Welcome to the first issue of Last Man Standing!

How it works:

The premise of this feature is forming a panel of experts from the gaming scene and bringing them together into a discussion on current topics. The catch is that their arguments will be graded by myself, Brent Riesen, based on how effective and convincing they are. The expert with the lowest score after today will be eliminated from the group leaving only four left. In the future, more experts will be eliminated until there are two left. Once two experts are left, there will be a best of three showdown.

Before things get rolling, here’s an introduction of our panel of experts.

Jonathan "elude" Gilbert has been a long-time member and leader of the popular team TEC. He has a long history in CAL participating in the Draft league and has been in CAL-Invite from seasons four through thirteen. Jonathan has also been a frequent attendant to the CPL events placing as high as ninth and he has also had a very impressive local LAN attendance. Just recently, Jonathan has been put on the GotFrag All-Star Team for the second year in a row along with being one of the first high-level teams to switch to Source for the next CAL season.

Mark "jESUIT" Cheben has a solid history in competitive gaming from Counter-Strike to Day of Defeat to Call of Duty. The many teams he has been on have helped to put Texas on the map in gaming. His CAL-Invite CS history has been with the following teams: Team Texas, Clan Killers 3, Issues with authority, Texas Area Untouchables, and GameWyze. Mark has also participated in Day of Defeat and Call of Duty with NUDE, GameWyze and Rltw for DoD and GameWyze for CoD. Among his many achievements are a 13-16th place CPL finish in CS at Winter 2003, a 9-12th place CPL finish in COD at Summer 2004, and two CAL-Invite titles in DOD. His expertise has landed him as part of the GotFrag staff where he is a writer and news correspondent.

Trevor “midway” Schmidt has been a pioneer in the competitive gaming community and does not need much of an introduction, but he shall receive one anyways. He began in his first team WEW and moved on to become an administrator for RiTD. Trevor later went to work with DomainofGames and turned it into a top gaming site. He jumped at the opportunity to manage Infinite Impact in the CAL-Draft league in which the first season championship was won. Shortly after, he moved on to found GotFrag and has been the face of gaming coverage.

Grant "Griff" Hall came to the Counter-Strike scene out of nowhere with Clan Agent and quickly won CAL-Main Season 8 with a 16-3-1 record, moving them up to CAL-Invite. Grant was later involved with Eminence and attended Everlan and Summer CPL 2004 with TEC. Today, Grant is a member of Pandemic, which has become a successful multi-gaming team with strong sponsorships and continues to participate in CAL-Invite.

Jason “Alchemist” Baker, along with the MFAVP staff, has been covering computer gaming events, such as the CPL, since 2001. The popular daily videos that they have produced from various events have been able to bring viewers at home into the action that takes place. Jason served as a senior CAL admin for many seasons until mid 2004 where he joined TSN as a shout caster. His success with the feature "Art of the scrim" led him to join GotFrag as a writer in early 2005. Today, Jason is both a writer and in charge of the Media Department for GotFrag. Along with that, he continues to be a member of MFAVP and a commentator on the gaming scene in general.

Without further ado, here is the first question presented to the panel followed by their responses:

Question: As you all know, CEVO began with high expectations and has somewhat failed to live up to them. The paying community has been pretty supportive for the most part due to the apparent solid anti-cheat that was developed and as an alternative to the over-crowded CAL. My question for you is do you think the community should be as accommodating for CEVO's problems as it has been since the league's inception with matches being postponed and CMN functioning improperly?

RESPONSES

Jonathan "elude" Gilbert I do not think the community should be accommodating CEVO; they should have made sure their CMN was functioning 100% before they enforced it. Their main problem is not that CMN is not working; it's the ideology behind it. CEVO wants to completely rid online gaming from cheating, and I am going to tell you now that it is not possible. The best thing online leagues can do is let it happen then deal with it when it does. Once CEVO grows so will their problems, and cheaters will find ways around their CMN, it is not a matter of if, but when. The only reason online cheating seems out of control is because of CAL, and that is because CAL is understaffed and they cannot possibly keep cheating under control, CEVO is a much smaller league and could keep it under control. What CEVO needs to do, its put harsher punishments on cheaters and teams that harbor them and invest their time in something more constructive then their CMN. I believe they are going in the right direction with their online league, but their goals are too high especially since it's their first season.

Score: Two points

Mark "jESUIT" Cheben No, there is no reason to forgive a league who fails to deliver a product. Making everyone update their anti-cheat client the night of the matches and hosting those files on the server the anti-cheat uses to authenticate with is moronic at best. Also I have heard that the CMN has already been cracked. What people are paying for is a false sense of security, a smaller league, and mandatory reschedules. While any league starting off will have problems, the difference
with CEVO is you’re paying for them too. CEVO would have been much better off coding an anti-cheat in an obscure language as opposed to .NET to make it more hack resistant and had a trial season to iron out the logistical kinks. The idea is good, but when you’re paying for something the thought isn’t what counts.

