Written by Peter "ptER" Mather
In this article I am going to be looking in depth into the UK scene, at its strengths and its weaknesses. What is it about the UK scene that motivates so many teams to represent their nation in such high numbers at events such as AEF and why does the UK scene have such a high proportion of people who will do anything to reach the top level? Why is such a vast majority of the vita nova council from the United Kingdom and how does this affect the rest of the COD scene? These questions and so many more will be explored over the next few pages.
To look at the UK scene we first need to step back and spread our gaze into the unseen crevices of our nation, at the foundations that makes our scene so controversial and so exceptional. If you ask any player in the UK what the best organization is, I guarantee that the majority will say all the top competitive teams such as dignitas or TLR and very few, if any, will even consider the organizations that actually make the scene work. I speak of course about the hidden gems of COD4, the organizations that get little to no recognition for their efforts, such as Deadly Forces.
Now, I know a few of you will be slightly confused right now so i’ll go into it in a bit of detail. When you first started off playing the game, I would be very surprised if you didn’t jump into a public server and get hooked. Now think, was your favorite server run and maintained by a clan? I know mine was, in fact, I liked the server and the people who ran it so much I went and applied to join them. In all honesty with you, they weren't the best COD players out there, but back then neither was I, so it was a match made in heaven. They introduced me to my first match, my first tactical nade and my first lan, I35. They still attend the I-Series, sometimes with as many as three teams and even made it into the playoffs at the last event. To put it in short, they find new players, take them in and train them into decent members of our community, whilst at the same time encouraging more people to attend lans boosting the prize pots and overall atmosphere for the top players in the country.
What we have to imagine at this stage is a hardware store, the hardware store is the game itself, the product that allows us entry into this world of esports. Now that we’ve entered the store the assistant can provide you with a ladder, in this case the assistant is Deadly Forces. Now that we have the ladder we can begin to climb, rung by rung, slowly getting higher until a rung is just a bit too high to reach. At this stage we need to keep working at reaching the new goal, in the metaphor this is the next rung of the ladder, but in the context of COD4 it could be cod.preinvite or even cod.invite.
The reason I’ve tried to paint this little picture for you is simple. By nature we, as humans, are quite lazy beings. We will try to get something done via the quickest and most time efficient method, and in my experience, we as a nation are some of the worst culprits in the world, which, lets face it, is one of our scenes major flaws. Due to this we will cut corners, whether this is leaving your current team for another that has made more progress, or by boosting your own individual skill level through devious means. We need to start picking ourselves up off of the floor and walking forward together, for a more prosperous future.
| Page 2: Skill Tiers |
I totally agree with you, egocentric kids like him should be ousted by the community for atrocious actions!
At the end of the day, it's natural for people to move on to greener fields, and that's why we continue to strive for better teams/jobs/careers/whatever, as it's in our nature to do so. And denying people that right, or even holding a grudge over that, is one of the most egocentric things a person can do
Would you rather work in a team with 5 friends who have spent a year working towards goals or jump ship and play with 4 players you don't know all that well just to be more successful? I, personally, play CoD4 in my team because the camaraderie when we, as five friends achieve something as a unit it is a truly gratifying experience. I wouldn't have the same feeling if I jumped ship for success in a PC game.
This isn't my business career, its a game, why would I fuck friends over for greener pastures?
edited 2010-09-04 15:44:35
This actually happens more often than you'd think.
P.S. Whereas I can't speak for every team, almost every player whos been in waL has had offeres from much bigger teams, with proper support, and better reps only to reject them and continue being shit with us.
It might be an easy decision for you, but its not nearly as black and white as you like to think it is.
Looking forward to your coverage of VN Lan.
And all to true, its just a great shame that most of it will never be acted apon.
Cokeee ;)
In Cod4, took the hard route in taking not so known players but potentially good players and did well.
Then the move from TLR to MYM was needed as TLR could not afford to take us to lans like MYM could. Plus it was good exposure for the scene as a whole.
On topic however it was a decent read but I feel going into each point (perhaps splitting the article into 3/4 parts would work) with greater detail would have been a wiser choice.
Good to see someone willing to write *COD* articles on this website.
edited 2010-09-04 18:30:27
If I see you on xfire I'll have a small chat to see where I can improve next time, this goes for anyone by the way, feel free to message me or post here.
best of luck uk's guys
Its also getting anoying that only the ''top'' players of the scene get interviewed from their point of view, while giving a lesser known person like the team mentioned in this story SAS, gvin no oppertunity giving their opinion about this fact training up the people.
Ofcourse people follow those ones who are more known to them and make an example then somebody who is unknown to the competitive scene.
I've always tried to help many teams and organisation to get in the competetive scene and I don't need any recognition but it would be nice to track down those people and hear their side of story, don't forget a story is always 2 sided.
