NiP Wins Counter-Strike CPL

raskolnik writes: "Ninjas in Pyjamas beat out Xtreme3 in a *very* close series of matches to win the $50,000 purse at the CPL today. Coverage is on ShackES and Domain of Games. Congrats to both clans!" $50,000 isn't quite a NASCAR purse, but nothing to sneeze at. When will this be on ESPN?

Comments

Re:About the same time....

[hooded1]

yo they do broadcast Sumo on ESPN2. I was flippin through the channels and was pretty surprsied to see it

ESPN?

[Quasar1999]

When will this be on ESPN?
As soon as there are judges, and those judges can be bribed... and there's a special on the judges being bribed on abc, nbc, cbs, and any other major network... then and only then will it be a sport good enough for ESPN to carry it...

There's money in games?

[zaius]

I always figured the best way to make a sucessful living would be to go into baseball, law, or medicine.

Screw that, I'm going to go buy a copy of half-life...

excellent round

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to give it to X3...They won some close OT games, and came back from the losers bracket to almost win this thing. In fact, they were a mere second or two from forcing this game into overtime when the man they had defusing the bomb got killed. The only game that was possibly better than the championship game was possibly WEW's crazy comeback.

That said, I don't think that computer games are going to be on ESPN anytime soon, although it's interesting to note that the championships of online games do tend to nearly always be very close and the best games of the tourney. You can always expect a very good championship game, and it's round-like nature makes for some very suspenseful moments during the match. Hats off to both teams.

Mike

Re:About the same time....

[irony nazi]

Multiplayer FPS video games would make great spectator events. There are many funny things that happen that could be replayed from the first-person perspective or from a floating third person perspective.

I'm thinking tribes... 2-3 people crossing the field to assault the NME base and they skirmish with a group of defenders. Very interesting indeed!!

Someone has tried it already.

[AltGrendel]

I forget who, but some cable channel tried televising this sort of thing. Turned out to be very boring. All they did was setup a couple of cameras to show the contestants. They should have tapped into the video out. THEN it COULD have been interesting.

But they won't think of that, will they.

Yea, right.

Re:Someone has tried it already.

[zaius]

The only things they could show with the video out would be the player's perspectives. It would be more interesting if they could show it like we would watch football or baseball--from a distant third person, all-seing perspective.

Re:Someone has tried it already.

[crisco]

Half-Life's engine does this now, they have assorted spectator modes that allow first person, third person following, free flying mode and a map overview mode with little icons for each player. Valve software has also set up spectator mode proxy software that allows lots of people to watch a feed.(But you might already know that and be talking about something else).

The real trick would be taking multiple streams of this and editing it in with some good commentary. Think NFL style, with the replays, different camera angles, etc. You could probably do it on a low budget, just taking the time to make it flow and make it slightly interesting to someone that might be a gamer but not real familiar with CS. But you can't oversimplify, you alienate your core audience of hardcore gamers.

Re:Someone has tried it already.

[Vess V.]

That wouldn't be that hard... just let several "camerapeople" in as observers, and tap their video-outs. And you can have one at CT base, one at T base, a couple at the most strategic spots on the map and a couple following the action, and continually alternate the view among all of them, including the players when appropriate.

Re:Someone has tried it already.

[British]

The Sci Fi channel had some show based on some game with racing spaceships, in BattleTech style hardware.

You eventualy got the most BORING show with THE nerdiest contestants ever.

Re:Someone has tried it already.

[Rura Penthe]

It's called HLTV and it is in use by quite a few CS servers out there already. You log into the HLTV server and you watch from a bunch of different angles as a spectator and you can get overhead view maps that show where everyone is and how they're moving, etc. That + a static movement behind every living player movement choice would make it the most interesting.

Re:Someone has tried it already.

[Kefabi]

The real trick would be taking multiple streams of this and editing it in with some good commentary. Think NFL style, with the replays, different camera angles, etc. You could probably do it on a low budget, just taking the time to make it flow and make it slightly interesting to someone that might be a gamer but not real familiar with CS. But you can't oversimplify, you alienate your core audience of hardcore gamers.


Why do you think StarCraft has been so popular in Korea for so long?

You don't just watch a game of StarCraft, you watch a whole program. Filmed in advance and edited.

You got the contestent stats (Win-Lose streaks), and "announcers" who can observe the whole map and comment on strategies, see possible problems for a player, and perhaps even explain of why a player is doing something.

StarCraft becomes a lot more fun to watch when you have a close battle between two players, and the anouncer points out that one of the players has something up their sleeve that the other player doesn't know. If the second player can survive whatever surprise attack is coming and win the match, it's even more fun. Many times they'll do that whole Picture-in-Picture thing and show the players face so the audience can see his/her reaction when a surprise attack comes. Hell, some of my friends laugh when I talk about StarCraft announcers "writing" on the screen to explain strategies much the same way football and basketball announcers "write" on the screen to explain plays.

