All Eyes on Enschede - Bcrbo's Column

With almost the entire eSports community focused on the events happening over at Hannover, Germany with the culmination of the IEM World Championship Finals, we, as a niche community, had our eyes set on an entirely different location. Enschede has been a loyal home to the Call of Duty community in the past and expectations were high as the Crossfire Intel Challenge drew closer, with a total of 46 teams all making the trip to this town close to the Dutch-German border.

I dropped by on Saturday (traditionally the most freak results happen then with last group results as well as initial playoff matches) and wrote down some of my findings of this Debutant-ball like event:

Internet =/= LAN

It has been said countless times and this event made it all the more clear, you need to be able to convert your performance online to the estranged and alienated setting of LAN, learning to play under pressure, with people watching and with standardized settings. With Crossfire utilizing an online seeding tournament to determine how the groups will be formed, we ended up with 8 teams who had been doing their thing in past months and who now had to prove to themselves and others that they could rinse and repeat in no matter what surroundings.

1. Fnatic	Group 2		9-16. NCE.I3D	Group 1
2. Reason Gaming	Group 1		9-16. Loaded	Unseeded
3. Power Gaming	Group 1		9-16. corgz	Group 2
4. iNFiNiTY*SKiLLS	Group 1		9-16. eSuba	Unseeded
5-8. SPEED-LINK	Group 2		9-16. TLR	Group 1
5-8. Hostile Faction	Unseeded		9-16. Team Dignitas	Group 1
5-8. H2k Gaming	Group 1		9-16. PGS	Group 2
5-8. YoYoTech	Group 1		9-16. Team Impact	Unseeded

In hindsight, we ended up with 3 teams in the top 8 of the tournament who had not been given a top seed (placing amongst the very first 8 of the seeding tournament would grant you a top seed).  When looking beyond that, a total of four teams managed to do way better than their online performance and sneaked into the top 16, even though statistically they should not have been able to (given that every team performs as the seeding system indicates).

Especially Fnatic took away all doubt that had snuck up on them prior to the event and their decision to pick up Norwegian pride  Daniel “zEnith” Johansson by finishing first from an unsuspecting mid-tier seed. Weirdly enough, they had to concede a loss to their eventual co-finalists, Reason Gaming, but with the combined effort of each member within the line-up, they made it all the more exciting in crunch time and finished Reason Gaming off in an amazing three-mapper.

Fnatic with their deserved cheque

American invasion?

It is not an easy thing to do and for most a pure dream, having the opportunity to cross the Atlantic to fight on a LAN for a mere couple of thousands and somehow always end up being the representation of the continent you stem from, as if there is a virtual war being waged between the United States and Europe. This basically meant that all Americans who were following the happenings in Enschede would rest their hope on those five individuals of Loaded Gaming and that puts them under quite a lot of pressure, pressure to perform and most of all, pressure of not letting their fellow countrymen down, showing all of them as well as all of us that there is still an American hunger to win.

As an added bonus, they had to forfeit in the seeding tournament as playing with 300-400 ping in matches is uncomfortable to both them as their opponents. This put them in a group with definitely one if not two very strong opponents. Versus Power Gaming they did show quite a bit of promise and did well, but were at no stage really so threatening or so overwhelmingly good that everyone suddenly started tipping them as the potential victors, in favour of a Fnatic or a Reason Gaming. But hey, it could be they were just warming up, that they needed a bit of time to get in the thick of things, to find their groove as all those Hollywood movies put it so nicely.

Unfortunately, it was not to be, they were put on the relatively easier side of the bracket but still could not muster a needed win, a win that would cement their chances at an upset. But no, it was not to be. It came down to a close three-mapper versus iNFiNiTY*SKiLLS,  but in hindsight, one would feel the Americans should have closed that match out, if they were to really have a shot at finishing top three in Europe.

