ddk on "cozy" return to CS, VALORANT stint, and the future

The British caster returned to arena casting at PGL Astana after four years away.

Daniel "⁠ddk⁠" Kapadia was part of a recognizable casting duo with James "⁠BARDOLPH⁠" Bardolph and casted a total of six Majors from 2016 to 2021, but has been absent from the scene ever since the Stockholm Major.

The Brit fulfilled a plethora of roles in the interim, such as a transition to VALORANT casting, where he formed a duo with Sean "⁠seang@res⁠" Gares, which was ended due to Riot's involvement. "We were super popular, and it seemed like that was not something Riot liked," the Brit told HLTV as part of an in-depth interview at PGL Astana.

ddk then transitioned to a General Manager role in Riot's shooter before giving Counter-Strike broadcast work another go, but his return was far from straightforward.

"I was trying to get back into CS for about a year and a half, and got no events. I was trying to get stuff with the smaller TOs or just really anything, and found out it's actually pretty hard," he said about a lengthy search for work that finally ended at BLAST Rivals, when Anders "⁠Anders⁠" Blume needed a casting partner on short notice due to Wilton "⁠zews⁠" Prado's dismissal.

ddk and the legendary Dane continued their partnership at PGL Astana, where ddk returned to arena casting for the first time since 2021, and the 37-year-old admitted casting in front of a live audience was a happy experience.

"To do an arena feels really comfortable because I've done that so much in my career, but it was kind of weird at first because I haven't done this in a while," he said. "The funny thing about it is that I was super nervous getting back into casting for the first time, but then I realized that Counter-Strike is fundamentally the same; and it's so cool how entertaining that is."

You can read the full interview, in which ddk shares his feelings after receiving an invite to return to casting, talks about his stint away from Valve's shooter, and expresses his love for Counter-Strike, below.

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You're here at PGL Astana, your first arena LAN event in a while. How do you feel about being back?

It's really awesome to be back, for sure. It's hard to answer it in a simple way because I think Counter-Strike has been a really big part of my career. I mean, I did commentary before Counter-Strike with Quake and everything, but I wasn't going to all these different events and kind of growing with the scene. It's really cool to come back because I didn't expect that would necessarily be the case.

Also, when I was affected by the lay-offs at 100 Thieves, I was trying to get back into CS for about a year and a half and got no events. I was trying to get stuff with the smaller TOs or just really anything, and found out it's actually pretty hard.

Because initially, I had conversations with BLAST and PGL…. And ESL, but they didn't really respond very much. [laughs] But those guys, they responded a lot. They were like, 'Hey, it's going to be really hard in 2024, you're probably not going to find anything, everyone's locked into contracts. But 2025 is going to be great.'

Then we get into 2025, and I'm like, 'Oh, this actually feels kind of the same.' I benefited from the fact that zews was going to work with Anders and when that didn't work out, I got a slot in there. I was already going to be doing something for BLAST at the Major, not casting, but they wanted me to work on some content with them, which was really cool, so that was a way back in.

But that was already halfway into the year, so I just thought I'm locked out at that point. Just the very fact that I'm back, is really, really cool, it still feels amazing. I get a fresh look at everything because I haven't just been grinding constantly over the years. I had this break, I was working at Aimlabs for a couple of years whilst doing talent work in other games, I was a GM, and I've done so many different things in the meantime.

So it's kind of cool to bring all that back into Counter-Strike. To do an arena feels really comfortable because I've done that so much in my career, but it was kind of weird at first because I haven't done this in a while, but at the same time, I've done it a lot. It feels really cozy, everyone's been really welcoming, so it feels really good.

As you said, you came into Rivals as a last-minute replacement for zews. How did getting that invitation feel?

