UKTerrorist

Code of Conduct

The cyber world that we inhabit today has destroyed many of the social boundaries that the real world has in place. No longer are you restricted to how you look, your age, your race - in the cyber world you can be, and often are, a different person altogether.

Counter-Strike, and other online games have not gone unaffected by the disguise of technology. Those who may be ridiculed at school for being geeks and unpopular can become legends of Counter-Strike with people showering them with praise for every win they achieve. Although for many this disguise is a form of escapism, I am beginning to wonder if it is this lack of human contact that is holding the Counter-Strike world back.

Picture the scene, you're playing clan X and before the game they have told you how great they are. Their reputation (more often than not is hyped up lies) says they are a great team and everyone is saying that they are being sponsored by this company and that company. You get in the game, you're playing a clan that is being sponsored by a company to play CS, supposedly, and you find yourselves beating them, not just beating them but thrashing them. Suddenly the professionalism of these players goes out of the window and slowly but surely the insults to your 'lesser' team start flying in. You must cheat, you couldn't beat us and so on. The 'professionals' leave the server and before you have a chance to say anything to any of the community they already have the message out that your clan is lame or whatever.

I know this because I have been both on the receiving end and dishing it out.

So why does this happen? Surely as 'professionals' these clans can show sportsmanship?
The answer is simple - they are not what they say they are. More companies are being set up across the UK with the purpose of supplying servers, and more often than not those who have primary roles in these businesses have not even started their GCSEs. These companies then go on to tell clans that they will support and sponsor them with a server in return for various advertisements. The businesses never get past the website stage and the clans that are being sponsored suddenly think they are NiP, or at least on that level of 'professionalism'.

Some would say the problem lies in the gamer's age. I think it's more to do with the gamer's maturity. If five twelve year olds can beat you, and are mature and good sports then they have just as much right to become professional as anyone else. If however a clan is un-sportsman like, in my opinion they should be banned from whatever league they are in and got rid of.

So how do you go about making sure your clan isn’t full of immature players? I think the answer is simple, make sure all pre-match talk with the opposition is minimal keeping boasting down to a minimum and then once in game make sure you clan doesn't talk to the opposition in any way shape or form. Look at it like this, if you call someone a cheater it will make no difference to the outcome of the game, it will not stop him and it will only create more tension between the two clans. Which leads nicely onto my second point...

Make sure all the rules are set before the game. It was only a few days ago that I played in a clan game where we expected CO rules to find it was all rounds count, in hind-sight I should've remained calm but I blew my top when they insisted on playing their rules, the game immediately got off to a bad start. If both clans know all the rules before the match you avoid the tension. Make sure the server is also tested and that pings are fine, I find that in many games there can be a 10-20 minute delay because of people complaining about pings and lag.

Always be flexible when it comes to anti-cheat, my advice would be to always require some form of precaution (such as a +showcommands, console screenshot and paladin anticheat) and make sure their whole team knows about it before the game. If you don't want any precautions yourself, make sure you know if they want you to use any and always make sure your own team knows that you will be using them. It's these pre-match and in-game precautions that make sportsmanship much easier. It is only when you master the act of being able to play without complaining that you can start out on the road to being a top Counter Strike team.

If you are a clan leader reading this and thinking that your clan would never follow these rules then my tip to you would be to make sure the other team knows what it is going to be playing against. It is the least you can do.