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 "We Hate Evolution"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.

The elation and sheer sporting joy at watching New Orleans win a superbowl at the first attempt in their history was quickly tempered with an early start after a few hours of rotten sleep. It was passport renewal day and I had to travel to Peterbrough to ensure I’d be furnished with my leather-bound book of British arrogance in time to make the necessary travel to the upcoming European LANs. After battling with commuters on two trains, I ended up at my destination, handed in my paperwork and reluctantly forked over a sum of cash that would have been best spent in any other way on something that in some arcane statute, long since forgotten about in a land of disappearing freedoms, I was entitled to for free anyway.

The exciting streets of Peterbrough

With four hours to kill I wandered around Peterbrough looking for something to entertain me. Instead, it slowly dawned on me that I was in one of the worst places on Earth, a place so mind bogglingly dull that there was no conceivable way to waste four hours except stare through grotty shop windows at what I could have spent my passport money on. I trudged through the sleet as wave after wave of ugly, mostly toothless, people drifted aimlessly between the greasy spoon cafes with the chipped paint, the arcades with the fruit machines that only had half the lights working and the pound shops with the signs in Polish. What a shit and torrid affair it was… I haven’t come across a place so dull you can’t even waste time there outside of rural Wales, and that’s the reason why I left the place.

In the end I holed up in a bar, surrounded by people who were nursing cheap drinks and slowly sobbing and I read three different news papers cover to cover. So yes, a shit day, but I tried to put it in perspective while I downed Guinness with rum chasers. You know, it could be a lot worse… I could be a CS:S player. Now, hold it, don’t worry, it’s not a “blah blah blah scene is dead” “blah blah blah you all suck” diatribe. Despite what you lazy skim-readers think I hardly – if ever – write those anyway. No, there is a real problem in this scene though and that is the fact that none of the players actually ever seem to get their prize money. I mean, sure, they do EVENTUALLY, but what the fuck sort of system is that? I can’t tell my bank, the gas company, the estranged girlfriend wanting child support for a suspiciously looking Chinese baby that they will get paid EVENTUALLY. It doesn’t work like that. You can throw the “cheques in the post” bullshit around only so long before someone comes to snap your femurs with the blunt side of a meat cleaver or even worse… Legal proceedings begin. EVENTUALLY doesn’t cut it in the real world.

The Experience was an event widely praised by all who watched it or took part (Picture: Heaven Media)

Case in point for this was The Experience, an event that we all enjoyed watching, participating in and reporting on. So much so that it won the Heaven Media Award for CS:S event of the year by a canter in the people’s vote. However, as of the time of stabbing out these words on my keyboard not one penny has been paid to any of the teams or organisations that placed at the competition. That was back at the start of August. We’re now in February.

I myself had no idea that it had gone on so long, but after three months the messages started, players asking me if I knew what was going on and if I could do something. So I did pretty much the only thing a journalist can do and that’s ask around. No-one seemed to know anything. Communication was awful and trying to pin down the person who was running the show was like the search for Bin Laden. Well, not quite… I was actually looking for this guy. By the time it got to the six month period I shared the anger of the people that were messaging me so vehemently. Not because they were bugging me and not because I myself personally was owed anything, but just because it’s not the sort of thing that should be happening. At all. I can’t think of any other tournament in any other field, or any competition that rewards skill and prowess, that can delay payment on an almost indefinite basis without any real explanation as to why this might be… Well “recession” and “economic climate” get slung around quite a bit, but we’ll come to why that’s a load of bullshit shortly.

Now being the kind of chap I am I actually managed to get hold of the guy who was in charge of The Experience, one Jens Christian Ringdal, and asked him the questions that most people were asking me. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I have condensed those answers into one statement to shed some light on the situation for those that might be interested:

“Payments have been delayed due to The-eXperience not receiving full payments from all 3rd parties yet. As the responsible person I of course would wish we had been able to pay out straight after the event, however it’s difficult to control 3rd party influence. We are still struggling to reach “status quo” and be able to pay out immediately after the 2010 edition and I feel confident we will be successful at this. Since the 2009 event I have been handling everything alone and I must admit I have not accomplished the communication satisfactorily. This is not an excuse and I take up on the sole responsibility for this. In a few weeks new staff will be attached and we will improve communication, so people can still expect the finest from The-eXperience. We guarantee that all prize money has been paid out no later than June 30th 2010. All attending teams will receive this information by mail during the following weeks. We are still negotiating with various locations, so the date may change, however as it looks now The-eXperience 2010 will be early October.”

