Angel Munoz - interview

I started in the gaming industry with the launch of the Adrenaline Vault
website in 1995, then two years later I launched the Cyberathlete Professional League. As the CPL has continued to grow I am still very involved with the operation especially developing long term plans for the league.

It was difficult because both sponsors and gamers were skeptical. We had to battle for years just to gain acceptance and then later to try to develop a sensible business organization. But all of our efforts have been rewarded with the global acceptance of the concepts we first introduced in 1997. The first event was small with only 300 attendees and just a few sponsors. All I can remember is thinking that I knew one day it would be a big concept.

Well it does not quite work that way, the sponsors are investing in obtaining global attention for their products. Hardcore gamers are early adopters of new technology and operate in a very hermetic environment, basically getting most of their information from other gamers. The CPL creates buzz and attention including branding the events with our sponsor's names and making sure they get lots of attention, the gamers benefit from the cash prizes but the sponsors in return hope to develop product loyalty and name recognition. So its a win-win for everyone.

The CPL has 18 staff members and 40 volunteers in the US alone. Europe has handful employees and we also have representatives in Asia and South America.

Very busy. As the CPL has become so popular I have to sit through 4 to 5 business meetings, manage about 50-100 important emails, several hundred instant messages and dozens of phone calls every single day with no days off.

For several reasons:

1. A community that had a sense of entitlement was not fun to work with.
2. The game got boring to us.
3. The CPL officers liked team tournaments much more.
4. The demographics and size of the Counter-Strike community were (and
still are) too strong to ignore.
5. Some people at Id Software did not like us and made it difficult for us
to promote their game.
6. Having to sign contracts with id Software was not fun either.

No. The people that were there enjoyed it. I'm sorry that some people that were not there found it necessary to bash that tournament. It also got great publicity on MTV, the biggest coverage to date for any computer game tournament in the world. That MTV program has been shown in many countries worldwide and viewed by millions

Question about how the tournaments are run, with what settings, etc are
best directed to Frank Nuccio, the league's commissioner. But here is my
standard response:

There is a limit to the amount of tweaking allowed to the key devices of
any sport. This includes baseball gloves, football cleats, and stock
cars. These limitations ensure that no one gains a competitive edge
through the use of their equipment. In that line of thinking, the CPL
believes everyone should use identical configuration settings where reasonable.

Certain configuration changes such as turning off the viewmodel or using a non-standard FOV create minute advantages and disadvantages for those who use them. These advantages are often debatable or unclear, and it is for this reason that the CPL chooses not to allow them. For example, if half the players think turning off the viewmodel is an advantage and the other half think otherwise, what happens is that half the players MAY have gained some level of competitive edge. To ensure that this doesn't happen the CPL requires that everyone compete with the same core settings. We want everyone to be playing the same game.

Relentless. Conviction. Passion.

All of them have been special for different reasons.

I really do not have enough information about these games to give an informed answer about how they will perform in a live tournament environment.

What is really boring is to have to answer a question like this. Counter-Strike is the world's most popular online action game, with 4.5 billion player-minutes per month and over 35,000 servers. This very moment (as I am typing this) over 80,000 people are playing it online. So to answer your question we will use Counter-Strike as long as there is a community of gamers that wants to play it competitively and that wants to follow the tournaments.

I play every first person shooter released. My favorite has not been released to the public yet: Halo PC multiplayer, it's very impressive.

That the tournament runs perfectly and that it shuts the mouth of all of those criticizing our decision without knowing anything about the game. Suffice is to say that the multiplayer of Halo PC is *nothing* like the multiplayer of Halo Xbox.

That all of the esports organizations in the world join together at one yearly MEGA-EVENT. That would be fun!

Bigger, better, stronger.