame, which they introduced last year in 2024.
Streamer Examples - Lake, s1mple, Niko
Signs, Example 1 - Example 2, 3
Streamers at large events - One, Two, Three, Four
Tournaments and Being Seen
Counter-Strike tournaments are held year-round at just about every level of competition in a multitude of formats and event styles. Even just opening Liquipedia, you can find a game going on almost every day, either online or in person. There are lots of people grinding to try and reach the top and prove themselves to be one of the best through these smaller tournaments and leaderboards, trying to be seen.
A lot of the reason smaller teams will play in these tournaments is because of something called “VRS Points”, or Valve Regional Standings. BLAST.tv help explain what these are and what they do perfectly, stating, “The Valve Rankings provide an authoritative ranking system for CS2 teams, reflecting their performance in official tournaments. Updated regularly, these rankings are a crucial indicator of team standings in the competitive scene, influencing invitations to major events and shaping the landscape of professional CS.” These points are much more important nowadays because the major tournaments are controversially no longer decided by open qualifiers, meaning teams need to play these smaller tournaments a lot more to build up these points to be invited to a Valve-sponsored major tournament with the largest crowd and ability to get your signature in-game.
Organizers have been doing a lot to try and keep tournaments interesting and unique, one of these event ideas being Blast Bounty. Teams are seeded to start with a prize pool based on rankings, with the lowest teams being allowed to select their opponents first, meaning they can pick exactly who they go against. Teams can guaranteed take home 50% of what they win, or choose to wager it and try and take more from other teams, meaning the prize pool is dynamic and the opportunities for upsets and underdogs are huge.
For a lot of smaller or starting players, their way of getting found out is going to be through FACEIT, an esports-centered platform where players can play at a higher matchmaking rating than offered normally, giving them a higher ladder to climb. At a certain point after you reach the top of that, players get invited to FPL, or FACEIT Pro League, an invite-only league where the best up-and-coming players usually join smaller teams and try to be scouted out by larger organizations and signed on. Some of today's best players have been discovered through FPL and have gone on to join larger organizations and win big trophies, such as Robin “ropz” Kool and Ilya “m0NESY Osipov”, both having been ranked in the top 20 overall players for multiple years now.
Though if you don’t get lucky, there can still be a step before this. ESEA League is an open league with a participation fee and is self-described as “your first step into official team competition”. It’s a much more amateur circuit, but still offers a path to a higher level. It’s division-based, meaning if you perform well, you’ll be moved up with access to a higher prize pool, and potentially the ESL Pro or Challenger League tournament. The league offers regional tournaments and an alright prize pool, meaning it’s a nice step for players to find teammates and make a little money if they’re good.
Gambling Culture
The National Council on Problem Gambling operates the National Problem Gambling Helpline Network (call: 1-800-522-4700). Help is available 24/7 and is 100% confidential.
Note: This was written before the update of 10/22/25, where you could now trade up any covert rarity skins into knives for a rate of 5 -> 1. Due to this, and as of writing, the market cap has dropped 2 billion USD and declining, meaning numbers may no longer be accurate.
Throughout present-day esports, gambling sponsors for the biggest tournaments (1xBet - BLAST Austin, PGL Copenhagen, Perfect World Shanghai), teams (Natus Vincere [GG.BET], Team Spirit [BetBoom] Vitality [Skin.Club, Stake.com] {Just to name a few, roughly 3-4/25 of the top teams didn’t have a gambling site sponsor as of 7/8/25, and even then many below these ranks did have a sponsor.}, talent (Skin.Club - James Banks, Karrigan, apEX), the largest forum and news site, HLTV (1xBet, CSGOEmpire), and even sites that catalogued skins like csgostash being bought out by multi-million dollar casinos like clash.gg, gambling and casinos are all over the scene, whether it be through external betting websites for specific matches, such as 1xBet, or case opening simulation websites like Skin.Club, where virtual item skins or crypto are king and used as a currency, it’s unfortunately unavoidable in this day and age, even having seen an Underdog Fantasy booth in person at the BLAST Austin Major for example.
