What's in a League?
Right from the beginning, the two leagues chose to follow separate routes. The PGL was organized as an online league, with the top players gathering for a small, live final. On the other hand, the CPL chose to stay an exclusively live league. This was due in part, says Munoz, to the difficulties of regularizing play over something as latency-prone as the Internet. Also, at a live event it's easy to verify that the people playing in a given match are really who they say they are. Online events don't lend themselves to the same kind of verification and control.
The "live only" model also has several advantages from a pure business perspective. The most important one has to do with sponsors. According to Munoz, "Sponsors are able to quantify the total exposure provided to their brand. For example, the Razer CPL event was exposed, via traditional means (television, radio, magazines, newspapers, documentaries, etc.), to a total audience of about 7,000,000 people. Online competitions do not provide the same type of brand exposure, and while it may have a large player following, the nonplaying spectators are almost nonexistent."
Another advantage to live gaming is that it provides gate receipts, which are the cornerstone of any spectator sport. Professional gamers must pay in order to participate, but this is not really a "pay-to-play" model since the fee is charged to everyone, not just competitors. Nonplaying participants can take advantage of numerous other activities, such as the BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) area where the CPL sets up a LAN and provides the means for informal competition in whatever game players happen to bring along. There are workshops where developers discuss various aspects of the game industry (the Razer CPL event in Dallas featured both John Carmack and John Romero, for example). And, of course, there's spectating. Watching a live CPL event involves large monitors that broadcast the action, because the contestants are segregated into a tournament area, which is generally off-limits to spectators.
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A typical competition area where gamers will battle it out. |
The PGL started out hosting both first-person and real-time strategy divisions. Red Alert was the choice for the real-time competition, because in the fall of 1997 it was at the height of its popularity. Later, the league made Starcraft its official real-time strategy game. This, of course, made it difficult for players to maintain their presence in the RTS genre over multiple seasons; although the games were generally similar, skills were not easily transferable.
On the other hand, the CPL stuck to one game and its lineage: Quake. "The Quake community was already mature and well evolved because of its roots in Doom," explains Angel Munoz. "I felt that id Software, above any other developer, provided the continuity and homogeneity that would serve as a strong platform for our league. Three years later, it seems that my feelings were accurate."
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This could be one of your many opponents. |
Munoz is under no illusion that the CPL can continue to play the same games forever. "We're always looking at new games," he told Gamecaster at the recent Razer CPL event. When asked to elaborate for this article, Munoz said, "We are totally flexible. As a matter of fact, this past weekend we had an event in Singapore that included an official Counter-Strike Tournament. The CPL is moving into team competitions, and we believe that this will open new opportunities for us in the near future."
