Column: The future of the Swiss CS:GO scene

CS:GO has been part of the international eSports scene for years. Mathieu “Maniac” Quiquerez, for example, who takes a close look at the Swiss scene in his first column.

On April 12, the Swiss Esports League presented its brand new tournament series, the Blick eSports Masters, with fifteen tournaments, online and offline, spread over three games: Smash Bros. Ultimate, Apex Legends and CS:GO. For the CS:GO tournament, four online qualification cups will be organised. Each cup offers the winner only one seat for the final stage of the competition. The four qualified teams will meet on August 17 in the final in Biberist. With a total value of CHF 10,000 for CS:GO alone, this competition directly positions itself as the largest of the year in Switzerland.

When I was told about this event, I was asked, among other things, whether such competitions were what the Swiss CS:GO scene had to develop. Can the eSports Masters be a development incubator for our community? Yes, a thousand times, yes! I will go even further: For many reasons, such competitions are a necessity that is more than just a development instrument.

First, the presence and size of the national tournaments have a big impact on the motivation of the teams to train. Like the carrot that moves the horse forward, offline events also represent concrete goals for which each participant wants to train as much as possible, individually and as a team, to increase his performance. This, of course, increases the overall level of the national competition scene. Work is the basis for every result in CS:GO, as everywhere else, and it is never easier to accomplish the task than if you have a big goal that motivates you.

Furthermore, a tight schedule often drives a team to plan long-term, to think in “seasons” or even “years” and thus to stabilise its team constellation. The biggest enemy of every developing scene – like ours in Switzerland – is the constant coming and going of players from one team to another. How can we improve, develop, perform when no team really takes the time to build its game, play together and learn from the inevitable defeats? In my experience, the lack of competitions, both qualitative and quantitative, unfortunately, leads Swiss players to think too short-term and react too suddenly to disappointments – according to a “result-oriented” logic: “If we haven’t won this competition, we should change players”. The more tournaments there are, the easier it will be for participants to see each competition as an opportunity to improve and prepare for the next and to relativise disappointments. That’s how the international CS:GO pros think.

After all, we must not forget that the reason for any competition is the desire to “be better than…”. Every tournament stimulates rivalry between teams, which is even more acute in the domestic context. From my 14th to 17th birthday, I put a lot of energy into becoming “the best in Switzerland” or making my team “the best in the country”. I’m talking about rivalry, but I’d like to add that it’s a “positive rivalry”, an imitation in the sense that any progress a team makes drives its rivals to catch up with them, work harder, outperform them. In my opinion, this is the phenomenon that has occurred in Sweden, Denmark or even France, countries that have successively dominated the Counter-Strike scene. The fact that these countries have formed very high-ranking teams is above all, a consequence of active national scenes that are full of competitions and that push the global level.

Motivation, stability, imitation – there are many ways in which a competition like the eSports Masters can contribute to the development of the national scene. The greater the competition, the greater its impact. And the more competitions there are, the more our scene will grow.