While the idea of random chance lootboxes was in games years before, Valve took the lead and popularized the idea of them through crates in Team Fortress 2 on September 30th, 2010. Years later, the Arms Deal update came out for CSGO, which introduced decorated gun skins, today making up a billion-dollar economy that could rival a small country. Keys, in the past, for both Team Fortress 2 and CSGO, were commonly sold and traded as a “liquid” currency, or resold for the majority of their value in cash, and still are to this day, just not as much as before due to more real money marketplaces existing.
Counter-Strike players spend tens of millions of dollars every month unboxing virtual cases in hopes of pulling something they find cool or rare, even streamers themselves break viewership records promoting the activity by spinning the case slot machine on stream, opening cases ranging from a dollar to a hundred dollars for thousands of viewers, or holding large stream events where tens of thousands of dollars worth of cases are opened.
This culture extends far beyond the screen by joining us at large Counter-Strike events, sometimes, if a camera operator sees someone holding one up, hoping to get their minute of fame by pulling something crazy. Or by doing something funny with it, such as recreating one with multiple sheets of paper, while on a plane, or getting a chicken to open it for them. Skins very quickly became a large part of the game, and have continued to be popular and important culturally to this day.
This culture has persisted despite a large shutdown in 2016 when Valve sent out cease and desist letters to 23 different sites with a second wave weeks later, stating they were in violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement for using Steam bot accounts for commercial and unlicensed use (to trade skins between the sites and users for betting) in response to the Washington State Gambling Commission order. Part of the reason Valve decided to take action was because of a scandal with site CS:GO Lotto, where big content creators TmarTn and ProSyndicate promoted the site, rigging it for themselves, without disclosing they owned the site, instead pretending they discovered it. Since this, Valve has taken no further action against the newer sites that have cropped up today, and gambling sites, real casinos, and betting have never had a stronger hold on Counter-Strike than they have today.
Personalization Through Skins
Skins, as mentioned previously, are the game's way of customizing yourself and showing off your style. Valve, in the past years, has continued to add even more than just skins, with an armory featuring charms and the new ability to place stickers anywhere on your gun almost completely freely. Players have tons of control in ways they can make themselves distinct.
Skins are obtained through plenty of different methods, including opening weekly drops from levelling up, opening cases, trading with players, and missions, or the armory pass and XP system, to name a few. They have different rarities and values, such as how beat up they are or what pattern they have, come from different sets called “collections”, and are obtained in different ways, some of which are no longer possible anymore.
Every weapon has multiple skins, and there are hundreds of stickers to place on them in any variety of ways. You can get different operators, patches to stick onto them, gloves, music kits for an MVP anthem, pins to display on the in-game menu, and, if you’re lucky or willing to spend the money, a knife. Knives are one of the rarest types of skins that typically range from a few hundred dollars to multiple thousands of dollars, or even up to 1.5 million dollars at the highest end.
During the Valve-sponsored major tournaments, unique sticker capsules are available for that specific event, giving players participating the opportunity to cement themselves in the game’s history by getting a sticker of their team and signature in the game forever, as well as receiving a portion of the revenue from these capsules. Players and esports organizations historically have earned around six-figure sums just from getting their stickers in-game, but numbers overall have gone as high as 110 million dollars total.
Players and orgs aren’t the only ones who can make money off of this, too. With the Steam Workshop, any user has the capability to submit a skin or sticker for a chance for Valve to see it and add it to Counter-Strike. Revenue earned from these is 25% if it’s a directly sold item, but in our scenario regarding cases, revenue percentages are kept confidential, as per the Supplemental Workshop Terms – Revenue Sharing, and not allowed to be disclosed for each skin. For this case, let's assume the 25% is used, and split between the average 17 skins in each case, meaning each item gets .04 cents split between them after Valve takes their cut, and then that revenue may be further divided between the item’s contributors.
