I recently got the chance to interview NBF and sR’s very own YankeeDeuce, AKA "Smooth AWPerator." I had a chance to get his gaming history background, his previous involvement with CAL, the BRIGHT future of sR’s up-and-coming CAL team, and his views on the future of competitive gaming. Take a gander here for the full interview and gain some insight to the exciting world of competitive gaming from one of our very talented members here at sR.
Dave: Hey Yankee, let me preface this by saying thank you for taking the time to let me interview you here. Why don’t we kick things off with a little background from you. How long have you been PC gaming, and specifically, what FPS got you into gaming?
Yankee: I’ve been gaming on the PC for I don’t know how long. I started off with Doom and Wolfenstein on a friend’s computer with Windows 3.1, using a joystick to move. After that I got into Half Life and the Rainbow 6 series, which is where I fell in love with First Person Shooters.
Dave: When did you start playing CS?
Yankee: I was introduced to CS during beta 5 and started playing beta 7. I took a year off when I was in Basic Training and AIT, but when I was stationed in Germany I started playing again. We held LAN parties every now and then and also played online. When we were deployed every so often our group would all be together and we would play CS over the LAN we had set up.
Dave: I know you had been involved with CAL in the past with WD. Was that your first experience with CAL?
Yankee: That was my first time playing in CAL. In Germany we had decided to start our own team for America’s Army. We were a part of one but had some issues with others, so we decided to create our own. However, it fell apart before we could play as we were deployed and then some members transferred to other duty stations, so we went our separate ways.
Dave: For a lot of the people that know little of competitive gaming, can you help differentiate the different aspects of CAL (M, I, etc).
Yankee: The different divisions of CAL are Open, Intermediate, Main, Premier, and Invite. CS1.6 has all of those divisions, while CS:S has CAL-O, M, and I. Open is where everyone starts. It is open to everyone that has a team. If you do well enough in Open to make the playoffs and win, you earn a move-up into the next higher division. Getting into the Invite division is exactly that – CAL will invite your team to play that season. The names that most gamers know are the Invite teams: 3D, compLexity, United 5, Weekend Warriors, etc.
Dave: We know you are putting a lot of effort into getting a strafeRight CAL team together. How is it going?
Yankee: It is going pretty well, we just started hold pick-up games, or PUGs, the other night. We will be holding a few of them a week before I select a few people to tryout for the team. I have a few people in mind already, and I feel we will do well.
Dave: What is your vision for this team? Where would you like to see it go?
Yankee: My goal for this season is to finish 5-3 or better. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but we will not have too much time to build team chemistry and develop our strats before the season starts. This first season will be more of a test to see where we are at and see where we can improve. The next season my goal is to go into the playoffs and earn a move-up into CAL-Main. I would also like to attend the CPL Summer 2006 Tournament if there is a Source tourney. This will be the hardest thing, as everyone on the team would need to be able to attend, and also to afford it. Things like travel, accommodations, food, and extra spending money can add up quickly. We would also need to bootcamp beforehand, as playing on LAN together is very different from playing online in the comfort of your home.
Dave: Competitive PC gaming seems to be growing at a fast pace. Prize money is on the rise. Sponsorship, coverage, and popularity are all on the up and up. Do you see competitive gaming on consoles having a neutral, positive, or negative effect on PC gaming? It seems to me that MLG is fresh to competitive gaming but garnering a huge amount of support from consoles as they are a wider supported platform.
Yankee: Competitive gaming will be associated with PC’s for some time still. I think console gaming will not effect PC gaming, as there will always be more sponsorships and coverage for PC games. I have friends that are into console gaming, but even they know who 3D, compLexity, NiP, and SK are. At most large LANs there are booths for Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, ATI, etc. There is more money to be made as gamers need to upgrade their computers to always have the fastest components. For a console, there is not much upgrading you can do, so I don’t feel the opportunity for sponsorships is as big as it is for PC gaming. I know many CS teams that have sponsorships for their game server, voice server, website, and travel/entry fees for LANs. Most of the big eSports teams such as 3D and SK have many different divisions including consoles, but the main team they are known for is usually the CS team. Another reason is spectators. Spectators are what drive sponsors – the more people that are watching, the more people that will see that product. HLTV is a great example. There are tens of thousands of people that tune into the HLTV broadcasts for the finals of large LANs. Streaming audio and video such as TSN, VBCast, and iTG also get thousands of fans tuning in. There are also many who only "watch" the match through a ScoreBot in an IRC channel. Even though in terms of general population those numbers are very small compared to the Super Bowl or World Series, it is much harder to watch a CS match than major sports. The fans that tune into HLTV need to own Half Life and Counter-Strike, need to find the IP address of the HLTV server, and need to connect to the internet in order to watch an hour match. If you could instead turn on your TV and change the channel, eSports would gain many new viewers that otherwise would not or could not have watched. It is much easier to do this with PCs than consoles, but that is beginning to change with the next generation consoles being released.
Dave: It seems to me that the Counter-strike community is divided between 1.6 and Source. It is widely known that the Winter CPL dropped Source in favor of a 1.6 tourney. What are your thoughts on that and the future of CS:S?
Yankee: While I love CS:S and fully support it, I was not surprised to see 1.6 picked for the CPL World Tour 2006. 1.6 has a bigger fan base and more international teams by far than Source. This will ensure that at every stop there will be many great teams playing. Instead of having only the top 2 or 3 teams being able to travel to the stops playing against local teams for Source, you will see many of the top teams in the world attending for 1.6 Another reason that I feel is one of the biggest is the issue of spectating. SrcTV is simply not good enough for people to watch it. Instead of 1.6′s HLTV, where you can control everything you see in the match, in SrcTV it is set to auto-director mode which can only be controlled by a cameraman spectating in the server. But still, you are limited to what they control for you. Even if there would be someone controlling the camera for every match, while in 1st person view you cannot see any view models. This includes the zoom on sniper rifles, so you cannot see when they are zoomed in. I believe if SrcTV was as fully functional as HLTV Source would have gotten much more consideration for the World Tour Game. Another issue for Source is the maps used for competitive play. Some maps like de_inferno are too cluttered and have changed too much from the 1.6 versions. Also, several
m
aps are missing, most notably de_nuke, de_cpl_strike, and de_cpl_fire. de_nuke is now being made by Valve, and strike/fire are being made by members of the Source community.
Dave: Well that about wraps it up for this session! Thank you my friend, and I must say I do enjoy getting that random headshot on you when we PUG or play in the shed;) Best of luck to sR’s CAL team. I get to play with many of the future members of the team on a nightly basis and think you guys will do an outstanding job. Anything else you would like to add?
Yankee: I just want to say thanks for asking me to do the interview!