Who? gBots

Most of the teams competing last weekend in Barcelona were regulars in the international CS circuit but amongst them were two local teams that made it through national qualifiers and earned a spot to compete against the top tier, a chance which they have cherished and will use as a growing experience to further better themselves individually and collectively.

Spain had x6tence in older versions of CS, a team who competed with some of the biggest teams of the time about a decade ago. Since then however, Spain has been unable to foster a team to compete at the top level and has overall shown only marginal results since the release of CS:GO. Known to be a volatile scene, with teams changing players on a regular basis and barely any infrastructure, this event meant a lot to the local teams and even the smallest victories were seen as successes.

This time however, the focus is on gBots, possibly the hottest Spanish team of the moment, who have fostered a small following due to their grassroots CS and a couple of their players' "nutty" aim. 

The first time I saw gBots was in late 2015. Oscar "⁠mixwell⁠" Cañellas, Rubén "⁠TorPe⁠" Jesús Gómez Rodríguez, and the team’s manager, Adrià Gispert,  were sitting quietly at a table in the front room of Afterlife, a bar which caters to gamers—mostly League of Legends fans, by far the biggest eSport in Spain, where Spanish organizations and players compete at the highest levels, although CS:GO is humored occasionally there as well—, watching Antonio "⁠FlipiN⁠" Rivas del Rey from a distance as he streamed in the adjacent room with dozens of young fans watching him live and thousands joining in online.

gBots were the newly crowned champion of the LVP, the highest honor in Spanish CS, at the Gamergy LAN in Madrid where they beat FlipiN’s x6tence in the final. mixwell was supposed to be a part of that x6tence lineup, but left to gBots only days after its inception, possibly having foreshadowed the struggles the international lineup featuring FlipiN, David "⁠Kairi⁠" de Miguel—now another crucial part of the gBots project—, Nemanja "⁠k1Ng0r⁠" Bošković, and Anel "⁠NENO⁠" Ceković were about to face en route to their eventual demise after the aforementioned LVP final. 

That is the Spanish scene in a nutshell, a small group of players that have shuffled back and forth without being able to find a winning combination. Currently, gBots and k1ck, a team that didn't manage to qualify amidst struggles with the British organization Epsilon for ESL Barcelona despite being considered heavy favorites, are vying for the top spot while x6tence and Baskonia—a team that recently got absorbed by a sports organization with one of the best basketball teams in Spain—fight to join the top level.

Soon after their LAN victory, gBots incorporated Christian "⁠loWel⁠" Garcia Antoran, who was present with the team at the LVP finals as a stand-in, and Kairi who substituted Javier "⁠dragunov⁠" Sánchez as the team's AWPer and then went on to become the team's in-game leader as well. Natanael "⁠kanarito⁠" Ródenas Betancort, a player who won the accolade of best newcomer of the year in Spain by local eSports website Trasgo last year, was the last addition to the team as Carlos "⁠peelk⁠" Barrio was removed for not having the motivation necessary to make the cut, an issue that has plagued Spanish CS in the past.

It seems, for the first time in a long time, that the right ingredients have been put together for a team to grow but, in a volatile atmosphere that draws parallels to the Denmark of a few years ago, nothing is set in stone. The lack of resources and infrastructure within organizations, e.g. no real salaries—at least not ones to live off of—, and struggling to become relevant are all constant threats to a team's stability and may at any point make the fragile ecosystem in which teams try to flourish explode. 

In an industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of Barcelona, young kids with faded haircuts and tracksuits can be seen playing petanca, or bocci, a game usually reserved for retirees killing time during long afternoons. In the apartment block above however, a quintet of players trying to harmonize in-game are tirelessly bootcamping, fine-tuning their strategies ahead of the big weekend by watching demos, practicing, and playing official online matches while a camera crew records them in view of releasing a documentary about their experience after the event.

