Opinion: The Cologne Major has ruined the second half of the year

How much hype can one event reasonably live up to?

The IEM Cologne Major was one of the most hyped events of all time by virtue of combining the two biggest events of the year into one, but there’s something of a diminishing return in terms of how much joy it actually brings.

Even if you considered the IEM Cologne Major a 10/10 event, you’re having to remove the July Cologne event from the calendar. Summer Cologne? The sun? Counter-Strike? Post-game beers by the river in 20 degree summer evenings?

My point is that by combining two of the best events of the year you don’t double the enjoyment of the single event, and you lose one of them. The second half of the season is completely ruined now, and it’s already a bit of a slog to get through.

No no, of course honey, I LOVE your FISSURE Playground 3 phase.

The outline of the year is simple, normally. You have IEM Katowice (or Krakow, because the game’s gone) at the end of Winter, the first Major in the Spring, Cologne in the summer and the second Major at the end of Autumn, start of Winter. It’s quite simple. Everything else matters, but it’s largely a warm-up for those four. Those are the ‘four seasons’ of Counter-Strike.

This year, we missed Summer. As an Englishman, I’m used to it, but I still don’t like it.

You’re supposed to have a warm-up event - you know, some nonsense that PARIVISION or Legacy win - before Krakow, and before Cologne, that really get the season started. This second half of the year just hasn’t really gotten started and a lot of that is because the big event that kicks it off simply doesn’t exist. We are treading water until the Major, and boy don’t the teams know it. karrigan hasn’t done anti-stratting since May. Vitality players are off having children (last December, apEX and mezii clearly saw the writing on the wall and started… well, do I have to draw you a diagram?). FURIA are barely bothering to exist.

MOUZ are still working their little socks off though, bless ‘em.

With no Cologne, we’re waiting until November for an IEM. What else are we supposed to care about? ESL Pro League, where the talent go for a holiday? PGL Bucharest is a big event, but the prestige simply isn’t there and it’s certainly not a favourite for attendees. DracuLAN?

One thing we don’t want is to become DOTA, and by that I mean we don’t want the Major to be the be all and end all, the only event really worth winning. The scarcely believable prize pool boasted by The International makes it way too important, and CS runs the risk of only having the Major that matters when they do this.

That’s not to say the other events don’t matter, they do - but you need that initial hype ramp-up that Cologne gives to get everyone interested. Right now, as a viewer, it still feels like we’re in that PARIVISION-winning-BLAST-events phase. It still feels like we’re in the Cologne waiting room. It feels like time is going really, really slowly.

I’d be far more excited for PGL Bucharest if it didn’t feel like the season didn’t matter. Cologne is too important an event to be ‘wasted’ as a Major, and the season has suffered because of it. Things are going to kick up a notch by November, and October looks like it could be fun, but it all just feels like an audition for the real event.

The Cologne Major was great. One of the best events of the last few years, bar the whole NiKo getting his Major thing. It just wasn’t worth losing Cologne from the start of the second half of the year.

We stole happiness from the second season for the first, and now we’re just hungover.