#comp crap

Old commission from 2 years ago for THEBILLDOZER, he wanted to make a poster for his RGL Season 3 6v6 team poster that was a recreation from The Birthday Boys' completely contemporary family meme but with six dads

twt mirror: here

Old promo art from the Lockdown Throwdown: Round 2 6v6 TF2 tourney back in September 2020 that was organized by PhoenixRed, an EU-based esports org involved in TF2, and hosted by KritzKast.

I’ve decided to step back from teamfortress.tv due to it interfering with some life crap for now. Work-wise, I haven’t done graphics and SFM for any TFTV events in a long time, and the last photography event I did for TFTV was for Rewind II in February. As it stands, that’s partially because a majority of LANs in the EU region (which is arguably where most broadcasted LANs happened) are headed by Essentials.TF. Since they have in-house SFM artists and other media people it seems redundant to bring on more. However, I might come back to TFTV or any org as staff in the future - for now I want to focus on my graphic design work, business ventures such as Ascent Esports, and animating some dumb ass SFM crap again for my comatose YT channel.

Unfortunately I’m also not going to i63 due to expenses and life crap. Rewind II and Copenhagen Games really ignited that LAN desire and so I really wanted to go to i63, but iSeries is an expensive LAN. That goes for non-Brits as well tbh based on what I’ve heard about rental costs etc. iSeries is absolutely worth it IMO; if you can afford to go you should. Myself personally I can’t nor is it a great time to. Speaking from a volunteer POV too, it’s more justifiable to hire an EU photographer (with their own gear, TFTV or Ready Up’s camera equipment has almost always been rented by sponsors or work partners) rather than crowdfund or sponsor an NA photographer to the UK. 

Often photographers/videographers who archive events are taken for granted. Right now and ever since, saving history is important, and I encourage people currently involved with LAN events or going to LANs to really absorb that. Remembering the good old days/good times helps with visual memories and archives. You’ll look back on those moments & memories fondly when things in life are tough, and when you remember those days with those people you cheered with, played with, and laughed with, you’ll smile and be glad you recorded it.

#My opinions since my Rewind 2017 post-LAN thoughts have changed a lot to the point where I don’t agree with past thinking or habits, but there’s a lot from then I’m still sentimental about. Even now I really do want to contribute to competitive TF2 behind-the-scenes, but I can’t right now; though charity events I’m invited to help like Hugs.tf and Tip of the Hats I would absolutely do my best to help out for. That being said, if you’re interested in volunteering because you want to help and/or you like competitive TF2, I encourage it! Of course there’s some unhealthy habits I would not encourage anymore such as trying to put the scene above your wellbeing; the scene will be here no matter what, and it’ll be there for you if you want to leave and come back.

TaiRong’s Twitter rant on why he left comp TF2 for comp OW cuts deep. His talk was very specific to AsiaFortress, but it’s a sentiment for many former TF2 pros and talent who prioritized OW. They wanted more than what TF2 was able to give them. In turn, what it gets interpreted as is a slight against TF2 and its community. 

I too, have also called brothers and sisters “traitors” at one point because I hated how not only they were leaving me, but then seemed to forget their roots. They didn’t owe me or TF2 anything. It’s not that they forgot their roots, it’s that the people who left are just as angry as the people who stayed. 

I will never forget Creep*, a prominent AsiaFortress player from Korea, telling me at i55 that he wanted to bring an Asian team to iSeries one day. In i58, that actually seemed like it would be the case, but the Asian players struggled to field a team for i58 because of a majority of their playerbase leaving for OW. When I reflect back on it, it would have been wasteful to collect who was left in Asia if the best players had left. Full Tilt and Crowns were the EU powerhouses, and even the weakest froyotech roster in LAN history would have probably beaten them. Australia still hurts from 4th Place LAN placements to this day.

Of course I would have liked to see Asia at a major international TF2 LAN, let alone South America or even Australia again. I hope they will get the funding they need if they decide to contest the powerhouses of Europe or North America, and I hope they will enjoy their experiences if they do so, as many TF2 players who fight for passion do. I wished the same for Australia when they came back for i58 and ESA Rewind, even though I knew the curse of 4th Place and the lack of monetary justification must have hurt a fair bit.

The fire/candle burning out metaphor is common in my scene. I’m saddened to hear about Pavane and TaiRong attempting to go through it all and fight hard after so many hours of dedication to TF2, but burning out or feeling helpless as so many others have done around me. I’m glad TaiRong asked Fl0w3r and Pine to follow him at the right time, and as such found more success in OW than they did TF2. It took me some time to accept it, but now I can say I think they made the right choice, as did so many others I saw succeed - Seagull, Muma, Mangachu. SDB, Knoxxx, Zebbosai. Some of the many old names and old faces that TF2 players remember fondly; that TF2 players miss.

