Katkame: “I played my first Counter-Strike match at age four.”

As far as I remember, I played my first Counter-Strike match when I was four years old. I borrowed my brother’s mouse and keyboard. At the time, it was CS:GO, and that’s how I discovered the game. Obviously, I played terribly back then, since it was my very first match. When I turned eight, I bought the game in 2018. And from 2022 to 2023, I really wanted to learn how to play well. I started grinding on FACEIT to qualify for ESEA.

The first person who helped me was the French streamer KRL. He really supported me. I sent him a message while playing on his FACEIT hub—that was a long time ago. So I reached out to him, and he gave me advice, like telling me to find a team. At that time, I started looking for a team to get into ESEA. It was difficult. Back then, there weren’t that many French teams. It’s easier now, but back then it was extremely hard. He said he might start an academy for the GenOne project. I thought that would be great. I waited—I was 12 or 13 at the time, so I was very young. I wasn’t playing that badly; I just wasn’t communicating. I was getting kills—I even pulled off one cool play on live stream—but I wasn’t sharing information, so we just couldn’t win. So he told me, “I can’t put you on the starting roster, but I’m willing to make you a substitute—the sixth player—so you can learn.”

At first, I just wanted to play, since I was constantly watching the practices. After I got to know that team and learned a lot, I thought, “Maybe I should move to an even weaker team so I can play, prove myself, and gain experience.” So I left GenOne’s academy team and joined a weaker team to play in one of the ESEA seasons. After that, I switched teams several times and ended up back at GenOne, but this time on the main roster.