By: Andy ‘Fro’ Popkin
(This is an editorial piece. The opinions in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of compLexity Gaming or its parent company.)
I had to wait for our ULTRA MEGA SUPER JUMBO announcement to release this article, but it was worth the wait. Whatever happened to the good old days where you had at least two CPL’s, ESWC, WCG, and a few Euro events to rely on for some kick ass 1.5 then 1.6 action. God DAMN do I miss those days. After CGS’s “brilliance” sort of destroyed great LANs, all of us that love to play and or watch the 
game of CS have nothing else to do but watch people hack online or go to a local LAN with 5 bad teams. Gets really boring to me, I have completely stopped watching and following CS (except for coL.cs scorebots) because there is just nothing in it for me. All the fun is gone.
CGS took the top players and teams in the USA, and then some from the rest of the world and decided to make a ‘super league.’ The long term idea was great, but it ended up just being an idea. If y’all can remember WEG, this was the same idea but it actually sort of worked. (I loved WEG, except for the 5am EST matches.) Having the world’s best teams compete on a totally new scale and being broadcasted on TV all over the world. Gaming arenas being built in major cities and eventually turning eSports into something like the NFL, was a really cool possibility. Sadly the CGS did not have the right people to run their shit, and that fish had to get flushed down the toilet. Their worst rule by far was not allowing contracted players to play anywhere or anything in a competitive form that was not approved by the CGS execs. Ask aZn, he knows that rule pretty well.
So basically all that CS fans had to watch was the Euro’s still doing their thing over there, and the occasional webcast of the CGS matches online if you did not have DirecTV. First off FUCK Source; before the CGS that game was going down faster than a hooker that just got paid. No one wanted to watch that crap. Secondly, since the beginning of CS LAN tournaments the Euro’s were running a decent one AT LEAST once 
a month. Sweden is basically a big freakin LAN so all those guys didn’t know that 10 ping even exists. That did not stop when the CGS came to be, that train just kept chuggin like it knew it could. In the mean time over here there was a one month outting for CS:Source and a few other games and the format was bogus, really all of it was bogus. No one could go play in CPL or anything worthwhile and really North American gaming has fallen behind.
Sure there have been some decent teams that go to CPL (when there was a “$1,000,000” prize) or WCG and get the shit beat out of them by Euro’s, but really all we have is some online stuff where you can’t tell who is or isn’t hacking. This new C3 (a milli?) tournament that coL is doing is actually sort of cool. The idea of trying to jump start some sort of NA gaming tourney online or not is a great thing. Even though I have been ragging on online stuff, I like where this is going. Could be the start of a new LAN in the USA but who knows. The one thing that is bugging me is, how the hell are you gonna keep kids from hacking in order to wear that coL tag. So I asked the one dude that can answer me. Jason freakin Lake.
So I know you’re going to tell me some bullshit answer of CMN will help and our team/staff/etc will be watching the final matches, but do you really think that will keep kids from cheating?
With online gaming it’s impossible to be 100% cheat free, but we’ll have pro gamers watching and reviewing POV demos from suspicious players. I’m not about to let a cheater into coL.. We’ll be watching the final rounds very carefully.
Thanks Jake, BS answer it is :p I guess your right though nothing that you can REALLY do except hold this thing on LAN. Moving on to the last part of my article, local LAN’s at least in my area suck. We used to have awesome LANs with e7, phatfish, some pros ringing for good teams. Now we have 7 bad teams that are just different pugs from last month, tournament is run like shit, and prizes are $75 a person for 1st when the entrance was $50. Even the major LANs started to get this way, CPL first and then WSVG (which was basically CPL with a different name) and then CGS. I hope over the next year we will see the local and global LAN scene blow back up now that CS is back on track. Money is a big issue right now though, so all of this might be put on hold for a while. I miss the old days of going to CPL Winter with coL, and even just watching and playing in the good local stuff. Cheers to 2009 being the resurrection of LANs that actually mean something! PEACE
