Some pics from the film: (*added by simonb)

bleh

Pleh?

There is a tradition on ESReality to delete "first!" posts.

Yay!!

Will edit this with compliments when I've watched. :D

n1 Simon and co.

/me hopes it doesnt end up being corrupt :>

gg crappy harddrive!

Please release non-zipped versions. Especially if zipping only saves around 10-15 megs.

errmm its not zipped just for space, a lot of web servers reject file types and it makes it easier to download. And think about it, slow a good few mins unzipping, but yet extra time downloading them extra megs? Does it make a difference?

The moral of my spam?: stfu and download, you aint paying are you?

yes, it does make a diff.


thank you.

rename the files to .zip an state in the news that it should be renamed to .mpg or whatever.. cant be that hard? :/

Great movie.. Really flowed well, Nice Job Simon!

great work Simon =)

nice movie, did anyone else find the sound came out louder on the left ear than the right?

Wow that was excellent :)

LOL @ ProZac's biffro too

Very professional, well done to 4k and SimonB, excellent stuff.

The best part of the movie was when prozac said "let the games begin" hahaha :D

Yes, how very exciting.

DIVX please. :[

great movie, very professional, nice adverts as well.

well done prozac, great presenting. Looking forward to the next one.

Do another @ a q3 event :))

Some other mirror please?
Mirror 1 is just being disconnected and I download only with 7kb/s at mirror 2.

I'm on adsl 512k in sweden(telia) :o

jag tankar i 50 från mirror1

jag får 680 från mirror 1 med telia

Actually one of the best movies I've seen that involved CS, really gj trying to explain everything and bring it to the media's attention, very very nice.

This is the best example i've ever seen how (pro) gaming should be brought.
Excellent coverage and filming.
The commentary was typical american, and it rocked :)

Great work Simon :) Hope to see more stuff like this from you, and I expect it will come ;)

GJ to you and ProZaC for the hosting.

Great work by all involved, very proffesionally done.

i want to stroke prozacs hair, its so soft \o/

this is really good

need to get the media to see this!

This was so good, it almost made me want to play Counter Strike. What more praise could I give?

The whole thing was done in the way I'd like to see a proper, pro-gaming television show. The hosting, walkthroughs and shoutcasting made it a pleasure to watch while the two teams went head-to-head alongside occasional camera shots of the gamers themselves.

The walkthrough of the tactics with the animated overview of the maps was interesting and welcome yet somewhat.. insulting. Let's be honest, it was a pro-gaming tournament and the majority of the audience know how to play the game and know the layout of the map.

Even so, I still enjoyed it and felt it definitely had a place within the video.

However ...

I had to cringe when I saw the two sexy ladies leading the teams down the stairs. I mean come on, ask them what a CT is and they'd probably turn around and say "Eww, like, go away geek!1".

Some of the interviews and the hosting by ProZaC seemed obviously unnatural, awkward if you will. Just didn't feel right.

With ProZaC's sense of humor he's a brilliant choice for a host ( although what's with that hair? ) but seemed somewhat restrained in this movie.. I really can't put my finger on it but whenever someone talked to the camera it just felt.. off.

Another thing is the adverts, "do do do do" ARGH. Were they really needed? Especially the Alienware one.. the moment that came up I thought as if I'd watched something that had been recorded off the television. Although I must say it was an excellent commercial :D

All in all though, an excellent movie. If your work continues to go in this direction then it'll be easy to see what would make a quality pc pro-gaming television show that would attract a high audiance.

Unfortunately Alienpants claim that television channels, terrestrial and sky just aren't interested in gaming programmes at the moment. So it looks like we'll be stuck with shitty programmes such as Gamezville with inept hosts who don't actually know what games are or have a clue about the communities behind them.

dont diss the hair..... its all about the hair :0

yeah whats the deal with all these lame gaming shows on late night tv? they only show crappy console games that no one plays apart from 10 year olds who got the wrong christmas presents.

i think if the tv execs had a clue, they would spend that budget on programmes like this, its superior to a lot of the pro stuff on tv, which says a lot considering its mainly one guy doing this.

