Hyper’s quest – Sweden’s lost genius and his struggle to overcome the most dominant team of his era
"I believe the little extra a team needs for success is someone who knows Counter-strike, and by that I don't mean someone who knows to shoot some headshots and yell "n00bs!" 'cause that I can learn my grandmother in fifteen minutes. I mean someone who really KNOWS the game and knows how it's supposed to be played on a team level too. Someone to take care of the tactics.
Someone who knows how a team functions and get the team to stay motivated. He should also have an eye for talents in players so he knows if a player should be able to join the team or not. The really good teams have one or more of these players and that's what makes the difference."
-Hyper (fragbite, 2004)
Daniel 'Hyper' Kuusisto was one of the greatest Counter-Strike players of all his generation. Yet, he won only a single major tournament, collected less than $90,000 in team prize winnings and spent less than a year and a half at the top end of the international scene, before retiring abruptly in the midst of one of his high profile NiP team breaking apart. Despite a brief comeback a year and a half later, that was essentially the last the professional CS scene saw of Hyper.
Hyper was one of the best individual players in the world, highly skilled but also with a tactical mind for the flow of a game, a talent rarely possessed by the stars of the CS world. At his peak he combined the game reading aptitude of an elemeNt with the kind of raw skill and aim that a player like f0rest would later use to amaze fans, all in the same body. Under different circumstances, perhaps Hyper's career would have been long and filled with trophies, instead he walked a different path.
Upon entering his individual prime, Hyper had to battle repeatedly with what was then the most dominant Counter-Strike line-up of all time: the mighty SK.swe of 2003. His career essentially began with an upset win over SK and they would be the team to block his path at every turn along his climb to the top. When he finally conquered his enemies in 2004, winning CPL Summer, it marked the end of his quest to overcome SK and be a part of the best CS team in the world. He would then join up with SK and, little could he have known it, his fortunes would begin a gradual decline that would see him out of competitive Counter-Strike entirely less than nine months later.
Building on an upset
Hyper began playing Counter-Strike after becoming injured, meaning he could not compete in football anymore. When his family bought a computer and got broadband internet, he started playing in public servers, anywhere up to 10 hours a day. He had played in some clans during this period, but it wasn't until he met Raphael of ArchAngels that he first entered the competitive scene truly. ArchAngels featured other players who would go on to become pros, such as GoodFella and Zad. The team attended Dreamhack Winter and finished third overall. Dreamhack was far an international tournament back then, in fact most of the top Swedish CS teams themselves did not attend and compete in it. Still, it was enough to earn Hyper an invitation to join caYa.
CaYa competed at NordicLAN Techworld in early January of 2003, losing to ex-team-mate Zad's matrix in the final 4:13 on nuke. Almost three months later, in early April, Hyper and caYa would make headlines by defeating SK.swe over two maps in the online ESWC pre-qualifier. At the time SK were considered one of the strongest teams in the world, having rebuilt their line-up that year, adding in ahl and fisker from 2easy, to complement veteran multiple-time world champion players Potti and HeatoN. SK had demolished their Swedish rivals 9.esu at CPL Cannes three weeks prior, establishing themselves as likely the strongest team in Europe. CaYa's victory was naturally considered a fluke, a product of SK underestimating a relatively unknown opponent in an online qualifier, but it sent out shockwaves around the CS world.
Hyper did not get along with one of the players in caYa and left the team on May 14th, but on same day GoodFella, his old team-mate from ArchAngels, asked him to join up with HiGhLand Online (HLO). HLO were one of the fastest rising teams in the country, having finished second place in Season 2 of the Swedish Esport League (SEL), a tournament that saw each team compete from their own LAN cafe in all matches until the offline finals, though top dogs SK.swe had not competed in that season. As if there were not already a tempting enough offer, the LAN cafe in question was only 15 minutes from Hyper's house, so the former caYa man was quick to agree to join.
Beginning to find a place offline amongst the best teams
Three weeks later, in early June of 2003, the team attended a pre-qualifier for the World Cyber Games Sweden main qualifier. There they defeated vesslan's 9.esu team in an overwhelming 13:3 win on nuke. 9.esu were widely considered the second best team in Sweden and one of the elite sides in the world, having won Clikarena two months early. Hyper would get his first chance to battle SK.swe offline at the SEL Season 3 final on the ninth of July. HLO had stormed the season, finishing in first place, and thus, due to the tournament structure, waited in the final of the offline final for the team who could reach them to contest the season's crown.
SK.swe had failed to win Clikarena, losing twice to the Norwegian powerhouse eoLithic, but had then been able to lure away eoL star elemeNt to join them. ElemeNt was one of the most brilliant tactical minds in CS history, not so much skilled in designing tactics before a game, as is often the domain of the default in-game leader of most teams, as incredibly adept at reading the flow of the game and his opponents, allowing him to pick out the perfect approach for attacking or defending. In adding elemeNt to their line-up, SK.swe were fully expected to become the best team in the world in short order.
When SK.swe reached the final of SEL S3, Hyper and HLO might have imagined this was just the match they had been waiting for, a chance to test themselves against the best in the country, but the outcome proved far from satisfying. SK rolled over HLO 16:7 on nuke and took the SEL title. What had seemed like a simple domestic match-up, with HLO and Hyper far from internationally known and revered names, was in fact the beginning of Hyper's quest to overcome SK.swe and thus elevate himself to the top of the totem pole, both in Sweden and the world. First though, there was the problem of getting out of Sweden and experiencing a real international tournament.
Failure in his first excursion abroad
Hyper's chance to leave Sweden's borders for CS would come in next-to-no time at all, as HLO partnered with German organisation mTw, rebranding themselves as mTw.HLO. With mTw's backing, Hyper and HLO could attend the Esports World Cup (ESWC) in France that July. Reaching the second group stage of the tournament, HLO would lose to both the French team Biznours and vesslan's team9, barely even beating FairGame, another French team. That put them out of the event in 9th-16th, far below the expectations their domestic results would have suggested were reasonable for them. The aftermath of that result was that Hyper was removed from the team, along with Magix, to make way for knoxville and Naikon, former members of the eoLithic team that had finished runners-up at Clikarena.
