Slashdot Mirror
Counter-Strike Finally Gets the League It Deserves
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."
I feel bad cs1.6 competitions are not played in international matches anymore. I am a fan of cs1.6 (and not GO)
People are still playing CS?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I guess that depends on how you define "oldest" and "eSport". Even Counter Strike's official release predated Quake III Arena's.
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
Starcraft came out over a year before Counter-Strike, and apparently before Quake III Arena as well.
I explicitly release the above into the public domain.
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.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
All I can tell you is that I played way too much of both of them.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sport
I think the definition of "sport" that gaming falls into is number 6:
"an object of derision; laughingstock. "
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 CounterStrike and Quake III Arena are laughable. They're not even close to the beginning of professional competitive gaming, which is surely what eSport actually means.
Obligatory Wikipedia reference says that eSports may well go back to at least 1972:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
The summary's claim of Counterstrike as the first eSport reminds me of the time some kid posted here a few years back saying he was part of anonymous and he was proud that him and his friends were part of the internet's first counter-culture as if the whole of the fucking 80s with cDc, Mitnick, LoD et. al. never happened. Even then I'm not convinced that even they were the first, but they sure as hell long pre-date anonymous!
Counterstrike as earliest E-Sport is stupid. Let me guess, whoever came up with that one also thinks George Bush was the first president, 9/11 was the first ever terrorist attack and Afghanistan was the first ever war?
I'd say get off my lawn, I'd say I must be getting old, but this is Slashdot, and I know that someone even older than me is going to come along and tell me about competitive gaming events on some ancient long forgotten computer somewhere in California in the 60s, and even older Manhattan internet counter-cultures in the 70s or something. So er, over to you grey beards :)
You mean TribalWar or TWL weren't good enough? [/troll]
"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')
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.
Gosh, was 2001 that long ago? I remember it like it was only 14 years ago...
now get off my lawn!
I'd bring up the Pong tournament at the local pizza parlor...but I'm too young for that.
I refuse to sign
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.
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.
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 or a particular set of unconventional pieces. 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.
Someone needs to get the rights to Jazz Jackrabbit and make a FPS that includes bunny jumping as part of its premise, just as later Tribes games are about skiing.
While Starcraft was released in 1998, Quakeworld was released in 1996 - three years before CS.
Meh, who cares if CS was 'first', whatever that is worth. The more important fact is that when it came out, it was a crappy looking game compared to everything else that was out at the time, and loaded with cheaters from almost day 1. I honestly didn't know that anyone bothered to play it anymore. If it wasn't 'getting respect', it is probably for a good reason...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Don't you need eThletes to be an eSport?
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.
Good ol' QuakeWorld, didn't need Kali anymore. Then came QuakeSpy. Ping 3 servers at a time, filter the list to servers under 300ms. Let it run for 10 minutes, don't use the internet.
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.
And just seeing the word "eSport" makes me feel like punching something.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it