Time: 00:22:10 CET 15:22:10 PST 18:22:10 EST 07:22:10 Seoul 06:22:10 Beijing
BLOGS
Changes to come?
By Daan 'trigerw1nz' Vansimpsen
Oct 20, 2007 13:27
With the rapidly increasing popularity of eSports for the main stream public, the image we put up by being professional is huge. After what happened at the World Cyber Games last week, we all have to face we're still not even close to achieving the status of a real sport.
Another important factor in becoming more attracted by the main stream public are the games we play. The potential viewers and future eSports fans won't care about the gameplay (or at least 90% of them) but about the intense action and realistic high end graphics, which require the latest hardware of some of the biggest sponsors of gaming tournaments, popping up on their screens.
So will this rapid development mean the end of eSports and its games as we know it?
Counter Strike, Warcraft 3 and StarCraft, and the Quake and Doom series have been dominating the eSports scene for years now, but it seems like now their time has come.
After the CGS announced their league and that they had obtained the exclusive tv rights to broadcast the Counter Strike games in both Europe and the United States but this has been declined by VALVe's marketing director, Doug Lombardi, last week.
With their league the CGS sort of forced the North American top teams and players to switch to Counter Strike: Source, paying them monthly wages and the possibility to win extra prize money. The Americans adapted to the game fairly quick while the European front was stacked against it, with the exception of Marcus "zet" Sundström who moved to the US to play with compLexity and Louis "Red´" Nyberg who was drafted by Emil "HeatoN" Christensen to play in his CGS team (Stockholm Magnetik). A lot of other players were waiting for the release of the long awaited CS ProMod, of which the first public beta has been released last week, but it seems about time Counter Strike 1.6 takes a step aside and leaves it up to either Counter Strike: Source or CS ProMod.
After respectively 5 and 9 years of dominance in the rts gaming scene it seems like the end of Warcraft 3 and StarCraft are near too. With the upcoming release of StarCraft II and the addictive factor of World of Warcraft, it seems like developer Blizzard has a patent to make these games work. After trying StarCraft II out for some times and Blizzcon and other events world known players such as Olav "Creolophus" Undheim and Fredrik "MaDFroG" Johansson already announced they will make the switch. So will this mean the end of the South Korean dominance in the StarCraft scene? (The WCG StarCraft competition has been won by a South Korean player ever since they decided to hold it)
And then there is the 1on1 first person shooter part of eSports. It obviously had it's glory times with Quake 3 and the CPL $1,000,000 World Tour which featured Painkiller as its main game. Although nobody really liked the game it was nice to watch the constant battle between Sander "VoO" Kaasjager and Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendell. After Painkiller came Quake 4 which was, in my opinion, a pretty cool game but many disagreed with me on this. After a year of competition and the end of their main league, the World Series of Video Games, news around the scene has kinda died. But there might be a change to come! With the release of the demo's of Unreal Tournament III and Painkiller II: Overdose there might be hope for the duellers after all. And if both blow they can still go to playing Quake 3 or even turn to War§ow.
/my 2cent
Another important factor in becoming more attracted by the main stream public are the games we play. The potential viewers and future eSports fans won't care about the gameplay (or at least 90% of them) but about the intense action and realistic high end graphics, which require the latest hardware of some of the biggest sponsors of gaming tournaments, popping up on their screens.
So will this rapid development mean the end of eSports and its games as we know it?
Counter Strike, Warcraft 3 and StarCraft, and the Quake and Doom series have been dominating the eSports scene for years now, but it seems like now their time has come.
After the CGS announced their league and that they had obtained the exclusive tv rights to broadcast the Counter Strike games in both Europe and the United States but this has been declined by VALVe's marketing director, Doug Lombardi, last week.
With their league the CGS sort of forced the North American top teams and players to switch to Counter Strike: Source, paying them monthly wages and the possibility to win extra prize money. The Americans adapted to the game fairly quick while the European front was stacked against it, with the exception of Marcus "zet" Sundström who moved to the US to play with compLexity and Louis "Red´" Nyberg who was drafted by Emil "HeatoN" Christensen to play in his CGS team (Stockholm Magnetik). A lot of other players were waiting for the release of the long awaited CS ProMod, of which the first public beta has been released last week, but it seems about time Counter Strike 1.6 takes a step aside and leaves it up to either Counter Strike: Source or CS ProMod.
