A lot has been writen in the past two weeks about why or why CoD 2 might or might not become the next big shot in esports. Carmac referred to Enemy Territory as the game that has tried to become big and has failed.
When 5on5 was announced, it was motivated by the intention to help ET onto a new level. Everyone is constantly talking about more LAN events. All players eagerly await the next Quakecon. Yet ET is still as small as it has been since its release, the LANs are hosted by the community and no big tournaments have picked it up yet.
So what went wrong?
Let's start with the leagues. When the ESL announced its International Premiership with more prize money than any EuroCup has ever had, I expected a lot of signups and a fierce competition. Now, a few months later, all but four teams have dropped out of the final stage, leaving the remaining teams and the whole crowd out there without any more exciting matches to take place. The prize money will be distributed even though little skill was needed to place 3rd or 2nd now that so many teams left the competition. The first to drop out were sFx, one of those who were seen as idle's strongest challenger. FF followed because they rather play the only 5on5 event out there. vib readily accepted 5on5 and then had to resign as well when they realised they couldn't go on playing with a six man lineup.
Call me biased, I do not know how anyone in his right mind could just gamble away the (monetary) support of Europe's biggest league. With that first season coming to an end and half the teams gone on the way, what do you think the odds are that there will be a second one? Everyone should realize that prize money for a game requires a minimum of success and attention for that league. Yet the ET community goes around saying that the ESL sucks and that ClanBase and its EuroCup, out of purely nostalgic reasons, has more prestige and should therefore be more important, even without a single cent of prize money.
Players should realize that prestige might be a good thing for some, but it doesn't help ET at all. I am sure that the Liga4Fun has a lot of prestige among fun gamers, but that doesn't mean more money or more fans for ET. ClanBase has had ET tournaments for the last two years, were there LAN events? It should be obvious that CB alone is not enough, but it seems most of the community (especially the players) only want a single important online tournament and neglect everything the ESL does.
Which basically brings me to my second point. Without wanting to blow my own trumpet, ET is in a situation where I can get it on TV and therefore into the public spotlight. Things were and are different with shoutcasters, they just sign up for matches whenever they take place. With GIGA, we need fixed times and dates and can't show it before 23 CET. But where are aMenti, who wanted to be a big esports player, when it comes to these matches? Where are all the other big names? So far, helix was basically the only team which constantly agreed to play on GIGA - though it shouldn't have been necessary to convince them since they get money and a lot of attention for that. Are 40.000 viewers not enough to help ET? Are the countless questions I get regarding ET no indication of how interested even those who have never played it before are?
The means are there, yet nobody seems to be willing to make use of them. Players rather play two hours earlier or can under no circumstances play on Saturday - alcohol and stuff, you know.
Are big clans impressed by the number of news posts on Crossfire that were made for a certain team? Are they impressed by internal clashes about 5on5 or 6on6? Sponsors and big clans want publicity. ET could give it to them - by having several successful major online tournaments, by having every top team appear on TV for an audience of dozens of thousands. And it doesn't happen.
Is that how you want to make Enemy Territory a bigger esports game?
Mission failed.
When 5on5 was announced, it was motivated by the intention to help ET onto a new level. Everyone is constantly talking about more LAN events. All players eagerly await the next Quakecon. Yet ET is still as small as it has been since its release, the LANs are hosted by the community and no big tournaments have picked it up yet.
So what went wrong?
Let's start with the leagues. When the ESL announced its International Premiership with more prize money than any EuroCup has ever had, I expected a lot of signups and a fierce competition. Now, a few months later, all but four teams have dropped out of the final stage, leaving the remaining teams and the whole crowd out there without any more exciting matches to take place. The prize money will be distributed even though little skill was needed to place 3rd or 2nd now that so many teams left the competition. The first to drop out were sFx, one of those who were seen as idle's strongest challenger. FF followed because they rather play the only 5on5 event out there. vib readily accepted 5on5 and then had to resign as well when they realised they couldn't go on playing with a six man lineup.
