For everyone who was expecting a meeting at i40 about the Counter Strike Source Union, I do apologise, the EAS Queue was pretty long, and other problems at LAN also occured, plus the Rasta BBQ was later than I expected. However before i40 I managed to write down all my notes I wanted to say, so I will share them here, beware of a long read!
This meeting is to achieve the first steps to helping the CSS Scene in the UK & in the near future Europe. If you are (reading) this now, then you are here for 2 reasons, 1) You are curious about the idea, maybe slightly skeptical that it can actually work or have doubts over my intentions, or 2) You heard about the idea and actually want to help make this idea a success.
The CSSU was set up in the aftermath of various LANs being cancelled. This project is for the long term benefit of the CSS Scene, and will naturally be a non profit organisation, and a way of helping the scene naturally progress.
The first steps of the project is to stabilise the LAN scene in the UK, maximise sign ups with the best information avaliable to all teams, along with bridging the gaps between event organisers & teams. The second set of steps is to help the scene progress, and at this present time, we are living in exciting times for the game. Hidden Path Entertainment are updating the game fixing many long term bugs and hopefully make the game 20x better and give the game a potential second lease of life, to bring us closer to the days before CGS had come around. We now need a plan to help develop the game and the scene so we can all survive a little bit longer.
The way I would like to run CSSU is to have two small groups, a leadership group of 5 individuals who I can trust and help promote the project accross companies, sponsors, leagues, ladders, lans, teams, organisations, communities and players. These are 5 individuals who have no reason to "want something for their own" in this project, as they should be the ones clear of reaping the awards for themselves, and instead should help out for everyone else. The 5 will be hand picked and will be mutual helpers to the project.
The second group should be like a Standing Committee of some sorts which will have up to 10 members, open to anyone. This committee will be the driving force of the project, they will shape the project and develop it for everyone in the scene, and will be completely in touch with the scene. The committee will work on the website, sideline projects, idea brainstorming, and will be doing a lot of work for the project in the background. These guys will be the frontline or the "foot soldiers" so to speak.
The priority right now within the scene, and should be CSSU's main focus at present, is to prevent more LANs being cancelled, every single LAN that gets cancelled poses a threat to existing ones, and ones for the future. Lets have a look at the reasons here:
WiredOut #2: Most likely bad dates for LAN (in the middle of crucial Uni deadlines & Schoolwork) & lack of signups
SMACK LAN: Quite simply lack of sign ups.
FireCore: Lack of signups, and location (Newcastle)
Antwerp eSports Festival: Although the LAN wasn't cancelled, there was no CSS Tournament down to lack of sign ups & at the time the update just came into play.
GamersJect #3: This event wasn't cancelled but ended up being that way, it depended far too much on EU signups, and not enough from Croatia, poor planning despite sign ups.
Other noteable mentions:
EPS LAN Finals: Whilst this isn't a directly open event, ESL blamed lack of exposure, and lack of support for this being cancelled.
Now this meetings aim & sole purpose is to get everyone thinking how we can improve sign ups for events and is it a simple case of
trust, do we trust these LAN organisers, and how can they show that they are trustworthy. I propose although the idea stemmed from Richard
"Gonzo" Lewis primarily, that we build a website which states all LANs, relevant information like flights/travel/accomodation/location/prize money/entry fee/booking info which would be very useful for all teams. Has anyone got any more ideas to help boost sign ups?
Moving away from just LANs, online side has been drying up recently, Enemy Down Open Ladder,
hit an all time low when there were only around 74 active teams (now up to 96 iirc), although there are the factors of summer, the updates and the usual inactiveness to account for. Whether you love or hate Enemy Down, it is the bread & butter of the UK CSS Scene, if ED goes hugely inactive then we may have issues elsewhere in the UK CSS Scene.
How can we go about keeping Enemy Down alive and also help others? We can build bridges between leagues & ladders and work closely between them all through the use of the #ukadmin IRC Channel and in turn promote events as much as possible. The community needs to get behind this and help support Enemy Down as much as they can. In turn a note should be made about supporting ESL as much as we can, via spectating matches, spectating events and just generally be around their ladders.
Lastly we can discuss the future of our game, is there a realistic future, and what can we do to make the gam survive and how can we get more players involved. There is of course one project planned to bridge the gap between casual & competitive gamers, through Felix's project
"Church Of Game", where the aim is to teach casual players (you know all the pub heroes out there) about the competitive side of CSS. CSSU will work closely with this project and support it any way we can.
Any questions, suggestions & crap people wanna say about this? I am thinking about hosting a few meetings in the coming month over mumble/ts3/vent to help develop this idea further. Also I am thinking about several Q&A sessions elsewhere on GamerFM and the like.
(Please note, I did have a special announcement to make, however I will make a seperate thread later tonight for this, this thread is now reserved for contructive debate, criticism, and various discussions over what I have said here). Obviously please note that these are my notes, so when I was due to do this meeting at LAN, I was anticipating discussions, and questions, and various other aspects on where I would open things up, ya know like a brainstorm!
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