var1ables Report

Holy Roster moves batman

2013-07-18T12:09:00.002-07:00

Yesterday I was having a good day, farming reddit karma, watching ESPN and after a good day of CSGO I go to sleep. Everything was fine: New update in a few weeks, teams are stable, it looks like some organizations are growing in interest to sponsoring a CSGO team.

Then today happened. AND EVERYTHING EXPLODED.

It all started Virtus.pro, a team which hasn't really had a great CS team since 2007, releasing their extremely competitive CSGO team. The apparent reason was the fact that it looked like they had a new team all lined up and VP was not part of it. Not really big news, eastern European teams change lineups a lot and teams decided to stop sponsoring games all time. Not a big deal right?

But then I checked my facebook and saw that Poland's golden five - a team which won 2 ESWC, 2 IEM and 2 WCG championships - was disbanding. Given their lackluster results recently you could probably think, rightfully, that they were just retiring. However it appears that only Loord whose skills have been declining steadily for at least 3 years, was retiring. This means that NEO, the second best player of all time, Taz, one of the greatest tacticians in CS history, kuben, a steady rifle who is a super star in his own right, and pasza, one of the up and coming talents out of Poland, are all on the market now.

That should be enough for one day? Wrong. HLTV.org then reported that Markeloff, the superstar awp of Ukrainian Na'Vi, was leaving the team with one waiting for him to join. The team that swept 2010 and won back2back IEM championships are now left with 4 players after switching to CSGO and having mediocre results.

"What team is waiting for Markeloff to join" you ask. The former VP lineup. The only players not represented in this new team are Kucher, who has been the best Ukrainian not on Na'vi, and Guardian, the Slovenian player who was recruited to add an awp to the lineup.

However that roster move isn't quite done yet as Virtus.Pro states that they still have the team they just released under contract and the reason for the team's shutdown was due to the players not fulfilling contractual obligations. That means that 6 of the best players in CSGO can't even play until at least the end of the year, unless they come to an agreement with VP on what to do. Furthermore Fox have denied all the claims made against him and his team by the VP organization and retorted that VP did not do all of the things that they promised as well.

Here are the tentative rosters:

Golden five:
Kuben
Neo
pasza
taz

Ex-Virtus.Pro:
Markeloff
Ange1
Dosia
Fox
Adren

Na'Vi:
Ceh9
Zeus
Starix
Edward

FA:
Kucher
Guardian

Fantasy land/might happen rosters:

Na'VI:
Cheh9
Zeus
Starix
Edward
Guardian

ESC/Whatever their sponsor is:
Kuben
Neo
Pasza
taz
Kucher

The Na'vi Lineup seems more reasonable - replacing one elite level awper with another. Won't be the same though, but it makes sense and addresses their need. Plus they must share the language since Na'Vi speaks Russian as well as ukrainian and Guardian just played for a Russian team.

The ESC/Whatever lineup is to nice and tidy. I think they'll probably disband permanently. I think taz, pasza and neo will probably continue playing and Kuben will retire leaving Kucher still on the market. So that "golden trio" will make an international team as they just had great success with on recently and still have the talent to play at the top level of CS.

Hopeful future

2012-08-22T15:25:00.001-07:00

It's not everyday that I get to be pretty positive about eSports, and counter-strike in particular. In the last year the whole CS scene basically collapsed - with only 2 real tournaments in the whole year so far. To put it in perspective, we had roughly 6 by this time last year. And we had an equal number coming up in the second half. Plus the online leagues and smaller tournaments around the world. However with CSGO coming out it seems that things have actually gone better than i ever expected them to - i had made relatively arrogant comments on twitter to pus, thorin and lurppis about how half of the 1.6 community would switch and all the tournaments would too etc etc etc. But damn even more than have seemed to.

So lets recap what's happened in the last month and a half:

Almost every single professional north american team's players are playing CSGO in ESEA and it looks like the interest is there at both the midlevel and the lower level of competition
ESWC's NA tournament is HUGE, featuring over 700 teams
ESL's Go4CSGO cup has a pretty solid attendance of 30+ teams ever week with several thousand(even 10-15K on one of the finals that I watched) watching the stream
EPS germany(the premier tournament in germany AND the flagship of ESL's online leagues) has switched to CSGO
NiP, with heaton at the helm, is back featuring 3 1.6ers(including 2 of the best ever, f0rest and get_right) and 2 source kids.
It looks like the golden 5 are going all in with CSGO
Fnatic appears to be switching as cArn as stated that they will be "playing multiple CS titles"
Two CoD teams have switched, holdmouse1 in NA and kola eSports in EU
Natu is switching with a finnish team
Dignitas, EG and coL have all shown various levels of interest in CSGO - with dignitas being the most interested in picking up a team
Almost every source team is switching or will be switching in the near future
It appears that most of the 1.6 community seems receptive to CSGO and have seen the changes in recent patches as major steps in the right direction in terms of competition
Dreamhack will feature a CSGO tournament
Numerous top level pros are streaming
Numerous top level pros are tweeting
HLTV's news feed is mostly CSGO related
r/global offensive is gaining thousands of subs - going from 4 thousand last week to over 7 thousand this week.
CSGO's recent patches have made the game better than ever
CSGO is the most popular version of CS on steam
Volcano's de_nuke_ve shows how fast the community can create better versions of the map than valve can

However i can't feel like some minor slights and problems with CSGO

When asked about FPS games both sundance of MLG and david ting of IPL have shown more interests or outright confirmed little to no interest in CSGO
IEM have shown no interest in CSGO
Matchmaking still sucks in CSGO
not a lot of people are really watching CSGO streams despite the fact that more people are streaming CS than ever before
The clan matches which were supposed to be in CSGO appear not to be occuring
The spectating tools have not been implemented, although the CSGO developers have stated that they were waiting on DoTA2's spectating client to base thiers off of
The major content providers in the beta, corey dunn, whisenhunt and ESEAnews have slowed significantly - essentially slowing the growth of CSGO's personality/content creation growth.
the game still doesn't have a silencer(LOOK AND ME AND MY NITPICKINESS)
Matchmaking doesn't make use of the _se versions of the map and volcano's _ve version of nuke

It looks like a major mixed bag. Mostly good, yes, but without one of the two major tournament circuits in north america(IPL or MLG) or the many houses that CS built(IEM, WCG) picking up the game, I seriously doubt that CSGO will get the coverage or the respect that it should in the higher echelons of eSports. No matter how good a game is(as seen in quake live), if people don't watch it it won't last. Furthermore it looks like some of the problems of CS's past might come back stronger than ever now if we dont' fix them immediately, but that's a topic for another time.

Sandwich patch notes

2012-04-21T04:51:00.001-07:00

Years after the sequel to the original delicious sandwich the next installment of the franchise that has sold over 25 billion copies receives it's 3rd installment; CHEESESTEAK SANDWICH.

Cheesesteak sandwich v1:
-meat is shit
-the spread is vomit
-the cheese is snot
-the bread is old and moldy

cheeseteak sanwich v1.01:
-shit is changed to 3 month old meat
-vomit is toned downed
-snot cheese is toned down
-Changed bread value from old and moldy to stale

cheesesteak sandwich v1.02
-meat changed to month old meat
-vomit changed to mayonnaise in the back of refrigrator
-snot cheese toned down

Cheesesteak sandwich v1.03
-meat changed to 3 week old meat
-Mayonnaise changed to old mayonnaise
-snot changed to hard american cheese
-stale bread changed to 3 day old bread

cheesesteak sandwich v1.04
-Bread changed to day old bread
-meat changed to week old meat
-american cheese made relatively fresh
-mayonnaise changed to right before expiration date mayonnaise

GOAL:
-Fresh sandwich roll
-nice spread
-delicious carmelized onions
-diced steak
-american cheese perfectly melted

Hopefully it'll get there...but right now it's not looking great.

Map balance part 3

2012-04-19T16:41:00.003-07:00

So here's the thing I've wanted to talk about for a while but I haven't mainly because it's really hard to explain.

So when you're looking at DE nuke there is only a few areas you need to look at. The "ramp room" which leads to the lower bombsite and there is the "outside" area at the very bottom of the screen which leads to the upper bombsite. The middle area of the map is the lobby and it leads to ramp and to the upper bombsite through a "hut" or a "squeaky" door and through a "radio" room. The CT's lead tot he same places, only their have an upper view of the hut which is directly in front of their spawn and a big garage which looks at outside and squeaky.

Only that's not it. There's also a second entry point for the lower bombsite. It's behind the big garage. now i couldn't find a real overview which properly displays this but the overview below shows it relatively effectively in their bottom lefhand corner. It isn't to scale but it does the job.

