More gaming!

So yesterday I posted about Starcraft which is something I enjoy watching, but it should be obvious I don't only watch video games, I play too (duh)! I mostly play online and am not what one would call the "average" gamer, I guess, mostly for the fact that I don't buy new games, actually, I don't remember the last time I bought a video game. I don't really touch consoles either, although I do own a PlayStation 2 and a single game for it (Gran Turismo 4). So, I've pretty much stuck with the same online game for many years(it has been updated though) and I've become quite good at it.

This game of choice is called Counter-Strike 1.6. It is a first-person shooter played in multiplayer only, where 2 teams face each other on a variety of environments (called "maps"). One team is the "terrorist" team while the other plays as the "counter-terrorists". The goal of the game is for either the terrorists to sucessfully plant and detonate a timed bomb in one of the two bombsites in the map or to eliminate the counter-terrorist team (from now on called CTs); all of this within a fixed time limit (usually around three minutes per round), if they fail to accomplish one of these objectives when the clock runs out, the CT team wins. In contrast with this, the goal of the CTs is to either defuse the bomb when it has been planted (the bomb has a 35 seconds timer in most games, although you can change the settings to make custom rules) or to eliminate the terrorist team. The CTs worry less about the clock as they will automatically win if the terrorists don't plant the bomb before the round ends. A round is around 3 minutes as I said and it lasts from when the player spawns to when either the clock runs out or one of the two teams won by accomplishing an objective. Once you die, you are dead and have to spectate the game until the end of the round, which makes strategical thinking and individual skills very important, you cannot carelessly run into the enemy and create a numerical advantage for the opposing team and hope to win. The game being so old, the skill involved in it is immense, especially considering that many of the top players have been around for almost 10 years now. Competition has been at a high level as Counter-Strike is widely played and one of the hardest games to master in First-Person Shooter history. Speaking of competition, let's just say that the top teams worldwide can live off of their CS tournament winnings, sponsorships and endorsement deals, almost to the same extent as Starcraft, without the insane fans and groupies.

Now that you are introduced to the game itself, I'll tell you why I decided to post on this topic today (and also partly why I talked about starcraft pros yesterday). I will once in a while post videos related to CS matches, players and tournaments. I might rant on things within the community, the leagues and the forums. I might report on big events and happenings within the eSports world. If you're already a fan, everything I just said is old news to you, but if I have caugh your interest and you are curious about eSports and competitive gaming, I will end this post with links to some major news and community sites for eSports. If you're completely lost, bored or don't care at all about gaming, just ignore the game-related post, they should count for about 10-20% of my blog posts.

**Quick Starcraft update, Jaedong won the KeSPA Player of the Year award, as well as Best Zerg. Flash took Best Terran and by popular vote, Stork won Best Protoss award over Bisu in a somewhat controversial decision when viewed from the stats perspective (Bisu was very hot in the first half of 2007, although Stork came back with two second place finishers in the GSI and the Bacchus OSL, Bisu was expected to win this award).

Links for eSports sites.
GotFrag #1 source for Counter-Strike news, biggest gaming community in North America
TeamLiquid Best source for Starcraft news in English
ProgamingTV Viewers guide for competitive gaming, lists all games being broadcasted on the main match casting networks.
ESRealityOne of the major European eSports website.