This definitely doesn’t sound the most promising or like a lot of money at first, but with how often these are unboxed, reaching millions of cases per month, the numbers start to add up really fast for creators. The workshop has the potential to bring its artists into six figures of revenue (averaging $420,000) on average in the modern era of Counter-Strike, depending on how popular the case your skin is in is. Valve has stated back in 2015 they’ve paid out 57 million dollars across their titles (Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, CSGO) with varying accompanying amounts of money for a plethora of different in-game items with different uses. By all means, this should not be a primary source of work, as the odds of being accepted into the game are extremely low from the competition, but the workshop exists to share passion and your craft with others, and to make something cool for your portfolio.
Souvenir Skins
During these Valve-sponsored major tournaments, souvenir weapons are obtainable. These are of a unique, bright-colored quality and have golden stickers on them, and give match information in the description, such as the teams that were playing and the tournament it was from.
In the beginning, souvenir weapon packages were dropped while watching the tournament live, and having your Steam account linked to Twitch. These packages offered exclusive stickers and player autograph stickers for the MVP of that particular round, meaning if you got lucky, you could get an autograph of your favorite player or another desirable player, and take the chance to open something cool or sell it to someone else. These stickers could also be scraped off weapons, but not granted back to players should they remove them this way.
Over the years, Valve has done a number of souvenir items, in 2021 for the PGL Major Stockholm 2021, and only this year, there were patches for teams you could get from patch packs. In Atlanta 2017, Boston 2018, and London 2018, you could purchase team graffiti to spray on the wall for limited uses, with part of the proceeds going to the teams and players.
Starting during the Intel Extreme Masters Season XIII - Katowice Major 2019, Valve changed the entire formula for how things work, introducing a “Viewer Pass”, which gave you unlimited access to every team graffiti, as well as changing how souvenir packages dropped. Instead of dropping from watching the stream live, you participated in their “Pick’ems” prediction system, for which teams would advance, slowly granting you up to three tokens to redeem packages from a match you wanted, with the ability to buy tokens outright for $3 each. During the Stockholm 2021 Major, these no longer featured player signatures and were instead replaced with map stickers. This continues to this day and remains an unpopular change among esports fans and collectors, but it brings nostalgia for the old skins, too.
Saudi Arabia and Sportswashing
The Australian Human Rights Institute defines Sportswashing as “the use of sport to redirect public attention away from unethical conduct. The intended effect is to improve the reputation of the offending entity, by using the immense popularity of sport to ‘wash’ away poor publicity. The most high-profile instances of sportswashing are carried out by authoritarian states that have committed human rights abuses, but commercial businesses also engage in the practice (e.g. to distract from climate-unfriendly activity).”
In recent years, the Saudi Arabian PIF, or Public Investment Fund, created the Savvy Games Group to get into the world of games and the esports entertainment industry. This includes purchasing and merging the ESL FACEIT Group for 1.5 billion dollars, running their own “Esports World Cup” featuring representatives such as professional footballer and multi year winner of the prestigious Ballon d'Or trophy, Cristiano Ronaldo, multi-time world chess champion, Magnus Carlsen, having artist Post Malone during the opening ceremony, and partnering with the Esports Awards in a 3-year deal to hold the event in Riyadh. This doesn’t just end here, however, as they have an intention to build a massive esports and gaming district in Qiddiya. The EWC Foundation has also started a “Club Partner Program” that teams can apply for, giving them large sums of money in the six figures with the potential for “additional funding provided through different activities, campaigns and bounties, leading up to EWC25, based on merit and metrics.”
The Esports World Cup this year (2025) will run again in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, running for 7 weeks in total, boasting an overall prize pool of 70 million dollars and featuring different games each week, such as League of Legends, DOTA 2, Tekken, Rainbow Six Siege, Counter-Strike 2, and just about any other big title you can think of featuring teams that are the best of the best like T1 (League), Vitality (Counter-Strike), top Starcraft II players (Serral, Reynor, Clem, and many more), Sentinels (Valorant), and even more clubs (roughly 200) across 24 different titles in total.
None of this has come without backlash from talent and the community due to the reputation of Saudi Arabia regarding human rights violations, such as the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the mass killing of migrants at the Yemen border, unequal treatment of women, slavery and child labor, and stance on LGBTQ+ rights, with being gay being illegal and punishable by death. This has brought accusations of “Sportswashing” to the spotlight and criticism towards organizations that participate in these events, taking money over morals, especially for larger organizations such as Team Liquid, who continue to post and sell pride-themed merchandise despite playing in events sponsored by the Saudi government.
