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No sponsors??

CPL Sponsors include AMD and Verizon

Major League Gaming has sponsors like Scion, Boost Moble, and Gamestop

And Intel, nVidia, and ATI constantly sponser tournaments. I don't suspect sponsorship is an issue.

Maybe they're the most respected league right now, but it wouldn't hurt if they could pick better venues for their champions.

From their events page:
The CPL Summer 2006 Championships, hosting both Counter-Strike 1.6 and Quake 4 tournaments, will take place Wednesday, July 4, to Sunday, July 9, 2006 at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas.

The summer event will also host a two thousand person BYOC, a large exhibition area, music concerts, conferences from renowned speakers and writers, industry celebrities, door prizes and unofficial competitions.

More details will soon be located at http://www.thecpl.com/summer2006/.

Maybe they're the most respected league right now, but it wouldn't hurt if they could pick better venues for their champions.

From their events page:
The CPL Summer 2006 Championships, hosting both Counter-Strike 1.6 and Quake 4 tournaments, will take place Wednesday, July 4, to Sunday, July 9, 2006 at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas.

The summer event will also host a two thousand person BYOC, a large exhibition area, music concerts, conferences from renowned speakers and writers, industry celebrities, door prizes and unofficial competitions.

More details will soon be located at http://www.thecpl.com/summer2006/.

And when people compete in CPL games they tend to play better games than HALO... I'd say professional gamers by and large consider HALO a complete joke, as they will this league.

During last years CPL The night before the source tournament valve released an update for source. The cpl staff had to scramble to simply recompile the servers to allow for the update. If users wern't locked into a content distribution system they would be allowed to play the game how they wanted. Have you ever not updated a game because the new patch caused bugs?

i thought gaming was a good career ... people get paid lots of money at gaming championships!
http://www.thecpl.com/league/

better trash my gamecube and get get better grades instead 8-[

To qualify for the Quake 4 tournament you need to go to Dallas, Texas in December. The qualifying round has 250 gamers registered so far. Maybe someone can clarify if these gamers already sponsored, or if they fork the money out of their own pockets to come to these events?

To qualify for the Quake 4 tournament you need to go to Dallas, Texas in December. The qualifying round has 250 gamers registered so far. Maybe someone can clarify if these gamers already sponsored, or if they fork the money out of their own pockets to come to these events?

Don't act so elitist, kid_oliva.

ALL of us here on /. spend time behind a computer sometime during the day (you are reading this, probably on a computer screen), and a large percentage of us work at computers 9-5 in IT or related field and get up only to go to the bathroom, the water cooler, or lunch break.

A lot of pro gamers (or at least those that aspire to be) hold regular part or full-time jobs from 9-5 or a normal 8hr shift, then play games from the time they get home, say 6 or 7pm, until 1am or later. A very small percentage of the already small percentage of 'pro gamers' play hardcore 12+hrs a day. If they do, it's usually preparing for tournaments where they know they will be taking home some prize money (Fatality, vo0 to name two).

While some people play games that long and don't aspire to be anything (see some WoW and Starcraft players) without jobs living in their mom's basement, the Counter-Strike and Painkiller tournaments do pay out SOME money, although anything below 16th place (out of 128 usually) at one of the world's largest and most prestigious tournaments, The CPL, will only get you enough to pay for your trip down there if you're not sponsored--whereas others coming from overseas must place even higher to meet expenses.

The percentage of gamers who actually come away in the black on what they put into pro gaming (travel, computer, money lost not working) is about as small as almost any other professional sport. Should they be treated equal? Debatable.

If you're really serious into FPS games (as in, making money off it, and believe me that's happening; See The CPL, ESWC, WCG) then over the last year or two mice have really advanced.

First of all the new ergonomic designs simply make it a lot easier to make large mouse movements across a big pad since your fingers are positioned somewhat on the sides instead of totally over the top. Most big-time FPS gamers use a lower sensitivity and a large mousepad surface.

Second, the optical sensors in the mice have advanced as well, for example with Logitech's MX518 supporting 1600DPI as opposed to most 800DPI sensors. That makes every little movement you make much more accurate.

