Most of the Source community has by now heard of the rumors surrounding CEVO having a Source league. I was recently given the chance to interview Charlie Plitt, the CEO of Cyber Evolution about the situation in hopes to clear everything up.
Mr. Plitt I want to thank you again for agreeing to the interview. To get started, could you please tell us a little about yourself and CEVO?
Charlie Plitt: My name is Charlie Plitt and I am the CEO and President of CEVO LLC. While I am considered "NEW" to the gaming scene, I have been involved in the gaming community for many years now and in various capacities.
CEVO LLC has been deemed the "next generation" or "evolution" of online gaming. This tag was given to CEVO by the community after we introduced the community to our "Pay to Play" high dollar cash tournament, and our evolutionary anti cheat software application. >
There have been some rumors lately that CEVO will announce a Source league on 30 OCT. Everyone in the Source community would love to know – are these rumors true?
Charlie Plitt: Yes the rumors are true. CEVO will be opening registration for our Counter-Strike Source event on October 30th. The event will initially feature two (2) divisions (Professional and Amateur) and there will be $7,500 up for grabs. The cash prize pot is subject to change based on advertisement and sponsorship revenues just like the inaugural CS v1.6 event.
Among the innovations that CEVO has brought to eSports is the CEVO Match Network. Has CEVO developed a CMN for Source, and will it be similar to the 1.6 version?
Charlie Plitt: Yes there will be a CMN client for the CS:Source event as well. While in the process of redeveloping the CMN for our second CS v1.6 event, we made sure that it would be compatible with CS:Source. As for its functionality it will look and work identically to the CS v1.6 version.
Currently the Source community is dependant on CSP to lock certain CVARs. The biggest of these is setting cl_interpolate 1 and cl_interp .01. Will CMN have a similar feature?
Charlie Plitt: The CMN has never locked or blocked our members from using any settings instead the CMN monitors game environment variable settings and reports them back to the content servers. We have been looking into all of the various CVAR settings that could be and are deemed "taboo", and we will take the necessary steps to keep game play fair and just for all.
CEVO currently has four divisions (Amateur, Intermediate, Main, and Professional) for 1.6. What divisions will be included for Source and will the player fee still be $15? How will you base team placement in the higher skilled divisions the first season?
Charlie Plitt: As I stated before there will initially be two (2) divisions (Amateur and Professional). We have decided to go with (2) divisions in order to evaluate the overall event so that when changes need to be made, we make them in the best interest of the CS:Source community.
The membership fees into the CS:Source event will be $15.00 US just like our CS v1.6 event.
In order to determine what teams will be placed into the CS:Source Professional division, we have been consulting the media agencies (TsN, GotFrag, and AmpedNews) that cover CS:Source and evaluating past team accomplishments. Currently we are looking to host between 12 and 16 teams in the professional division, and the remainder of teams in the Amateur division. If it is determined that there is too great of a gap in skill levels between the Amateur teams, we have considered opening a third division (Main).
Source is limited by the amount of quality maps available for competitive play. Are there any plans to convert de_russka and de_tuscan to Source?
Charlie Plitt: We have contacted Brute Maps the creators of both of these maps, and requested to port them to CS:Source. While the request has been made, I can not guarantee that this will be completed in time for this event.
Once again, thank you for the opportunity to interview you Mr. Plitt. Do you have any final thoughts or comments?
Charlie Plitt: I would just like to wish all the players and teams that decide to participate in this inaugural CS:Source event the best, and remind all who have general comments or suggestions to email me or stop by our and talk to us on Ventrilo (texas.cevo.nationvoice.com port 1337) as CEVO’s ultimate goal is to help the CS:Source community grow and flourish.