Flashpoint’s goal from day one was to make CS:GO entertaining for all, and they are committing to that promise by hiring a former WWE writer to turn the league’s players into characters of themselves “cranked up to eleven.”
Everyone loves a good bit of trash talk in esports, however personalities can be pretty hard to come by. Some players prefer to hold their tongue, letting their gameplay do the talking instead.
However, Flashpoint is going to turn some of CSGO’s best players into “theatrical” stars — at least, that’s what they’ve promised. How? They’ve hired a WWE writer to help train players to tap into their own personalities, and scale them up to 11.
“We’re going to do some media training with the players, and we have a former WWE writer who’s going to be talking to the players and his job is to work with the players to develop their personalities in the same way that he literally worked with WWE wrestling,” said Christopher ‘MonteCristo’ Mykles
The comments from Monte got a laugh out of Team Envy owner Mike ‘hastr0’ Rufail and fellow Flashpoint caster Duncan ‘Thorin’ Shields, cracking jokes about how exaggerated the writing could get.
“So, is he gonna be like — s0m, this is the part where you grab a chair and crack over Nifty’s head,” laughed hastr0.
There was good reason for skepticism in the Flashpoint camp off making the bold hiring, but Thorin stated that this move could be a game-changer for the league, which might not have the same level of player firepower as ESL Pro League.
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“I was actually concerned when I heard we were bringing in a real WWE writer because obviously WWE does go a bit too silly sometimes and they have those weird things for kids,” he admitted.
“However one area that actually reassured me was that this guy said ‘the best wrestling characters are the ones that are the person just turned up to 11.’ They are cranked up to be theatrical, but they still have some elements of who that person is.
“It’s not like when you make a fake wrestling character that’s really silly. He’s, for example, not going to make a super-quiet person like Daps the swag baller, he’s not going to do that. It’s going to be appropriate to the character of the person as well.”
It’s all about entertaining the audience in a new way that esports hasn’t tapped into before, and making players more marketable than ever.
Given Flashpoint, on paper, doesn’t really boast the star power of Astralis or Natus Vincere, having players and personalities spectators want to watch is a must. Plus, one might hope the week-to-week trash talk between players might become a bit better too.