His excitable tones are synonymous with the Wolfenstein community. As a start up caster, he broadcast from the internet equivalent of a radio rack shack, he found happiness and a home at Inside The Game and went on to develop a career in gaming. Having recently successfully hosted the Sixth Crossfire Challenge – Stuart Saw talks to Crossfire.

Gaming is an unnerving and constantly evolving profession. An industry that adequately supports relatively few, yet is the ultimate meritocratic profession. Raw talent can be developed and nurtured, anyone can progress from broadcasting in their basement to entertaining a crowd of thousands in the sizzling heat of Singapore. Dedication, passion and a natural gift for entertainment are just a few of the qualities required, and ones Stuart has in abundance.

My last confrontation with Stuart Saw, aka TosspoT was an aggressive and provocative exchanged back in 2006. It probed his financial situation, his personal casting style, the morality of gaming and ego. How has Stuart changed since then? How have his pet projects developed and where does he envisage the future?

Originally posted on Crossfire.nu

With the recent open beta of Quake Live, teams are investing some time looking into players. A51 is no exception; A51 has picked up Gillz and boots, two up and coming duelers in the North American scene. Here is what Gillz had to say.


Excerpt-

Q: Does your family support you in trying to become a pro gamer?

A: I'd probably have to say no on that one. My mother has some crazy conspiracy beliefs on e-sports, thinking it's some massive scam luring kids in (Thanks Angel). I've never met my father before, and my other relatives don't support it either, they believe it's a waste of time and money. I have a few very good friends who support me in it. I'm really just doing it for myself. I want to accomplish something that makes me happy, not something that makes everyone else happy. My mother lets me go to these events fine, but doesn't necessarily support me in it. I was forced by everyone to go to college, which I understand. So, here I am.

Q: Are you worried about LAN events not being able to cope with the fact that QL is online only at this point?

A: Well, the closest LAN event we have is Quakecon, which is in August. At this point, I would imagine dedicated LAN servers would be out by then. I'm sure both AGP and ESL are pushing them to release it, because who wants to play at a LAN with 20 ping? It's not the end of the world, but I think all of the community would be extremely happy if we saw dedicated LAN server programs released before Quakecon.

Late last week there was the Starcraft 2 Q&A batch 49 that was released. Shortly after the release, there was an extremely long list of questions that the community was able to ask both Karune and Cydra about the games development so far.

All of the questions and answers are shown below in their original form, so take your time and enjoy the questions answered.

Source: Battle.net forums

First article posted here at ESR about America's Army. One of the fastest growing games with a community that is growing a lot lately.
Hopefully I will be able to inform all you readers a few times per week with everything interesting that happened in the AA scene. With AA3, the new version, on it's way, you will probably read a lot more in the future.

This first one is about the first community organized LAN for Europe supported by GameVibes. Several teams have already confirmed attending the event, and from what it looks it's going to be a great success.

General information:
Date: 4th and 5th of April
Location: The Outpost, Antwerp, Belgium
Fee: € 50 per player / € 5 per spectater
Prizes: Total prizepot of € 1700 so far, only from the fees with 16 teams attending!

The LAN will be non-byoc, so you don't have to worry about bringing your PC. There are 32 PC's available at the Outpost and the organization is aiming at 24 teams to be attending this LAN.
Teams will play in a 4on4 format with, as you can imagine, breaks in between the matches. 8 teams will be playing at once.
At the moment the organization is in contact with several companies to be sponsoring the event. If you are interesting or you know someone who would be interested, please don't hesitate and mail to caesium@live.co.uk.

Payment information:
Payments are to be made directly to Gamevibes, a trusted organization with a history of organizing LANs. We would prefer it if payments were made at once by your whole team. When sending your payment please write your names and team name in the bank transfer comments/notes.

Bank account information:
SWIFT/BIC: KREDBEBB
IBAN: BE18 7330 5121 9565
Gamevibes BVBA

Useful links:
FragOut news
Website of the event

Magnus "fox" Olsson was one of the most famous quakers attending this DreamHack Winter 2008. He managed to achieve the biggest combined prize money in the Quake Forever tournaments with the 3rd rank in VQ3 and the 1st in CPM, earning him a total of 1 050€ and 575€ worth of products.

After his games, he found some minutes to answer my questions.

(Thanks to xou who made this article "readable")

TosspoT is the face of Crossfire and Cash the brain, but what role does the third part of this unlikely trio, Adam "Adacore" Oddy fulfill?

Adacore initially joined the administrative side of gaming in the Fall of 2005, gradually working his way through the hierarchy of ClanBase. He has since coordinated LAN events across the globe, hosted several EuroCups and attained the title of Crossfire Challenge Tournament Director. Adacore sits down to talk the past, the present and the future with Crossfire.

But first what does his associate Cash make of the man himself?

