Haha, you seriously think the vast majority people playing games were ever doing it because of some "pro gaming"?!

No, but any time a big time tournament organizer with big time prizes disappears, it tends to dampen the activity of top level players, or make them seek another game altogether. It's less of a direct effect and more of a halo effect; see the increase in activity in NA following the announcements of CPL having a Quake 3 tournament, and subsequent announcement at CPL Winter 06 where it would continue, and then the following cancellation of that. While I didn't measure it, my perception of activity tended to follow those announcements. Same with WSVG; 1v1 activity seems to have picked up lately, and I attribute it to a few high-level players becoming more active, which attracts more interest, and typically more playing.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=quake+3

Nice. Haven't used that feature and it's really quite interesting. Looking at just the US, I noticed:

The decline from Jan 2005 to now looks like 50% (unless the Y axis isn't linear), which is pretty gradual. Surprisingly so, considering how "dead" it's been considered at times throughout then.

There's a couple of spikes in 2005, one after ESWC, and then some more motion starting in mid-Oct. Not sure what the last part is about.

The sharp upward jump in 2006 between mid-Oct to mid-Dec corresponds with the run up to CPL.

2007 was nearly flat; there was a good bit of online duel and CTF activity during this time, and plenty of drama with all the hacking accusations and such. No doubt, plenty of people were looking for dirt on their favorite targets :P

And Oklahoma searching for Quake 3 so much? Shit, I'll have a Red River Shootout with them :)

While it's not perfect for getting information on the popularity of a subject, it works rather well. These are just searches, not player activity in-game. You can expect a lot of those to be searches for patches/configs/demos/etc. Note that the announcement of quake live did not stir any new interest on the web. Right now, we're at the all time lowest level of interest in the game.

A Quake LAN is great and all, but for what? If people think that Quake Live will magically conjure up interest and new players, they're wrong. It's supposed to be a test bed for new features and gameplay possibilities, but the results are just going to shatter the confidence of id. Just look at UT3... 33k copies sold and less players than the older games. Do you really think that Epic is going to release another UT game after those numbers?

Why play a game that won't be around? Few games right now have a growing playerbase.

The idea of the Quake LAN is to have fun. That's all...no money, no prizes, just a LAN for the sake of playing, rather than seeing which of the top 4/6/8 players will play the best that day.

And I agree about Quake Live. Growing a community with a game that's as hardcore as Quake 3 isn't going to happen...not until vast numbers of people get bored with the easy to play games that are rather popular now. But, at least they're not doing a retail product!

Money could never have been the reason for people to play since Quake has never had enough to realistically provide for any player. People are leaving for other reasons - job/life/other games/inactive community/bored/mod wars/etc. For each few people that leave for one reason, you end up with someone else leaving because he has less people to play. And it continues on...

There has never been a time when people have left mainstream gaming for older, more refined games. It's not even about that. A game like Q3 could have been wildly popular if it was handled correctly.

Look at dota and starcraft. Two of the most popular games on the market and they have a large established playerbase that is growing even bigger. If you don't know the games, both Starcraft and dota are spectator nightmares, and yet they enjoy great popularity. The arguments people have made before about quake looking dated or that it's just too hard for a spectator to watch without knowing the game are just silly when you look at other games that are doing just fine.

Starcraft is probably one of the most skill intense games ever made. There's nothing newbie friendly about it at all. DOTA is quite a bit more newbie friently, but it's more about teamplay instead of individual skill.

While money was never the REASON for people to play, it's like I said to DEMIURGE: a halo effect. Looking at how much was doled out back in the day, you're dead on: outside of being top 4 consistently, you couldn't make a living off of being pro. But, if there are those top players that are highly active, they'll get their friends to play, or find new ones who will. The tournaments with big money numbers attract big attention, which also potentially brings in more players. The presence of a big prize ripples out to reach places where the game itself can't or doesn't, because while Guy Reading Internet doesn't give 2 shits about Quake 3, or whatever game, he does understand BIG MONEY BIG PRIZES. It also has a top-down motivation factor where people get their friends to play. I practiced at the wee hours of the morning at the prompting of a certain tiger-toting player from q3test through Babbage's, and I was making my friends play when I could as well. Some of them wanted to get better, so they played more.

