I've just moved into a sponsored gaming house, AMA.

How boring is cs for you now that you've spent hundreds of hours playing?

No game gets boring when you play with friends.

Do the women dig it?

My girlfriend also moved with me, so..

Is everything paid for? Like groceries and stuff? For how long are you guys planning to stay in that house?

No, just the rent, we still have to pay the bills/food/anything else. We plan on staying here for at least a year.

Do they actually pay you to play or do you have to find employment to pay the bills?

Personally I still work but the others generally just live off their CGS money/poker money.

I have no idea how popular CS streams are but a lot of pro gamers make most of their income from streaming. Generally, with sponsorships, you get a lot of freebies from the sponsors and some of them might pay for things like travel to tournaments.

Just something I found awesome: When I was still really into CS, the first pro team I heard about was 3D and I read that they were sponsored by Subway so they got all the free subs they wanted. I'd never been so jealous of someone before.

I stream but CS is not very popular compared to the likes of LoL, I get around 200-300 viewers on average and make about 50dollars or so a month from it.

http://twitch.tv/onscreenlol is my stream

On a scale from 1 to GabeN, how good do you have to be to get into a sponsored team?

Good but not the best, just win a few events and stand out from the crowd, if you are lucky you end up sponsored sooner or later.

What happens when people stop being polite and start getting real?

We have all been friends for years, we are way past being polite.

What's the best CS advice you can give?

Don't copy other players settings just because they are good with it, use something that suits yourself and stick with it.

Can you confirm or deny that you got yelled at by staff at CPL UK 2005 for drop-kicking a cardboard cutout of Fatal1ty?

It's true, don't get me wrong fatal1ty is a good player but the cardboard cut outs were a bit annoying.

how many hours a day do you usually play for?

5 or so weekdays, 24 weekends.

How much WoW-gold do you have to farm to pay the sponsor back for rent?

People still play WoW?

Behold my shitty rogue. http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/frostmane/Onscreen/simple

Props for arena master and never reaching max level on the disgusting expansion that was Cataclysm.

Yup, my old guild mates tried to convince me to play but I got bored fast, it's just not the same!

I used to be in Ad Infinitum on Stormscale-EU if anyone remembers.

You guys must be living the dream. Do you ever wake up and just ask yourself: "What am I doing with my life?"... And then proceed to laugh because your life must be fucking awesome.

No, I wake to the sound of my alarm clock at 7am to get ready for work after practising to 2am the night before.

How bad does that place smell?

There is a slight aroma of beer and whiskey in the air, other than that its surprisingly fine.

GO or Source? or 1.6

Which is your favorite? Which is the "best"?

Do you enjoy Day of Defeat? Tf2?

We are all ex 1.6 players except for 1 ex quake player. I was the only one who didn't move onto source. We are now all competing in CS:GO. I really enjoy CS:GO right now but my favourite will always be 1.6.

You can see my old 1.6 movie here

proof?

Also what is a sponsored gaming house, do you just live there and play video games or what? tell us a bout a general day.

It's a house set up specifically for the team to live in and practice for events, we have a pool, sauna, gym, gaming room and cinema room. We generally do whatever we want and try to practice as much as we can. I still work full time and so does one other player, I could if i wanted to give up my job and game full time but i refuse too.

I've posted proof on my twitter (I have about 2 followers though, but i guess it will do?)

Do you think CS will ever because as prominent as it used to be?

How / why?

With a little help from Valve it could become very big like the old days.

On round 1 of Dust II would you go A Long or to B?

In a normal buy round how would you get through to B and clear it without getting raped in the tunnel?

We don't just have 1 pistol tactic, we have multiple and use them depending on which team we play. So could be either A or B and can change mid round depending on the situation.

Have your teammates fake A in the hopes to force 1 player to rotate from B leaving only 1 left in the site, smoke flash and run in backwards to make sure you don't get flashed.

Do you stream? A lot of people here would be interested in watching im sure..

Why are you called 4kings when there are 5 of you? Based on my (limited) math skills, I propose a name change to '5 kings'

http://www.twitch.tv/onscreenlol

Thanks shad :P

What does your training/practice schedule look like over the course of a week?

pretty much every evening, it depends when we can get games, we book them in advance with other teams.

How do you practice? Pick up games? Or against other teams?

If we are all able to play we will arrange games with other teams, if not then we just play gathers either via IRC or ESEA.

How did you go about getting sponsored? Did they come to you or did you try to find a good organization?

I've been sponsored by other orgs in the past, 4Kings approached me back in 2011 after winning an event.

I'm a very passionate gamer, and I'm not too shabby at any game I pick up (usually finish with the top score in pick up games, etc etc). However, working an every day 9-5 really holds me back from going to that next level.

