Bravado Gaming unveils Project Destiny 2.0 – Elevating South African esports onto the global stage

Project Destiny was Bravado Gaming’s first foray at catapulting South African esports talent into internationally dominant regions. Despite coming from the socioeconomically challenged and relatively geographically isolated region of South Africa, Bravado Gaming had experience at the highest level of competition, featuring at the first Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major at Dreamhack Winter 2014 Jönköping, gaining insight as to what it took to maintain world-class ability.

‘We can’t compete from ZA because, as many people know, we are so disadvantaged when it comes to our latency and we are stuck in a bubble because of it. You have to be with the teams you want to beat in order to hope to be better than them,’ explainedDimitri Hadjipaschali, co-founder of Bravado Gaming

Leveraging this knowledge together with its sponsors at Alienware, Dell Technologies and Intel, Bravado successfully incubated a talent pool that it believed had what it took to shine bright on the world stage.

Based out of North America, the original project took place throughout 2018 to 2019, including six-month stints in both Phoenix, Arizona and Austin, Texas. With the entirety of the South African esports community behind the team, the goal of achieving international success was in clear sight.

Bravado’s notable achievements during Project Destiny include:

– Peaking at an HLTV world ranking of #21.

– Qualifying for the Katowice Americas Minor Championship 2019.

– Winning the Dreamhack Invitational Mumbai 2018.

– Placing 2nd at Dreamhack Winter Jönköping 2018, beating out Optic and G2 in the offline finals to get there.

Where are the players now?
Of the original six members of Project Destiny, three continued to see success in international competition, moving on to storied North American esports organisation, Cloud 9, who recruited the likes of Johnny “JT” Theodosiou, Aran “Sonic” Groesbeek and Tiaan “T.c” Coetzee as part of their CS:GO development programme in late 2020.

JT and T.c continue to remain abroad as they now compete under the Complexity banner as a Top 10 CS team, with recent highlights such as 2nd at IEM Sydney 2023 and 3rd at the BLAST Premier Fall Finals 2023.

‘People had no idea that we even played CS in South Africa. To me, Project Destiny was showing that we could take on the world and prove a point,’ observedAndreas Hadjipaschali, co-founder of Bravado Gaming.

Introducing Project Destiny 2.0
Bravado Gaming believes that the core roster it has developed is one of the strongest that Africa has ever been able to produce. It is with this in mind that is proud to announce Project Destiny 2.0. As of May 2024, Bravado’s CS roster will be flying to Belgrade, Serbia, where it will be competing and training, until mid-2026. The reason it has chosen to compete out of Europe is quite simple: to be the best, you have to play the best.

Where Bravado is accustomed to playing the same handful of teams ad nauseam in South Africa, the European scene will allow it to face a far more skilled and diverse pool of teams, amplifying its rate of growth tremendously.

‘I really believe that they’re going to turn heads. We had spent a lot of money during Project Destiny – we wanted to spend this money on these players whom we knew had what it took. Fast forwarding to today, if I didn’t feel the same now as I did back then, we would never have chosen to make this investment into Project Destiny 2.0, together with our sponsors comprising of Alienware, Dell Technologies and Intel, Andreas added.

Whilst it may not have seen success recently in the Middle East, as part of the PGL Major 2024 closed qualifiers, Bravado Gaming is absolutely certain that given time alongside the plentiful support and resources that it knows it can provide, the CS team will be able to produce results that the entire African region can be proud of.

Meet the team
The competing roster will be:

– Wiljhane “Wilj” Smith (Age: 19)

– Marchahn “March” Smith (Age: 22)

– Johnathan “Doru” Fox (Age: 23)

– Kian “Triton” Gibson (Age: 21)

– TBC
– Daniel “LaBishop” Hufton (Coach, Age: 29)

With support from Bravado’s management team behind the project: Andreas and Dimitri Hadjipashchali, Tristan Rens, Emma-Leigh Hoyle, Jaco Du Toit, Karmen Scheffer and Matab Amer, as well as from its incredible sponsors: Alienware, Dell Technologies and Intel.

As massive fans of Counter-Strike, which is its bread and butter and heart and soul, the majority of management has competed in CS for years themselves. With a huge outpouring of passion from the team behind the scenes, the players are secure in knowing that they have one of the best management teams available behind them in their endeavours abroad. 

Objectives

– Reaching and maintaining a top 30 HLTV rating.

– Qualifying for a major.

– Consistent content development and distribution.

– A story to tell: From zero to hero, unfolding as the story is being written.

– Unique endemic and non-endemic partnerships and collaborations.

– Featuring in mass media around the project and objectives.

‘I kind of see this as a one-shot opportunity to follow my passion for Counter-Strike. Alongside this group of guys, my teammates, who I can genuinely say are some of my nearest and dearest friends, it’s an absolute no-brainer for all of us,’ concluded Johnathan “Doru” Fox, Captain of Bravado Gaming CS2.