We need to reorganize

Forrest “Var1ables” Campbell continues the stuff we need articles with “we need to reorganize” about the current state of tournaments

Counter-strike needs to reorganize itself. Even if the tournaments itself do not want to be organized under one sanctioning body we need to make a system which truly determines whose the best int he world for the game of counter-strike. For most of it’s lifetime we’ve been essentially a disjointed body of tournaments, and most of them claiming that their winner was the “world champion.”

Kode5, WCG, ESWC, IEM and the now defunct CPL all claimed that the winner of thier tournaments would be the world champion, meaning any given year you could have 5 different world champions. For example 2008, a year clearly dominated by mTw with it’s wins at Kode5 and WCG, will have an asterisk next to their name as they share their title with MYM/Vitriolic/wicked/AGAIN/Frag eXecutor who won ESWC and Mousesports who won IEM2 that same year.

We either need a body which -  like FIA, NASCAR, PGA, or the BCS - allocates points to the tournaments that are held and crowns a certain team world champions or we need to have one truly final event with the top4 or the top8 teams in the world - again according to a point system -  that will have a invitational tournament that allows these teams to play it out one last time for all the marbles.

Now that being said their are very obvious problems with such a system. How would all the tournaments been allocated points? How would you give an extremely prestigious tournament like WCG point in comparison to lets say an invitational tournament like eStars or even the much younger Arbalet Cup tour?

That’s a pretty easy thing to settle really: Tennis already did it for us. Lets take the system from tennis, four grand slams, how ever many masters, and then regional and national tournaments to decide who gets what. Obviously the Grand slams are worth more than the masters, the master more than the regional and the national more then a city tournament.

In counter-strike it’d look something like this:
4 Grand slams(30 point events):
Kode5, ESWC, WCG, IEM

6 masters(20 point events):
WEM, eStars, Arbalet cup, IEM GC’s, Dreamhack winter/summer

Regional/continental tournaments(15 point events):
IEM CF’s, WCG panam, Samsung european championship

National tournaments(10 point events):
ESEA, EPS, WCG nationals etc

Now there are obvious problems with this system, but this is a simply mock up which can, and should, be debated and argued upon by journalists, organizations and other important members of the community, but simply put we need it. First it allows us to have a definitive world champion and not have asterisks next to team names in the history of counter-strike and second it could add so much drama to the scene, and more so than simply contract disputes and team maneuvers ever could. Anyone who has watched sportscenter and heard of the anywhere from 4 to 11 point lead going into the final race of the NASCAR season or someone who follows F1 and saw the only 24 point difference between the top 3 competitors goin into the last race  could see that .

We Need an Organizing Body

Feature -- Forrest “var1ables” Campbell explains why we need an organizing body for competitive gaming

Note: none of this represents the opinions of Insider eSports or it’s partners. This is my opinion, and no one elses.

After getting pretty in depth with other - real - sports I’ve seen one major thing that we need in order to be taken, relatively speaking, seriously. That’s some organization that oversees the leagues and the various events that are held around the worlds and the rules that are deemed to be the standard for the world.  

For a long time we’ve been basically going on a league-to-league or event-to-event basis in terms of rules - especially in a game like counter-strike - some utilizing the now antiquated rule set that the CPL used, bo1 double elimination bracket,and others use the now standard rules,bo3 single elimination. Some minor modifications  come with each events - like group stage, no group stage, time outs, no time outs and various other minor changes - which can cause confusion for some of the teams that aren’t reading the rules fully, or aren’t stated clearly, leading to controversy in the rulings of the admins.


In real sports organizations like FIBA, for basketball, FIFA, for soccer, FIA, for motor sports, and others make the rules that are used for international tournaments sanctioned by the said organizations.  Some might say that this would cause conflict between the organization - lets just say that it's FIGA for an arbitrary acronym - and the tournaments that are currently in power, IE the discrepancy between FIA and NASCAR’s rules in terms of technology and other major differences.


I don’t think that would be the case, as organizations like ESEA and IEM are on some friendly terms as can be seen by the recent midway interview and WCG and ESEA’s sister organization E-Sports services which has run tournaments for Arbalet and WCG respectively in the past, as well as the relative camaraderie between WCG and IEM that was seen in 2008 where WCG LA and IEM LA were held at the same time with little problem what so ever. So I think that these leagues will find the use in all of it, as it will clear up confusion that is in the rules used in between events, and it should make the event run more smoothly with consistent rules and less confusion when disputes arise.


