Counter-Strike Finally Gets the League It Deserves 113
An anonymous reader writes: Counter-Strike is the oldest eSport in the world today, with its roots stretching back to the dawn of the millennium. But unlike rival games like League of Legends or StarCraft 2, its pro scene has been mostly reliant on sporadic tournaments instead of a regularised league. That's changed with the announcement of the ESL ESEA Pro League, the first Counter-Strike Global Offensive league with a seven-figure prize pot. As one writer points out, this is a huge boost for the pro scene even without developer Valve's involvement: everything from paid travel expenses to regular viewing schedules will help the scene, and let the top players play even better than before: "it has taken over 15 years to happen, but now Counter-Strike has a tournament that can potentially elevate it to become one of the biggest eSports in the world."
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I guess that depends on how you define "oldest" and "eSport". Even Counter Strike's official release predated Quake III Arena's.
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Going back way before these there were plenty of professional gaming competitions for things like Mario. Fuck, this is basically the plot of the 1989 film The Wizard, whose premise isn't exactly based wholly in fiction.
Even in the FPS world, Quake 1 also had a number fairly large scale professional multiplayer leagues and that was released in 1995. Thresh (Dennis Fong, the guy that went on to found Xfire) was part of a pretty high profile event in 1997 where he won Carmack's Ferrari.
Thus, talk of CounterStr
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Ability to start your own league (Score:2)
Going back way before these there were plenty of professional gaming competitions for things like Mario.
But would Nintendo object to public broadcasts of Super Mario Bros. competitions? I know it's been claiming Let's Plays.
Counter-Strike is the lamest eSport in the world (Score:2)
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I think you're confusing "oldest" with "oldest active". Those are different things, in the context of merely the oldest, oldest and first most definitely are the same thing.
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Don't you need eThletes to be an eSport?
Re:Counter-Strike is the oldest eSport in the worl (Score:4, Informative)
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While Starcraft was released in 1998, Quakeworld [quakeworld.nu] was released in 1996 - three years before CS.
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A lot of people forget about Quake 2 multiplayer CTF with Lithium mod. Even Unreal Tournament had many people on it.
Oh Lithium... it was so bloody awesome, grappling-hook jousting in big open levels.
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Quake 2 was the peak. Quake 1 wasn't quite right yet - it was the most moddable, and had some of the most entertaining mods, but Quake 2 is just as raw and fast, with a lot more richness to the base game (and it's own amazing world of mods), and the 3D is done right.
Counter strike 1.6 not being played anymore (Score:1)
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If your character is a rabbit (Score:2)
Someone needs to get the rights to Jazz Jackrabbit [wikipedia.org] and make a FPS that includes bunny jumping as part of its premise, just as later Tribes games are about skiing.
Wow (Score:2)
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Funny post from a man whose sig celebrates a band thirty years gone.
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With that being said, I played the shit out of CS and Q3 Arena... Fun as hell.
The last video game I finished was the Mass Effect trilogy(brilliant)
I'm just surprised with how fast the video gaming landscape changes that there are still people doing CS.
I still think it's a great game!
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Strategy? This is something that CS completely LACKS. It is a twitch game. It is COD without all the stupid killstreaks. Run shoot die repeat.
Competitive CS play is often very different. Very slow paced, running is rare, tactics matter a lot. I found it boring to play, myself (perhaps because I'm not that good at CS to begin with), but it can be great to watch - sometimes very tense as the teams creep around the map.
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Funny post from a man whose sig celebrates a band thirty years gone.
I assumed his sig was a joke.
The alternative paints a terrifying scenario of a secure mental hospital with a missing patient, carrying an axe.
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You can get a degree in Adobe CS?
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I still loving playing Quake. Not QuakeWorld, Quake. Love the gameplay and the physics.
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Q3 was a helluva way to spend an evening.
I think I'm getting talked back into playing it again...
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Sure. It's on the 3rd successful iteration now - there was Counter-Strike: Source in 2004 and everyone is currently playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive from 2012.
If I hear "eSport" one more time... (Score:2)
Counter-Strike is the oldest computer game feigning it's some sort of sport in the world today.
Sorry but the whole notion of "eSports" is idiotic.
Sure, there's a bit of temporal glory for the guy who rolls over Pac-Man, etc, etc. But it isn't a sport.
The fact that the supposed "league" is rife with cheating/hacks with no real way to catch creative cheaters simply detracts from the notion of "sport" even more.
Re:If I hear "eSport" one more time... (Score:5, Funny)
So it should air on ESPN 8, the Ocho?
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While I find it funny too, apparently the Dota 2 yearly championship aired on either ESPN2 or ESPN3. Not bad for competitive gaming.
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Indeed, it's not a sport any more than darts, tiddlywinks, chess or poker are sports.
I'm not sure what your point is. Those aren't sports either, and anyone who pretends they are is, what's the word, wrong.
The fact that you can get paid a lot of money for being goood at something does not make that something a sport, otherwise you'd have lawyering and banking in the fucking Olympics.