This is the biggest change from CS1.6 and CS:S to CSGO. They completely drop that route. Now the argument for it was that that pathway wasn't used so why even have it in the game?

They removed the stairs and they removed to "green mile", the fake bombsite and the second tunnel on lower. They still have the control room which allows for a bit of diversity on bonmbsite coverage for the T's or CT's to hold.

That being said the unforeseen consequence for us CS players, something that valve probably didn't really think about. By taking away that pathway and the second doorway on lower it makes the lower bombsite infinitely harder to play AND makes it infinitely hard to take. Instead of 2 or 3 viable ways to get to that bombsite there is only one: ramp. This makes radio room AND lobby a death trap because the CT's can just run up on the T's. and the outside can only funnel into the minigarage connector to A. So it's all rushes and all death for the T's instead of them being able to control the pace and abuse the multitude of pathways that the T's have to take outside.

Basically they made a map which was already NOTORIOUSLY CT sided EVEN MORE CT SIDED.

map balance part 2

2012-04-04T22:59:00.003-07:00

So now i'm going to touch on two maps which have not been touched much from their layouts and map designs outside of cosmetics and some minor changes in between the games - dust2 and inferno.( I haven't forgotten about de_Nuke but that'll be touched on in the near future).

INFERNO:

de_inferno is considered one of the most balanced maps in the history of counter-strike mainly due to the equal times it would take from A bombsite and the B bombsite for BOTH teams. Where de_train had fast times of rotation from outer to inner for the counter-terrorists than it would with the terrorists, the times of rotations for the CT, specifically from apartments to B-bombsites and vice versa, can be relatively long but overall it's a pretty fast rotate for the players of archway on both sites. The terrorist path of rotation from alt mid or apartments to banana and vice versa, are equally long. Furthermore 2 areas of the map, mid and banana, are easy paths to cut off for either side if they attempt to abuse that path of rotation.

On CSGO little has changed outside of a few minor changes - most notably the constricted pathways for apartments and banana - the map's layout has not changed much. This is GOOD. By not really changing much of the map the balance of the map should not have swayed too much. While i could make a big stink over the placing of the fountain in the B bombsite, having a construction site where L-halls was or the fast rotation path from CT archways to B from my play through these things have not really changed much from one version of CS to another. This allows for the metagame to change very little and the strategies and tactics should be applicable from one game to the other

DUST2:

dust2 is THE iconic map of counter-strike. Where most people who have played halo will know wizard or warlock, quake will know DM6 and starcraft will have played a game on lost temple CS is the cs communities map. IT goes without saying that this map will not be changed much, if at all.

That does not mean this is a perfectly balanced map as, with the exception of long A, every single pathway on the map is easily accessible by the terrorists, and not for the counter-terrorists. The map has a middle area which is connected to every since pathway and there are more entry point for the terrorist side to this area than there are for the counter-terrorists. However the benefits of this are marginal as a strong CT side could be dominate their half and win it outright. However for the most part this goes in the way of the terrorists however slightly(IE 9-6, 8-7, 10-5 for the T's).

Similar thing to inferno, while there have been some minor changes(the big box in middle is slightly shorter and makes it able to be jumped on it and then ton cat walk, the boxes on lower can be jumped onto etc) for the most part the overall format and layout remains unchanged. This allow, like inferno, for the same strategies, the same tactics, the same metagame to transfer over and from the recent CSGO tournament in Copenhagen it appears that the T sided nature has been toned down a bit, but that could be more the player than the map.

Overall these 2 maps display the old saying "if it aint broke, don't fix it." Most people, outside of the hardcore gamers who play this game for a decade like myself, will not notice these changes and most people will not even care - and for the most part these changes do not really hurt the game as a whole.

Map balance part 1

2012-04-03T02:41:00.002-07:00

So here's my attempt at explaining why 1.6 maps are better than CSGO maps - specifically train and nuke - and why certain maps are more balanced than others. I'm sure there is more that is far above my level of understanding but here's my attempt.

TRAIN:

So here's the problem with this map: it's far too easy for the CT's to rotate from one site to the other and it's much, much harder for the T's to rotate from one site to the other. For example if you're cut off white halls it's next to impossible for you to actually rotate from white halls to T mid or IVY. Going down ladder, if the CT's called fast enough they'd have that covered.

On the other hand if the CT's get the call that they're going IVY but haven't actually gone through the people covering lower inside could run through white halls and flank them. IF they're actually through ivy they could provide backup through ladder room, z halls or run all the way to CT spawn and flank from there.

Basically the problems of the map is that it's far to hard to properly spread out the CT side and pick them off or exploit there weakest point or have an easy place to rotate to when the T's initial plan fails. While it can be done - and over the last few months they have seemed to have balanced themselves out, however slightly(IE instead of 11-4 or 12-3 CT halves we have 10-5 and 9-6 CT halves).

So how did CSGO fix these problems(ala the stairway from underpass to overpass on dust)? They didn't. In fact they made it worse in some regard. Where the bomb sites were in cover and only had 2 real points of attack in the previous game(s) In CSGO they're more out in the open and they have taken away cover and prevented vertical support outside. So where on the inner bombsite there was the flatbed(although i misspelled flatbed fatbed...don't mind that, i'm just stupid) and took out the 2 train.

Now most would argue that this isn't a real issue and that train was perfect how it was. But there is another issue which remains unsolved from the removal of those train cars and getting rid of the ladder to 5(and now 6) trains. By removing those trains and limiting the vertical movement you have a map which, once you take a bombsite, is actually incredibly hard to hold as you have less places to hide and are more out in the open.

By limiting the ability to get onto 5 and 6 or under ANY of the trains you don't have that extra place to hide(preventing depth in strategy) and by adding another heaven(above Z halls) the map moves more towards the CT's favor again as once you take a site it's harder to hold and simply taking the sites will be harder due to the fact they have height advantage and almost all the areas that CT's have to hold can be held by multiple areas and most of the areas on the maps can be covered by multiple CT's without much of a rotation.

While i'm sure the changes in the map might not show these changes favor the CT side the potential that they could - and the fact that most of the players in the beta from my experience have not played CS and do not understand the layout, the benefits and the drawbacks of playing each spot the way they do - might harm the game in the long run. Basically they shouldn't try to fix what isn't broken, even if they don't like how the game APPEARS to be played - let the players try to sort that out, as it has been the last 13 years.

1.6 community logic

2012-03-28T14:09:00.000-07:00

coL drops CS - "who cares, the CGS ruined their credibility"
mTw drops CS - "who cares, they've been bad for like 2 years now"
EG drops CS - "who cares about american CS?"
Mouz drops CS - "they haven't been good since cyx died"
Lions drops CS - "who cares they're the 3rd swedish team"
WCG stops PC gaming - "just like cArn said, WCG is a joke"
WEM drops CS - "They weren't important anyway"
IEM rumored to stop hosting 1.6 - "we have 70k viewers why would they stop?"
DreamHack looks to be moving more for sc2 - "who cares dreamhack is just a glorified lan party"

Seriously guys, it's bad when we're losing basically ALL of our infrastructure. I don't want our game to be an also ran or a not-ran-at-all. I'm sorry lurppis and cArn, you mother fuckers aren't helping our game grow anymore, seems like you disregard all the progress that CSGO has made because it was bad 6 months ago. CSPROMOD will NEVER, EVER, EVER, work - especially with CSGO right around the corner. Why? CSP has been slow to develop - it took 4 years for them to release thier first beta version and it takes them 6 months per update - whereas the CSGO development is weekly and they seem to start to give a shit about our tournaments, our scene and attempting to grow our scene and trying to get our game as close to the version we love. But, just like CSP, you'd rather have the game die because it was IMMEDIATELY because it was EXACTLY like 1.6 - and you seem to forget that from beta 1 to beta 5 of the original game CS wasn't ANYTHING like what we have now. Hell even 1.0 to1.3 is nothing like the version we've been playing for the last 6 years.

Basically it's CSGO or bust for us, and it's rather sad you'd rather have bust than help build CSGO.

Arsenal mode

2012-03-09T23:22:00.001-08:00

So the latest CSGO beta has come out. And well...it's interesting. They changed the map to de_lake, a reused L4D2 map which is actually surprisingly fun to play, and they changed the game type to arsenal demolition. Arsenal demolition is like gun game but with a bomb and a single bombsite - which is actually surprisingly fun when you're playing it. You also move down the gun ladder(start with m4, go to P90, then deagle then shotgun...after that idk. never got that far yet).

