James Banks at BLAST Premier Fall Finals: “Twistzz Might Be The MVP”

BLAST Premier Fall Finals is one of the key events in the Counter-Strike calendar. For just a few days, the very best of the best CS teams come together to battle it out. But there’s more going on here than the players and teams. James Banks is a pillar of the CS community. Having been involved with the game since 2003, so there’s not much this guy can’t tell you.

We got the chance to briefly chat with Banks during day 3 of the BLAST Premier Fall Finals about CS2, rosters and his predictions for the rest of the tournament.

How are you finding the Fall Finals so far?

Falls Finals is always good, it’s a lot for the first two days. I think 4 best of threes a day is certainly not easy but I still enjoy what I get to do. It’s more fun with all of the storylines and the new teams and the changes and finding out what’s happening.

Obviously, the cadiaN/Heroic one and him rumored for Liquid but I would say almost 100% confirmed at this point. I just asked him if he’d do World Finals. He said he won’t do World Finals with Heroic so that would mean that the signing is almost there.

Looking at this new Cloud9 roster, very interesting, very exciting, even without an AWPer. Wherever they go, I think a lot of people would love to see s1mple go there because it brings back the old Navi core. But yeah, so far Fall Finals is good!

With all of the changes not only to the game but to the rosters as well, how do you prepare as a host and an interviewer?

I play a lot of Counter-Strike! I play a lot to understand all of the stuff that is different and what is changing.

For Heroic, obviously, there’s nothing really I can do. You just have to see how they perform, watch it and base it off the games. You can see how their form is and how their mindsets are coming into it.

Navi is another interesting one. W0nderful is another Ukrainian AWPer and has the same sensitivity as s1mple in game, which is just funny. He copies his settings but is still very different in terms of how he approaches the game. So just watch a few demos and make some notes.

This is actually easier to prepare for than if I’m going into an event in 6 months time, where things are more flattened out and even because some of the questions write themselves and I don’t need to have too much of a brain.

And I guess on the topic of obvious questions, how are you finding CS2 personally?

I love it, but I have a mindset of I hated CS:GO. Not as in, I loved our game and everything it had but it wasn’t a game for me. I don’t like one way smokes which I think are, how to edit this nicely, “bullsh*t”. For me, with one way smokes, the aim game is taken out of it and it’s about if you know the trick. I like that this is a bit more raw skill sided and I like the shooting modes.

Obviously, they’re adjusting things with how the models move around and stuff. But every day I’m back home, I play CS2. I’m enjoying it a hell of a lot more and I’m probably playing better than I did in CS:GO so let’s try and keep that going despite being older!

As a representative of the CS community that everyone knows, how important is it to you to promote the CS esports scene?

It’s everything. It’s like, I’ve done other games. I’ve done Tekken, I’ve done Street Fighter and PUBG as well. But I’ve been playing Counter Strike since 2003, I’ve seen all the versions grow and develop.

I’ve been asked to host other games but I don’t like the game, not because it’s a bad game but because it’s not the game for me so I refuse the work. I’m in a luxurious position where I can do that because I’m very lucky that people want to hire me for Counter-Strike. But I have a position where I can choose what I want to do. I choose Counter-Strike because I love it and I still play it. Like I said, when I go home, I still want to play it and want to get better.

For me, watching the development of it and Valve’s updates is great. Yes, we know the anti cheat is terrible right now, they’re working on a fix for that. Richard Lewis made a video saying about what they’re trying to do with this AI anti cheat, which is much better than the intrusive side that Riot uses. This is much better. Valve has been a smart company for a long time. Yes, we’re not perfect but still so much better than when CS:GO first came out.

When I first played CS:GO, there’s a video on my YouTube channel still, I played the beta at a convention centre on a Playstation 4. The game was built for consoles as well as being on PC. That’s where a lot of issues came from. It was like, this isn’t the Counter-Strike I know, this is more like Call of Duty but then it evolved into the amazing game it is now.

CS2 is in a much better position, we’re just more critical because of how happy we were about where CS:GO was. Whenever you change versions, there’s always going to be push back. It’s sad to see the drop in the numbers of people who’re concurrently playing and it’s worrying because if they’re not playing Faceit, then they’re playing the normal premier mode, which is full of cheaters.

I have videos from my stream where I was playing with Ukrainian player Markeloff and we had two games back to back against aim bots. We were playing about 16k ELO and people were actively cheating in that. Now we want to keep playing but if you’re a normal fan then they might not come back at all. Valve needs to make some improvements and hopefully they happen soon enough because I don’t want to keep seeing the player count go down.

I believe in Valve and when you look at a competition like this, there’s still a very high skill level. It’s still exciting and so far, MR12 is working out very well. Obviously, there are some economy adjustments that need to happen but as we see it now, the teams still look their very best.

The last thing I wanted to ask about was some quick predictions for BLAST Fall Finals. The first one is how many games do you think FaZe are going to play before they drop a game?

I think they’ll win here so they’re not going to drop a game here. Their next event will be the World Finals so this is where it’s interesting. I would be happier if they lose a game here with Twistzz than if he leaves for another team, rumored to be Liquid, and then they lose a game because they don’t have the main roster.

I’d love to see them win here and go with the same roster at Worlds, maybe they drop a game in groups and then come back. Then the streak is over but at least they had a good streak.

Ultimately, I respect Twistzz’s decision. He likely made it back in CS:GO when they weren’t doing so well but as a fan, I don’t want to see this roster go. It would be sad for the game if we didn’t see this roster again.

Who is your prediction for MVP of this tournament? A lot of people have said ropz but what do you think?

Ropz actually hasn’t had too many huge games this tournament. Twistzz had just one bad map I think but Twistzz if he goes hard to do it. At the start, I predicted FaZe vs. Vitality for the grand finals. There is a world where I see Cloud9 beating Vitality tomorrow. If Vitality are in the grand finals, Spinx might be be one who does it. Even ZywOo. But ultimately, I think Twistzz might be the MVP. If it’s a last hurrah, then why not?

There are only a couple of teams left who haven’t already qualified to Worlds. Who do you think is gonna get the spot?

I don’t think any of the teams that need to qualify by winning are going to stand a chance at winning. So it’ll come down to points and so far, Cloud9 have got to semis. It comes down to Cloud9 or Complexity from the World Rankings. So my opinion would be Cloud9, they have chance to beat Vitality but Complexity won’t beat FaZe.