When people talk about up and coming teams in the UK a lot of people point to GLG – an abbreviation of Good Looking Gamers – as an example of talent that has progressed sufficiently. And while it might be true that they contain some “up and comers” at the heart of the team is someone who is not only a veteran in the truest sense of the term, but someone who has also had his flirtations with the top of the scene.

Having picked up the game in beta 5.9 Stewart had only really made the decision to stick with CS:S after his friends joined him from Unreal Tournament. By the time 1.5 was out he had started playing in teams and by the controversial introduction of 1.6 he’d made something of a name for himself with teams such as hertz and shots.cs. With i17 around the corner, all paid for and ready to compete, Stewart turned his back on serious competitive play in favour of partying instead. It took until i26 until he decided to actually get back into it and by then CS:S seemed to be vogue in the UK.

At i28, playing in fiveflow, he caught the eye of a lot of people at the business end of the UK scene. Known for his one bullet aim and being especially lethal with a deagle he then attended i29 with Ultimate Quest and the double header of i30 and ebuyer with Zboard, where he achieved a third place finish, the highest of a UK team, behind mTw and fnatic. Instead of that being a launchpad for a career it instead proved to be a high point without equal. His time in Infused promised much but it was always just short of progressing to the next level. Shackled somewhat by his work as policeman, Stewart said that the pattern of his teams would always be “playing for fun, end up getting half decent team and then it goes super serious and I have to leave.”

Fortunately for him the GLG team have no such pretensions and he has been able to juggle his job and his playing time, much to the benefit of both parties. At the most recent i-series the team managed to catch everyone by surprise, steamrolling fnatic 16 -2 and beating an FM Toxic mix containing some of the best players in Europe not once, but twice. In the end they managed a 4th place finish, not quite on the podium, but it showed that there was life in the old dog yet. Stewart gave me some of his views on his career to date:

You've been around for a long time where a lot of other players that started at the same time as you - and even after you - have since quit or faded away. What has kept you going for this long?

I try quite hard not to be an idiot to people online. Anybody who's played with me on vent and at LAN will know I rage up there with the hardest, but I try not to be abusive. I think it's because of this I haven't ever had any trouble. I Haven't had any e grudges or any enemies and I've always had a great time socially at every LAN I've been to. I tend to spend most of my playing time with people I enjoy playing with, so believe it or not, I’m one of the few who actually ENJOY playing the game when I can. That’s the probably the only reason I am still around - all ends up back at the good old community spirit of CS:S I guess.

Another GLG "night in"

After your time in Infused though, with your work taking up a lot of your time, you were effectively retired. Was it the people in your current team, GLG, that sort of kept you going and brought you back to playing competitively?

Definitely - Infused were getting big sponsors and things were going really well - and they wanted results, which means putting the work in. That wasn't possible with me because of other commitments so I moved on. I ended up playing in a team called GOOD LOOKING GAMERS with a few mates as a piss take to how much we used to go out clubbing at LAN. Next thing you know some people in our team are printing out tactics in colour in little booklets for maps… No names about that one. So even though we take it seriously when we're at the event, as soon as game time is over, we have a good laugh. I don't think I could find the enthusiasm with any other bunch of guys

GLG brand themselves as being a none serious team, yet at the last i-series they achieved some serious looking results. You beat an FM Toxic team featuring some top players twice and demolished fnatic. I guess the first question is how did you manage to do that? Were you expecting to do as well as you did?

Playing teams like FM Toxic is the reason we go to LAN. They were a team of five very good players who can play well as a team. They had known players and they seemed a laugh. As for the fnatic game I am not too sure. It was just one of those games where everything goes your way I guess. I always enjoy beating fnatic, mainly because I've been hammered by them at LAN, so it's always nice to get some revenge. In all honesty I've no idea how we do it. I imagine it's just the pure ego that we all have when we say to each other, regardless of who we're playing, that we are going to smash them. Each LAN we end up having a little phrases and in jokes… Like at TEX we had salad, and i38 it was “shit the bed” (don’t ask)… I think the momentum we get from shouting and screaming and having a large group of people cheering us on, mostly our own community teams, makes a huge difference.

If you ask me where will we come at the next event we attend, I honestly couldn't say. We've had a nice long break since LAN and we're only just starting to play again. I would only be able to say at the event.

Do you think a part of why you can beat teams like that is that they maybe underestimate you? They see something like "Good Looking Gamers" and hear the stories about you going out drinking all they time, so they expect you to not be able to play?

Yes, It's possible. I know when I personally attend LAN and play, I only really recognize the old-school English CS:S players. Any of the foreign players or new UK ones, new for me anyway, I always feel a bit dubious playing them, as they are a bit of an unknown for me. Most people take it the other way, as in if your not well known then your more beatable. I am sure the stories of us going out drinking all the time are exaggerated. We don’t go out every night. Sometimes we stay in and play drinking games instead.

A big thing for us is morning games. We are always awful when we play in the morning. We have no idea why but we are working on a solution. On a serious note I don't think other teams think about things like that, they will concentrate on things like recent form and player strengths in certain positions.

But just to be clear - although you guys are quite keen to stress the team is just a bit of fun - you still do practice and have even shuffled the roster to maintain that competitive edge. It would be misleading to think of you as "amateur" or apathetic to how you perform, correct?