Call me biased, I do not know how anyone in his right mind could just gamble away the (monetary) support of Europe's biggest league. With that first season coming to an end and half the teams gone on the way, what do you think the odds are that there will be a second one? Everyone should realize that prize money for a game requires a minimum of success and attention for that league. Yet the ET community goes around saying that the ESL sucks and that ClanBase and its EuroCup, out of purely nostalgic reasons, has more prestige and should therefore be more important, even without a single cent of prize money.
Players should realize that prestige might be a good thing for some, but it doesn't help ET at all. I am sure that the Liga4Fun has a lot of prestige among fun gamers, but that doesn't mean more money or more fans for ET. ClanBase has had ET tournaments for the last two years, were there LAN events? It should be obvious that CB alone is not enough, but it seems most of the community (especially the players) only want a single important online tournament and neglect everything the ESL does.
Which basically brings me to my second point. Without wanting to blow my own trumpet, ET is in a situation where I can get it on TV and therefore into the public spotlight. Things were and are different with shoutcasters, they just sign up for matches whenever they take place. With GIGA, we need fixed times and dates and can't show it before 23 CET. But where are aMenti, who wanted to be a big esports player, when it comes to these matches? Where are all the other big names? So far, helix was basically the only team which constantly agreed to play on GIGA - though it shouldn't have been necessary to convince them since they get money and a lot of attention for that. Are 40.000 viewers not enough to help ET? Are the countless questions I get regarding ET no indication of how interested even those who have never played it before are?
The means are there, yet nobody seems to be willing to make use of them. Players rather play two hours earlier or can under no circumstances play on Saturday - alcohol and stuff, you know.
Are big clans impressed by the number of news posts on Crossfire that were made for a certain team? Are they impressed by internal clashes about 5on5 or 6on6? Sponsors and big clans want publicity. ET could give it to them - by having several successful major online tournaments, by having every top team appear on TV for an audience of dozens of thousands. And it doesn't happen.
Is that how you want to make Enemy Territory a bigger esports game?
Mission failed.
The second part I totally agree with, although I do have to ask why GIGA can only provide coverage on saturdays at 23CET, of all times? That is probably the single least convenient time for players (well, maybe second after friday).
If u read last months comments on important threads, you should know its the 2nd thing about (sometimes) - prestige, not as opponent but as addition.
ignoring 5o5, but that makes it a fight ;)
<3
we just died, it has nothing to do with 5o5/6o6 :p
Let's be honests here, ET is free and that contributes to a low average age in the community and by being free didn't atract the sponsors and the people that could take ET to the big leagues and that's when the mission failed. Now do you a expect a 18/19/20... years old guy to give up a very big part of his life to improve his game and to become "pro" in a game that as no future ? well there some and they are the one's who are keeping this game alive but that can't last forever.. the younger ones will replace the old ones who will leave ET and that repeats trough the ET story.. So.. the ones that can take ET to a better level are leaving because they see no future in ET when they reach the top.. that is a vicious cycle wich unfortunatly we can't break...
Maybe the new rtcw can break that cycle and go to a biger level.. maybe it will not be anything like ET and people will hate it.. or maybe it will never be released for PC atleast.. and that's something that people need to realise and start to think more about ET and how to improve it, but that lead us again to age questions and resposabilty questions that i have already stated.
Sorry for my "bad" english..
And games that for adults are only allowed to be shown after 23CET
It's great that we had the IPS, but the conduct & opportunism from people surrounded with sours the taste.
You're also overstating the prize money. It's 560€ for winning + 20€ per win - which is nice pocket money but not much more. And since prize money for online competition is fairly trivial you can't really blame the lack of interest....you can't buy prestige. It'd be sad if ESL cut & run, but it's only their first season you can't expect the world?