Become an EYEballer
Hyper could not have known it at the time, but his failure in France had already planted the seed of the most important moment of his professional CS career. At the event he had met vilden and the rest of Frontline[EYE], the name the EYEballers team were going under at the time. After hanging out with him at the event and later finding out he had been removed from HLO, EYE offered him a spot in their team. They were a SEL team, but had yet to experience any big success in any regard. Hyper accepted and officially became an EYEballer on August the seventh.
"You are asking what an impact Hyper had upon joining our team? I'd say he was the difference in us going from being one of the top teams in Sweden to being the team competing with SK."
-vilden (fragbite, 2012)
Ten days after joining, Hyper helped Frontline[EYE] secure a small domestic victory, going undefeated to win an installment of the Rendezvous LAN series. Three weeks later EYE were to compete at the SEL S4 offline finals. Having had a bumpy regular season, including a surprise loss to lesser known PlayIT, Hyper's team would start off at the very bottom of the tournament, having to battle through two higher seeded opponents to potentially reach the final, where the SK.swe were waiting. Hyper and EYE immediately made themselves known as a new force in Swedish CS, dispatching vesslan's Adrenaline, who had won ESWC and finished runners-up at CPL that Summer, and xPerence.se back-to-back to reach said final.
Battling SK.swe for the first time as an EYEballer
The SK.swe that Hyper found himself facing in the final was an even more scary prospect from the one his HLO had locked horns with in the previous SEL final. That SK had still been in the process of integrating elemeNt into their line-up, while this SK.swe had the Norwegian fully integrated and had just won CPL Summer, and the $60,000 for first place, without a single map loss along the way. This SK.swe would go on to be the most dominant team in the first eight years of CS competition. Hyper was running headlong into the path of a Counter-Strike express train, set to flatten him with ease.
This match would set the stage for EYE's ascension as SK's only legitimate domestic competition though, as Hyper and company managed to battle back from a disasterous three CT first half performance on nuke to lose a relatively competitive 12:16 game. Where SK had been dispatching even the best teams in the world with ease, Hyper and his team had not gone down so easily. Perhaps at this point some eyebrows were raised and fans from around the world took note of this scrappy EYE side and their star Hyper. Still, coming close to winning was not the same as winning, a key distinction that teams in contention sometimes lose sight of.
Yet more moments against the mighty SK
With that loss still fresh in mind, Hyper did not have to wait long to have another chance to potentially clash with SK.swe. Less than a week later, the Swedish WCG qualifier rolled around. The World Cyber Games was one of the major international tournaments for Counter-Stike, along with CPL Summer, CPL Winter and the newly established ESWC. With SK.swe in such dominant form, having yet to lose a map since the beginning of their CPL Summer event campaign, nobody was expected to stand a chance of securing the lone spot representing Sweden in South Korea for later that year. EYE moved through the tournament winning game after game to reach the final. This time the game was not close at all, as SK won 13:3 on nuke and Hyper once more saw himself beaten at the last hurdle of a LAN tournament by SK.
Five weeks later, in late October, EYE attended the Swedish qualifier for the Cyber X Games (CXG), a big event in the USA promising a $100,000 first place in their CS tourney, to be held in early January of 2004. SK.swe were, of course, the heavy favourites at the qualifier, having won the WCG gold medal undefeated only a week prior. The Swedish champions were using SpawN, a ronin-like individual star who they had taken in as their fifth man for the WCG, with elemeNt of Norwegian nationality and thus ineligible to play. Hyper met his Swedish nemeses in the upper bracket semi-final and found himself humiliated 13:2 on inferno.
Battling back to reach the final from the lower bracket, he would again find SK in his way. Hyper had now faced SK.swe four times in offline maps and lost all four times. To win this qualifier he would need to not only beat SK, but twice in a row. Amazingly, the first map proved to be a turning point for Hyper's EYE team, now going under the organisational name Gamepoint.AMD. Winning the first half of dust2 8:4, they managed to maintain their lead and push on to a 13:6 win, granting SK their first map loss since the beginning of CPL Summer, way back in late July. SK's 37 map offline winning streak had been snapped, at last, and now Hyper and Gamepoint looked like the first team capable of actually challenging them for the top spot on home soil and abroad.
The top five teams at the qualifier would all receive invitations to CXG, but Hyper was battling for more than just the $2,000 difference between first and second at the qualifier, here he had an opportunity to finally slay SK in emphatic fashion. The deciding map was to be dust2 again. This time, though, SK.swe were more than ready for what they now knew would be a fight. The game went the full distance of MR12 regulation, and it was SK who came out with the win 13:11. Despite losing in the end, after all, Hyper had taken the first step of beating SK in an offline map, something nobody else had done in many months. Now the world looked to Gamepoint as the team who might be capable of being the regular rivals of the team who were otherwise indomitable.
"Why we were playing SK close depended mostly on the face we played against them a lot when we practiced. You always got a feeling that they were not very serious, even during official matches. But there was a reason behind this, they never had to care so much about team-work, they all possessed a ridiculous amount of raw skill so they never had to. We played against them a lot and we couldn’t really compare ourselves to them in that regard, so we had to focus on team-work and sat many hours on listen servers practicing tons of different type of rounds, flashes, grenades and all that, which eventually led to our win at the CXG shootout match and in the CPL Summer 2004 final."
-vilden, EYE team-mate of Hyper's, on why they were able to play SK close (fragbite, 2012)
Becoming the true contenders
Gamepoint was a team that took a different approach to attempting to climb Mt SK. Where other teams continued the old method of recruitment, adding in as many skilled aimers as possible and hoping to match SK's skill level, Hyper and Gamepoint looked more to the approach vesslan had pioneered in his teams. Vesslan's teams had always been second best to HeatoN and Potti's NiP and SK line-ups in terms of skill, being as the latter teams had cornered most of the elite individual players in Sweden, but had found at least a little parity by putting their emphasis on teamplay and more advanced tactics.
