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Bahraini gamers Mohamed Rasheed and Mohamed Bucheeri of Bahrain Wolvez shot their way to gaming glory and waved the flag of victory in the kingdom’s first Red Bull Flick esports competition.
The dynamic duo battled 23 teams of two in the first-ever 2v2 Counter-Strike (CS): Global Offensive (GO) tournament before being crowned victorious and taking home a BD600 cash prize ($1,600).
Team Firepower, which includes Ebrahim Sharif and Abdulrahman Alkuwari, came in second and received BD225 as a cash prize ($600). Team Siren Esport’s Sayed Yousif and Mohamed Al Ghareeb took third place and a prize of BD112 ($300).
Rasheed aka 23D, who is a 25-year-old network specialist from East Riffa, said: “The tournament was great and we really enjoyed it. Bucher1 (Bucheeri) and I have been playing together for 11 years so we didn’t face any miscommunication while playing. We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
“We both got into gaming and started competing by playing Counter-Strike 1.6.”
Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter video game developed by Valve and is the first instalment in the Counter-Strike series. Set in various locations around the globe, players assume the roles of counter-terrorist forces and terrorist militants opposing them.
Meanwhile, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game in which both sides, the terrorists and the counter-terrorists, are tasked with eliminating the other while also completing separate objectives.
In the Bahrain CS:GO 2v2 championship, teams of two were pitted against each other, as opposed to the standard team of five players in most CS:GO tournaments.
The gameplay was not based on whether one team could exterminate the other team within a timer, but that one team “holds the flag” at a specific location on the map for 45 seconds without getting hit by the enemy to win the round.
The maps in the game are not standard CS:GO maps. These five maps were specifically created to become the playground for Red Bull Flick.
“We liked the Red Bull Flick capture the flag maps,” added Bucheeri, a 23-year-old AMA International University business and information technology student from Arad. “We heard about Red Bull Flick from Respawn Gaming Centre Stream, which was sponsored by them.
“We had some difficulties in playing 2 vs 2 capture the flag since it was something new but we practised a lot until we felt that we are confident to compete against other teams.
“It was really stressful because once you lose a match you will lose everything but we managed to overcome any nerves by motivating each other.”
They have competed in several Counter-Strike tournaments held in Bahrain and during Imagine Games Network competitions in 2013, 2015 and 2017. They also won in Bahrain Comic Con 2018. Bucheeri competed in an Online Middle East Tournament and won first place. He also participated in tournaments in Dubai.
The champions advise others wanting to get into competitive gaming to continuously practice. Bucheeri said: “This tournament showed us that there are many Bahraini talents and gamers. For everyone who recently started playing competitive games, work on practicing and improving your skills because eSports is expanding in the Middle East and it’s the future.”
As reported on GDN Online, a recent study carried out by Strategy& Middle East, which is part of the PwC network, found that the GCC gaming market is evolving at such an intense speed, it could potentially be worth $821 million by 2021, an increase of $128 million since 2017.
An estimated 2.5 billion people globally now play video games, while in the UAE alone, the report found that the median number of hours spent playing video games every week reached 14.
