Like many kids his age, Mark Louis Laguardia is an athlete. But unlike other athletes, his sport includes defusing bombs, rescuing hostages, and warming up by shooting a bunch of random bots.
No, he isn’t playing tennis on a civil war battlefield. Mark Laguardia, 20, is an eSports athlete. A Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player, to be exact. And not just any CS:GO player, but an insanely good one.
In this year alone, he has already won Champion for two major competitions, quickly becoming one of Cebu’s prominent names for Esports.
The first major competition was The Mayor’s Cup 2019 last March, the biggest eSports gathering to happen in Cebu. Spearheaded by Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, the competition included more than 100 teams of all ages and all different walks of life, all battling to be crowned Champion and to win the PHP15,000 cash prize.
“My [Mayor’s Cup] teammates, the E-Youth, they’re from different schools,” Laguardia said. “One guy’s from Velez, one guy’s from USC, one guy’s not even studying anymore, he already graduated.”
“We [couldn’t] practice that much ’cause everyone’s busy with school and projects and everything like that.”
Still, despite their conflicting schedules, the E-Youth still managed to emerge as the pioneer champions of CS:GO in the competition. But Mark Laguardia isn’t claiming any of the glory for just himself – he truly believes that his team and their chemistry were the reasons why they won.
“[CS:GO] isn’t a one-man show where you can just carry the team,” he said. “It really comes down to knowing your teammates, what they want to do, and what they want to achieve. If you have the same goals.”
“If you don’t have teamwork or chemistry, you can’t really win the game.”
The USJ-R Intrams, however, presented a different challenge. Set last September, the competition included 6 different teams of USJ-R students, all from varying colleges and even senior high.
For this competition, he played with the Public Agents, which was, quite literally, a brand new team.
“I met the team two days before we actually played. We didn’t really have time to prepare or practice,” Laguardia said. “I only knew, like, two of them.”
Playing with a new team is always a challenge, especially in a game like CS:GO where teamwork is absolutely essential. And playing with a new team for a major competition? To many, the mere idea seems like a prime example of a Catch-22.
Not for the Public Agents, though. Despite being a new team, the Public Agents still won during their very first day against Universal Debuggers.
After that, it was easy pickings for the team, winning against Dead on Arrival and Vigors during finals.
And now that Laguardia and his team have won Champion for USJ-R Intrams? “We actually have gotten close. I didn’t know two of them, JC and Vianney, but after the Intrams, we got super close.”
Knowing all this, it’s clear that Laguardia is far from a “n00b”. Nobody can deny how skilled he is in gaming – he’s been playing competitively since 2015, and already logged in more than 4,000 hours of playing.
If his life was a video game, it’d be a Triple-A, and he’d be the final boss.
There’s a true love for gaming when it comes to Laguardia. Something lights up within him whenever he presses up and down when playing a game, ever since he was a kid. Pokemon, Mario, Dragonball – these were the games he played on his GameBoy during long trips back home.
And that love for gaming never stopped. After discovering Crossfire, a first-person shooter game he played religiously at age 12, he fell in love with first-person shooter (FPS) games, which ultimately led him to CS:GO.
“I just like the competition. I like winning against different kinds of teams,” he said. “When it comes to the real game, anything can happen. There are different situations wherein you get caught up. Sometimes, you don’t know what to do in those situations, so playing the game more often is really a great [practice.]”
It’s hard for non-gamers to understand, but there’s a unique feeling gaming gives you that can’t be replicated anywhere else. The tense atmosphere, the fast chases, the looming feeling that at any given moment, you can be caught.
It’s the thrill of it all that makes gaming so addictive. Gaming has gone from a simple hobby to a fully immersive experience, one that encourages you to be a better version than you were before.
To Laguardia, that’s really what gaming is about: training yourself to become a better player.
“I think [one] misconception is that people think playing games at a high level is easy,” he said. “It’s not. You have to put a lot of effort and time into what you’re playing so that you can play at a high level.”
“The more you play, the more knowledge you get about the game. You have different callouts, what to do in different situations. It’s not just about shooting people. There’s more of a strategic approach to it.”
While greatly misunderstood by outsiders, eSports has become a second home to people like Laguardia. E-Youth, Public Agents – these aren’t just teams, these are alliances forged in friendship and camaraderie.
“I think […] people only see the bad side of gaming. They don’t see the benefits of gaming. They only think of it as something that’s for fun and can’t be profitable in the long run,” he said. “But actually, it’s quite famous and it’s a famous profession nowadays. And you earn a lot of money from just playing video games.”
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