With Winter Season 2020 now over, it’s time for some announcements regarding the future. But before that, let’s briefly go through the history of the platform, so you can have a better understanding of the context behind the announcement.

The idea of creating a matchmaking system for Trackmania came in mind in late 2017 as a project option for my bachelor’s degree. I couldn’t get my mind off it and I didn’t even bother coming up with other ideas, so I went for it. Trackmania Nations Forever was a better option at that time because I was already familiarized with the technical side of it.

Summer 2018, first testing phases began. The community responded very well and the feedback given was very constructive. Later on, the switch to Trackmania 2 Stadium happened, while also adding an ELO-based ranking algorithm and Twitch integration.

Autumn 2018, ESAC was now finally available for everyone to try out. We reached the milestone of 500 registered users and bought the domain we now have today: esac.gg. The activity was so great, that the servers collapsed. This a screenshot I managed to save from that time period:

Winter 2018/2019, I started my first attempts in organizing events on the platform and with the help of https://www.twitch.tv/tmscotsman we started the ESAC Podcast.

March 2019, I realized that there were some barriers the competitive scene of Trackmania had, that impacted the life and performance of the platform, so I decided to close ESAC until further notice. Later that month, I publicly suggested the idea of implementing a global map pool by creating a poll, where the majority of the players (almost 80%) voted YES.

Summer 2019, I announced the release of the Competitive Open Map Pool, which goal was to approach the barriers previously mentioned, by helping build a stronger competitive ecosystem, where new tournaments could be organized easier, where mappers have more return of invested time and effort in their maps, where players can play in multiple competitions at the same period of time and other more benefits.

Q4 2019/Q1 2020, ESAC went live again and started organizing seasons by using the previously mentioned Competitive Open Map Pool. The platform also shifted from a pure matchmaking platform to a competitive platform, where the goal was to strengthen the game’s esports ecosystem by providing tools, services, competitions and other means of creating competitive-driven content.

March 2020, A new Trackmania has been announced.

All this time, since October 2018, ESAC has never really left the beta phase. Now we are moving into a new direction, and this path will be represented by the Gamma Phase.

The Gamma Phase essentially is an overhaul of ESAC’s website. It’s a project started from scratch from a UI/UX perspective, so that it can adapt to the new path the platform will take and can make the accessibility for the user much easier than it had been before. The goal of ESAC will remain the same: providing a competitive platform with tools and services that help strengthen Trackmania’s esport’s ecosystem, but by focusing on 3 key aspects: Play, Organize and Follow.

Play

From a player’s perspective, ESAC will be a source of discovering and participating in events, such as leagues, tournaments, ladders and more. Each player will have a profile page, where users can see their performance, results and other information. With one ESAC account, you can participate in countless events organized on the platform. Data will be migrated, so if you already had an account, you don’t need to create a new one in the Gamma Phase.

Organize

From a tournament organizer’s perspective, ESAC will offer you all the essential tools and services that help you manage and administrate your event. These tools and services are unique from other similar platforms to ESAC in the sense that they are designed and constructed with Trackmania in mind. Compared to other esports, that have a competitive standard, Trackmania’s variety in this category is quite significantly sized. Some features ESAC will have that distinguish themselves from other similar platforms are ManiaExchange integration, a custom map rotation system, seeding phases, creation of custom formats and assigning them to matches, creation of match settings and assigning them to formats, assigning game servers to matches, assigning streams to matches, custom faq section and more.

Follow

From a user’s perspective, ESAC gives you the possibility to discover and watch live events happening on the platform, as well as previous matches results in the most detailed way possible. No more trying to find random discord servers, opening spreadsheets and trying to understand what’s currently going on with the competition you want to follow. ESAC will give you easy access to all public data in an easy to consume way. A live section on the website will also be available, where you can watch live on twitch any matches that are going on at that time. Other types of content will also be available on the home page or on the pages you want to follow.

All these 3 key aspects of the platform will be structured in 2 easy to understand concepts: Pages and Events.

Pages on ESAC are intended for entities that are involved in Events or create competitive-driven content, for example tournament organizers, teams, journalists, associations and influencers. These pages give the possibility to organizers to create their events, to teams to participate in team based events and to everyone to create posts that will be visible on their pages and to some extent on the platform’s home page. Posts will be optimized for search engines and allow you to easily engage with your followers and reach a higher traffic through the centralization factor that ESAC will have.

Events can be created by pages and include all the tools, services and accessibility mentioned during the explanation of the 3 key factors that Gamma will bring.

How will the new Trackmania impact ESAC?

During Trackmania’s announcement something was made clear. This version of the game will be esports centric. One of the two most known tournaments of Trackmania will move to the new game. It makes sense that in the future most of the notable competitions will transition there. Considering the goals ESAC has, the current climate enforces the platform to adapt. Strengthening a momentarily non-existing competitive ecosystem is quite a challenge and therefore the matchmaking system, the Competitive Open Map Pool and the ESAC Seasons will be closed.

The reason for closing the Competitive Open Map Pool is that Nadeo already approached the barriers, that this project was trying to approach, through their addition of in-game seasonal activity/maps. Nadeo obviously has more manpower than ESAC and I think they will have much greater and impactful results, than COMP would ever have, which makes this project obsolete.

Closing the matchmaking is something that does not come easy, but it does not factor in with the key aspects that ESAC will focus on in the near future. Adapting the matchmaking system to the new Trackmania is something that will be very time-consuming from a software development point of view, and we also don’t know how the competitive environment would look like in the new Trackmania. If the matchmaking will ever come back, it will come with a very well-defined structure, that will give the players the highest incentive possible to grind their way to the top. ESAC organized competitions will also come back only when this structure will be put in place.

These are uncharted territories for ESAC and uncertain times because of the lack of information we currently have and with the situation the society is in at the moment. Nonetheless, I am excited for the future. Hope you can understand these decisions and look forward to what ESAC can bring to the scene.

I will keep everyone updated as soon as there’s something worth sharing.

Until then, stay safe and healthy.

Erwin Weber

esac.gg