"Adacore is by far the best colleague I have had in running gaming tournaments. I know that running gaming tournaments, especially LANs always results in troubles, but for 4 editions in a row I have never seen him slip up. He is a person that is so well-composed, stress-resistant, polite yet tough and fair that he remains on top of his game.

He is one of the few admins that anticipates on what will come rather than what will happen. I am sure that TosspoT will agree with me on this that Adacore has been one of the key success factors of the Crossfire Challenges just because of his sheer intelligence, work ethic and dedication to succeed."

Crossfire Challenge 5
Date: 12th-14th December, 2008
Location: Enschede, Netherlands
Games: Enemy Territory 6v6, Call of Duty 5v5
Prize: ET €5000, CoD €7500
Coverage: www.crossfire.nu
Video: QuadV

Now that I got the pictures out, I might as well write about my personal experience at the event. Timeline might be a bit off but you easily lose track of time and what is going on at Dreamhack. So I'll just try to remember what happened when. It ended up being a bit too long and about all sorts of random crap so be warned.
I also uploaded some videos from the event which you can find on the last page of this article.


Click next page to start the read.



other links:
* My Dreamhack Gallery
* My Videos from the event
* DeaTh's gallery

Google has announced its venture into game-based advertising via its official blog.

The games that they’re targeting happen to be web-based games like the ones playable on InstantAction, and "social games" like Google’s own Lively. Even the venerated Quake Live would fall under the definition of a "web game".

But what does this really mean for gamers? Gameriot.com takes a cynical look into the possibilities and outcomes of in-game advertising.

Sweden has raised one of the biggest and best Quake players of all time. There for everyone knows the old gamers joke: "If you are from Sweden, your are automatically a good FPS player". This was also a valid rule for the Arena legend Alexander 'Z4muZ' Ihrfors. How ever, like a lot of former eSports players, a few years ago Z4muZ changed his shaft for a pack of cards. So these days you might find him online or in a casino for poker.

Z4muZ is becoming a man, currently 22 years old and lives together with his girlfriend in a nice apartment in Avesta, Sweden. So he's living a good life out there in the cold.

For us a good reason to interview Z4muZ. Just to see how he is, what he does and what he loves.

Gary, aka z0MBie is the man behind the recently announced Don Baker ETL Cancer Research Charity tournament. He aims to raise upwards of $1000 for charity by hosting two 32 team tournaments: one Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, the other Call of Duty 4.

Read on to find out why.

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I made a little statistic how well the top players did on the different maps. I considered every player who attended at least two of the big Q3 events in 2008: ESWC Masters Paris, GameGune, ESWC Finals or ESWC Masters Athen.

Top 5 on each map (min. 4 games on the specific map):

"player name" "number of wins" / "number of matches"


ZTN is the only map which is not removed on a regular basis by all listed players.
Only a few players seem to feel comfortable on all maps.


There might be some errors, if you find one, please post it.

As i am really psyched about GameGune, i decided to IM some of the fascinating individuals that frequently visit here, to ask some short questions.
noctis already replied this morning [+], so here we go:

In your memorable interview with DDK, you said that you were pleased with your ESWC Placement (5th-8th), do you still feel the same about it and what does your new team 4K think about your performance?

noctis: I hope nobody remembers that interview. I am pleased to reach my goal of placing top8, but after the game vs fox i was a bit disappointed because it could have been top4. My manager pretty much thinks the same thing afaik. ;)

Moving on, how did you prepare for GameGune?

noctis: I played 3-4 maps with Spartie on monday.

Three weeks ago you faced fox in the ESWC Masters Quarter-Final and lost although you were able to win dm6 and give the swede a hard time on hub. Do you think you can do better in your upcoming group match against him?

noctis: As it seems the group games are only bo2 and i have no idea how the map selection works i am hoping to reach a 1-1, but im not too confident atm.

Do you fear any of the other players in group A? What do you expect from Krysa?

noctis: I don't fear any player. Krysa might give me a run for the playoff spot and with bo2 who knows whats gonna happen. :/

If you manage to get in the double elimination Bracket, what are your expectations?

noctis: I don't think that far ahead when its even unsure that i make it out of the group, i will try to give my best and see where i end up.

Who do you think is going to win GameGune?

noctis: fox or av3k, hoping for fox tho.

Thanks for your time and good luck! Anything you wanna add?

noctis: GO FOX!

A new channel (#Q3TDM) has been created on Quakenet, and over the course of a few days, it has hit 60+ people. It now has a running echbot, where you can add to play pugs for 2v2 and 4v4. This is mainly a North American channel, made due to the lack of team play channels for VQ3 Quake 3.

If you would like to watch, or better yet, join in on this event please join #q3tdm on Quakenet by clicking here.

So please help a growing community by joining in and playing!

Also, this weekend we will see the first small tournament run by #q3tdm, a 2v2 tournament. The map list will be pro-q3dm6, q3dm7, ztn3dm. This is a tournament without any prizes, just for fun, and to see how well it will run.

Bracket Is Up

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