Don't you sometimes wish that you could take a look at the world as it would be had you never been born? Or how everything would have turned out had you done something differently.
Just 23 days before QuakeCon 2006 opened its doors someone from their organisation sat at the computer and typed in a press release informing the awaiting gaming community about the official competitions at the event. Enemy Territory was on that list. And against absolutely all odds three european teams took the trip to Dallas and made it an interesting event.
I wonder if this person who released the information realizes that had he or she pushed the task of writing the press release aside for a few more days or perhaps just for a couple of hours - everything could have been completely different. I would most likely not be writing this right now because there simply wouldn't be anything to write about.
No. This column is not about philosophy or what could have been or should have been. It is about the fragility of Enemy Territory as a competitive game. The game and its community barely dodged a bullet this summer. And look at where we are now.
It is been just 8 months since the press release I mentioned earlier. In those 8 months ET has had more LAN tournaments than ever before. At least such LAN tournaments that mattered something for the community. QuakeCon 2006 itself, Crossfire PrizeFight Challenge, Poznan Game Arena, SHG Open 2007 are just the biggest names from the past months.
In addition to these LAN tournaments ET has been finally given a lot more recognition from the ESL. The ESL International Premiership Series had a prize pool of 1500 euros, which would have been the highlight of almost any other 8 month period in Enemy Territory history. Clanbase continues to host EuroCups for ET and whether or not there is another one coming our way is a lot less uncertain than it was less than a year ago.
Furthermore, the organisations that pick up Enemy Territory divisions are no longer only known for just the ET players. Nope, still no mousesports, no Schroet Kommando or Fnatic. But let us not get ahead of ourselves, one step at a time. I am incredibly happy that Dignitas decided to pick up the former idle.ee team. I have utmost respect for the organisation and they are definitely suitable to host the unarguably best team this game has ever seen.
And have you noticed? Crossfire is no longer the only website with more than 100 daily visitors that covers enemy territory events. GGL, GotFrag?, esreality and even readmore.de all have written about or mentioned Enemy Territory during those last 8 months. Such recognition hasn't been there since the golden days of RTCW.
Maybe it is because I have not been that actively involved in ET those past months as I perhaps once was, but I can not really recall any huge star caliber players leaving the scene, but I do recall quite a few legendary players returning and if rumours are true there are more to be announced. Quite a few of the parodia players have returned. Or what about zeropoint and their three austrian oldschoolers. KiH has been at almost every LAN event. The game is doing so good that people are actually coming back. Who could have seen this one coming?
There are two things that have surprised me the most during this period. First off the fact that european teams actually attend the LAN events in europe. I remember talking to Mr. Stuart Saw about the Crossfire LAN events a few months ago and I remember telling him that he should rather focus more on one single event than host more events. I was afraid that the interest about CPC1 was a one time thing, because afterall this was the first European LAN event since Optihack early in 2005 and that teams could not afford to travel more than once a year. I am so glad I was wrong. The E-drama that followed after TosspoT and friends team managed to book the vacancy left by the swedish rewind team for CPC1. The fact that the PGA LAN event required online qualifiers, a rather surprising amount of teams attending the SHG Open and the fact that 16 ET spots for CPC2 is still by far not enough shows that Enemy Territory is more alive than it has ever been.
The other thing that really surprised me was that the 2000 euro LAN event in France ET Fragland 3 managed to go so unnoticed that it didn't even make the front page on crossfire.nu. Can you imagine ANY other time in Enemy Territory history when this could have been possible? Is Enemy Territory perhaps too alive for the community to handle?
I dare say, had everything not worked out and had Team Crossfire, idle.ee and KiH not attended QuakeCon 2006, then even the biggest believers would have a tough time seeing a bright light at the end of the tunnel and ET would indeed be dead. We dodged a bullet, but I feel that someone is loading a gun and is about to take aim again. That bullet might not necessarily kill the game, but it could hold it from going any further.
As I mentioned, different Enemy Territory teams have been finding their way to organisations that are actually able to support them. Be it with hardware or in best cases with at least partial monetary support for the teams to attend various LAN events. Everything seems to be great.
Here is where I ask you to name top ET teams that have been together for more than two months. If this trend continues and the organisations that actually invest money in ET get tired of throwing their money away the situation will never get any better. No decent organisation will ever be interested in sending a team to a LAN event only to see them disband or change four players in their line-up just 5 days later.