Whether it's really making a big difference at all in terms of aiming and skill, it's probably something that wouldn't be explicable by a gamer but you could just "feel" like the mouse is more responsive.

Good gamers don't usually use WASD

they should also fix every glitch in the game, be perfect, and o yea! add 20 new, balanced levels acually though...they should really ban the keyboard/mouse hookup like the http://www.thecpl.com/CPL does

The clan is staging the competition to find some Painkiller players to represent them at the world tour. The CPL World Tour itself isn't 'Pop Idol' based.

"You are telling me that something that requires more time to process to make it look significantly better, is slower than the uglier, slower-computer-friendly version? How long did it take to do the PhD work behind this?"

No, asshat, I'm saying the DX9 renderer is slow even on a decent card, and that you're better off forcing the game to use a renderer it doesnt want to.

"whatever he calls CPL is up to him"
No, asshat, The CPL is the biggest CS lan in the world. 4500 was the number of people in the byoc last year. want my byoc pub demos?

"Not to mention that the code similarities would likely be there. Even if the engine is "all new," they will still reuse some code. Not everyone likes to reinvent the wheel everyday."

No shit, asshat, thats what I said. The parent poster was saying HL2 wasn't based on quake, and I was saying otherwise. And incase anyone feels like arguing with me..

Core.dll from CS:Source ->
1002B2F4 pushmsec....tfstate.weaponanim..fov.physinfo....m_ flNextAttack..
1002B334 ammo_rockets....ammo_cells..ammo_shells.ammo_nails ..maxspeed....
1002B374 waterjumptime...flSwimTime..flDuckTime..flTimeStep Sound.weapons.

Funny, Niether CS nor HL even uses cells or nails, yet those are the exact 4 names of the ammo variables that are used in quake (and still exist in HL1CS.. do a delta_stats in console and you'll see all the variables attached to the player struct)

At the CPL events, which are very similar to QuakeCon, they usually have a few unreleased games on 10-20 demo machines there, most recently UT2k3/4 at the last few events. When leaks of the early versions of UT2k3 surfaced, Intel and NVidia (who ran the exhibition booths) started standing people around their show comps, watching the players like hawks. The leaks became a bit less widespread. Given that Doom 3 is what id has been solely working on for, oh, the last 6 years or so, I think that their security will be tight as a drum.

Of course, it'd be much harder for them to keep tabs on their own volunteer staff, considering that during event setup, they have easy access to all the tourney machines, all the exhibition machines, and certainly easier access to the distribution media for the game...

Unfortunatly its uninformed opinions like this that hinder gamings growth. Allow me to sling some answers back:

* Anti-social (With sports, you are pretty much forced to play with someone else)
- A decreasingly less valid point. Multiplayer games (regular and MMOs) are becoming more popular each day, and new generations of games are introducing increasingly complex social interactions among players. Not to mention the hundreds of clans, communities, and fansites that spring up around popular games.

* Waste of money (Kicking a football once you have bought it costs nothing, but arcade machines eat coins)
- Gaming is no more expensive than many other popular sports, like Hockey or Football. All that equipment costs a LOT, just like a sw33t rig and a couple of games. "Just a football" would be better compared to, say, "Just a Gameboy" or "Just a no-name pocket game", as they're both shadows of their respective 'sports'.

* Lack of exercise (Sitting around the house all day)
Not gamings strong point, I agree. But why does it have to be? Not many people are looking for physical activity in gaming... thats what a gym or pool is for. (Unless you REALLY want to combine the two.. then you can go play DDR :p)

* No chance of professional achievement (as, say, with popular sports)
- Bzzt. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Some of these people have six figure salaries. Thats a lot more impressive than a hell of a lot of careers.

* Addiction (I've never heard of someone who played/survived an 8 hour match of soccer, and still wanted more)
I guess you'd be interested in hearing a little record or two that happened recently. Worlds longest game of hockey: 130 hours. There were even an attempt or two around where I live that clocked in at 87 hours (ice was melting). Now thats h4rdc0r3.

* Viewed as being "mindless" (Chess, and other boardgames aren't - but even then they have a social element, professional rankings, etc.)
- So inaccurate, its almost laughable. Games are not all 'mindless'. A high level match in a FPS or RTS entails as much strategy as a game of chess, easilly. Planning, reactions, feints, counters, etc... its all there.

