In an interview with Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund we sat down to discuss his feelings on how the team managed to stay together between 2015-16 and come back with a positive mentality, to a point where they are showing decent results, contrary to the not-so-distant past.
Aleksei: Hi Christopher, how are you?
Christopher “Get_RiGhT” Alesund: I’m all good, how are you?
Aleksei: Very well, thank you.
Aleksei: How’s London?
Christopher “Get_RiGhT” Alesund: London is always exciting to go to but you always get depressed when you come here because it’s always bad weather *both laughing*. Jokes aside, it’s amazing to be here again, even though it was kind of freezing when we were here, it’s always nice to come here every three to six months, as you feel like it’s something new again, even though it’s always new locations. You understand where you are after a while, everything here is good, the condition of living, the hotels and everything else. It’s all good.
Aleksei: I think it’s fair to say that you’re one of the veterans of CS. The beginnings were very humble, obviously nowhere near Wembley Stadium and $3.5million for two seasons. As a person that experienced this first hand, what are your feelings on it?
Christopher “Get_RiGhT” Alesund: On this tournament?
Aleksei: On the progression of CS and this tournament as well.
Christopher “Get_RiGhT” Alesund: With CS it’s been a weird ride in a way, if I can put it that way. Mostly because of how everything exploded, prize money, locations popping up, bigger tournaments fighting to be the number one, which is good, you need competition to become better, especially tournament organisers, because there’s so many tournaments nowadays. It almost ridiculously too much for a professional gamer, but at the same time it’s good because it allows you to deny some, go to some and let other teams go to some.
Overall I think it’s in a good state, but also in a bad state, because now everyone is fighting over, most of the new companies, the viewership that the major has. It (the major) has always had the best numbers and you can’t really deliver every time, you know? So they’re thinking it’s going to be millions who are watching and all of those things, but that’s how they do business. I’m not a businessman; I’m not an organiser or anything, so I don’t really know how everything is working out for them. I can only really speak on the location, prize money and so on.
It’s nice to be a professional gamer, still, so it’s good in that sense. It’s also terrifying in a sense. If you look at Dota 2 for example, it was the biggest game, it’s still one of the largest, but no longer THE largest, like it used to be. There were tournaments every, prize pools everywhere, big money here and there. It was even bigger than we are having right now, but it was also concerning, because 
when everyone is fighting for the spot of the team that’s going to attend there, those that are putting in a lot of money won’t necessarily be getting those spots, as most of the teams are burned out due to travelling too much, they haven’t been home for a long time or they haven’t prepared well enough, so they can’t perform. I see this as a serious issue and I’m terrified, because there’s no real schedule in eSports and we’ve never had it. We probably, it just needs to be more stable so people will understand that it’s a sport and people can follow it easier. You can let us, the players, be healthier and happier, because it takes a toll on you personally, it’s hard. At the same time we’re doing something most people probably won’t be doing or never had the chance to do. I do something that I love, at first CS was my hobby, now CS is all I do, it’s starting to become more of a job. You know you’ll show better results when you go to a job where you actually love what you’re doing. So it’s ok.
Aleksei: Recent performances, the most recent one being DreamHack Summer, second place.
Christopher “Get_RiGhT” Alesund: Yeah, disappointed.
Aleksei: You may be disappointed, but I feel that ever since the slump you guys went through, that took a massive toll not only on you buy also your supporters, you shifted into gear and started showing results. Could you explain how that happened, what was the driving force behind the change?
Christopher “Get_RiGhT” Alesund: Well, we had a really long and difficult slump last year, like five or six months, I don’t remember exactly, but it was in that period of time that rumours were spreading that we were going to split up and I’m going to NA, someone else going to another team. Some parts were true, I’m not going to hide it, I’m going to be honest when I talk about it, because it was a dark period of time for every single one of us.
We had a long discussion before the end of the year and we still love each other, we’ve been together for such a long time, we can’t just throw it away for whatever offer you’re getting or whatever you think is better for you. We had to think it through and see. All of us came along and said “Let’s really really really start from scratch and start from zero.” We needed a new coach, probably a new player, as we wanted to play as five Swedes. Nothing against “allu” or anything like that, but we spoke a lot of English and we felt that in the long term it would be better to speak Swedish and see what happens. We had to just redo everything, when “THREAT” and “pyth” got on the team, everything turned around for us because when “pyth” joined, we didn’t have “THREAT” to help us, as he was still studying abroad, so we had to just play at tournaments and make sure we’re not too far off with the skill level.
It was also a little bit of a half-dark time, we didn’t really take care when we were playing, didn’t do anything special with it. We just trained and put up some good ideas here and there. There wasn’t really someone calling, someone who was the boss or anything, but it was also a good experience because we actually understood the issue we had before. When “THREAT” joined, everyone was super happy and ready for the new year. “pyth” started getting into the team more, “THREAT” was a guy every one of us knew, except “friberg”, so we knew who we were putting in. We just said: “Whatever he has in his mind – that’s the rule, this is what we have to do. If he wants you to go and die, or do something stupid, according to yourself, that’s needed for the team, that’s the rule, you know?” You have to, everything that he says is law for us, and I think that changed everything for us. When the four of us just talked before the end of last year, we said that we want to do it again, but we had to start from zero. That was an extra push, when he came in, with the same mind-set in a way. He didn’t know what we were talking about, but he at least had an idea. We then gave up and said this is how it is, everything fell in place, we understood what we wanted, we understood that there’s no real star or super star in the team or any defined roles, we just have to work as a team.
I mean it took us one and a half years to win a tournament, you know? That feeling when you understand you won a tournament it feels like bringing up some old memories from the past, but now it’s in present time and you actually won a tournament, it’s a good feeling. It’s something we’re striving towards every tournament now.
Aleksei: Christopher, thank you very much for the insight, it’s been an absolute pleasure listening to you go over the past and how you’ve come back to where you are now. Regarding ECS, as a final question, who would you like to meet out of the teams?
Christopher “Get_RiGhT” Alesund: It doesn’t really matter to me to be honest, we’re in the group stage so we just have to take one game at a time. I don’t do any predictions or any teams that I want to meet in specific anymore, because it always felt like it would haunt me or strike back against me, so take one game at a time. We play against Luminosity in the first game, and we’ll see how it goes from there. It seems to be going better after we’ve changed our mentality. I hope we can bring some good results, that’s it.
Aleksei: Thank you very much for the interview Christopher!
Christopher “Get_RiGhT” Alesund: No problem!
Images courtesy of DreamHack Flickr/Adela Sznajder and ESL