Regarding fresh blood, I agree there as well that people just don't look for an old game when they want something new to play. But, there are quite a few players now in the NA scene that I either hadn't heard of, or didn't even play yet, when I stopped in late 2002, which was nearly 3 full years after the game was released. While people are leaving for other reasons, I'm an example (and I've seen quite a few more recently) of people who have come back. But, I think that in our older, wiser years, some of us realize that the community is extremely self-destructive right now, and are iffy about staying around. There are things that definitely prevent me from putting in the time I used to be able to, but at the same time, I liked the game enough to play other stuff and come back.

I'm curious though; what do you mean by handled correctly? That sounds like a good subject to tackle :)

Starcraft and Brood War were my 2nd home in college, and I still think it is one of the pinnacles of modern gaming. And being even a decent player is extremely demanding, but picking it up, playing mouse only, and building only a marines and SCVs *IS* an option. A shitty one, but an option nonetheless. While you can't get very far like that, it's a lot more progressive to go from totally new to functionally competent, in what I've seen from friends who picked the game up at my suggestion, than it is in Quake 3. Quake 3's single player was clearly designed to get people trained a bit on the game, still doesn't have (in my eyes) that gentle learning curve from "Okay, I understand what is going on" to "I can do all of the basic things that any other player can do, just at a much lower level" like SC. If there was a "newbified" version of Quake 3 play, there might be a better chance of this happening. Although, it can be argued that VQ3 *IS* newbified :)

While I agree that money can help drive someone to play, it also depends on the way it's advertised to him. Fury was a free MMO that boasted a $1,000,000 tournament (hi cpl) and yet it crashed and burned. Even QW had huge prize tournaments when it first came out, and was amazingly popular. Look at it now. WoW is nothing but a money sink, and the subscribers grow by the thousands. Working in LAN centers for a few years, I've been really close to a lot of gamers, and have tried to encourage people to play Q3/QW/SC/etc - it just doesn't stick with them.

I'd say the discussion about how the game was handled is an easy one. The messy state of Quake is, and has always been, the fault of id software. Anyone can take one look at baseq3 or baseq4 and cringe in disgust. Before Quake 4's release, id touted that it would have arena gameplay, built to expand on what was in Q3. Quakecon tournaments were run on OSP, not baseq3. Id couldn't see what players wanted after all the years? We shouldn't NEED to mod a game to make it playable. If you can't play the game out of the box, you shouldn't be surprised when the only players are the die-hard fans who wait for someone to put their free time to work to fix something that id charged money for. Even now, id is working on Quake LIve without saying "Hey, we're doing this and this, discuss." Don't be surprised when it's just baseq3 with 3 layers of bloom and lens flares. To improve a game, you need communication or observation. They have neither.

Id relies too much on the community to build the player base for them. Releasing a finished product is a requirement. Would you buy a car that was missing features or crashed randomly? Why would you buy a game with those problems? In a way, id reminds me of CPL; promises and disappointment. Each time they go to release something, they say "This time, it'll be different!", and everyone gets their hopes up and thinks that this time will be THE time. The mod makers are the ones we should thank. They're the ones that have given us a real game to play all these years.

The fundamental gameplay is much the same from newbie to pro in Quake, whereas it's almost an entirely different game between low level and high level play in Starcraft. For the last few months that streams were open, I had been watching the Korean Starcraft channels that they have on TV. They play for 18+ hours per day and the matches are amazing. They fill stadiums, even though the game has somewhat poor spectator features. Just recently, they've expanded the shows to include english shoutcasting - in hopes to expand the game in other countries. Thus far, Blizzard has had no part in any of it, either. They've only been responsible for making the game and patching it up. If a platform like Q3 existed that was as well made as SC, we'd be doing just as well.

True enough about money; but take 2 extremely similar (or identical for the sake of argument) games and put independently-run big money tournaments behind one, all else being equal (it's not in reality, but in argument that has to be the case), the one with the IRBM tourneys will get the bigger following. That's the crux of what I was getting at, but really I was trying to say that the people attracted to a game for big-money tournaments are a different type of player than the ones who play because they want to play. The attraction to the big money tournaments changed the way the events played out. Playing in the BYOC became a no-no; you set up in your hotel room with your practice partner. That cut down on some of the fun, friendly games that made the LAN events so much better than playing online. And of course, it became less BYOC-centric because then they had all of the booths around the tournament area for vendors to show off their shit. And that's of course before people went to Quakecon to trade porn and play fucking Battlefield, but that's just a sign of the gaming times.