Some of the very few responses given by organizations or companies were Geoguessr, a Google Earth based game, which, after a community blackout due to the controversy of associating with the Saudi Arabian government and their human rights track record, posted a statement and decided to withdraw from participating in the Esports World Cup. The other notable response was from Team Liquid, where they pledged to wear their pride jerseys at the event in Riyadh, as well as donate proceeds from the event to LGBTQ+ organizations, which has led to the community response of accusations of grifting and virtue signaling while attempting to play both sides.
Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has stated he “doesn’t care” about the claims regarding his country sportswashing and has stated “If sport washing is going to increase my GDP by way of 1%, then I will continue doing sport washing,” and when asked specifically about the term sportwashing, he replied “I don’t care … I’m aiming for another 1.5%. Call it whatever you want, we’re going to get that 1.5%.”
The Esports World Cup also features a superfan program for the organizations they’re partnered with, which gives teams the opportunity to give away a prize package of flights, hotels, and tickets to a minimum of 20 fans to help represent their team at the event, not disclosing that the EWC is paying the teams at milestones for the number of fans they sent with the goal to diversify the crowd, an anonymous source from Richard Lewis says. People who participated in the “Superfan Program” have alleged unequal treatment, censorship, and a plethora of other issues. Esports News UK interviewed and found out that despite the event letting people create signs, they were under strict scrutiny, confiscated, and threatened with being removed from the event, which very much lines up with the other censorship in their Level Up sportswashing documentary, where they cut out Team Liquid’s Co-CEO Steve Arhancet talking about growing up gay in their country. Esports News UK also reported that the most common theme was that fans of Team Falcon’s (funded by the Saudi PIF and with ties to the EWC) got preferential treatment, making them appear more visible on stream and audio, giving them better all-access seats, and giving them free jerseys and other prizes from a cheering leaderboard.
Despite all of this, partnerships have continued in the ecosystem, and tournaments are still played. I find it reprehensible that the number of people taking money and brushing this off is as high as they are, but nobody’s willing to change or contest it widely, at least until the money dries up, they pull out, and everyone suddenly feels differently.
Jason Lake on Sustainability, Operations, and Results
As of August 19th, 2025, Complexity has left the Counter-Strike esports scene after 21 years, citing lack of financial resources. This interview was obtained prior to this.
At the Austin Major, I got the opportunity to meet the owner of the Complexity organization, Jason Lake. Complexity or Complexity Gaming is an American esports organization currently based in Texas that started in 2003 and has had many different teams and rosters across games, such as Rocket League, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, and League of Legends, to name a few. In recent years, they were owned by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, but more recently have been repurchased by Jason Lake. The organization has sponsors and partners such as HyperX, Gamestop, Miller Lite, Lenovo, and MSI, to name a few.
Getting an interview with Jason was important to me because the North American esports scene has been rough in the past few years, with teams struggling to find sponsors and financial support, generally not being able to compete at the same level as European or Asian teams, or becoming a worldwide organization rather than North American-focused. While the issue of finances isn’t exclusive to North American teams, I wanted to make it a point of focus to learn what I can from someone dedicated to supporting North America, even running a “North American Revival” Counter-Strike tournament series with Mythic League, which is the largest North American Counter-Strike community, and PrizePicks, a fantasy sports betting company.
How did Complexity start? What made you first want to get into esports?
I first started Complexity because I wanted to play CS and have reliable practice partners. However, once I discovered the burgeoning professional scene, I benched myself, created a company, and started hiring better players.
What goes into an esports org? What kind of work or research?
Everything you can imagine being in most companies. Management, sales, marketing, accounting, logistics, etc. Also, since it's a sport, we have player managers, coaches, analysts, scouts, and sports psychologists
You’re one of the oldest active organizations. How do you maintain it and continue to grow it?
