Austin: "CS2 is better than CS:GO was when we left it"

During day one of Fragadelphia CS/DO, Austin "Austin" Meadows' team WICKED managed to lock in a spot in playoffs after besting Skyline in the Group B Lower Bracket Final. This event is the first LAN competition for the content creator in CS2 after last attending ISEF 2023 with Detonate out in Romania.

Ahead of the team's rematch with Skyline, Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore spoke to Austin about his transition into content creation, how his feeling about CS2 have changed since launch, and his team's aspirations to make a deep run at Fragadelphia CS/DO, among other topics.

To start, what do you think went wrong in your loss against Xiaoma in the winner's final of Group B?

It's hard to say, we definitely did not play our best CS. We had a couple of unlucky rounds that led to us losing the game and we couldn't get our feet under us but I'm not too worried. It's a little LAN nerves with it being the first time for a lot of our players to play LAN so we'll bounce back and it won't be a big deal.

With that, it is also your first big competition in some time since Detonate disbanded and you switched to content creation. What made you decide to focus on content creation and streaming at that time?

After we got back from Romania the team hit a wall and everybody decided to go their separate ways. I posted an LFT and explored my options but it did not seem like there was any interest in playing with a content creator, which is what I was unfortunately known for.

So, I did not have any options so I decided if I couldn't join Mythic that I would make my own stream team and run it back since there's no other way to really make money as a player in North America.

The creation of WICKED is interesting because it has mason from Detonate and feels quite similar as a squad. Was it intentional to mirror what you had at Detonate?

It's not something that I wanted to end, Detonate was a team that I was very proud of, especially because we got to go to Romania and did compete at a pretty high level. For WICKED bringing mason along just made sense, and picking up Andrew after previously playing with him on X13 were just things that came together. Everybody was looking for a team and we decided to run it back.

When you decided to take a break from team competition you were very vocal about your dislike of CS2. Could you articulate your issues with the game at the time?

At that time, I'm pretty sure no one enjoyed CS2. The game was very hard to play and there were a lot of issues, especially with online CS. If I was competing at LAN, it would be different, but at that time it was borderline unplayable and there were a lot of issues with peeker's advantage and holding smokes.

I wasn't enjoying it, and it made more sense to focus on content creation at that time.

Now though you have become somewhat bullish on CS2, saying cl_bob and cl_righthand don't really matter and that many of the issues the game still has are superficial. What brought about this change and do you earnestly believe it?

I genuinely believe CS2 is better than CS:GO was when we left it. I know a lot of people disagree with that, but the truth is playing here at LAN you can see very clearly that the game is a lot better.

It is a game made in 2023 instead of 2012 so you would expect it to be. Since we don't have to deal with any online issues like peeker's advantage, it feels very crisp and I enjoy that there aren't any more one-way smokes.

Focusing back on your content creation, were you surprised about the reception after taking the dive into streaming?

It's been going great. Everyone who does content creation that's bigger than me has welcomed me with open arms. They've really helped me grow my brand and it has been great.

I get to queue with fl0m, hang out with Trainwreckstv, it's been fantastic and I would do it again.

Later tonight you will be playing Skyline to make your way into the playoffs. How are you feeling about that matchup?

I'm not worried at all and I'm pretty sure that the previous showing we had against them speaks for itself. We're showing up to take care of business and then we have another match after that online.

Not worried at all.

Should you make the playoffs, do you think WICKED has the chance of making a deep run here?

100% as long as we don't let the nerves get to us in the closer games I don't think that we'll have any issues competing. We don't have any issues competing online typically. Normally we can keep it competitive against teams that are on paper better than us and I'm pretty sure we can make a deep run if not win it all, mark my words.

Austin and co. are now in the quarterfinals of Fragadelphia CS/DO and look to continue their run with a view on taking the whole $10k tournament.