Onliners no more

This brings me to my next point. With such a multitude of teams making the journey, there were bound to be several who had a streak of online about them, who had to, more than others, prove themselves in the heat of things. And in the final 8, we find three of them who have done so, who entered this event as underdogs and who really showed us that there is a possible future where our current top teams will no longer reign sovereignly. iNFiNiTY*SKiLLS  and Hostile Faction showed us that there is still hope for the younger and fresh new teams out there, that your first event does not automatically need to be doomed.

Both of them did well and managed to finish at a spot way better than anyone, realistically, would have attributed to them just a couple of weeks ago. And what does this show us? It shows us that all these teams need is to visit a couple of more LANs, to gain the necessary experience to follow through on their potential and show us they can not only play the way they can online, but can even reach beyond that and pick up a win versus the really top teams. If we have a look at the results, we see that Fnatic needed only two maps to beat both of them but the difference was so close that no more than 2 or 3 rounds a map separated them, and Hostile Faction was even in a comfortable lead on both maps but could not finish the Swedes off.

Had either of them beaten the classic Swedes, they would have definitely made a lasting mark on the Call of Duty 4 scene. However, that might have been asking too much from such young (in terms of LANs attended) teams. We, as a community, will be expecting similar results at the SteelSeries eSports Challenge in May and if they deliver, 2010 will not only have become the year of Call of Duty revival but ensure a future of fresh and young talents to eventually take over from the current top teams (as that is the way it goes in eSports, the old get beaten and slowly disappear from the scene).

German Hope?

In total, five German teams attended the Crossfire Intel Challenge 7, which was to be expected from such a huge Call of Duty nation and being located “close enough”. However, out of those five, only one progressed to the Playoffs. 2 ended in third place, 1 in 4th and 1 in 5th. From such a huge Call of Duty nation, you would expect to see a little more competition right? To be fair, out of those five, only two were considered to be real top teams and were considered to have a realistic shot at advancing past their groups.

SPEED-LINK energetic after winning another round

Unfortunately, each time mTw attends a LAN they go home with more questions raised than answered and this time around, it is no different. Granted, one of the surprises of the tournament, Hostile Faction was in their group and went on to do magnificent things, but you would never have guessed the result to be a 05 to 13 right? What is the deal with them, they have attended numerous LANs now and although it is quite obvious, in my eyes, that none of them use illegal settings, they somehow cannot bring the same form they have online to LAN. And why is that? Is it motivation, is it confusion? They are a mix of both young and old teams, but perhaps they suffer from the German curse, perhaps overestimating their own abilities a bit mixed with the inability to change the way they play mid-game. Having quite a bit of experience with the Sauerkrauten style of play, things tend to be practiced quite rigidly and the really good teams will always leave enough room in their game plan for improvisation.

There is a big but though, there is a shimmer of hope in the German scene. SPEED-LINK, of course SPEED-LINK! Having housed the most (and only) successful Call of Duty 2 team, home to legendary players such as Trigger and Fuchsstute, the team has had awful experiences when it comes to Call of Duty 4. These now seem to be Dead And Gone (hello generic pop reference) with the results of their current team. The boys around Kevin “reflexzR” Klempera, the best German player right now, did well, did very well even. Making hardly any mistakes during the groups, being close to beating YoYoTech in another Gallo-German war, they completely destroyed the highly anticipated team around Adam “vanner” Vanner. A close three-mapper ensued versus the other surprise, iNFiNiTY*SKiLLS , and unfortunately they had to accept defeat and saw them finish in 5-8th position, a beautiful result.

So, all in all, there is hope for the German scene, but also hope for the Call of Duty community in general. It has shown to be resourceful, united and eager to continue on. We have been given a chance by Stuart “TosspoT” Saw and the rest of his Crossfire crew and grasped it bi-handedly and with the results and atmosphere at the event itself, Call of Duty seems to have a bright future after all.

Our next community hurdle is the SteelSeries Esport Challenge, organized by eSports Open, and if we can assemble a total of 32 teams under two months, we should really be looking back at 2010 with a smile. Keep it up is what I’d say.