It certainly hasn't been easy. We've endured multiple different generations of esports over the past 22 years. We've tried to make fiscally responsible decisions and avoid overspending. We've also focused on operating professionally and with integrity. To survive long-term, you need to do your best to treat people properly. Burn too many bridges, and any industry will flush you out.
How hard is it to branch into different game divisions? Why do you pick certain titles?
It can be expensive to expand into multiple gaming divisions, so you must be sure you have a proper financial justification (partner leagues, sponsor support, etc.). Lots of different factors go into such expansion decisions.
Has Complexity had an impact on your community in Texas? How do you monitor this?
Yes, we've done regional charitable work and run summer camps for underprivileged youth since we've been in Texas. We love it here and want to be responsible members of our community.
How important is community engagement and feedback to you?
The customer (fan) is always right in some ways. The tricky thing is when some fans want you to go left and other fans want you to go right! Feedback is super important, and we're always following comments on social media and chatting with fans in our Discord.
What are the common mistakes owners and management make?
Expanding too quickly. Spending too much and falling into the trap of always feeling like you need to hire the BEST gamers (at high prices) rather than developing your own talent.
What are common misconceptions people have (regarding org/games/players)
Some people think orgs are very wealthy and often take advantage of the pro gamers. Generally speaking, the pros are paid extremely well while most orgs struggle to survive (especially during economic downturns like we have now.)
Money is obviously super important, but also can be super hard to come by for orgs, how do you find funding? How do you find partnerships? Do they approach you? Do you approach them if you think you'd be a good fit? Both?
We're constantly reaching out to potential corporate partners and pitching them our services. It's as much an art form as a science. When companies are shrinking marketing budgets, the esports industry suffers, as we still don't have solid revenue diversification.
How do we show value in esports to the wider general public?
In an attention economy, the sheer number of people playing our games and watching the pros speaks for itself. We have a giant global ecosystem. The trick is to figure out how to monetize it better.
You gave an interview with TLDR on advice for people looking to get hired in the industry. Would you say most of what you said there remains the same today? If not, what changed?
Yes, I get asked this question so often that I made a YouTube video about getting a job in esports. If you're super passionate and don't give up, there are still lots of great opportunities.
mzinho - National Player
Teams come together for Counter-Strike from all over the world, with one of the recent popular ones being The Mongolz, an underdog all-Mongolian team revived that worked their way up from nothing to quickly rise and represent their nation and become a North American fan-favorite. With an average age of around 20 with little experience, they were doubted as underdogs and assumed to be an easy elimination pick, but are now one of the best Asian teams to have ever played, and made grand finals of the Austin Major.
In late February this year, The Mongolz became a national team of Mongolia and were honored by the government. They now receive government funding for bootcamp, travel, accommodations, tax credits, and, importantly, athlete passports to have visa-free access to most countries. Events have been held in Mongolia with large-scale celebrations and watch parties across different events, sometimes going early into the morning to cheer for their team, with the team even hosting their own event.
With such a huge honor and accomplishment in such a short time, I wanted to hear from one of the players, 17-year-old mzinho, on the stresses, reaction to being recognized by their government, and preparation for events such as this one.
Being the officially recognized esports team of Mongolia, do you feel a sense of national pride? Do you believe the team will be more sustainable compared to international teams? And what are some of the upsides and downsides to being a national team?
About the national team, it's no different from before, we're just doing our thing. To the world international team, maybe, nationally for national team, just like there is no miscommunication, I guess because you're just talking in your own language, and I think there are international and national teams different I think it's miscommunication sometimes.
Do you feel a lot of pressure going into these games, being that you guys are a younger team? A lot of people are discussing that even if you stick together in four or five years from now, like you'll develop together as a team, do you feel that pressure now to sort of stick together and kind of grow as a team, or are you more focused on the individual and just performance in the moment?
Maybe just doing it all together, individually and as a team, we should probably grow up and tournament to tournament, we're getting experienced. Maybe yes if we stick together like everyone here, you guys are talking about 5 or 4 years, that's a long time for this community. Maybe in one year, I think that's enough for right now. After 1 year, I think that's enough. We can maybe like spirituality or something.