Regarding GIGA, it is great exposure. But you can't fault people that have other things to do, it's hardly the perfect hour from what is a relativly small userbase. How much do they get paid? o0
Normally we should divide the 1500 € between the best three teams, as all other ESL IPS Tournaments do it either. But we (ESL ET Admins) decided to change the system completly. We tried to offer all teams an incentive to play their matches, because we knew about the ET problematic with dropouts and forfeit wins (CB EuroCups, Warleagues, previous ESL Cups, ... ).
And if, as FDJ already mentioned, ET should be not part of the next ESL IPS Season, it's not the fault of ESL ET Admins. Especially chosen made a brilliant job - which was honoured already by the ESL. All ET wannabe "pro" teams and players should then ask themselves if they are happy to pass up this golden opportunity. ESL can offer all a lot, the 12500 € prizemoney for all IPS tournaments where surely not the maximum. But if ET topteams cannot show the needed professionalism for a prizemoeny like this and further tournaments, the ESL can switch very fast to other games who might better represent the standard the ESL stands for.
I still think the esl site needs a bit (lot) of work..
so pls describe me whats ur problem with it (rly dunno :( )
the problem is that you grew up with cb page and as we all know, everything new is for most of the people - and you at this point aswell - difficult. you just have to surf some time on the page and you'll see all advantages of the esl site.
Navigating to the right tourney page in the ESL site is horrendous, but the CB site isn't much better.
CB in general is a lot better at presenting what is going on in each competition - ESL has seperate pages for the grid, upcoming games, and for larger tournaments requires multiple entirely seperate section (for example IPS first/final stages), which makes navigation complex.
ESL pages in general appear to be a lot less customisable by the admins - the right hand side bar for cups on CB is entirely customisable, so you can put important and useful links and information in an easily accessible place and link across to other relevant competitions.
The ESL front page looks a lot better, and the site design in general is far better than CB.
The clan details and info is better presented and more useful at ESL compared to CB, and player info is also better.
From my experiences scheduling games is a lot more confusing on ESL, but that may have just been lack of experience. CB gives a few more options in this respect, I think, but neither really get anywhere close to just talking to opponents on irc...
Team management on ESL is easier than on CB, on CB the clan management functions are sometimes a bit buried in menus.
But that's enough comparison - both leagues have failings from a design and structure point of view, but they both work and provide great competitions.
I just wanted to say that ESL site has many advantages and is not as bad as I have to read it daily here on xfire. The page offers many functions and is upgraded day by day, but a lot of them are just unnecessary for normal users and the every daylife of an eSports league (the page changes more and more to a community page or as you can hear it often by TE to "the biggest eSport platform of the world")
Without a doubt, CB site is constructed different and offers also many things. You probably wont believe it, but I can tell you some aspects of CB site I miss at ESL or which CB made better.
Let's concentrate on your last sentence :)
This post will self-nuke in 20 seconds.
I hate to rain on your parade here but ET was around long before Turtle started coming into the spotlight, ET failed to make it to the level of CS, WC, SC & Quake for the same reasons RTCW failed, for the same reasons SoF failed, MOHAA failed every first person shooter series that came along after CounterStrike, not because of anything ESL or GIGA have attemptd, because lets face it, if it was going to make it, it would have happened LONG before the days ESL and GIGA started showing an interest.
Whilst every german out there will support ESL and GIGA till their dieing breath, I hope they'll realise that it is the closed minded approach that this article puts forward that is the biggest obstacle that company will ever face in competing with Clanbase. Because if they ever overcame it, Clanbase would die the next day.
but im german and i wouldn't defend them until my last breath tbh. they make BIG mistake like clanbase too. But FDJ can't attack his Boss ( ;) would be a bad idea ).
example of turtle entertainement / ESL failure:
see the pro-Gaming case in CS.
and pls admins whom do what they get failed for, even if it's not true make a BIG mistake too.
ESL, CB , GIGA = ALL NOT PERFECT.