If ET were to lose the support of such organisations it would mean that less teams are able to attend LANs, which will mean that the LANs will be less interesting, which will result in less interest from global gaming websites to cover the Enemy territory events. The less exposure on such websites the less LAN organisers are interested in hosting ET tournaments, the less organisations will be interested in having ET teams and the less new sponsors will consider an Enemy Territory as a game worth investing in. It is a loop, and once you fall off of it, it will be really difficult to get back on.
Everything has grown in Enemy Territory during those last 8 months. The amount of LAN tournaments, prize purses of the LAN tournaments aswell as those of the online leagues and tournaments, the amount of global exposure has increased as has the number of actual organisations that back up Enemy Territory teams. But along with this the expectations for Enemy Territory and its players have grown aswell. Believe it or not - they are actually expected to give something in return: to not hurt the organisations image.
Enemy Territory has great tools to become a more popular game in the gaming world: A dedicated community, the crossfire.nu community website, amazing TV mod for the game and a great website (gamestv.org) to make using it even easier. If Enemy Territory can manage to keep on rising as a competitive game and can make sure that events like SHG Open or ESL IPS were not a one time thing, then these tools will greatly help new players get right into action and this will further improve the games chances of being featured at new tournaments.
Everything fell into place for us 8 months ago and as a result everyone else have taken a step closer to the Enemy Territory world. It is now up to the Enemy Territory world to decide if they take a step forward or backwards. Quo Vadis?
Just 23 days before QuakeCon 2006 opened its doors someone from their organisation sat at the computer and typed in a press release informing the awaiting gaming community about the official competitions at the event. Enemy Territory was on that list. And against absolutely all odds three european teams took the trip to Dallas and made it an interesting event.
I wonder if this person who released the information realizes that had he or she pushed the task of writing the press release aside for a few more days or perhaps just for a couple of hours - everything could have been completely different. I would most likely not be writing this right now because there simply wouldn't be anything to write about.
No. This column is not about philosophy or what could have been or should have been. It is about the fragility of Enemy Territory as a competitive game. The game and its community barely dodged a bullet this summer. And look at where we are now.
It is been just 8 months since the press release I mentioned earlier. In those 8 months ET has had more LAN tournaments than ever before. At least such LAN tournaments that mattered something for the community. QuakeCon 2006 itself, Crossfire PrizeFight Challenge, Poznan Game Arena, SHG Open 2007 are just the biggest names from the past months.
In addition to these LAN tournaments ET has been finally given a lot more recognition from the ESL. The ESL International Premiership Series had a prize pool of 1500 euros, which would have been the highlight of almost any other 8 month period in Enemy Territory history. Clanbase continues to host EuroCups for ET and whether or not there is another one coming our way is a lot less uncertain than it was less than a year ago.
Furthermore, the organisations that pick up Enemy Territory divisions are no longer only known for just the ET players. Nope, still no mousesports, no Schroet Kommando or Fnatic. But let us not get ahead of ourselves, one step at a time. I am incredibly happy that Dignitas decided to pick up the former idle.ee team. I have utmost respect for the organisation and they are definitely suitable to host the unarguably best team this game has ever seen.
And have you noticed? Crossfire is no longer the only website with more than 100 daily visitors that covers enemy territory events. GGL, GotFrag?, esreality and even readmore.de all have written about or mentioned Enemy Territory during those last 8 months. Such recognition hasn't been there since the golden days of RTCW.
Maybe it is because I have not been that actively involved in ET those past months as I perhaps once was, but I can not really recall any huge star caliber players leaving the scene, but I do recall quite a few legendary players returning and if rumours are true there are more to be announced. Quite a few of the parodia players have returned. Or what about zeropoint and their three austrian oldschoolers. KiH has been at almost every LAN event. The game is doing so good that people are actually coming back. Who could have seen this one coming?
There are two things that have surprised me the most during this period. First off the fact that european teams actually attend the LAN events in europe. I remember talking to Mr. Stuart Saw about the Crossfire LAN events a few months ago and I remember telling him that he should rather focus more on one single event than host more events. I was afraid that the interest about CPC1 was a one time thing, because afterall this was the first European LAN event since Optihack early in 2005 and that teams could not afford to travel more than once a year. I am so glad I was wrong. The E-drama that followed after TosspoT and friends team managed to book the vacancy left by the swedish rewind team for CPC1. The fact that the PGA LAN event required online qualifiers, a rather surprising amount of teams attending the SHG Open and the fact that 16 ET spots for CPC2 is still by far not enough shows that Enemy Territory is more alive than it has ever been.
