Thats right another CS:GO post… soz fam but I just can’t help myself….
But its the Counter Strike: Global Offensive Majors and the biggest prize pool for CS to have ever been played so far. For 1 Million dollars, 16 of the best teams in the world have travelled to Columbus, Ohio to compete in CS:GO Competitive matches, with big names like Ninjas in Pyjamas, FaZe (xXxMaikelelelelexXx), Cloud9 and Natus Vincere. So what? SO WHAT? Halfway through the Majors already and it has been confirmed that the peak viewership was over 1,000,000 viewers which is significantly huuuuuge for the E-Sports industry! For games like League of Legends, DOTA2 and CS:GO, there is a huge competitive industry and plenty of major teams, players and prize pools, but how accessible is it to be able to watch and follow the games?
For anyone that already has the game installed its pretty easy, as long as you click play it practically spams you on the in game menu, but what about the good ol’ Fox Sports lovers? The guys that religiously follow the Rugby or the Football like I do with CS? How accessible is the game for them? Late-Mid 2015 in the Crown Casino held a CS:GO invitational comp with a $55,555 prize pool; Not bad eh? Polish Team Virtus pro and NA team Cloud9 came over to compete against Australia’s two best teams the LA Renegades and Team Immunity, but something about this invitational was different. I couldn’t find the streams for it on TwitchTV, where were they? How else could I support our Local Boys? FOXTEL took the reigns and played it Prime Time on one of their Sports channels, and it was awesome… for the esports community…
Sure FOX Copped alot of flack from showing CS:GO on their main sports channel, but I’m inclined to think that it also grabbed alot of attention from us gamers and the potential of having E-Sports treated like the rest of competitive sporting.
Back to the MLG… (omfg its really stressing me out my pickems are getting shredded I’ll probably only get bronze rip me) In all seriousness though, some of the games being played have been incredible whilst others have been super disappointing. From watching Virtus Pro who were in a bit of a Slump after the Crown Invitational, to win 16-1 on Train against G2 and to see EnVyUs, the team that won the Majors last year, to lose 8:16… feelsbadman.jpg. The majors have also broken records for having the most OTs as a CS:GO Major.
So at the moment, I’m honestly kind of lost at where these scores and games are coming from. I can’t tell if teams are playing out of their minds or if the maps are balanced or unbalanced or if iBUYPOWER have influenced some sort of “throw4skinz” match fixing (just kidding but my new Dlore looks fab 😉 I’m just gonna keep hammering at it and see if I can get some balance in my map… maybe if I test just one bombsite like demolition and force the competitive game play? hmm…. For now, I’ve learned how to construct the basics in the CSGO SDK. 
Game Cultures 
I loved the fact that FOX is exploring e-sports, it’s opening up the doors for a wider audience. Not only that but its also getting rid of this stigma that competitive gaming isn’t a lazy, non practiced thing. These overtimes and underdog team win upsets are killing me, never have I seen e-sports be this exciting. All in all though, it will be cool to see when some of these competitive e-sport mindsets are put into your project. If you need help with map editing, making, texturing a good source of information in this field is a guy called TopHATTwaffle, his channel can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiKV_fEUKDc2IxTvTTQLegw
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This article is super insightful into the changing reputation of how the professional sports scene is being viewed, demonstrated well by the fact the FOX sports picked up a context and ran it on the main sports channel. I was unaware that this was a thing, and it is cool to see that the eSports community is gaining attraction outside of the gaming community as a whole.
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