Now lets get into the problem with this. Unlike gun game in CS, CSS or even CoD you don't get your weapon upgraded(or downgraded in this situation) you have to wait until the next round to get your shiny new gun. This causes a slight boredom because - like in CS, CSS and CoD where respawns are on - you have you wait after you're dead before you get your next gun. This is probably due to the fact you have a bomb site in the middle of the map, but it's still not that great.

The next obvious problem is the amount of rounds you get to play. I think i'm pretty alright at CS, or i should be i've been playing it pretty much my entire life, but i can't seem to get past shotgun, as when i finally get a kill with it it's the last round of the half and i have to start over again. Now this could be remedied by upping the gun after each additional kill but that'd get rid of one of the better features in the game - "bonus grenades" which come with each kill.

So heres the run down:

Positive:
The small map size allows for fast action and is equal distance from each spawn to allow for intense firefights
The game itself is pretty fun and the strategy involved can be there...just hasn't been developed yet
It's a good warm up for a "real" game of CS

Negative:
Too few rounds
Guns don't upgrade fast enough
You don't get a new gun after each kill
The addition of a bomb prevents you from continuing the fast action gungame is known for

Overall:
It's a good concept, but they need to hammer out a few problems. When they add "arms race" or whatever they're calling "real" gun game it should be fun....but until then IDK what they're doing.

CSGO update feedback UPDATED

2012-02-25T13:56:00.008-08:00

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE:
I'M WAS WRONG ABOUT BEING WRONG: the spray recoil for the rifles is grabage.

UPDATE:
UPON FURTHER REVIEW: I was wrong about the recoil, it's all in my head, I still think the SMG is useless though, I don't know what to do to fix it though, outside of upping the damage, but that might lead to more harm then good.

So i recently got into the CSGO beta and seems pretty legit so far, although there are definitely things that need to be tweaked in order for the game to recapture it's podium as the king of the eSports world - if it ever does. But before I go on my AVGN style tirade i'd like to mention what is good about this game.

THE GOOD
1) That it exists

Now most people in the CS community would see this game as a useless sequel that nobody wanted. And potentially they'd be right - if they haven't noticed the decreasing prize pots, the thinning out of the CS farm system or the fact that a little game called SC2 has taken over in EVERY SINGLE ASPECT in the last year or the fact that our collective CS community is fractured right through the middle and as long as that is the case CS as a game will never get the love and attention that it should simply because our blood feud over shit that occurred 7 years ago is more important to us than our game and our gametype living on(instead of the bastardization of it that we see in CoD, sorry guys, you guys are bros but SND as you play it is kinda horrendous). And too be honest i'd rather have any game with the words "counter-strike" in the name to be the king of the eSports world, even if it means that my beloved 1.6 has to drive off into the sunset.

2) The prettiness

The game is really pretty. That's basically it. It's desaturated, sure, and i love me some colors but overall i like it. IT's not CoD/battlefields' ALL BROWN ALL THE TIME yet but it's not nearly as colorful as CSS or CS1.6. And while there is some useless stuff scattered around the map I don't really give a shit about that. IF you do you need to go to the doctor and get yourself a prescription of Ritalin because you have ADHD.

3) The developers ACTUALLY SEEM TO CARE

Let me say that again: THE DEVELOPERS ACTUALLY SEEM TO CARE. THEY ACTUALLY WANT THIS GAME TO SUCCEED, AND FOR PEOPLE TO PLAY IT IN COMPETITION. THEY'RE ACTIVELY TAKING SUGGESTIONS AND FEEDBACK FROM PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS OR FORMER PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS ON THE MATTER. THEY ACTUALLY WANT THIS GAME TO BE GOOD. For valve to even want this is a massive step forward from the "oh esports exists, that's cool I guess" that we've seen before and now they're trying to do their best to make the game the best that it can be, and it seems just about every update is a MASSIVE improvement over the last.

Riot during their beta actually actively discouraged people from competing in League of Legends and Blizzard managed to ignore the fact that Terran, at every level and on next to every map, was completely overpowering. This does not seem to be the case with the CSGO developers - they've even changed 2 things that they were hardline on recently because the community wanted it so badly(the addition of chest armor and defuse kit).

Well now that the lovefest is over time to get to what everybody wants: RAW UNDYING HATRED.

THE BAD

1) The maps

Now while some things can be overlooked - as can be seen minor graphical updates or can be waved off with a collective "mleh." Others can be TOTALLY GAME BREAKING. Perfect example: Nuke. How the fuck is the cleanest map the one map I seem to despise the most? Because they took out what was a major advantage - and one of the only advantage the T's had over the CT's on that map - the fact they could attack from multiple angles and if you took outside the counter-terrorists had to stay on guard and watch an area which they might not otherwise - the actual lower bombsite rather than simply guarding ramp. By taking out green mile they took out that weapon in the T arsenal and now they have almost no way to actually take the lower bombsite other than to chance it and run directly into the death trap that is ramp, and upper is even safer now with the massive nuclear waste barrels and the the fucking forklift allowing upper floor to be really safe now. Oh yeah, also get ride of the crane thing. Shit needs to be gone.

Inferno i have a problem with as well, but it's less now than i thought it once was. The cubby/flophouse area at the end of CT side apartments kinda pisses me off but it's not as bad as i thought it would be, but I'd still rather it not exist. And then there's the fucking fountain. Now I get why it's there. Wait, no I don't. WHY PUT IT IN THERE, THERE'S NO REASON FOR IT TO BE THERE. TAKE THAT SHIT OUT VALVE GOD DAMN IT AND JUST PUT IN SOME MISSILE BOXES OR WHATEVER WE WERE FIGHTING OVER ON INFERNO. WHATEVER IT IS JUST TAKE OUT THE GOD DAMN FOUNTAIN. Also, get rid of the archway on banana to allow for CT's to be less dominating on that area. or simply widen banana. Whichever works.

Train is well, train. But what I really hate is how people could actually get over z-hallways and get to a spot of the map that really they shouldn't be able to(EDIT: noticed the ladder...I still don't like it though). That annoys me. But what really is something they should change is the ability to go under-neither the trains and make most of the trains lower and move the ladders to the back so that it's easily accessible. I like what they did on the T side of mid and i get why that ladder is there, but I liked getting on top of 5 train, and I'm sure that 6 train would be a pretty awesome angle too. On inside I'd like the trains to be slightly closer together and for them to add the flatbed back to right next to ladder. That'd be awesome. I'm sure the more I play it the more I'd find more things to hate about it, but right now I don't like it for these reasons.

Dust2 has some minor changes i'd like to occur but overall it's pretty good. One such change would be them making the triangle boxes on A plat or the double stack boxes on CT side cat. Both would be nice, but from my playtime and experience with the map so far it doesn't seem like a big deal.

2) The recoil

The recoil is kinda broken. It's better than it was in the original beta but it's still pretty bad. While every update they make it less and less terrible it's still pretty terrible. Now the bursting is spot on and the tapping is getting better every update - at least for the main 2 rifles the AK/M4 - it still has a major problem in that the hold down mouse 1 and pull down spray is still TERRIBLE. About 4-5 times every match I've noticed that a close range spray whiffs and sometimes both the CT and the T player hold down mouse 1 and both waste both of their entire clips. That needs to change. Right now.

The same thing could be said about the SMG's, the whole strategy of the SMG - historically and in my persoanl experience at least - is for the player to spray down their opponent with simple mass of bullets and that leads them to pick up a more powerful weapon. It's a gamble but it works some times. as of right now EVERY SINGLE SMG is useless because even if you're close range and you spray your entire clip you'll end up missing far more then you hit. and it'll often lead to embarrassing moments where you spray a guy whose not looking at you and you'd hit 2-3 shots and they'd just turn around and shoot you in the face with whatever rifle they had.

3) The weapons

SMG's are useless as stated above - they don't do enough damage or have a good enough spray in order for them to be useful.

Rifles are kinda broken, but from my estimation it's a simple fix. Lower the recoil for the AK/M4 and it should be alright. The AUG and the Kreigg are fucking AMAZING...although the spray is useless and the only successful way to fire the gun is single shot. So far the AUG and the Kreigg are the best guns in the game in my estimation, but i haven't played with them enough to really tell. The awp and the scout are effectively the same.

The real problem, so far at least, has been 2 things and 2 things alone. The pistols and the shotgun. BOTH starting pistols are pretty weak and I dread pistol rounds because I can't tell when i'm hitting shots or when i'm totally off. And when I do hit shots it doesn't seem to be doing a lot of damage or it seems to do INCREDIBLE amounts of damage. One of the other,but not the perfect middle it should be at. Oh yeah, the deagle is better than all the SMG's and now the shotgun. This leads me to the shotgun. Oh nova, you were so great in the last beta. What happened? They must have patched you...and they should have. But now it seems like an overnerf, an over reaction to the awesomeness. Basically they made one of the most cost efficient weapons in the game to a gun which is barely usable. Poor gun, it was so awesome too.