Likewise, Hyper and Gamepoint sought to pour many more hours into their tactical approach, to bridge the gap to SK that their raw skills could not. Hyper was a player on the level of even the best SK players individually, and vilden's AWP could shine in big games, but after that there was not enough firepower to take SK's star-packed line-up on in raw aim duels. Now that Gamepoint had seen it was possible to make SK bleed, they would continue down the path their approach had taken them. Hyper's quest seemed closer to reaching its goal than ever.
"My greatest strength as a player is definitely my ability to read the game as well as I can, and also my sense for tactics. My greatest weakness would be that I am a mood player, if I'm in a really bad mood, I play [badly] after, and if I'm in a good mood, I play great."
-Hyper (Gamers.nu, 2004)
In mid November, three weeks after the CXG qualifier, Gamepoint traveled to Denmark for CPL Copenhagen. The European CPL event saw a number of the top teams in the region meeting to battle over a crown which was not comparable to the bigger bi-seasonal CPL events, but still stood as a solid medium sized event in its own right. SK.swe were of course in attendance, looking to add another title to their haul for the year. In-game leader elemeNt had announced he would be sitting out of the event, due to school obligations taking up his practice time, but had contributed his tactical ideas to the team nonetheless.
Gamepoint made it through the first four rounds of the tournament without giving up 10 rounds to a single team, bringing them to the upper bracket final and their first meeting with SK at the event. Playing on nuke, the map SK had crushed Hyper on twice in the past, SK came out in truly fearsome form, crushing Gamepoint 14:3 and sending them to the lower bracket. A tight overtime game on train against the German dream-team of mousesports, seeing GMPO escape with a 16:12 win, put them back into the final and gave them another shot at SK. The first map would be nuke again and while Gamepoint played much closer this time, even getting to 10 rounds, they still fell all the same.
SK's wins in Copenhagen brought their map record since the beginning of CPL Summer to 44 wins and a single loss. Hyper's task in beating SK was not just to beat the best team, but the best team to have ever played Counter-Strike. Hyper's offline record against SK now read one win and seven losses. No matter the heights his individual play hit or his team collectively rose to, unless they could beat SK they would never be considered the best. The North American scene noted that a worthy contender to SK had arisen, but there was no way of knowing how GMPO's performances would translate to the international circuit, extending outside of merely European play.
"We have to work on some certain perspectives in our game play such as improving our team play and our CT play on some maps. We also tend to lose a lot of rounds due to carelessness and lack of routine in certain situations. We have to work on that to become more stable and improve our results versus worse teams. We can beat mousesports, for example, with 16-12 (overtime) and then play a game versus a clan which is much worse and have the same result, all due to lack of routine."
-Hyper after CPL Copenhagen (Gamers.nu, 2003)
Heading stateside for the first time
Another change of organisational name saw Gamepoint.AMD adjust their name to Team64.AMD. With their new name they headed across the Atlantic for CPL Winter and CXG in the USA, taking place over late December and early January, respectively. With a potential $130,000 of prize money up for grabs, over the two events, Hyper had a chance to quickly boost his career earnings with some big performances.
The first couple of games went very smoothly, quickly reaching the winning score, but then Hyper's Team64 found themselves facing a tricky opponent earlier than usual. In the upper bracket quarter-final, 64 were facing NoA, a team made up of famous players from both North America and Europe. The experimental line-up had been put together, officially, only a month prior to the tournament. Initially flopping at a qualifier for CXG, few knew what to expect from the unusual side, as displayed by their 27th seed. Playing on cbble, 64 would become one of many teams to realise that this NoA team were having the tournament of their lives, winning seemingly every pistol round and blowing teams out of the server with raw skill. NoA won the game 13:5 and Hyper's team were into the lower bracket significantly earlier than they would have expected to be.
Smashing their way to lower round 7, they met United5, the last American team in the tournament. Crushing them 13:7 put 64 through to the final six teams. Hyper was three wins away from reaching the final, where SK were surely due to be waiting. The opponent in the lower semi-final was mousesports, the German team they had edged in an overtime win on train at CPL Copenhagen a month ago. Mousesports were not just the best German team, they were the most deadly line-up the country had ever produced, stacking together star names like Blizzard, Johnny_R, gore and neo. The rematch would take place on train, the same map as in Denmark, and this time mouz came out on top, taking the win 13:9. 64 were out of the CPL and now had only a decider for fifth place to play in Dallas. Playing on fire, a map Europeans never played on, they lost to Brazil's MiBR 11:13 to leave in sixth place.
Hyper had come into CPL Winter thinking his impressive performances against SK, the only team to even beat them in over 45 games the dominant Swedish team had played, would mean they would be top contenders for the title in Dallas. Instead, they had struggled to handle an on-fire NoA and finally been eliminated in a revenge game against mouz, another team loaded with skill.
"We definitely went to CPL Winter 2003 with the expectations of making it into the top three. That CPL was very similar to CPL Winter 2005 though, where all the best teams attended, which should not be forgotten. Even though our goal was always to win, we knew we could beat any team on a good day, top three was more realistic in a tournament like that.
There are mainly two reasons as to why we didn't manage to get there. The first reason was that there was only Hyper who played at his capacity individually, the other four of us failed to do so when it mattered. Consequently, the second reason for our failure logically follows, and it was simply because that was our first trip to a Dallas CPL. The tournament that we heard so much about, that we had seen so many times from watching HLTV the years before etc. It was simply too much to take in and at the same time play our game as we should have (or even above that level) to reach a top three placing."
