Casting, Stratbase and some Soul Searching

I went on a trip recently to Scotland where I did the North Coast 500 road trip. I tried to completely disconnect and log off as much as I could to really enjoy being in nature — taking a big break. It’s helped me think through a fair few things: about my career, about my general life direction.

I had a lot of time to sit and process some of the things that have been rumbling around in the back of my mind for a while now.

The first, and probably most pertinent thing that’s been on my mind over the last couple of months, is that casting’s really started to dry up. It felt like we’d hit a really nice upswing at the start of the year, and since around halfway through, it’s dropped off pretty hard. I think that’s been felt across the industry.

Tier 2 organisers are scaling back, and finding work is harder and harder. Every colleague I’ve spoken to in the industry is echoing a similar thing, and that’s a bit worrying. Because at the minute, casting and Stratbase are my only two real sources of income. I’d just been feeling very negative about the entire thing.

My opinion started to shift a little bit on the way back from the UKIC finals in Sheffield when I realised: what a privilege this is. Even if it all ends, even if next year I’m not casting anymore and I’ve just got Stratbase chugging along and I’ve decided to go elsewhere with my career — what a privilege it’s been.

To be able to spend essentially two years of my life focused around a video game that I love. Casting it, building a product for it, being involved in the space in a way I could only dream of when I was grinding CS:GO five years ago. There aren’t a lot of people who would be in the position to even attempt such a swing as I did, right? I’m in a very lucky position. But unfortunately, I think both Tim and I have realised that the consistency of work we were hoping for just hasn’t materialised. It seems harder than ever to break in as a caster in CS, especially when we’ve got so many incredibly talented colleagues.

All this is not to say that I’m giving up. I think back to some of the highlights I’ve had — like UKIC, building that relationship with the guys over there, being able to work multiple of their events in a row, in multiple different settings. UKIC has taken me all over the UK — obviously up to Sheffield to the pracrooms and the Loadout Media studio. It also took us down to London to the Red Bull Gaming Sphere, and the highlight of my career so far was casting at LogiPLAY in Birmingham, where we actually had a full-on arena, and I was stood there casting UKCS, hearing my voice echo around the room. It’s an experience I’ll never forget.

I hope I get to experience it again. I hope I get to do it all again. But with the Esports winter only intensifying as time goes on, it remains to be seen whether we’ll have the opportunity to. We’ve both realised that we now need to start looking for more consistent sources of income elsewhere.

And that’s okay! Hopefully, we can still pick up a few events and continue the grind.

Moving on to Stratbase — it’s had a couple of really difficult months and revenue is down quite significantly. I don’t know whether that’s a knock-on effect of the Esports winter or the fact that, between bouncing around a couple of other product projects in the last couple of months, I haven’t really given it the love it deserved.

I’m rectifying that now and hoping to make up for lost time with a big October update and by trying to push the marketing more. It’s always been my weakest skill, and it’s something I need to build up. I genuinely think it’s a fantastic product — and everybody who uses it says they absolutely love it — it’s just about getting the wider CS population to know that. It’s always a struggle when you’re bootstrapped and you don’t have a massive advertising budget. Some of the integrations I’ve done previously haven’t seemed to hit the mark, so I need to have a look at that, figure out exactly what the problem is, and try to resolve it. I’ve got some really cool ideas planned; I’m just hoping I have the runway to make them a reality. And even if I get employment elsewhere, Stratbase will still continue — it might just be a little slower on new features.

I’ve always thought that, from a purely business point of view, building a tool to sell to consumers in an already niche market (CS players looking to take the game relatively seriously) wasn’t an amazing move — but I did it because I love it, and because I’m passionate about it.

I’ve been thinking that maybe I need to try and build another product with a slightly wider appeal. I’m weighing up going into developer tools. There are a lot of companies making a very good living in that space already — and that’s not a bad thing. It means the idea is valid. So I’m going to have to consider that at some point as well, but I want to try and push Stratbase more before I start to do that.

In terms of life in general, I genuinely have no idea what my ideal career is at this point — which is a scary thing. I always remember listening to Stephen Fry paraphrase the Oscar Wilde quote: “If you know what you want to be, you will inevitably become it, and that is your punishment; while if you never know, you will never become anything, which is your reward.”

If you know exactly what you want to do, that’s great. But if you don’t, it’s such a privilege because you get to explore so many different things. And an idea that’s been bouncing around my head recently is presenting. I was always such a massive fan of Top Gear growing up. I wanted to be on Top Gear. And obviously, with The Grand Tour ending, it’s left a pretty big hole in the entertainment I consume. And I’d love to make stuff like that. I love cars. I’m not mechanically minded by any means, but I do absolutely love driving.

So I’ve had an idea for a Top Gear-style segment that I want to try and shoot over the next couple of months. I’m going to call it “The Death of the Estate Car.” The amount of SUVs and crossovers that are just absolutely stinking up the roads these days is mental. I think the estate car is such a perfect format, and it’s a real shame their popularity has declined so steeply. I think that’d be a really cool piece to film, in the same vein as the “Funeral for a Ford” piece The Grand Tour did towards the end.

Camper Strike is going to have its next episode. I’ve got a guest — I just need to plan when we’re going to do it. We’re going into winter, so it’s going to make things a bit tricky, but I’d love to get more episodes out before the end of the year. They’ve been doing pretty well on YouTube Shorts.

Hopefully, I can keep using that to grow the show, because I really enjoy filming it. I think it’s a really cool concept. I’d love to make it a bit higher budget — perhaps a couple of extra cameras, or even just one extra camera — but that’s not really within my capabilities at the moment.

(If anyone’s got a 4K-capable Sony camera they don’t mind lending me for a weekend, do let me know. I’ve got a ZV-E10 at the moment, which is fine, but it’d be nice to have a second angle just to mix things up a bit, you know?)

So yeah, that’s my little life update.

I do hope I can continue working in Counter-Strike. I’m certainly not going to go to any other game. Thank you very much for reading. Hopefully, I’ll still see you around.