The house, like the team, is still a project, but one that is well under way. The first person to greet me as I walked in was a worker, who was painting the doors and frames of the apartment, and boxes from moving in furniture and gaming equipment were still stacked close to the ceiling. At the end of the hallway, a dim light came out of the gaming room, where the player's monitors and a strip of LED lights were all that was needed to create a comfortable atmosphere. The team was relaxing before their practice matches. kanarito played Hearthstone while one of his teammates called him a lucker for drawing a good hand, devolving into a jovial back and forth about how he was playing his hand. 

kanarito, the newest addition, is a natural competitor. One of those players who is not happy with not being one of the best, and who is willing to take the necessary steps to achieve his goals, even if they may seem far-fetched. "That’s why I left Baskonia," he says, "they were happy being a top three team in Spain. I want more. I want to be the best, and not only in Spain."

kanarito's will, however, does not blind him when things go wrong, or when performances are underwhelming. He is the first player to recognize when the team put on a good display, even if the results didn't follow. "I've been in the team for a few days, I'm pretty happy with our results," he says, realizing this project is going to be a marathon and not a sprint. 

TorPe is one of the three members of the organization, with mixwell and the manager, Adrià Gispert, who live in the team house. It is there for whomever wants to use it, and the players have freedom to come and go as they please, as long as they show up for bootcamps. He is, like kanarito, originally from the Canary Islands. He says living in the team house is nice, because they're like a second family to him, but when asked he is quick to admit he misses his home, the weather, his friends, his family, but that it was a sacrifice he was willing to make to pursue his dream, as playing from the Canary Islands is like playing from Africa pingwise.

Half an hour or so before official online matches, you can see the guys buckle down. loWel is already warming up, and mixwell asks for an invite to the server with a big grin. Minutes later however, silence reigns as all five players focus on hitting their shots.

Watching gBots play lower tiered Spanish teams is a lot of fun as the team are constantly cracking jokes and keeping the atmosphere light. According to one of the members of gBots, a player on the opposing team had ghosted at a LAN, so they have no mercy and are gleefully exacting their revenge on the server frag after frag. 

In this aspect, Kairi is one of the most fun players to watch: boisterous, full of bravado, and with a short fuse. Their opponents pushed through smoke, managing to kill Kairi, who then raged: "these noobs, they push through the smokes, they don’t know what they’re doing!" The next rounds, gBots put up smokes and waited for the other team to push through. "These noobs just YOLO," said Kairi, "so predictable," mixwell added succinctly. Kairi can be a jokester, and loud, but when the team is in a bind and needs to focus he is also one to reign it in and make sure everyone is focused and on point, showing why he's taken on the role as IGL, not only tactically but also knowing when to apply his experience during tense situations.

mixwell is possibly the most engrossing player of the whole team. He is considered by most to be the best player in Spain, and it can't be denied he has top-notch aim. mixwell comes from a family of gamers. His older brother went by the nickname Datacom, and played in the Spanish Day of Defeat national team as well as in the best teams of time over ten years ago. mixwell played football when he was young, and he would come home and watch his older brother play. "I used to come home, sit next to him and watch. He was talking to people on TeamSpeak, and playing, it was like football but on a computer," he recalls. "So when he'd go out partying on the weekend, I'd sneak into his room, and after figuring out his password, I'd log on and play. He'd change his password, and then I'd find it out again, so I could keep playing."

He had a similar view on going to LAN. He went to his first ones barely a teenager, and would save any money he made from playing to be able to pay the fees and costs of attending the next.

mixwell started playing Day of Defeat, following in his brother's footsteps, then moving on to CS:S, and now CS:GO. "I wish my brother had more support from my parents. If he would have played a game with more players, he could have become one of the pioneers in Spain. He was amazing." And mixwell isn't the only one in the family to choose this lifestyle. His younger brother, who goes by Nixerino, also lives in a gaming house in the North of Spain, where he plays League of Legends for Baskonia, the team that won the ESL Masters Spain in Barcelona, on the stage in the other side of the venue from where his brother was matching off against the best CS:GO teams in the world.

mixwell didn't always have it easy to play at home, and at certain points even had to take his gear to his manager's house, as if in a private bootcamp, to keep competing in the game that he loves. The manager and owner of gBots, Adrià Gispert, doesn't fall far from the typical idea of a team owner and manager. A bit controlling at times, looking out after the brand, making sure the players look good and act properly, but most importantly with a desire to do things the best he possibly can for everybody involved, to give his players freedom in hopes they will be comfortable and want to grow with the organization instead of jump ship at the first offer they get. Offers which, by the way, most of them have already received. 