-vilden on his team's CPL Winter sixth place (fragbite, 2012)
A disappointing second event but with a bright spot
If missing out on a top three finish at CPL Winter was crushing, then finding out that CXG's tournament would never take place was deeply disappointing. Incompetence on the part of the organisers left all the teams waiting at the venue for the tournament to begin, which it never would. To try and save face, the organisers arranged some exhibition games, claiming the winner of each would win $10,000 prize money. One of the exhibition games set-up was 64 vs. SK. The two hadn't met at the CPL, but now they would fight once on American soil. Playing on nuke, 64 managed to secure their second ever offline win over SK, taking the game 16:11. For the first time, Hyper had beaten SK on nuke and in doing so brought his record up to two wins to seven losses.
Even with that loss to SK, the top Swedish team could simply claim that the exhibition nature of the game meant little. SK had won every event they had entered since CPL Summer, including two SEL seasons, the WCG gold, CPL Copenhagen and CPL Winter. Over that span of time of five months, SK.swe had racked up $144,000 in prize money. Hyper's team had won only $25,000 over the same period, so their two map victories and numerous second places seemed little more than moral victories.
A slow start to the year
While the year had begun with the CXG win over SK, after that there was a lul, as 64, now renamed back to EYE, had no tournaments lined up. Hyper attended the SEL S5 finals as a stand-in for HLO. CaYa, which included known Swedish players Bullen, Nebb and Calippo. SEL had begun to fall apart and teams like SK and EYE were no longer competing. As a result, vesslan's Adrenaline, who had finished fourth at the CPL, and dsn and cArn's xP.se were expected to take the title. Hyper and his team had other ideas, easily beating Adrenaline 16:8 on dust2 in the semi-final. In the final they just edged out xP.se 19:17 in overtime, taking the SEL title, Hyper's first of his career.
On May 15th, it was announced that vilden would not be able to play with EYE for the ESWC pre-qualifier Rendezvous 11 events later in the month, with school obligations occupying his time. EYE would use Calippo, who had won SEL S5 with Hyper in HLO.caYa as the replacement. At the ESWC pre-qualifier, EYE were upset on inferno by a mix-team called PO&CO, but qualified to the main qualifier nonetheless. At Rendezvous 11, EYE would face top Danish team The Titans in the upper bracket final, narrowly winning 16:14 on train to reach the final. There, they lost 14:16 on dust2, but then rolled the Danes 16:6 on nuke to take the event.
More trouble at home
The loss to PO&CO could be written off as being due to vilden's absence and having to integrate Calippo, so winning Rendezvous seemed to have righted the ship and they looked to be good again. At the ESWC qualifier, in mid June, they would find that they were far from their best form. A crushing 7:13 loss to Bullen and walle's spiXel in the upper bracket, on nuke, put them into the lower bracket. SpiXel at least were a team on the rise, but a 9:13 loss, again on nuke, to Ownage, was a result which should not have been possible for one of the world's best teams. Only the top three teams would go to ESWC and EYE had finished fourth. Clearly Hyper and his men had questions to ask of themselves.
"That Crw couldn’t come with us to CPL Summer came as a surprise for everybody and from what I remember we didn’t have much time to replace him. GudeN knew Iskall since his time in a team called epic and we had all been playing mix games with him, so we were all aware that he had the skill. Although his strengths lie more in his personality than skills in-game, he was good at communicating with the team and always had a smile on his face. A nice, calm person that was awesome to hang out with, I just think we prioritized that instead of raw skill."
-vilden on Iskall being brought in to replace Crw at CPL Summer 2004 (fragbite, 2012)
A month after the qualifier, it was announced that EYE member Crw would not be competing with them at the CPL Summer event, which was only two weeks away. Hyper's team had always showcased an advanced tactical approach to the game, but they would now make the most of their fortnight of practice, going incredibly in-depth in that respect. While most teams would be understandably nervous in using a stand-in, EYE would come into CPL Summer fully practiced.
Warming up for the Summer
"Before this tournament we had a couple of bootcamps where I believe we spent our time doing something no other team had done to the same extent before, at least from what I believe myself. We sat down making so many advanced tactics (in comparison to what we'd experienced before with other teams and teams we had played in ourselves) with flashes and grenades thrown at specific pixels on the monitor together with a time, and a fake – you name it. Hours were spent on this instead of just playing lots of practice games. Furthermore, it had the exact effect we wanted: it didn’t really matter how we played individually, we would win the matches anyway, simply due to fantastic team work."
-vilden on EYE's CPL Summer preparation (fragbite, 2012)
Hyper made his second trip over to the USA for a CPL event. Coming into the event, fans were uncertain of who the favourite for the event was. SK.swe had fallen off in dominance over the year, as elemeNt had departed for NoA. With an all-Swedish line-up, SK had fallen in 5th-8th at ESWC, being shockingly upset by little known Russian team Virtus.Pro on dust2. As the tournament began for EYE it was clear they were playing at a higher level than anyone could possibly have anticipated. Over their first five matches they won without letting their opponents even reach seven rounds won, in fact they went 65:19 in rounds over those games. Amongst the victims were Team3D, formerly the best team in North America and a line-up still stacked with star names; mouz, fresh with new star recruits and hopes of rekindling the success of late 2003; and D!E, a West Coast American team who had shocked many in reaching so far into the tournament.
In the upper bracket final EYE met SK.swe. Despite his 2:7 historical record offline against SK, Hyper knew this was an SK who were no longer the strongest line-up in CS history, at last they were vulnerable. The map was dust2 and EYE came out on top 13:9, moving into the final. SK won an overtime lower bracket final to reach the final themselves, meaning Hyper would have to do something he had never done to accomplish a goal he had long desired: beat SK twice in a row to win an American CPL event. As a rookie Hyper had watched Potti, HeatoN and ahl playing in the final of CPL Winter 2001 against X3, now he would be facing the Swedish trio in an American CPL final and his victory over 3D had already seen him dispatch two ex-X3 members from that final.