The same amount of work is put into a show about Diablo II or Lineage or whatever other game that is being televised in Korea.

If you can explain to people watching a Counter-Strike game on TV that this is NOT a mass of people running together and randomly shooting each other, if you can explain that there IS strategy on both sides, and show exactly HOW the players are working together to win, it becomes more fun than just watching virtual people shoot each other.

Ideally, you'd have announcers who have a clue about the game with access to a map of the entire level be able to explain to the casual person why one team one and the other lost. When someone puts that much effort into televising one of these gaming sessions, you'll see that persons won't be bored and will actually enjoy watching.

Re:Someone has tried it already.

[Sabalon]

People have been doing this kinda thing for a while. I know in ChaosDM for Quake2 people would connect and follow their character, but have the chase cam facing them so they could always see behind them.

Hmmm...perhaps I should setup another machine at home at night. The students at the help desk would really get an ass-whopping then :)

ESPN

[MisterBlister]

It'll be on ESPN approximately...never.

There's a ton of issues with online gaming that will relegate it to niche status at best for the foreseeable future.

One of the biggest issues is that the game of choice changes too often due to progressing technology -- compare this to baseball (or even newer sports) where the rules and gameplay remain relatively the same..In the gaming world, the game of choice changes about once every year, or two years at the most. This causes a few problems, one is that it is very confusing to spectators who don't play these games themselves and two is that it limits the options for having 'star players' ala basketball, etc.. Today's top CS players aren't likely to be the top players of tomorrow's game-of-choice. Very few 'pro level' game players dominate in more than one game, as the short history of this activity has shown.

Secondly, gaming just doesn't have much potential as a mainstream spectator sport. Sure, people that play these games all the time might appreciate the skill involved in winning the top gaming tournaments, but to people who don't play these games, they have no basis for understanding this skill. In traditional sports they can still be impressed by the human factors involved -- eg. "wow that guy jumps real high", or "wow that guy runs real fast". When it comes to gaming, there's no context for them to make any relationship like that unless they game quite a lot themselves, thus the spectator potential is very limited.

Re:ESPN

[Samrobb]

Secondly, gaming just doesn't have much potential as a mainstream spectator sport.

If all you do is hook up a video feed from a random Q3 deathmatch, well, yah, you're absolutely right.

When something like this becomes popular (and I think it will, eventually), it will be because someone realizes that these type of competitions aren't "games&quot - they're an opportunity for some really interesting, interactive, ongoing entertainment that's less like a football game and more like a series of made-for-tv fantasy movies.

Just thinking in terms of CTF: you could have level designers cranking out all-new CTF levels (huge ones, too!) each week. Use different themes - say, ancient-Aztec-jungle motif week1, hard-boiled-detective genre week2, etc. Put NPCs in the game, and make them real NPCs - hire bush-league gamer/actors to play the role of the mad scientist who betrays the team, the lone good cop who assists them, etc. Give the players goals other than "frag the most poeple" - for example, there might be a scenario where there are a slew of NPCs attending an event in a museum, and the players are secret agents trying to find an assassin out to kill one of the NPCs.

Now that you're got the elements of great stories, record every player's (and NPC's) display, and a few key non-player viewpoints... that's what the director is for. When you're done, edit and package - heck; you can do whatever you want to the "footage" - maybe part of what you "capture" is just wireframe, and the finished product looks 10x better than what they players saw when they were "there", because you throw some really expensive hardware at rendering to make it look "real" in that otherworldly, unreal way... Hey, you could even have guest appearances (imagine a STNG based game where Picard was played, of course, by Patrick Stewart...).

Voila, you have Star Trek meets Big Brother meets WWF. Hard to see how that could avoid becomming a hit.

Re:ESPN

[Boiling_point_]

Sure, people that play these games all the time might appreciate the skill involved in winning the top gaming tournaments, but to people who don't play these games, they have no basis for understanding this skill. In traditional sports they can still be impressed by the human factors involved -- eg. "wow that guy jumps real high", or "wow that guy runs real fast".

There are plenty of sports with "specific" skills that aren't immediately apparent to the casual observer - think of batting techniques in Cricket, or the teamwork needed for many sports, especially football(s). Not knowing "how" someone is really good isn't always crucial to enjoying watching them play.

For Counter-Strike, I believe the most accessible, enjoyable aspect is seeing the teams work coherently - this is a difficult thing to capture from a third-person perspective, so would require expert commentary to work well.

There's nothing about online gaming per se that is non-teeveeable - that's why the term "spectator sport" was invented: to differentiate certain sports from other, boring-to-watch ones.

Think for a moment about how the impact of television has affected the rules of many sports - different scoring systems, rounds timed to fit timeslots (eg. day/night Cricket was invented by the media) Granted, there are limitations with current games that will prevent them from getting airtime on Sundays, but that will change once someone designs a game both for players' and spectators' enjoyment from the ground up.

