There are so many age-old questions in eSports. Why do people flame so much on the forums? What happened to my prize money? Why isn’t SourceTV working (if on the forums, add “EPIC FAIL”)?

Within the past week, the need for an answer to a different kind of recurring question came to forefront. It’s just that time of year.

It was time to make a CGS All-Star team.

To answer this most daunting proposition, some of the finest minds in eSports met at the place where all truly brilliant ideas come to fruition: The Cheesecake Factory. (If you think I’m joking about the brilliant ideas, you haven’t tried the Adam’s Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple Cheesecake.) The “finest minds” in question were Paul “ReDeYe” Chaloner, Bobby “weenus” Hicks, Bryan “DrDogg” Dawson, and Adande “sWooZie” Thorne. I also tagged along, but only because we needed somebody to poke fun at.

In the end we decided many things, not the least of which was making two All-Star teams, to be released in two separate articles: one for the East (Chicago, New York, Carolina) and one for the West (Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles). We also set down two important ground rules:

1) The All-Star team is based only on this year’s performance. It was still easy to vote on name recognition rather than actual performance, but we did remind ourselves that we’re not handing out career achievement awards. That’s a topic for a different time.

2) In that same vein, being selected to an All-Star team is also an honor only for the regular season, just like "real" sports. Of course, we’re only human, so we can’t simply erase things that happened during the playoffs like delusional Cubs fans trying to block the pain. But we did try.

Forza and Counter-Strike also had special conditions, which we’ll get to in their specific sections.

I’ll end the intro with this: what follows is a mish-mash of transcribed conversations, the feel at different points during the evening, and anything else that helps convey why we made the decisions we did. Looking back, I only wish we had space to include everything. But I had one copy of this article that included more quotes, and it came out to about 3,300 words. In an effort to make this readable I trimmed a lot of specific conversation points into more general ideas, most of which came from ReDeYe, because he's cool like that. If you feel like we've left something out I can pretty much guarantee we discussed it -- it just got left on the cutting room floor.

Still, despite that, hopefully by the end you’ll feel like you were right next to us, stuffing your face with tasty, tasty cheesecake.

Dead or Alive Male

The Pick: Ryan “OffbeatNinja” Ward

Offbeat solved the mystery of Master during the season. He may now add a fictitious All-Star trophy to his list of awards.

We had a strange reaction when we brought up OffbeatNinja for Dead or Alive Male. Nobody objected to the choice, but nobody was really pumped about it, either.

Basically, Offbeat had a good, but not great, season. He was 7-5 with a plus-eight point differential, but that included a 3-5 loss to Cardell “DaveCheppelle” Thomas, statistically the worst player in the league.

Then again, Offbeat was also the only person to beat Master when he won his last game of the season 5-2 over Dallas’ MVP candidate. In their other meeting, Master escaped with a 5-4 win. Maybe our lack of enthusiasm is a problem with our perceptions, not Offbeat’s actual performance.

“The problem is when you asses it against last season, Offbeat was worse,” ReDeYe said, at one point. “You’d say he had a poor season. Even though he finished second in the league he had a poor season by his high standards.”

Of course, the other candidates weren’t exactly diamonds in the rough. The aforementioned Cheppelle did exactly what New York asked him to do during the season, but there’s no question OffbeatNinja had a better year. Jeremy “BlackMamba” Florence didn’t get any traction, and again was statistically inferior.

Thus, OffbeatNinja earned our nomination, but we would have been much more enthusiastic if he played a full season the way he played the last two games. As ReDeYe said, “I think something happened to him around match eleven, and everything kicked back in again. He just suddenly went ‘oh yeah, I remember how to play this game.’ It just clicked, he was good, and then he met Master in his last game and beat him easily.”

“It’s that last five percent of confidence and remembering his ability, that he’s got one over this guy that’s he’s playing … whatever it was, it was that missing five percent that he found right at the end of the season.”

Just in time for an All-Star nomination.

Dead or Alive Female

The Pick: Tanya “coolsvilla” Underwood

Can Coolsvilla win without using her controller? That remains to be seen, but we think she's an All-Star.

