To those who don't really know who cArn is – enlighten them!



Okay, my name is Patrik Sättermon and I'm 21 years old (born 1985). I'm born and raised in Skåre, a suburb to Karlstad – a place of great natural beauty. I'm having a hard time describing me as a person, although I consider myself to be fairly normal.



But to mention something; I didn't vote in Sweden's parliamentary election, I do laugh at Filip and Fredrik, I never dance sober and travelling is one of my greatest passions. Life as a professional CS player means a lot of travelling and a whole lot of experiences. We have a lot of fun with the team outside of the game. It wouldn't be wrong to say that I really enjoy my life.



A number of days the latest months I've been on the move, because all of the competing, and because of this I still live at home in a house together with my parents and a cat named Murre. At the moment, however, I live in an flat with my beloved team mates to sharpen our skills before December's challenges.



I've always enjoyed ball sports, but I'm not active in any of that at the moment, however. To get a little exercise I try to run some kilometres a couple of times per week. Although I wish that I could’ve been a little bit more active. I take the future as it comes; I don’t really have any plans of quitting playing despite my age of 21. If I would set up some future goals it would be fun to, by the age of 25, be able to speak more languages, having travelled around the world and be able to play the guitar. As the simple man as I am, the majority of that will, however, probably only be dreams.





You won Wonderbase but you’re Asian tour ended up pretty weakly result wise with two 5-6 placings at WSVG China and KODE5. How well would you say that your form is right now?



The expression of an unpolished diamond would be quite accurate to describe our present form, I would say. I don’t really know what went wrong in China; overall we’ve been playing well in 2006. I think the failure in the Far East is a wake-up call for us to renew our play. We now have about four weeks to do that. I feel pretty optimistic that we’ll be in good shape for the WSVG finals.





Statistically it isn’t unusual that player changes occur after a situation that you were in after the Asian tour, and there were several rumours that this would happen to you. What do you think about doing player swaps when the team clearly has been playing weaker than usual?



I don’t know really. First of all, I think there are too few players that don’t have a clan that could take a spot in the team. I also don’t think that that is the right cure for temporary weak play from the team. I mean, overall we’ve performed well during 2006, with the exception of WSVG Chengdu and KODE5 in Beijing.





Was a player change in fnatic ever a topical question?



No, seeing that we had upcoming competitions (WSVG and CPL) it would be directly foolish to change the team when we’ve stick together for so long.





Often it has been NiP that has been in the way for your success during this year and with the exception of a show match last spring you’ve never beat the ninjas, despite 11 tries. Why aren’t you able to beat NiP?



I think we ourselves made it complicated to beat them. Sure, there’s no shame in losing to NiP as they are in my view one of the greatest teams in the world. On the other hand, I also think that we are one of the greatest teams in the world, so hopefully we’ll be able to break the negative trend when WSVG kicks of in December.





In November times the greater part of the year has already passed by, but big events are still left. For your part the WSVG finals and CPL Winter is the two upcoming events. First off, take a look at the year that soon has passed – are you happy with what fnatic has achieved?



I don’t have to think long to say yes to that question. Before the fiasco in China, if you should call it that, the team had an average placing in tournaments of 1.8, which I think few teams ever reached. I’m happiest with our achievement in the ESWC tournament, although now I think that we gave away the first place.

And to look forward -– how important is it for you guys to reach success at the WSVG finals and CPL Winter?



Very important. With the dedication we'll put to the game until then everything but top 3 placings would be failures. If we play our cards right, though, we’ll end up there.





Which of the two events do you value the most?



The WSVG finals; I believe it’s just 10 competing teams and all teams are really skilled which will make the tournament perhaps the toughest this year.

The first news article on the website where your nick is mentioned is when ArchAngels resurrected. First off, how did you end up in ArchAngels? Many players struggle every day to take that step from unknown to established – was it hard for you?



That I ended up in ArchAngels was because of both luck and skill. Luck in the sense of that AA already was a known team which made us able to play against better teams, which itself led us to develop as players in a whole other pace. But it also demanded skill, if I could say so. Raphael who recruited me had seen me play in mix teams and he thought that I was capable to play at that level. If this was hard to reach I can't really recall, I was still really fascinated by the game during this time so I played without any particular goal. As time went by, things just happened the way they did.





From playing in ArchAngels to being one of the world's most respected Counter-Strike players – how did that happen? Which way did you go?



As I mentioned earlier the breakthrough came in ArchAngels. It was in that clan I learned the basics in team play and all that comes with that. The play during this time was pretty weak tactical-wise, however. I think we had two tactics for each map: "B1 split" and "B2 split". It was also in ArchAngels that I got to play my first important LAN games. I have to go back to the ESWC qualifier in 2003 to find our first important LAN win, which was against caYa.



After six months or so the team went inactive and I joined up with xPerience.se. This was during the time CS went from WON to Steam. In xP.se you could say that my international career got a boost. We played both in Greece and Las Vegas with the team and we also placed second in the SEL league, which existed at that time, before the team died.



From xP.se the train continued to Team Gamers.nu together with dsn, who I've played together with since xP.se. In Gamers.nu I was the one who took the role as in game leader which I believe was an adjustment as a start, but nowadays feels comfortable. G.nu was the first team I played in which had a sponsor, but I can't really say that I was a professional player back then, because the income from CS was really small. It was in G.nu that I believe I developed as a LAN player the most. We attended several LAN events which led to a lot of experience. We even managed to win a CPL qualifier in Spain which at that time was my greatest achievement.



