With two seemingly inconsequetial LAN events coming so soon after the online ESWC Qualifiers once again the world of e-sports has shown off it’s finer points. This week, it’s the turn of CS:S to burst forth with a sense of entitlement, the collective delusion that is so typical of the European scene once again coming to the forefront like a bad recurring dream. Let’s not forget the undercurrent of bitterness that is so tangible in the air it’s almost as if those former Facebook twins had an unwanted child with a lemon and were being forced to pay upkeep for the yellow bastard.
Before we get into this week’s screed there are a few supporting statements to make. First things first, while the inclusion of CS:S is welcome on the ESWC ticket, I think most agree that a twelve team competition is disappointing. Whether or not it could have realistically been more can’t be ascertained, although I’m sure many will come forward and say they could have attended now no commitment can be demanded, but even 16 would have had a much healthier feel about it all. It would remove such criticisms as one quarter of the attendants being from one country in a competition that places great emphasis on the “W” part of its abbreviation.
We also know it would have been a far truer reflection of the European landscape had each country had LAN qualifiers . How it didn’t happen in Germany, UK and Scandinavia I don’t know. Portugal managed it and their most successful LAN series still pays out in hardware. They certainly aren’t overflowing with resources, don’t have a lot of domestic sponsorship and the infrastructure means their internet connections are for the most part terrible. Still, a qualifier happened, one of two countrys to do so.
There are many reasons why it didn’t happen the way it should. ESWC’s model, which is kind of like the Coca Cola company, means that anyone hosting a qualifier is going to have to cough up some money up front and then hope for the best when it comes to breaking even. They have to incure the costs and guarantee the attendance of the team that wins. It would cost more than a standard prize and you don’t have the option to delay it for as long as you want while you wait for other cheques to clear – there’s a definite deadline on this one.
There’s that and the fact many people are hanging off different corporate teets, not least of all the WCG, which means that if you’re in bed with one suckling away, you’re told you can’t suddenly wipe off the milk mustache and latch on to a fatter breast when starts to dry up and go all baggy. No, that is frowned upon in e-sports. One tit at a time seems to be the unwritten rule.
But fuck the negatives, right? CS:S got included on a big ticket, got a decent prize purse (the biggest of the year) and all the taunting from the 30 FPS, technology redundant heroes (through their favourite medium of pictures, not words) won’t change that. Come at you “bra”? Maybe I will when your country gets an airline… Don’t get me wrong, it’s great you can still play your favourite game on a 386 but companies that want to get involved in e-sports are looking beyond plain old numbers these days. What good is thousands of people that buy nothing to a company using your game as an advertising gimmick? They want traffic they can monetise and you ain’t it. Fight that with facts.
In the build up to the online component of the tournament it did seem that the CS:S scene had gotten itself a little giddy and actually started behaving like it was no longer the spoilt brat at the e-sports party. You know, the kind whose parents have to buy it a present so it doesn’t feel outshined by the birthday boy. Alas, it was short-lived. No sooner had the qualifiers started and then the moaning began, a logic vacuum descending and making all sense implode in on itself.
Take for example the bullish insistence from a team such as cotch (now eSahara) that they deserved an invite despite failing to beat mediocre teams in the qualifier. The team that had taken months off from the game, had members put the whole team on hiatus so they could attend social events and enjoy the Summr, effectively a team that turned their back on the game suddenly wanted the red carpet rolled out when they failed to qualify. And while the romantic amongst us might want to see some sort of wild card offered to them (in the same manner as seeing an old sporting veteran given one last chance at a hurrah) there have been no mitigating circumstances to warrant it. Everyone has been in the same boat. Some earned their spot. Some lost to Infused and LiNK Gaming. Talent and past glory doesn’t come into it. Three months of inactivity does.
Next came the complaints about CKRAS being allowed to enter the qualifier at all after already having a direct invite extended to them. On the surface it does indeed sound insane, less so when you consider that qualifying teams get free hotel accommodation, a perk you’d think would be best handed out to invitees. “It’s just greedy” some teams grumbled but it makes complete sense in the long run for the organisation. Some UK teams even asked them to throw some matches, to ensure they could maybe squeeze past them, at least one hurdle they’d be guaranteed to clear… After all that’d “be fair”. Fortunately it never came up in practice.
One minute the Danes are allies, the next villains. The DSRack qualification prompting the usual derisory cry of “onliners” and cheaters, accusations not helped by their embarrassing capitulation at this weekend’s ONIC event. Members of the team mousesports were particularly vocal about how wrong it was that the Danish were allowed to attend, invoking Reason Gaming as another example (they too flopped at ONIC) of why these dirty Danes don’t deserve to be there. It might be a valid criticism had their team not completely avoided Danish opposition altogether and instead were knocked out by a combination of powerhouses LiNK and eSuba. Also, if you feel strongly about players being “online” and cheating, is the German league really the place to be?
Horrific levels of hypicrosy and barrels of biterness. Whatever the valid criticisms of the structure of the competition to date, there is nothing sensible about the ones that have come since unless, of course, we believe that Wire is defective and these players have cheated online. The envy of those attending is clear, easily detectable by the cries of “injustice” and let’s not forget the members of DSRack are despised – perhaps rightly – for past transgressions under other tags.
Contrast this shower of shit to what has happened in the North American scene ahead of the ESWC event. The all conquering – until recently – Team Dynamic had to cough up hundreds of dollars of their own money to guarantee attendance due to a lack of sponsors and never once played the “we deserve the red carpet treatment” card, even though everyone would agree guaranteeing their attendance would be smart in terms of spectacle. They recently lost their first ESEA final in five seasons, humbled by the Netcode Illuminati team that also had an invite extended to it.
Equally those American players in Netcode, facing a near impossible task, knew that they would need the winnings from ESEA to fund their journey to ESWC. If they didn’t win then they would have to rely on hand-outs from a likely non-existent benefactor in order to guarantee attendance. Not to worry though because instead of whinging, instead of complaining about the way ESEA had been organised, instead of running down the best thing to happen to CS:S in a good while, they simply knuckled down and did what they had to. Outclassed by Americans? Don’t you just feel dirty?
You see when it comes to things as black and white as competitions, deserve really doesn’t have anything to do with it. You can argue your team deserved to stay up that season because they played better football, you can argue your lot deserved a trophy because they only lost one game all year – the final, you can argue that there has to some sort of appreciation of what has gone before and allowances made for the bigger names because, well, they just deserve it don’t they… But it’s all wooly, abstract bullshit. I’d much rather argue that everyone was on a level playing field and some dealt with it others didn’t.
The recurring use of the word “argue” is giving too much credence to the ideas being expressed. They have no underpinning coherence, no logic beyond “it should have been us because” and when you operate on those entirely biased terms whatever follows the start of that sentence is guaranteed to be entirely bullshit. If the CPL was founded today would the motto have been “play hardly, go moan”?
I’m not saying “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. Fuck that noise. Rather if you fuck over yourself take some responsibility. The only lemons here are yourselves.