Red’s Corner is a bi-weekly column by Paul "ReDeYe" Chaloner released every other Thursday across both Tek-9 & Cadred.

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

Obviously, it’s going to be a white wash, a crushing blow, a David versus Goliath battle with only one outcome or if you prefer, it’s Chuck Norris versus Mr. Muscle. However you want to square this one away, there seems to be universal agreement that fnatic will win the CSPromod show match with Reason Gaming.

The evidence is, most would agree, somewhat overwhelming. In 2009 alone the fnatic team pulled in a 6 figure sum in prize money, won many high quality tournaments, came close in others and reached more finals than any other team in 1.6 history in a single calendar year. They have 5 of the greatest players of the scene, including at least 2 who would make most “Greatest 1.6 team of all time” teams. They also play the game, CSPromod is working towards being more closely aligned with, other than in the graphical department of course.

So the thought of any other outcome other than defeat for Reason Gaming is unthinkable, which means two things. If Reason Gaming should win, it would be the most incredible shock result of all time. Secondly and more importantly perhaps, it leaves us with the question: What would be a good result for the boys from Eastern Europe?

There are many levels of acceptable and what might be acceptable to us in the community as a “good performance” might be very different to how the players feel. I am sure that all of the guys from Reason will want to do as well as possible, there is little doubt about that, but going up against the brilliance of fnatic in what is effectively home territory is a tall order for any team from CSS.

Personally, I think Reason have to keep it fairly close for the community to be able to say they did well. Anything inside double figures in terms of round haul would be an excellent result. Less than 10 and things start getting a little harder to appreciate and if they really cant cope with the fnatic stars, a round haul of less than 5 would be determined as a failure.

The game may not give us too many clues on the whole “will this mod unite the two games” question, but it has the propensity to help us understand the gap between the two scenes a little more. Let’s be honest, if Reason come close to fnatic in this match or heaven forbid, win a map, then the rest of the top line CSS teams will be looking at CSPromod far closer and thinking they might have a chance to compete after all. Should Reason fail or at least put up the kind of scores people expect them to, then teams will be thinking twice about moving to CSP any day soon from CSS.

The same cant be said from 1.6 teams as the game is essentially just a better looking version of the same thing, or at least that’s the aim eventually, even if its not 100% spot on just yet. So the move, should it ever happen, would appear to be far easier for 1.6 teams right now.

I am of course getting way ahead of myself; this is still a beta version of essentially a new game which is trying to emulate an old game with better graphics with a side story attached. That story is one that I am not entirely convinced of in the first place. Why would a team of developers produce a game as close to 1.6 as possible with better graphics have any wish to unite the two current scenes? Its not like universally CSS has monster teams that would do well against most top 16 1.6 teams in the world in any case and without large tournaments adopting CSP as their game of choice, this becomes less about uniting the two games and more about providing tournaments and sponsors and TV a far better “product” to look at, whilst still giving the players the same environment to play in, in other words, Counter Strike Utopia.

If that’s the case, then it really doesn’t matter what the outcome of this game is. It matters not that it’s for a bit of fun to promote CSP, which it absolutely is of course and perhaps we shouldn’t read too much in to the result anyway. I could be accused of saying that as someone who plays CSS more than 1.6, but that’s missing the point, I couldn’t care less who wins or loses, I am just fascinated by the match up between the two teams and players. The thrill is in seeing who awp’s better, who calls better strats and how the massively differing styles play impact the way each of them plays.

I hope that they both play “properly” too as with many a show match it’s often easy to slip in to “it doesn’t matter so I don’t need to try”. I am sure however that all 10 players will give their all, within the spirit of the game. Why wouldn’t they? Fnatic aren’t used to losing, least of all against some pesky CSS noobs and likewise Reason Gaming are keen to prove they are no push-overs and in any case they have plenty of 1.6 experience, beating many of the top Czech sides in the past and they will call on that experience during the match.

