Interview with Andre "nooky" Utesch

I am here with Andre "nooky" Utesch, one of the german CS:Source legends, primarily winning titles with the international line-up mTw. After playing for the german mousesports in Global Offensive, he has quit playing professionally and we caught up with him for an interview.

 

First off, the question many of the former 1.6 and Source players hear: Which has, in your opinion, been the best CS and why?

Nooky: Well that’s a really tough question. I personally liked 1.6 the most because of the teamplay and the way it was played. But that does not mean the other games are worse or bad - it’s just my personal feeling. CS:S for example was really great when it came down to set tactics, amazing smoke/flash combinations or fakes - e.g. alley towards lower ramp smoke on de_train. Stuff like that is impossible on 1.6 or CS:GO.

CS:GO is by far the most competitive game we had until now - but the reason behind that is not the amazing gameplay, graphics or whatever - the reason are skins / bet and gambling sites and the huge prize money teams can win at the tournaments. Furthermore we got streaming services and way better prepared casters / crews which is a completely different level to the one we had a few years ago.

But still I would love to see some changes in CS:GO to make it more competitive and more skill based so that dumb play gets punished and not rewarded

 

What is one specific flaw that you would want to be fixed in CS:GO?

Nooky: There are a lot of things that I would like to change in the game - but i don’t think they will but when i can only pick one:

I would like to have more tagging / movementspeed reduction when you get hit by an enemy. At the moment everyone is doing A D A D to cover positions or is jumping - it’s nearly impossible to be peeking and holding an angle without an AWP.

 

Do you think that the flaws the game has are being criticised in an exaggerated way by the community?

Nooky: I have the feeling Valve doesn’t really care what the community wants. I mean they add stupid stuff like defusing ropes or whatever you want to call that stuff which is a joke for the professional scene. Now you can always see if someone is defusing or faking with a ministep.

Same goes for changes to maps and lots of other stuff. When I was in Seattle at their headquarters for the beta test, every player who has been there suggested ideas they would have liked to see in the game - as far as I remember 5% maximum of those got implemented.

I mean there is still no split-screen mode for gotv - there are still bad 64 tick servers - still nearly every MM you play on GE you get cheated off the server - the list is long ...

 

Although there might be a few flaws, Global Offensive has surely made the whole CS scene grow in unprecedented fashion. Do you think this growth will continue at this level or is an end in sight?

Nooky: I think it will still grow - maybe not as rapid as it did within the last 2 years but CS and eSports will get bigger and bigger. I mean we all grew up playing games - well most of us ;). So when my generation will be 40+ I assume lots of them will watch some eSports in the evening.

nooky and Michele "zonixx" Köhler at mousesports - image courtesy of hltv

You played CS professionally for roughly 10 years. Apart from those directly relating to playing the game, which skills and character traits helped you the most to stay at such a high level of competitive esports?

Nooky: Most important are self-confidence, determination, passion, persistance and of course a bit of luck. Other than that, tons of practice / study your own games and other players.

 

And which advice would you give anyone trying to get into the competitive scene? Is it just practicing until perfection or is there more to it?

Nooky: Well it’s hard to say - I guess maybe 0,1% or even less really get good enough to compete with the best. But if you really want it you have to give everything and you have to learn from the players who are better than you. And instead of watching matches on twitch, get the GOTV and learn what those top players do different - because that’s the reason they are where they are!

And if you still want to watch the game on livestream - sure thing but don’t forget to watch the GOTV later. Same for your own replays - there is so much more than MM in this game!

 

Going pro surely is a difficult decision to make. Did you ever have any doubt about it, especially at the start?

Nooky: In the start I just loved playing the game and I wanted to compete - the only thing that made it hard when I was already on a higher level was the fact that I had to give up lots of my spare time to become good enough.

You come home from school and you have to practice around 6h a day. But that’s the choice everyone has to make - if you want to be one of the best players you have to give everything. And today it’s even harder than it was 5-10 years ago.

 

ESL One Cologne has once again shown the lack of german teams being able to compete at the highest level. Doesn’t that make you want to come back to help a team like mousesports?

Nooky: I would love to play again but as I said it takes a huge amount of time and I don’t know if I would be able to manage that. I mean a top team got like 5 days practice each week + officials and on top of that there is a big event nearly every 2 weeks nowadays. So if you want to play professionally you can’t really do anything else in my opinion. ESports in LoL, CS, Dota and maybe some other games is at a level where the best players do this as their full time jobs. So in order to do this you have to stop doing anything else and get paid / rewarded so you can actually do this full time.

I myself want to focus on my studies, my stream and my company for now.  

 

Something else Cologne presented once again was the dominance of fnatic. Do you think they’ll be able to maintain this streak of winning majors at Cluj-Napocca or are there teams able to stop them?

Nooky: I think fnatic will still be a top3 teams - maybe they won’t win the next major or the next bigger event but I think it is impossible to win every event. Right now we have some really strong teams like fnatic, EnVy, TSM and Virtus who could beat any team at any event. Behind that we got Na’Vi, NiP, C9, G2, Titan and some other good teams (can’t mention them all) - these teams want to get into that Top4 and I’m sure they will do anything they can. So I think that we will have some really amazing games and events coming up and it will be harder and harder to get into the final - but right now fnatic is the best team in the world

 

Last but not least: Where can people find you on social media?

Nooky: You can find me on twitch, facebook and twitter.

 

Thanks a lot for your time, I wish you best of luck in the future!

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