After respectively 5 and 9 years of dominance in the rts gaming scene it seems like the end of Warcraft 3 and StarCraft are near too. With the upcoming release of StarCraft II and the addictive factor of World of Warcraft, it seems like developer Blizzard has a patent to make these games work. After trying StarCraft II out for some times and Blizzcon and other events world known players such as Olav "Creolophus" Undheim and Fredrik "MaDFroG" Johansson already announced they will make the switch. So will this mean the end of the South Korean dominance in the StarCraft scene? (The WCG StarCraft competition has been won by a South Korean player ever since they decided to hold it)
And then there is the 1on1 first person shooter part of eSports. It obviously had it's glory times with Quake 3 and the CPL $1,000,000 World Tour which featured Painkiller as its main game. Although nobody really liked the game it was nice to watch the constant battle between Sander "VoO" Kaasjager and Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendell. After Painkiller came Quake 4 which was, in my opinion, a pretty cool game but many disagreed with me on this. After a year of competition and the end of their main league, the World Series of Video Games, news around the scene has kinda died. But there might be a change to come! With the release of the demo's of Unreal Tournament III and Painkiller II: Overdose there might be hope for the duellers after all. And if both blow they can still go to playing Quake 3 or even turn to War§ow.
/my 2cent
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http://www.sk-gaming.com/rss/blog/trigerw1nz
Counter-Strike 1.6 is pretty assured to be going for another year, i don't quite think it will pan out or as quickly as mentioned in your blog above.
Viva 1.6 forever.
a) CSP won't emulate '1.6, so gamers will be forced to either put up with the flaws of the source engine, stop gaming or switch game.
b) '1.6, at least competitively, isn't financially sustainable. No one is making business from it, the cracks are only going to get bigger in 2008, no matter how much you love the game.
c) There are better games than CS. The CS game play is just so simple and boring, how people have been playing this for seven years is beyond me. Yes I know this is subjective but still, I think there are a few games which are better and more deserving.
Btw I don't see FPS regressing but well other games getting bigger such as WoW or SC2. It's more like an improvment in the gaming world instead of a regression. Well that's just my opinion.
Don't understand why you say none can sustain of 1.6. None could live of CSS before CGS. Which will maybe include CSP :p
In my opinion and experience, class based, objective, stopwatch game play is the future. It's continuous non stop action which requires both brains and aim. It's not random and the maps barely affect how capable a team is able to perform. To top it off, two of three games I'm going to mention were based on the Quake 3 engine which meant the end product was literally, perfection.
Return To Castle Wolfenstein [Quake 3]
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory [Quake 3]
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars [Doom 3 - Just been released]
Imagine in your mind, watching toxic and cooller battling it out in Quake 3, lightening guns blazing, amazing tracking and prediction, your heart stopping, your mouth dry. Now imagine a team game based off that (ww2 based), that's how it feels to watch a RTCW/ET match. To play in one...is just another level all together.
FPS Duel has already regressed since most disliked Q4. If CSP is 'bad', then what will the '1.6 players do? I imagine a good number will just stop gaming altogether. Regression isn't a bad thing to be fair and if the FPS community managed to get rid of a few CS players it wouldn't be bad at all. I know that's a horrible thing to say, but the vast majority of them do little for the 'cause'. That's why I said there was more 'worthy' games (mainly meant communities) out there.
I'll leave the finance comment out for now since it's very lengthy but I'm going to be writing something soon about the future of fps, so keep a look out :P
That's entirely wrong.
Same effect as in CS 1.6 and CS: Source ;P
I'm sure CGS will be doing changes to game list next year or at least for 2009 if it exists then since CGS haven't reached enough audience with the current team game.
CS: ProMod has no future because its kinda unreliable and unbalanced.
#2 "The CS game play is just so simple and boring"
Simplicity is generally one of the secret materials of perfection.
