Since CS Source was released, we have seen many different “companies” running servers and competitions, without them, source would simply be a game that a bunch of randoms would get together in a server and play, not having an aim to improve for any reason.

The following article will talk about the different server/competition companies that have come through Australia, and what impact they’ve had.

GameArena
Really, the begging of Source competitions in Australia, running a very simple ladder which hosted more than 200 teams, not sure where they came from to be honest, but the GamerArena ladder was the only way Source players could compete for something.

GameSpace
As much as I personally enjoyed playing in the GameSpace ladder and league, this was more of a fun ladder for teams to go and have a war where they could enjoy themselves, the “big teams” of Australian Source didn’t really compete in GameSpace, giving the teams with less experience a chance to win something.

AUSource
This was a community IRC Channel who hosted a community website, started in 2006; AUSource quickly rose to become Australia’s #1 place to talk all things Source related, find scrims, find sluts and much more. The beauty of AUSource was that it bought together every single player in Australia to a mutual place having nothing before that for the community to grow; it really started a trend in Australian Source. However, with the emergence of OGN and soon after GotGames, AUSource was quickly over run by the superiority of these other two emerging companies.

Although AUSource started to run a ladder, there was a lack of commitment within the competitions administrators to see it through, this lead to the ladder not going ahead, and the eventual demise of AUSource

Oceanic Gaming Network (OGN)
Another company no longer with us, OGN hosted many public servers and also many different competitions. During OGN’s reign at the top of Australian Gaming, they ran numerous 32 team Defend Your Server Competitions, where the best teams across Australia would compete for their chance to win a server until the next competition.

With servers tried, and software tested, OGN moved on to run an Invite competition, the competition was absolutely fantastic… for 4 weeks, unfortunately, someone decided to ruin everyone’s fun and DDOS’d the OGN network, killing the software, to the fault of OGN swell, they did not have any backups, and lost everything. This was to be the end of OGN on a competitive level, they continued to run public servers for years to come, but finally it seems they have closed their doors.

Anything Interactive
Well, here’s a company who had Australian Source in the palm of their hands, they had unlimited support from every single member of the Australian Source community and the backing of some major companies, unfortunately for Anything Interactive their demise was none other than a fault of their own, trying to run a competition not within their means.

In 2007 Anything Interactive exploded into the Source scene, running a national competition at VA LAN Cafe in Melbourne, with qualifiers all around Australia the competition shaped up to be a real break through in Australian Source. 2008 proved to be the high point for Anything Interactive, running Gamerthon at ACMI in federation square, Anything Interactive ran competitions for FIFA, Gran Tourismo, Halo3, Guitar Hero, DOA, CS 1.6 and of course CS Source in an unheard of week of competitive gaming.

But of course, with ups, comes down, in 2009, Anything Interactive shot themselves in the foot, attempting to run another Nationals competition with no venue confirmed, no money in the bank, and no time to work on it, Anything Interactive failed miserably in what proved to be the end of the company. The end of Anything Interactive left an understandable bitter taste in the mouth of many Source players.

World Game Masters Tournament (WGT)
How they got WGT out of World Game Masters Tournament is beyond me, but with that said, the fact remains that the WGT has run 2 very successful Source LAN competitions in Sydney. With a free online qualifier and not only flying the qualifying teams to finals, but fronting their competitions, that alone would make any source player happy, but with the best gaming equipment, and a fantastic setup, add in some gorgeous promo girls, and you got yourself a wonderful weekend!

CyberGamer
I’m sure if you ask any CyberGamer admin, they are looking to be the future of not only Australian Source but Australian Gaming. They are currently running an Invite competition which includes some of Australia’s top teams. Unfortunately for them, they are in a head on battle with the GotGames CEVO season, a challenge that right now, they cannot win. Many teams are turning up to their matches unprepared, or undermanned, not caring if they win or lose. With that said, I believe CyberGamer is just what Australian Source needs, some healthy competition for GotGames, fighting to better themselves and get the one up on their competitor.

GotGames
FINALLY I get to GotGames, where do I start? Right now, GotGames IS Australian Source, there is not one competitive Source player who doesn’t use their forum for discussions or at the very least, know about their forum. Why is GotGames so successful you say? It’s simple really, GotGames was able to stand the test of time, running competitions continuously and successfully, no other company can say they have run this many competitions of a number of years and still are going in Australian Source.

Currently partnered with CEVO and backed by some of the biggest names in the IT industry, they are the leaders in Australian online Source competitions, running CEVO Professional, Intermediate, Main and Amateur competitions; they have every single competitive source team in Australia competing for honors.

Not only are the GotGames forums the main Source forums in Australia, their brilliant programmer, the one and only brilliant 12-60 has created some amazing website tools for the use of the public. GotGames Live revolutionized the way we find scrims and pug in Australia, much simpler than having to use IRC which was the former method.

The future for GotGames looks to show an endless amount of possibilities, with GGTV having being announced and hopefully recording soon, they are looking to take another giant leap to better Australian Source once again. The only request I’ll make for GotGames is to have another attempt at running a Nationals, if anyone has the resources to do it successfully, its GotGames!

In summary, we have seen many different companies rise and fall through out Source in Australia, some made a large impact to the game such as Anything Interactive and AUSource, and some weren’t as successful, with that said, NONE have done more, or been more successful than GotGames, a real rock in the ever-changing world that is Australian Source. Without the likes of GA, GS, OGN, AI, WGT GG, CG and AUSource, we would not be able to look back and think of the many fantastic matches we have seen over the last few years, in fact, without companies like these, there would be no such thing as competitive source in Australia.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 12th, 2009 at 9:07 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.