At the end of our discussion about Coolsvilla we decided two things: she was the obvious choice over Mystik, and that only four weeks before the end of the season, that wasn’t necessarily the case. In fact, if we left out the last four games we felt Mystik was the more deserving candidate.

During that crucial stretch, a few things happened. For Carolina, Mystik came oh-so-close to beating Vanessa but couldn’t quite pull it off, and two games later she lost to Belle. During that same period, Coolsvilla went 4-0 with a stunning 20-2 round differential, beating Mystik, Belle, Phoenix, and KasumiChan. That’s Season 1 Vanessa domination. I don’t want to start any rumors, but after a run like that we probably should have checked her famous cookies for performance-enhancing drugs.

Just kidding, of course. Even though she was insanely hot during those last four games, we also agreed she was one of the most consistent players throughout the year. Even when she wasn’t winning, her GM didn’t have to worry about being five points down after DoA Female, either.

DrDogg: I would say that cools could be counted on the entire season. [Her General Manager] never had to say ‘am I going to get this performance out of her, am I going to get that performance?’ whereas every other DoA Female you had to wonder which version was going to show up.

ReDeYe: You also have to remember the stage, as well. Coolsvilla was, on the stage, flawless. Mystik? Not so flawless.

During the regular season as a whole, all signs pointed to Coolsvilla.

FIFA 2008

The Pick: Yfran “Eafra” Garcia

In this photo, Eafra has either: A) Done something good against WiZaKoR, or B) Learned of his All-Star Selection. I'd guess A.

A few days prior to our All-Star conversation, Paul and I talked about the play of Andrew “Anomaly” Brock. He brought up some interesting statistics, and by the time we rolled into the Cheesecake Factory later in the week I had a sneaking suspicion that Paul would go with Anomaly. The situation was ripe for conflict because the statistics and record favor Eafra.

Basically, I came into FIFA expecting a debate, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The discussion started off with a round of support for Eafra while ReDeYe remained silent, and I remained silent waiting for him to speak up. I finally broke the silence on Anomaly, and ReDeYe took over with the statistics.

ReDeYe: He’s lost seven games overall, six games in penalty kicks. And he’s the only player that’s scored outfield goals throughout his games this season. He’s second only to Stermy in terms of goals scored in normal time …

LANDodger: And he’s 3-0 against WiZaKoR this season.

ReDeYe: Correct.

Weenus switched to Anomaly after Paul made more points about Anomaly’s consistency in scoring from the outfield, his aggressiveness, and his tendency to rise to the occasion during big matches. As ReDeYe said, “I think if you put Anomaly in an All-Star game, you’d get an All-Star performance.”

DrDogg and sWooZie stuck with Eafra, leaving us in a two-two tie. I was the last person to vote, and you can infer from the winner which way I leaned.

For me, just like a typical FIFA match, the difference came down to penalty kicks. Yes, they’re a guessing game, but so are facets of other sports – baseball players guess at pitches all the time. That doesn’t mean there isn’t skill involved in knowing opponent tendencies and playing a mental game of cat-and-mouse. I don’t think anybody completely disagrees, but at the same time I think it should be rewarded more than it is.

As it stood, FIFA was the most contested selection of the day, though everybody agreed Anomaly and Eafra were both deserving candidates.

Forza Motorsport 2

The Picks:

Eric “General E Live” Earley
Dan “ComeBackDan” Otto

Surprisingly, this was one of the easiest decisions of the night. Considering there were three teams tied at 8-4, that’s a little strange. But only two of those names stood out, as you can tell from this snippet of conversation:

GEL celebrates a victory over 3D in the playoffs. There should be plenty more to come in his CGS career.

ReDeYe: ComeBackDan has to be the #1. 31 points, 4 points more than any other driver. Six wins, one more win than any other driver in the league.

Weenus: And GEL. Done-zo.

LD: I don’t think anybody would argue with CBD at this point.

Weenus: ComeBackDan and GEL.

ReDeYe: And I think you have to put General E Live next to him.

Weenus: GEL …

DrDogg: What did you say?

Weenus: General E Live!

ReDeYe: That’s the All-Star team in the entire league, to me.

As you can tell from Weenus’ interjections, we pretty much decided on these two guys right away.