Re:ESPN

[dangermouse]

Umm... I distinctly remember seeing a Magic: The Gathering tournament on one of the ESPN stations (may have been ESPN2) a couple of years back.

Never say never.

Re:ESPN

[tshak]

In the gaming world, the game of choice changes about once every year, or two years at the most. This causes a few problems...

Not really. CS has been going for 2.5 years and is most likely to continue strong for another year. Sure, I play more advanced games like Ghost Recon, and eventually Unreal 2 CTF, but nothing beats a good 'ol game of CS. Actually, at my old office we still played Doom via "Doom Legacy" - it was very fun. I would anticipate that if gaming competition was more mainstream that the dominant game would be a lot less volitile. As long as there where regular upgrades to keep it fresh (like Half-Life/CS), I don't forsee your concern to be a stumbling block for computer game competition.

Re:ESPN

[startled]

"It'll be on ESPN approximately...never."

I could attack the logic of your argument, and debate the fine points of tastes in sports, but I'll just take the easy way out: it's already been on ESPN. Bet you didn't expect your prediction to be false before you wrote it, eh?

I would rather not be involved in this

[sstrick]

If you read the coverage on Domain Of Games it talks about stealing the internals of a guys computer and ripping the transistors off his motherboard to wreck it. All because he confessed to cheating a few years earlier.

Not the sort of people I would like to hang around with. Can anyone say immature?

Re:I would rather not be involved in this

[sstrick]

Just quoting the interview. Read it yourself.

It's on right now... in Korea

[RollingThunder]

I was in Korea from Sept 7-14 (what a GREAT time to be travelling.... oy) and the wierdest/coolest thing I saw while I was there was a TV channel dedicated to competetive game playing.

While I was there, I saw Tribes 2, Starcraft, what looked like Street Fighter (insert version here), Ghost Recon, Counterstrike, and several other games I didn't recognize at all.

I totally know dude!

[Breakfast Pants]

The other day I was watching TV and they had all kinds of shit! The NBA, GPA, NFL, MLB, shit I can't even remember all teh other crazy ass names. The whole world must be run by these pasty little nerd boys!! Forget my pants, who ate my sarcasm sign?

Cyberathelete Professional League

[cicatrix1]

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.

It was on ESPN

[Anonymous Coward]

Point in fact people, this CPL tournament WAS covered by ESPN.

Coverage

[Steve Gibson]

... posting since /. broke my webserver ...

Well, I've got ShackES/Shacknews (I own the pages) running on a temporary server that couldnt quite handle any additional traffic, much less a /. link. Getting that poor thing to respond at all would just be futile...

But, if ShackES was actually working you would see that the event was featured on CNN Headline News for a live 3+ minute interview and ESPN and several local TV stations were there at the event.

Once ShackES/Shacknews are up and running again (probably late tonight?) there are links to a video stream of the CNN interview and info on the ESPN etc coverage that was there.

Also btw, WCG also went on this weekend, they spread out about $250,000 in cash for their tournament, CPL did $150,000 cash and another $100,000 in prizes (including a car).

Half a million worth of prizes going out to people playing computer games in one weekend, cant say I would have expected that one.

The CPL (probably more than you want to know)

[shlamo]

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.

Re: ESPN and Future

[jradkowski]

I am a writer for Challenge-us.com a hardcore gamer site. Ive been gaming competetively for roughly 2 years now and yes $50k is nothing to sneeze at but it wasnt the most ever awarded. A $150k purse _WAS_ the most. (approx a year-year and half ago) This, however, was the first major Counter Strike Tourney so far and I am guessing many more to come. (None so far have matched up to this scale) While I am not a Counter Strike (CS) Player I have kept an open mind about it, even though I am a hard core quake3er and what I saw today on HLTV was amazing. The games were well played and I also like what control the spectator got in watching. Now step back and think of this... CS is a FREE MOD for HL. Yes FREE, and it gets this much attention and is this large, its just baffling that they don't have more problems then they already do.

On the net there are quite a few bots and hacks out that some of the filtering doesnt get. Its slowly being changed but from what I saw today as far as gaming and teamplay and fun I think I will be playing counter strike a bit more then I do already.

As for ESPN... their cameras WERE there and yes it will be airing sometime in a special I think. As for gaming TV... its already in the works/reality. G4 was announced by Comcast and should be available soon!!!! I will definately be ordering that channel when its available, should be interesting to see how much they cover. (Consoles to hardcore gaming I am assuming)

Joe Radkowski
aka
D|S-Syn

What about World Cyber Games?

[Otis_INF]

They've just ended: http://www.worldcybergames.com, held in South Korea, with competitions in Counterstrike among other games with competitors from 37 countries. I think, with a pricemoney of $300,000.- , the WCG is a more important game event than the CPL.

actually...

[gdoliner]

espn was at this tournament recording footage for airing at a later, undetermined date.