Part one of the i34 CSS preview

When Birmingham Salvo mobbed the stage amidst the confetti and television cameras I stood in the press gallery not quite believing what I was seeing. Birmingham Salvo had come up against the odds and perhaps most importantly, won a worldwide event as a British team.

Instead of rambling on about how proud this makes me, because frankly I’m really not patriotic enough to do that ( I’ll link you to ReDeYe’s article on the matter), I’m posting an interview taken moments after the final with the mastermind behind the team, Michael “ODEE” O’Dell.

You may choose to moan that this is the second spotlight interview with O’Dell in short succession but when you’ve just won the biggest prize in gaming, despite this being only the fifth game of the season for your team, you deserve some special recognition.

I bring you an in depth interview with none other than the renowned Demoman ‘Byte’ from Weapons of the Rebellion.

In the first of our pre-final interviews Cadred sat down with ODEE for his take on the CGS so far and the final.

Demos are traditionally released on a per-match and per-event basic, but what this series of articles does is bring you demo packs per player.

Kat Hunter is General Manager of the San Francisco OPTX, one of two CGS franchise teams left in the World Final brackets. The third place finish in the regular North American season was enough to take them to the playoffs where they'd fall to Dallas Venom. This left their season verdict hanging in the balance, with a 3D New York only the first hurdle they'd face for a chance to reach the World Finals. They powered past 3D, whom were the favorites by far and went on to crush Europe's hopes of a third team a the Worlds as they narrowly slid past London Mint.

Jose "SecretAgent" Fernandez's team pulled off one of the biggest upsets so far in CGS as the Mexico City Furia's Source team salvaged franchise pride by defeating Birmingham Salvo 12-6. The night before at the VIP Party he told me he'd win. I laughed him off as a deluded overconfident player, I was wrong.

Birmingham Salvo have been hyped to breaking point in the past months and week;. "The best team in Europe", "The best team in the world". The latter was proved "false" with the loss to the Dallas Venom in the Individual Finals, yet many saw the loss as unlucky despite the lack of a title, they were still in the top three.

Tonight's match against the Mexico City Furia was meant to be a formality. A challenge for Furia to keep the score.

After only finishing 9th-12th at i33, the former team ephix have improved bucketloads over the past few months, and are in the process of preparing for the upcoming LAN season. In the first article of Cadred's buildup to the Call of Duty 4 Summer LAN season, I sat down with Adam 'vanner' Vanner of infused Gaming's CoD4 team.

Formerly known as X043, we take a look at Team-Zboard, its foundations and its future.

It's been a good while since we came across some sort of Team-Zboard reform, but instead of going straight into that, lets take a look at the history of the legendary Team-Zboard. Team-Zboard is one of the longest standing UK organisations, with its teams stretching back as far as Multiplay i23 back in 2005, where its source team competed and won the very first CSS tournament under the trustful hand of Ben "Ben0" Balcombe, who is still the clan leader to this day.

London Mint recently lost out on their chance at the Championship Gaming Series with a loss to the San Francisco OPTX. Richard "ritch" Gibbs plays for the Counter-Strike: Source team, currently with a 2-1 record, I sat down with him to answer some questions.

Since games have existed, there has been controversy surrounding them. Over the last 20 years, the games industry has developed in leaps and bounds, and the debates around their impact on society have increased at an equally alarming rate. These arguments have been done to death, and the scientific research that has gone into it would outdo anything I could replicate. So, this article will take a step back and view the debate from a different perspective, and analyse how the media affects eSports.