Really nice movie, even made CS look interesting (OMG!)...the french dudes seamed to have skipped alot of English classes tho :p

they spoke better english than most UK cs kiddies /o\

they are big cs kiddies ^^

i thought bad english was genetic in french

Cant comment that, havent chatted with any french over voicecomes but Im pretty sure that those in the movie was a part of the majority: ENGRISH SPEEKERS ^^

lol stfu tarts :)))

Im no CS player by a long shot, but this this video actually made me interested in CS. Mostly the tactical bits though I must admit.
Very interesting stuff, great work (everyone who helped making the video that is:p)!

why bring the blonde intel-girl into the interview? only makes it pathetic and adds to the prejudices about gamers.

We all know that it's not true. Gamers don't collect massive amounts of porn like people are made to believe. Once it's used it can't be re-used damnit (unless it's a really good vid).

well, it's suppose to be a "professional" show about gaming. so why add to the prejudice about gamers? it's not like other people don't download porn aswell. it just makes it a less professional appearance, I mean, she obviously ain't a CSology master.

but SHES GOT BOOBIESSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HEHEHEHEHEEE

AND TITS TOO
AND BREASTS
AND SHE IS A GIRL!!! WITH BREAST!!BOOBSANDTITS!!

MMMMmmm

OMG?! YOU ARE ELL PLS!!

HELLO ELLE

Downloading now.

slow!!!!!! mirror I only get 380k/s :((!!!!!!!

joke

Still think CS is crap, even after it was explained a bit in this.

Come on people, stop downloading and commenting this. simonb doesn't want all this attention. He dislikes attention. He's an anti-attentionwhore! GO AWAY YOU FILTHIES, leave the kind sir alone with his filuum!

Damn, wish I could change my vote to make you most annoying ESR user ;)

I find it funny that you are unable to seeing as the poll has a link which says "Change Answers".

You probably lost his vote with that comment

gr8 movie!
nice download 254kb/sec :)

Quake3 coverage nexT?

I'm so happy that I can finally say I downloaded something faster than somebody else :P

first: this film maker is just godlike... really impressive

second: proZac is still a funny boy lol and nice hair cut :D

third: lol @ my teammates speaking english... can't be worse :D

I decided to watch this in the mindset of someone who didn't know anything about gaming. This is quite a big leap but I'm a method man.

It's pretty poor compared to MDG2 IMO. Maybe it's cos I'm tired n ain't had too much sleep, but most of the game footage was boring and the commentary was over my head. I think the way that it was done in MDG2 was more entertaining and better executed. Tunes were better in MDG2 :)

I did like the attempt to explain the tactics, but it worked better second time with the examples in the aftermatch analysis.

Closing criticism, I don't think that proZac looked or sounded too interested in what was going on, certainly didn't live up my expectations that were built up from ESWC Uncut.

thats because MDG2 wasnt about CS! doh?

stlong movie imo

wtf happened to prozac's hair? :D

He tripped over a hot wire just before the interview

Good movie, longer than i expected, with it only being 186 megs. Had a real TV feel to it.

Would definatly like to see more like it, but focused on a q3 event. The strat breakdowns, replays with overview and stuff was awsome.

LOL at Porky's hairdo.

That's an icho style hairdo!!

idd !

quite boring movie

Awesome work simon, very nicely done, I am not a cs'er but this is very cool stuff.

This made cs look interresting!

prozac prince of motown

If this movie was the basis you'd have to evaluate the potential of 'pro gaming' with I'd say no, it won't make it. :)

I can imagine the average Joe on his couch thinking; "This is just wrong!" and switching to the next channel. Everything looks too cheap, the people don't look good. The pre-match analysis and the interviews; no, that's just not good enough (Using the 2D map was close to obsolete, why couldn't they do a proper freechasecam rundown of the map?). The only portion which had a little try in it was when Xenon explained the pistol round (As much as I dislike him in general he's better than most at talking about competitive gaming). And this coming from a CS'er who's played since the release of the game and competed in numerous tournaments.

you think they should have shown people what the map looked like by running through it? i've never seen that map before and a 2d view is the only way i'm ever going to know wtf they're doing.

CS looked pretty cool, ...

unfortunatly you can't believe what you see on TV..

While this was a great attempt at making gaming look good, it came way short of being anything a non-initiated would ever watch.

good points :

The commentators where excellent, - helped get you into the spirit of things, even if they made a few mistakes along the way.

