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:

Update My Lada Riva	4th June
It's Not Boring	21st May
France...	7th May

There is a great piece up on the Cadred site this week, in case you missed it, about Phil Wride aka Protex. It is a glimpse of a man who has been around esports for as long as I can remember and although I wont go in to the detail that Richard has, suffice to say, Phil is a chap I have known for a long time and someone who whilst I wouldn’t always agree with has been quietly pushing esports along in the background.

Picking up on a point Richard has already made, there are many of these types of people in and around esports who rarely get a mention or the plaudits they richly deserve. Luckily they also seem to be the people who aren’t attention whores or crave adoration, so rather than expose them here, lets just agree that a lot of people do a lot of work for very little recognition and we do appreciate it.

In other news this week, I have moved house. This may not interest you and I don’t blame you, people move house all of the time, none more so than in Counter Strike Source, but they don’t have to search for white goods or kitchen utensils, at least I don’t think they do. We still haven’t seen the full set of moves in the scene and until we do and they all get together at a big LAN its going to be pretty tough to work out whose kitchen utensils are sharpest.

VeryGames are one of the teams that aren't attending the upcoming Summer LANs...

The disappointment here is that very few teams are signed up to the bigger lans that we have upcoming and there are mutterings resurfacing about the death of the scene. Even one tournament organiser who has little to do with CSS mentioned to me this week he had noticed the lack of sign ups to Outpost On Fire and thought it sent a very bad signal about the community. But let’s face it, we’ve never been very good at signing up to tournaments, less paying for them earlier.

We also have to take in to consideration the dearth of movement in recent months of whole teams and players leaving and joining new teams, reforming old teams and generally breaking up the scene bit by bit. It is also worth mentioning that the summer months are here and whilst that doesn’t strictly prohibit the playing of a videogame, it certainly makes it much harder to get 5 on the server, let alone get them to a LAN tournament. With all of that said, when you look at the sign ups for Outpost On Fire and to a certain degree The eXperience, it isn’t looking as rosy as it did earlier in the year.

These are big events on the calendar and whilst OOF might not have the same pull as say The eXperience, the prize money is solid, it’s being run by people who know what they are doing and every sign is that it will be a great event. In the early days, some of the system issues made signing up a lot harder than it should have been, but these “bugs” were removed weeks ago and its now even easier to sign up than pulling an ugly bird in a night club.

... mTw on the other hand make a welcome return to action.

Looking through the sign up list at The eXperience tells us a similar story in terms of signed up teams. Verygames, Reason Gaming, 4Kings, TCM and many more just outside of the Top Ten are all missing. As you would expect, there are a lot of Danish teams signed up, but perhaps more telling is that only two other Scandinavian teams are in. The one plus for me looking at the list is that we will finally see a return to international lan competition for mTw. Now, if only they were going up against the very best teams of 2009…

Putting this in to perspective of course, one could argue that many players will be on holiday during these two tournaments and many of those players have little to no choice but to skip the events. My one concern is in the first 6 months of this year, CSS had more international, cash paying tournaments than almost any other game in Europe and by and large they were well attended, yet things aren’t looking so rosy for the second half of the year. These two events will however prove or disprove the theory that the scene is in decline and on its way to a slow death for the rest of 2009.

I personally hope not. We have had some fantastic matches, tournaments and player performances this year, possibly more so than any year before and certainly in my eyes, watching at the events first hand has shown me that the skill level has gone to a new level. Tactics are also changing up again and teams are still refining things they learnt 4 years ago or even coming up with brand new ideas to combat some of the more obvious strats on Dust 2 for example. Inventiveness and better aim are just two of the things that seem to have improved again and gone to a new level, but unless teams start staying together (and in a good organisation) we aren’t going to see that continue and we aren’t going to see all of the top teams at the same event again.

Would you really rather be doing this than attending a LAN?

It is a huge shame that the teams who were formed between the end of CGS and around May time aren’t still together (bar one or two who have made internal changes themselves) because now is about the time they would really be going head to head with well trained, highly motivated, heavily practiced and well oiled machines. This summer could have been a blockbuster for CSS with top organisations back on the scene, fantastic team line ups abound and still new individuals coming through and making waves. As it is, we won’t get the kind of tournaments we hoped for this summer and we have to go back to the splits, acrimony and “ratting” that has been going on for almost 2 months now to see where it all began to go wrong.

It could be that the scene, teams and organisations will all bounce back after these two events, but lets be honest, after August, what is left in the way of big tournaments for the community? Not much.

I have already heard from a couple of tournament organisers who are sitting on the fence right now, watching and waiting to see how these two tournaments pan out, using them as a public beta test for their own initiatives and agendas. If they don’t see the sign ups, don’t see the big guns coming out, not even for large pots of cash (TEX) then why on earth would they want to run anything for the game? It isn’t just tournament organisers either, but sponsors are also taking a hard look at the kind of value for money CSS brings them and we should all know by now, what happens when sponsors lose interest in tournaments.

Speaking to a team manager who recently had a CSS team, but now doesn’t, also gave me a little insight to what some of the bigger organisations are thinking. He said he was pleased with what the team achieved and believed they would go on to achieve great things in the game until they broke up. He also said he had no immediate intention to replacing them or even perhaps picking up CSS ever again. He isn’t alone either and other than fnatic who have only recently come back to the scene, no one else from the G7 is even remotely interested and can we blame them, its hardly a thriving scene any more.

It would be remiss of me to avoid the solution to all of this or at least touch on the things we can do within the scene to help keep it alive, if that is indeed what we want to happen. I know full well, that like me, most of you reading this will be unaffected by the top teams disappearing and major tournaments falling by the way side and that’s fine, because we can still keep playing on ED or ESL or in our mix teams, having pickups or generally laming about on a public.

Big crowds make an event, so spectators play their part

A healthy scene however has always been one where there is a top line, that is competitive and seen to be the pinnacle. Most players (who aren’t lying) would love to play in one of the big teams one day. Most of us won’t ever be good enough, but that doesn’t mean you stop trying to improve or learning more from a demo of a great player. I have seen enough communities implode over the years to know that keeping the top teams, the great orgs and the best players within the scene helps the entire scene and CSS is no different.

We can do little as spectators and fans to help this, but we should at least cram on to the source TV links and video streams to show how much we love these great tournaments and prove that even if the players keep jumping teams more times than I move house in a year, the scene is still strong and has a future. Support is everything, just look at football in most European countries. Would Ronaldo really be going to Real Madrid for £80million if fans didn’t turn up to see him play?

Likewise, organisers aren’t going to set up tournaments if no one comes to watch, either in person or online. So regardless of the team changes and regardless of whether all of the top teams have signed up to OOF or TEX, lets make sure the events are well supported by us, the fans and we might just find we have some more tournaments to enjoy later in the year.

Lets start with UKeSA this weekend, even if the sun is shining.