* Violence (Contact sports are violent too... but not in the deliberate blood-splatting way some video games are)
- Also a valid point, but its interesting to note that extremely violent games are virtually never the ones chosen for professional competition. Most violence in games is purely symbolic anyways. Would chess be considered violent too if the pieces bled or exploded when they were taken? And lets not forget the king of violence: Boxing. Nice sport, but you can't really look at that and then start pointing fingers at games.

* The loser sub-culture stigma (Anyone here old enough to remember the 1981 film "Joysticks" ?)
- Ah yes, a very large stumbling block. But like all good things, it will take time before gaming grows into a more mainstream role. Gaming is downright infantile compared to the age of most other sports. Hockey is what... 150 years old? Gaming is... 15? Call me in 85 years and we'll see where things are at. ;)

* Fanatical Christians think role playing games are evil (I'm not kidding on that one: they reckon that creating character as a personification as oneself is idolatory, and then giving them magic powers makes it all look worse.)
- Mod me flamebait, but since when did it matter what a tiny slice of a religion thought? What kind of power do they even weild? Are they the Illuminati or something? Christianity isn't even the largest religion globally, never mind the small portion of bible-thumping whackjobs that view games as the "tool of the devil". Their skewwed viewpoints are of little consequence to the rest of us.


G

This is the same location as this years Cyberathlete Professional Leauge.

Looks like a great place, some pictures are here

This is the same location as this years Cyberathlete Professional Leauge.

Looks like a great place, some pictures are here

In counterstrike, there are plenty of cheats that 'even the playing field'.

Off the top of my head:

Fullbright (add an insanely bright light where the players origin is, removing any shadows making it easier to see anything)

Skinhacks (make all cts blue and all terrorists red, use is obvious).

Soundpakcs (replace default sounds with more distinguishable noises, for example giant 'OUCH' sounds when someone gets hit, making it easier to tell if you hit someone through a wall)

Whitewalls (remove all textures, making players contrast better).

No Recoil ( compensate for gun recoil making it easier for newbies to spray)

Its not all wallhacks and aimbots. For the record, I don't cheat (I'll be at CPL this summer), nor do I have any respect for anyone who does even if it is just to even the playing field.

These seems like a pretty nifty piece of equipment. However, as a serious gamer (attending several LAN-based cash competitions a year, including the most recent CPL), I would not recommend this mouse to anybody other than a casual gamer looking for a new way to play. As I recall I remember seeing one of these in use at a expo and some people were having fun playing a few racing/flying style games. Maybe it could be a fun alternative to a gamepad or joystick, but using it in any other game, namely the First-Person Shooter, would be devastating. It would be hard to imagine trying to play with this mouse with my current settings of a windows sensitivity level of 2 (default is 6) and sensitivity in game as low as possible so that I can achieve maximum accuracy. True, it requires a lot of movement when doing a 180 with a MX700, but aiming accuracy is as good as it gets. This could be a neat little package along with maybe one of those "Multimedia Desktops" you see being sold on TV all of the time. Welcome to the (not so) new age of gaming periphrials.

The Counter-Strike finals at the CPL Europe a couple of weeks ago saw 10,000 people spectating over the internet using HLTV, I was among them. Likewise the final matches of all the major tournaments (WCG, CPL, CXG) see similar numbers of online spectators. In fact ALL of these tournaments have trouble keeping up with the demand for HLTV slots for spectating. I'm sure soon we'll be seeing numbers going on 15,000 to 20,000. And as others have pointed out, places like South Korea have 3+ TV stations dedicated to video games and spectating. Whether or not e-sports will ever get to the level of NBA, NHL, NFL remains to be seen, but one thing's for sure it's growing fast.

A pretty good book to read if you are interested in gaming professionally, is Monster Gaming, by Ben Sawyer. Not only does it outline the competitive online gaming community, it delves into mods and other cool stuff like customization & configuration. The book has a foreword by Angel Munoz, the founder of the CPL, and cover art by Id legend Paul Steed. While Monster Gaming is not about becoming a CPL athlete, it is about being a better gamer.

