Competitive CS:GO

This year mark's the 16th birthday for Counter Strike, which started out similarly to DoTA with humble beginnings as a mod for a game popularly known as Half-Life (Half Life 3 confirmed). What started out as just another mod back then has earned itself a top spot in the eSports community with millions of dollars worth in prize pool and the filling of entire stadiums today.

ESM Katowice 2014

So, how did this happened? Well the first obvious reason is, Valve. If it weren't for Valve to see the potential and pumped money into the mod to make a standalone version for the game it probably wouldn't have garnered that much attention. 

Back then, the eSports scene was very different and young, fast paced shooters dominated the scene with games like Unreal Tournament and Quake. In 1997 the very first tournament was sponsored by Microsoft for Quake with the grand prize of a ferrari. 

Quake

Although the huge hype in fast paced shooting games one university student decision to create a game which centered on the conflict between terrorist and counter-terrorist squads spawned from a personal interest in the subject. Such a theme required a more realistic setting for the game, which was the main reason why he chose to mod Half-Life.

Following the release of the mod it immediately gained tons of attention and continued to grow as it involved a lot of community feedback. In fact the game was so community driven to the point that all the maps were actually made from the players themselves.

I believe that was the biggest factor as to why Counter Strike remained loved and played for so long. It is because the game was essentially made by the people of the community, who else knows what the players want more other than themselves.

Soon after in the year 2000, Valve took an interest in the game and acquired the rights to release a standalone version. Soon enough more games started emulating that style of gameplay with the release of Call of Duty and Medal of Honor. Games that were steeped in realism started becoming more popular.

Fast forward a few years and Call of Duty actually beat Counter Strike in terms of popularity and player base, but with the recent release of Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) was able to reclaim its spot at the top. It can be seen that Counter Strike is more something for the eSports scene because of its huge emphasis on teamwork and I personally think there will always be a place for CS, because people appreciate that.

With that I think I explained a little bit of its past and touched a bit on why and how it became popular. I hoped you had fun reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. :) Stay tuned for more posts!

InterVarsity Competition.

Well I did something that I actually thought I wouldn't have the time to do again once I started university, which was to join some gaming tournaments. Then again it was only a rookie tournament so practicing was not really needed and furthermore there were some restrictions, one being that your teammates must be in the same school as you since this was an interschool competition.

We played our first game at around 12 p.m. and I took this picture during the loading screen. If you can't see the picture properly, the reason why I circled the guy on the left is because the 4 of us had a diamond border and  the guy I circled was playing on his smurf which only had a silver border so I felt like it kinda ruined the picture. :(

This part is just for clarification for some of those who don't play LoL. The borders that I mentioned earlier represents our rank which starts from bronze, silver, gold ,platinum, and diamond. To put into perspective, as I said earlier this was a rookie competition so the majority of people that went for it were around silver to gold. "Smurf" is a term used when someone that is of a higher ranking plays on a lower ranking account.






So basically I got really lucky in terms of teammates since there were 2 other semi-pro players and one of them being my classmate and with 2 other pretty decent players as well. We did really well (obviously) with every game being ended around the 20 minute mark (a game normally lasts at least 40 minutes).

The picture on the right was at the end with us coming out on top. I wish we would get sponsored by Taylor's. #FreeAdvertisingForTaylor's





Before I end this post I just want to explain more on the intervarsity competition, as you can see the banner on the left explains the stages that will take place until the grand finals with the grand prize of 5 iPads (which I will sell later on so if you're interested do get hold of me xD) and a prize pool of RM6000.

If you're interested in taking part you still have 2 more chances as the qualifiers is still ongoing, you can check out more details here.

With that I conclude today's post I'm sorry I've been unable to post frequently as I've been busy with some other things as well but I will definitely try my best to post a bit more often, have a good day. :)