Look at soccer. When the leagues where young, RLY big mistakes are made. You just have to learn and do better in future ( RTCW2).
i'll just say an actual irl case with "league failing":
NHL/STANLEY CUP: Biggest and most important hockey league / CUP existing for icehockey. Big mistakes were made in the beginning ( jury decisions, bad rules etc )
but in the EHL ( Responsable for all european leagues ) they haven't done this mistakes because they came 50 years later.
so why don't cb and esl just don't learn from each other ?
atleast in the domain of et :<
it would save the game.
So you blame the 5on5 even tho you never supported it.
And also the whine about the clans not acting professional, the organisations should first look at themself and act professional, for example the 5on5 thing what was intended to increase the chances for lans but caused so much whine about nothing that it just damaged ET and now we need to repair it again.
Try to setup a structure first with all organisations to get ET in the spotlight and get lans for it. If that goes allright then you can start competing against eachother. It's stupid to compete if there's nothing to compete about.
But i guess we lost the battle already since COD2 will win it.
Just gg to all the retards that wanted 6on6 because it just felt right.
And also gg for ESL for owning themself.
As last i say gn and happy flame time.
retard
Why can't you show replays if the timing of matches is the main issue? You say that there is interest from those who don't even play the game, so it's not like they won't watch because they've already heard the result.
Many sporting events are shown on a delay.
Global Config please.
here the page: http://www.usk.de/
in german :/
:P
I think the scene is changing, just give it some time and we might see ET in the spotlights
ye more and more retards becoming good and playing on a representative high level
There are also TV shows covering X sport that have a regular timeslot in which they show the best game of that week. Obviously there won't always be live games, but once again that's not an issue.
If you decided to show ET on a Sat night @ x time each week then fans would get used to that timeslot. If there was to be no match on that night at the specified time, or the match to be played was an average one, it makes sense to show a replay of a better match.
Using replays you can actually ensure you are actually showing entertaiing matches, which is always good. Anyhow just my views =)
And on the one hand of the failings with ESL and GIGA, I could bore you with a list of how in my experience this has been ET's most prosperous year for exposure of its comp community.
Please remember ET's age, it was released before CoD1
You have to break things down as follows, ET is a free game, thus the market of players are very very different. Alot of players, expecially in main servers, are people playing games for the first time. They don't care about ESL, GTV, CB, CF, etc. but more or less how to strafe, or how to shoot a mortar, etc.
The next area would be the fact that ET is an older game, with the same problems that RtCW has. Deathmatch is something you here seldum in this community; but it's a revolving revenue for companies. Games like Counter Strike and Quake have alterior objectives, some even used in tournament play, but they are not the primary objective. You can't win an ET match by playing deathmatch, and while I feel playing as a team, with an objective mindstate, alot of players enjoy games that require more concentration on aim, and less on working as a whole.
Anouther area would be the fact that you are seeing forfiets, dropouts, etc. Alot of these problems are un-avoidable; but some of the problems have been stated here. The time issue with GIGA would be one, while as it doesn't directly relate to teams attendance, some teams might feel more oblidged to play if they would work with times, etc.
I'm an American, and truthfully your side of the pond has it great, in the area of RtCW and ET. In the states the amount of RtCW OSP servers is slim, with no actual pubs happening. I see rTg fill up every day, while our equivalent }-{ell's Gate sees half of it's slots filled once a month. ET is probably in an even more damaged state, suprisingly, with only a handful of pubs around and seldum do they fill up, and; with the age comparison, ET is quite farther downward than RtCW was at the same slot in the timeline. ET and RtCW are soley supported by TWL, a league who has had it's problems with players, teams, etc. in the past and really has some, if not a large amount, of the community not wanting to play for them. I'm just pointing this out, as seeing ET tournaments, online events, and LANs being worked on, aswell as an active site and community, is so far off from what ET has been like in the US, for a long time.
