The problem with ideas – why G7 & TCA failed - The G7
Posted by Steven dfb Leunens on 2009-05-19 17:20:26
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Let us first take a look at the oldest of the two organizations I would like to discuss with this article. The G7 was announced and launched April 26th 2006. Here is the official information you can find on their website:
Mission Statement of G7:
The G7 teams have been formed to promote the cooperation, and unity between professional electronic sports (e-sports) teams.
G7 aims to: * Improve and represent e-sports in all its aspects, as well as provide a platform for stability for member teams * Provide a communication channel for the community to improve e-sports, through the unification of teams * Strive to achieve the following; cooperate with leagues and tournament organizers, standardize player transfers amongst teams, represent stability for players signed to member teams, provide a professional, information based website about e-sports
G7 will be very active in the gaming community i.e. giving our feedback on rules and regulations for various tournaments, support serious and professional companies arranging tournaments e.g. in which prize money are allowed to be paid out on time, that equipment for matches is of a high standard making the matches as competitive and fair as possible
G7 will raise the voice of the member teams, as well as support tournament organizers to make competitions and tournaments as professional as possible with the highest possible level of achievement. Our ambition is that teams, sponsors as well as all fans and spectators shall without any doubts get the best possible experience out of e-sport.
For me personally I think the G7 failed right there already. The goals and ideas they set out are mostly so abstract they could change the world or do virtually nothing and you could in both cases state accurately you have reached the goals you set out. What does “represent eSports” actually mean? Or can someone tell how you can “provide a platform for stability for member teams”? I surely can’t find a solid answer for either of them. Stability among G7 teams has been the same as the average bank share on Wall Street, just look at all the changes that had to be made with teams being removed and teams being added quite frequently in what should be “the most stable of the pack”.
The G7 has made several attempts to improve eSports, some may argue they act solely on behalf of their member teams, but regardless of that, the G7 did make an effort. However 30 press releases over the course of 3 years is way too little. (it does seem to be improving with the ranking system they are promoting)
Perhaps a lot has been done behind the scenes, of which us outsiders have little to no knowledge – but it shouldn’t be like that. An organization attempting to act as a voice for a certain group of people or other organizations can only do so with the constant consent of those individuals or organizations. Without continuous direct contact there can be no real governing body. And if the G7 are not striving to be a governing body for all eSport enthusiasts and teams then they are simple a group of eSport teams trying to make things better for themselves, not caring for the rest. For me the failure of the G7 lies within the balance between the two and the fact no one actually knows which one of the two it is truly trying to be.
very good read, and very true. Awesome flowing style of writing as well.
Loss of motivation over time is also a great downturn. People's priorities in life change over a while, and there is nothing chaining them to what they initially sent out to do - not that there should be, but sometimes, for stuff to really turn out well, one needs to input more than simply his spare time, especially in large scale endeavours such as G7 and TCA to a lesser extent. There is barely enough manpower ready to give in their input, or time to give in their input.
anyways, I just woke up, so i don't really know what i'm typing. have a good day!
If you look at the COD-scene just 4-5 months ago, some was playing COD4, some COD2 and some COD5. Some didnt want to play anymore, and teams fell apart from each other.
Now we have to big events coming up: Outpost on Fire 3 and the-eXperience 09 with a possible total prize purse of 18.000 euros (10k for TEX, and 4-8 for OOF).
The two tournaments has other games than COD4, but the ticketsales are the highest in both tournaments for COD4.
If TCA had an either directly og non-directly affection on this outcome, i do not know. But the competitive scene of Call of Duty looks much better than it did 4-5 months ago.
really good read, dfb doing great job lately, keep it up =)
on the topic i would say that TCA primary goal was to chose the game and the mod and than they didnt put another goal infront of them as there wasnt so big need for it. But if you wanna grow you need to put your goals up and reach them and then again put another goal and so on, its same in life-
To some extent I agree that the goals are too vague, but goals like these will in most cases never be very specific. This is not only limited to the TCA/G7 organisations. But point about communication is 100% true.
What I think is the largest problem, is that these kind of organisations has no power over teams, players or events.