The 13:9 upper bracket final game had suggested that EYE were in form but not entirely out of range for SK, who had taken the most rounds from them in the tournament. The Grand Final would be a clinic for EYE and Hyper, as they ran over SK 13:5 on inferno, took the title and the $30,000 prize. Hyper had comprehensively beaten SK, the team he had battled with again and again, so many times unsuccessfully. His quest was over, Hyper's team was now the best in the world. A struggle that had lasted more than a year had finally yielded and seen Hyper cement his claim as a great player. His offline record against SK now stood at a very respectable 4:7.
"I've always known we had the potential to beat them and beat them big. The hard thing is to do it in a tournament, when it really matters. Because you have to have a lot of confidence and show them no respect. Just play your own game stick to that, show them no respect. The moment you show them respect then they'll run over you like a train.
[...]
We lost like four finals in a row to them, so they were kind of a mind ghost. Now we've won three [games] against them in a row, so now we're their mind ghost."
-Hyper, after beating SK in the final of CPL Summer (GotFrag, 2004)
Just over a month after the CPL, Hyper attend the European Nations Cup (ENC) offline final, a tournament in which national teams made up of players from different line-ups competed. Representing Sweden, Hyper helped his team dominate Finland and Austria to take the title and ensure Sweden showed its prowess in the European region. Three days later, it was announced that Hyper had accepted an offer to join SK as their new in-game leader. EYE had suffered problems prior to the CPL, leaving the team unable to attend on sponsor money and forcing vilden to finance the whole trip out of his own money. As a result, despite EYE being recognised as the best line-up in the world, it was easy enough to see why Hyper would accept a move to a more skilled line-up, which also had impeccable financial backing and could promise him the best salary in the world.
One has to wonder, also, if the difficult nature of Hyper's quest hadn't played a role in the move too, as letting SK rebuild their line-up and having to again fight them with a less skilled line-up might have seemed an unnecessarily difficult task. Hyper had helped carry his team to the top and victory over an opponent that had once seemed unbeatable, now he was ready to accept another reward in the form of being headhunted to become the new in-game leader of their team. The world looked to Hyper to be the new elemeNt and usher in a new era of dominance over the CS world.
"When I started playing this game I was watching NiP beat X3 in the CPL finals and I remember I wanted to be just as good as them and my biggest goal was to play with them. And when you get the chance to make a dream come true, I think you should grab that chance. Further more SK has a more stable organisation and I won't have to worry of making it to an event anymore."
-Hyper, upon joining SK in September (SK Gaming, 2004)
Debuting at the World Cyber Games
In early October, SK were ready to head to the World Cyber Games Grand Final with a line-up of HeatoN, Potti, Hyper, fisker and SpawN. At the last minute SpawN fell ill, leaving the team to bring in sixth man ahl as his replacement. The event was to be played in Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, a slightly different version of Counter-Strike in which grenades behaved differently. Smashing their way through the first two rounds of the playoffs, losing no maps and never having more than eight rounds taken in a map, SK.swe advanced to the semi-final and into contention for a medal. For the previous WCG, Hyper had been forced to sit at home and observe HeatoN and Potti winning the prestigious honour of the gold medal, now he was playing alongside them for a chance of helping them repeat that feat.
The opponent in the semi-final was the same team SK had beaten in the final last year: Team3D. Hyper's EYE had crushed 3D on nuke at CPL Summer, so few expected much from the American team, who were long since past their prime days of placing top three at CPLs. The opening map was train and SK looked to be flying, winning the first half 10:2 on the dominant CT side. Taking the game 13:8, they moved to one map win away from a finals spot. The second map was inferno and 3D looked strong in the first half, winning eight Terrorist rounds. On the pistol round of SK's CT half, moto pulled off his miracle 1v4 from behind a box inside the A site, winning the round for his team and propelling them towards a 13:8 win of their own.
The decider was on dust2 and SK began on the dominant T side. A dreadful two round half score for them ensured they were all but out and 3D sealed the deal in seven rounds, eliminating Hyper's hopes of a WCG gold medal. Now he would have to face South Korea's MaveN for a chance to take the bronze. MaveN featured players who would later be known as lunatic-hai, but at this time Korea had never produced a top CS team, so they were expected to fall easily to the stars of SK. Instead SK found themselves immediately shocked with an opening map overtime loss on train. Winning heavily on cbble it seemed that they had woken up in time and they headed into a deciding map on aztec. MaveN surprised once more, winning 13:4 and sending SK home to Sweden with no medal at all.
A test back on home soil
That WCG result had been a shock to the system, failing to even secure the bronze medal after all. At the end of the month was the Nollelva LAN on home soil, with most of the top Nordic teams planning to attend. Potti decided to sit the event out, so SpawN was back into the starting line-up and ready to compete. Facing elemeNt's NoA team, who were using XeqtR as a stand-in, they won 16:8 on train in the upper bracket. Next up was icsu, a little known team containing no recognisable names. When icsu beat SK 16:12 on dust2 the sky seemed to have fallen for SK, sent to the lower bracket by players who shouldn't even have been able to compete with them.
Down in the lower bracket, SK met walle and Bullen's spiXel on train. SpiXel had finished runners-up at ESWC that year, so they established themselves as a strong team, but had since brought in miniw, walle's younger brother, and veteran AWPer Rwa, so the strength of their new line-up was not entirely set. Coming into Nollelva, spiXel looked to be in form, having beaten an NoA line-up, who were using a stand-in of their own, at OsloLAN. SK found themselves pushed to the absolute limit, barely surviving a multiple overtime game on train to reach the final. In the final would rematch the icsu team who had handed them their first loss, needing to twin two maps to icsu's one, due to the tournament being double elimination.
