The Italian CS:S scene isn’t one that immediately springs to mind when you think about the game, yet it was one that made a significant amount of progress across 2009. Teams were starting to look competitive, the national team progressed further than anyone thought they would in the ESL Nations Cup and Ox Gaming won the battle for hearts and minds when they attended OOF3 and managed to cause something of an upset by beating a beleaguered fnatic.

Then it all went quiet and the teams seemed to fade back into the obscurity from where they had emerged. Indeed as we begin 2010 that Ox Gaming team no longer exists and we have to wait the next international tournament to see whether the Italian side will reproduce their form. Key to both of those teams was Guglielmo “GugLi” Carraro, a player who has since started playing with the UK team GE Clan as he looks to find another way to get back to competing in Europe once more.

His CS:S playing career began when he moved from playing Battle of Middle Earth when that fizzled out and he took to playing Source. The Italian EPS was starting up and teams were coming together and looking to compete seriously for what represented the largest prize Italian CS:S had seen. After making himself known to the top Italian players he was given a chance to represent Insane e-sports. Within the span of one season in the EPS they went from the amateur series, to getting a spot at the LAN finals in the top flight and earning a place in the ESL Major Series. This in turn earned him a call up to the national squad. The transformation from obscure RTS gamer to international FPS player was complete.

The player is well liked and respected among his peers and has managed to dodge a lot of the criticisms and accusations leveled at the other Italian players. It is a rare thing in the European scene to find a player that no-one has a bad thing to say about… Was Guglielmo one of these rare beasts? As he looks to get his playing career back on track I took the time to talk to him about the Italian scene, among other things, and skillfully avoid making any Sopranos jokes.

So, the Italian scene was one that came on leaps and bounds in 2009. We saw Italian teams competing at European events and their national team pulled out some good performances in the ESL Nations Cup, which raised more than a few eyebrows. Firstly, what do you attribute the improvement to?

The Italian team has always been decently strong starting from EDA that featured in a couple of Eurocups at the start to C23 that obtained a great 5/6th at TeX, but the team that did so well at the ENC has played together in mixes for about two years. Even though for most countries national teams are mixes, the Italian one is like a team. The player pool in Italy is very small and there is a huge difference in skill between the top four teams in italy two years ago and the rest of the people, so from there a group formed that would pass afternoons and nights they didn't need to play with the team to mix together and play ESL ladders be it 2on2, 3on3 or 5on5s.

Guglielmo practices at OOF3 while Tomas "WT" Herout watches on (Picture: Heaven Media)

As often happens when a team of players from a nation not exactly known for the achievements in e-sports starts to improve there were a lot of accusations thrown the way of the national team, and indeed some of the organisation's CS:S teams when they were playing in cups involving European teams. What do you make of all that?

Well I know all of the players in the team personally having met them at LAN and playing with them everyday and I am sure not one of them cheats. Each one of them has also had impressive achievements at LANs since Nembo and Skizzo had been to two WCG for 1.6 while stylahhhh has won 4 EPS MVP's in a row. Buba, kimera and pwnage had all performed well at LAN. Every single one of the players in the team saw it as a compliment and as a way to achieve more in order to be able to show what the team did at the ENC in European Lans. Unfortunately we weren't able to get the ENC LAN finals because one of the core players was missing that night against Germany, and also because ESL Italy had already informed us they probably wouldn't have been able to pay for the trip down to Cologne. More than anything though all these accusations were some real motivator.

How big is e-sports in Italy? Is it gaining more and more interest at the moment, or is it struggling to be taken seriously?

It depends what side we look at. The console side of e-sports looks like it keeps growing and some other internet games such as CoD4 have a huge scene following through, but for other games like CS:S and 1.6 most of the community disappeared and died with the end of the EPS last year. To be honest what will happen will e-sports, especially with online PC games, will have a lot to do with the EPS in my opinion. Though there are some rare cases of some good orgs blooming up so we never know. Italians also have the mentality of seeing gaming as nothing more than hobby to do when your not out with friends and while you see international teams practicing for four hours you will see Italian ones practicing for two.

You managed to get a taste of a European event when you competed at OOF 3 with Ox-Gaming. How did you find the experience?

Well it was a lifetime experience, we met loads of nice guys from the TiD guys, to the cadred watchpost, the Charity guys and everyone else. All lovely people and the fun we had on those four days is probably one of the moments I will always remember in my gaming career. Had we arrived last or first it did not really matter to us. We just wanted to enjoy the experience and I will probably try to get to another one this year. It’s also a complete different level from Italian LANs in the way it was organized and run.

Partying often beats gaming in the Italian mindset

But as it happens you did put together some good performances. You managed to get a win against a team representing one of the biggest multi-gaming organisations when you beat fnatic. Do you feel that you gave a good account of yourselves as a team, or were you expecting to do better?