Although a fairly large task, they should set out to be organisations with an authority like FA/UEFA/FIFA, where unwanted behaviour gets sanctioned, regardless of whether it's online or offline.
It would require some kind of registry of nick, name and a personal ID, but this would be a piece of cake to solve. But I'm sure serious players and teams would accept this. However, getting events to follow an external authority might be somewhat difficult(might be wrong on this though, but I don't know any lan-organiser:p ).
I still believe TCA has achieved it's initial goal which was to unite the CoD4 scene, and get things going again after a major standstill upon the release of CoD5, and as a result of the mod battles, and the brief hype on a possible CoD2 revival.
Although we failed an attempt to arrange one universal mod with the combined efforts of the DAMN and Promod creators, that later resulted in the now finished product that people are enjoying today, thanks to one determined individual who deserves full credit for listening to the EU community and providing what everyone here wanted. We realised that a universal mod was impossible (as EU and NA scenes where never going to have the same preferences on how the game was to be played), and through a cooperation carlisle, we ensured that the mod was used across all the popular tournaments, ladders and cups, which it now is today.
Upon the release of Promod Live, and with the scene once again thriving (cups, tournaments and LANs announced by the day), TCA staff slowly went inactive again as there where no future plans set.
Time has passed, and now issues have bottled up, such as unpaid prizemoney, flame/banter (the whole global chat discussion), film tweaks, cheating, and much more. And where do people look for help? Well naturally they look towards TCA, and are upset that nothing is being done. And rightfully so, if I might add.
Fact of the matter is however, that I was previously in charge of things and only very few staff members where actually contributing to the issues at hand, back then. Now time has passed, and even less of the original staffers are there to help. In light of recent posts on how TCA should be doing this and that, several known and respected individuals such as vanner, durus, davjie and more have all offered to help, and i'm sure that if they all get together and start combining their efforts, they will certainly be able to address several of the issues i mentioned before. But before people start contributing instead of being passive, don't expect miracles from TCA. I for one don't have as much time as I once did, and a new leader needs to be found to run things, and distrubute the work load (as one person certainly can't handle that much work).
I completely agree that if TCA are to continue working with and for the community, new goals need to be defined, and that communication has to be ALOT better. I guess only time will tell whether that will be possible or not. It all depends on the amount of work newcomers and contributers will put into it.
Finally I'd like to point out that although we've 'borrowed' some phrases from the G7 mission statement, TCA and G7 are very different organisations. While the G7's goal is to help the professional eSports teams of that organisation and improve eSports in general, TCA was created with an unselfish goal of stabilising and strengthening a specific scene that was ruled down and out by most.
Fact of the matter is, this TCA joke is ran by people who are not motivated enough to actually do the job to deliver the purpose of TCA. They are literally clueless and just jumped on the CoD4 United bandwagon to get their lil picture put on a site.
CoD2 had a very, very good foundation built by players who were down right professional and enthusiastic about what they wanted to achieve for the game they loved. Funnily enough, it got somewhere CoD4 never got - WSVG, and that is without the help of the G7 member teams. And why? Because the game showed top notch professionalism and competition even if it wasn't as big as CS.
CoD4 is not loved. Evident by the fact a number of players have came out in the past and said they only play the game because of the competitive factor.
CoD4 is going to be replaced now by MW2 and I hope to god it requires more brain and aim rather than sprint and spray.
z1n0 saying TCA achieved its initial goal - Uniting the CoD4 scene. It was pretty inevitable the scene would unite with or without TCA's minor influence. Don't take credit for something that was bound to happen anyway.
And finally, I might have given up on a CoD2 revival, but it seems it has had as many LAN's as CoD4 has had these past months even without a major, active community.
z1n0 saying TCA achieved its initial goal - Uniting the CoD4 scene. It was pretty inevitable the scene would unite with or without TCA's minor influence. Don't take credit for something that was bound to happen anyway.
my intent was not to take full credit, honestly.. so let me rephrase: TCA contributed to uniting the scene, by addressing issues such as the mod situation.
