Fragadelphia co-founder sasquatcH: "We’re looking at doing events every month"

For Dust2.us' final piece of content for Fragicago 2023, Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore had the opportunity to sit down for a one-on-one interview with Fragadelphia co-founder and owner Stephen "sasquatcH" Csikos. In the extended interview, sasquatcH discussed Fragadelphia's first event in CS2, the esports winter, how the esports landscape has changed in his 20 years embedded in the NA scene, and Csiko's plans for the future of Fragadelphia heading into 2024.

Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript consists of the first three questions.

So this was your first CS2 event, how do you feel it went?

I think it went well. We are satisfied with the turnout, and the amount of teams that are high-quality, we are really thrilled with that. The event went well the first day, a little hiccup with servers that's to be expected on a new game, even though its not an old game. But after that day two went really good, we were done around 8:30 and day three just ended, its nine o'clock, 9:30 and I think we're really happy with the performance of our organization so I hope everybody really enjoyed it.

With one event now under your belt under the new and independent Fragadelphia once again. We had a very lengthy interview when the relationship with Nerd Street come an end, since then there was a long period of time between talking about bringing Fragadelphia back and when it finally came back. What was the road like to the return like?

We were ready to come back I think around June, and our original intentions were to be, when CS2 came out, to be launched right when the game came out. We saw them advertise in late spring a summer launch and we thought it was coming out sometime in June or July, and obviously it didn't.

So we don't like doing events with games that just released so having it released in September really got us scared that we wouldn't be able to execute right away, so we think the date we chose was good. The road was hard, going dormant for a year-plus really hurts when it comes to partners and sponsors and going out to market.

You have to put [yourself] almost back to zero, and proof of concept has to be done again and I think this event is a great example of what we provide to the community. We're that semi-professional/amateur tournament that is community based but still high quality.

I think that quality really shows in what you guys were able to accomplish on a honestly shoe-string budget. But, it comes down to a lot of enthusiasm from people in the community, a lot of volunteer casters and a lot of people who volunteer who volunteered their time to the product. How does that feel that Fragaedelphia still has that cultural cachet even with people who were too young, in middle school, when Fragdelphia 1 happened?

I've been around the industry a long time. I played so long and then I started working full time in 2014 in gaming and all the early years of CS so much volunteer work was done. It's a passion project for a lot of people event now, we're talking most people do not make money in competitions they play, or work in this field.

I think getting a lot of these new people that I've never met to come out and ask if they can volunteer, give their time, or just be involved is really promising to me. It's how I started in gaming, I mean the first aspect of working and not playing was when I worked a LAN tournament in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia during college and I worked 22 hours straight and didn't get paid or compensated. The LAN center I worked at gave me a job and that was the beginning and I think that same sentiment and that same enthusiasm is now reflected with the people who are doing it now.

We have a handful of dedicated people who are here asking when the next tournament is. When they can get involved again, how we do the next online event, and those are probably the people who, once I'm out of here, are the people who will carry the torch for what we're doing here.