The news that players have been invited to Seattle by Valve to discuss “their next move” regarding the future of Counter-Strike: Source has now been confirmed, quietly, by several of the attendees. It’s going ahead and based on the wording of the invite it would be fair to presume that the next move is likely to be another iteration of the game, not fixing the game itself.
It seems an odd decision, something totally out of the blue, so much so that some people thought it was an elaborate scam, on a par with the Sassquaando LAN. There are plenty of questions you would ask… For example, if it’s about a new game, where are the 1.6 players? Have they been invited? Are they better at keeping secrets than their Source counterparts? And more importantly, why would Valve suddenly care about the community now after years of (quite rightly) ignoring them?
And yet it’s very real, at last a reason to think that this game might have a future at a point where 1.6 is dwindling and CS:S is stagnating in a community whose defining qualities are boredom and apathy. Of course, it might not be, there still being a chance that even at this critical stage in the development both of the Counter-Strike series and e-sports as a whole the invited parties could totally fuck this up.
I mean, for starters they don’t all agree with each other, nor do they agree with the spokesperson for Zblock. It amazes how little about the game that the top players can know sometimes. It also seems, if past reactions are anything to go by, they don’t respond well to change, many of them now seeming to believe the previous incarnation of CS:S was better for competitive play (it isn’t) and blabbering on about the merits of 1.6 when hardly any of them actually played the game competitively for any length of time. It could turn into a right mess.
But let’s say they’re not out there to FIX the game but rather to direct the development of a new one… Couldn’t that prove even more disastrous? I mean, if you’re not open to anything new and you hate what we have now, what are we actually going to end up with? I shudder to think and can only hope that those who go – the motley crew of a Dane, a Frenchman, a Finn, members from a prominent UK team, members from a prominent German team and J3di – realise that this is not only the most significant opportunity extended to the community but it’s also likely to be the last.
Valve have had some great success in building community bridges within other games, most notably Team Fortress 2 where it has even got to the point that they joke about installing cheats for the Free To Play Invitational cup in their changelogs. If the community can behave in the right way, it’s clear that Valve are open for dialogue and collaboration. Equally they have shown they don’t need it to make games that are not only innovative but also hugely lucrative. With DoTA 2 round the corner it will be of little concern whether the Counter-Strike community can get their head out of both their collective arses and actually get on board with some positive action.
Still, the weirdest thing to me is why it hasn’t been shouted from the rooftops, people unsure whether or not it’s a secret. It’s unlikely Valve care what anyone does regarding this, yet getting people to confirm it’s actually happening has been like pulling teeth. When I heard about it first hand I was sworn to secrecy by the people involved… They then went and told other people and before long everyone was telling everyone else about the big secret they knew. Classic CS:S.
It does make reactions such as this, taken from the Steam Community Forums, all the more perplexing though, even if it did come from a French person known for little more than being a pro-Vakarm troll:
“Cadred guys are idiots, they just try to sell their stupid ad. This information was supposed to remain “confidential”. People spent much time to make this community looking like something serious (my terrible english doesn’t help, ok) and guys like richard lewis just ruin it for their stupid job.”
Firstly, I fail to see what ads we sold off the back of this. Perhaps he could direct me to the relevant advertising campaign we ran that coincided with my forum post. It seems bizarre to attack a website that has probably done more for the European CS:S community than any other. Previous editors rejected covering 1.6 to show some solidarity for CS:S and Heaven Media have drawn more big sponsors to support CS:S than the likes of the website he champions so vocally. I guess giving credit where it’s due still remains that impossible dream for all parties.
The other part is who says the information was supposed to remain confidential? Let’s assume that was the case, what the fuck are we doing for a living over here? We’re a news site… This was pretty big news. Should we ignore it, pretend it isn’t happening? And in doing so how does this help the community? I’m of the opinion people have a right to know that the game they care about could potentially still have a future. As things stand I’m sure many waver over the old “uninstall” button before plunging into yet another meaningless mix…
Of course we have established this year, more than any previous, that there’s a lot of people in this community that have real problems when it comes to “life / game” balance, so it can be forgiven. They don’t really know what they’re doing, what they’re saying and they don’t really understand the bigger picture.
When I first heard the news I was indifferent. That’s fair enough give our track record of collectively ruining everything that we do. The same year that we finally get tacked on to a big tournament in the shape of ESWC (even if, in all honesty, the new wave of ESWC is a shadow of its former glory) we’re all still sat around waiting for something to happen. With only two qualifiers of note, people are sitting around hoping that the completely unlikely outcome of invitations will occur instead. In the meantime the profiteers that pretend they are ALL ABOUT THE GAME avoid even talking about as they know they won’t have any other reason when it comes to explaining their motivations, or rather lack of them.
Now that indifference has been eroded. I spent a long weekend at LAN where the plan had been to keep my head down and ignore the people in attendance, just get in and get out as quick as possible. Yet, no matter how much I might want to believe it, it’s not as if everyone is irredeemably rotten in the scene and it’d be nice if we could get something together in time for a future that will see e-sports grow and grow, just potentially without “our” title as part of that landscape.
A large part of that is going to come down to the ability to get behind the new game and let me be clear in what I mean about this. 1.6 is superior to CS:S, no doubt about it but had the entire 1.6 community got behind CS:S at its inception chances are we’d not be discussing any of this now. The game would have been tweaked and honed appropriately, it would have had record numbers of players, record sponsorship for tournaments and TV coverage. It would have been huge. Instead, we all remained divided… The die hard 1.6ers who remind me of people on the Titanic insisting that the boat can’t be sinking because it was meant to be unsinkable and the CS:S community who have always had their fingers crossed for the big fix while at the same time venting their spleen against anyone who tries to fix it.
As it stands we can’t even agree on what would make the best version ourselves, the competitive crowd disagreeing with the public community, and the people who think they’re in the competitive community don’t even agree amongst themselves, a hierarchy being drawn up not based on skill but on ideas. Check this forum thread for an example of just how muddled it can all be. Some people even seem to think a return 100 tick is the answer, when for the most part it was proven to be the problem.
So, it’s unlikely that everything that comes out of this meeting is going to be liked by you. Hell, chances are you’ll disagree with most, if not all, of it. And you can’t just blame the players for that either… There’s one set of ideas that nobody is even factoring in to the future – Valve’s. So if they want to bring the game to be in line with more modern FPS shooters, if they want to include persistent profiles, unlockable class systems, upgradeable weapons, RPG like stats… What are you going to do? Stick by the old game, or support the new one?
Past history points to a rather dull and uninspired answer but know that if we do all do that, we’re going to sit around waiting for Counter-Strike to go belly up with little else to do by a means to occupy the time. If one thing NEEDS to come out of Seattle between the 11th-15th, it has to be the acceptance that change is the only way that the game can guarantee a future. Just be ready to embrace it this time.