4) Grenades

So let me do a fast summary of everything that's wrong with the grenades so far. This is way longer than I originally thought it would be so i better wrap this up fast before you guys get bored and watching some of the amazing cat videos or something.

HE grenade: Either devestating or no damage. If it's dead on it does like 3/4 of the opponent's health, if it's off by like 2-3 feet it does 4 damage. that needs to be balanced out

Flashbang: The flash's flash need to be shortened, only a little and much more important the fucking double vision needs to be tweaked shorter or needs to be taken out completely. It's too long IMO, and quite annoying. I should also see the crosshairs while flashed.

Smoke; seems pretty alright, but it needs to a little less dense. Minor tweak, not much needs to be done really.

Molotov/incendiary: the AOE is a bit big but the damage over time seems pretty big. Overall I don't see it as a big deal, but the area it effects that it takes up is a bit big.

Decoy: it went from "oh wow, thats not a human at all" to "wow, that's pretty convincing...if you're a bit thick." I've been confused by it occaisonally, but usually it's useless.

OVERALL

It's pretty alright right now, but it still needs a lot of work before it can considered ready for competition. The grenade damge, the recoil and the maps needs serious tweaks before this game is even close to being ready for either competition or for the average consumer. That being said it's definately better than it looked originally and it's definately better now then it was at the last beta. I just hope they don't release it before it's almost perfect and it causes a splintering in the community - causing the scene to go from 2 60-70K communities to 3 30-40K communities.

My probably terrible league idea

2011-10-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

This is a probably terrible idea but I've been thinking about this for almost ever.

Here’s the skinny of it:
12 teams - either 2 6 team groups of 1 large table.
Each team plays each other twice(unless there is division, then they play each other 3 or 4 times)
4 team playoff or 6 team playoff
promotion and relegation - Botton 4 goes to relegation where they play qualifying team for their spot in the overall league.
“but var1ables, where do you get the teams?”
This might be kinda weird but I'm guessing that it’s going to go two way, Either through selecting the best teams from the best leagues of each nation(EPS or whatever each country uses). Those guys get an autoberth. If not invite or tournament to decide the participants.

After the first season the teams still there then it’ll go something like this:
all the winners of the national tournaments go to a tournament. THe people who win then go on to play the bottom for of this league.

This allows for the national leagues to stay that - national - as well as give them some importance to the overall scene.

For CS it’d be something like this(bold go to playoffs):
IDEA A:
Group a
SK
mTw
winfakt
mouz
Lions
alternate

Group B
fnatic
navi
Again
ESC
anexis
Moscow 5

IDEA B:

SK
mTw
winfakt
navi
fnatic
mouz
anexis
Lions
alternate
Moscow 5
Again
ESC

Going backwards

2011-10-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

eSports has been around for about 15 years now. For about 10 of those years we’ve had “major leagues” and “Olympic of eSports” but we’ve done nothing to deserve those things. Why? because we’re imitating the real world sports - and doing it poorly.

You see the things people at MLG(them especially because they took the first two words of the MOST BELOVED SPORT IN THE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA), IEM, WCG, and ESWC don’t do when imitating the sports is do research. You know why these major leagues formed - MLB, NHL, NBA and the like - formed was because the teams which were already around decided to make their own league instead of having some sort of ridiculous independent system which ranks teams on some sort of formula or polls(See NCAA). It also made it much easier to schedule and make rankings that could be considered official.

They also were made to fuck over the players and try to keep the salaries and costs low. But that’s another topic entirely.

So basically the pro teams existed long before the league. MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA all had professional teams which made up their league - not the league which made the teams. Or the leagues that gave the teams validity(ie places to compete with the best). The teams were already competing with other teams - and the best ones floated to the top, got managers and formed their own league.

I’m not sure about all of soccer(futbol for your damned euro’s) but i know that the EPL was formed only 20 years ago - from the teams which were the best in England and had nowhere to play.

I think more then anything the teams need to actually work together - and then form their own rankings and actually hold each other accountable and enforce their damn contracts. And the leagues are doing it totally backwards: they've got the "major league" feel without doing what was done in order to do what traditional sports did to get there.

And none of the teams invest into development - which means that we're hoping that we get lucky when somebody gets called up into the majors or we have to pay/buyout another organization to get the talent need to get better results. The only one i can think of is a call back to 2004 when complexity sponsored forsaken - a team which once held coL’s place as America's second team. It’s also ironic that they are the only team which has ever even tried to hold “academies” or sponsorship tournaments.

This will serve 2 purposes: you’ll be able to ACTUALLY HAVE PEOPLE THERE TO CALL UP WHEN SOMEBODY RETIRES. And unlike starcraft - which no matter how close knit a team is it’s still an individual game - having a player retire/be traded/get bought out in a game like counter-strike, TF2, Halo or the like really can hinder team performance, especially if your in a country like America where talent is few and far between for CS and is equally hard to hold onto. The second reason why this is important is it gives you leverage against both the current players(who could be replaced easily by the up and comers) and against your rivals for those players(as you have both young talent and you can sell them such talent for a profit by the sales of such talents).

And instead of getting TV/radio/streaming rights for their matches(read, revenue) they're doing it all out of pocket meaning that most of the stress is on them. Especially when organizations are finally becoming big enough to to demand such things and streamers are getting the revenue needed to actually purchase such rights. But this’ll be talked about much later down the road.

TL;DR - nobody's doing anything right, and nobody bothered to open up a damn book and do some research.

eSports history time

2011-08-01T21:45:00.000-07:00

You expected me to write all this shit down? WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I AM....I'll do that later. Right now is recommendation time - and this stuff is important. Well not really(in the grand scheme of things) but at least you'll be better educated by watching/reading most of them.

Videos:
Watch all of thorins interviews. ALL OF THEM. Seriously. THEY'RE AMAZING:

Watch compLexity redemption, the story of compLexity's second major and first top8 placing at winter CPL 2004. In the next year they'd become the best team in competitive counter-strike after winning ESWC 2005.

Watch Team3D at WSVG louisville, like coL redemption documents 3D's win at the first WSVG event.

Watch E-Athletes, the story of the rivalry between coL and 3D. It's basically the TL;DR version of Gameboys but it's good never the less.

Watch FRAG Pro Gaming Documentary the downer of the group is probably the most negative one of the bunch. It deals with how shittily regulated the current scene is and how the CPL are/were total dicks to both their players and their winners. Also documents how a great player couldn't get a sponsor despite being awesome(and is stated that he couldn't get it because he's black).

Books:
As a massive counter-strike fan i can't help but say that Game Boys: Triumph, Heartbreak, and the Quest for Cash in the Battleground of Competitive Videogaming is a great book that documents the rivalry that took place from 2004-2009 between compLexity gaming and Team3D.I've even done a poorly written review.

Next is Korea's Online Gaming Empire. It's more of a statistical analysis of how fucking big the korean gaming business is but the last 2/3 of the book are dedicated to the korean pro gaming scene. It's actually an incredible read and where i learned the most about how shittly the starcraft players are treated in korea.(i'll write a review of this book....eventually)

This is the only book, The StarCraft Bible 2nd Edition: Who knew that explosions of pixels could inspire? i've not read but from what i have read(from the free stuff chobopeon has posted on teamliquid and the short audio version) it's fucking incredible. Someday i'm going to do this for counter-strike, although i really hope that somebody else does who can do the game justice. This is probably going to blow my mind while reading it, but idk yeat.

Good and the bad, and the growth of eSports

2011-07-26T04:49:00.000-07:00

GOOD:

People are actually watching

people are watching gaming - a concept that didn’t seem possible even 3 years ago at the level it is right now. Even people who have never really competed in some of the games, nor do they ever plan to, will watch just to be amazed by the genius of some of the players. Perfect example of this is cross pollination of some of the CS crowd to the SC2 scene, where some of the older players who have grown tired of CS have started to watch SC2.

People are starting to make a profit

And I'm not talking shady profiteering profit. I’m talking actually covering operating cost and making more than that. MLG’s CEO, Sundance Digiovanni, has state numerous times that he fully expects that this year they will be profitable - heavy of the coat tails of SC2 and also trying to shift focus from the sale of the MLG brand to having a sustainable business model. Fnatic, in an article with wired, are also(finally) profitable after many years of hard work. And ESEA’s Craig Levine, who hasn’t stated that they are actually profitable, sure seems to be from the growth of both the league itself and the services they’ve been providing for years. And the best part is that they are actually paying out their contracts - to competitors and to players. Those two things - paying out and actually being profitable - seemed to be mutually exclusively 2 years ago. Now it’s becoming an occurrence which is becoming increasingly consistent.

