The optimal tourney circuit format

As things currently stand, it's hard for teams to plan their calendar for the upcoming year with events taking place randomly, and sometimes even colliding, which forces teams to miss tournaments.

Other times big tournaments are scheduled too close to majors, and teams tend to skip some of the former to focus their full attention on the game's grand prizes: the $250,000 events.

In this short article we take a look at how the current situation could be improved, what Valve could, and should, do about it, and what an ideal tournament structure would look like.

The majors rule CS:GO, but how do we build around them? 

 

The off-season

Regardless of Counter-Strike not being taxing on the body in a similar fashion to sports such as football or basketball, teams still generally need breaks from competition. You can still get burnt out from the game, and it can be good for anyone who spends hours every day, seven days a week, doing a similar task, to take a break and gather their focus. That calls for an off-season from top level competition.

Historically that time has been January, as the summer season is often busy with tournaments, but in 2014 that was not the case, with ESEA Invite Season 15 Global Finals starting on January 17. Some teams opted not to go, while for instance Titan returned to CS much earlier than anticipated from their winter holidays to attend the event. Additionally, SLTV has held a Finals event in late December for the past two years, which suggests there's a strong possibility that one will take place again this year -- despite teams often boycotting it due to holiday plans. 

What's common for most events though is that they are often not announced early enough and players end up scheduling overlapping vacations, making internal decisions to take a couple of weeks off of practice with no news from event organizers to go on.

Instead of teams trying to read organizers' minds, we should make a pre-determined time in the calendar, say mid-December through the end of January, the official off-season in Counter-Strike. This would also make sense as most contracts run through January 1, so teams could renegotiate their deals in peace without time constraints.

"Off-season is great for teams. It gives them time to breathe, and to have a break. It's much needed for some teams to get motivated again," dignitas' Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth told HLTV.org.

"Our Gfinity result probably confirms that more than anything -- we had a break for more than a month, and only played 4-5 days prior to it, but had lots of motivation which translated to good play."

An off-season from professional play would also serve an additional purpose in allowing top players to compete in various online leagues for fun and to attend domestic tournaments with mixteams, ideal for players such as Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund who seemingly can't get enough of the game. This would help the domestic scenes in each country, as their very best players could show up at smaller events just for the joy of it.

It would also open up the opportunity for a number of smaller online tournaments to be held. Back in the days top players often competed in online cups with their friends for fun, and while the numbers weren't like in today's CS:GO, the games still garnered attention from fans, and allowed them to see their favorite players in a different environment. It would also be a good chance for new tournament organizers to host some tournaments, be it online or on LAN, for younger players, and still gain attention.

The players who do wish to continue playing during the off-season would also be free to stream their hearts out, which would keep the fans intrigued and interested in the scene. Players could make some extra streaming revenue, grow their fan bases, and generally interact with fans more, if they wished to.

Ultimately it would be up to the players. They could disconnect entirely for a month or so and completely recharge their batteries before the next year, or continue playing to try and gain an edge on their competition. Regardless of the choice, the possibility should exist for it to be made.

Sometimes a vacation is what the doctor ordered 

 

The majors

It's not possible to guarantee the existence of majors for years to come, but for professional players whose livelihoods depend on Counter-Strike, and who probably depend on prize money and not just salary, it's important with a short term grasp of the monetary situation. Furthermore, hardly any top players are full-time professionals, which makes this even more relevant -- as maybe a less financially unsure future would help some of them to take the leap from part-time to full-time. Valve could easily facilitate this move, if they were to announce their majors for the upcoming year all at once.

If Valve were to repeat their footsteps from the last twelve months, that would mean three majors a year. One at the end of the first quarter, another one in the summer, and a third one before the end of the year. Three majors a year would guarantee a packed calendar for teams, and it would help them plan their year around it. A team considering roster changes would also know when the next major is, and be able to plan accordingly.

"It would be great to know when major Valve tournaments will happen in the next year. Most of the teams planned their vacation before ESL One was announced, and therefore changed all the plans," Titan's Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt told HLTV.org.

"Being able to plan events, building your schedule around Majors is very important to prepare as well as possible. It would also benefit smaller organisations to negotiate contracts deals, if teams are 100% sure to be qualified for an event.

"We know that VALVe are caring about the game, and are tending towards professionalism, and knowing early when such events happen would benefit everyone."

It would make most sense to build from the off-season to the minor tournaments and then the majors, but unfortunately things don't work that way. The majors are what make this scene work, they are at the core of everything, and therefore the rest of the circuit must be planned around them. But there is one problem with that -- as long as the majors aren't made public early enough, and for the record, announcing ESL One Cologne in July was not early enough, other tournament organizers cannot plan around them. You can't take into considerations the things you don't know.

