Richard “Dr. Gonzo” Lewis shares his derailed train of thought with the wider world in his regular column feature, Gonzorreah.

Read Richard's last column "Strange Days"HERE

This column is the sole opinion of the author and does not represent the opinion of Heaven Media Ltd or the opinion of any affiliates.

“There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware”



Yeah, I had something else planned for this Monday, not least of all rest and recuperation. As part of my ongoing development program for the Cadred staff that enjoy working with me so very much, this will sometimes include forcing them to cut loose and enjoy one of my patented wild weekends. Only the strong survive and the weak are all too often rarely seen again. This explains what happened to Alasdair “Duck” Sparrow in case any of you were wondering. However his replacement has done more than adequately and acquitted himself well. Perhaps a little too well, as it is me now that writes this from a dimly lit room praying for my fragile form to hold it together for just one more year, while the supposed young padawan sips beer in my living room shouting unintelligible Scottish abuse at the television set.

Is this really something to be so vehemently rejected?

Of course, you’d only have to take a look at your Steam Friends to see what the big talking point of the week is. Yes, CSPromod… And man, I’m already reading a lot of rotten gibberish about the game, it’s possible future, what it needs to succeed and survive and all the rest of it. So many crazed and wild opinions it makes the average neurotic conspiracy theorist seem well researched and balanced. Yet all of it is espoused as fact and when “facts” conflict, which fact do you choose to believe? Who do you think can see the future? Do you even want to look that far ahead?

I may have dropped a fair and balanced review of the game, one that seems to have come across as overly positive. That was something I myself didn’t realise until I read it back before publication and everything I put in there was completely true to how I saw it at the time. I feel completely free from any required allegiance to one game over the other and as such I think Cadred readers were spared the political spin on what were largely agreeing reviews. I mean, the people with 1.6 players to placate could never come out and use words such as “identical” or “virtually the same” to describe the recoil patterns and AWPing… Far better to add caveats such as “as far as I can tell” or “It would be too difficult to decide in its current form” and so on. Sure, reviews are subjective, but it’s not really a suitable arena to just feed your readership what they want to hear, or what you think would be best for them to hear.

As much as it might pain me to go on the record and say this after years and years of arguing about the merits of Source, but I think the 1.04 release of CSPromod shows just how much of a failure as a competitive game it actually is and was. CSPromod is a beta and in some areas you can tell that immediately, but even in its current form it does a lot of things right that Valve never did and never even tried to correct. When you think back on all those pointless updates foisted on us down the years and then you think how different it all could have been if they’d worked towards a same goal as the CSPromod team… But what’s done is done and we are now faced with yet another choice and one that’s absolutely critical to the future of competitive Counter-Strike.

Yes, they used to televise this...

I’ve seen a lot of stupid things said on both sides of the argument, which is nothing new in such debates, but there’s some comments you just can’t let stand. I mean, the first thing I saw was the general standpoint of the whole graphical issue regarding 1.6… Someone said “Chess didn’t change because of bad graphics” which might sound sensible, but let’s really think about it and see that thinking for what it is. Everything is periodically revamped, repackaged and revised to make it better for the people that invest their time and money into it. It happens to everything and those that don’t move with the times or try and innovate invariably get left behind, lose the exposure to people that might take up either participating or following it, and the dwindling numbers put it into a dark corner where it is forgotten about.

How many of you are old enough to remember when Chess was on TV? I grew up in the eighties and when the big names were playing each other, you could catch the match-ups late night on Channel 4. Millions would tune in to watch these grand masters move little pieces around a board… But it didn’t just go out on air as a simple game of chess. There was a format used to ensure that matches would finish in a timely fashion. You had computer overlays analysing moves, chess experts telling you the difference between a Sicilian and Scandinavian defence and of course the commentator enriching the context of the game with both anecdotes revolving around the competing eccentrics and the political backdrop of the times. By 1997 the televising of Chess had lost its shine until Kasparov agreed to play Deep Blue – a chess playing computer – which had enough of a novelty to generate some interest again. It proved to be a fascinating study of man versus machine in the eyes of a public that were coming to grips themselves with new and innovative technology. When he lost, it was talked about for some time.

But Chess didn’t stay on TV, nor was there anyone out there wanting to “reinvent” it. And sure, they all still enjoy playing the same game and it remains one of the greatest games ever conceived by the human mind. But you won’t see it on your screens, the vast majority of the population couldn’t tell you the rules, and those that know enough about Chess to be able to hold a conversation about it would likely tell you it was boring, that they hardly played and the idea of watching a match would not be something they’d want to do over a weekend. The same thing happened to a host of fad sports that were televised for a short time… Sumo, Kabbadi, tiddlywinks. At the same time as they disappeared from your screens, games of equally obscure standing went from strength to strength off the back of smart marketing and development.

