Hi there, my name is Nicolas "suNset" De Waele (also known as Dev) and I'd like to give you my point of view on the following subject:

"What’s going on with the Belgian Counter-Strike scene?"

Well, you can obviously divide it into two parts:
The diehard 1.6 community, who continue to play the good old gameplay, and the Source lovers, who enjoy playing Counter-Strike with better graphics.

As I've noticed lately, many 1.6 clans start to move onto Source here in Belgium.
There are many reasons to explain this:
1) Source is new, fresh and looks awesome. It’s a fact, CS:S looks awesome, and almost every bug has been removed since its launch date.
2) Source is supported by lots of leagues and cups. Belgian clans can sign up for professionally organised leagues, such as CAL. It’s also very successful at LAN-parties.

So basically, the Counter-Strike community is totally divided.

Another problem we have, is finding sponsors.
It’s extremely hard to find a good sponsor in this country, because non-gamers consider gaming as something childish and don’t look at it as something professional.
Sponsors just don’t see a future in professional gaming.
While in countries as Korea, gamers are considered as heroes, here we’re all considered as nerds or geeks..

Sponsorship is also one of the major reasons why good clans give up so fast.
I know we have very talented players here in Belgium, but we just don’t get the chance to prove ourselves, due to lack of sponsors.

Maybe I should move to Sweden…

suNset.