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The fact that the supposed "league" is rife with cheating/hacks with no real way to catch creative cheaters simply detracts from the notion of "sport" even more.
Sounds like baseball, cycling, and just about every other high-level sport out there.
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If archery and stationary target shooting are considered Olympic sports, then competitive team video gaming surely qualifies as a sport.
Chess is an Olympic sport. But few players would argue that "e-sports" are "sports". They're "e-sports"; they're their own thing.
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Well, calling competitive vidya an "eSport" is only relevant for marketing purposes.
CS and baseball have about as much in common as baseball and basketball. It's all marketing.
Unlike sports, e-sports are owned (Score:2)
The key difference is that nobody owns tennis, baseball, cycling, chess, poker, or archery. There's no Tennis Holding LLC that can pull videos off YouTube and pull merchandise out of stores. With video games, on the other hand, a game's publisher owns exclusive rights to make and show the game and can use copyright to shut down a league's broadcasts if the league doesn't toe the game's publisher's party line.
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The organizations you mention are leagues, and leagues compete with leagues. The NFL, for example, had no legal power to prohibit competing leagues, such as the AFL, the USFL, or the XFL, from playing and broadcasting gridiron football because nobody owns gridiron football. The NFL owns only broadcasts of NFL games, not of any other league's games. A video game, on the other hand, is a copyrighted work, which gives its publisher the legal power to determine which leagues are allowed to exist.
Skill transfer (Score:2)
I imagine that skills transfer from one stock car oval track promotion to another more readily than, say, Counter-Strike skills would transfer to Call of Duty, or even Tetris skills to Dr. Mario. It'd be like competitors having to switch to badminton or pickleball when The Tennis Company starts winning lawsuits.
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Well, what do you propose then?
Uh.
Video game?
Call a spade a spade please.
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Fix the politicians
But they keep screaming and calling the cops and objecting when I bring out the gelding knife...
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Sorry but the whole notion of "eSports" is idiotic.
These kind of labels are given by "the media". I am sure you can name a few more examples yourself.
Are eSports real sports and does it even matter? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Anybody can make a chess board (Score:2)
Anybody can make table tennis or chess equipment. Only Valve can make Counter-Strike equipment.
Anybody can change the rules of chess and start a league around, say, randomized starting positions [wikipedia.org] or a particular set of unconventional pieces [wikipedia.org]. Only Valve can authorize the modding of Counter-Strike.
Anybody can broadcast a table tennis or chess match. Only Valve can authorize the public performance of Counter-Strike.
The broadcast is a derivative work (Score:2)
The broadcast is a derivative work of the game, which is a copyrighted audiovisual work. Otherwise, Nintendo wouldn't be able to keep claiming Let's Play videos on YouTube.
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If proprietary sports are allowed to be called sports, then there exist sports that do not deserve a league.
Can a game be reasonably called an "internationally competitive sport" even if only two people play it?
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Putting Table Tennis, CounterStrike and Chess in the same bucket is pretty weak. (Chess and CounterStrike I can see since they're games (not sports), but Table Tennis at international levels is very physical indeed.)
One of my former coworkers has been competing in Table Tennis at the international level for decades and I can confirm that he's an athlete.
Re:If I hear "eSport" one more time... (Score:4, Informative)
Regarding cheating: Yes, because real sports, especially the professional/competitive level, is known to be free of cheaters.
Arguably, eSports cheaters are much easier to catch because by definition, everything is controlled by a computer and most cheaters leave some sort of trace that can be tracked. I'm pretty sure that you will find no physical sport that has as strict an enforcement of anti-cheating rules as even the most lenient/lazy competitive eSports games. Especially at the highest level of play, during tournaments where competitors are physically present, with hardware provided by and players under observation of judges, cheating is practically impossible. Many physical sports would be better off if their tournaments had the same ratio of cheating as eSports.
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There's already a name for them though 'games' that described them perfectly..
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The word 'game' doesn't capture the amount of training these participants go through to compete at their level. When $100k is on the line, it's no longer a game.
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Regarding cheating: Yes, because real sports, especially the professional/competitive level, is known to be free of cheaters.
ROFLCOPTER. Do you REALLY believe that? All sorts of athletes keep getting banned for cheating by using/abusing performance enhancing substances. That is just the first and most obvious example I can think of.
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The fact that the supposed "league" is rife with cheating/hacks with no real way to catch creative cheaters simply detracts from the notion of "sport" even more.
Yep, nothing like cycling at all.
For something to be "sport" (Score:1)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sport
I think the definition of "sport" that gaming falls into is number 6:
"an object of derision; laughingstock. "
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"Since when is redbull.com a reasonable source for news?"
I think Redbull know something about sport, they have a Formula 1 team that used to be the champion
(although now they get beaten by their junior team *Toro Rosso')
Wait a second (Score:1)
stretching back to the dawn of the millennium (Score:2)
Gosh, was 2001 that long ago? I remember it like it was only 14 years ago...
now get off my lawn!
Not sport (Score:2)
And just seeing the word "eSport" makes me feel like punching something.