L'Italia magnifica? - Bcrbo Column

I reached the Alps: the soul within me burned,
Italia, my Italia, at thy name:

And when from out the mountain's heart I came
And saw the land for which my life had yearned,
I laughed as one who some great prize had earned:
And musing on the marvel of thy fame
I watched the day, till marked with wounds of flame
The turquoise sky to burnished gold was turned.

The pine-trees waved as waves a woman's hair,
And in the orchards every twining spray
Was breaking into flakes of blossoming foam:
But when I knew that far away at Rome
In evil bonds a second Peter lay,
I wept to see the land so very fair.
(c) Oscar Wilde

The sun was shiny, the temperature was fair and the eSports community was flocking around in Lignano Sabbiadoro, Italy for exciting prize purses and a multitude of games for us to follow. On top of that, an all-star shoutcasting crew of QuadV would package it all in a sparkly box with a nice ribbon around it.

The concept and idea behind the Ultimate Gaming Championship all stem from the perspective of gamers, not high-end production offices or rad product sponsors who want a glittering show. No, it was the objective and goal of Alessandro "Stermy" Avallone, create a LAN event where the participating gamers and hopeful gamers at home are at the centre of attention and walk away from Italy with a feeling of being treated well.

With a mixture of attractive and fast-paced Console titles as well as some of the more known PC eSports titles, the tournament was set to commence with six games and six tournaments of the world's best players. Yet for some reason, that plan did not come to fruition in its fullest. There were several tournaments and communities that responded inadequately. Especially the big, our big Call of Duty 4 let lie this event by its wayside and decided to somehow not attend.

I wonder why. Was it a disliking of the venue, a problem with the date or was it bad advertising that let this event slip under Call of Duty 4's fingers? Being organized by Alessandro "Stermy" Avallone and him being at the forefront to promote the event, it could hardly have been a disliking to the set-up or the credibility of the event. Should it prove to be so, the Italian star gamer would lose his well-built up reputation in eSports forever and still being a semi-active Quake player, he cannot afford to do so.

The date, although announced a bit late, should not have caused too many problems. The problem more lied in the fact that out of the current TOP 10 teams, there are plenty who have finally managed to secure a strong support base, but only recently so and would prefer to either build up their savings for the strong Summer LANs that are approaching or just not feeling ready yet for a big event.

OX.Enermax posing with their first place finish

You have TCM-Gaming who have had some line-up problems in March, Fnatic who are semi-inactive and still recovering from their thorough line-up shifts, Anexis eSports who were going out of aNimus-Gaming and into Anexis eSports. Then there was the collapse of RG-Esports, the controversy surrounding the suXus organisation deal, the inability of the only just now LowLandLions to find themselves a new organisation. The French Team MondialServers, Czech eSuba and Finnish YoYoTech will not want to spend their carefully collected and mapped out LAN budgets on an event that costs a lot and came quite early, meaning they would perhaps have to opt out of either Antwerp Esports Festival or the-eXperience '11 later this year.

These are just a number of examples of why we saw literally not one of the game's truly best teams attending the event and travelling down to Lignano Sabbiadoro. Moreover, the tournament was at all not supported by the local community either, as the regional exposure and location was quite well for other teams to travel there. Sure, the Italians had only just had an event, with the Italian RedByte tournament paying out just as much as the Ultimate Gaming Championship and with arguably less international competition, served as the main hub or event for the Italian community, mostly teams who have very small budgets and paid most of the costs out of their own pockets.

Although unfortunate, it is understandable that a small Call of Duty 4 country, in comparison to the traditional ones, such as Italy could not afford to handle two big events. This still left teams from Croatia, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Greece who were relatively close to the event but decided not to show up, except for the fofos.sk team. It was therefore, personally to me, quite disappointing to learn that the Ultimate Gaming Championship was reduced to nothing more than the Littlest Gaming Championship in terms of Call of Duty 4.

Having spoken to the man behind the whole event himself, he had included Call of Duty 4 on personal request because he is a big fan of the game, playing it with friends quite often and just liking it more than other FPS team games. Finally having found one of the truly great eSports Maecenas who has a foot up in the big league and also happens to be a big fan of our game, it seems tempting fate a bit by choosing to ignore his event. Although I think it was more the case of having really bad luck in terms of when the event was planned, as it was just a month for the top tier teams where they were all having some sort of problem, still shifting around the line-up or desperately trying to secure some support for the months coming.

Main challengers, Team RedByte, could not cut it in the end...

With more Ultimate Gaming Championships planned for the future, there are some things that can definitely be improved on either side, to maintain a healthy relationship. First, the UGC should do well to announce its event, with TUP information, at least one month earlier and perhaps try to find out beforehand by asking top teams personally what dates they could potentially attend. Likewise, the Call of Duty 4 community should try and at least put in an honest effort to attend this event, as we cannot afford to pass up this opportunity and it could, should it become a yearly thing, end up being a good event for the teams who want to play all year round and not just for the Summer events.

So I would like to conclude this event by offering apologies to Stermy in the name of our community, because we did not give him the best his event deserved and a congratulations to the six teams who did show up and played their hearts out. You gave us some entertaining matches in the end.