TCA never united anyone z1no ...everyone chose carlisles mod whether you liked it or not. Do you honestly think people will take a group that is self elected and unrepresentative of the community seriously?
TCA never united anyone z1no ...everyone chose carlisles mod whether you liked it or not. Do you honestly think people will take a group that is self elected and unrepresentative of the community seriously?
well cod community hardly as is very immature but still they did help in some way as some needed that final decision, you know your facts were made assuming on forum threads on this site and uk community only-
I think the main problem with esports at the time is the time it takes orgs/sponsors to pay out, the standard is set at +- 1 year?! I think orgs like TCA and G7 should be there to ensure the growth of esports by handling things like this, hell even get a lawyer or smtn because with the current setting there is a limit to where esports can go at the time.
don't wanna start a flamewar, but the top of the COD4 scene is made up by either arrogant and immature people, or unmotivated 'has-beens'.. it's not good for the scene
in cod2 you had the likes of Trigger, Mick, crow etc. etc. all contributing and if someone has something bad to say against any of those 3 I'd call them a liar.. I can hardly think of any arrogant/immature cod2 players who played ''just for the money'' or ''just for the competition''
don't wanna start a flamewar, but the top of the COD4 scene is made up by either arrogant and immature people, or unmotivated 'has-beens'.. it's not good for the scene
in cod2 you had the likes of Trigger, Mick, crow etc. etc. all contributing and if someone has something bad to say against any of those 3 I'd call them a liar.. I can hardly think of any arrogant/immature cod2 players who played ''just for the money'' or ''just for the competition''
Lol I actually agree with you for once, and not just a bit, I totally agree!
don't wanna start a flamewar, but the top of the COD4 scene is made up by either arrogant and immature people, or unmotivated 'has-beens'.. it's not good for the scene
in cod2 you had the likes of Trigger, Mick, crow etc. etc. all contributing and if someone has something bad to say against any of those 3 I'd call them a liar.. I can hardly think of any arrogant/immature cod2 players who played ''just for the money'' or ''just for the competition''
You're right, the COD2 scene had a more motivated community, something which has always lacked apart from the first 9 months / summer LANs in COD4, and still then it has been disappointing.
Well done dfb and well written. I think your thoughts probably came at a perfect time and I agree with your points on the need for clearer goals and communication. These have definitely been lacking.
Firstly, what I quickly want to say is that while we can take the positives of a professional cod2, lambasting wildly at both cod4 and the TCA isn't constructive.
My second point is that before people jump into the riot with their flaming torches and pitchforks, I hope they've realised this part of your post:
"I’m also not stating The Cod Alliance or the G7 have done nothing at all, because that wouldn’t be the truth at all"
Because you're very right once again. I think that the organisations mere presence through their brief time around, despite their weak goals and PR, has done a lot more than people think. I can't speak as much for the G7 as I don't know an awful lot on it.
With regards to the TCA, the fact that it came to being and existed was at least a positive sign at the time; it gave the community the chance and idea that something could be done- together. Sometimes an idea and presence is enough, and in my opinion it was in this case, their existence, at least to a certain extent, helped solidify and stabilize a swaying cod4 community.
So while the TCA should really be more proactive in both their functioning and communication (as we've seen a period of inactivity) the cod4 community is a difficult one both to please and work with for reasons i'm sure at least the reasonable and realistic of you already know.
I do hope that people within the TCA step it up a little (doing TOO much can be a bad thing)and i'm sure with the introduction of people like vanner,durus and davje,the TCA can be improved to better help the community.
I must admit, I have no idea what the overall task of TCA was, but they changed nothing / or at least nothing significant. I'm afraid that TCA was just and idea (just like you said), and that's all there is to it. There was no communication between the community and TCA, and, to me, it seemed like a dictatorship, rather than things we would all agree on.
