E-SPORTS Star

First, can you give me a short introduction of yourself? Hello, my name is Tomi Kovanen, and I go by the alias lurppis. I played Counter-Strike competitively for multiple years, all the way from 2004 until 2012. Since then I've worn various different hats in the community, working as a writer and a shoutcaster among other titles.

How did you get in touch with computer games in the first place? When I was younger, I was only interested in NHL and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series, both of which I only played on PlayStation. My brother started playing Counter-Strike first(although a bunch of my friends tried to get me into it as they were playing it together), but I didn't get hooked on it until I found out about the competitive aspect of it. Once I learned about CPLs taking place in Dallas and the fact there was more than public servers and a Clan-Base ladder to CS, I was sold.

What games did you play and how serious was your gaming in the beginning? When I first started playing more games on the computer, it was only single player games such as No One Lives Forever, Grand Theft Auto and Soldier of Fortune. I think the final nail to that coffin came when I was reformatting my computer once, and I forgot to save the files that contained my saved games. I didn't want to start all over, so I just gave in and started playing more CS with my friends.

The first time I thought about playing more seriously was sometime after WCG 2003, when I found out EG. ca was practically a group of friends, not too different from the team I was playing with (which only consisted of my real life friends) and had gone to Korea together. The thought of being able to travel around the world with your friends sounded really cool to all of us and we sort of wondered if we could stand a chance the following year.

When did the hobby change into a profession? I think the only time playing Counter-Strike was legitimately my profession was during the time I played for EG. It was my only source of income from 2004 all the way until 2011, but making a few hundred euros a month and the occasional prize money hardly made it seem like it was my profession, more so a hobby which I got paid for.

In EG we were paid a nice salary, still not comparable to real life salaries but together with prize money I definitely made a comfortable living.

Why did you choose Counter-Strike? I wasn't really the one who chose Counter-Strike, but the choice was made by its popularity and my friends who were playing it. I was never much of a gamer when I was younger and I'm still not; I don't play any games like DotA, League of Legends or WoW, and never have. If it wasn't for LANning on what felt like almost every weekend in 2003 and early 2004, there is no way I would have played Counter-Strike competitively.

In fact, we still reminisce about those weekends with friends sometimes and in a way wish we could go back to those times. Being fifteen, having practically no worries and responsibilities and being able to spend weekends together with friends doing exactly what you wanted was great.

You lived in the States for two years while playing for Evil Geniuses. How did you get contacted and how did it feel to play as the only foreigner in the team? Were there any cultural shocks when living in the States? I had met all of their players before but the only one I would consider myself to have been friends with was nothing. When they were in need of a player in the spring of 2009 he asked me if I would be interested in moving to the US and I said I would, and from there on out it all happened pretty fast.

I think I signed the contract electronically the next day, and was on a plane to Dallas three or four days later. Apart from th e ridiculously sarcastic humor we've created among all of my Finnish teams, playing with Americans wasn't very different (although n0thing still thinks no one but him understood when I was actually joking sometimes). There were little things to adjust to here and there but it wasn't a big deal, contrary to what some people believe due to my dislike of CS: GO, I'm not at all opposed to change, if it's good. And I thoroughly enjoy a ton of things about the US.

Let's talk about the good, the bad and the ugly side of eSports. You have to be fairly close to the top to get to enjoy the good side of eSports. If you're the person who actually deals with sponsors or companies and gets things done for your team like I was, you can likely make a lot of contacts in the industry, giving yourself a chance to work there in the future.

I've had a few very interesting job offers in eSports, but I haven't taken a full time job yet because I want to finish school first, and quite honestly I'm not sure if I want to work in eSports due to all the stuff I will get to in a second.

Whether you like it or not, players and teams are basically only there for marketing for all the big companies that fund eSports. That's why you see complete garbage games being played (World of Tanks, Pointblank for example) because the developers will pay for the prize purses.

Games change, organizations constantly lie to and deceive players (mTw is the latest example), event organizers either don't pay out money at all (CPL,ESWC) or pay very late (ESL a few years ago). Oh, and let's not forget Own3D.tv apparently scamming players for their ad revenue.

There's been a few times when I've thought about just completely leaving eSports for good, and it might happen sometime in the future, but as long as Counter-Strike is involved it simply doesn't make sense.I definitely feel like I have a lot to give back to CS, but it is easy say there are a billion things I would do completely differently in eSports if I had the power to change them.Teemu Hiilinen


Hiilinen