What suggestions do you have for anyone who would like to break into professional gaming as a serious career? Do you know anyone who makes an income off of streaming? (Twitch.TV etc) If so, how did they go about getting started up?

Sorry about the multiple questions!

Real talk: If you're old enough to have a 9-5 then you're too old to become a professional gamer.

You should know that I am 25 and my teammates are 25, 25, 29, 29. :P

I'll be gaming in my retirement home when I'm 85, playing the newly released HL3.

Don't just sit and play online, go to events. Book time off work and compete in as many as you can.

I don't know any CS players that make a living off twitch, I would love to do something like this but the numbers are just not there. You need at least a steady 2000+ viewers on average to make any sort of 'good' money from Twitch. I barely get 200 viewers on a good day.

Unless you are a pro LoL/SC2 player you can forget about making a living from streaming.

how is the internet ? does every single one of you have his own or is it shared ? When you stream, use TS and play whats your ping ?

We all share a fibre line which is 80mb down 20mb up. When I'm streaming I rarely get a higher ping than 20ms.

How do you stay physically active?

We have a small gym and a pool.

A pool.. In UK.. This time a year.. K..

It's heated, but yes it's just fate that the moment I get my hands on a pool the UK has the coldest easter in recorded history..

M4 or AK47?

AK is a lot better than M4 in CSGO.

What pokemon did you choose for your starter?

Charmander obviously.

4kings? My friends played against you at the PCGamer Showdown in 2008.

They were playing TF2. J-Server. You guys walked all over them, but in the last seconds of the last round my friend got a heavy taunt kill on bybben.

I have nothing else to say/ask :P

OOO scratch that. I'm big into CS:GO myself, not particularly amazing at it but public games I can't be touched. Are there any particular servers you play on/would suggest for someone wanting to improve and actually learn to play properly?

I only really play Hostage maps on pub servers through matchmaking because I run into a lot of familiar faces and know I will more often than not come away with a win.

We have been recently been playing a lot of ESEA, I would recommend it over playing matchmaking as it has a very good anti-cheat.

Are there other pro gamers in the house other than you and the rest of the team? If so, what games do they play?

Do you think another team can pass NiP's crazy winning streak?

Do you like Starcraft?

Nope just us. I doubt anyone will get close to their insane win streak, that must be a record of some sort.

Who doesn't like starcraft?

Most of you guys need better desk chairs for that level of gaming... for any level of gaming/computering really.

We had the choice of any chair we wanted, mine is the massive office chair at the back, some of the other guys just wanted standard dining room chairs. It's all personal preference.

Good luck! I wish we had some sponsorship dollars for CS in North America. Come on Complexity and EG pick it up. Good luck against NIP. My question: Do you guys have enough good opponents to practice against, or do you feel your ability to improve per day is restricted by the lack of other formal training partners? Aren't there only about 4 salaried CS teams in the Euro-zone? Do you have to wait around for non-business hours so the other teams can get home and compete?

Correct, teams generally only prac in the evenings and weekends. We have a big private facebook group with all the top teams so arranging games is really easy.

What specs do you have on your current gaming machine? Also, number of monitors and size too if you don't mind. I'd be curious if you have posted your rig to /r/battlestations as well.

What hobbies outside of gaming do you guys do?

I recently built an overkill machine for myself with an i7 3970X and GTX680. (wish I waited for the titan though). You can see the full specs on my buildapc post.

We are all avid poker players, most of the team making a living from poker alone.

I use a 144hz Benq XL2411T monitor which is 24" and a secondary 24" samsung monitor. I like to have 2 big monitors for when I am multi-tabling poker.

What Poker sites do you play on? Is it not illegal where you are at?

Stars and FTP, nope not illegal in UK!

An ex counter strike 1.6 player here.

I loved 4K back when commando, dag, elly, mangi and the rest were in the team playing, their synchronized tactics were the best. They had quite the success back then doing synchronized attacks when both cts and ts. (Here is their masterpiece on de_inferno, one of the best tactics ever made on that map by any team):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H7BN94aSmE

Also this video made me jizz

My question is:

1. Will your lineup use synchronized tactics or will rely on individual skill?

Thank you very much for the AMA.

That video is actually very basic compared to some of the stuff we have been working on. I'm very anal when it comes to tactics. I'm the kind of guy that sits on a server perfecting a smoke for 2 hours.

Hey, where abouts is this house? Like just roughly, it looks exactly like my Aunt and Uncle's old house and I'm just wondering if it is the same building.

Manchester, UK.

My recoil control in cs is godawful, how do i improve it?

Jump on a local server, sv_cheats 1 and then sv_showimpacts 1.

You can now see server side where the bullets actually hit, practice with this.

is that the cleanest the house has ever been?

Yup

Do you feel like you're wasting your life?

Not at all, only been here a few weeks so far and it's been great.

How much money do you make being a pro?

Not enough.

Congrats

Thanks!