The first map was a nervous affair for SK, they came through a close game on inferno 16:13 to earn a deciding map for the title. Played on nuke, a map Hyper had lost numerous big finals games on in his career, the would-be best team in the world were able to convincingly beat the upstars by a score of 16:8 and win the title. Failure at WCG could be somewhat offset by pointing to the team's problems with SpawN dropping out a week before, but losing to icsu here had been a warning sign that SK were not the world beaters they had imagined. Still, many expected Hyper's team to be one of the favourites for the CPL Winter event that would end the year in December. Only problem was they would never get there.
In late November, SK competed at the offline final for SEL Season 7. In the upper bracket final and grand final they faced a mix-team going under the name smilE, made up of veteran players of the Swedish scene zaffe, MegatoN, Magix and Nebb. The line-up also included a new name who would figure heavily in the following year: zet. SK easily handled smilE, beating them on nuke 16:4 and 16:3 to take the SEL title.
End of an era at SK
SK had been associated with elite level Counter-Strike teams ever since the arrival of HeatoN and Potti in the Summer of 2002, but in late 2004 SK were to lose their team and its stars entirely. The players refused to sign new contracts with the team, arguing over salary amounts and profit sharing, so the German organisation decided to send its German SK line-up, used only for the domestic German league EPS prior to that, to CPL Winter in the Dallas, not the Swedish side. Hyper had to sit at home in Sweden as NoA famously won the event and his ex-team-mates in EYE finished runners-up. The circumstances surrounding SK's absence mean the question will always be there, hanging in the air, over whether they could have beaten NoA and EYE and won that CPL.
On the first of January, 2005, it was announced that the line-up of SK.swe had moved to a new organisation called Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP). NiP had been the clan HeatoN, Potti and ahl had all played in back in 2001, before lack of stable sponsors had forced them to join up with SK. This revived edition of the clan would be a real organisation, with full backing even an agent who had experience dealing with professional hockey and football players. If the players had been upset with the way SK had handled matters, now was their chance to show there was a better way.
When vilden, Hyper's ex-team-mate from EYEballers, was recruited on February 24th, the world was stunned. NiP had seemingly gathered together all the best Swedish players, and thus many of the world's best players, in a single team. Fans and pundits expected this team to become the best in the world and predicted they could potentially achieve similar levels of domination as the NiP line-up of 2001 and the SK.swe line-up of 2003. If late 2004 had been a disappointment for SK, as it clearly had been, then their expectations for 2005 seemed more positive than ever. Now was Hyper's chance to make up for lost time in filling up his trophy cabinet.
Vilden's addition not only helped crush any future prospect of EYE contending with NiP, but also allowed Hyper to give up the role of in-game leader. The ex-SK star's style of tactical influence was more one of reading the game and making good suggesting. One can compare his partnership with vilden to that of elemeNt's with XeqtR in eoL and NoA: elemeNt would read the game and tell XeqtR how the opposition was playing, then XeqtR would choose which strategy, of those he had prepared, they should execute. Just as that Norwegian's partnership made them one of the most dangerous tactical forces in the world, so the EYE combo had enabled Hyper and vilden's teams to compete with even the impossibly talented SK.swe line-ups, matching their skills with superior tactics.
The beginning of the fall
NiP's first event was a European CPL event in Barcelona, Spain. With teams like Brazil's MiBR and America's compLexity making the trip, this looked to be the most competitive European CPL event in history. NiP were using a line-up of Hyper, vilden, SpawN, ahl and HeatoN, with fisker being resigned to the bench and Potti having gone inactive. NiP's first match saw them instantly stunned, but not as much as the rest of the CS world that was looking on. Facing Spain's x6tence, a team that had never accomplished anything of note and was known only for the occasional antics of lone star Musamban1, NiP were soundly beaten 16:9 on inferno.
In the lower bracket NiP smashed their way through teams to reach a match-up with MiBR. The Brazilian team featured dangerous new AWP star cogu, but also ex-SK in-game leader elemeNt, as the young Norwegian prodigy had been brought in during one of his many excursions abroad. NiP were able to hang on in a tight game and win 16:14 on dust2. After easily handling France's GoodGame, NiP had broken into the last three teams remaining. CoL awaited them, a line-up who had shown their unexpected quality with a fifth place finish at the CPL Winter event only five months or so earlier. Powered by star AWPer fRoD, the coL line-up had added in veteran clutch player sunman to the team. CoL were able to easily beat NiP, winning 16:8 on inferno to eliminate Hyper and his team in third place.
Even if a third place finish had been below expectations, especially with such a shocking loss to an unknown team like x6tence, the NiP players and their fans could perhaps put the result down to early teething problems. Next time they would come back stronger, surely? Less than a week later Hyper attended Rixhack, a domestic LAN, with NiP. The event boasted no big name teams, so NiP rolled through the bracket to the upper semi-final. There, they met a mix-team going under the name Skolpojkarna2 (translation: schoolboys2). The mix had, with a slightly different line-up, won a LAN already that year. This line-up featured Red, GoodFella, sNajdan, dsn and cArn. Each had player long been playing in top teams, domestically at the very least, over the previous year, but they were very much a mix team, with no legitimate experience playing as a unit.
NiP again found themselves upset by an unlikely opponent, losing 9:16 on dust2 and being cast down to the lower bracket. Reaching the final, Hyper's NiP badly needed to dispatch Skolpojkarna with ease, to show they were a legitimate elite level team in the world. Winning 16:12 on nuke in the opener was a star, though the match had its shaky moments. The deciding match would be on the same map and this time NiP fell apart entirely, being rolled 16:5 by the mix-team. Not winning CPL Spain had been one, but losing to a mix-team at home was another entirely. NiP would have little time to fix whatever problems they were going through, as qualifiers for ACON5 and ESWC loomed the following week.
Humiliation at home
ACON5 was a new tournament boasting a grand final and qualifiers around the world. Around mid May, NiP attended the Swedish qualifier. Easily handling the group stage opposition, they moved into the playoff bracket. In the first round they were instantly upset by a Norwegian team9 line-up nobody was expecting anything of. The team's star player, REAL, was only 15 years old, and would go on to become one of the great 1.6 players, but right now they were nobodies. Shaking off the loss, NiP progressed through the bracket with ease all the way to the final, getting revenge on team9 16:8 on the way.