Yes, we have a large roster that we shuffle about now and then. For some reason it fits quite nicely that the people who play well together (and in my opinion are the better players) also get on quite well and generally enjoy each other’s company most. But when it comes to practicing, in all honestly our online time is limited. For example before I38, I discovered WOW – shocking I know - Boostey discovered girls, which was even more shocking… Tony got a kitten, Fearless was in process of getting a new car and flogging his PC, Shig got a new house with his missus and had no net for 2 weeks. I could go on all day about why we didn’t play that much but we don't need to practice too much, as we have all been playing together for quite a while and our ego's make up for our lack of time. But in no way are we amateurish. We do take the game serious when we play. I generally make up tactics on the go but I rule with an iron fist. Sort of.

You've also been together as a team for a very long time now. Do you think that, along with the team chemistry, has been crucial in enabling you to break away from the rest of those teams that are trying to break through and be considered at the top end?

Without doubt - being together for an extremely long time, and having a very considerate and easy going sponsor, one who understands the game and the scene, makes things a lot easier. In all honestly the only reason we have kept together so long is probably because of the group and the people leading it, mostly Tony / gom8z. He can be annoying as hell sometimes but as a motivator of people and making all of us, not just the GLG team, enjoy being online and playing, he is top drawer.

The team at i36

One thing people might be uncertain of is the backing that you guys have. Is it a self funded pursuit? Are you guys part of an organisation? Just what is Twisted Play? There has been a lot of confusion about the whole thing when you talk to interested parties…

As far as I'm aware (and I could be wrong) TwistedPlay is a community. Gom8z could be called the face of TwistedPlay and we all work hard to get our name out there. In regards to the money, we have quite a few sponsors, and it helps that a lot of us are adults, only just, with jobs. Our Organisation is H2O (Hard 2 Own) and we are also sponsored by Patriot gaming. Both are huge and probably are some of the best sponsors out there to have.

As someone who has been in the game all this time you’ve seen many changes and had to adapt to them. Has that been difficult? What has had the biggest impact on your playing over the years?

The biggest impact to gaming, for me, has definitely been life more than anything - nobody can compete at the highest level without playing regularly. I've been through a few relationships and jobs, and i think i've had it quite easy compared to some. Trying to balance that with playing computer games at regular times, normally social times (Tuesday night = pub quiz night and Sunday night = football night) makes it quite hard. If anybody works shift work or does a demanding job, they'll know that social time is a luxury and to fill it up playing computer games isn't always a good idea. Not to mention changes in the game throughout the years - eg. quickscoping being removed . That for me was a drastic change, I was at a loss for quite a while when that went away!

What about the way the game is played. I remember the way people approached the game in 2004 and these days it does feel like a completely different game. How have you coped with those radical changes, especially being a largely part-time player?

I was scheduled to attend I17 with a good cs team back when I was 17/18 years old, and we were a lot keener than any css team i see attending LANs now. Believe me, I'm talking a3 printouts of the maps.

Nowadays it is completely different... A lot more emphasis is put on teamwork compared to individual skill - not saying the top teams around aren't individually skilled, but teamwork matters so much more. With me being a part-time player that makes it increasingly hard to keep up. GLG have always had a large roster, with people popping in and out of activity. Fortunately the team is quite forgiving when it comes to missing game nights. I try not to overload myself with CS:S. The last i-series we went to I played two hours in the two weeks on the run up to LAN. But I arrived on Thursday night, the whole team met in the pub the night before (most of us had our girlfriends there as well!) and we had a good drinking session. That to me is worth more than 100 hours a week practicing on the run up to LAN.

Is there one player you have played with over the years that you thought was better than anyone else? What about talent that you thought would go on to make a name for themselves but it didn’t quite happen for them?

Comparing people in source is quite hard - there's so few people with the complete package. The one that stands out the most for me playing with had to be my time in Zboard with hudzG. There were so many times we'd play a game and he would be stuck into the most ridiculous situation, a no-hoper, and he would just pull something out the bag. There's not a lot you can do when somebody genuinely believes that no matter what the situation, they will win. Playing with people with lots of self belief makes the game fun, especially as his mentality was so much like mine. You're faced with an impossible situation and you die yet you are still angry with yourself because you know you could've done it, and that nothing is really impossible.

The i30 Zboard team was very close... Some said TOO close

Currently there's a big trend in people saying that Counter-Strike - be it 1.6 and CS:S - is dying, or is dead. What do you make of it? Does it feel any worse off than it was, does it feel like it has peaked, or do you think that it is simply changing and people don't understand the changes?

I honestly wouldn't be able to give a good enough answer. I think css is big, you've only got to look at i-series to see the amount of half-decently skilled teams that the uk can produce to know that it is one of those "easy to pick up hard to master" type games. I would say CGS would be it's peak, and unless something similar comes along, I can't see it becoming financially feasable to live as a CS:S player. CS:S doesn't change much, just the people who play it. When I first started playing, there was a group of 20 or 30 players who were the best in the UK and they moved in and out of the top teams together. How many of those players are still in the top few and still move in and out of the top teams? It changes all the time. Once a new bunch of players take over at the top, they dictate how other people play as they are at the top and they make the rules, so to speak.

Is there anything you regret though gaming? Any one moment you'd like to go back and change, or are you largely content with it all?

The only thing i regret is the amount of quality people who have stopped playing and are missing from LANs. There are too many to name. Not a lot i can do about that though.

And finally - what are the plans for you and your team in 2010. you going to stick around?

I'll be around - hopefully - and still playing with Twisted Play. Eventually GLG will start taking games seriously and go pro and I'll be left in the background - It always happens!