The History of HudzG

Posted by: Corin

George Hoskins, known in the gaming world as HudzG, is an eighteen year old living in Bristol; he has a supportive girlfriend of two years, and enjoys playing the guitar, rugby, and his weight training. Until several weeks ago George worked as a baker, and yet now, as one of the world’s few professional gamers, he is set to fly out to Los Angeles with London Mint to do what he does best in front of millions of homes, competition for a share of the $500,000 first prize. It really is a huge break, and one that gamers world-wide dream of – but how did he get here?

Like many people of his generation, George has been playing video games from a young age, starting off with titles such as Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo Entertainment System, over a decade ago. Sticking with consoles, George played a number of games on both the NES and the then top-of-the-range Super Nintendo, or SNES. His first experience of PC gaming was with one of the most influential video games ever to be created – Doom. This game was so revolutionary not only at the time for game developers, but more specifically in George’s experience, that he recalls how he and his brother would share the controls, with his brother moving around the game, and him manning the weapon controls. Although he did move on from Doom to Duke Nukem 3D, the violence of this game put both George and his parents off the game, which saw his interests move on to sporting games, such as Super International Soccer on the Nintendo 64, and World Cup ’98.


Despite having chosen football games over first person shooters earlier in his life, at the age of nine George and his family moved to Quake 2, from which time he “was instantly hooked on FPS and [he has] never looked back”. Having played and completed Half Life, George got his first taste of competitive gaming, in the form of brotherly rivalry in Quake 3.



At the age of ten, having given Unreal Tournament 99 a short try, George and his brother installed an early version of Counter Strike from a disc that came free in PC Zone magazine, and the rest, as they say, is history – “I instantly fell in love with this game and never looked back onto anything else” he recalls.

By this time his grandfather had an ISDN internet connection, which allowed George to spend much of his free time playing on public CS servers – he spent so much time in front of the computer, in fact, that at one point he was banned from playing Counter-Strike by his parents!

After around a year of this George came across a feature in a magazine about Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, and this was the first time it occurred to him that there might be a way of playing more organised and competitively in Counter Strike as well. Having convinced his parents to allow him to install an IRC client, George joined his first clan, QMC - though he was removed for not spending enough time online.

George’s journey through the world of professional gaming really started in 2002, when he watched a match between Four Kings and Team 3D, and from this point on he set his sight on being able to compete at that level. Since that day he has followed teams such as Four Kings and SK Gaming keenly, and despite moving to Call of Duty in 2003, he soon returned to the Counter Strike series, and, in buying a new computer at the age of 16, George’s competitive Counter-Strike: Source career was launched.

The first serious team George played Source in with Subversion, and their aim was to do well in Clanbase Opencup, which they achieved with a first place finish (though George is modest enough to remind us how young the scene was then), and they then attended the first SGL lan in 2006, achieving a second place behind one of the best known names in UK’s Counter-Strike: Source history: Zboard. The direction in which the team was heading was not, however, in line with George’s ambitions, so he decided to leave, and was to be inactive in gaming until the very end of the year.


It was at this time that George’s first real break came, as he was offered a spot in a new Zboard line-up, after his performance against ben0’s old Zboard team at the SGL LAN. The team, which consisted of HudzG, fatal, beta, w1p, ben0 and ollz, attended the Multiplay i30 event, entering both the official competition and Enemydown’s Ebuyer tournament. Despite a disappointing result in the Ebuyer competition, Zboard finished the official i30 tournament as the highest placed UK team, beating the likes of Four-Kings and Auxilia, to finish behind mTw and Fnatic.



Team Zboard celebrate their 3rd place at i30

After the Multiplay i30 event George was finally starting to get recognised by the community as a top player, but unfortunately that team that had performed so well on LAN was to fall under the effect of the Team Zboard curse, resulting on the players going their separate ways due mainly to work commitments. After that George was contacted by Crazycat about making a roster for r3 to attend Lan79 with, and, joining up with beta, shivers and phx, they did just that.


Perhaps his biggest break was to come after the Multiplay i31 event, when George formed part of a new Reason line-up. Richard “Ritch” Gibbs, who now plays alongside George here at Mint, had parted ways with the team that was to be drafted to the Mint Franchise last season, only days before The Experience event in Denmark, and after George had persuaded him to make a team, they approached the Reason management with the aim of creating a team of European players. Having got approval, and budget to attend Danish event SLAP, the team picked up Danish players Jimmy and c0bain, as well as warclown from Norway. Hit by a number of unfortunate computer problems, the team dropped early into the lower bracket, but, having been loaned five new computers for the event, managed to fight back, to gain a respectable 4th place.

A week before the next event, Multiplay i32, Ritch was replaced by Fetish, a move which surprised the European community, with many people questioning his ability to fill Ritch’s shoes. The pressure was really on for this event, as George had made the tough decision that a bad event for him and his team would mean the end of the road for him, and on the first day of the event they met with none of the tournament’s big names, despite a close encounter with Infused Gaming. The next day however they were to face perhaps the most important game in George’s life so far, a match against the very best team in Europe, Fnatic. The Fnatic guys were certainly confident going into the game, as they had every right to be given their history, but a text message from old team-mate Ritch really gave George the kick-start he needed; it read “This is your chance to show them who you are”. Despite losing both pistol rounds, the Reason team played the game of their lives, and managed to pull out a 16-9 victory.


warclown, fetish, jimmy, hudzg, c0bain

George was then faced with a very difficult decision – in order to have a hope of playing in a CGS franchise he would have to be playing in a UK only team, and so he parted ways with Reason Gaming in order to pursue his dream.


After this George went through a couple of teams, beginning with Cotch in which he played alongside now-rivals from Birmingham Salvo, wez and wilzOOO. After attending Multiplay’s i33 event with the Guns4Hire squad, and being knocked out by none other than London Mint, George was on the verge of walking away from gaming for good, but was thrown his lifeline when he received an offer to join the London Mint line-up, ready for season two.

The combine came around, and it was quite literally make or break for both George and Ritch. Despite having been playing as part of the Mint team, neither were guaranteed a place in Ben Woodward’s franchise. The rest, as they say, is history - George has described how he felt when his name was announced as a drafted player as “the best emotion [he has] ever experienced”, and he was then joined by his old friend and team-mate Ritch to complete their line-up.


Drafted, at last!