Saving NA CS: Benikage
North American Counter-Strike isn't just made up of players, staff, and organizations. Fans, casters, analysts, and other personalities are important components that sustain the scene. In order to hear the thoughts of these community members, Dust2.us presents "Saving NA CS" as a series of interviews.
Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore chatted with Benikage, a freelance CS:GO caster and a devoted fan of the women's Counter-Strike scene, about the Impact scene, what kind of content he provides, and much more.
Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.
Who are you?
I'm Benikage, caster for a lot of ESL Impact tournaments, like Cash Cups and actually other women's tournaments outside of the Impact scene.
I don't think it's a stretch to say, I think you are the most obsessive fan of the women's scene on Twitter. What's going on there, how did you become such a ravenous consumer of women's esports? What led you down this road?
I was into League of Legends but it wasn't holding my interest. MOBAs was kind of a thing, I have always bounced between games after the death of my beloved series which was Unreal Tournament. I started with League and my friend was like "No, you like shooters, this is not something you can commit to full-time, so why don't you try CS?" And I did and the first match I wound up watching was the ESWC Final between then Team Karma and the just-signed CLG Red. It was a great match, CLG won it and it kind of hooked me on Counter-Strike. I started following CLG Red from there and watching a lot of their games, and I just got more and more hooked.
What else do you get up to in the scene? What's your main squeeze?
I do a little bit of everything. I do mostly, now, a lot of the times, the Oceanic Cash Cups because there's not really a lot of coverage for those other scenes. It started with the ESEA league seasons, I used to commentate them in 2019/2020 and now it's just been finding where there's not a lot of coverage and trying to provide coverage, so Oceania, the Liga Feminina, which doesn't have English broadcasting, everything is Portuguese, so providing English coverage for that and other events like that.