Also, imo, TCA was merely a marketing tool for top teams - "Oh, look, those guys are in TCA. Wow, they must be good." TCA hasn't helped the community in any way. If you want a mod that the whole scene will follow and play on, just release it in public, let the public decide, and that's about it. (don't flame me :D)
Nice article and valid points too (agree with nreo also). But the thing that I want to point out is that while it is very applicable to G7 I don’t think it is as applicable to TCA. The G7 has been around for a number of years, and as you have pointed out have failed to really do anything, they have not learned from their mistakes and in my mind don’t actually do anything (other than lay claim to some boycott.. but i cant even remember what that was about!). I can not say I have ever seen, or heard of any direct influence/input to the CoD community. But the TCA on the other hand, is a different ball game, its only been around for 5 months and is still in its infancy, so mistake were going to be made (nothing goes to plan first straight away), but no time has been given to allow for such mistakes to be resolved. But with that said, plenty can be learned because as we can see from peoples comments, there is a lot of input that can be valuable to the future of it (should there be one).
Although it does annoy me when people post about how the TCA has done nothing, if that is the case then why are you even commenting? There would be nothing to comment on if that were the case. Assuming it done nothing when there is no evidence to support it either way is a little stupid, you can't say that didn’t do anything, because we didn’t ever get to see what would happen without its presence. I find it equally annoying when individuals comment on members of the TCA implying that it was all to do with e-fame etc, at least these people wanted to make a change & tried to do so, whether it worked or not is irrelevant, the effort and intent was there and that is good enough in my mind, and something more people of this community should be doing, rather than just whinging and doing nothing.
An idea from an individual is just that, one person’s idea. But when the whole community shares that idea, it becomes something else, even if the TCA didn’t work (which is not what I’m suggesting), the idea was there and was an idea that many had faith in, that alone made it work. Tangible or not, it put most of the community in the right mindset for having everyone going in the right direction.
A perfect example of this is the incident with i36, CoD:WaW was the named CoD game for that event, but the community stuck together and with that it was changed back to MW.
To be honest, the main reason the community stuck together was less to do with selfless camaraderie and more due to the fact that WaW wasn't very good.
Relations in gaming are mostly destructive. Till the community itself matures as a whole, there's little to no point in attempting to impose a regulation across the board.
Let us first take a look at the oldest of the two organizations I would like to discuss with this article. The G7 was announced and launched April 26th 2006. Here is the official information you can find on their website: 
Loss of motivation over time is also a great downturn. People's priorities in life change over a while, and there is nothing chaining them to what they initially sent out to do - not that there should be, but sometimes, for stuff to really turn out well, one needs to input more than simply his spare time, especially in large scale endeavours such as G7 and TCA to a lesser extent. There is barely enough manpower ready to give in their input, or time to give in their input.
anyways, I just woke up, so i don't really know what i'm typing. have a good day!
Now we have to big events coming up: Outpost on Fire 3 and the-eXperience 09 with a possible total prize purse of 18.000 euros (10k for TEX, and 4-8 for OOF).
The two tournaments has other games than COD4, but the ticketsales are the highest in both tournaments for COD4.
If TCA had an either directly og non-directly affection on this outcome, i do not know. But the competitive scene of Call of Duty looks much better than it did 4-5 months ago.
on the topic i would say that TCA primary goal was to chose the game and the mod and than they didnt put another goal infront of them as there wasnt so big need for it. But if you wanna grow you need to put your goals up and reach them and then again put another goal and so on, its same in life-
To some extent I agree that the goals are too vague, but goals like these will in most cases never be very specific. This is not only limited to the TCA/G7 organisations. But point about communication is 100% true.
What I think is the largest problem, is that these kind of organisations has no power over teams, players or events.
Although a fairly large task, they should set out to be organisations with an authority like FA/UEFA/FIFA, where unwanted behaviour gets sanctioned, regardless of whether it's online or offline.
It would require some kind of registry of nick, name and a personal ID, but this would be a piece of cake to solve. But I'm sure serious players and teams would accept this. However, getting events to follow an external authority might be somewhat difficult(might be wrong on this though, but I don't know any lan-organiser:p ).
Although we failed an attempt to arrange one universal mod with the combined efforts of the DAMN and Promod creators, that later resulted in the now finished product that people are enjoying today, thanks to one determined individual who deserves full credit for listening to the EU community and providing what everyone here wanted. We realised that a universal mod was impossible (as EU and NA scenes where never going to have the same preferences on how the game was to be played), and through a cooperation carlisle, we ensured that the mod was used across all the popular tournaments, ladders and cups, which it now is today.