The other thing that really surprised me was that the 2000 euro LAN event in France ET Fragland 3 managed to go so unnoticed that it didn't even make the front page on crossfire.nu. Can you imagine ANY other time in Enemy Territory history when this could have been possible? Is Enemy Territory perhaps too alive for the community to handle?
I dare say, had everything not worked out and had Team Crossfire, idle.ee and KiH not attended QuakeCon 2006, then even the biggest believers would have a tough time seeing a bright light at the end of the tunnel and ET would indeed be dead. We dodged a bullet, but I feel that someone is loading a gun and is about to take aim again. That bullet might not necessarily kill the game, but it could hold it from going any further.
As I mentioned, different Enemy Territory teams have been finding their way to organisations that are actually able to support them. Be it with hardware or in best cases with at least partial monetary support for the teams to attend various LAN events. Everything seems to be great.
Here is where I ask you to name top ET teams that have been together for more than two months. If this trend continues and the organisations that actually invest money in ET get tired of throwing their money away the situation will never get any better. No decent organisation will ever be interested in sending a team to a LAN event only to see them disband or change four players in their line-up just 5 days later.
If ET were to lose the support of such organisations it would mean that less teams are able to attend LANs, which will mean that the LANs will be less interesting, which will result in less interest from global gaming websites to cover the Enemy territory events. The less exposure on such websites the less LAN organisers are interested in hosting ET tournaments, the less organisations will be interested in having ET teams and the less new sponsors will consider an Enemy Territory as a game worth investing in. It is a loop, and once you fall off of it, it will be really difficult to get back on.
Everything has grown in Enemy Territory during those last 8 months. The amount of LAN tournaments, prize purses of the LAN tournaments aswell as those of the online leagues and tournaments, the amount of global exposure has increased as has the number of actual organisations that back up Enemy Territory teams. But along with this the expectations for Enemy Territory and its players have grown aswell. Believe it or not - they are actually expected to give something in return: to not hurt the organisations image.
Enemy Territory has great tools to become a more popular game in the gaming world: A dedicated community, the crossfire.nu community website, amazing TV mod for the game and a great website (gamestv.org) to make using it even easier. If Enemy Territory can manage to keep on rising as a competitive game and can make sure that events like SHG Open or ESL IPS were not a one time thing, then these tools will greatly help new players get right into action and this will further improve the games chances of being featured at new tournaments.
Everything fell into place for us 8 months ago and as a result everyone else have taken a step closer to the Enemy Territory world. It is now up to the Enemy Territory world to decide if they take a step forward or backwards. Quo Vadis?
ET is awesome.
Lans help
New maps help
Prizes help
Playerbase which is atleast stable, and better - increasing, is whats needed.
nice article
don't forget DJ and his work for Giga / Giga 2
I even start to like ET again :)
We can't know everything - that's why it's open for everyone :)
but yes... fucking cheaters, thats the biggest problem and i wonder why Crossfire Public server and pbguid system is not growing? Whats wrong?
Perfectus!
ET is one of VERY few freely-distributed games to get reasonable prize purses, it's normally the commercially released titles that attract large sponsorships and prize purses.
But very good read and atm I think wolf: et has a chance to get picked for Quakecon 07, depends on when et: qw is released. If et: qw is released after june 1st I bet there will be a wolf: et compo.
Nice reading..really nice.
Atleast it made me think more about one thing... the team im in now, AuXiliA supports us for the CPC2.. but noone will know if the team stay together after cpc2..
reading this, I will atleast do my best so that the team stick together.. if not, its as u say.. pretty useless for the sponsors to give more money at a later time when all the experience they get is that the teams keep falling apart..
We dont deserve a news tbh ;)
Take PGA as an example, Mit0s talked to us, not only did we run their qualifiers but we sent someone to their event for coverage off the money raised from the qualifier fee.
However more to the point, well written article hannes, maybe one day the villagers will forget your father.
As for the last sentence: I think it is rather good that I do not understand what you are trying to say :p
:D
its just another column saying how ET has growen the last months?
its getting boring..
(don't take it as an offense :p)
its just that this is another journal, written about the fact, that enemy territory is growing.
http://crossfire.nu/?x=column&mode=item&id=149
http://crossfire.nu/?x=column&mode=item&id=145