Sunday, 11 May 2014

3rd CS:GO blog: Organizations and professional play in CS E-Sports scene

To welcome you to my last CS blog I'm going to introduce some of the top organizations which have been around the E-Sports scene for a long time. Just to start off, some of the names which you might have heard of around the E-Sports community might be: NiP Gaming, VERY GAMES, ECS ICY BOX, Team 3D, SK Gaming and the list goes on. If you hadn't guessed yet, these organizations are all of familiar long standing reputation in the CS E-Sports scene, specially. 
The method where by an organization participates in a tournament is by recruiting teams for different games which they wish to 'invest' in, and basically sponsor that certain team throughout the tournaments. Hence the organization has the power to stop the contract when they want, which makes for hard times for teams which are not performing at the top of their caliber. Organizations have, to an extend, monopolized the professional E-Sports scene since the start of cash-prized tournaments.
However, the growth of organizations allows for more suitable environment for professionals. Gaming houses have revolutionized professional gaming from a few years ago, however as E-Sports has grown over the years, with cash-prizes increasing yearly, and as the competition grows between teams, gaming houses are now a must for professional players.
Now I come back to my point that the organizations have monopolized professional gaming: only organizations can afford to pay for all the costs of housing the team members. It is practically not possible for a semi-professional team to rent out a gaming house in order to become better, in pursue of professional play. This however, calls for tougher competition, where only the best of the best can stay at the top circuit all year around. 

I'm going to talk a little bit more about the organizations and their most notable achievements. Sweden's NiP gaming started back in 2000 as a Counter-Strike team, playing professional and winning 4 CPL championships throughout 2000-2001. They continued their form but they struggled to find a sponsor, and as a result they joined the prominent e-sports organization SK Gaming. Under SK Gaming they became a dominant force in CS. Their prize money from tournament victories in 2003 totalled approximately USD170,000. This is indeed a considerable figure, one of the most successful years for any organization in E-Sports to date. The NiP CS:GO line up, starting from 2012, has been one of, if not the best, CS teams since. They have managed to win countless tournaments, taking first place in 21/26 tournaments they have played in since 2012. They came 2nd 4 times and took 3rd once. Their most recent victory was at the infamous Copenhagen Games, played year at Copenhagen, Denmark. Ofcourse to win the tournament they had to overcome their rivals Virtus.PRO (formly known as ECS ICY BOX), who had beaten them in EMS Katowice 2014 just a month ago. The final was a thrilling 2-1 series in favor of NiP and the following article outlines the highlights:
NiP takes out CPHG

All the way across the globe down under, VoxEminor have been dominating the Australian CS:GO scene since forming in 2012. Their current line up consists of former professional CS and CS:Source players, who are indeed some of the most experienced CS players in Australia. Their most recent victory was on September 23 in MSI Beat it! Oceania after beating Arichaic.esports 2-0 in the finals. Ofcourse they qualified for EMS Katowice 2014 as the top Australian team. Being only one of the few teams from the Australian CS history who have played in an international event, VoxEminor put all they had on the line. They managed to pull great results considering their opponents, however they were not able to progress out of group stages. The following article outlines VoxEminors time in EMS Katowice 2014, and the video is an interesting interview which portrays what differentiates Australian CS scene compared with the global scene:
VoxEminor at EMS Katowice 2014
Interview with SPUNJ at EMS Katowice 2014

E-Sports has come a long way since the start of 2000's, and the Counter-Strike franchise has certainly made a huge impact on its growth. Since the start of CS:GO, all professional CS:Source teams, even old CS teams, started playing CS:GO. As a result, all the top tournaments that hosted CS:Source cash-prized tournaments moved to CS:GO. The game shifted the face of CS in E-Sports, as the CS:Source scene was moving at a slow pace, Valve brought out the perfect game to liven up the CS scene once again since the early Counter-Strike days. Ofcourse CS:GO has been growing ever since 2012 and still growing at a steady pace in 2014. The competition has never been this tense, and the players put everything on the line to keep their professional status.

This concludes my Counter-Strike:Global Offensive blog. Throughout my three blogs, I have talked about how the game came about, what the game is all about, what the CS E-Sports scene is about, and what is really happening inside of the CS E-Sports scene. I hope you enjoyed my posts and that you appreciate the way E-Sports has revolutionized the computer world by taking technology and bringing out the best in competitive gaming around the world. 

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