The Business of Things (CS 1.6 to Source)

It has been a topic of debate for some time now. Since the day Counterstrike:Source was released, people have been talking about it replacing its older brother CS1.6. Since then the community has been split. But with the new era of competitions upon us, it is time for a change. The out-dated graphics and same predictable maps of 1.6 aren’t pleasing the fans like they used to.

Many people in the 1.6 community believe that Source is the wrong game to go with and that tournaments and sponsors should stick with 1.6. That decision is wrong. 1.6 had its time in the lime light but now its time to graciously step aside for its younger brother.

Now many 1.6 fans will be reading this and probably thinking of a few choice words they would like to share with me. To these skeptics and all others wondering why there has to be a game change, this is why..

Tournament organizers, sponsors and the media/general public do not wish to watch out-dated games that aren’t visually appealing anymore. They do not want to spend their hard earned cash on an old dying game.

Now many of you are probably yelling at your monitors calling me an idiot for jumping on the ‘Source band-wagon’. Also saying that graphics don’t make great game play. Which is completely true, graphics don’t make great game play. But they do bring billions of dollars and millions of fans to the competitive esports scene.

Now I am expecting the, ‘Source has to many bugs’ argument. Which is only half true, and completely irrelevant. Source may have many bugs still needed to be worked out but then again, it has only been out for 3 years (this being its 3^rd year). On the other hand 1.6 has been out since 2000. It was had 7 years of updates to become what it is today. Source still has to go through that same evolution.

Take the Quake series for instance, Quake 3 was the biggest dueling game since it came out in 1993. As soon as Quake 4 came out everyone shed the same tears that the 1.6 community is shedding now, ‘to many bugs’. Which again, was completely true. But because of all of the patches/updates (especially 1.4) Quake 4 has become a great game, and widely accepted among the Quake community.

Now you are probably saying, ‘well Source is far to easy to be a competitive game’. Which is completely false. I have spoken to many 1.6 players that have said Source is too easy, I then preceded to ask them who they had played against to give them the impression the game was tooe asy. On which they replied a team name that I had never even heard of before. Just because you beat a Source team; doesn’t necessarily mean they are good to begin with or that the game is easy. Many of you will probably throw the example of Complexity at me saying, ‘HA! They went from 1.6 to Source and now are disputably the top team in Source’. But what you must understand is that they had switched to Source when it first came out, but switched back because it wasn’t economically feasible for them to continue on with Source. Not to mention the coL players frequently ESEA’d and scrimmaged Source before other major teams like JMC or EG even made the recent decision to switch over to Source. And look at those teams, they aren’t even able to keep up with the original top Source teams like Hyper!, verGe or EFGaming.

Now you are going to talk about how most Source players are 13 year olds that ruin the game. But then again, its common knowledge that ALL licensed events must abide by ESRB ratings in which case children under 17 years of age are not aloud to even play an ‘M’ rated game, right? So these youngsters wont even be at events to ruin them for you.

After all of this you will probably just say that ‘the 1.6 community will band together and live on’. But you wont. Without financial backers to invest in a game that wont benefit them in any way, its only a matter of time before 1.6 is dead and only a memory. Which you could retort that ‘Valve just made million dollar deals with major companies to put advertisements into 16'. Which means nothing. Valve may be making money, but guess what, the esports scene doesn’t benefit from it at all.

Major financial giants like Intel or Ati don’t want to send money to events that host only 1.6 anymore because those games don’t push their products. Noone that plays 1.6 needs a top of the line graphics card or an Intel chipset. Heck, all you need to run 1.6 is windows 98.

Thus the need for the game switch . Esports can’t survive without financial backers or media appeal, and that is the larger picture here isn’t it? More tournaments, more money in the scene and to become a mainstream sport just like hockey or baseball? To get that, you need more visually appealing games and financial backers. So if this ‘dumbed down’ version of how business affects the 1.6-CSS game shift doesn’t sway any opinions. Maybe it really is time to switch to WoW PvP after all.

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