The Purposelessness of Professionalism
Professional Counter-Strike may seem profitable, but is it all that it is cracked up to be?

By Brian “echo 7 - voodoo” Mann
GotFrag? Guest Writer

For years Counter-Strike has thrived and pumped deeply throughout our veins, all the way from the top players of North America down to the most amateur player. For years the sheer enjoyment of the game's physics, the beginnings of its community, and of simply playing the game were more than enough to addict players to the game; purpose existed solely on the basis that the game was enjoyable. Many of today’s top players might have played for years simply because it was fun, not knowing what a scrim, match, or even CAL was. Alas, these days are far over for the lot of us. The most influential factors that direct competitive Counter-Strike today, i.e. CAL, CPL, Valve, IRC, GotFrag, etc., have taken the game to a point that is bereft of the aforementioned environment. Now, because of the many “locking”' factors that prevent our community from advancing, the community as a whole has begun to melt into broken levels that ultimately cause the entire structure of Counter-Strike and professional gaming to crumble from within. This is the death of our beloved Counter-Strike; this is the purposelessness of being a champion, and the reasons why each and every one of us should hang up our shoes. Short of a miracle occurring within the scene, once each and every one of us realize that we are each held permanently captive to the boundaries that we each seek to surpass, we will all give up and retire. The sole pivotal point that exceeds everything and that holds everyone within its grasp is purpose. This is what the community lacks, and because of this, the game is slowly dying.

I have been a part of this community for quite some time. The history of my own abilities and experience range from being a huge “noob”, not knowing what leagues or scrims were, to eventually riding on top at CPL and achieving what we all wish to do. I have watched this community grow and change over time. I have learned about the boundaries that have been created amongst the tiers of the CAL community to play competitively, and now I have learned about the boundaries and limits of the game within which we all live. Within this essay, I will try to shed light on what exactly we are living within and how the hopes and dreams of many pertain to the reality of our situation. I will address the make-up of the community today, and what needs to change in order for the community to grow and survive.

Regardless of what you may set and attempt to attain as individual goals, the majority of players work at Counter-Strike for more than just the love of the game. This is the individual purpose we each bring to the game when we play. This is what I mean by our community being capped off. It is our purpose that is capped off in the end by reality, and the players that realize it quit and retire. Regardless of how many fans exist, how many people play Counter-Strike, how many tournaments take place, or how many sponsors participate, Counter-Strike will never truly be a sport. Never will the players make an excellent living playing the game. Possibly, in time, the top teams from each country will be able to make a decent living—a living that we are all capable of making by simply attending college. However, because the majority of cream of the crop players and teams cannot make Counter-Strike a true career, the purpose of the entire structure and making it to the top is destroyed. Until purpose is put back into our community, the situation will continue to worsen. The couple hundred top players in the top leagues are the spearheading force that drives the community forward. They are the sole reason that professionalism and reason to compete exist. They give the tournaments, leagues, and players reason to exist. In other sports such as baseball, the entire purpose of playing is to make it to the MLB one day. The players currently in the MLB have a different purpose—to compete, obtain greater fame, and acquire a sturdy financial living. This is the same structure of the gaming community. However, the means for top players to acquire a strong financial living is impossible at this stage, leaving part of the equation aloof. Therefore, the spearhead that drives this community is slowly sloping off as both time passes and players grow older.

I have outlined the most important controlling factors in the community below, from which we derive our secondary purposes for playing the game. The factors include LAN tournaments, online leagues, websites that follow Counter-Strike, businesses and products within the community, and IRC (the players’ “union”). These are the factors that feed off of the game and give it purpose greater than public server play, which what was intended when the game was originally designed. Another key factor that controls the game, and subsequently everything within it, is Valve. Together, every one of these factors has outlined the entire community, creating structure and levels throughout it. But over time, the aforementioned factors have slowly begun to decapitate our community. We are choking simply to exceed these barriers.

I’ll begin with the dilemma surrounding tournaments; particularly in regard to the CPL. CPL is the world series of Counter-Strike. For top-notch players and teams, the CPL is the only reason we continue to practice and to play competitively. When I was a younger player and I hadn't reach the top, I didn't care one bit about making it to a CPL. Before I was in a CAL-invite team, my goal was simply making it into the top league. I believe this correlation still stands true in today's community. The only reason that the top players play is for the chance of winning in big tournaments, earning respect, and bringing home a decent amount of cash. For the younger players, although their eyes may one day set on the CPL, they are still trying to make it into the top division. When you break down the CPL in retrospect, however, you'll notice a few things that are out of place. The CPL is offering a $250,000 summer event for 5 different games, with CS being the largest purse of $100,000. While this may seem like quite a large number when looking at it, 100 grand broken down is hardly worth anything. The top prize is 30 grand. Since this prize is for Counter-Strike, it obviously has to be split 5 different ways. For half-a-year worth of work and dedication, where one can spend upwards of 10 to 50 hours each and every week practicing, receiving 6 grand for all of your efforts is a bit on the low end. In fact, it's so low that it’s a minimum wage salary, and that’s IF you win 1st place. In today's community the European scene dominates everything. So unless you're in SK, you should set your realistic expectations a lot lower. In fact, unless you're top 5 in the U.S., you probably won't make any money at all after you pay off the cost of travel and attendance to CPL, even if you win $1,000 a piece. It's a nice chunk of change, but as years pass and high school is further behind you, this value is hardly enough to support yourself and your future.

The prize distribution of the CPL is incredibly bad for this day and age, considering how expansive the game has become. The CPL has four other tournaments, mostly in the $50,000 range. Since this is half of Counter-Strike, I would expect the CPL to be housing half of all participants that play CS to play these other games. What I mean is that if there are 2000 people showing up for CPL to play CS, I believe there should be 1000 Halo players, 1000 CoD players, and 1000 UT2k4 players. Outside of just the CPL, there should also be a community at least half the size of the Counter-Strike community. Every gamer out there knows this isn't even close to being true. Counter-Strike dominates probably every other game that I've mentioned by tenfold after combining players by the sheer number of people willing to travel and compete in these large tournaments. So why is so much money being redirected to those new games? Well, it's simple. Regardless of the CPL spending 400K or 100K on the Counter-Strike purse, there will be just as many U.S. and European teams that show up for the event, as well as equitable amount publicity. The CPL won't attract that many more gamers spending another 300k on event when they can get just as many gamers to show up for an event that offers 100K. The new games are what the sponsors are looking for—the newer games that make us buy new computers just to play them. How would Intel be able to market their newer and faster boards to a bunch of guys that only need about 1.4 GHz to play their beloved game so much? Something isn't right here, and it needs to be fixed.