It would be better for the players with as little confusion with rules as possible and just let them go what they came to do - play. Now there’s still the problem with the need for an organization the G7teams, which represent the big sponsors and the players which are represented by those sponsors and how they fit in all of this, but I'm sure that the two organizations can coexist as they - as individuals - have coexisted for as long as they have existed.


Now there’s two other topics involved here - whether the G7teams should expand their teams and organizations which they represent  and whether or not there should be a players association which can protect the players from irresponsible organizations- but those are other topics for another time.

Epic spamming

Don't mind the epic spamming below this post it's mostly due to the fact that i don't want to lose any of the awesome sauce i've posting the past to something stupid like a website shutting down or something. That and i want to have some body of work on this website.

Counter Strike shakedown #13

Feature -- Forrest "var1ables" Campbell releases #13 of his Counter Strike 1.6 Shakedown.  This series will look at happenings in eSports the past week and his opinion on what's going on.
Note:  None of this is the opinion Insider eSports or it’s sponsor(s). This is just my no-named wannabe-journalist opinion.

Roster moves of the week of august 26

So a lot of nothing occurred prior to the WCG grand finals and here are some of the bigger moves - of a bunch of teams that most people don’t care about. Online Kingdom lost it’s roster before it could even send it to any events. The organization cites poor placing on one of ESL’s online leagues as the cause for them not being sent to DSrack, but Øyvind "KF3" Magnestad told HLTV.org that the change was more due to the organization’s culture rather than the teams poor showing. So in the last year this team has changed names 4 times - ALCHEMIST’s to Vitriolic to  Lions to Online Kingdom, and all the organizations they have left they blame for the cause. But guys, you there always seems to be some problem with you guys otherwise you’d not have any reason to leave or be dropped from the organization, regardless of results.
Next d2x - formerly ruins -  has picked up EG’s WCG ringer Travis "tuBBy" Bechtol  and ex-loaded now ex backfire player Paul "Adrenaline" Baker as strat caller and team leader  Dustin "dizzaman" Dilyerd and long time teammate Chris "TRULS" Navratil who decided to take time off from counter-strike and do other things. Way better than calling it retirement, because nobody ever retires from CS. Look at Heaton and SpawN. Bechtol and Baker showed immediate success as they both helped the team upset the best team in north America, Evil Geniuses in ESEAi with a 16 - 13 win ending there undefeated season.
DTS.chanix picked up the team that narrowly lost to Na’Vi and almost upset them. So maybe they can go to more events and DTS.chanix can actually have a good chance of showing their former roster Na’Vi what-fer.

LOLWUT WCG?

Okay so WCG grand finals was this weekend and i have to say WTF WCG. First look at what they did with the groups - seven teams pulled out causing three groups of three and two groups of two to be formed. How about they just merge the two groups of two and actually have a competitive group stage? How about invite the second - third now with PoV being no more - American team and  so that we have fill out one of the groups of three and then find some replacements for the other two? It can’t be that hard with fnatic, power and many more sitting out on the sidelines.
Add to that the slashed prize pot from 36K for first place and prizes for the top eight to being a prize pot for the top three with a mediocre 25K grand prize. So basically epic cuts. And that’s with all that new marketing power they should have with the WCG ultimate gamer having been in the second series. Now I'm wondering, what’s the point in making a shitty reality TV show with a 100K prize for first - and more if you count the Samsung prize package and I'm sure that they are paying those guys for of couple weeks of their life -  if you are diverting your attention from your bread and butter - your grand finals. It seriously annoys me that the biggest prize they will be handing out is to some asshole who is on a reality show rather than people who play hard and competed for the chance to represent their country and really game instead of these no named wannabes(sorry clown and jwong). It makes the sport,eSports (or competitive gaming  if you are a patronizing jerk), look bad and it takes us back 5, if not more, years as it makes us look like a sideshow.
Then you have what they did with the broadcast/main stage thing. You have a bigger seating arrangement - the main stage - being squandered by the fact that all the good matches are happening at the smaller, albeit more important, broadcast stage. I get having a second stage to feature important matches, but wouldn’t it make more sense to have the bigger stage ALSO be broadcasting? This would allow for more people to seated comfortably and be able to see more. Have the side stage feature another important match which couldn’t be scheduled in due to time constraints, and not have both the counter-strike and Starcraft - the two biggest games at the event - be forced onto a smaller stage which is cramped and hard to get a  seat at. Trust me i was there.
However these complaints are not outweighed by how awesome the event was. The matches were epic, the story lines, especially in the final - would Na’Vi take all three major titles, IEM, ESWC AND WCG? Or would mTw be inducted into the WCG hall of fame with their second win? - was a great show of the raw competition of this 10 year old game we all love so much. And if you don’t......why are you reading this? Go play quake or something.

