Do you like it? Do you watch it?
Personally, I am a Counterstrike junkie. Been playing since beta (with breaks in between) but it's simply astonishing to watch how much the game has changed over the past 13 years. I'd like to say that the skill limit is as high as the sky, but it's simply not true. New players are changing the metagame even now.
Basically, the core map pool has remained unchanged for ~a decade. New maps are added every once in a while.
de_tuscan, a revamp of de_cpl_mill was added in 2006 I believe.
Last year, de_forge (revamped de_cbble) and de_mirage (revamped de_cpl_fire [or was it strike?]) was added as well to most official tournament map pools.
There was also a contest some time ago, the winner of which was to $5000 for designing a new competitive map. Don't remember what really came of that. I think the winner was de_lite or de_hell or something like that, but it hasn't been picked up by tournaments.
In 2010, CS was lucky enough to benefit from the sponsorship of Murat Arbalet - a Khazak businessman and a fellow CS junkie. He sponsored a series of LAN tournaments with very respectable prize pools, as well as sponsoring a Ukrainian team. Na'Vi eventually became the most dominant team of 2010, breaking the record held by most prize money won by a CS squad within 1 year and strongly shaking up the scene.

This can lead to awesomeness. I.e. have a look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ye1Vs4k3wc

Counterstrike's legacy is in danger though. Acquired and neglected by Valve it can be run on your grandmother's toaster. Hence sponsor support is lacklustre - you simply don't need that next-gen graphics card to run it. Typically a lot of sponsorship comes from non-core hardware related stuff, i.e. from mice and headset manufacturers (Razer, Steelseries, apparently Logitech is getting involved too).

CS is still the #1 most popular game on Steam.
Interestingly, today's statistics are remarkable low, only 56374 players:
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Typically it tops the charts.
Fortunately, the hope is out there. A new tournament was recently announced in China with a $95000 prize pool (technically it's CounterStrike Online, a strange creature, but the tournament is played by players from 1.6).

The Intel Extreme Masters 6 final had 73000 viewers on live stream.

Moreover, CS 1.6 is immense in the developing world (China, India, North Africa, etc). Unfortunately they pirate the game instead of using Steam, hence the actual player count is unknown, but it could easily be an additional 100k+ players. One of those 'If I can get it for free, why pay for it' mentalities.
At the last World Cyber Games a team came out of Iran and showed some beautiful CS. Honestly, progaming in Iran? Sounds too good to be true, but these guys were good!

I also regularly watch the GSL (Global Starcraft League) though I don't play Starcraft II that much.


As you can judge, Counterstrike is something that I am quite passionate about. (Shame that CS:GO is a turd) How about yourself? Do you watch progaming? Do you enjoy the games? Do you play yourself? It emerged in another thread that Vagabond is quite the badass in Quake 3.

Would love to hear your views!
For those who might be interested in seeing how far the game has really gone, here's a few more quirky actions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=533QjhGyn8w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDUcXErhiWQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smxCogyO4_E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7McG5TCK37Q

edit: one more, probably the #1 CS highlight of all time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg0iMr93z6c

Dude, we played CS 1.6 last night (me and 6 other friends). Guess who was the loudest, shouting and yelling to people to play together like a team, explaining them tactics on the go, what to buy for which round, where to expect the enemy to come from, exactly what step to take... I was playing the game seriously, in the right sense of the word, for 3-4 years (only it and barely just a few other games so I wouldn't get FPS-sick).

I'm a eSports, of any kind, junkie, although eSports games I like the most are Counter Strike (1.6 and Source), Starcraft 2, and Warcraft 3.

One big hug to Blizzard and Valve for pushing eSports, now even further with DotA 2 and Blizzard All-Stars (once they get released).

Starcraft 2 related, the first official world championship is on the way, more info here:

http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/esports/

EDIT: Fixed the link.

You sound like a pain in the ass to play with. ;-)

So I've been told (by opponents, not teammates). :p People always want me on their team... good organization and working for the team will lead you to victory!

Your link is dead, otherwise great post!

Back in the day when I used to play 'seriously' I was the in-game leader of my clan - hence all of the in-game management stuff! Counterstrike is unfortunately seriously undervalued. It is as much a thinking game as it is a pure aiming one. I 'quit' back in 2006, meaning that I simply play a few mixes every once in a while, or spend the night on a public server after a drunken return from the pub.

I am lukewarm towards Valve at best... Source is shit (apologises, I know you're likely to disagree). The gameplay simply cannot hold up against 1.6. CS:GO is awful (I'm in the beta, it's terrible). Valve has for the past half a decade or so simply done the best to completely ignore 1.6's existence. The most popular PC FPS ever made. Used to be a big Valve fanboy, as a result of this, they are as bad as EA for my purposes.

Blizzard is great though, can agree with that!

What do you think about LoL? Personally, I find the game a little boring. My ex-girlfriend used to play it lot though so I did show her some pro-gaming tournaments, but the game bores me. I might just be damaged by my DOTA experience though. Got into it for a while but scuttered away in horror once I started to understand it a bit more.

Also, WC3 was never my thing. I didn't like the whole hero, upkeep and few units idea. Used to play SC instead. The man is right - the in-game leader role in CS is by a mile the most important role!

Hey, if they don't mind playing like that, that's perfectly fine. :) (My comment was mostly meant jokingly.) Personally I'd just want to have fun, and not have someone breathing down my neck, but that's just me.

Fixed the link... haven't played LoL, so I cannot comment on that one. However, I've played lots and lots of DotA matches, so I'm really looking forward to Blizzard All-Stars... and not so much to DotA 2. If you want to have fun, go play Team Fortress 2. If you want to play a tactical FPS where every round matters, you're at the right place. :p

Only things I watch are the Company of Heroes casts from Imperial Dane (Propagandacast channel) and even that is just a collection of multiplayer matches with commentary and explanation of why and how and etc., so it is not at the progaming level.

Starcraft 2 is the only one I follow regularly and for me at least it's loads of fun (both playing and watching).

This thread sparked my desire to go back to CS... but I must resist! Diablo 3 is coming soon.

I personally never played CS much I really didn't like it.... but Quake 3 Arena..

I play StarCraft 2 in a very casual manner with a friend or 2 and we 2 vs 2 on the bronze ladder sometimes, so that's as far as my level of competitiveness goes. I do enjoy watching streams from time to time, ever since watching TSL3 where ThorZain ended up champion and he and his spoon terrany ways is one of my favorites.

I can't put too much seriousness in gaming though. Though winning is fun I never have that "eye of the tiger kill 'em all" mentality and will usually try to have a good time even if it means i might lose for pulling off something stupid. Fun videos like "When cheese fails" will have a greater sway on me than watching the stream of any pro player.

Here's two "When cheese fails" enjoyed a lot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOvGCrilWik

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-3ZrXOrz_0&ob=av3e

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA! :D

If anyone's interested then HSBG (best Bulgarian team) and Virtus.pro (decent team from Russia) is live right now (e: kucher and xaoc are Ukrainian).

HLTV.org has the HLTV running here:
hltv5.verygames.net:27071

But as most of you probably don't have CS installed, you can watch the stream here:
http://www.own3d.tv/livepopout/virtuspro_52192
Unfortunately it's in Russian (not aware of an English stream), I just mute it.
Also the guy has wallhack, which makes spectating slightly easier.

e: just waiting for HLTV to reconnect to the game. Put those paper bags down.

I don't care for it.