The CPL qualifier win in Spain led to, as almost always, that the team was able to go to CPL Dallas. Here the team didn't succeed at all and ended up in 16-25th place or something. This led to the end of the team and me and dsn went to Begrip.



The Begrip team's greatest goal when it was put together was CPL Dallas' winter event. We played together with the team of IsKall, Calippo, Zad and dsn in three months before this competition where we ended up in fourth place, after a loss against NoA.

From there the train went from Begrip to Eyeballers, where both dsn and Zad joined. archie (observe the e) and Bullen was the two other players in the team. We didn't really achieve anything greater with this team, with a third place at Euskal Bilbao as greatest result.



At the end of the EYE period I started to work at a gas station, so when the team went inactive I felt for joining a new team. The conditions weren't right for that, at that time, however. dsn joined fnatic and me and the rest of the players went inactive. At the end of the year (2005) Harley (dsn) told me that fnatic had big plans for a new team for 2006 – something that really felt right for me. I eventually quit my job to instead wholehearted go in for CS, actually one of my better decisions in my life. :)

Now I play in fnatic and I'm comfortable both with my team mates and the organisation.





When you started to establish on the Swedish CS servers it was often with an AWP in your hand, a weapon you haven't used for some time now. Is it because of the competition with dsn that you had quit using the AWP?



Yes, I had a time where I personally think I was really good with the AWP. After all versions and changes that CS has suffered my skills have decreased some. I don't see it as a competition with dsn of who that gets to use the AWP in the team. I quit that role a long time ago and I consider dsn to be better, so no hard feelings, haha.





How would you describe your playing style in CS?



Because I'm the in game leader in fnatic I always try to adjust myself and act in a way that will contribute the most to the team. I gladly go as the first player to attack a bombsite or fake-attack a site if that will lead to a round win. My strengths would be team play and game theory and my weakness would be aim.

We've see dsn trying the in game leader role more than once, but almost often you're the one who has the role. How do you guys think in this matter? How does dsn's leading style differ to yours?



At the moment I'm the one who's leading the team in game, something I've done 99 % of the time in fnatic. The few times dsn has lead the team is matches when we've tried playing without tactics, for example some matches against NiP when we've in earlier games not been able to penetrate their defence. I have more experience than dsn as an in game leader which perhaps gives the team more calmness and structure. Harley is very innovative as a caller and he can come up with some crazy tactics that sometimes work out.





Describe your team mates!



dsn: This 20-year-old Gothenburgan with the name of Harley is the person I've played together with the longest. I have to go back to 2003/2004 to find where I first started to play with him. He's definitely the one I know the best in the team. As a player Harley is best when he gets to use the AWP, but he kills most people with Colt and pistols too.



Archi: One of the team's two young men, has the least experience from tournaments but still perform well. He's probably one of the best aimers in the land of Sweden. Is together with myself the greatest when it comes to nightlife after competitions are over.





Tentpole: Is one of the team's two people living in Upplandsväsby, is 21 years old and circling around the Internet playing SWE Only mix games. As a player Kristoffer is very experienced, easy to play with and to defend sites, which I do with him on almost all maps. Is also one of those players who could break his mouse after a lousy public round.



f0rest: The other player living in Upplandsväsby, 18 years old. Ranked as Sweden's best all-round player and winner of the 2006 CS player of the year award. I guess you don't really have to say more than that. Patrik is a key player who can manage to win rounds all by himself. He fits in to any team in the world.





You've mentioned that the team is living in a flat in Gothenburg at the moment. How is it like living together?



So far so good, everything works out well. It feels good to practice at LAN because it's really an advantage communication- and development-wise. But it's also both good and bad living so many at such a small area. Everyone could use some time alone sometimes. If you want to get that here you have to go up early (14.00) when everyone else is sleeping. :)





How good for the team play is it to be living together?



It's good; all the greater competitions are played in LAN which differs a lot from Internet play, especially communication-wise. Also, we get more time to develop our game in a whole other pace than what we could over the Internet.



You've spoken of renewing all of your tactics and as the team's tactician you should know pretty much about this. What have you really changed and how has it worked out so far?



It would be foolish to sit here and tell you exactly what we've changed, but we try to build our rounds with a little bit more finesse and variety. Earlier the tactics was just a matter of routine, we seldom developed them and we analyzed our game way too little. The greatest reason for this should be that we didn't have so much time because all of the tournaments. We now try to go through all our rounds in a more serious way, we try out some new ideas and I think and hope that we'll be best, from a tactical point of view, at the winter events.





If we only take the different maps in the game – which are fnatic's best and worst maps?



Our goal is to be best at all maps, without leaving anything to the coincidence. In reality that is pretty tough to achieve, however, and during my time in fnatic I would say that Inferno and Train are our weaker maps and Dust2 and Nuke our better.





If you make a little innocent speculation about your nearest future – where would you see yourself in a couple of years?



It's hard to predict, much can happen that will change the conditions both in the real life and playing-wise. If CS and the whole gaming world will continue to grow I probably will, in some way, continue to work with this. But it's really impossible to say.



About a year ago I was close to quit the whole thing, when I more or less worked at a full-time job. However, I can't really say I regret a second when I jumped on to the train which led us to the fnatic team. The train's next stop is unsure though, I like to take one tournament at the time and do my best – so far that attitude has worked out well. I'm not worried about the future at all; things will be as they'll be.



Thanks for your time and good luck this winter!