Competitive FPS Gaming Documented, Exposed

Simon Bysshe writes "I've just released the latest freely downloadable film in my series charting competitive FPS gaming. This film, shot in more of a TV show style compared to my previous Slashdot-featured documentaries, features a Counter-Strike match between the UK 4Kings team & the French Armateam. This time, the film was sponsored by Intel, who also flew in the star Quake3 player Cyrus Malekani (aka proZaC) to present the show. The 24 minute, 185mb WMV movie includes in-depth interviews with the players, extended coverage of games with commentary & post-match tactical analysis covering the key rounds."

different encode?

[the_greywolf]

i'm interested in seeing this, but i don't have Windows Media Player 7+ installed, and WMP 6.4 on my machine doesn't like most WMVs...

so... is there another format i can watch?

Re:different encode?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ever get prompted for them, let your WMP 6.4 download the WMP 7-9 codecs. Even better, download WMP 9 and totally disable the player (by associating mplayer2.exe - which is WMP 6.4 - with every 6.4-compatible WMP file type). The only thing you'll be sacrificing is the ability to play Cinepak-encoded QuickTime movies in WMP and the WMP 6.4 Netscape plugin, but you should already have QuickTime or QT Alternative separately, and that plugin never worked right for me anyway.

Re:different encode?

[crazyaxemaniac]

The Windows Media Player 9 codecs are now available through Windows Update as a separate download.

Yah cos

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows that having a hyperdeveloped thumb really makes you a sportsman. :-P

I am very pleased with this.

[GearType2]

His previous videos were very... amatuer at best. I remember one of my biggest peeves of them being the voice and music. It was always the blaring techno in the background that would be thrown in and the terrible mics used to get voice. You would hear maybe, 3 words and the rest would be muffled.
Another qualm I had with his earlier works was that these are supposed to be videos of how these events draw crowds and how that this is in fact a sport now, but what he would do is talk to the players and ask them *why* they are playing and how they like to play. Newsflash: they get paid for it.

But, this video is top notch. The sound is so much better. It's obvious he put a lot of work into making it *sound* better. The quality is very high, although I would like it to be nativly louder, as I had to turn up my speakers quite a bit to hear their voices, but that's not a big deal, as the background music was lower than the voice. The presentation of the entire video itself was very great. If I had not seen the earlier videos I would think this was done by a great studio. It looks like TechTv had a special on e-gaming. I am very pleased with this, and hope we see much more.

Re:I am very pleased with this.

[Goldberg's Pants]

The guy needs to learn about interlace...

Text script please

[MMaestro]

Yes I have broadband, yes I have a crap load of video codecs to watch movies/videos/clips, and yes I could very easily download this movie. BUT as nice as video are, I think the interview in text format would still be helpful for some. Some people still use 56k modems. Personally, I don't like the idea of having to listen to someone talk about their gaming experience when I could read it.

Re:Text script please

[Prien715]

You've got no way of knowing this, but it'd actually be incredibly unhelpful. If you're looking for the teammates talking about the other team, they pretty much say they think they're both good but think they're team is better. As for in game strategy, it's a lot of pointing at the monitor and saying "We decided to rush here [points], but that didn't work, so we camped out here[points]."

I don't know if Halflife has replay files (ala WC3, SC, etc), but if it did, giving those replays along with an mp3 of audio (start them at the same time as the replay and they should sync) could be a very good way to watch these that doesn't require lots of bandwidth.

Re:Text script please

[MMaestro]

Actually, I was referring to the interviews only. As for Half-Life replay videos, there SHOULD be some kind of third-party program that records what your computer projects, thus mimicing the feel of watching a replay.

Re:Text script please

[Prien715]

Replays for networked games are incredibly simple, or so I'd think. If one simply stores the content of the packets sent to and from the machine, you should be able to reconstruct the game. The video method you suggest would require much more memory. However, the packets sent out by networked games are designed to be small.

Why Team FPS isn't a good spectator genre.

[Prien715]

I watched the video and it was really entertaining...but that's probably because I love counterstrike.

I kept wanting to watch some other perspective but instead had to watch whoever the camera crew was watching. This made me wonder: how do more traditional sports deal with this problem? They don't. In every other sport, there's a ball of some sort. If you follow the ball you follow the action.

