The Act of Anticipating
How Brett Novits led his Counter-Strike team to victory
Rebecca Wolff
It was the final map in the series when junior anthropology and political science major Brett "Prospektion" Novits got ready for the knife round. Whoever wins this will dictate which side they start on — terrorists or counterterrorists.
Prospektion, captain of Miami University’s Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) team, prepared for this video game the same way he always does — strategizing with his team, 45 minutes of warm-up and a five minute break from his computer.
The pistol round (the first round of each match where the only weapon players can use is their pistol) kicks off inside a map called Vertigo, which places the players on top of a skyscraper in a nameless city. The rooftop appears to be under construction as yellow cranes and random equipment litter the scene.
Miami starts off as the terrorists.
“It’s easy when you watch things to see what you did wrong,” Prospektion said, just 30 seconds after we began reviewing the footage from the round.
But that’s one thing about CS:GO — there’s always something happening, and time passes at an impossible rate. The structure of the game is set up a lot like volleyball, except instead of spandex and a net, players have specialty chairs and headsets. Each game is broken up into three maps, and each map is a best-of-30-round. Each round can be two and a half minutes at most.
However, the team prepares for hours just so everyone is ready when the clock starts ticking.
Prospektion and his four teammates use Room 114 in King Library for practices, which he tries to organize at least twice a week. Theory practice, which is typically held on Saturdays, is where they talk about the game and what they would do in certain situations without really playing it out. They go over past matches with demo review, as Prospektion calls it, which is equivalent to film review in football.
As the team captain, Prospektion acts as a sort of manager and coach to the other four players. He sets up every match, coordinates every practice, holds tryouts and helps plan strategies.
“I’ve played a lot of games, but Counter Strike is the one that captivates me at a competitive level because it is the most balanced game I’ve ever played,” Prospektion said.
Within each round, the main objective of the terrorists is to plant a bomb, and the counter terrorists have to diffuse it before it goes off. Whoever finds success wins the round. After each round, the screen resets and they go again. After round 15, they switch sides, and the counter terrorists become the terrorists and vice versa.
Every map starts with a pistol round, meaning the only weapons they can use are their pistols.
“RedHawks baby, kawkaw!” said one of Prospektion’s teammates.
A light comes across the screen and blinds our view of the game for a few seconds. Prospektion paused the game to explain what had just happened. Someone had set off a flashbang which is a weapon used to blind an opponent.
“We’re about to see another one right now,” he said. “Then you’ll see I corrected him for it.”
It was thrown by a member of Prospektion’s team. The teammate had used it to blind the opponent in case they were waiting around the corner they were about to round. But even if the opposing team saw the flash first, they’d know Miami’s team would be right there and start shooting anyway.
Prospektion doesn’t speak much during these games. He has another teammate who acts as the team's “quarterback” and calls plays and strategies as he sees fit. Prospektion only speaks when he feels he needs to — either to call out a bad play or notify his team about the opposing team’s location.
He makes his kills with the same seamless efficiency. He leans forward in his chair just before his character shoots an opponent from below.
CS:GO is the most balanced game he’s ever played which is why it appeals to him competitively. Everyone starts off on a bare-bones level. Experience and understanding is key. The maps have tons of lingo, and if you don’t know exactly where everything is before you even enter, you’ve already lost. You can fall off the sides of buildings and accidently kill your own character if you don’t know what’s around every corner.
There’s an economic aspect that doesn’t exist in a lot of other games. Teammates can send weapons to one another. You can be rewarded with currency after doing well in a round, and you can have an advantage over another team based on the rounds you’ve already played. But if you don’t know how to budget and spend, you could end up weaponless in a later round.
Miami switches sides and becomes the counter-terrorists after round 15.
As they sweep through multiple rounds, making kill after kill, Prospektion explains to me that they’re operating with a “good offense is a good defense” mindset throughout the last few minutes.
He hits his stride when he gets a hold of an AWP, which is the term they use to describe a heavy sniper rifle. He can now do his job for the team.
A timeout is called. One of Miami’s players needs to go change out the rag that has been resting on his forehead throughout the entire map. He got his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine earlier, and he has been playing with a fever of 102 degrees.
The game resumes, and so does Prospektion’s focus. He keeps emphasizing his position to me. In rounds 21 and 22, he sat in the same corner of the map, waiting.
Hell is the name of the corner Prospektion is camped out in. There’s a raised platform to the right named Heaven, but he’s more comfortable with the viewpoint Hell offers him.
This is his main role for the team: the “AWPer,” (a designated player who carries the expensive AWP rifle and secures key shots). From Hell, he can see opponents as they approach, but they can't see him. Prospektion notices the other team doesn’t utilize this vantage point. Once they switch sides, he is able to get his hands on an AWP, and he uses it to take them down.
Because of him, they won the 22nd round, which marked their 16th win of the map – best of 30.
When he clicked pause again, I waited for his next grandiose explanation.
What had I missed?
Nothing. That was it. Forty-five minutes of footage review of a game I had never played or seen before, and one that I barely understood. It felt like maybe 15 or 20 minutes had gone by.
It hits me that this is one of the game’s greatest appeals: it speeds up time.
Prospektion hates free time. Maybe hate is too strong a word, but think of it this way — if time is money, then Prospektion would sooner spend every cent than open a savings account.
“When you have four hours of free time per day because your homework is done and your club meetings are all done, or there isn’t one today, you’ve gotta pick up something to fill the time,” Prospektion said.
So, he sits down in front of his mouse and keyboard, and he slips on his custom Miami Esports jersey with his name gleaming across the back in bold silver font.
He pulled up some of his highlight reels. One kill in particular he played a few times.
He blindly shot and killed someone through a smoke screen. He had heard the other player shoot at him on his way to retrieve weapons from the inside of a building. Then, on his way out, he fired back into a wall of fog and hit his target.
He tells me how frustrated he was when he found out he hadn’t recorded the kill. He had to go through a downloading process to get the clip so he could have it to share with people. He remembers it taking anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. The clip was less than 10 seconds long.
He cracks his fingers before he pushes the keyboard back against the server.
Though he’s managed to play on a college varsity level, and on a team outside Miami, Prospektion sees himself retiring at age 23 at the latest. It’s like skateboarding in the sense that, if at age 17 your career hasn’t taken off yet, it’s because it’s probably not going to.
“I’m 20 years old, my career is more than half over already,” Prospektion said. “I’m probably going to retire at 22 or 23 because that’s when most people retire if they haven't made it. Some people stick it out until they're 27 or 30.”
He’s studying abroad this coming summer and hopes to go to The Cathedral of Counter-Strike in Cologne, Germany. It’s a major landmark near the Lanxess Arena, where many CS:GO gaming tournaments have been played.
Until then, he’ll pass the time and hopefully get to play his role in Hell.
* Miami University’s CS:GO team is no longer a registered Esports team.