Having the majors set in stone for the next calendar year would also help players make decisions about their lives. It can be a big decision for a player in his mid twenties trying to decide whether to continue his career for another year, as his contract is about to expire, or to hang up his mouse and move on to other things in life. Knowing there's an additional $750,000 up for grabs, compared to no majors at all, can definitely make a difference in motivation.

We also now know that these major events are actually profitable for Valve, thanks to the sticker economics behind them. We don't have any data on Cologne yet - though Valve surely does - but if it's anything like Katowice, then Valve should financially be able to keep hosting three majors a year without any issues.

When will the next major take place? No one knows, yet. 

 

The minors

Though the word minor may seem demeaning, it shouldn't be interpreted that way. The little brothers of the community funded and Valve backed events are a huge part of the eco-system of CS:GO, and must remain here for the scene to blossom and for there to be professional players in the first place. However, for the people in charge of these events, not knowing when the majors take place can make it extremely hard to schedule them.

Take for instance ESEA, who have announced their Invite Season 17 Global Finals to be taking place on November 21-23. It seems like as good of a date as any, but if Valve were to announce DreamHack Winter, scheduled for November 27-30, as the next major this week, some teams would likely feel inclined to skip ESEA - despite its last season having the most prize money out of any event not backed by Valve - in order to put their full focus on the major.

The issue isn't even as big for events of ESEA's and for example G3's caliber, as they still have enough prize money to attract plenty of teams. For smaller tournaments, however, a major being scheduled too closely might as well be a death penalty. DreamHack Valencia may have had 'only' 10,000€ in prizes, but if the event was scheduled further away from G3 and ESL One, you can bet more top teams would have made the trip.

"Knowing the global calendar of CSGO events helps organizers work together to avoid date conflicts.  It gives us an opportunity to provide a steady schedule of CSGO activities for fans and players." - Craig "Torbull" Levine, president of ESEA

Last year's biggest victim was MSI Beat It, which started their months long qualification process completely unaware that the first $250,000 major was going to be announced for late November. Ultimately almost all top teams dropped out, with only VeryGames, fnatic and the Swedish SK Gaming squad making the trip to Beijing on the week prior to DreamHack Winter.

These scheduling conflicts also significantly hurt online leagues. SLTV has previously seen top competitors such as NiP, fnatic and Titan withdraw to focus on a major looming ahead, but had the organizers been made aware of the year's schedule months in advance, they could have adjusted their own schedule accordingly to better accommodate these teams' wishes.

Naturally some events' dates are already locked. DreamHack's dates haven't moved much in the past decade and certain events held at the same trade show each year - such as ESWC for instance - won't be rescheduled. That doesn't take anything away from how much good an open schedule could do for others though.

MSI Beat It was missing most top teams -- through no fault of their own 

 

How can we get this done?

The problem is that we don't have a governing body in Counter-Strike, who could try to push for something like this. In the Counter-Strike 1.6 days we had a collective called G7, with some of the world's most powerful organizations in it, but as soon as teams within the circle failed to reach agreements - the result being Rasmus "⁠Gux⁠" Ståhl leaving SK Gaming for fnatic - the entire system collapsed like a house of cards.

Currently there is a group of teams who call themselves the G5 - namely Na`Vi, Virtus.pro, fnatic, NiP and Titan - who have attempted to seize control over certain factors such as travel support and certain rules, but the initiative doesn't have enough power. Furthermore, as demonstrated by its attempts to force ESEA's hand before the start of this on-going season, the teams aren't truly willing to miss out on tournaments just to back up fellow group members -- some were ready to let the others drown to save themselves.

That's why what we truly need is for Valve to step up. Unfortunately Valve's approach to dealing with the community has always been rather laid back, and it likely won't change in the future, but simply getting the next year's majors approved, and announced before the year ends, would work wonders.

If that were to happen, these teams could go through the appropriate channels to talk to other tournament organizers, and easily figure out things such as the off-season. They could also set clear ground rules - e.g. that no event should take place within two weeks of a major, or that online leagues must have a similar break during those periods.

The problem is that, like so many other things, it depends solely on Valve. Though guaranteeing $750,000 in prizes for the next year isn't a small venture even for a multi-billion dollar company such as Valve, it can be done -- and should be done.

In the end, it's all up to Valve 

This may seem like a lot of work, but in reality it would only take the first domino to collapse for the rest of it to fall into place almost automatically. Let's see if Valve will take the first step.

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