IEM America preview

Group A with the Brazilian power house now under the banner of coL will be able to advance with little challenge, winning there group 3 - 0 but the real challenge will be fighting for second. I know that this Brazilian lineup was having problems with artyk showing just how good the Latin American talent is in the overall scheme of things, or how poorly this team is practiced, and we all know how good area51 is and how experienced on LAN d2x is so there are sure to be some challenge for that second spot. I expect are51 to come out narrowly 2 - 1 with a loss to coL.br. mL-gaming’s still to in experienced to be competing with this international opposition. d2x, even with all their talent, i seriously doubt that they can best area51 and the new coL roster.
Group B will have EG continuing there dominance not dropping a game - or even 10 rounds as Scott “Sirscoots” Smith would call it...you better be right this time around! - making it another race for second place. Loaded hasn’t been very strong in recent history and i don't’ see that changing anytime soon so i don’t see them coming out the group. Backfire has been coming up strong so i can definitely see them upsetting Loaded and excello.zowie, a team that hasn’t played at a high level in North America for like six months.
The brackets would come to EG vs area51 and like WCG Pan American championship Area51 will be rolled hard by EG 2 - 0 as EG has been just getting stronger and area51 without GRT is not as big of a threat as they once were. coL.br vs backfire will just like EG vs area51. Backfire is good but they just don’t have the experience to compete with the 2006 ESWC champions and the extremely impressive play from Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo de Alcantara.

This makes the final EG vs coL finals again for the second year in a row, albeit with a very different coL roster. However i think that EG’s stellar performance recently will be enough to beat coL - and I've said in other articles - who has only beaten EG coming out of the lower bracket and in a bo1 format.  EG will win the series 2 - 1, i don’t know what maps will be picked but it just seems like EG has been to strong to be beaten by a team which hasn’t seen big international competition, albeit they placed fourth in this WCG,  in the last 9 months, especially when EG has meshed and prepared like they should be for this event.

WCG grand finals recap

So the biggest event of the year was this weekend. Or was supposed to be the biggest event. But with power, mouz, alternate, fnatic all not attending it seemed relatively lackluster from a viewer-ship perspective. Furthermore there was little drama in the groups with two of them being groups of two and three groups of three made it seem like the favorites will always progress. And they always did - with the exception of full-gaming formerly known as wCrea and p00nhandlers leaving early. Then brackets went as planned with only exceptions being the two Swedish teams leaving in the first round to Na'Vi and Frag eXecutors respectively.
EG got beat early 2 - 0 by a well prepared mTw roster which then went on to beat coL.br team 2 - 0 in round three to get into the finals. Na’Vi did the same to Lions Beat4Gamers(B4G) and Frag eXecutors to make it to the finals to mTw, who the roster has never lost to in the short history of the team. This meant history would be made either way the result went - Na’VI would swept the three biggest events of the year, ESWC, IEM and WCG only leaving two major events, kode5 which nobody knows when will take place and dreamhack winter, or mTw will be inducted into the hall of fame, making it the second purely 1.6 team to make it into the WCG hall of fame and the second in two years to make it.
However it was not to be as the first game it appeared that mTw had asked Na’Vi a very weird question before the start of the match - namely “hey guys i heard you like winning major counter-strike events, you want this one too?” And Na’Vi responded “F-yeah” as they only dropped eight rounds, and controlled the map the entire game. The next map seemed like it would be the same way as Na’Vi rolled hard on tuscan getting to 14 rounds dropping only a handful before mTw came back,and had 3 1deag’s in one of the pistol rounds, to win 16 - 14 to send it into map #3.
Now this is the money game.  De_train featured some of the best play from both teams,  a incredible first half by Na’Vi which they managed to win T side 9 - 6 going into the second half and strung together a series of round to make it 14 - 6. However mTw wouldn’t go down and rallied back to make it 14 - 13 before Na’Vi started to dash there hopes with 15 - 13 before mTw sent it into OT with a two round victory equaling out the score 15 - 15. The first OT Na’VI rolled mTw 3 - 0 and only needed one round to win it all, however wouldn't’ stay down and swept there CT 3 - 0 to send it into a second OT. That said OT started much like the first with Na’Vi Sweeping mTw and finally closing out the round to win the whole tournament and sweep the majors of the year, winning IEM in the spring, ESWC in the summer and finally WCG in  fall.