EliGE: It will take a lot longer than I thought before NA CS:GO recovers and gets better
In an interview with Pley, the Liquid star gives his belief on some of the difficulties of NA Counter-Strike and what caused its collapse.
The superstar rifler Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski is by many regarded as one of the most skilled and best players in the recent history of Counter-Strike. The icon has, despite his modest age of 23, been a fundamental figure on not only a dominant Liquid-side but also the entire North American scene since his breakthrough in 2015.
However, in recent years, NA CS:GO haven’t been up to its usual dominant and high level, which we have seen the huge region display for as long time we know. Something that has resulted in a mass escape of both players and organizations.
As Tarik “tarik” Celik said: “NA Counter-Strike is officially dead”
We have sat down with EliGE to talk about the current state of North American Counter-Strike, where he believes that there's a problem with how the players are branded and that the scene lacks personalities.
- If people want to go back to how it was, where people support and look up to the players, and also are interested in the matches, then I think NA players have to work on their branding.
Because I think the biggest difference is that players aren’t streaming as much anymore and people don’t actually know who many of the players are. Players who are taking up spots, doesn’t have as big of a personality or they’re not doing any content. Therefore, it’s really hard for viewers to have any type of relationship with these players.
You can hear the entire interview with EliGE down below:
In the last 12 months, we’ve seen a myriad of big and renowned organizations from North America pull the plug and close down their CS:GO division. Iconic and famous teams like Cloud9, Gen.G, 100 Thieves, and Chaos has all been laid off from their duties by the organizations behind the team.
In the above-mentioned interview, EliGE gives his perception of the lack of investments by orgs, where he explains that if they stream semi-regularly there’s “a much higher likelihood to get picked up”, just because of the branding aspect of things.
Here's some highlights from EliGE' impressive 2021 season so far:
