Could s1mple "trace" himself?

Swept up on the winds of change of a new game, the GOAT's decision to take a hiatus could come back to haunt him.

CS:GO is gone, long live CS:GO. And although it has the same varnishes and trappings of CS:GO’s skins and maps, CS2 is an entirely new animal of a game. This is to be expected for a game ported to a newer engine (Source 2) which retains the Source codebase for some things but also includes plenty of overhauls that affect movement, positioning, and aiming.

This kinesthetic and game-feel difference is being perceived most strongly by two different user pools: by the casual-competitive layman with several thousands of hours sunk into the game (as evinced by users writing PhD-level papers on creating a desubticked movement), and by the professional players. The various observations across the two groups indicate that the game feels different than CS:GO, and frankly, weird at times.

The greatest player in CS:GO history, Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev, has been particularly vocal about his dislike of CS2. But more on him later.

We have seen numerous posts and tweets about the changed feeling of sprays, the subticked hit registration ("what you see is what you get" may go down as one of the best memes of the game’s history and we’re less than two months in), subticked movement, desynced animations, inconsistent jump heights, etc.

To the John Everyman trying to enjoy the game, it is certainly enough whinging to make one’s head spin (and hearkens back to the early CS:GO days on the forums) but, like everything in life, there is a kernel of truth hidden under the layers of resistance to change. CS2 does feel different — and it does play differently.

With the game also undergoing weekly updates that impact its networking, animations, and interpolation, that means the "feeling of CS" will continue to drift away from any sort of mooring it may have had to the end state feeling of CS:GO. And with that drift will blow the winds of change, skirling the snows of muscle memory to the air.

And so our hypothetical train of discussion arrives at its first station of speculation to ask: How will this impact the tens of thousands of hours that professional players have invested into CS:GO? Will this destabilize the understood hierarchy of the greats, the top teams, and the legends of the game in the months prior to CS2's release?

So far, going off IEM Sydney and online tournaments, early signs are positively indicating that disruptions are minimal. FaZe are beginning an undefeated Cinderella run despite persistent roster rumors, Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali seems to be JAMEing, and the top teams are making use of new game mechanics (like blowing through smokes or abusing the new bomb radius) to the best of their ability.

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But this wouldn’t be a debut feature article by yours truly if we didn’t feel the need to posit a wild question. Could s1mple "trace" himself?

Thinking along this hypothesis, our train next arrives at a station on the outskirts of Warsaw, Poland, looking for a particular persona. We do not dawdle overlong before collecting s1mple and the train’s whistle sounds as we leave the station, off to an uncertain and grainy future.

With the indisputable GOAT of CS:GO, s1mple, stepping away from the game as a competitive player and potentially involving himself in some other project, is there a real chance that the game’s best player will go out like a planetary nebula and fade as a white dwarf?

We should quickly mention that s1mple also referenced taking care of the people in his life when stepping away. It is a lot harder to connect the release of a new game to personal issues, so we are purely discussing his open dislike of CS2 itself in his decision to step back from competition.

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Who is CS:GO’s greatest-ever player?

To study this hypothesis, we need to brush up on our ancient history. There are plenty of newer CS aficionados who don’t recall the CS:GO of 2012 and how it laid waste to some of the greats of 1.6 and Source who transitioned over reluctantly and didn't sink the hours required into a new game. For every 2013 Ninjas in Pyjamas, there is a Yegor "⁠markeloff⁠" Markelov, or a Jakub "⁠kuben⁠" Gurczyński, or a Alexander "⁠xek⁠" Zobkov. These were aging players who awoke to a brave new world and suddenly found that they could not move within the different map layout, entirely different grenade physics, or sliding "ice skating" feeling that people originally ascribed to CS:GO when it came out.