New people have come to the sport

SC2, as much as i’ve been resistant to it being the sole eSport, ha helped this a lot as it brought a lot of people and really, really, really grew the fanbase of not just it, but eSports in general. That and the Fighting Game Community(FGC) move to streaming has made them open up their eyes to whats out there(they didn't’ consider themselves a member of the eSports community even a year ago). The console community, through SC2, has started to not only learn how to stream their games on their own, but also what games like CS, quake, and LoL - which helped not only them learn about these older and much more structured gaming communities, but also allowed them to move into a space and help extend their brand outside their world.

People are having babies

Watching Djwheat teach miniwheat how to play starcraft 2 made me realize amazing for someone like me. People who i grew up looking up to in gaming are having kids. And they’re teaching them how awesome gaming is. Why is this good? People are old enough to be parents, AND THEY ARE TEACHING THEM HOW TO LOVE GAMING. We’ll have SECOND GENERATION players in 5 to 10 years. And they’ll be better. And they’ll be smarter. Pretty amazing if you ask me.

THE BAD:

People are stupid and ignorant

and no that’s not redundant. Everytime i read teamliquid, SRK, HLTV etc i always have to cringe. These people like not having events streamed(SRK) for some reason I've yet to understand. These people like how KeSPA managed players(TL). People actually think sirscoots founded lead and made Evil Geniuses what they are today(FUCKING EVERYBODY NEW). It feels like i have to yell at them or be condescending(which i do anyways because i’m a dick). Especially the last one. It seems no matter how many interviews happen, no matter how many streams are done, no many how much information is out there for the taking people are still stupid and still don’t take the knowledge they are given to them

Journalism Sucks

Straight up. Journalism in eSports is only one step above general gaming - which the people who are supposed to be critiquing and covering organizations are sponsored either directly or indirectly by the same people they are trying to critique. The opposite is also true, as i have experienced at insider eSports - that despite having good content and great coverage of games we couldn’t get a single sponsor because we were on some body's shit list or the people who were supposed to be helping us with the sponsor situation would either a) leave and take the sponsors with them b) go to a bigger organization or finally c) go work for the people who are supposed to be giving us money. Not exactly a conducive situation to finding funding. ANd it gets worst when the web 2.0er’s, especially in TL, don’t ever seem to realize that by posting news they are journalists - whether they like it or not - and therefore must do the due diligence that any journalist would, and it’s simple common courtesy to approach people for statements when you KNOW A SHIT STORM WILL HAPPEN IF YOU POST YOUR THREAD.

Players are either jaded or stupid

players seem to fear big organizations or seem to not get what they can do for them. Look at the root-gaming buy out for example: you have a group of guys in jax, jlake and jbass who have invest heavily into the sport, and in the case of jlake almost bankrupted himself for it, and the SC players didn’t want to join them. Even with the star studded roster they couldn’t get any sponsors on their own, so why did they split off to try to get them now? And coL HAS sponsors. And HAS had a history of providing for players. With the exception of some of the gaffs(releasing a team for roster moves, then picking up a game which is known for roster moves: contracting players then releasing them immediately) i don’t think coL is that bad of an organization. As i’ve said before - what were they afraid of by joining a big organization? That they wouldn’t have to eat top ramen every day to save in hopes of going to events? Or that they’d have time to practice instead of worrying about travel expenses? I seriously just don’t get why there’s some hostility to the bigger organizations. Now i'm not saying not to read all the contracts or sign immediately but they really need to think of the reputation each has - and certainly coL carries more than almost any other organization out there.

Contracts don’t mean shit

Every couple of weeks i see either a contract dispute or a player being in trouble because of a clause in a contract they weren’t aware of which led to all sorts of problems for them. But rest easy as these contracts don’t mean anything - as is demonstrated by the hatred SKgaming has for Fnatic and vice versa. If they’re willing to steal each others players - GUX for fnatic and Delpand in Sk’s case - without any real problem we have a big problem. If they were legit one would take the other to court - and win big. If the biggest organizations in the west contracts don’t mean shit god help us for this sport to ever be important. So break them as you please, nobody seems to care.

Maybe i'm hearing this wrong...

2011-07-22T02:36:00.000-07:00

But is Milkis saying that KeSpa worked? What the fuck world is he living in. You think 14 hours a day of practice - MANDATORY. SEVEN DAYS A WEEK. FOR MINIMUM WAGE. As GOOD? You think doing that, and NEVER getting a shot at competing in a major because you're on the managers shit list, or even more heinous - being foreign - as GOOD. Or never being able to have a girlfriend or friends outside of the organization as GOOD. Or the possibility of being forced around to different teams - for no fault of your own. Or banning players for chatting - EVEN ACCIDENTALLY - or wanting to change their settings mid game is GOOD?

And KeSpa(the Korean eSports players association) was actually an owners association, run by the sponsors and never actually took the players perspective into their discussion. Or that the financial backing - from company like Hite, OGN, pantech, stx, eStro - isn't necessarily as sturdy as they thought, leading to sudden shifts in sponsorship, forcing sales and movements of players from location to another. And sometimes even forcing players to lose what few intimate connections they have through trades or through dispersal drafts.

Maybe he's been living in a box, but those conditions are not what i consider GOOD.

Quick snippets of my thoughts

2011-07-14T02:55:00.000-07:00

Being on a TV show does not make you relevant
Being on a TV show does not make qualified to interview people
Learn about who you are interviewing before you start the interview.
Try to look stuff up before you open your mouth
Sirscoots did not found EG
Owning stock in a company makes you responsible for what happens in your god damn company
Most of the major players in starcraft are ignorant douchebags
Don't talk about what you don't fucking know
Try to stick to things. Arguments happen, don't be a bitch.
You can't kill an idea
Starcraft is not eSports
EG, mouz, alternate, dignitas, SK, fnatic, mTw, coL and many more existed before starcraft
EG, mouz, alternate, dignitas, SK, fnatic, mTw, coL and many more are houses that CS built
Having 5,000+ followers/subscribers doesn't make you important
People need to remember that this is a hobby
Don't be a douchebag, it doesn't help anyone.

The greatest(gaming) misnomer of all time

2011-06-29T15:11:00.001-07:00

I’ve been reading this for a long time on twitter, facebook, and (mainly) the MLG forums. This idea of “competitive” merit and this idea that there is such thing as a “competitive game” archetype. Now I've always considered it to be a minor problem - focusing mainly in the console community - but I've been hearing it from some people i respect now.

I’d like to say this: all games are competitive. Inherently. If score is being kept and theres a winner and a loser, the game is competitive. Don’t believe me? Ask the Donkey Kong players. Or DDR players. Hell even the cooperative play of some games could be considered competitive due to scoring, leveling and other aspect which have become common place in today's games.

So why do people consistently bring this point up? Mainly because they are misunderstanding what they are actually talking about. instead of using the word “competitive” which doesn’t make any sense in the context as I've provided they should be using “good” games. Something that has seriously been lacking modern games. In terms of pure gameplay mechanics(small bodies and crosshairs, autoaim etc) and measurements of raw skill(aim/accuracy for FPS and APM in RTS) most modern games do not compare to games like CS, quake, and SC:BW. Anyone who has played both will tell you that.

Why is this important? Basically because when the people who are complaining the loudest about the games are being ignored - simply because they are not approaching the developors correctly. For example the MLG community always talks about making games competitive/designing for them to be competitive - like HaloCE, CS, Quake and starcraft(all being accidentally competitive mind you) - missing the fact that if they simplay saying that are average instead of saying they are competitive(IE ~>5% of the average gaming population) just add the critique as if they are an average fan.

Greatest hits of eSports shit talk: first 2 weeks of June edition

2011-06-21T22:13:00.001-07:00

Well I've not written in a while for a number of reason: i spent about a week walking around a meadow(which turned into a dust bowl) in Tennessee watching some best damn bands in of the world and then i just didn’t write for a while out of sheer laziness and apathy. And i caught up on my sleep and television.

But i missed some of the juiciest bits in eSports during that time span. And i just can’t resist all the pent of shit I've yet to spew out onto the page. So here’s my take of some of this stuff

SK steals Delpan from fnatic

If you are unfamiliar with the topic here’s the down low: Delpan, who is signed with fnatic’s prestigious counter-strike division, was signed to the biggest eSports organization in the world, Sk-gaming, who just happens to be the long time rival of that organization. Oh yeah, and the same fucking thing happened this time last year when GuX went to fnatic from Sk.