The main reason I'm playing Q3 now is because of Q4; I was excited, got a friend to upgrade, we were both disappointed and decided to just play Q3 instead. I think that for sure a lot of the problem lies at id's feet as far as sustaining and supporting the community goes. Involving people from the community cuts both ways, but when it comes to "How a game should ship out of the box" it seems like they dismissed all of the mods for Q3 that got things to a very happy place. I didn't think Q4 was terrible out of the box for competetive play, but it certainly wasn't ideal. The bugginess and gameplay drove me back to Q3, and I think there were quite a few folks who did the same.

Quake Live has 2 major strikes against it. You handled the first one well; it probably won't as complete as Quake 3 is out of the box. It doesn't need to be 100% of the way there in terms of polish, but feature-complete means at least an OSP level of server admin capabilities. I think Syncerror's presence on ESR is a great sign, as his activity and ability to really get what people want and why appears to be exactly what is needed to get from forum comments to "Oh, now I get it" moments in the id offices. The other major strike is the Quake 3 community's current state. I have a feeling that if there IS a surge of people playing it, they'll be turned away by being derisively called noobs from the second they start playing until the second they stop. As much as I'd like to see it succeed, I just look at Quake 4, and the sense of disappointment the community felt after that. Sure, id didn't develop it, but it didn't say "No, it's not good enough, keep trying" and manage it that way.

I think that the gradient from new to pro in SC is much more linear than the gradient in any of the Quake games. In Quake, you have aim, movement, timing, and reflexes to use as your basic components of what I'd call technique. In SC, you have far fewer base techniques to master, since most of the game is mental, making the barrier for entry into competence lower, but from there, you can't make up for a well below average tactics with well above average technique. I'm very behind the times as far as how the game is played, but I would imagine that it holds true that SC still has a similar ratio of physical to mental requirements to chess, meaning that it is more important when you move than how fast you move. Just to illustrate, a player on a keyboard (or console controller) has no chance against someone with a mouse and keyboard in an FPS, but if a guy goes all mouse against someone who knows every shortcut in the game, the all mouse guy won't necessarily lose in an RTS (yeah, I lost to a mouser a couple times).

I'd still have to disagree with the money issue. WoW costs you money to play and (up until just recently) didn't even have tournaments. Even at the start, it had a huge following. Fury, however, was created from the start to be PVP only and had a tournament for $1,000,000. Even still, nobody plays it. CS became popular long before it had tournaments, and other games were already hosting tournaments. From all the LAN events I've been to and all the time I've spent around players while at work, I only see people who play for the fun value. The problem with Q3, I believe, is that the only way you can enjoy it is to be good at it - and the skill level/learning curve is already so high. It's not easy explaining to someone that they have to lose for the first few months without getting a kill before they can get anywhere. I still find it ironic that people don't come to quakecon to play quake. =P

I'd say Q4 was pretty horrible for tournament play out of the box at the start. Better now, but it was pretty horrible. Sounds getting stuck, rockets not dealing damage, rockets hitting you when they shouldn't, shotgun pellets dealing way too much damage, sound positioning off, poor performance, terrible maps, no autodownload, no GTV, the list goes on... Do a google trends search for Quake 4 and watch how quickly it died. =P Also, a lot of people blame Raven for Q4, but id said they were working very closely with them, and that everything had to be approved by them first. When it shipped, it was up to standards for id.

Hmm.. there's a lot more to Starcraft on a professional level than you think. Not only do you need great timing and micromanagement in-game, it is physically demanding as well. i'm still not very good and I can pull maybe 80-100 APM (actions per minute) where a professional starcraft player can pull upwards of 400. Building things on time and managing 10-15 buildings between multiple expansions while managing your economy and combat is difficult at best. There's a reason some of these guys are making 6 figures playing the game. There are 2 channels that I know about in korea that play on TV which are dedicated to nothing but live starcraft matches all day long. Stadiums full of hundreds/thousands of people show up to watch these guys play.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=p08QFrGa8Jo <- keyboard view of boxer in action
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3040656170288749833 <- one of my favorite matches

Just look at CPL Winter 2006; how many players came out of hiding, Quake 4, or whatever else they were doing to play in that tournament? Look at the spike in google searches as a spike in interest. The BYOC was dead for Quake 3; MAYBE half of the players had computers set up there who were playing in the tournament. The people weren't there for the game, they were there for the money; this is exactly what I was bemoaning in the first place. And exactly what I'm wanting to be reversed now that the money's sucked out of it, but I've also argued that I fear that it will suck players out with it; my point that I made in my last post of "game with money in tournaments gets more players than the same game without money in tournaments" still stands, and you're disagreeing with me in a way that I'm not really arguing against. Sure, CS was popular before the big tournaments, but plenty of kids had to have found a draw to the dollar signs, or else it wouldn't have sustained growth for as long as it did. We all know the gameplay is pure shit, so it ain't the fun that's keeping people playing :)