There is no player who exemplifies this Bill-Murray-in-Tokyo feeling better than Martin "⁠trace⁠" Heldt. Ranked third-best player in the world by HLTV in 2010, and fourth-best in 2011, trace was poised to be a player who would define late-stage CS 1.6 for his aggression, high in-game intelligence, and graceful movement and shooting. But then Hidden Path had the idea to make a console port of Counter-Strike which was hot dog water. Valve rightfully moved in to pick up the pieces of that dumpster fire and thus was born the imperfect Frankenstein's monster that became today’s cherished CS:GO.

trace moved into CS:GO with the rest of them but, unlike his coevals Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg and Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund, he seemingly found himself unable to get a feel for the game. After a few months of play with the likes of Michael "⁠Friis⁠" Jørgensen, Andreas "⁠MODDII⁠" Fridh, Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth, and even Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen, he soon bowed out of the team and out of the game, citing a dislike of CS:GO in general.

Although trace did return later for a brief stint on a geriatric mTw and then moved into coaching, many were left wondering if a brightly burning candelabra hadn’t been snuffed out too early by the circumstances of fate, time, and demotivation.

For a player whom many viewed as the next big prodigy in CS 1.6 to fade so suddenly into the night came as a surprise to some observers, but this kind of wilting tends to be overshadowed by the blossoming of other flowers in a new venture — namely Ninjas in Pyjamas and their legendary run. People soon forget the bypassed landmarks along the tracks, and questions about who or what could have been in 1.6 faded into backroom discussion parlors of the internet, doubly so when the Arms Deal update released skins and changed the face of CS forever.

Now we find ourselves on the footsteps of the CS2 hills, awaiting to see which direction Valve will wildly swing the railroad switch and thus steer the game. With s1mple stepping away, you can see where a train-engineer-disguised-as-a-feature-writer could be left wondering about potential disaster looming on the tracks ahead. Will our simple caboose roll across that snowbound wasteland in these early months? Even if s1mple continues streaming the game, playing FACEIT, and abusing his teammates for their willy-nilly faux pas, will that guarantee he has the mindset, the fortitude, and the drive to stay current?

This comes on the heels of s1mple having his rating dip into territory unseen since 2016, and is doubly gauged to the track of players fading in KPR and Rating as they age (see the excellent article on this by Harry "NER0" Richards below). When all these factors are considered, it seems clear that the longer he stays away, even ostensibly entertaining other offers outside of Natus Vincere, s1mple really risks dropping off from the skill ceiling he previously worked so hard to raise and attain.

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When do Counter-Strike players peak?

Sports and CS:GO history are littered with comebacks. Michael Jordan left the NBA after 1994 to play baseball of all things and came back to give the Bulls three more championships. Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz had his entire personal miniseries of Twilight play out in Sweden before he regained his senses and went back to banging heads. Cédric "⁠RpK⁠" Guipouy appears to spawn outside of his Father’s car shop and decides he wants to play computer games every five years. In competitive disciplines in life, once you possess the baseline training hours and the genetic instinct for your field, returning to the fore is like riding a very wobbly bicycle to the top of a hill, difficult but doable.

But returning to a competitive form is not the same as remaining the GOAT. With s1mple's legacy already being hounded by Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut and plenty of new prodigies lurking in the wings, I have to make the bold and entirely scientific prediction that every month s1mple spends away from competing on a top team decreases his chances of being a Top 5 Player of 2024, the first full year on CS2, by 12.5%. A small piggybank fund will be set up for forum posters to deposit P250 Sand Dunes should I be right come December next year.

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One for the future: donk

As we look forward to the new legacies, new stories, new rivalries, and new histories that CS2 will inevitably bring with it, the inexorable march of time chugs onwards and we also have to be mindful of the past. The train that we boarded a long while back when s1mple flew into Los Angeles and was just a scared Ukrainian kid being looked after by Liquid’s management seems like a distant quaint thing. Through all the ensuing years of memes, stellar performances, and accolades, we are now rumbling into an unknown future with a conductor missing at the helm. And as the snows swirl around our dusk-chugging train, we are left wondering if in CS2 s1mple may simply vanish without a trace.