Post war analysis display was nice too, even if the explanation lacked a bit of .. well complexity. I hope there's more to cs tactics than "moving in groups".

bad points :

The girls. Putting girls next to formula1 racers, boxers and wrestlers works. Putting them next to young males that play computer games only brings up the whole nerd thing that we need to get away from. If girls get into gaming for real some day, and cs stars get laid on a regular basis, then bring on the chick announcers.

The whole setup looked like a "Robot Wars" event, except in robot wars you can understand what's going on. Despite the commentators efforts, it's still much to hard for the normal person to understand whats happening in a cs match.

conclusion :

A huge leap forward in terms of making gaming a spectator sport, while at the same time showing how far it has to come still.

reveal yourself!

GJ simonb and Prozac! You made CS look like a skillful and entartaining game.

Must have been hard work :p

Great movie, good example how to bring pro gaming to a higher level

Great movie, gaming evolution.

Professional looking, etc (yes the adverts add to the effect also :x).

This had better presentation than mdg2, but still i prefered mdg2 because it showed superior content (in game action, exciting interviews)... it was very nice to watch cs, but watching rtcw was amazing in mdg2 (mainly due to graphics, directing of camera).

Thinking from a non-gamers pov this was informative as mdg2, but was'nt as exciting (due to less exciting interviews and game action).. can i see some matrix style cs bullets next please :x

intel should hire Jhon woo.. they defintily have the money and they can definitly try better gimicks to sell thier chips :)

not to diss simonb.. but like popularising the movies on bbc and other news channel showing how gamers are making movies to make the whole scene bigger is a bad tactic.

but oh well .. they prolly made a 15 year plan.. i just hope to see AMD folks dont try the same.

i find it funny people are stuill trying to promote "pro-gaming" with Counterstrike, a game about terrorism. Gee, thats clever isn't it? With the way a lot of people are generally concered about the state of the world with suicide bombings occuring all too often, we have people trying to promote a new "sport" of gaming, with a game that glorifies such a fact!

Personally it doesn't bother me, however I can see a LOT of people having such issues with it, my father would really hate this, but he would probably dislike how inaccurate it is more then what its based on.

pro work Simon!!! :P

This review might be a bit too long as comment but here goes:

Extreme_edition_challenge video brilliantly depicts an intel sponsored event where two CS teams battle it out in lan. It shows from various angles how the match comes together and advances, giving nice insights to some of the tactics used and introduces us to some of the players. The commercial bits further the feeling of watching a normal tv broadcast, which you would have even without them. However it does assume that the viewer knows quite a lot about the subject matter of gaming and even more so about CS. Of course it is the most widely played multiplayer computer game in the world, but still only a fraction of regular tv viewers know of it or even about it. Therefore I have to presume that this video was mainly made for the CS community, which in itself is quite large even in terms of mass media (millions play this game), but it's far from being mainstream. There's nothing wrong in making these kinds of self-promotional videos for the community, but there's also little to gain from it (other than respect of other gamers). After all I'm sure we would all like see multiplayer gaming growing out gradually, bit by bit, ultimately becoming accepted by the mainstream as a true sport like football or ice-hockey with star players, fans and the lot, wouldn't we? SimonB's modern day gamer 2 explained a lot about gaming before going into it and in my opinion that among other things made it really a superb example of how to possibly get more media attention for gaming. I've given some thought on how one could go about furthering the cause in this here video and here's some ideas I came up with:

The video starts in the premises, shortly showing where, when and what is happening. An intel marketing chap tells about the goals for the event. That's all good and well, although the word lan and the absence of the actual location (oxford) fails to convey the milieu to the regular John Doe. We learn about the location later on but the word lan is left unexplained, only more referations to it follow afterwards.

Interviews of the teams comes up next and after it a map overview. Interviews are done nicely and the viewer gets to know what the teams think of each other (the word lan is used abundantly though). The map overview could have been a lot clearer, as it was done only in 2d it gave no actual reference points that could be later on recognized in the 3d pov's of the players. So it was kind of wasted to others than CS players (who already know the lay of the land). The fact that the 2d overview was rotating everytime the camera was moving didn't make it any easier follow. (a lot of weird words were brought in here as well).

The pre game tactics session was great. Ever since the original football manager game (the one with the moving stick figures), I've been fond of dot-like presentation of persons or tactics and to see the game tactic on screen with moving dots is just awesome =) (however they could have glorified with sectors showing the way the player is looking at). In these the viewers can see the actual teamplay element in action (like in later on in the film in the after match look up).