Upon the release of Promod Live, and with the scene once again thriving (cups, tournaments and LANs announced by the day), TCA staff slowly went inactive again as there where no future plans set.
Time has passed, and now issues have bottled up, such as unpaid prizemoney, flame/banter (the whole global chat discussion), film tweaks, cheating, and much more. And where do people look for help? Well naturally they look towards TCA, and are upset that nothing is being done. And rightfully so, if I might add.
Fact of the matter is however, that I was previously in charge of things and only very few staff members where actually contributing to the issues at hand, back then. Now time has passed, and even less of the original staffers are there to help. In light of recent posts on how TCA should be doing this and that, several known and respected individuals such as vanner, durus, davjie and more have all offered to help, and i'm sure that if they all get together and start combining their efforts, they will certainly be able to address several of the issues i mentioned before. But before people start contributing instead of being passive, don't expect miracles from TCA. I for one don't have as much time as I once did, and a new leader needs to be found to run things, and distrubute the work load (as one person certainly can't handle that much work).
I completely agree that if TCA are to continue working with and for the community, new goals need to be defined, and that communication has to be ALOT better. I guess only time will tell whether that will be possible or not. It all depends on the amount of work newcomers and contributers will put into it.
Finally I'd like to point out that although we've 'borrowed' some phrases from the G7 mission statement, TCA and G7 are very different organisations. While the G7's goal is to help the professional eSports teams of that organisation and improve eSports in general, TCA was created with an unselfish goal of stabilising and strengthening a specific scene that was ruled down and out by most.
Fact of the matter is, this TCA joke is ran by people who are not motivated enough to actually do the job to deliver the purpose of TCA. They are literally clueless and just jumped on the CoD4 United bandwagon to get their lil picture put on a site.
CoD2 had a very, very good foundation built by players who were down right professional and enthusiastic about what they wanted to achieve for the game they loved. Funnily enough, it got somewhere CoD4 never got - WSVG, and that is without the help of the G7 member teams. And why? Because the game showed top notch professionalism and competition even if it wasn't as big as CS.
CoD4 is not loved. Evident by the fact a number of players have came out in the past and said they only play the game because of the competitive factor.
CoD4 is going to be replaced now by MW2 and I hope to god it requires more brain and aim rather than sprint and spray.
z1n0 saying TCA achieved its initial goal - Uniting the CoD4 scene. It was pretty inevitable the scene would unite with or without TCA's minor influence. Don't take credit for something that was bound to happen anyway.
And finally, I might have given up on a CoD2 revival, but it seems it has had as many LAN's as CoD4 has had these past months even without a major, active community.
my intent was not to take full credit, honestly.. so let me rephrase: TCA contributed to uniting the scene, by addressing issues such as the mod situation.
no disrespect mr zino xx
And that quote from Michelangelo was really nice. Thanks for sharing <3
well cod community hardly as is very immature but still they did help in some way as some needed that final decision, you know your facts were made assuming on forum threads on this site and uk community only-
Nice article ;)
edited 2009-05-19 23:37:10
Wish I was intelligent enough to join in with the convosation above.
gotta agree 10,000% with KarL
don't wanna start a flamewar, but the top of the COD4 scene is made up by either arrogant and immature people, or unmotivated 'has-beens'.. it's not good for the scene
in cod2 you had the likes of Trigger, Mick, crow etc. etc. all contributing and if someone has something bad to say against any of those 3 I'd call them a liar.. I can hardly think of any arrogant/immature cod2 players who played ''just for the money'' or ''just for the competition''
the top of the COD4 scene is made up by either arrogant and immature people, or unmotivated 'has-beens'.. it's not good for the scene
Like yourself for instance... But yes I 100% agree.
And nice article!
TCA ? :/
edited 2009-05-20 09:22:47
the top of the COD4 scene is made up by either arrogant and immature people, or unmotivated 'has-beens'.. it's not good for the scene
Like yourself for instance... But yes I 100% agree.