So what’s my take? Fuck both of them. SK-gaming should’ve had the moral high ground and been legit, buy out delpan’s contract and show fnatic how to run a god damn eSports organization. But they didn’t and decided to to take the low road and do the same thing they bitched about last year.

Fnatic’s a little bitch who got what was coming to them for stealing GuX last year:it’s karma, turnabout is fair play. You can’t just be a dick to people(laughing off sk-gaming and the G7’s negotiations to try to get them to pay SK for gux) and not expect for someone to to punch you in the face eventually. But it’s even worse because they had the nerve to complain about it.

To be honest i wanted this shit to go to court more than anything. So that this shit can never happen again. But fnatic is to much of a pussy to take Sk to court and SK would probably just end up paying fnatic off anyways.

Well at least we know that the contracts in eSports are still shitty.

Root Gaming is bought by compLexity: stars make team reign

Root Gaming finally decided enough was enough and saw that players can’t really manage themselves and compete at the highest level and get sponsors at the same time so they decided to close up shop and go to the second biggest organization in North American eSports - compLexity.

Is this a good idea? Part of me says yes. CompLexity gets the top tier talent they need to bolster their - quite frankly - shit tier starcraft lineup and root gets the sponsorships and time they need in order to properly compete as players.

What really confuses me is why would some of the stars - kiwikaki and slush - would look a gift horse in the mouth and decide to continue wondering if they can get to events by forming a new team, tewam reign. Frankly their ‘sponsor’ VT-gaming is a joke in comparison to compLexity. I was hoping that EG, fnatic, or Sk would approach these guys and sign them with a big ass deal that keep them set for life. But no. They decide to continue to eat top ramen and freak out every time they have to get to a LAN event.

Why? Worrying about whether you can travel sure must be fun. Or maybe they just don’t like money. What ever the reason they’re fucking stupid. What’re they worried about - coL abusing them and not sending them to events? When has that ever happened? Shit they’ve DROPPED teams for not wanting to go to events. Worried they’d go under? Jason lake’s got a law degree and is working for a law firm(and has almost bankrupted himself flying the former coL.cs team around the world) and he’s got two guys behind him who aren’t exactly broke - one who ran a pro CS team out of his own pocket and the other knows how to manage and run a business - i seriously doubt they’ll ever go under with these owners. And that doesn’t even look at their sponsors(who are apparently godlike).

Seriously, why? I still don’t know what they’re thinking.

It’s the same ol’ rodeo

2011-06-07T02:48:00.000-07:00

I’ve seen this movie, I'm been to that ballpark, I've danced with that lady. More cliches about knowing how something plays out.

Now what am i talking about: not understanding the danger of having a lot of capital pushed into a game doesn’t make the game sustainable or long lasting. It only means that the first line of ‘professional’ players will get more money than the subsequent players will.

Time to stop being abstract. Time to be factual. Lets look at the history of games, or leagues for that matter, and see what they do with a massive cash infusions. How many have developed local scenes? Zero. How many have developed a tiered hierarchy which allows for promotion and relegation? Zero. How many farm systems exist for developing talent? Zero. How many from the beginning of the last decade still exist today? one. WCG. That’s it. Gaming has a pretty shitty track record, if you put a shit ton of money in it, of developing games or scenes which consistently grown talent and allow for the trickling up of the talent and the trickling down of prize money.

And that idea that rising tides float all boats. Unless that tide is a tsunami, and then smaller boats sink and the bigger boats just barely survive. What do i mean? Lets take starcraft II for example. As a recent Lo3 has stated(get the link eventually) if i was a venture capitalist or a sponsor,

Now lets compare this to the developments in both Europe and American in the last few years in specifically counter-strike, just by itself. In Europe ESL has been on the forefront of developing their talent through tournaments like the Inferno Online League and DreamHack in Sweden and the EPS/EAS throughout the whole continent. The latter, most notably, really does allow for a trickle up of talent, and then the trickle down of prize money. Other events, like the ASUS cups, and the now dead Arbalet cup series, proved to essentially revive counter-strike in Eastern Europe. In north America it took us much longer to do this. CEVO provided the initial “bail out” for CS, as it kept NA cs alive through the CGS years, but now ESEA has pretty much single handedily(yes i know that word sounds weird but i can’t think of anything better to put in) put CS back to what it was in 2004/2005, but this time we are now able to provide these players a consistent prize pot, provided mostly by the organization’s own revenue stream rather than clinging the sponsorship model which has failed us horribly.

Now why is this bad? The CS scene is essentially on life support and isn’t getting the viewers/advertisers that the SC2, LoL, Halo, etc games do. Let them have the smaller prize pots and smaller events and our massive community will continue to draw sponsors and everything will be great.

I’ve heard the same thing - shit I've used that same argument when the quake scene slowed down - and I'll tell you one thing. That doesn’t last. If you don’t grow the bottom , and give people a way up you’ll have the same 12 people playing at the top level and nobody will ever make it past them unless somebody retires and forces a call up.

“but starcraft is an individual game, so everyone should be able to compete”

That’d be true if we didn’t already know all the faces currently in the scene. Anyone who has even a rudimentary knowledge of the brood war competitive scene knows all the currently top players - and even the not so top ones - and anyone who know a handful of Warcraft III players knows knows even more of them. THe only real surprises in the currently state of starcraft 2 have been TLO - one of the strongest foreigners in the world - and Select - who played dawn of war, and made it into the WCG hall of fame for winning that game twice. Huk and torch are the only newcomers who really made it into the top tier of competition, and only one of them is still playing at the top level.

Basically the top level of play are dominated by the same 20 players who have dominated the last group of RTS games. And from the current formats of most events - with the exception of the GSL(whose conditions are less than admirable to foreigners) and MLG(which has and open bracket) - all major events are essentially invite tournaments. Some may have a play in spot, but those are junk in terms of real growth of a scene. You’ll never really get the next generation’s talent into the scene if only one of those players can make it in, and will probably lose their first game and be out.

So what if whitera retires? Or tyler? Or incontrol? Or ? Who is able to replace him? Is there such a player available? And if so who will make the choice? The scene is currently structured very oddly - with all the top tier talent at the top making it into every tournament and everybody else just trying to get some name recognition to even be considered for an event. So if your joe blow whose first competitive RTS is starcraft you’ll probably be out of luck, unless you show some prodigious talent and understanding for the game which has never been seen before.

Now I'm not saying that we should just let everyone into the NASL or the GSL. That'd be counter productive to the growth of the casual userbase: you’d have thousands of throw away matches which shouldn't have been played in the first place because of open brackets, leading to quick matches and boring games. At the same time this focus on top tier invite level tournaments, which don’t offer any real way of entering a tournament outside of dumb luck or some sort of voting process - which can and will be hacked by the voters. I’d like for some sort of layered structure, like the minor leagues in baseball or a pyramid in soccer, which would allow for the cream to rise to the top, and allow for a real shot at the top for the basic user. THe only example i can point to in the west is the now defunct CAL and both the ESL and the ESEA league’s structure. Open(and amatuer) at the bottom, Invite(and professional) at the top. Without such a structure the current leagues will become stale by the constant repeats of the games you’ve seen 10 thousand times. And who really wants to watch kiwikaki play spanishiwa every day?

Basically my complaints are two fold: The current model they are using, the CPL/WSVG/MLG model, is unsustainable and can’t last for long. The only one of those that is still around is MLG - who is basically surviving on venture capital. Second the lack of a pyramidal system like that in soccer, or a minor league system like that which is in baseball or hockey, which allows for both the development of new talent as well as giving older, waining players a place to play in their twilight years. Without these things you will see a stagnation in the scene as well as an eventual downturn which occurs when the sponsors and leave the scene like they eventually will.

Time to beat a dead horse

2011-05-22T22:11:00.001-07:00

Well i never really talked about why i thought the CGS failed - so 3 years have passed i think this a good time to talk mad shit on something i was never in. I’m not going to blame the game selection, or the fact that they killed CSS and 1.6 in America, but I'm going to actually criticize a few things that i really think were major problems.

First, and foremost, i feel like NewsCorp failed miserably when they picked people to run the league. From my understanding from those involved is that they got former record execs, MTV execs and other entertainment people and thought they’d know how to run a 50 million dollar league. They had a total of two guys - the former head of fox sports and the former CEO of a beach volley ball league - from sports and gave the people in gaming - namely Jason bass, Alex Conroy, Jason lake(who now own compLexity), Mark Dolven(former owner of pandemic), Emil Christensen and Jonas Vikan(prestigious CS guys who built up their own brands) - menial positions within the league. The one guy who really understood gaming they gave a position was more like a guy who sent invoices and ran the actually league and it’s season - Craig Levine, former owner of 3D and owner of ESEA - had little input into the running of the upper levels of the league.