The first thing to do to get a regular, everyday, tv viewer interested in a computer game tournament is to present the event in an exciting, yet comprehensive way. If you start it by bombing them with abbreviations and notions that are still mostly unknown to the mass media you will start to alienate them since they might not be able to grasp at what they are hearing/seeing. In the case of counterstrike, one might start off by letting the host introduce the game itself shortly (or longly if needed): "Counterstrike (CS) is a computer game where two opposing 5 person sized teams play out, in turn, as the terrorists and counter-terrorists (CT). The terrorists are trying to detonate a bomb at a specific place, called a bomb spot, in a confined area of gameplay, called a map, whereas the counter-terrorists try and prevent it from happening (after this you could have a slight pause, such as an interview or highlight showing of a game so you wouldn't bore the audience with too much info at one time and then continue to unravel the game if it's needed to explain later parts of the film, for example->). What follows is a gun battle where both teams start off by first having 800 dollars for each player to spend on various modern day weapons/ammunition/gear (, such as the desert eagle pistol, awp sniper rifle, the russian ak47/74 assault rifle, ...) that have been realistically modelled in the game, however in the first round you are restricted to buy only pistols because of the higher cost of the bigger guns, that is why the first round is called the pistol round. After buying the gear the players head on to the battlefield, from their initial starting points which are called "spawn" points. The teams always start at the same places, in opposite corners of the map and near their teammates. Now the game advances with the teams playing out their (possibly) beforehand made up plans on how to achieve their goal, it involves tactical thinking, teamplay, quick hand-eye coordination (in order to score hits with the bullets on moving targets) and sometimes just pure luck. By eliminating or "fragging" your opponents, your team will get more money so you can buy better gear in the next round and use more complex tactics to overpower the other team. (I honestly don't know about the scoring in CS, but obviously at this point you would explain it so the audience will later on understand what the other team has done when the scores change. I didn't when I watched this vid). When a viewer knows about the game before the game is on, he will get so much more out of it and can actually start getting in the game a bit.

Now about the actual gameplay content. The match starts in the first round when the score is 4-3 for 4kings. I Don't know why it was done in such a way, in my opinion a game should always have a clear beginning and an end, at least when there's only one match on the show. When matches are finally gonna get streamed in a way that they can be broadcast in realtime on the telly, it will be different of course since the matches will be hour long but for a documentary such as this one it should be the case also (The scoring from here on is totally cryptic for as I have no idea how points are being gained). Other than this the gameplay content is highly watchable and superbly commentated by the team sportcast network fellows.

The after match interviews give nice closure for the game, armateam shows how losing isn't all that bad and how it can be analyzed, and four kings explains how they got back into the game after being down some points. Some people criticized in esreality how asking the blond lady about the game was a stupid stereotypic thing but I disagree. You should always ask opinions of people that have not been involved in the game itself, be it a blond girl for that matter. Shows an unbiased perspective (if they weren't paid to say something).

The CoD commercial was really kosher, the public viewers can appreciate the graphics of computer games' instantly and showing a lot of eye-candy is just a good way to do that. In this case it was the showing of cool battle scenes. The guy who explained the game could also have explained what a mod culture is.

The best part of the video, in my opinion, was the after match tactic runthrough. It depicts with pretty much crystal clarity what happened there in the start of the second half of the game in the pistol round. Was nice to get a bit of larger perspective to it.

Then the end of the film shows the essential stuff, what the whole deal was about (yes, that shiny plate in the box).

I give it three stars of five. (modern day gamer 2 is ****(*)/*****)

-Veracious

Why do I get the feeling that you're a gaming journalist? :)

hah, first time i've seen prozac serious (in a way)

great work simon, as usual!

Hah! Same here. :)

Nice job on the video simon.
I just hope intel will organize some more great events, where a mix of intel and non-intel teams compete, as right now, it just being intel teams means they cant hold
world-respected, or fair tournaments, as of course, all teams need to be able to compete to make it fair.

Also good job to prozac, and nice hair style:).

Also noticed some very expensive camcorders, intel clearly put a lot of money into this, pro camera crews, studios, WP:D

nice1 going to watch it :)

Good movie. Would have been fun to see more spectacular moves from the game though. Saw it last year and I think that there weren't dozens of them... may be wrong...

great movie simon. glad it all came together in the end

*belated reply ho!*

u tart

gripping stuff... :)