In the final they met SSV Lehnitz, made up of familiar names: Megaton, Magix, sNajdan, solido and zet. Some of the names were players the NiP players had been competing against domestically stretching back years. The key new name was zet, as the rising star's impact on this game would be one of the sparks that would see him elevated to a top talent in the domestic scene. SSV defeated NiP 16:9 on inferno to take the spot at the Global Final for ACON5 and leave NiP with nothing. There was no time to even mull over what had just happened, as the ESWC qualifier was held the day after. This time NiP would not only be upset, but entirely humiliated, as they lost in the group stage to a mix-team called "teh loserz".
Where Skolpojkarna had been filled with quality names, all experienced and with known skills, this mix-team featured a couple of former Swedish pros, who had long since gone inactive from the top end of the scene, but most embarrassingly a player called gosey. Gosey was known in the community as the file admin of sites like sogamed and then SK Gaming, most of the NiP player's former home. NiP had been thrashed 13:2 by their former file admin, the guy who used to ask them for their POV demos after they'd played an official match. NiP's dreams of being the best team in the world died in that moment. They would go on to win the qualifier, even beating SSV Lehnitz in the final, but that one loss seemed to perfectly encapsulate the incredibly skilled line-up's inability to put together any kind of consistent level of performance.
11 days after the ESWC qualifier, it was announced that vilden, SpawN, fisker, ahl and Hyper had left the NiP organisation. Vilden later revealed that an argument over whether or not he should be removed from the line-up, with HeatoN apparently placing the blame for the loss at Rixhack on the ex-EYE player's shoulders. With HeatoN a figure-head of the organisation, removing him was not an option and thus the players had to leave en masse. The NiP experiment had failed in its first incarnation of that era.
"When you say it is confusing, [how poorly we did], imagine how confusing it was for me/us! We just spoke about how well the practice went before CPL winter 2004 with EYE, it was even better when we played with NiP. There were not many practice games that we lost with that team either. So, it was actually working, but we didn’t bring that play to the tournaments we played in. Then again, the hype itself about the team beforehand actually was the reason to why the team broke up, according to how I look at it at least. It goes a little hand-in-hand with how you just expressed your question, in totally negative terms, which is logical since everybody thought we would win anything.
You can look at it this way too; NiP placed 3rd at CPL Barcelona and 2nd at Rixhack at their first two tournaments. Instead of putting all focus into which teams we lost against. On all the websites and forums in the community it was spoken about in terms of what teams we lost against. Don’t get me wrong though, I understand it is logical that people do that. But if we'd ignored what everybody thought and just looked at the results alone and didn’t let the hype that was around our team bring us down, I’m confident that we eventually would've started winning some tournaments. But the hype around us destroyed our patience and ultimately led to us going to SK instead.
As for Emil [HeatoN] not wanting me to be recruited into NiP, that's something you'd have to discuss with him to get the story straight. From what I have heard I was ahl and Hyper’s first choice for whom they wanted to recruit. SpawN and HeatoN were in the beginning more into bringing in walle to the team, but as Hyper didn’t want to be in-game leader SpawN agreed to give me a shot instead of walle. That’s how I got the story at least.
The break-up came after Rixhack when Emil told people in other teams that it was pretty much my fault that we lost the tournament to Skolpojkarna. The combination of not discussing it with the team first and the fact that ahl, SpawN, Hyper and I did not agree eventually made us leave NiP for SK. We wanted to stay in NiP, but since HeatoN’s name is very much correlated with the organization as such, the owners decided that we had to leave if we still wanted to play together, which we eventually did when we teamed up with SK and Snajdan. There are no hard feelings between me and Emil though; CS has to be looked at professionally and be separated from one's personal life!"
-vilden, on his time in NiP (fragbite, 2012)
While vilden, SpawN and ahl would reunite with fisker, joining up with SK, Hyper went inactive entirely. The new SK.swe line-up would win back-to-back CPL events that year, establishing themselves as the best in the world at the end of 2005. To this day many have wondered why Hyper did not go with the team to SK, the player himself citing being burned out from playing. After so long battling to overcome SK, doing so and then joining up with SK, one might have expected his career from there on would have been a little less stressful, winning trophies without having to do as much heavy lifting. Instead, Hyper had found himself placed under more strain, doing his best to buoy up SK and NiP line-ups which had repeatedly underperformed, despite housing some of the game's biggest star names.
"I've been asking myself that very question [of why I didn't join SK] several times and I haven't come up with any decent answer really. The only thing I know for sure is that I was pretty burnt up and sick of the game. I also wanted the Summer off, to hang out with my friends and go to the trip I'd booked to Cyprus with them.
[...]
No, I'm not all happy with my decision if I look back at it. It was a wild summer for sure, but I regret that I quit playing CS, I guess I didn't really think of what to do after the Summer."
-Hyper, on his decision not to go to SK after NiP (fragbite, 2006)
A brief comeback amounts to little
In April of 2006, almost a year after Hyper had disappeared from the competitive scene, his name surfaced in the team list for the new Swedish ENC squad. Fans wondered if perhaps this meant he had been secretly practicing, showing a good enough level that the captain of the squad had decided to include him. Indeed, that theory seemed to have merit as he was announced to have made a comeback on the fourth of May, joining Raw Gaming. Raw were not a well known team, but they did contain some names worth mentioning. One was archie, a team-mate of Hyper's from his CPL winning days in EYE. The other three: allen, hibb and hyrule, would all go on to be known, to differing degrees, over the coming years. With fans imagining a Hyper in peak form, having adapted to the 2006 style of play, they fully expected him to climb his way back to the top of the game.
"I've gotten a bunch of offers since I quit gaming, several required me to move to another continent to play in the team and I didn't quite feel like doing that. The reason for why I chose Raw is that they are very sympatic and nice and they also give me the time and conditions I need to perform at max again."