What happened was that BLAST's executive producer, Frederik Munksgaard… I woke up at 9 AM or something like that, looked at my phone, and it said I'd missed a meeting or something. I was like, 'Wait, what?' I looked at the email, and he invited me to a meeting that was two hours before I'd even woken up. So I jumped on the phone with him really quickly, and he's like, 'Hey, I don't know if you know what's been going on, but this is happening, would you like to jump in?' And I was like, 'Okay, yes.'

That meant that it wasn't just that one event that Anders was working with zews for, they were going to do multiple events, so all of that suddenly became a possibility. But the thing is that it didn't set in straight away as a thing that could happen, because I'm currently going through the process where my Green Card is pending, which means I can't leave the country without abandoning it.

The process to do that is kind of sketchy in a way because you have to apply for this thing called emergency advance parole to leave the country and come back if you don't want to kill your green card and probably get banned from the country forever. So I had to call my immigration lawyer, and she's like, 'Yeah, you know, you can apply for this, but there's always a risk with immigration stuff that they can… it's up to their discretion, so they can say that they don't think this is a good enough reason.'

You have to prove that it's either some kind of emergency health, family, or work situation, so you have to prove that this is actually essential for your career, and again, they can just tell you to fuck off if they want to. So I didn't know if this was real or not, but at the same time, I had to accept the event.

So they might accept my application, but if I suddenly get turned away by immigration, I put PGL or BLAST in a situation where they've got a week or two to fill the role. So I'm like, 'Oh, my God, I've been trying to get these guys. What if I piss them off?' There was a lot of drama for me when that was all going on, but thankfully, as we've seen now that I'm actually here, everything panned out.

About this partnership with Anders. I guess this wasn't your plan from the start, given the short-term nature of you doing these events, but is this partnership something that you feel could work in the future?

I think Anders and I work pretty well together, just immediately it's really easy. We're both veterans and we've both worked with so many people, so we can have conversations with each other and be very direct about what we want to do. Both of us have shifted our mindsets in the same way, so we're both like, 'Okay, it's really up to the TOs, and everything feels more transient than it ever used to.'

We are both prioritizing getting work and not really thinking about wanting to make this a thing, because we both want to make it easy to be hired. So it's just about doing a really good job, having fun whilst we're doing it, and leaving the future open to see what happens. Initially, when I was approaching the CS talent space and trying to get back in, I was saying to TOs that I was open to anything and everything.

Then there was this scenario too, where, especially with EFG, they told me I need to have a duo and that they need to see that I know what I'm doing. I had to prove that by doing reps and stuff, so that was a little bit weird. I think with EFG, it's just… Let's not go there. [laughs] But in general, it does seem like if you're going to come back and cast, you need a duo.

So after about a year, I decided to push the angle with James [Bardolph] a lot harder because he wanted to connect as well. So we've been trying to do that, and then this opportunity kind of popped up. We're just in this place where I think, unlike the old days, we're not really taking anything for granted and leaving all the options open.

Talking about the good old days. Your last arena LAN event in CS was the Stockholm Major, four years ago. Does it seem that long for you, considering you did so many different things during this period?

It does feel like a really long time, you're totally right. There were a lot of different things coming in between all of that. I moved cities, got married, and worked in VALORANT. At the time, I was still working with Aimlabs, doing content production with them first, then moved into product management, so I had to learn all these different things with them and then moved into working with 100 Thieves.

That happened because Sean [seang@res] and I were doing really great work in VALORANT and we were super popular, and it seemed like that was not something Riot liked. So they were trying everything, and I'm just going off the actions and the communication, to sort of crush us as a duo, so we both got sick of it.

Then we had the opportunity to get into the team end with 100 Thieves, so I became the GM, Sean became the head coach, and we had a really sick year in 2022 before Sean moved on to something else, and I remained at 100 Thieves. For me, that was a very important experience, because the performance stuff on the team end is something that I've always been super passionate about and was always studying, testing ideas out, and trying to get deeper on performance.