To put it this way, if heaton would say these words .. another story.
The only one "thing" which managed to get me off of 1.6 is my girlfriend, nothing more. I've never been bored of counter-strike more than one month, there's something in this game I love and that's not your love for the Q3 engine which will change my mind.
#10 CSS is a broken game, nothing more. Only featuring noobs tbh, hardcore 1.6 gamers exploded the CSS scene when they switched, without any problem. I've been playing both games (5 months of CSS & 6 years of 1.6) and I know I will never give another try to CSS. I've tested CSP and it damnly sucks imo because it's too "CSS" for me. That's all about feelings btw.
EDIT: btw I understand that CGS rather chose CSS instead of CS 1.6, random people are more interested in watching "beautiful" (I don't find that CSS is beautiful) games instead of pro's games. After all, they won't know the difference between CSS r0x0rz and CS 1.6 professional players. This is a fact, CS 1.6 isn't visually attractive (even if I think 1.6 gathers the perfect balance between a nice gameplay and not-so-ugly graphics) for everyone. But I do believe great games are the ones people enjoy playing, not watching.
John Carmack commented that the beauty of both RTCW and ET lay in their simplicity. Yet I guarantee that the vast majority of CS players wouldn't have a clue. So there is obviously a clash of opinions and definitions.
To clarify, why technically I believe it's (cs) not the best game 'type' then. Good games should generally stick clear of the 'slippery slope theory'.
This is where, if you happen to lose hit points or a round, it shouldn't lessen your chance of a recovery. If you die in Quake, you re-spawn and although you've a smaller opportunity to get to the mega or armor or get a weapon, the chance is still sizable and 'fair'.
The CS game play is basically the worst kind, where if you lose the pistol round, you're put at an incredible disadvantage for the entire match. Which side you start on on certain maps could potentially kill the match before it has even started. That's bad map design for a start.
Tactical diversity seems rather weak and the game is predominantly aim based. If i was solely interested in watching good aim, why not just watch Quake or a 1v1 duel game? The difference in skill is substantial.
A good game shouldn't be random. A team from ET managed to go without losing a single game (only lost 2 maps) for nearly a year and a half. Even on bad or new maps, they still won, because they had the best team play and great players.
Maps are based on objectives, so if you lose the first stage, it doesn't affect secondary or other stages, you've the ability to recover.
Even if you've a bad defense or offense (equivalent to side for you guys), i.e. someone sets a lightning fast time against you. In CS that would kill almost any chance of a comeback, since you would only get so many rounds until they won. In this game play, regardless of how well they did, it doesn't affect your chance to win.
I'm not going to argue, since I know in my heart which way team based fps will eventually go, and I know that many of the existing professional community have played and enjoyed ET/RTCW games.
It's arguing whether checkers or chess takes more skill, in the case of ET/RTCW having more attributes to master and techniques, plus it's played 6v6 as well, and uses a better engine! ;D
Btw in case you weren't aware, CS uses the Q1 engine :]
Ultimately, if what I'm interpreting the author is trying to suggest to be correct, then CS is not the perfect choice for connecting to a wider appeal of audiences and more simple straight forward games will be more understood. For example, Quake goes back to the fundamentals of 1v1 dueling but appreciating the skill will be something difficult to translate.
I personally think team fps is going to be "the" future game of eSports, by involving multiple players it displays the extra quality of team work and captures the synergy/emotion of winning together or losing together, something a single person could not completely encapsulate.
I'll disagree evan, biased maps are the same in other popular games like Warcraft (not to mention racial imbalances and so on) and even Quake, where one player can be absolutely dominant, such as Monsoon (I think that was the name) where the railgun enabled toxic to demolish any player on it. Even in CS, the ability to fight against the odds (eg. 1v5) or winning eco rounds and clutches make the game much more interesting.
However, never playing ETQW before, I cannot comment on that.
The reason why CS1.6 is "broken" is because Valve refuses to fix it and covertly want it to die, so everyone changes to Sauce. They generate revenue from Sauce selling well but don't generate any revenue from increases in player bases for CS1.6