Well, those were primarily gameplay bugs. While yes, it did suck for a tournament-caliber game, I tried to avoid bringing that up as a reason for not being tournament-caliber because you could have run a tournament with baseq4 much, much more easily than baseq3 because a majority of the key features were there. Now, dealing with the rather sizeable bugs, that's an issue players have to decide the value of. People in the real world certainly have shitty, inferior platforms used as competition platforms, such as Nascar, but the structure is much more friendly to competition than something such as Champ or WRC, even though the gameplay and underlying platform is much better.

And I think that the amount of play Q4 actually got, while being such a turd, was quite in large part due to the money in the tournaments. Why the hell else would anyone have played that piece? Couldn't have been the gameplay and bugs that kept people coming back.

I have no idea what my APM was back in the day, but it was probably pretty high. I was pretty high up on the BW ladder (before it got hacked to shit) for a good while, so I do have at least some experience. My premise is that there are ways to overcome poor technique by being a better strategist. You're not going to win very frequently by hitting monster APMs while having shoddy tactics. It'll give you an advantage in some situations, but in the overall picture, the technical aspects of the game are dominated by the tactical aspects. Yes, you have to have it all to be pro. That's a given :) It's just that you can overcome a lack of technique with an extra helping of strategy, but the other way from everything I've seen, is exceptionally difficult.

In Quake, your tactics are practically irrelevant if your technique is shitty. If you can't aim, move, time, and have shitty reflexes, your ability to execute any strategy is more or less out the window. But, if your technique is at a higher level than your opponent, your tactics don't need to be anywhere near as good as your opponent in order to win. The emphasis in Quake is on technique, while SC is tactical, and it's far easier to get into, and progress at, something with a low technique barrier than a high one. Yes, at the highest levels of Starcraft, you have to have insane technique to win, but your technique revolves around your strategy. Quake's strategy revolves around technique. That's all I said, and I wasn't taking anything away from the SC pros :)

You and me, we are writing a book together. And we're in Texas, heh.

say hi to ron paul for me.

If only.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=quake+3&ct...amp;sort=0

lol even in England the Poles come out on top :S

Through Q3's ups and downs I have never stopped playing what I enjoy, Q3.

Quake for LIFE. Don't even care about which Quake it is, just give me some Quake and life will be grand. :D

Quad Damage at Quakecon EVERY YEAR! :)

I'm terrible at it now, but I still love me some QW and Q2CTF over Quake 3. Timeless gameplay imo :)

no other game comes close to quake 3 for me, dont see anything changing that =)

remember. the mass/mainstream is always stupid/gay. never follow it.

Oh god that's not at all what I'm talking about. Just that with the money gone, maybe those of us left can start putting together more regional, focused, and fun Quake LANs, like back in the old days.

I can't remember the last LAN party I went to (outside of the ones we put together down here) that was actually run AND attended by people who were focused on Quake (or at least knew how to play, or what the game was about, or had any idea that it wasn't just some mindless FPS)...and that includes Quakecon 2006. I know there are plenty of us around the US and A, but getting some more interaction as far as LANs go would be nice, possibly coordinating them to have city vs city or state vs state match ups between teams on LAN.

i think people need to get more into organizing cups where the entirety of the prize pot came from the entree fee of the participants, instead of hoping for corrupt, money grubbing, fuckface, bastard orgs, like cpl, to take care of us.

I like the concept, but without a level playing field (not the game itself, but the chance of competitors to hit the money), it's hard to get people to buy in to that type of system. If there was more luck involved and John Q. Nooblet can buy the game, install it, and win the whole thing, it might be more likely, but I think that's best left in the realm of card games :)

Devs should learn from the universe. A plant takes time to grow. Allow the gradual progression from seed to root to full-fledged panderer. Pair players based on level of progression.

i think i'm gonna light your fuckin garden on fire.

Green doesn't burn. A kind sentiment though. Can't imagine where it comes from.