How do you prepare for events? With this, obviously, there's a lot of travel involved. There's a lot of mental stress around that, making sure that you can attend these events and kind of be at 100%. How do you personally or other members of the team prepare for things?
I think the travel is a lot, travel time is so long, but fine, we're just doing our our fun thing, I mean, it's like we just want to play Counter-Strike and make money at the same time. Little bit unhealthy for us, like traveling a lot, and at this point, not winning trophy, yeah. Tournament and just doing practice and play by tournaments, and then we go back, there is not free time to go out, like what's the city or something, no place like home either.
On Stage - Mike “DarfMike” Winnick
Talent is essential for putting on a good show. Esports events have lots of different roles that are seen or heard that people have to fill. There are casters, who you’ll hear commentate over the game as it goes on, and analysts, who take apart the game afterwards and explain strategies and what players might’ve been thinking to better help understand. I wanted to get close to some of the main faces, though. I wanted to speak to interviewers and hosts of the show, which is exactly who I have here with Mike Winnick, who was the host and presenter of IEM Dallas 2025 at DreamHack Dallas, being one of the main faces of the event in and around the crowd to help hype it up.
How did you get into casting and hosting?
The thing is that everyone has a different path. I walked into a local LAN called Fragadelphia in Philadelphia, Frag 10 in 2017. I had seen a Reddit post, and I was between jobs. I had a job starting in a couple weeks I had a couple weeks off I saw a Reddit post that talked about the LAN inviting people to come out and should also have like one footnote that said “we'll do open caster tryouts” that's why I said what the hell I'll drive on, up stay with some friends, walked on the LAN said “hey I'd like to cast” they said okay, put me on the mic said “if you suck we'll take you off if you don't you can keep going”, did a few games there and then got invited back to keep attending the Frag Point-Fives coming through Frag 11, went through the ranks doing some casting on my own channel working with different groups, ended up working with ESL and the rest is history.
What is your preparation process for getting ready to go on stage and introduce things?
For getting the energy going, it depends a little bit on the role we're talking about, stage specifically, before the event I like to take notes on each of the teams that are going to be there.
My notes are like an analyst is going to take more specific notes in terms of like what specific storylines they wanna hit, for me, it's more the broader elements of like “What are the narratives? What is the story? What is the potential? What happens if they lose?” How much does it matter?” You maybe think of some individual storylines for players, depending on what questions you might ask, things like that, so that just sort of brings them top of mind.
I'm privileged that I get to work in Counter-Strike pretty much all the time. I'm following the scene, I'm watching the podcast, so I'm checking interviews, I'm reading articles, so for the most part, everything is pretty top of mind, but you just want to refresh and make sure you got everything you want. Just getting very in the know, yeah?
And then in terms of what I'm actually doing on stage and like writing the pre-speeches, that kind of thing. My process usually either happens the night before, when we're in the shower, or in the morning of when I just start turning over the ideas in my mind of like, “What's the big storyline? What's the connective tissue between these two teams? What does this matchup mean?” Find some sort of interesting idea from that, and then depending on the timing that they want for the broadcast, you try to distill that down into the right message to get people pumped to get people excited. If I give somebody goosebumps, I'm doing a damn good job, so that's the general idea.
What does the esports community mean to you? Specifically, the Counter-Strike community?
I mean, it's everything, you know? The community is awesome, I was talking about this with somebody today. It was sorta one of the messages that I wanted in my early opening speech, is we're really lucky in Counter-Strike, that we have history in a way that almost no other game does, you know? The game started in 1999, the pro scene realistically in 2001, and while the game has changed a million times since then, we’ve had different versions of the game, patches have happened, fundamentally, it's still the same game, and so having 25 years of history is just something that's really rare in esports in general, so we're privileged to have old heads and young kids discovering it. All of that variety gives a lot of life to what we do and a lot of excitement to it, so that's part of the community. And then for me, being a North American guy coming up through the scene here, there's a ton of players that I know, there's a lot of people involved in the scene, it's really cool at this event.
