Welcome to the next installment of the Soapbox! Remember, this is the place to get your voice heard in a big way. Submit your rebuttals and new topics to soapbox@gotfrag.com. Include your GotFrag username in the email.

This week's Soapbox is written by GotFrag's own Trevor "Midway" Schmidt and like all Soapboxes, is solely the opinion of the author.



What is popularity?

Over the past few weeks, I have seen the in-fighting in this community reach a critical mass. This is a community that I have been a part of since the early days—when RiTD and DoG were the leagues to watch, when Euros vs US was the hottest question.

The community has grown and changed, but at its heart, it is still eSports and competitive. Articles and forum posts debating the idea of what is better or what has a future; Source or 1.6 are a daily occurrence today. I have largely stayed out of this debate.

Sitting at the broadcast desk and behind an editor’s desk, the perspective is interesting to say the least. The answer, to me, still hasn’t emerged.

A Soapbox article recently suggested that the future of Counter-Strike: Source is dependent on CGS, while 1.6 continues with its KODE5, WCG, ESL and ESWC events this year. The article went on to state that CGS was holding back CS:Source. From my perspective, the question is: “Is that really true?”

Is CGS holding back CS:Source or is Source holding back CGS? And where is 1.6 going?

I look at the 1.6 tournament scene and I wonder what is really different, 2006 was CPL, ESWC, ESL and WCG. Now it’s KODE5, ESWC, ESL and WCG. We have just replaced one event with another and continued right along.

As this community grew, when we talked about eSports, there was always a focus on making it “big time.” To me, it seems that the Counter-Strike scene on both sides has lost that focus. The focus is more on which version is this tournament using? 1.6? Source?

Let’s play a numbers game for a second. 790,000. 1,214,000. 10 Million.

The first number is the number of unique players for Halo 3 over the last 24 hours. The second number is the number of people playing concurrently on the Steam engine over the same period. And the last one for good measure is World of Warcraft’s subscription numbers. Now to be fair most WoW fans have 2-3 accounts so a true number of unique users are hard to put a finger on directly.

The point is the numbers.

Let’s say I’m a stockbroker looking at the stocks of different eSports games. Halo3 is currently jumping out of the gate with Major League Gaming, the parent company of GotFrag, supported by Dr Pepper, Gamestop, Stride Gum and recently Hewlett-Packard (HP). Their current MLG Meadowlands opening tour stop has 256 4v4 teams with another 40 on the waiting list.

World of Warcraft’s 10 Million subscribers has a $200,000 tournament getting started soon and is building its future roots with support from ESL to CGS on smaller organized events.

Now a Counter-Strike investor might look at Source with CGS and smaller LANs and with 1.6 featuring WCG, ESWC and KODE5. On top of that you have the recent failures of CPL, GGL and WSVG. The last one isn’t really a by-product of Counter-Strike but their roots are in Counter-Strike. The picture doesn’t look as pretty and the waters are muddy.

So let me ask you, if you had to take your own money and invest it into an eSports game of the future which one would you “push all in?”

Counter-Strike backed by Steam numbers are not falling behind, it’s lacking focus. There’s no clear future. The players who left to CGS and the players who remain in both North America (and South!) and the other side of the Atlantic are simply hurting eSports and Counter-Strike by separating themselves.

Other games aren’t beating Counter-Strike where it matters, in the servers. They are beating us where we have been traditionally been the strongest; the board rooms, IRC channels and viewership. This fracturing of the community has allowed others to take advantage.

I’m not saying “Why can’t we all get along”. I’m saying “Why can’t we all work together for a common goal?” Together, we are the most powerful eSports game in the world but instead of working together, we spend our days flame whoring the “other guy’s” forums.

Where went the handshakes and good games? Why is that not just as important between versions as it is between matches? We’re competing amongst ourselves for the same pie.

At the end of the day, this community is the one that decides. We ran CPL out of town and we continue to decide where it will go with how we devote our time and energy.

We need to believe again.

I’m not advocating CS:Source or 1.6. I’m not saying CS needs to fall in-line with any league. What I’m saying is we need to stop pissing in the other guy’s yard and all the while, doing nothing more than sitting on the fence.

The easy buck is often nothing more than that, easy.

Building a sport is not easy.