World Cyber Games. Destination: Italy.

Australia’s new Counter-Strike heroes are heading to the world finals, and we find out what they have to say about it all.

Nobody saw it coming. Team Style, by far the favorites to take first place in the Counter-Strike Tournament at the Australian final of the World Cyber Games in Brisbane, had to settle for second at the hands of No Remorse. No Remorse will fly over to Monza, Italy, to represent Australia in the Counter-Strike 1.6 tournament.



They didn’t get much time to bask in their success and contemplate the road ahead, because before long a Channel Ten news team was interviewing them, asking about iPods and other consumer gadgetry. Soon afterwards they were asking them to do pushups on camera, to show the entire team preparing for the Finals.

They (and we) were half shocked and half embarrassed. There was some disbelief in there too. The cameraman and presenter insisted. Atomic intervened, explained that their skills were dependant on reflexes and teamwork and that being an athlete doesn’t always mean track and field is involved. After partly suggesting, and partly demanding that a different promo be shot, we settled on the presenter dropping a pen and having the players catch it.



“Winning has its drawbacks”, one of the boys points out after the network news cameras leave. As they settle in to do the rest of the interviews with the gaming press, they seem to know it’s all good preparation for them, and will probably win them some sponsorship. We still wanted to know how they felt about the representation of gamers in the media. No Remorse’s reply: “They had a stereotype in mind and they wanted us to be like that.”