The number of wicked web links in there is enough for any gamer to drool over. I've been thinking of doing a Slashdot book review of it, too.

Interestingly, I wonder exactly who the U.S. has employed in its counterterrorist operations.

Who do you think? CPL say:

The CPL announced five of the international qualifiers being held for the $200,000 Counter-Strike World Championships taking place at the CPL Summer 2003 Event in Dallas, Texas, from Wednesday, July 30 to Sunday, August 3, 2003.

I think we'll have some new recruits soon :-)

It seems like what they've done here is take something similar to that system, match it with the positional gunsite system the Longbow uses to aim it's chain gun, and created a conformal HUD display. All in all very cool. I'm sure the next step is to put all this on a Predator and just leave the pilot sitting in the relative comfort of base camp. The military will start recruiting at CPL events.

As a side note, the inspiration for our system came from a true story. It turns out that a vast majority of plane crashes throughout the world come from what avionics people clinically call CFIT. That's Controlled Flight Into Terrain. Basically it means some moron pilot flew the damn thing into a mountain. Well, in the mountains in Chile some regional airline pilot was flying between two peaks when he receives a course correction from ATC. Visibility is low so he's flying almost entirely by instrumentation. Well he makes a correction in his flight computer for what he believes to be his next waypoint. The problem is he accidentally makes the correction for his _previous_ waypoint. So, following his orders, the plan prompltly goes into a hard turn to head on back to the new waypoint which is now behind him. Before he can figure out what was happening *kaboom* the plane becomes a permenant feature of the local terrain.

More and more people are beginning to see that professional computer gaming is a real sport. The event in Dallas over this weekend (which I did not attend mind you -- it doesent pay quite well enough for me to practice months for (YET!!)), was huge. Over 50,000 people spectated the event over HLTV (Watch the game being played LIVE on your screen -- a very cool technology). The purse for the clan who won (NiP) is $50,000 split between 5 people. Not a LOT of money mind you, but remember the sport is only now being given the attention it deserves. When the NFL started, its players rarely had $10k/year salaries.

As for the ESPN part, ESPN along with other major news companies were at the event, cameras in hand, reporters in front of them.

Also Angel Munoz, the CPL event organizer for this event, was interviewed by CNN. Find it here (wmv format :I)

More CPL Media Info

Major companies sponsoring the event are Intel, Logitech, and more. People are throwing some serious money and effort towards the sport.

And No, I dont work for the CPL, nor do I agree with everything they decide to say or do, however I am a strong advocate to seeing professional gaming being presented as a sport. It takes more talent than football, baseball, etc. It really is in the same league competitively, just not financially and commercially yet.

Alright, for all of you who seem pretty uneducated about the Cyberathletes Professional League [thecpl.com] I'll try to fill you in. The CPL was formed several years ago (right around when StarCraft was the hottest game on everybody's list).

Generally there are several tournament's a year (one in the winter, one in the summer). This past event is held in Texas where some other tournaments are held as well (QuakeCon for one). Each CPL tournament has a featured game. This tournament's game was Counter-Strike.

The event hosts a Bring Your Own Computer Area, (for those who want to frag all through the night) as well as workshops, (HardOCP had one this year on overclocking) prize raffles/giveaways, and of course the tournaments.

This year there was also an Alien vs. Predator 2 Deathmatch tourney going on too. (Fatality of Quake3Arena fame wiped the floor with everyone and won a Ford Focus with a custom AVP2 paintjob) See Adrenaline Vault and TheCPL for photos.

The CStrike tourney was a 5 on 5 clan competition and players from all over the world come to compete in it. The prize money for the tournament totals to some $150,000 dollars and comes almost entirely from Sponsors. The fees that they charge for admission into the tournament go mostly to cover the expenses of the hotel, setup, etc. And while a $50,000 US purse may sound like a lot, after it gets divided 5 ways to $10,000 minus the cost of Food and Board and Airfare (When applicable) you might be a little bit surprised when you don't have as much money as you thought you had. And that really only applies to the winner! There are tons of people who come a long way and don't even make it into the top 100. But if the money were all the tournament was about then I think a lot of people wouldn't even bother going to one of these events. The tournament is mostly about having fun and working on becoming better at Video Games (LAN differs quite a bit from Online play).