-Hyper, on joining Raw (fragbite, 2006)
Raw's first offline event would be the ESWC qualifier, attempting to reach that international event in France. Losing in overtime to a Swedish check-six team and an unknown arCade side, early expectations for how good Hyper and Raw could be seemed to have been overblown. Immediately after that qualifier, they competed at WSVG Dreamhack, losing again to x6 in a close game, 14:16, in the upper bracket, then falling to little known serious gaming, Finland's finest, in the lower bracket. A final placing of 9th-12th was not particularly impressive.
It had previously been announced that Raw Gaming would attend the WSVG Intel Summer Championship (ISC) event in Dallas that Summer, essentially the CPL Summer event rebranded, but those disappointing domestic results caused the organisation to change their minds entirely. Instead, there would be no trip to Dallas for Hyper. On the 21st of July, less than three weeks after the announcement that the Dallas trip had been cancelled, Hyper announced his retirement from the team. The career of one of the Sweden's CS geniuses had come to a final close.
Underrated but not entirely unappreciated
"Hyper is definitely overlooked when people are debating the best player ever and all those kinds of discussions. To me Hyper was what f0rest became later in 2008, 2009. If Hyper continued playing CS, he would definitely be mentioned in the same context as f0rest, SpawN etc. He had a calm playing style, smooth movements but at the same time quite aggressive. Similar to how I experienced f0rest's way of playing CS. He also had sick timing on when to get his kills, the kind of ability zet possessed that ultimately made him one of the best players during 2006. He was also very smart strategically and was always giving me feedback on tactics and calls I made in-game. He could also handle the AWP pretty well; he rarely used it due to his insane skills with the rifles.
It wasn’t that I didn't understand that he went to SK when they could offer him a monthly salary, more like the stupid kid he was when he refused to practice individually in the beginning of 2005. He started playing WoW instead and got hooked. From that point on he was lost and never came back as the player he once was, which was very tragic if you ask me. May you burn in hell, Morgath! (his stupid dwarf that he was playing)."
-vilden on Hyper (fragbite, 2012)
When discussions are had over the best Swedish Counter-Strike players of all time, indeed the best players of any nationality, Hyper's name understandably is quite far back on most people's lists. He didn't win enough big trophies or play long enough to truly create the kind of legacy that the all-time great players can boast. Yet, at his peak, Hyper was one of the very best individual players of all time, both for his skills and the impact he could have on a game from a tactical overview. That he spent the energies of the beginning of his peak battling against the most dominant team of all time, to that point in time, makes for a great tale to tell, but means his resume lacks for some of the first places it could otherwise have proudly bore, had he played in a different era.
Hyper did have his moment in the sun though, in beating SK.swe and winning CPL Summer 2004 undefeated, with victories coming by such large margins over all the teams in attendance. In that moment, EYE were the best team in the world and Hyper was the best player in the world. His quest had been long and with many hardships to overcome along the way, difficulties which had broken many potentially great players and teams before him. But in that moment he had achieved his goal, his quest had been completed and he had moved past his nemeses to reach the very top of the CS world.
Joining up with SK should have been the opportunity for him to make up for all the missed opportunities of EYE, now a member of the team who potentially could dominate the international scene and win any tournament they entered. Instead, that part of his career is remembered more for the upsets SK, and later NiP, suffered at the hands of teams they were considered better than. One can't really lay that blame on Hyper's shoulders, it was clear from SK's gradual demise before his arrival that the team suffered from motivation issues, with some of their players having won practically everything a year prior. The game was moving into a more tactical and teamplay-orientated era, so SK's old approach of loading up with the most firepower and having loose tactics could no longer keep them at the very top.
"I'd say EYE was more of a friends' clan than SK. In SK we always played on LAN which led to a very intense situation when we spent so much time together and met each other almost every day. In EYE we only met at competitions and the training part was mostly executed on Internet, with a bootcamp prior to big tournaments as an exception. So SK felt a lot more proffesional but meanwhile also harder, I believe you fly at each other more often which never is good."
-Hyper, comparing EYE and SK (fragbite, 2006)
Perhaps the real tragedy of Hyper's career is that EYE were not in a position to offer him terms comparable to those SK could use to convince him to become their new in-game leader. If he had stayed in EYE, with what was already a very solid core, then not only would he have shined as the star in their victories, but their team was placed to be one of the very best in the world for the next year or so, if they were all able to stay together. Certainly, breaking up his partnership with vilden at that time was a crime against beautiful Counter-Strike.
"[Hyper] was so good, I think he might have been the best player back then. For sure [he is underrated], he was a lot better than some of the players who are remembered from that time. That's one of the reasons that I thought we were really good back in 2004 and he was a really good player, but we never really got to show it."
-HeatoN, Hyper's team-mate in SK (SK Gaming, 2010)
In the end, Hyper had a good career, in the context of his opposition, but goes down as one of the great "what if?" cases in CS history. Supremely talented, equipped with a determined mind to break down the more cerebral aspects of the game and capable of elevating his teams beyond just his ability to shoot wonderful headshots, Hyper was one of the great players, even if his career accomplishments can't match up to those ahead of him in the historical hall of fame. Still, his quest proved a success in the end. Faced with the impossible, he achieved the improbable.
"Aim, team play and intelligence. You are nothing in Counter-Strike if you lack one. Aim is practical and the easiest to learn among the three. The two others are theoretical and harder to learn. Team play usually comes as routine, by practicing with your team, though you've got to have a good sense for it. And last but not least, intelligence, if you are born stupid there's nothing you can do, you will need intelligence in this game, I'm afraid. And you need it to predict your enemy's next move, to put yourself in good positions and situations and to read in between the lines, such as how you are going to break through their defense."
-Hyper, on the qualities a good player needs (Gamers.nu)
Photo credit: fragbite