This lack of input by people who actually knew gaming, and how to run successful gaming organizations, weren’t even allowed to go out and do what general managers do in sports leagues. FIND SPONSORS AND ADVERTISERS. They were basically player managers and figure heads which were animated behind their players during the season.

Second, if these people raised any criticism they were crushed almost immediately. From listening to Jason Lake, Djwheat, Mark Dolven, and Jason Bass talk about their experience within the league - and from my interactions with them while being in the league - it seemed to be two different experiences: 1) they would tell me that i was crazy for questioning the idea that a gaming league with only three sponsors could pay over 100 people anywhere from 15-20K salaries and pay the executives much more(reportedly the GMS got 50k a person, i can only imagine how much Scott Valencia and the CEO were making) while they were 2) saying the same fucking thing their higher ups about the game selection, prize money, ownership etc. Jason bass, i read somewhere, was so pissed off at the website managers hiring excessive amounts of programmers and designers - which he would’ve done for much cheaper - and just quit because he was sick of it all.

Third they upper management didn’t actually understand how important it was for the former 1.6 players to play 1.6 in the off season. This was just short sighted - they didn’t get that if compLexity walked up(like they did near the end of the CGS) and just rolled all scrubs playing 1.6 that it’s basically saying “hey, all our players are the not just good, they are the best in both versions of the game” and instead basically gave them a false dilemma, either play source in the CGS or don’t play in the CGS at all. And that was only in the case of CS, the players of DoA could play in other DoA events, the PGR/Forza players could play in WCG/other events and etc. But they wouldn’t let the game with their players play in the game with the most money where they could still compete. It's not like fRoD stopped being fRoD just because he played source. It’s not like Method and Rambo were bad after only a few years in source. And they proved it when the came back, all the best players in 1.6 continued to be the best players in both source and 1.6.

The reason this is important is three way:It’s basically free marketing. If they roll up to WCG or CEVO, or IEM and play 1.6 against the American and European teams, and not just win but win big, what does that say about the CGS’s players. IT would prove that these players weren’t just the best in source but it would also prove they were the Best in 1.6 as well. Next is the fact that they could probably take a small percentage of the prize money won and use that as revenue.

My fourth problem is the fact they never localized the teams to their regions. And I'm not even talking investing into the LAN centers in the localities which would enable the creation of esports arenas. I’m talking simply having more than one area for the games to be played. Like lets say have the eastern and western conferences...ACTUALLY PLAY IN THE EASTERN AND WESTERN UNITED STATES. They made these arbitrary distinctions but never had any real reason - like those which were in the NBA and the NHL, where those things mean something.

And it’s not like this was not possible at the time. The Kiev Cybersport arena had already been there for a while, long enough for the CGS to use it for it’s events. And it’s not like the Germans don’t rent out theaters and other areas for EPS games - because they do. And it’s not like the Chengdu eSports arena and the studios in Korea aren’t available. Because they are. They could’ve really had something, and generated revenue with it, but decided to not do anything.

My final problem is the fact they never tried to sell off the franchises in order to make up the 50 million dollars that they put into the league’s North American setup and the international franchises. It’s not like there wouldn’t be potential buyers: as we have seen with the South Korean teams pro teams, people will pay big money to own a gaming franchise. This could also help the localization process: if they sell the teams to investors, have the investors front the cost of the gaming arena and the travel expenses. And you could also begin the syndication of the broadcasts, the specialization of teams when it comes to sponsors and finally the reduction of costs to the league as the owners would be signing the checks rather than the league.

Why can’t we all just get along

2011-05-20T04:04:00.000-07:00

So i’ve been reading, and reading and reading and hearing about this false dichtomy - that either we need to all get along and be friends in order to attract the average gamer or we shoudl just give up on ever being mainstream and trolling each other is simply just one thing we have to deal with?

Why can’t it be both ways; for example i try to tell people to watch CS streams(what littler there are) and pay attention to games that aren’t sequels to the best RTS ever made - and i don’t know if i’ve gone anywhere on either front - but at the same time i troll the shit out of slasher, fishstix, vvv and the “big” names in eSports - some times i don’t know if they realize when I'm being purposely ridiculous.

And while i agree with both, keekerdc’s point that the “kindness” of the community has never been related to the size of the viewership(going along Nixon's silent majority idea that most people who watch don’t say anything) and vVv/toptiergaming’s idea that we need to slow our rolls on the newbies a few questions kept creeping into my skull: why can’t we be talking about the finer points of strategy in CS and how WSVG/CGS/etc or SK-gaming/coL/etc aren’t sustainable as well as teaching an intro course on how gaming organizations, tournaments, lan centers etc work? Why can’t we coddle the young and be cynics at the same time?

To tell you the truth part of my ability to toughen up and talk mad shit on people who have done much more for the growth of eSports than i ever will in my short lifespan has come from this ability to filter out the stupid shit 90% of the community spews. Survival of the fittest if you will, those who want to see this thing grow and realize that most of the people out there are trolls who just talk shit.

Basically all this boils down to is something I learned a long time ago when gotfrag was still alive(thank you MLG for that, i love you for it) is that you have to be able to filter comments/posts on a forum. Start looking at the length of posts - if it’s a line long it’s useless 2 - 3 you might have some content, more than that and it’s definitely worth the read. You might end up getting trolled from time to time but it will definately increase the likely hood of legit stuff you read.

The Good the Bad the stupid

2011-05-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

MLG’s announcement that GSL’s player would be shipped into MLG columbus and the top 4 foreigners would be sent to the GSL’s Code A there was a resounding F- YEAHHHHHHHHH! in the community. However, it’s not all good in this equation.

First lets look at the deal itself:
- GSL sends over 4 players to play in MLG’s tournament
- GSL’s players get seeded directly into the championship groups
- MLG’s top will be given code S status, unless they already have it
- MLG’s next 2 will be given Code A status
- the GSL’s players all get the Code S status, the top foreigners will get code A status
- More koreans can be invited to the tournament, but must compete through the open bracket

So it sounds good - koreans go to MLG, competing with out best. If the foreigners do well they’ll get code S status, or code A status. Sounds great right? MLG - the only big US tournament left - will get some of the best players in the world to play in their tournament.

However the bad seems to be far worse. First they decide now, not the last 3 years when europeans had to pay out of pocket or have sponsors pay to come over, to subsidize international players. They also suddenly decided to let other leagues point system, which they didn’t in Halo or GoW with the ECL or the i-Series points, be valid in their own.

But the worse, and the dumbest by far, is the fact that the 4 invited players won’t have to fight through the open bracket seems ridiculous to me. If i decided to get zyos, hp darkman, ogre 1 and ghandi together to play in Columbus - four legitimate halo legends - they’d have to fight through the open bracket. If i decided to get the old SK-halo team together you know what they’d have to do? Go through the open bracket. If i sponsored an European CoD team to come out you know what they’d have to do? FIGHT THROUGH THE OPEN BRACKET.

What makes these Koreans so special? The fact that their league has more money is broadcasted for far longer? If this is the case why didn’t they use the WoW points from WSVG or IEM when they were supported WoW? Why don’t they use WSVG, ECL, iSeries points for halo and and GoW?

And the even bigger question is - if they are giving these players stipends to come out, like i think they are - why aren’t they doing this for the European players? It’s not like the travel costs are that much worse for the players and the organizations - which can barely stay afloat as it is - which send the European players out. It’s not like certain players - ret, TLO, morrow and a few other - aren’t at the same level at the Koreans, because they almost all are.

And then there's all the other tournaments - Road to code A, the foreigner house and a few others - which all allow you to go out and play in Korea if you want, it's not like there is some sort of color barrier for the players. It's simply lack of reason - more tournaments, more money, easier money etc in foreign events - that foreigners don't choose to go out to these tournaments.

Three up, many to go

2011-05-13T16:12:00.000-07:00

It was announced Thursday that the the Inferno Online Stockholm LAN center had expanded - becoming the biggest LAN Center in the world and putting in an eSports Arena .

This means that in the western world there are now two eSports arena in the western world, the famous one in Kiev which has been talked about in a previous blog and this new one in Stockholm Sweden(which i was surprised didn’t already have one). As well as the third one overall - with the one in Chengdu which was built in the middle of the CGS years. And this isn’t counting the arenas which are retrofitted for Starcraft events in Korea, or the sound stages which MSL/OSL/GSL use during their big pro events. This means that PC events will finally get the proper support they deserve without having to haul out cranes, scaffolding and bleachers every event.

However there’s still work to be done. If these business venture continue to be as successful as they have been in the past and attract major events like IEM, WCG forcing other countries and their entrepreneurs to build more in order to continue to host these events.