Score: Four points

Trevor “midway” Schmidt We are talking about the CS Community here. While they back people, organizations often take the brunt of scrutiny. Did people give CPL a break when HLTV does work at their events? Imagine if those people where then paying for that HLTV. Glad I’m not CEVO, no matter what there reason is the community won’t stand for it long and they probably already have lost some support. I’m receiving tons of pms from people saying the league is a joke. While I’m not going to agree with that I can understand their frustration. Still ignore the CMN for a second, the concept of a pay for league with large cash prizes alone is worth doing, but I’m not sure the community will overlook the promises made of a cheat free environment. If the CMN continues to have issues CEVO’s success will be tied to effectiveness.

Score: Three points

Grant "Griff" Hall I think the community as a whole has settled for mediocrity for long enough. We have settled for a league where cheaters run rampant, we have settled for the same prize value at tournaments world wide for years and we have settled for a game in which the creators seem to disregard the people that are playing the game as it, in my opinion, is meant to be played. Stop rambling on and get back on topic you say? Done. CEVO came out of nowhere and made a big splash among the gaming community saying they could give more support against cheaters and overall offer a better league experience for the community. However, so many events and leagues are planned poorly that I would figure by now people would make sure that theirs would be better, different, and solid. I believe CEVO will come out of this alive and make a good impact on the community but they just don't seem to be ready yet. All of the people that paid for season 1 aren't getting all of what they have paid for. I don't believe the community should settle for this but to be honest there isn't really a whole lot we can do about it at this point we just have to push for better changes and sound leagues. I hope that CEVO is working hard to fix the problems that they are having but it isn't good for the community to not be prepared for the task at hand.
Score: Three points

Jason “Alchemist” Baker As much as our community loves to flame any mistake a person or an organization makes I have been pretty shocked by the support CEVO has received. Either their hate for CAL is that strong or they really believe in what CEVO is trying to do. CEVO is offering the holy grail of online play; a cheat free season that you could earn money by winning. It’s a great idea. I just do not think it will ever happen. The CMN still looks like it needs more development time and CEVO itself needs more servers to support the amount of traffic the CMN creates. When asking people to pay for a product, you need to deliver even the basics. So far CEVO has even failed at that. It takes a lot of hard work to run a league then add in the extra customer support for players that can not even read the basic rules page let alone the install instructions for CMN then you are in a world of trouble. It is only a matter of time for the most enthusiastic CEVO fan boy to turn on them.

Score: Four points

Wrap-up
As expected, each participant seems to have an issue with CEVO, but some were much more critical. Alchemist and Midway have more of a moderate viewpoint on the matter and they seemed much more supportive of what CEVO was trying to accomplish. Jesuit, Elude, and Griff all thought that CEVO should have made sure all CMN problems were fixed before the season began and are very critical of that aspect. All in all, everyone does seem to envision CEVO having a successful run in the future, but that the first season have been somewhat unimpressive.

All the arguments were very sound, but some stood above the rest. Jesuit’s was a bit overly critical, but he did have a great point in some mistakes made by CEVO. Alchemist’s was similar, but not as harsh and for that it seemed just as strong. Both Griff and Midway continued to stress that the community needs to unite for CEVO to work, but neither of them really went on a limb one way or another. Although Elude had some great points, the way his argument was formed suggested that CMN was unacceptable. Although the program has had its struggles, his stance on CMN being somewhat hopeless just does not seem right when it’s the only league that has made an attempt to try something new. In addition, his clarification that CEVO should just deal with cheating as it happens without a clear policy is simply not aggressive enough these days and his points did not convince me otherwise.

With that, Elude has been eliminated the very first week with two points. Here are the rankings as they currently stand…

NAME	ISSUE 1	ISSUE 2	ISSUE 3	ISSUE 4	ISSUE 5	TOTAL
Alchemist	4					4
jESUIT	4					4
Midway	3					3
Griff	3					3
Elude	2	X	X	X	X	2

Make sure you check back for the next issue of Last Man Standing. There will be no eliminations next time. In addition, all GotFrag Prime members have two opportunities awaiting them. Two threads have been made in the Prime forums. One thread allows Prime members to bring up topics that they think would facilitate a great discussion from our expert panel. Even more exciting is that the second thread allows Prime members to vote on whose argument was the strongest and whose was the weakest. After all the votes are tallied, the expert with the highest amount of “strongest argument” votes will get one point extra added to their score.

Come back next week and watch the road to the Last Man Standing crown!