Talking about Multiplay, its pretty normal a company wants to make profit, now we all say yeah they should be more honest and fair about the prize money but why don't u ask them for a interview.
People shouldn't moan about prizemoney, thats the whole fucking problem of the gaming scene, people should get a grip and be glad they are getting something. People often forget that gaming is a hobby and you can't really make a living out of it. Only a few people can make a living out of gaming.
People who play at the top level should be glad they can visit all sorts of different country's and places and get that paid from their organisations. And for the people who aren't in the top quit asking lan support if you haven't reached anything.
Xtreem signing off
/mind is blown
Vital springs to mind, think this article carries the main message you fail to see.
Pettiness and grudges aside, i've been in the cod scene for probs going on 5 years, and during those years i'd quite happily admit i've achieved very little. The main reasons behind this is the fact i refused to cut corners or leave my friends, if i ever get anywhere (different priorities these days), i'd much prefer to do it with friends rather than in the company of arrogant tossers (i realise i never will lol >.<).
That said, the higher up the tier ladder you go, the more acceptable these sort of things really get. For professional teams, this is business, you make money and represent an org, your obligated, the main problem area is however, is the wannabee fags who can't accept your not at that level and try to imitate the pro's by treating your friends like shit.
Attitudes make a community.
agreed.
People need to realise i-series is a profit making company. Even though they don't fund huge prize purses they still provide a LAN for upcoming UK teams to get the ball rolling on the LAN side of things for their teams.
Where would org's like Dignitas or Reason be without i-series?
Speaking from my own experience, i-series helped my previous teams a hell of a lot when it came to LAN's in CoD2. So stfu bad mouthing i-series
[constructive input]
also agree that iseries has probably done more good than bad for the UK community, and still is doing more good than bad in terms of getting LAN experience.
edited 2010-09-05 16:37:37
need to give air to the interview with pics or anything
I've got a nade for hardware.
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It's a very idealistic, far left way of looking at the scene and looking to see what we can do for "the motherland", but at the same time I very much disagree with some of the content. I prefer Newbury (I camp and have never had problems and I also live 3 hours away).
The "players jumping ship to a better team offer" thing is something anyone would do. That's the competitive nature of human beings, that's how it's always going to be... and really... rightly so.
Multiplay, despite it's massive failings, does a great deal of good for the UK. Valuable lan experience, breeding new teams, keeping those core elements of the bottom rung of the skill ladder together.
edited 2010-09-06 17:55:43
why interview him..
But ye as long we have idiots like myz in the scene its gona be messed.
edited 2010-09-09 12:06:06
Without being part of the company itself how do you know the costs/figures and more.
As always when things get bigger you have more problems and more issues, security, safety, insurance and more!
You say about ticket prices and this mean "this" is available, how would you know you've never run it all!
" At the same time Multiplay mock the community that they have already poked with a stick, with the option of a £5,000 prize fund, for a small and very reasonable demand of 96 teams, which is equal to 480 tickets. The amount of money they get from the tickets of these members is 5 point seventy six times more than the prize fund, and thats a very generous figure towards multiplay, this is excluding early arrival (which is plus £15 per head) and my original figure is including every discount available."
Don't talk figures unless you know them all! You don't know what other income they have from sponsors nor do you know what other costs they have. Renting the venue is costly enough on it's own let alone everything else.
Also did you include the "big ones" discount into your calculations? You don't know how many people pay EEB, EB or Full Price.
Anyone could start their own lan, but as soon as it gets bigger and more complicated you will always hit problems and at the end of the day it has to be worth doing it, otherwise what the point? Any LAN that may end up getting big over here will always end up looking towards money and revolving around it.
Is it more efficient from a business perspective to pay X amount to have a lan at location 1 when location 2 is half the price? Is it more efficient to have a LAN miles away from you HQ or is it more efficient to have a LAN 50 mins Max from your HQ?
I think you get my point.
You can't compare running a lan here to other countries.
Other countries are less slack on things.
Our whole country is fucked up and is based on people moaning, them stopping something/doing something and at the end of the day ruining the country.
You have to fill out a million forms to do anything these days and the councils don't even know what they are doing.
A while ago they had a meeting about a issue we had on our field and they don't even invite the people who own/want to do something!
I could make a lifestyle choice and never work in this country, have kids, get a house given to me to live in, I would get money pretty much given to me that I wouldn't even deserve! My kids will get grants all through their education and I wouldn't have to do fuck all. They would get more then people whose families work lol! What a joke.
My 2 Cents!
That was working on the basis of £60 a ticket, I don't think you can get cheaper than that, I could of course be wrong.
I'm working on a few project at the moment and I acknowledge my multiplay point was crude and unfinished and I intend to correct this in the future. Add my xfire and we'll talk if that's ok with you.
xfire: hotshot303