North American Counter-Strike has been riddled with problems since the beginning of CS:GO. These problems are not due to a lack of money or an excess of it, a lack of practice partners, jetlag, etc. It is because North America has backwards priorities. Not only that, but North America is evolving backwards.

It may be hard to believe how North America can evolve backwards, but there is certainly an opportunity for it. North America has been a mostly isolated region. Even when teams like Cloud9 and Team Liquid get to play Europeans, rarely do they bring back that knowledge. The rise of SK and Immortals has presented North America with two viable practice partners, but they are too little too late to alter North America’s mentality in CS:GO any time soon. These teams can’t serve as inspiration for North Americans either because they are just about as foreign as the Europeans, meaning the skill level that the Brazilians posses is seemingly out of reach.

NA’s backwards evolution takes a course in which fragging is valued above all else. The impact of a good in-game leader who watches demos and creates incredible tactics does not register with those select NA players who compete against Europeans. An example of this trend is Cloud9. After seangares left, Stewie2K, a player notorious for making the most illogical plays ever, was brought on. When they eventually get an in-game leader in Slemmy, they kick him because they didn’t realize what he brought to the team in terms of tactics. Since then, the team has announced that they do not require a dedicated in-game leader, and Stewie2K and autimatic have since been C9’s leaders.

Cloud9 is an example where fragging is the only understood and valued form of game impact. And after losing one of North America’s best in-game leaders, they, like other North Americans, adopted the asinine mentality of “since there are no good in-game leaders, we won’t have one” instead of actually looking for someone willing to dedicate themselves to the role. The result of this way of thinking is high fragging players getting into the best teams. A cycle is then perpetuated where all of the best teams have the highest fragging players. This system is not allowed to change because this way of thinking exists at all levels of North American Counter-Strike. Even if a bunch of in-game leaders formed a team, they wouldn’t be able to challenge the best NA teams because they don’t have any fraggers. There is no way of breaking this cycle.

International competition has no way of stopping this system either because it is enough just to compete online because organizations can guarantee sponsors a set amount of time that eyeballs will be on their brand. North America is too rich and too secure to be challenged by failure at international competition. Also, European characteristics of playing Counter-Strike do not rub off on North Americans, again, because the scene has bred generations of braindead fraggers who have no love for tactics and cohesion. Even if NA teams were thrown against the brickwall that is European competition, those who are most likely to be playing them—the best, most established teams—are the least likely to learn from them because they are the most braindead, fragging-intensive players North America has to offer.

Cloud9 is not just an isolated case of blindness to tactical impact. Team Liquid shares the same mentality. Before stanislaw joined, they claimed there were no established leaders to choose from, so they weren’t going to bother to pick up anyone who was going to dedicate themselves to the role and opted instead for playing without an in-game leader. Only when stanislaw had proven himself a capable in-game leader were Liquid willing to take him on. OpTic may appear to be a team that values in-game leaders as they had risen to prominence with one, but stanislaw had not called for a team before OpTic. He was just a support player. The apparent reason why stanislaw was kept on the team over daps, the in-game leader of OpTic before Tarik joined, was because he was the better fragger. The most tactical North American team of 2016 was a team who’s caller only began calling three months prior to their ELEAGUE victory. This story proves two things about the North American scene. North Americans can contest against Europeans if more people accepted the benefits of having an in-game leader, established or otherwise, and that more people can dedicate themselves to the role. Second, the teams that stand a chance of beating the best European teams are only willing to play the game on their own terms.

Often times, we associate evolution with being a gradual change—a change of margins where the fittest edge out the rest over generations of time. That has been how North America has evolved backwards. People become better and better fraggers because that is how one survives within the North American ecosystem. What are not prioritized and valued in North American Counter-Strike are tactics and strategy. Since being the best at killing someone takes so much mental power, one faced with the choice of being a better player overall versus just a better fragger is forced to choose being a better fragger at the expense of intelligence. Any time spent on the improvement of intelligence goes out the window because it is not required in North America. As a result, North America’s backwards evolution is allowed to take place.

The kind of evolution NA needs is rapid change caused by a mutation. In biological terms, this could mean a group has acquired a trait that allows them to get more food or sex, or they could be resistant to a type of disease. In Counter-Strike terms, NA needs the circumstances and freakish players, like stanislaw, to surface all at once so that they can get more trophies and be resistant to the European competition.

Analyzed through an evolutionary lens, it’s not hard to see why NA struggles to produce cerebral players. It’s because up-and-coming players lack the incentive and direction to play in that way. Who wouldn’t if everyone calls you out for your low fragging and doesn’t recognize what you contribute elsewhere? North America needs to refocus what they prioritize in players, and it begins with NA’s role models and captains.

Image credit: Dot Esports

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