I've since made so many friends who are performance coaches or elite performance people, and that's something that I'm still working on and looking to pursue in other ways from a business point of view. And that created a lot of new potential paths for me alongside coming back to the talent space. A lot of growth has happened in these three or four years, so it feels like forever.

The funny thing about it is that I was super nervous getting back into casting for the first time, but then I realized that Counter-Strike is fundamentally the same. Principles-wise, it's the same thing, and the beauty is really in how well the teams can find a good cohesive bunch of players, get the roles right, and how well they can execute these fundamentals. It's so cool how entertaining that is, even if the meta is a little bit different.

As a last point on that note, you have all these other esports that have developers putting a lot of time and investment into pumping out content, big patches, and changes. The developers are way more involved in guiding that process, but Counter-Strike doesn't need that. That's sometimes what's missing about Valve, they are hands-off, which is actually something that you want after coming from the opposite world. I can tell you that introduces a lot of problems and it can be pretty bad, so I now get to re-appreciate what we have here in Counter-Strike.

You mentioned you did GMing and casting in VALORANT, then you retired from casting, which I guess was the result of motivation issues after what you said about Riot. How important is it to be back in CS, considering this is where you made your name?

The cool thing about CS is that of all the esports, it does one of the absolute best jobs in being totally focused on the competitive elements. You don't really have a lot of bullshit around that. And because of the open system that you have, it's almost like a free market system where you have all these different companies and TOs that are really accountable to the market, and what the market really cares about in Counter-Strike is not the memes and stuff like that... I mean, they care about skins and stuff like that, but ultimately, it's the competition that drives everything.

So you get a company like PGL, who gets to try and come into the space and try to make a profitable business as a TO and do their thing. You get HLTV, for example, that gets to grow alongside the game as an independent entity that's kind of living off the game. You get all of these different things that can pop up just because you don't have a developer that's going to say they want to lock everything down, and I think that's really important.

Just being in this environment where the competition is the most important thing is so sick, and we also see this at events. One of the things I love most about the IEM tournaments is that, and I think some of this is because of Carmac [ESL's VP Special Projects] because I know that he's such a big sports fan, it really feels like the football of esports in the best way. I love that vibe.

I'm not going to work, talent-wise, in a game that's not a Valve game, because at this point I just don't want to involve any of that extra potential bullshit. Let's just stick to Valve, they know what they're doing, and they're letting the game grow. They also care about the open circuit, they get involved to keep it open, and I think that's super important.

Just to kind of bring it all together. You're back in CS now, maybe not long-term with Anders, but you are back at a tier-one event even though from the outside, it feels like there is a bit of a monopoly in terms of talent. How hard is it to break through and how do you feel about the fact that it took you almost a year and a half to get back?

Yes, I think it is really hard. I don't really know how to place myself in the mind of the TOs exactly. I'm not sure about a lot of the calculations they make when they select talent, but I think the expectation this year was that the TOs would try to differentiate themselves a bit more, which would necessitate them opening up to not just using all the same talent, so the product looks and feels different. For a lot of people, they're a little bit surprised that it's not happening a bit more, I think.

Maybe it's just the case that it's somewhat of a slower process, it's hard to say. There are other players that are coming into the space with a lot of money like YaLLa, for example, they might be one of those. I'm not sure how that's going to look or how that might impact the overall scene, but yeah, getting into the space is hard. BLAST wouldn't have offered me any of this work and PGL may not have offered me any of this work with Anders had I not already been very experienced and sort of a safe pick. Because even if I necessarily haven't been grinding in CS the last few years, they know that I have all this experience, and so for them, I think it feels like a pretty safe bet.

If you're in a situation where you're trying to make that jump between tier-two and tier-one, that is the hard limit in terms of someone giving you that first chance, it's super hard. I'm so impressed by some of the talent that's in the tier-two space. If you would implant some of that talent into the 2016 era, they would instantly be right at the top immediately. But right now, there's just so much good talent at the top, and just too few spots.