One of the most amazing things about this tournament was the ability for Counter-Strike enthusiasts to be able to watch the Tournament on the internet with Half-Life. By joining a specially designed server, up to 80,000 people could have watched the final round (there were only 40 of 128 slots filled on the server I was on)
here's some info:

Speakeasy.net, Valve Software Launch 11 City Half-Life TV Network First-ever PC Game Broadcast Network built to support 80,000 Simultaneous Viewers Seattle - Broadband ISP Speakeasy.net and Kirkland based game developer Valve Software announced today the first ever launch of a fully national broadcast network of live video game coverage. The inaugural use of this network will give tens of thousands of viewers from around the world the best-possible spectator experience for the $150,000 Counter-Strike World Championships this week in Dallas, TX. The World Championships represent the largest of such competitions ever and is produced by the Dallas-based Cyberathlete Professional League. Speakeasy has partnered with Valve Software to support the largest broadcast installation ever using Valve's Half-Life TV server software. The software allows for anyone with a broadband connection and PC to connect to a live game and watch their favorite teams play as if they were playing along side them. Teams from Seattle to Sweden are flying in to compete in the four-day event; thousands more will stay home and watch the competition unfold live on the Speakeasy Network.

"Broadcasting the CPL finals to 80,000 viewers is an incredible achievement and a huge advance in our efforts to bring competitive gaming, and gaming in general, further into the mainstream," said Doug Lombardi, director of marketing at Valve. Spectators will be able to tune in to a live broadcast of the match simply by using their PC and installation of Half-Life, and will have the option of 11 different locations to choose from to guarantee the best experience.

"We have customers that are running cable from their PC to a large screen TV just to watch this," said Edward Bender, Director of Online Gaming for Speakeasy.net. "I think this event will definitely get more people to recognize competitive gaming as a spectator sport." Counter-Strike, the number one online action game in the world, is a team-based multiplayer game built atop Valve's award-winning game engine. Valve released the multicast spectator technology (aka Half-Life TV) as a free update earlier this year.

Read about how to use HLTV @- http://www.cs-extreme.net/guides/HLTV/HLTV.asp

I think we're not at the stage yet where this should be considered Professional Gaming. I don't think anyone can make a true living off of winnings from the CPL. Maybe someday it will reach that point, and this is a great step to getting there. Sorry for the long post! Hope it helped some of you learn about professional gaming.

For the uninitiated, CPL stands for Cyberathelete Professional League. This story is about the recent competition (indeed, world championship) for the uber popular Half-Life modification, CounterStrike.

I don't know what country you're commenting about as far as the Unreal Tournament tourney is concerned. If you're talking about USA gamers, then the list is fairly accurate as far as "elite gamers" is concerned.

The Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament competitions are a pure 1 vs. 1 format. Clans (gaming teams) have nothing to do with this since this isn't a teamplay competition.

The Quake 3 field looks pretty strong with Zero4 who won over $50,000 US dollars in the past year just from playing games. He won CPL's Babbages event and Id Software's annual Quakecon tournaments.

Someone mentioned the CPL in another post. They are actually holding a major gaming event of their own this coming weekend, the CPL world championship. It's a Counterstrike event with about $100,000 in total prize money.

Gamers or anyone else with freakish curiosity can check the CPL event by going here.

sk

AKA "The turd is finally polished!"
Counterstrike has completely quad rocketed quake3 into submission. Don't believe me? Check gamespy.com's stats. I'll even save you the trouble....

Top 5 Games By Players

Half Life
25155

Quake 3: Arena
2353

If this isn't "Ma Mmma Ma Monster Kill" I'll buy you a copy of Unreal Touranment. How did an old creaky 3 year old engine (21 October 1998 release) have an order of magnitude of difference in popularity. Didn't Carmack get the curved surface alpha blended Wow-a-tron 9000 SIMD enhanced shaders right? Unfortunately he did at the cost of his core audience.

The CPL (Cyberathelete Professional League) has dropped Q3 support. Other major tourneys are considering following suit and there seems to be a lot of frustration with the limitations of VQ3 (Vanilla Quake 3) turning into an eleborate game of pong. He with the best aim wins 40K!