Like I said above, I'm American, so I don't know the whos whos about the community; through Battle For Berlin I've become aquantinces with quite a few community members, from RtCW and from both games, but I can't say who is doing what as far as whining, etc. :)
I can't really recommend a whole lot, as the game is on it's final lap; with newer games and cheaper alternatives with more results coming out in the future, the communities that are not headstrong for one goal, and one goal alone, aswell as a community intent on showing professionalism and attend tournaments, LANs, etc. isn't going to thrive with such rich and new and freely sponsored games coming through the woodwork.
But... You can't force people to be what you want. I know I'd personally like to take Qcon 02 RtCW scene and immortalize it as what it would be forever, but it's not going to happen. Teams come and go, players fade away, and people loose the will to support the game. The only real thing you can do is listen, listen to the people who are playing the game, and understand that people want something that represents them; so find people in the community who are compitent and knowledable to lead the community in the right direction.
In the end, it's up to the players and teams as a whole to make ET a game that rivals CS, or not, but I feel the community ( US or otherwise ) has spoken, and the game is on the same road as RtCW, while it be free, you are guarenteed pubs and games for alot longer, but the competition is dying off, and the support from leagues, tournaments, and companies who see nothing in the future of ET, will vanish.
It's not easy being in the role of an admin apart of a community who wants something, but can't really put forth the effort in their own right to attain it, even when it's handed to them. That is where you choose, to support a community who isn't going to achieve the goal you've set, or to realise that you can't control a community and to do what you wish; but don't expect things to turn out wonderful or for a revival of an old game to magically happen.
Long rant, have fun hating me and such, gnite :)
- Mortal
One thing I found strange is that you say ET is in a worse state than RTCW. Over in Australia ET still has a decent pub scene, but RTCW has long been dead and buried.
I don't find ET noobish, I find it to be inferior to RtCW - but so do alot of current ET players, RtCW isn't in a state to do anything other than satisfy the diehard fans - where as ET has a bigger fanbase because it is newer, and is free.
too many leagues could just ruin the game when you dilute something too much you get nothing. but just CB ( or any other one ) holding all the powers is just as foolish. we saw it with the 5/5, too much power is double edged.
i kinda like the fact that there is not only the clanwar cfg on servers. and like fdj it s not about spiting on CB. we are all thanksfull for what they did and are still doing. but i surelly prefer a world where i can choose between coca and pepsy. for all the reasons you can imagine, change, freedom, challenge between both etc etc ...
i mostly agree with fdj on everything, but i believe there is in the ET community another major problem preventing any evolution. how many peeps play ET, how many aren' t low?
there is absolutly nothing done to give a chance to low players to learn something. in france we got something great, the best clans ( i wont say they re good but it s our best :'( ) just refuse to play with fr teams cause they re lowskillerzzzz. isn t it marvelous? like this any other low clan plays between low skill and this is how you come to get low team pretending to be med/med+ . ignorance aint no fucking blessing!!!! and you cant expect a game to get skilled with loads of good teams when there are no teacher. ( ettv is cool, but when you see low skilled teams who dont even know what /kill is for, trying to play on idle tactics, you realise it s far from enough)
there are many great guys spending time for the community, the same way get something starting with good players spending time with low clans and giving a 1 hour prac with tips and advices. this would do more for ET than any cup league or cash prize
It might also give you the possibility of doing some editing to make it more exciting.
And, thanks to ETTV, ET may have recording/replay abilities that puts it ahead of other games.
And i agree on the part that its really strange that a CB eurocup has more activity than the esl league, i think its strange that people dont accept it when ESL is reaching out 2 help the community. I mean who cares which company organizes the tournament as long as u get paid and everything is arranged properly.
Ppl whining about ET being a free game, i think cs started as a mod so thats a really strange argument.
I would also like 2 say that sum ppl should learn 2 appreciate the effort that sum ppl put into this game 2 make it big.
if theres a will, theres a way. but it seems like, ET is not worth enough to make compromises.