"He just wants to have fun, and he wants everyone around him to do the same," Gispert says of mixwell. "He just wants to be happy, that’s why he's here and not elsewhere." mixwell has had offers which were more enticing economically, but that's not what matters to him, and it shows. When the team's camera crew place the MVP trophy next to him during an interview, he tells them to please remove it, as it is not fair to his teammates who also played that final, and makes him look full of himself. 

mixwell is strict, though, and critical. Particularly in his communications during and after the games. If somebody does something he doesn't think is proper, or misplays, he is quick to let them know. "Why would you do that? That makes no sense, that's just not good movement," he snaps at Kairi after he gets overrun on the CT side of de_inferno during a match. 

"Everyday, when I go to sleep I think about what has happened. What have I done right? What have I done wrong? How do I play against these teams? How can I help my team?" he says. Something he mirrors after the games, when the first thing he does is go on Twitch and scrobble through the VOD to see the important moments of the match, the highlights and the blunders equally; praising and criticizing, What works, what doesn't, and how to make it better. 

loWel, the youngest of the lot—although next to Kairi the most experienced—, didn't stop checking Twitter, Steam messages, and other social media. He doesn't say much, though, in or out of the games. He's fidgety and constantly doing thingsbut decidedly introverted. At some point during their third match of the night, however, he gets a message on Steam. A bigger European team asking him and mixwell if they would like to stand-in for them at an international tournament coming up in case two of their players can't make it.

First doubt, and then worry—"What about my passport? Do I need a visa? Do you have a passport? Can we do this"—, but after some encouragement, finally, loWel started to open up and show some excitement. After every round during the remainder of the match he was smiling and high fiving mixwell, who was sitting next to him, every chance he could. You can tell immediately loWel is a nice kid with incredible aim, who wants to be the best he can and help the team succeed selflessly. 

The two players finally weren't picked up to go to the tournament, due to worries about travel arrangements, but after seeing them play together there is no doubt they have enough raw talent to hang with the best of the tier two teams in Europe. 

With the event looming large, the whole team knew their limitations; none expected to win in Barcelona, although they wanted to at least put on a good show. And they ended up doing just that. They played three matches, two against top five teams and one against a top ten team.

Their first match against Dignitas was the most heartbreaking for the team. Ahead 14-10 on de_cbble, the Danes' best map, gBots lost an eco round that would have given them almost surely the match. However, their inexperience showed as they in turn had some economic struggles and gave up the last six rounds to the Danes.

"We had the honey on our lips," said kanarito minutes after the match, which is a Spanish saying meaning they could taste the sweetness of victory, despite it ultimately being ripped away from their mouths agonizingly. The team spirit was sweet and sour at this point, incredibly happy to have taken one of the top teams in Europe to thirty rounds on their best map, but very critical of their inability to close out the map. 

From there on out they got picked on by the top teams, who bullied them out of the tournament as quickly as possible. They faced fnatic in their second match, again on the better team's best map, de_inferno. fnatic toyed with the Spaniards a little bit, playing more recklessly than they would have in other circumstances, but the Spanish team still managed to post 13 rounds before the end of the map, a feat they were also very happy with. 

The first day wrapped up with two matches, but for a band of mostly unknown players to take so many rounds off top teams was something to be proud of. A reminder that if they kept working hard, practicing, and taking the game seriously, they might be able to at least contend for being one of the tier 2 teams making the rounds.

The team got knocked out by EnVyUs on the second day of play, and were brought down back to earth as they got stomped on de_mirage, one of the maps they're not so ready on. But the weekend had already been gilded for them at that point, to play on a stage against top teams and show they had some fight in them was enough motivation to keep the dream alive in a country that struggles to maintain very minimum standards.

On Sunday morning the players are at the venue in their plain clothes, enjoying the matches being played, being in good company and seeing people they don't usually get to see from the scene. Kairi and loWel are heading back home that same afternoon, ready to get back to their routines after a couple weeks away.

Nobody is happy to have lost, but the players smile and know it's time to work harder to keep this momentum alive, and that feats that may have seemed impossible a weekend earlier weren't as impossible after all, and that putting in all the hours they do with hardly any monetary returns—if any—may at some point end up paying off.

The guys will take their seats at their desks again, grinding through practices and official online matches, hoping another opportunity of this caliber will present itself at some point, because they know a LAN every six months isn't enough, and what some teams can learn, dial in, and work out in a month, may take them years due to the fact they just don't have the opportunities. 

Despite the uncertainty of the future, what is to come, and if they will manage to break a curse that has plagued Spanish CS for over a decade, team manager Gispert summed it up well moments before the kick-off of ESL Expo Barcelona: "They're up for the challenge."