Actually, I think i've got it. You're one of these 'girlish/nerdy' guys who try to make up for their perceived feminism (in contrast to the dumb, muscular jock). This over-compensation causes a masculinity-complex.

I use the garden parallel because it is nearly identical to the way the brain functions (and in the case of this thread, nearly identical to evolution). If you fail to understand the science, it is your loss, my loss, and the loss of us all - we live together (segregation does not truly separate).

no

You are a typical American animal. You falsely believe pleasure is a goal, rather than a guide.

You are young, and driven-by-pleasure, therefore disinclined towards truth. Eventually though, you will learn.

no

Only a slave or a fool would allow another to tend their garden.

sure

As you grow older, you will become less superficial. You are nothing more than your conscious mind. Everything else is your body.

fortune cookies are more enlightening than you, tbh, and i'm not talking about the fortune.

Light does not equal good or true.

I am not playing a game with you. I realize you do not understand the way your body influences your conscious-mind. It is unfortunate you are too small for us to have any actual effect. It is a waste of time. I'm only used to dealing with the significantly higher-developed. In notions you can understand... I do not teach pre-school.

no

It would need, however, lots of data collected, which can get expensive, and then analyzed, and then tweaked over and over in order to get anywhere near "right" enough to work well.

It'll happen, I'm just not so sure QL is even going to be able to go there. These surrounding facets of the game don't sell games; pretty graphics and war do.

but people always have to pay entry fee.

IM SO SPECIAL IM MY OWN PERSOOOOOON

that's luKrek!!!

emos are always full of comedy <3

i'm not the one clinging on to be SPECIAL


FUCK MAINSTREAM YEAH

me neither

lol

lol

If i wasn't broke as a joke sure i would attend a lan in TX...but if the lan isn't within 4 hours of driving distance and i had a place to sleep then count me out =\

:D It wouldn't be any time soon if I was going to put something like that together; I have way too much going on to give it enough attention. I'd choose Austin because we have at least 12 people locally who already get together every couple months for a LAN. Plus, it's about 290x better than Dallas or Houston.

In Czech-Slovakia we have in summer LAN Trnavka that is traditional q3 tdm 4v4 with 60-70 ppl in village called Trnavka. It is better every year even if prices are cup`s (beer costed there around 0.5eur:), ppl just go there for fun, drink and celebrate our little Q3 fest :D. Our whole community give a fuck to the commercial tourneys, becouse we all love and want Q3 only ! thats means no camping bullshit behind big blue box with awp:)).

Sounds awesome :)

Yes, kinda rare, but the world q3 scene needs more axn`s like this :(.

So let me summarize this:

A lan with Quake only, no commercial crap, only 50 cent for beer (czech beer ftw!), and if there are any czech woman too you can count on me ;)

first they harvest the crops and then they play q3, sounds like a religion i could embrace :>

they harvest the corpse and then they play q3

yeah and hostel is cheap too you only have to pay for it with your life!

I'm sure it's worth it!

true... bodies are still trendy here.. buHAHA :))))

hehe

Sure mate if u have lust for it and some team that will go with you - no problemo, you are welcome :), it depends on our scene and if some Trnavka will be... by now we have q3 revival - thanks hawr1x :) and #snuffpickup (cpma vq3 4v4 pickup channel based for central eu) is on fire right now...so lets say around 10 cz/sk teams can show up this year (last was 11 - max is 16(5 or 4 table places each team) + entering fee was around 10 euro.

Movie From Trnavka 2007 > http://www.quake.cz/?q4=news&iD=954

+

Sounds like we need to visit Czech sometime :)

[+]

I'm not going to Austin, TX if cooller and toxic arn't there, for sure

srsly?

Don't push me
cause I'm close to the edge, I'm trying not to lose my head

It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder
How I keep from goin under

i probably wouldn't go to lan in another country. i would in the uk, especially now i have a laptop, easy to transport.

what keeps me playing has always been clans. when a clan dies or goes inactive thats when i lose interest.

That part was more geared toward the USA scene. as I wouldn't expect anyone even as north as Canada to make the trek for a weekend. Mexico's close enough but their scene is a little dead afaik.

Would be nice if there was a much bigger UK TDM/CTF scene :/

I doubt even if you combined all the quakes you'd get enough teams/players to have a decent Quake only LAN :/

there was one, covlan was it called? q3 scene does seem to have had a bit of growth, interest from quake live maybe.

uk quake lan this summer would be cool. i will probably have quite a biof spare time, but i know nothing about networks.