Yes we did put in some good performances which most of us probably didn't expect. We expected to get some nice results but probably never to beat fnatic and push them real close in our second encounter, and with the problematics we had pre-LAN having to change our 5th one week before and everything we were just hoping the bring the most out of it. I am still a little disappointed for how we went out losing the elimination matches on the two maps we were not able to prepare because of time constraints. Though this is one minor con on the positive experience we had throughout that week.

Everything seems to have gone quiet for Ox-Gaming at the moment, so what exactly happened in the aftermath of doing well?

Well once me and seven moved houses for universities loads of things popped up, we hadn't played for 4 months and we kept on changing 5ths to the point that ox picked up the old inferno team so in November we decided to call it a day. During the winter vacations I was called up by my friend Jonny to see if I was interested in playing in GE Clan, and so after a few games we felt good together and as of right now we are having loads of fun playing and doing real well against some good calibre teams hopefully to give a good impression at i39. The others from the old OX-gaming have all stopped gaming except for overfly that will be probably setting up another Italian team.

A lot of Europeans find the attitudes of UK players to be... Well, let's say unique. This, along with the language divide, has been one of the reasons why you generally don't tend to see a lot of mixed UK / European teams and even fewer successful ones. How are you finding playing alongside the Brits?

Well being one of the lucky few Italians that speaks a good English I already had the pleasure to play in some UK / EU teams having a first taste of the British attitude and even though its a real pain on certain occasions, it’s great if seen in the right way. Right now I am probably having one of the most fun times in my gaming career. Every night is a progress night with a great laugh behind it and I've got to thank everyone in the team and IMF for that. The manager especially has been really helpful and understands what we need in order to be successful.

Guglielmo enjoys a beer in Belgium

Do you think it could be something of a trend that you might see, where European players in countries that don't have a lot of organisations that can fund LAN travel will look to get involved with teams from other countries in order to be able to compete?

I think we will especially as e-sports in some of the smaller countries is decreasing rather than expanding and more than LAN funding I think the possibility of increasing the knowledge of the English language that is fundamental in the world right now. The possibility to know people around Europe is always a door to be kept open for life's future endeavours, since it might be helpful later on. Obviously the ability to LAN in other countries has a lot of positives.

So, what do you make of the current trend of people saying that the scene is locked into a downward spiral? You've effectively moved from one scene that was progressing nicely and into one that was a bit more developed, so what are your thoughts on that sort of thinking?

I'll go against the flow and say that in my opinion e-sports is growing since we see loads of new events / organisations and teams pop up everyday. The Italian scene has been progressing nicely both in CoD4 and CS:S but all in all there are not many people following e-sports as much as a couple years ago. When I moved over to the UK scene I noticed there are many more events to join and more teams that suit someone's skill level. While in Italy we have one top team, in the UK you have about five or six that in a good day could give a good fight to any of the top ten in Europe. I firmly believe though that if we players are the first to think that e-sports is going in a downward spiral then we will never see it growing to what our dreams hope it would.

GE Clan are one of those organisations trying to build up and break through into being serious contenders. Do you think they're on course to do that?

From what I have seen in this past month they are working very hard on doing that. They always try and help teams in need and slowly going into the top tier of teams they bring to LAN. The organisation is very professional and as its trying to push the competitive side of e-sports just as it holds a huge respect for the community side of the game having about 8 servers to play on and trying to get feedback to always improve. I think that if they keep on working like this they can only do better and I wish them all the best.

GugLi hopes to attend more European LANs this year (Picture: Heaven Media)

As someone who came from a totally different gaming background before going on to represent his country in CS:S what players did you learn from either directly or indirectly? Did anyone inspire you or have a profound impact on your development?

I have gone through many teams and each team i went through I learned something from. I was lucky enough to know some of the top Italian players such as TAGO right from the start of my gaming in CS:S. Through mixing with them and loads of hard work I came to what I am right now. A player I indirectly used to watch how he aimed and how he moved is probably ferus. At the time him being 14 and playing at such a high level was pretty mind breaking for me at 16 years old. Though my real step forward was when I joined insane e-sports… All the guys in it -Buba, Loller, CursinhO and gizmo – worked so hard with me in order to improve and we were able to jump that gap that Italians team had between being a normal team and being able to compete at the EPS finals and against teams in Europe.

For you personally what would be the one thing you would want to achieve either within or through gaming?

Well I think the possibility of having a salary and living on gaming is a dream everyone has, but we all know its gonna be very hard to obtain and nearly impossible for all but the best. Therefore my goals in gaming are to be able to travel through Europe doing something I enjoy while being able to meet loads of people that might become good friends and the experiences that come with it, and why not being able to win a couple of LANs would be very nice.