Moving slightly away from the match itself, the whole purpose of this game, besides settling some grudges between communities, is the promotion of CSPromod and it’s a warped kind of compliment that in all of the discussions and talk and comments on this highly anticipated match, almost everyone has forgotten that it will be played using a game which just 9 months ago was being heavily ridiculed as something that was broken and would never amount to anything more than a broken pile of badly put together code.

After some incredibly hard work, tough knocks and more than their fair share of abuse, Alex Garfield and the team have produced something which is not only playable, but already being considered for competition play, even in beta form. We shouldn’t forget it’s still in beta either and having spoken to Alex a fair bit about it, it might well be in beta for a little longer yet, but the next version should be even better. There is no reason for it not to be, because save for using Source models, there is not a huge deal wrong with the game these days. Sure there are still things it needs and updates that need to be made and parts of the game which must be tweaked, but considering how bad the first beta was, this is a shining example of sticking with it in the face of huge adversity.

I remember well a year ago when Alex Garfield was taking massive flak (most of it rightly too) and yet he stayed calm, remained focused, retrained his thought and staff and cracked on with something most thought was only a pipe dream. If CSP eventually goes on to succeed as it should in replacing 1.6 at tournaments all over the world at WCG, ESL and beyond, then we will owe him a huge debt of gratitude for sticking with it, when most would have thrown it all away and never touched it again.

When you think about what Alex and his team have taken on, it really is monumental. They didn’t just take on Valve (by effectively ruling out CS 2.0, they encouraged someone like Alex to produce it instead), but instead they took on all of the sceptical doubters like me and many others who said it could never be done. You could never produce the game we really wanted when CSS first came out and Valve dubbed it “Counter Strike, but with better graphics”. We all know that wasn’t true back then and it wouldn’t be true now if they did release a proper follow up to 1.6, but the CSP team didn’t care about that, they set out to produce something from the ground up, not basing it on either code base and that alone is a huge task. Beyond that, they also took on the establishment of players who mostly, some secretly, some publicly said it couldn’t be done and would never work.

With 1.6 so embedded in major tournaments however, it will still take a massive amount of lobbying and work in the background to get CSP in to the major tournaments, but expect it to be like a tidal wave once one of them moves and trust me, we need them to either all stick to 1.6 (which I really don’t want) or ALL move to CSP when its finally finished. We can’t risk one major tournament moving to CSP and the others sticking to 1.6 because it would just splinter the community again instead of uniting any of it.

It is human nature of course to react this way and I have seen it before in esports. When CPL decided to use Source, it wasn’t really ready for competition, it was a poor decision and it may well have killed the scene before it had begun. Of course, everyone was waiting for someone else to blink and CPL blinked first, which then meant all of the other majors stuck to 1.6 as they no longer had a challenger for teams or dates of events (ESWC springs to mind). Having said that, WCG did go down the Source route in 2005 and despite a decent grand final tournament, they reverted back to 1.6 the following year and haven’t deviated since.

We need to make sure that doesn’t happen this time but I feel sure at least one major tournament will accept CSP as the game of choice, but in doing so will ask for some form of exclusivity for it and thus fracture the community in to 3 distinct parts, damaging the Counter Strike scene even further. My hope is, the lobbying works on all levels and if CSP becomes competition ready, all the majors will adopt it and to be frank, if any of them are reading this (I know you do!), once the code base is finished fully, there would be no real reason NOT to use the game instead of 1.6.

If it plays the same in every way to 1.6 but looks so much better on your giant 40 foot screens at events going out to thousands of people at the venue and online, then it fulfils the objective and the main critique I hear from sponsors and investors today “that game looks like shit”. This way, you get the best of both worlds, the players are happy and so are the event managers and organisers.

We are still some way away from this utopian dream, but the CSPromod team have moved the reality somewhat closer than it has ever been to succeeding and I wish them all the luck in the world, but their ultimate success or otherwise will soon be in the hands of the event organisers and there is little they can do about it.