What a week I’ve been having. Internet cruelly snatched away from me via a series of incompetence that opens up a whole new branch of comedy pitched somewhere between farce and slapstick, struck down with the flu in the last remnants of Summer, deadlines pouncing on me from the dark and smashing my teeth in like angry looters who arrived late to the highstreet and then Valve decide to go and not only launch a new Counter-Strike title but also vow to fix CS:S as well.
Fuck it, this is sometimes the way it happens. I’m a philosophical man by nature – I tell myself through the shakes and the coughs that it could be worse and indeed it could. I could be a 1.6 player. It seems the vast majority of that particular community has become so hard-headed, so entrenched in their thinking, that their mental age hasn’t advanced since they started playing the “game of games” over ten years ago.
What is this – a computer game or Jesus? And if the religious comparison sticks in your craw then look at the fanatical devotion that is embodied by the people that follow 1.6. The announcement that Valve were making a new game brought them all out in force to repeat the mantra that makes up the most part of their bible – “Fuck Valve, Fuck CS:S, CS:S players are only those who failed in 1.6, 1.6 for life, amen.”
It’s pretty much all they say and you too can play at being a 1.6er if you simply rearrange any of those sentences and post them in public. If ever there was a gaming jihad it’d be the 1.6 lot that would bring suicide bombing to the table, providing the somewhat ironic twist of it being the virgins perpetrating the atrocity as opposed to being the reward for doing so.
The only thing I can say in their defence is that there is certainly a lot more proof that 1.6 is the best team based FPS ever made than there is evidence of a benevolent creator. But before descending into Richard Dawkins territory here’s the sad truth about gaming and indeed it’s ugly, bastard stepchild e-sports – it’s a progressive industry, things have to move forward. What you’re now doing is retrogaming, a cute and loveable pursuit that I too indulge in from time to time but nothing that can survive in large swathes in the face of progress.
In time the 1.6er will be relegated to the lunatic fringe that they seem all too happy to occupy. We’ve said it before but now the march of progress comes with the determined stamp of jackboots. What do you think will happen when the great players, already in their early to mid twenties, decide that enough is enough, it was a good run and they want to go and do something else? What do you think will happen when organisations decide it’s no longer financially prudent to salarise a team that can only realistically attend a handful of events a year that is worth their while to finance? What do you think happens when a younger generation are shown a game that looks to them the same way Manic Miner would look to you and are given a choice of something that looks better?
Yes, the numbers will dwindle and what I would like most of all, genuinely most of all, would be for 1.6 to be laid to rest with some respect and decorum. We get it, it’s a great game but it’s no longer viable, regardless of how amazing the gameplay is, to have a prominent place in the modern world of e-sports. All other premier titles are now being replaced with more modern and better looking iterations. Starcraft, DotA, Quake… It’s time for Counter-Strike to fall in line and wouldn’t it be nice to think that we could all get along and slot into one broad community? Wouldn’t it be even nicer to think the “fuck Valve” attitude (a strange one considering their championing of the Counter-Strike format) could be put aside? It’s no wonder they don’t want to commit to an all out new title. They’ve had two communities effectively tell them to go and fuck themselves for making the game that they play incessantly and obsess over.
Here’s why it isn’t viable – firstly it looks like shit. I agree with you that graphics maketh not the game and that only shallow people would judge a book by its cover (this is what I tell all the women I meet in bars anyway) but it’s not so cut and dry in e-sports. For starters do hardware sponsors really want a game that it’s possible to run on a mobile phone being the one that they pump money into, given that they also have an agenda to try and sell the latest technology by making people feel inferior. CS:S might be an old game but it is still one that requires knowledge of astrophysics, voodoo and the Mayan calendar to achieve a constant 100 FPS in all situations. Plus, you get 10 FPS shaved off mysteriously with each update anyway.
The other factor is TV. CGS wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole despite trying to cash in on the credibility of the game because it looked so out of place alongside the other titles. Other broadcasters have commented on it. I remember being at a 1.6 WCG qualifier where two cameramen were reduced to tears laughing at the game with the shit graphics. “OH LOOK! HIS HEAD IS A TRIANGLE” they bellowed. If you ever want to see any form of Counter-Strike on TV again – and you should – then it’s going to have to be one that looks like it’s from this century at least.