Now, almost every successful and major sport has had rule changes and tweaks over the last ten years. NBA, NFL, European Football, Tennis, Formula 1, Boxing… The changes are usually implemented to make the sports more exciting, more free flowing, fairer and more balanced. But who are these changes really for? Not the professionals that play them… Hardly ever is that true. A lot of the time it is detrimental to them as they have to learn something new, something that might clash with their particular style, or they may find a tool that they use to great effect suddenly take from their locker and smashed to pieces. Imagine Stoke City if the long throw-in was suddenly banned… But the point is, they’re the professionals, they’re the players, they’re the ones earning the money, so they have to knuckle down and adjust.

Most of those changes are there for the spectator who are, in their own way, small investors in the industry. The average sports fan will spend thousands of pounds following their team through tears and glory over the course of their life-time in a variety of ways and while those already indoctrinated to this way of life do not need to be catered to, what about the next generation? What about the people that don’t go to as many games as they could for whatever reason? How can we get these people to buy into what we have? It’s all business and even though few sporting franchises are run for massive profits, you know that the people at the business end are getting rich. With exposure comes sponsors, big investors, and more exposure. Once you have the balance it is self perpetuating. Of course, if you let it stagnate, it's very easy for it to all fall down.

The rules and the looks may have changed, but the crowds have kept on coming

Tying all this to 1.6 and the need for an update – computer games have progressed so much since then, if you honestly think that sponsors simply care about gameplay then you are as barking mad as the people that think Benitez should still be in a job at Liverpool. How much longer do you really think it’s going to be before a game comes along that CAN really showcase a high performance machine while still appealing to the e-sports crowd? And when it arrives what hope for a game that to the layman looks like a series of triangular George Michael lookalikes negotiating a landscape built from skidmarks? Sure, diehards might stick with the game, even some of the biggest names to have played it, but it’s easy to make those decisions if you were never at the top, or if your career is coming to a close anyway. What for future generations of e-sporting hopefuls?

At the end of the day it’d be nice if the big names and the big players made a switch to something that was going to generate further sponsor interest and potentially reach a wider audience. But equally it’s not dependent on them at all. In their absence others can rise to fill that gap at the top… I mean, these people that are so resistant to change are not being reasonable and not looking at the big picture. The facts are that when 1.5 was changed to 1.6 hardly anyone embraced that change either. Now 1.6 is cited as being this flawless game, a benchmark in programming. The reality is that all the ugly flaws in 1.6 have just been so accepted because of the sheer brilliance of the format, that as time has gone on they have become “features”. If people aren’t willing to step out of their comfort zone and try something new on the grounds “they don’t have to” then for the sake of progress leave those dunderheads behind.

After all, when those 1.6ers made the – now seemingly foolish – move to Source they had to learn something new and it was essentially a completely different game. The similarities between CSPromod and 1.6 are far, far greater than they were with Source. And just when you got a handle on it, in the early days at least, Valve would come along and change a weapon’s characteristics to make it more balanced, or introduce another set of commands that made online play even more baffling and potentially exploitable to unfair ends. But we had to get on with it and, in the short term, we reaped some rewards. WCG picked it up for one season, showing they at least are open to the idea of trying out new games on one of the biggest stages for e-sports. CGS brought it in despite an outcry from the 1.6 community and even some of their employed staff. It didn’t work out and the 1.6 community might have won a victory in their eyes, but if that means there is no form of competitive Counter-Strike in 2-3 years you’d have to label it a Pyrrhic one.

Change and progress is not always a bad thing

Which brings me to the other point people are espousing as fact – that the 1.6 community must embrace this project en masse or it will fail. It is a preposterous assumption and the success of Source for all its failings is proof of that. I’m not even saying the Source community should be the one to jump ship, I’m just saying I don’t see why many wouldn’t want to. The game is not only already far better suited to competitive play in my opinion, but we would have what we’ve been banging on about for ages – a dedicated development team that understand competitive gaming and listen to the community that supports it. The reality is if CSP was to occupy the space Source does now, little would change, and the game would have a very solid foundation to not only sustain it, but to build upon. In the end if the leagues, tournament organisers and sponsors all make the decision to show their support then people from all sorts of backgrounds, not just the 1.6 and CS:S divide, will move over to give it a go.

Hard core 1.6ers remind me of non-smokers that become vocal anti-smokers in many ways… They live in this eternal life fantasy bubble, seemingly oblivious to the fact that even with making a choice that is the right one on paper, they are still going to go the way of all things and die. There’s not even a guarantee that by sticking to your decision you increase your life-span. At the end of the day, it’s a personal choice, and I can respect whatever people want to do. But it is true to say that 1.6 is not going to be around forever and it is also true to say that the Counter-Strike format is one that deserves to endure regardless of such petty squalling that is going on right now. As things stand I’m definitely not saying CSP is the thing that is going to be the future of Counter-Strike. But what I am definitely saying is that all competitive titles are limited and without a willingness to try new things we’re subscribing to a very predictable future. Is it so hard to understand that flaws can be corrected, improvements can be made, nothing is static? They seem simple concepts to me at least. People are going to have to make some big decisions, but let’s make them informed ones. And if you’re going to do that, you’re going to have to give it a chance. Better that, than the alternative, I fear.