This is obviously an overstatement but isn't far from the truth. Read some of the pro tourney demo reviews (zero4, fatality, lakerman) and commentary on challenge-world.com (and affiliates). Search for the word "aim". All of the pro players recognize that big league Q3 is all about the crosshair. Obviously you need to hit your target but is that all deathmatch is about?

Q3 seems to be bunny hopping right into the "wrong place", errr... Actually it isn't, and thats some of the problem. You can't bunny hop, acceleration jump, double jump, do complex air manauvers, and perform weapon switch combos (rocket to shaft -> pin to wall) because these were obviously bugs and Carmack fixed them. Its a near wonder that rocket jumping isn't "fixed". Maybe it is in Wolfenstin MP Test, I'm not sure. Q3 is bad deathmatch. Why? Let me count the ways:

You can't control a map with 5 second item respawns, Depleting armor makes it armor heavy, you can't enhance your velocity, way too much weapon balence, the Grenade Launcher is timed poorly and is about as precise as throwing a dead tuna, the rockets are still too slow, etc, etc...

Wait a minute you're saying... If these are legitimate problems that hardcore quakers tend to agree on, and the Q3 source is open, and easily moddable- why don't I shut up and start coding?

Simple. Its already being done for and by hardcore quakers. Its called CPM Challenge Pro Mode it essentially rebreaks what Carmack has "fixed", and it makes a much more enjoyable (rewards dedication >> depth) deathmatch experience. It isn't nearly as fringe as you might think. If I was a betting man I'd give it 2to1 to overtake VQ3 in 2 years when all of the "I do it for the pretty colors" first person shooter llamas have moved on to the NBT.

Look at the featureset, here
See what hardcore quakers have said about it here and here

Vanilla Quake3 is finally "gold"? Great. I could care less.

This just shows that just because a game has two sequals to it does not mean the original is dead. Even more interesting is that The CPL is running an up coming tournament which includes DOOM2 and QuakeWorld as a deathmatch games.

Certainly interesting for a couple of games most people considered dead...

----------

I haven't seen much of this model but becuase it relys on the games being played over the internet it is destined to fail because of cheating. There are too many varibles. And there ARE people making a living off Quake3 these days and now Counterstike is getting big. Thanks to companies like CPL and Battletop. CPL is making a nice profit and has even helped jump start companies (such as Razer). For instance. John Wendel also know as cK-Fatlity (thats Fatality of Clan Kapitol) who made over a $100,000 in 2000 playing Quake3. And this year there is even more prize money to be had with a CPL $250,000 Q3 1v1 tourney. The Quake3 Team DM World Championship (Yes thats right teams from every country) Frag 4 was last year. Gamers.com (run by the ever famous Denis "Thresh" Fong) just bought the defunct PGL (Profesional Gamers League) from AMD recently. This is NOT a hobby to a fair but small amount of people. It's an international event with Gaming becoming one of the biggest entertainment industries celebrities will begin to pop up and it won't be the designers it will be the players.

It's better to look at Professional Gaming like the X-Games extreme sports that people never thought would make it big but are now respected and show on ESPN. Also ESPN just announced they will be covering a Tournament for a snowboarding game of thiers.

This is not a fad. It is not a hobby. This is life and it's growing fast. Now when you dream of playing games for money it doesn't have to mean being a play tester for some console gaming developer.

For those of you with greater interest heres some links:

CPL
Shack E-Sports

Who knows which professional gamers may switch! TheCPL

No, the problem is that id has changed the physics in the game. In the previous versions, people have been tweaking quake and all their hardware so that they would be able to sustain a constant framerate of 125 fps. The reason for this was that it enables a player to pull off all sorts of cool jumps and navigate the maps easier and faster.

Changing this nine months after the game is released is considered by many as a Bad Move, and I tend to agree. I have yet to hear from people who like this change.

Top players have been practicing these moves over and over and over again in order to raise their playing level and stand a chance at $100.000 tournaments like those run by The CPL. Basicly, this new patch throws ours of practice out the window, because these tricks become useless... Not so hard to understand why people are pissed now, is it?