This, among other cultural trends, explains the dwindling popularity of the game. In Germany the ESL has an overwhelming bias towards CS:S over 1.6 and this trend is continued in a lot of other developed European countries. There’s still the means to get to a top European event by self-financing. There’s still opportunities for younger players to come through, especially given that when CS:S players retire or “lose it” they generally stay out the game or at least whatever it was that made them good in the first place stays lost. Combine that with the “younger game, lower ceiling” argument about skill and it’s easier to see why newer players would be tempted to plump for CS:S (or, I suppose, CS:GO) over 1.6. In time it’s entirely likely that the glamour, or the illusion of glamour, will increase. An all expenses paid trip to Seattle for the pros certainly isn’t a bad advert.
While we’re on the subject of skill – just as an aside before we swoop down into the “under 2000 words conclusion” – I never get the argument against CS:S. If this newer version of the game is so easy, why not have your cake and eat it, alternating between the two titles and placing well in both? Every 1.6er I’ve seen make the move has struggled at first and had to invest time in learning the differences. None of the arguments about it being an easier version of the previous game really stand up under any scrutiny. It’s just a different game with a different set of mechanics. If these proposed updates go ahead then it’s safe to say the game will handle more like 1.6 anyway. I never get why some of these players don’t put their time where their mouths are… Where’s the harm? 1.6 events are getting thin on the ground at the moment so why not help conduct a friendly experiment?
Of course, it’s mostly not the top players making the arguments against CS:S. Sure, from time to time they have to come out and appease the wider community by saying “they’d not play it” but the reality is most would not care. They embrace the lifestyle of being an e-sports competitor more than they embrace any one game. Look at the reaction that greeted Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo when he declared CS:S to be “more tactical”. Here was one of the finest players his country has ever produced, someone who has experience of both games, expressing his honest opinion and his reward – from this community that supposedly worships its stars – was venomous abuse.
Perhaps then this is why Valve didn’t invite any 1.6ers (I don’t believe the rumours that players declined because of “busy schedules” any more than I believe Bush fairly won the 2000 election). Apart from the point it would be close to pointless given that the game is on a modified Source engine anyway (and let’s not forget how much 1.6ers reject that, claiming to have never played it when prompted to do so) if they came out and said anything positive about the exercise the community would tell them they are wrong. You can only be right when you agree with the mob mentality.
Newer games, better looking games, games supported by the developer… These generate interest and go far in e-sports. Right now CS:S has that over 1.6 and you can expect other people to follow suit. Intel Extreme Masters picking up CS:S seems to be a given now and despite the fact every time I’ve gone on the record with those people they say different, the same birds keep on tweeting the same rumours. No smoke without fire.
1.6 has had a run in e-sports that is as amazing as it is baffling. That community that pushed 1.6 to the top of the pile (even though they all hated it when it was changed from 1.5) are a huge reason of what it made it work, what made it attractive to e-sports enthusiasts and sponsors. Now that same bludgeoning mentality does little for the game but is actually starting to harm e-sports. No-one disputes what is the better title but sometimes what’s better doesn’t always win the war. Go ask Betamax or mini-disc.
And it has to be said this isn’t necessarily settling for an inferior product. The news from Seattle means that while CS:S will never be the same as 1.6, it’s at least going to be continually improved until it can be the best competitive game it can be. CS:GO will rope in a horde of new players and who knows where it can all go from there? All it takes is the acceptance that change has to occur, that all titles die in the end and that there’s still somewhere to go when that happens.
I know most of the 1.6 community won’t get behind the CS:S drive. Still, whether they do or don’t doesn’t really matter. It’s clear what side of the fence Valve are on. It’s clear what side of the fence event organisers are on. It’s clear what side of the fence broadcasters are on. All the inane forum posts in the world won’t change that. The people you claim to respect would say it in public too, if only they weren’t scared of the fanatical consequences.