An ode to the loveable, horrible, wonderful Counter-Strike community and my first tournament experience

"It sounds like you need to find some sense of belonging, a group you can call your own and feel at home with."

Those words, or words to that effect, are ones my therapist recently spoke to me. I think she probably had in mind something a little more traditional—church, or one of those manly men groups, something like that—but last week I found a glimpse of a solution amidst an industrial estate in Warsaw, Poland.

There, Logitech G Play 2026 was being held, including a Counter-Strike 2 tournament with a $100,000 prize pool. As I sat on a bleacher seat surrounded by Poles, despite not understanding a lick of what was being said around me or by the Polish commentators over the speakers, I felt at home.

The stage housed both teams—the Canadian team Luminosity Gaming and the French team 3DMax—facing each other, and the audience lining all four sides, with big screens above the stage on all four sides.

I had the choice to sit in the area designated for VIP and press, cordoned off and conspicuously lacking bleachers, instead housing chairs firmly planted at floor height. I chose to sit in the bleachers, though, with the hundreds of regular CS2 fans that had come to see the show. No doubt I'd heard one or two of them in my own games before, shouting expletives at me in a foreign tongue. Just how I like it. These are my people.

I've been playing Counter-Strike for well over a decade now, albeit with some breaks away from the game during that period. But apart from when CS:GO first launched, I never really got into the pro scene—I mostly preferred to just play and improve without getting too into teams and tournaments.

Sometimes that would make me feel a little disconnected from the community, when my teammates would reference games and pros that I wasn't too familiar with. I was happy enough, but being at the tournament last week made me realise what I'd been missing out on.

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I suppose the feeling I experienced was the same as what sports fans get—at least, those who actually travel to see games. I'd only ever been into football of the American variety, which made in-person attendance difficult as a Brit, setting aside the occasional game at Wembley stadium.

I didn't get into it immediately. As I sat and watched, it took me a while to acclimate and get invested. It helped that I'd spoken to a couple of pro players from Luminosity the day prior, as I found the two that I spoke to—Azuwu and yxngstxr—to be very genuine and friendly people, so I felt invested in them winning (alas, they did not).

(Image credit: Future)

I was grateful to be familiar with the game and the maps, because I could understand what was going on despite not understanding the commentary. But most of the first game I spent getting used to the pace and rhythm of spectator mode, having not watched a spectator CS2 game in quite a while.

Between the first and second game, plenty of people rushed away from the bleachers to go out and grab a drink or have a smoke, myself included. I didn't speak to anyone; I didn't need to. I just stood outside for a few minutes in the dwindling light, anticipating getting back on a seat and watching the next game.

There were moments in that game that felt genuinely spiritual

The second game was when I got fully invested. Which was just as well, because that game went into two overtimes, which is very rare at least in my non-pro experience. It was a long, close match, and that made it all the better.

There were moments in that game that felt genuinely spiritual, which is a crazy thing to say and you will not hear me recount again, lest my colleagues never let me live it down. The memory of seeing the AWP-er Afro clutch as the commentators ramped up the tension of their narration, and then hearing the roars all around me as he hit a ridiculous shot, is now seared into my mind.

As are the silly things, like the audience—myself included—ramping up our building roar to a crescendo as two opposing players were approaching each other without knowing. Or the between-round camera cuts to an audience member sitting on the row next to me, with his laptop out, opening loot crates, again with a building roar as he crossed his fingers for a rare skin rather than wasted money.

The few hours in their company left me very appreciative for the community and the players I've spent so much time shooting in the head over the years.

The lights, the booming and bassy audio, the whole experience has made me feel a fool for missing out on it for so long. But more than those things, it's the shared experience that I feel I've missed out on the most, the feeling of connection with others over the love of the game.

It feels silly that, for a game I've sunk so many hours into over so many years, until now I'd not tried to really connect with its loveably toxic and foul-mouthed community in-person, sharing the tournament experience.

Here's hoping for many more FaceIt matches with these people, no matter how many multi-lingual insults about my mother they throw my way. Deep down we know we love each other and this incredible game. Sometimes it just takes a bit of in-person, language-barrier'd bonding to realise it. How's that for belonging?

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