I get rebuttals of how TF2 was marketed as a casual game a lot. I know this. It was one of the reasons why matchmaking was met with so much pushback when new devs finally were allowed to implement it. To some extent, I’m inclined to agree. My favourite shit to deal with has to be when I see comments that say that the competitive TF2 pros are ruining the game. That they should just leave and stop pushing competitive on a casual game.

Well...they did. 

After years of watching Valve to push the community’s 6v6, having to grow up and stop being a salt factory about my brothers and sisters going to OW instead, being paid for and thanked sincerely for my involvement in OW from Blizzard, never touching Valve’s Matchmaking since the first launch week until they adjust it again, and now overseeing what might be the most important piece of TF2 narrative in the form of 1 and a half years of filming - I’m okay with them leaving.

They left, because TF2 itself, as well as the majority of TF2′s playerbase, was insistent on TF2 being a casual game. Therefore, people who wanted more than that finally decided “alright, it’s going to stay a casual game” - and found a competitive game instead. Gameplay opinions, criticized business tactics, and other semantics aside - they found a game that did not limit itself to insisting on being a casual game, but wanted to also be called a competitive game.  

I am happy for TaiRong’s success and determination. I understand and sympathize with TaiRong’s anger and his frustration. I am happy he left TF2 if he was no longer happy with it. I can objectively say as a bigger TF2 fan that OW is treating him better so far. How long that will last, I don’t know, but I can 100% say it’s treated him better than AsiaFortress from his tweets and from what I know. Of course I’m sad that TF2 was not enough for him; I understand that his and many other’s anger is more at Valve than TF2 itself. I understand the other side of the story that disagree with that sentiment and will point out Valve’s decisions as wiser.

But that’s okay. I’m glad they left if they weren’t happy here. I’m glad they’re happier where they are.

I’m sure similar fandoms experience this: I see not just former pros, but content creators, artists, Youtubers, talking about how they fear returning to TF2 for anything. The reasons sometimes are similar: they’re afraid of angry TF2 fans who labelled them traitors. They’re afraid of falling back into the comfort TF2 will offer them rather than go out of their comfort zone to try new things for themselves. They’re afraid that they’ll fall back into a depressive state because they were either in a bad state when they ventured into TF2, or they simply will always want more than TF2 was or will be able to offer.

Let them leave then. They are not yours to keep. They were not meant to stay. Their relationship with TF2 was not as fond as you thought it was - who was wrong in that relationship is up to you. Their anger is not because they forgot their roots. Their anger iis not against the community. Some of their closest friends and teammates are all probably from the same roots. 

We did not forget their roots. They did not forget their roots. Their anger was because they couldn’t find what they wanted - so they found it elsewhere. And that’s okay.

WHAT’S THAT, FROYO WON ESEA AGAIN??? I COULDN’T HEAR IT OVER MY INSOMNIA-INDUCED INABILITY TO COMPREHEND COUNTING PAST SE7EN WON L A N

Honestly, I thought pubs would be their own thing too. To some extent, they still are, but the complaints about lack of vanilla servers are frustrating simply because people are too used to Quickplay rather than Server Browser. 

Also leaving penalties are ass. They are standard in most multiplayer games that are ranked but I’m glad Valve did something about them. It’s one of those things that very, very theoretically sound decisions that end up being very, very messy in execution. OW is still struggling with leaving penalties to this day, albeit I don’t think it’s as bad. 

Do not take this as “this event is cancelled because this staff member is depressed”. No events upcoming are being cancelled as far as I know. This is a rant, this is a ramble - an opinion piece, my thoughts, my fears, my weaknesses.

LANs are very important in terms of community spirit, not just a true test of player skill. They also require a lot of production: 

there’s cameramen, whether those who take photographs with theirs or those who fly out to focus on a player’s POV during the live game

there’s organizers and administrators, who work their asses off only to stand around and make sure everything’s going okay, trying to troubleshoot everything that will obey Murphy’s Law

there’s equipment: cables upon cables. MicroUSB, USB, adapter, HDMI, all these things I’m not sure I’m even familiar with

there’s external programs: the NodeCG programmer. The Cheat Feed relay. 

there’s casters whose voices dry out during their cast because they forgot to drink water. 

Every year or every era of competitive 6v6 TF2 from either Europe or North America, I watch a man - usually a figurehead in the scene during the time - blow at least four American digits to make a live TF2 event happen. I watch them lose all faith as community feedback, love and appreciation reaches deaf ears as they realize how deep in debt these events sent them in.

I watch as these men denounce competitive TF2 in their bitterness. I fear the people who will lash back at them, saying they didn’t ask to have quad digits invested into competitive TF2 and it’s their own fault - and yet, they fail to realize that the reason the high quality as well as the LAN itself exists is because of how much was invested from personal pockets. I fear for the other future frontmen or the ones who help them, their own anxieties about whether or not we’ll survive threatening to consume them whole.

