Saving NA CS: Detonate Levoski

North American Counter-Strike isn't just made up of internationally recognized organizations and players. In order to grow a more sustainable scene, NACS needs the support of local players, organizations, and other entities. To hear the thoughts of these community members, Dust2.us presents "Saving NA CS" as a series of interviews.

This time, Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore chatted with Levoski Tinnell Brown, Jr., the founder and CEO of Detonate about his organization's role in the Atlanta community, the history of its original Counter-Strike team who beat Rick Fox's Echo Fox in 2016, and more recently, sent a roster to Romania to represent the United States at the IESF World Championship.

Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.

As a small organization, what's Detonate's goal of having a booth here in DreamHack Atlanta?

The purpose of it is because there aren't very many esports organizations here in Atlanta, GA. Most of the organizations that you see are in California, Texas, or Canada. I feel like Atlanta deserves an esports organization that's growing and marketing toward the local scene and trying to build a fanbase in the community, specifically for supporting and cheering on competitive games.

What prompted you to bring Detonate back in 2020?

I had a bit of a hiatus in competitive video games for a bit of time. I was just a fan, and enthusiast, I was hanging around Atlanta events, my friends encouraged me to get back into it and get back on the horse and start Detonate up again. 2020 comes around, COVID is happening and I figured 'let me go ahead and get it started, while everything is kind of dying down.' I focused more on just trying to build the brand and make it a bit cleaner this time, so I changed the mascot logo to a clearer logo. That was the whole purpose of it, I just wanted to make it a bit cleaner and more about the business this time.

Detonate made a seemingly conscious decision to focus on Counter-Strike. Why did you make that decision?

I actually have a background in the fighting games community and I originally wanted to get into Counter-Strike because personally I love the community, I love NACS, I like watching it, I am mostly an enthusiast, only recently started actually playing it now and again. Once I got more acclimated with the scene and got a little bit more comfortable, I kind of fell in love with everyone's passion for the game and I just tried to support that to the best of my ability.