This will also allow for some validity in the moves of teams to localize to a city or region, if their practice facility also is where they play events, and finally may be a "home field" in an eventual international league which will be written about later.

It sure is ad hominem in here

2011-05-11T23:06:00.000-07:00

So in between writing my final essays for the semester I checked my twitter and noticed some comments from Jeff “smeagol” dickinson talking mad shit on my shitty blog that keekerdc re-posted on his own. And while I value the opinions of more veteran members of the community - especially those which left the scene after everyone said how much they fucking hated the guy - it’s kinda ironic that he didn’t even bother to read the “about me” section of this blog. Or even the subtext of the title of it - I'm a nobody. A wannabe journalist. Someone who hasn’t been inside the major organizations and haven’t been around for their founding(although i did watch some of them rise and fall as well as read books about them). If i left the scene tomorrow nothing of value would be lost. I'm surprised anyone even reads this blog. I'm even more surprised that Keekerdc does.

So it’s ironic really - me, the nobody who is trying to do something for the scene - is getting criticised by somebody who was important at one time that hasn’t really done shit for the last 4 years since he didn’t join the CGS(which was a good call all things considered) with djWHEAT.

I’d like him to write comprehensive history of these scenes if he can - because i have on hand is old gotfrag/hltv/sk-gaming articles and interviews along with the extremely bias gameboys (that barely covers compLexity and 3D factually) as sources i can cite.

So basically this is my final statement: I’m a nobody who is trying to do some objective “journalism”(if you can call it that), while I'm getting criticised by some guy that hasn’t done anything....for trying to do something.

Esports Book review 1:GameBoys

2011-05-07T17:32:00.000-07:00

Game Boys: Professional Videogaming's Rise from the Basement to the Big Time by Michael Kane covers the rivalry between the two biggest organizations in North American eSports history: compLexity gaming syndicate's vs Team3D. The book details the event directly after 3D's second win at the World Cyber Games and compLexity's win at ESWC - during that winter during the CPL.

However if you are looking at this book at a detailed breakdown of strategy or games, look elsewhere. This book is primarily a look at the two organizations and the drama between them. Team3D's status at the time as possibly the second biggest organization in terms of money in the western world - only trailing behind Sk-gaming - competing against the poor house compLexity gaming. Think Brooklyn Dodgers vs. New York Yankees - except instead of baseball they played counter-strike.

The book describes the characters and the storyline quite well. The loud, boisterous managerial style of Jason lake, owner of compLexity, versus the calm cool and collected Craig Levine, owner of Team3D. These caveats towards developing a feel for the characters, however, does not stop the overall progress of the narrative. The writer even goes into player transactions, sponsor deals and player salaries while still pushing the story forward in a good, tangible narrative. The book even mentions the dollar amount that was given Team3D and to the then startup Evil Geniuses, even giving out the player salaries which is generally a no-no in eSports journalism.

Some of the stories, about the founding of CAL i was not even aware of until the reading of the book. Others, like why and how Dave "Moto" Geffon and Sean "bullseye" Morgan were forced out of retirement, are a well told tales but still does bring some of the drama to the book and really does push the plot along.

Although the author does show that he is not of the gaming world - describing compLexity as a team that could never do it on LAN and was more of an online team when they won the biggest event in CS(ESWC) and did quite well, placing top 10 at CPL winter 2004. Furthermore when describing Team3D as the "best CS team in the world" may be a good narrative device, it was far from truthful. At the time of the book compLexity was force on the field - 3D had the best sponsors - and they weren't even the biggest organization in terms of dollar amount in eSports - that was, and is, SK-gaming.

Then you go into his descriptions of the action, it's clear his understanding of the game is not at the level required to really be giving a blow by blow, let alone go for a strategic breakdown of the events which are happening in the games themselves.

Overall i'd recommend this book to those which are not very well acquainted with counter-strike, and it's long storied history, but for those who already know it in depth, it leaves much to be desired.

FPS’s struggle

2011-05-05T23:07:00.003-07:00

A recent discussion sparked by everyone’s favorite marketing guy @fishstix that the FPS scene has fallen behind or died off completely in terms of the scale of eSports. Now I’m here to tell you why that’s totally fucking wrong.

First, while FPS’s don’t have the most streaming content out there, it still is out there. For CS ESL.tv and some German, Russian and Japanese casters still stream this stuff consistently. Furthermore fishstix’s former company Quakelive.tv streams stuff on a consistent basis.

Now this is FAR, FAR from ideal. We have almost no amateur casters for CS and quake. And we have almost no English casters for CS and quake. Until recently - with the ESEA stream which did fairly well for their first foray into the streaming game - you had to hope that sirscoots, djwheat(which would never happen), or rivington the third would find interest in a match and stream it. And when they did they never really bothered to do commentate in a manner which would be conducive to new players. This seriously hinders the next part of the problem: eSports Efficacy.

Most, not all but most, new people to eSports don’t know a damn thing about the history of it. Shit most people don’t even know how big Starcraft: Brood War was. Whenever i tweet about Team Evil Geniuses - ANY of their branches - people automatically assume I'm talking about their starcraft team. Even prominent moderators(@zlasher) don’t realize that I'm talking about Evil Geniuses’ prestigious Counter-strike team.

This leads to some confusion when the teams and players aren’t properly prefaced with the necessary information to show why this match is important. It doesn’t help much when some streamers - specifically the LiveonThree crew - turn their backs on the game that brought them there and the premier eSports news site - Gotfrag - gets killed by Major league gaming.

The third and most crucial point of the three is the fragmentation of the communities - specifically the CS scene. For the majority of CS’s lifetime there was only one place to go for news, HLTV info, interviews, match reviews and just casual talking - Gotfrag.com. It was the ESPN of eSports, if it was big news - regardless of what game it was - it was on Gotfrag. This allowed for easy access to all games - Quake, DoD, coutner-strike(1.6 and source), Call of Duty, America’s Army, even starcraft and warcraft three had good coverage at gotfrag.

With it’s death the scene fragmented about 5 ways. CS went to HLTV.org and ESEA, Quake went to ESReality, Starcraft went(inb4 it was always there) to gosugamers and team liquid, call of duty went to tek-9 and i have no clue where America's army DoD and warcraft III went.

Now for the first two i see solutions forming. cArn from fnatic and n0thing from EG are both doing demo reviews - their youtube channels can be found in an early blog - and both are really trying to get more people into counter-strike. Every ESL even seems to have higher and higher quality in terms of broadcaster’s knowledge of the game and their ability to get into the game emotionally. Corey Dunn and jesuit jumped back into the broadcasting scene with ESEA and they attracted a decent crowd in terms of viewers(~6000) for their first time around. The second one seems to be getting better with time, as people watch starcraft they will naturally become interested in the history of the game and the organizations which are supporting it.

However, unless someone wants to offer Sundance a boat load of money for Gotfrag.com or major league gaming actually decides to move out of their comfortable little console world and allow coverage of other games on gotfrag - or even simply funding the coverage in the slightest - I'm almost certain that people will come back and they will get the community’s love again.

However moving to a new game is NOT the solution to any of these problems. It only makes these problems worse. Suggesting that moving to a game - which has no leagues, no sponsors and no long term stability - will actually hinder other things which have separated and made the games themselves interesting.

A prime example of this is the game i come from. Counter-Strike’s 10 year lifespan has allowed a full metagame, styles, and overarching strategy to develop which would not have if it had only been around for 3-4 years. We didn’t even know all the things about a map - like de_nuke - and the gameplay - like crouch hopping - until the middle of 2007.

If we were to adopt every new game that came along - like halo has - we’d have: 1) worse content because the level of strategy and understanding of the game will not be there 2) worse player careers as some players will be force out before their prime 3) an underdeveloped metagame which would hinder the game from being competitive 4) a lack of proper development in terms of player skill as just as the people becoming comfortable and competent with the mechanics of the game they will be force to adapt to the new game which may not play the same as the old one.

However not moving on will also hinder a scene. For example, if the broodwar scene never moved over, we may never have had explosion we are currently experiencing. If the skillset and the feeling for the game can transfer over with minimal interference in terms of changes in maps and gameplay than it should played rather than the old one. The reason source was never really adopted wasn’t because it’s graphics weren’t good, but instead that the gameplay and maps weren’t as fluid and instead of a mere facelife they models and maps were changed to the point which strategies and thought of the original could not change over.

Therefore we SHOULD adopt a new game IF a successor allows for the talents inherent in original game can transfer over, allowing for a smooth transition of talent and metagame from one to the other. New maps, new strategies etc. should come from the community instead of the from it being forced down their throats.