I witness fundraisers - the solution, surely for a community-surviving tiny eSport - created to send production people from a continent over to another, only to barely make enough and it only is able to send one person. I watch the community react to heavy backlash at players who ask for some money to be sent over to a LAN, and I watch it bleed over into determining why X should go over Y, and what Y has done that X hasn’t that can benefit production more, breaking our unity.

I look at a stickybomb on somebody’s stream as they play the Matchmaking Beta, lag ever so slowly, 12 frames per second, as it descends towards the ground. I hear we’re not sure what’s going on with that anymore except those who might be in contact with Jill - who is probably swamped and stressed out just as much. I get excited when I see the official announcement in-servers for the Grand Finals - only to realize that while this might help our viewership, it doesn’t help us in a financial rut.

Sometimes, I hear of risky experiences with border patrol in terms of getting expensive streaming equipment through the country’s airport. I’ve been stopped once with a friend who was producing. They didn’t believe we were doing a TF2 Charity event. We had to go through 3 levels of border security before they let us through.

Other times, I watch organizers tear their hair out at people not signing up for something they spent hours investing advertising in, and the sponsors drop them. Sometimes I watch organizers waiting anxiously to see if the sponsors they spent weeks trying to pick up will call back - while other small sponsors drop TF2 or focus less on their TF2 teams in favour of CS:GO or LoL teams.

I watch other games that compare themselves to TF2 pop up, immediately with catering towards everything that the 6v6 crowd wanted, and players leave or disband their LAN teams to go play that game instead. Not by that rivalring company’s fault or that game’s fault, but because it shows more promise financially or personally more than the TF2 they want does. And when I hear “this game is going to kill TF2″ as a result of this, I’m tempted to re-correct them with the pessimistic: “no. Valve is going to kill TF2″.

I’ve used the candle analogy since the departure of one of the most positive faces for competitive TF2. I’ve watched so many candles that helped me light my own - albeit not one that leads the way as much as the frontmen right now - burn out so swiftly. I watch now as our current frontman struggles to keep his flame lit - find a reason to keep that flame lit - as a wind snuffs out one of his crewmembers’ flames. It was a crucial crewmember, not as in the front as the past frontmen but they did their part and spent their four digits.  

My scene is labelled, dismissed often, as people who are trying to hard. Desperate nerds who are trying to make a non-competitive game something it’s not, despite how TF2 at its core is a competitive game (two teams, one objective). An ignorance to how much this game means to these players, or how much it makes our players. An ignorance to how costly it all is. It’s hard sometimes, for both the non-competitive and competitive players. I know that the players from the scene I care about most are sometimes volatile. Sometimes, “it’s far worse in CS:GO/DOTA” just isn’t a good excuse. Sometimes, they say “I hope this scene dies and I hope these people who are involved in it get what they deserve”.

I am not the saviour of competitive TF2, nor will I ever be. I am not the frontman I wanted to be. There are people who have done more than I could ever do, spent more than I can ever make. They are the frontmen I have worked with, who I have looked up to. Whom I’ve watched suffer or fail to be noticed for whatever reason somebody may hold.

The community has been warm, kind. Cruel, cold. I look at people cheer. I look at players try their hardest. I look at the community who smiles upon us when we do good. Who frowns upon us when we make a mistake. Who rolls their eyes at us when it seems like we take ourselves too seriously. Who pray that people who are struggling with real life to still focus on donating money to video games and hope their kind words will be enough.

Competitive TF2 is a labour of love; a volunteer effort. I have watched literal blood, sweat and tears go into producing not just online but live events for it. My mother, a practical person and an immigrant to Canada, teaches me very traditional roles in terms of money and spousal partnership. “Money cannot buy love - but love will not pay your bills.” And now I watch money, the root of all evil, stay the root of all evil. I watch money make the world go round, and I watch as we don’t have enough money to send people around that round world. CS:GO, LoL, DOTA or SC2 players can. Small eSports - Rocket League, TF2?

To me, your thanks and your appreciation - it means the world to me. To my peers, I’m sure they appreciate yours too - but they’ve burnt out. Sure, new frontmen will come. They’ll also go, and I fear they’ll go just as bitterly as everybody else seems to be: realizing they can no longer overextend for greatness - keep live TF2 events going for players to compete in - because it’s not worth it. 

All I know for sure is that we hope Valve appreciates it as much as you guys do, because now the ball is in their hands once again. As anything with Valve and their infamous radio silence - we just hope they throw it back to us. For now - your kind words help for what they can do. Your candles are still lit. Keep it that way. Do not let me, or anybody else, put it out if you feel as strongly as you do for us, for the players, for the scene. Just understand this:

Live competitive TF2, is so expensive to produce.