Red’s Corner is a bi-weekly column by Paul "ReDeYe" Chaloner released every other Thursday exclusively at Cadred.

Paul's last three columns can be read by clicking the following links:

More movement, more player changes, more rumours on the cyber grapevine and more stabbings than a prison yard kidney shank tournament. Yep, you guessed it, that’s the wonderful world of UK Counter Strike Source. It hasn’t ended yet either, with plenty more whispers of changes, drops, pickups, new line ups and presumably a few more shanks still to come. There is one thing you can say about the whole thing: it’s not boring.

But what difference does it make to us mere mortals who aren’t armed with the fighter pilot reactions and a keen eye for lopping off virtual heads? Well, not a lot I guess, but it makes it interesting and we certainly enjoy it all. Much in the same way as football transfer rumours, team changes, manager sackings and teams rising and falling. In eSport it just happens far more often and with less money, but it still holds our attention and intrigue in much the same way. If it was formalised, as UKeSA set out to make it so, would we enjoy it just as much? Well, it would certainly make the eSport journalist’s job a lot easier, but do we really want our vibrant but fickle scene to be bastardised? Is it really wrong to enjoy these shake ups? I don’t think it is!

This over simplifies the reasons these team changes and player movements happen. It isn’t really about money or at least it shouldn’t be, there isn’t enough to go around anyway and unless you are French right now, you aren’t earning much from Source in any case. It isn’t really about the prestige of playing for a big name, although I know many players find certain clan tags more desirable than others, no, what really drives the players at the very top is being able to compete at the very top and challenge for trophies and prove that they are the best team in the scene, they want respect for their skills by not just being recognised as a good player, but being the best. In that respect, it’s no different before the CGS came along but I swear team line ups were more stable than they are now.

Team Dignitas have made three changes since Gadget Show Live...

Its fine to want to be the best and make your team the best, but it seems in eSport and especially in Counter Strike Source players and to a degree managers are far too eager to jump on the change bandwagon. Much of the time it’s a clash of personalities and after all, some of these lads have big egos, it doesn’t take much to bruise them, but in the main, its more than that, it comes back to the desire to win and the feeling that there is always a weak link in the team.

History should however teach those who want to dominate tournaments that changing players, shifting a line up constantly and not staying together is actually detrimental to winning on a consistent basis. Take a look at 2005 and the success of Insignia Cadre or in 2006/7 the dominant European wide force of fnatic or 2008 with Salvo winning everything they entered. The key in all of these examples is stability. Of course, they all had great players but even then, some of the line ups contained players the community and other top players didn’t rate all that highly.

Think about the critique levelled at Mangiacapra last year as being the baddie of Salvo but only now are people seeing what a hugely calming effect the big man had on his team mates and how having that kind of player with that kind of experience in a team can help make a team, not just great, but consistently great. Other players have come under fire in that line up too, it wasn’t all that long ago that PT was getting grief too, yet as he stands down to become active 6th (a curiously popular phrase lately) only now do people appreciate what he did for that team.

It is no different going back to the other teams either, they all had at least one player who was unfashionable or targeted for being “bad”, yet as a team in a team based game that is still reliant on good team work to win, they gelled perfectly with their playing partners, not just on a technically gifted level but in terms of hard work, practice and sticking together through thick and thin. In summary, most of them were friends.

In 2009, it’s VeryGames. Another team who have been together for a very long time now (in eSport terms anyway) and whilst they have made a line up change, they appear to be just as strong and some would argue stronger. It was the same when fnatic made one change in the past too, bringing in a player who would fit in, not necessarily the best fragger, it was about chemistry.

And Crack Clan folded...

But the formerly invincible Team Dignitas are now hardly recognisable following a number of line up changes over the last 5 months. There is no doubting the passion of the newly added players, particularly Kritikal, but it’s going to take time for all of that to gel and work, not to mention interesting to see how the strong personalities in that team work out. They, like many other line ups today have the potential to beat anyone on their day, but only staying together long term is going to make them a consistently successful team.

The point is, teams know what the formula is to win, but insist on making changes anyway. Crack Clan were on the up and up over the last 9 months, one of the most solid, unchanged line ups in the scene and on the verge of setting some kind of unofficial UK record for lack of changes in a year. They showed huge progress throughout the early part of the year and became the only team to beat VG on LAN during the Gadget Show tournament this year. Things were looking good for a group of players who all had some form of axe to grind with the establishment and were all highly motivated, highly skilled, heavily practiced and ready to step up to challenge for the number one spot in Europe.

Then they made a change and whatever side you sit on, there is no doubt that the change lead to problems which snow balled. It’s pointless me trying to analyse it all as I don’t have all the facts, but for me, as an outsider looking in, it was a huge shame to see a team with such potential and on the verge of realising it, to suddenly implode. I really believe the line up was on the verge of a major tournament win and who knows after that.

The UK scene has some phenomenally talented players, there is little doubt or argument in that, but for whatever reason they don’t seem capable of playing with each other for any length of time or even, at all in some cases, so the idea of having some kind of super team line up or “Team GB” seems about as likely as Alex Ferguson playing up front for Manchester United next year. Don’t get me wrong, it’s interesting for all of us to watch it all play out and in some ways amusing too, but wouldn’t it be great if the scene stopped shafting itself in the ass and teams stayed together longer, certainly in terms of seeing competitive tournaments anyway.

And TCM too... so that leaves one team unchanged since Gadget Show Live!

Nothing is going to change this however, especially in the short term and whilst rules stopping players from moving around too much or tournament restrictions like those imposed by ESL and UKeSA will help reduce the amount of regular changes in line ups, realistically they aren’t going to stop it. Frustratingly for example, one of the teams who have qualified for the UKeSA finals in CSS doesn’t even have a team in Source (TCM), one doesn’t have a full line up and the other two have made major changes to their line ups since qualifying.

Not sure what I am on about? Well, the clan owns the spot in the league, not the players, so TCM for example owns the spot in UKeSA and could, in theory and according to the rules, add 5 new players today to compete in the LAN finals but as it stands don’t actually have a line up. In all probability they could end up playing in the semi final without a single player that helped get them there. On this evidence, UKeSA is hardly promoting stability within the UK eSport scene, especially allowing the teams to enter vastly different line ups for the final, but I don’t see what choice they have considering they have to see 4 full teams competing at the event for it to have any chance of success.

The only way we are going to get more stable line ups is to enforce restrictions on player movement and to do that, they have to be aligned to one league and to do that, which needs to pay out substantial prize money, which allows teams to pay players well (certainly enough to make it their living) and… you get the idea.

So we aren’t going to see any changes in this respect in the immediate future and from a purely personal point of view, I am ok with that, it’s exciting watching new line ups form and try to compete and seeing how different styles of players mix with each other, some working, some failing badly and seeing the rise and fall of some players stock. It is, as my step father used to say, all part of life’s rich tapestry or in this case UK Source tapestry and long may it continue.

It may not be the best route to success, but its bloody good fun watching it all unfold.