Editor's Note: This is an op-ed article from CGS lead writer Mike Luxion. That means editorial. Opinion. Just wanted to remind you...

There’s a war going on right now that you might not know about. It’s a battle for the hearts and minds (read: money) of young men and women across the world. The stage is set. The competitors have been determined. And as their chosen medium becomes more mainstream, there seems to be a growing sense of anticipation about a showdown.

There’s only one thing missing: something for the competitors, the CGS and MLG, to actually fight about.

To be fair, the big players in eSports probably look like a match made in Heaven. Competitive gaming is a niche market, and here are two leagues trying to find their way. One of them is a plucky, upstart league born of the community, and the other a giant, corporate entity looking to capitalize on a growing industry. They sure seem poised for a shootout. But while some see the CGS and MLG as natural enemies, is the eSports landscape, as it stands, really a 21st-century version of the proverbial western town that “isn’t big enough for both of us?”

I’m not convinced that it is.

In a way, this fight has already happened once, albeit on a completely different scale. Years ago, CAL was the premier online league. This is primarily because they were the only legitimate online league, and they were directly tied to the CPL, the premiere offline tournament. Their golden age lasted until CEVO came along and offered prizes, an anti-cheat client, and a pay-to-play system. The top teams left CAL for the CEVO gold rush, and fans everywhere were predicting a doomsday scenario for CAL, the online league of yesterday.

Before they played in the CGS, they played in CEVO. And before that, they were stars in CAL.

That day never came. The problem with crowning a victor is that the two leagues provided different services and had different goals. Despite having the top teams, by the time CEVO came around CAL was already a massive entity that, in truth, catered more towards the average gamer than the one looking for a career in competitive gaming. While CEVO attracted the most competitive players, they weren’t set up to attract the horde of gamers across the full spectrum of games that CAL offers. It’s not that one league was bad, and the other was good. One league didn’t have it wrong, and the other didn’t have it right. They were just different.

Fast forward to now, and there are certainly parallels to the relationship between the CGS and MLG.

Can leagues compete when they’re not fighting over the same resources, or even using the same league model? At least CAL and CEVO used some of the same games, and had the same basic format (a regular season followed by playoffs, a short offseason, and then another online season.) The MLG uses a tournament-based format, taking their competitions from city to city over a calendar year. The CGS uses a league-based format, where what you did yesterday directly affects your matches in the future, and the season lasts two months. The CGS has a draft, MLG has GameBattles. MLG uses (primarily) Halo, and attracts Halo fans. CGS uses four games, and attracts a totally different set of fans.

What, exactly, is left to fight over if it isn’t money, fans, or players? Bragging rights?

Let’s think of it another way. If the MLG were to die tomorrow, would all the Halo fans come running to watch the CGS? If the CGS were to die tomorrow, would the Source or DoA fans go scrambling toward MLG? What about the players? It’s not like Ksharp gave up his dream of a professional Halo career to join 3D. Ditto goes for Walshy in Halo. Can two entities really be fighting if neither directly benefits from “beating” their opponent?

In fact, it might be more accurate to say there’s strength in numbers. Without the CGS World Finals, would the MLG have been featured on sites like CNN Money and 1up? Considering some of the major points in those articles are “competition” between MLG and CGS, I’d have to say that it’s doubtful. The same can be said from the CGS’ perspective. Would those articles have gotten the green light without a hero and a villain? Could be. But, the story is far less interesting with only one entity in the eSports "space."

The reason for that is simple: to be a story about David and Goliath, both players have to be on stage. Maybe David or Goliath can carry a scene by himself, but he can’t do a whole act. They need to play off each other to really steal the show. It’s the conflict between them that’s interesting, not the characters themselves.
Just look at the language that peppered the recent article on CNN Money:

"all Major League Gaming has to worry about is not being blown to smithereens by Champion Gaming Series… "

"It's too early to declare a winner in this smackdown… "

"the battle between the leagues… "

"It looks like it's finally game on between Major League Gaming and Championship Gaming Series."

It’s clear that a large part of the focus in that article is the competition between the two leagues.

I suppose that epic match between underdog and prohibitive favorite is the impetus for the misunderstanding. But I don’t think there’s a conflict there as much as people want there to be a conflict. We all love watching the underdog take on the monolithic giant, and that’s the problem. It’s too easy to pigeonhole the relationship between MLG and the CGS into that scenario. The key difference is that this competition isn’t a zero-sum game. In the fight between two competitors, one of them has to win; in the cola wars, regular buyers of one won’t go out of their way to support the other. It’s either/or. But gaming fans don’t have to make that choice. Halo fans can watch MLG, Source fans can watch the CGS, and gaming fans with no particular allegiance might enjoy both for different reasons. It’s more like Cola vs. Lemonade.

To be honest, it’s not like this is a day-to-day issue. In fact, I’m not even sure it’s an issue with the fans as much as it is with people outside the gaming world. As far as I know, gamers don’t go around spouting hate or support for either league on a regular basis. But I cringe when I read some of the recent press, and it pits the two leagues against each other, at the very least through insinuation and sometimes directly, in a way that doesn’t seem to represent the current situation.

Down the road there might be a huge conflict between the two leagues. Maybe both add Counter-Strike 2, the MLG increases its TV presence, or something happens even sooner. But right now? There is no head-to-head battle like two wrestlers jockeying for the upper hand. There are just two companies taking two completely different approaches to the same problem: quenching people’s thirst for competitive gaming.

Basically, there’s a war going on right now that you might not know about. But that’s alright, because it’s only happening in a hypothetical place where the two leagues are vying for the same resources, not for the ultimate prize.