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.