In counter-strike, there is no ball. It's harder to present a visual image that captures the beauty of a well-executed pincer attack or the stealth of a hiding sniper.

I think this perspective problem could doom pro-gaming. The only suggestion I have is to provide audio commentary while allowing the viewer to switch perspectives at will or else follow the producer's.

Re:Why Team FPS isn't a good spectator genre.

[Doc Squidly]

Its video games. Everytime I watch a video game match I loose interest, after 4 seconds, when I deside that it would be more fun to go play on-line.
Lets face it, video games are not a spectator sport. Especially when you can control the camera, which would at least give you some degree of intereaction.
Don't get me wrong I'd love to be able to play FPS's in a pro league but until they make it enjoyable to watch (on TV, with more corporate sponsors other than tech like Intel) it's not catch to non-gamers.
Also, I liked the video.

Re:Why Team FPS isn't a good spectator genre.

[karnal]

Then what you would probably need are good "replays" of the match.

Let's say there's a tournament and someone wins the big prize. You could walk through with each of the opponents and asked them about the game, and reference it with clips from their point of view, a 3rd person angle, or the prey.... :)

I think that would be an easy way to do that kind of sport. It could never be realtime, however...

Re:Why Team FPS isn't a good spectator genre.

[mikelu]

Counterstrike could be very interesting as a spectator sport if you did two things:

1) Have commentary like normal sports...but it has to be recorded and put together afterwards. CS is too chaotic to do realtime commentary in any detail.

2) Have a server recorded replay which is then rendered into a 3d, isometric perspective, full map view point which is displayed picture-in-picture, or full screen when the commentator is talking about overall strategy instead of individual skill. This view can have vario

It's odd to note....

[metalhed77]

Strange how these P4 Extreme procs are being used to run a game that runs fine on my old athlon 600 mhz wit a geforce 2mx. Ah the joys of marketing.

Re:It's odd to note....

[MachDelta]

Heh, the little framerate counter (in some shots) is pretty much always pegged at 100fps. :p

when it comes to FPS gaming documentary

[z01d]

You must have a look at OdB Productions [odbproductions.com]. The two guy made a bunch films based on several CPL/ClanBase/whatever LAN events. Their works are very professional and entertaining. (IMHO, better than the two files mentioned by /. here)

The future is not now

[ArcticPuppy]

Competetive gaming is still very young. Give it one generation and I think it will be as mainstream as some of the smaller media-covered sports. The penetration of games in todays youth-culture is massive. Most young people ( 18 years old) will have heard of (and most probably) played the most popular titles like Counter-strike and such. I dont think these people will quit playing when they "grow up", heck im 28 years old and i still play counter-strike 3-4 times a week. But the whole gaming thing needs to be assimilated into our lives like everything else. As it is today, only hardcore players can appreciate a good counter-strike match. Im sure if i were to watch an American Football match i would loose interest after about 5 minutes because a) I dont know anything about american football and b) american football is not part of our main-stream culture. In stead we watch people doing cross-country skiing for hours. Yes, we watch people compete in this incredibly boring sport where nothing dramatic ever happens, and we love it. Why? Because over time (i would guess 50+ years) this has become "tradition", we know a lot about cross-country skiing, we do it ourselves, and we love to watch it.

Re:The future is not now

[Webtommy88]

Ditto on that, I sometimes find myself inexplicably watching Curling for hours at a time and even into 3am once. For those who might not know, curling is almost like shuffle board except the rocks are alot larger and u throw these suckers down ice.

Along the same line as the parent, I think even Machinima will gain a greater following as kids grow up watching more CG in their films and completely CG films for that matter, it would not be as far fetched for them to watch films made entirely in a game engine

Cannot use VLC for Apple Mac to play this.

[Domini]

It uses the wmv3 video codec for which you prob. need WiMP 9 for Mac to play.... aargh!

more counterstrike docs

[janesays]

This is good work, but what I don't understand is why Slashdot keeps promoting this particular filmmaker's Counter-Strike docs to the exclusion of other independently produced CS docs. I haven't seen anything on slashdot ever about Gamers [thegamingproject.com], which is (IMHO) better than this guy's stuff and has been shown at a bunch of CPL events... it does both interviews with C-S big shots and lots of action (competition) sequences. There's a trailer online [filefront.com].