There was one caveat: player roles. We picked the players we thought were the best two drivers, period. But sometimes it’s not that simple. On a team, everybody plays a different role. Barry Bonds was asked to hit home runs, but the second hitter on another team might be asked to sacrifice the runners over because they don’t have a huge, hulking clean-up hitter.

In the same way, ComeBackDan and GEL were asked to be the drivers that made opponents despair once they had a decent lead. Dark Storm and Phantom were often asked to ram opponents to create that lead.

Even thought we decided on CBD and GEL as the two All-Stars, we also felt it necessary to mention the different player roles, and recognize them for their excellence, as well. ReDeYe once again summed up the group’s feelings nicely, saying, “I think Phantom’s been the best running man, the best blocker, and the best tactician. There’s a case for Darkstorm, as well, but I think Phantom has played very strongly.”

It’s hard to put it any better than that.

Counter-Strike: Source

The Picks:

Strat Caller: Jon “Juan” Mumm
AWPer: Nick “n0it” Nowakowski
Rifle 1: Cyrus “org” Habibi
Rifle 2: Kyle “Ksharp” Miller,
Flex: Sam “devour” Chamma

6th Man: Matt "Stevenson" Stevenson

Before we even thought about picks, we needed to make some rules to avoid something like this:

ReDeYe: If I had an All-Star team it would have Devour in it, and n0it in it, and fRoD, brawwwrski, and Moe. And I’d be stuck with five AWPers.

[Weenus imitates a firing line of five AWPers.]

We gave Juan the reigns to the Source team, and we trust he won't drive the bandwagon over a cliff.

In other words, we wanted to make at least a semi-functional team. We can’t know how these guys would gel, but at the very least we didn’t want an obvious problem like no strat-caller, four AWPers, or five role players. So both the East and West team will have one strat caller, a primary AWPer, two dedicated riflers, and one “flex” position to be filled by any player of our choice.

The very first guy we decided on was Nick “n0it” Nowakowski. I’m not sure whether it was the Rookie of the Year award or not, but he was the first player on everybody’s mind. Not bad considering he was new to the league this season and other AWPers included Devour and Stevenson.

We moved to strat-caller next. This led to another obvious choice: Jon “juan” Mumm, n0it’s old (and new) teammate. Nobody disagreed, and this pretty much summed up the conversation:

LANDodger: I think juan is an obvious choice. I don’t think anybody is even close.

ReDeYe: In the entire league right now.

LANDodger: In the entire league, and that includes Rambo who has the reputation.

That being said, we had a little more trouble filling the rifling spots and the flex position.

For flex, most of the candidates had iffy seasons. Devour, Stevenson, and da_bears were the leading candidates, and they weren’t bad by any means, but nobody seemed to stand out and carry their team for games at a time, either. Even ReDeYe was on the fence, and that says something considering, in his own words, “I’ve prayed to the church of Devour.”

In the end we went with Sam “devour” Chamma for the flex spot. I mean, you can’t really go wrong selecting him for that position. Whenever somebody, even jokingly, refers to praying at a church in your name, you probably belong on the All-Star team, especially when nobody blinks an eyelash about that kind of praise.

The riflers were even more difficult. At one point Dominator even came up, despite being in the wrong division.

Cyrus “org” Habibi was a unanimous pick once we finally remembered his name. It took a surprisingly long time. That’s strange considering his level of talent, but I suppose it speaks to his play-style, as well. He seems to quietly go about his business as one of the less-recognized people on a team with an All-World AWPer (devour), All-World Blogger (s0nNy), and All-World Talker (Torrez).

Our final spot on the team goes to Ksharp. This was met with some reservation because we recognized, as Paul said, that it’s the fanboy’s choice. But despite rising to stardom as an AWPer all those years ago, he’s been excellent with the rifle as he fits in alongside nickn0it. Nobody on the Core was definitively better, while Stevenson and da_bears didn’t seem to fit the role, hahN was inconsistent, and tr1p couldn’t replicate last year’s dominating performance.

We ended up making one final consideration: adding a sixth man and filling that spot with Stevenson. It just felt right.

We just hope you feel the same way about the rest of our decisions. Especially now that we can't soothe any arguments with offers of cheesecake.