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

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

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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.