I've seen a lot of people who have worked with those Fragadelphias at those local LANs actually come into roles here. So it's fun to have those two worlds combined, so it really is a lot of community, it's the players, it's the fans, it's what makes it happen, right? At the end of the day, without the community, none of these events happen. The way I look at it is when I'm the stage host, I'm not different. I'm not separate from the fans, we're sharing a passion, we're sharing an excitement, and what I view myself as is almost a conduit for what they're feeling. And so we can sort of merge not you know consciousness quite, but but sort of collective identity and excitement and passion, and we're all in enjoying those hype moments, we're all hitting the same beats and feeling the same pulse of the game in those moments, you really do feel like the community is just everything.
How do we help the community grow? How do we get more people on Counter-Strike, how do we get them interested in the esports scene?
I mean, this is the beautiful thing about Counter-Strike: it's just actually the best game, so people keep playing it. Our very good answer, player numbers grow continually, like we're again really lucky, we are the king, we are your favorite FPS's favorite FPS, right? And so to a degree that takes care of itself, you know? If people get introduced to the game, and there are a lot of them, some are going to get hooked because it's a hell of a drug.
Obviously, as the game state improves with CS2, things are going to get better. With that, we're already seeing improvements, Valve’s been pretty proactive about doing a little bit of feedback, which is nice. It took a bit, but they got there. I guess they're addressing it, and I mean, the reality is this is still a pretty new game state and things are definitely improving on that front, so that will also help.
I think what we can do is just be welcoming, right? I think that's a huge part of it. You know, when somebody's in your game and maybe you realize they don't quite know what they're doing, they're very new to it, it can be very easy to get frustrated or upset that they don't have the same knowledge that you have, but if you can just slow that down and explain some of what's going on, explain call outs experience strategies. Talk it through, explain why maybe they want to save, talk around it, and why that's a good idea. Just those little moments with little interactions can go a long way, and giving somebody a hand and giving somebody a little bit more knowledge.
And getting them into the community, in terms of events like this, is one of the great things about local LANs and grassroots, and one of the reasons why even as my schedule gets busier, I try and go back is that those are a great place to become part of the community. You get hooked in, you attend something to show up, you know you're meeting people, you're meeting friends, maybe meeting people you've been playing with online for years, and suddenly you meet them in person. You put face that name and that that's a lifelong friendship so attending in person events are huge, for anyone who's listening, if you haven't been to an in person CS event, try make it happen, really would recommend, it's awesome, whether you're coming as a viewer or whether you're going to a local LAN signing up with some buddies. I love playing local LANs, I'm dog shit at the game, so I don't last long, but I have a great time doing it.
What skills or advice do you have for people who are interested in getting involved in working in esports or doing what you're doing now? Obviously you got started at Fragadelphia, but I also figured things are a lot bigger than they were.
I don't know where the opportunities are, I mean things are always changing, that's that's the reason why like I tell my story about how I got in but the reality is we're such a nascent industry that the sands are always shifting, everyone's path is going to be a little bit different, but there's a few things that you can fundamentally give as advice which is a two things, you care about two things, you're passionate about and if you're going to do something you're passionate about, and you're all into it, do the best job you can with it with every opportunity you get whether it's big or small.
Locals are a great way to do it, if you're anywhere where there's a local LAN of any degree showing up and saying “hey I want to help” will usually be met with enthusiasm, you might not be doing exactly the role you envision, but learning new skills, learning new attributes, helping out contributing in whatever way you can is a massive thing to do, and then don't be afraid to explore roles and figure out what actually suits you.
Try different dimensions within esports, you know? Some people start out as casters, wind up playing, some people start as players, wind up hosting, some people wind up starting in front of the broadcast, and then suddenly they’re accountants in the back. There are a lot of different ways that you can be involved in esports in general, and there really is an aspect of this for everybody. I think you know, show up, be enthusiastic, be willing to help out.
Conclusion
Esports is for everyone and expands over a broad range and spectrum of people, from different games, ages, and locations. It unites people under a common banner to celebrate and cheer for their love of a game or a team. Counter-Strike has a long and rich history with a huge community and tons of players and personalities. There’s a lot to see, and definitely something for everyone to enjoy, and we’re incredibly lucky for that and that we get the opportunity to keep it growing as the king of esports.
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