And nice article!
im hardly at the top of the scene, but yeorite :>
Amazing.
gotta agree 10,000% with KarL
don't wanna start a flamewar, but the top of the COD4 scene is made up by either arrogant and immature people, or unmotivated 'has-beens'.. it's not good for the scene
in cod2 you had the likes of Trigger, Mick, crow etc. etc. all contributing and if someone has something bad to say against any of those 3 I'd call them a liar.. I can hardly think of any arrogant/immature cod2 players who played ''just for the money'' or ''just for the competition''
Lol I actually agree with you for once, and not just a bit, I totally agree!
would be interesting to have some feedback from g7 menbers doh !
gotta agree 10,000% with KarL
don't wanna start a flamewar, but the top of the COD4 scene is made up by either arrogant and immature people, or unmotivated 'has-beens'.. it's not good for the scene
in cod2 you had the likes of Trigger, Mick, crow etc. etc. all contributing and if someone has something bad to say against any of those 3 I'd call them a liar.. I can hardly think of any arrogant/immature cod2 players who played ''just for the money'' or ''just for the competition''
You're right, the COD2 scene had a more motivated community, something which has always lacked apart from the first 9 months / summer LANs in COD4, and still then it has been disappointing.
edited 2009-05-21 14:58:07
Firstly, what I quickly want to say is that while we can take the positives of a professional cod2, lambasting wildly at both cod4 and the TCA isn't constructive.
My second point is that before people jump into the riot with their flaming torches and pitchforks, I hope they've realised this part of your post:
"I’m also not stating The Cod Alliance or the G7 have done nothing at all, because that wouldn’t be the truth at all"
Because you're very right once again. I think that the organisations mere presence through their brief time around, despite their weak goals and PR, has done a lot more than people think. I can't speak as much for the G7 as I don't know an awful lot on it.
With regards to the TCA, the fact that it came to being and existed was at least a positive sign at the time; it gave the community the chance and idea that something could be done- together. Sometimes an idea and presence is enough, and in my opinion it was in this case, their existence, at least to a certain extent, helped solidify and stabilize a swaying cod4 community.
So while the TCA should really be more proactive in both their functioning and communication (as we've seen a period of inactivity) the cod4 community is a difficult one both to please and work with for reasons i'm sure at least the reasonable and realistic of you already know.
I do hope that people within the TCA step it up a little (doing TOO much can be a bad thing)and i'm sure with the introduction of people like vanner,durus and davje,the TCA can be improved to better help the community.
edited 2009-05-22 06:24:10
And pretty through mostly ... so I agree :)
Also, imo, TCA was merely a marketing tool for top teams - "Oh, look, those guys are in TCA. Wow, they must be good." TCA hasn't helped the community in any way. If you want a mod that the whole scene will follow and play on, just release it in public, let the public decide, and that's about it. (don't flame me :D)
Although it does annoy me when people post about how the TCA has done nothing, if that is the case then why are you even commenting? There would be nothing to comment on if that were the case. Assuming it done nothing when there is no evidence to support it either way is a little stupid, you can't say that didn’t do anything, because we didn’t ever get to see what would happen without its presence. I find it equally annoying when individuals comment on members of the TCA implying that it was all to do with e-fame etc, at least these people wanted to make a change & tried to do so, whether it worked or not is irrelevant, the effort and intent was there and that is good enough in my mind, and something more people of this community should be doing, rather than just whinging and doing nothing.
An idea from an individual is just that, one person’s idea. But when the whole community shares that idea, it becomes something else, even if the TCA didn’t work (which is not what I’m suggesting), the idea was there and was an idea that many had faith in, that alone made it work. Tangible or not, it put most of the community in the right mindset for having everyone going in the right direction.
A perfect example of this is the incident with i36, CoD:WaW was the named CoD game for that event, but the community stuck together and with that it was changed back to MW.
edited 2009-05-25 18:24:25
Relations in gaming are mostly destructive. Till the community itself matures as a whole, there's little to no point in attempting to impose a regulation across the board.