Now just in case you missed it, they are guaranteeing it within one year of the competition. Am I the only one who thinks that is unacceptable? Am I the only one thinking that sort of possibility should not really be entertained when running a competition. I mean, three months is the equivalent of a year in e-sports in terms of how things change. One year down the line in CS:S you can guarantee the team won’t be together, likely won’t be on talking terms, will be scattered in various organisations and everyone is so loathsomely lazy and operating purely from a point of self interest that no-one is going to chase the other parties to make sure everything gets resolved. Why are there no contingency plans for when things go wrong? Why can’t a company do something incredibly radical – as happens in the business world a lot – and borrow to meet their commitments then chase up what they are owed in their own time?

The Alienware Area 51 Tournament at The Gadget Show Live (Picture: Heaven Media)

Now I know all too well the inner workings of the Cadredite’s brain and there’ll be plenty of you rebounding the sentiment “this doesn’t affect me, it affects about fifteen people at most, stupid idea for a article, couldn’t care less” and the like. But big picture awareness – if people don’t pay out prizes, then people stop competing and then the numbers and prestige of tournaments drops, so the prize money – which you don’t see until your next birthday has been and gone – drops and eventually you have four teams of pub scrubs competing for the first prize of a can of red bull each and some shrinky-dinks they found that were probably left over from the last “business meeting” the organisers had. If you don’t think it’s a factor in the apathy and pessimism that is dogging CS:S right now, then you’re about as dumb as the admin in my last office job that didn’t realise when you send a fax the paper doesn’t actually disappear when you send it. “It hasn’t worked” she’d wail “it’s still here”, while the rest of the staff facepalmed themselves to the point of deformity. Then moved to Peterbrough.

The Experience doing it isn’t even an event in isolation. I had planned to make it a double whammy as I’d been contacted regarding Multiplay and their failure to meet the i37 payment deadline of six months, but we’re still waiting on an official statement about that. ESL also owe some UK EPS money and you know, I’d probably not have to dig too deep to find tournament after tournament that hadn’t come close to paying out yet. Typing this might be the sort of thing that burns a few more bridges in e-sports and brings me one step closer to being removed from the scene altogether, but it is getting beyond a joke. It was never this bad back in the day, not as I remember it. The tournaments that didn’t pay were remarkable for that reason, now waiting six months seems to be some sort of industry standard we all have to accept. And to think, there were people who criticised Heaven Media when we published news on this site saying that the Alienware Area 51 tournament at Gadget Show Live had paid out the money one week after the event had finished. “You love to congratulate yourselves on doing what you’re supposed to do” would paraphrase the feeling from some, but that is actually unprecedented at the moment.

Now, to the excuses. Yes, there was a recession. I did notice that. But that also accounts for the reduced prize-pot, the increase in entry fees and – just in case tournament organisers have forgot – it affects the customer base too. You can’t just have your cake and eat it. You can’t charge more for a reduced “service” blame it on the economy. The first thing that should be there are the prizes, whatever they may be. If you’re advertising a prize, you should have it advance before anything else you do. I mean, why not set-up a LAN with a one million pound prize fund, but it’s dependent on you winning the lottery, so there may be some delays in paying out. I mean, if you’re going to jerk people around then you may as well be gloriously ambitious in how you do it.

"Sorry lads - thought I would have got my money by now"

When I think of recessions and hard times I think of people like students who not only get shafted by the disgusting Student Loans company, but players that are owed tournament money amounting up to thousands of pounds that they don’t know if they’re going to get or not. I don’t sympathise with a corporate entity that promised one thing and then delivered another… I mean, I doubt I’m going to see those guys eating Tesco Value beans on toast twice a day, paid for from the copper jar. I reckon that in the midst of this supposed ongoing economic crisis they're doing just fine. But if someone owed you a lot of money - hundreds, maybe thousands - and you're struggling financially yourself, in normal circumstances what would you actually do to get that cash out of their pocket and into yours?

Things like this really set e-sports back and it has got to be dealt with. We need a REAL organisation that can actually affect change. All people wanting to run reputable competitions should have to sign up to a code of conduct that promises to pay money in a timely fashion or have penalties imposed on them. No empty G7 threats, no hollow “boycott” plans (if you boycott all the events, what the fuck is left to do but uninstall?) just people with enough clout – and if need be legal know how – to get this fixed once and for all. How can we turn this industry into anything close to a sport if there aren’t any rewards for the stars? Seriously, enough is enough.