



There are some fundamental problems in the way Trackmania operates as an esport, which make the use of a matchmaking system quite problematic. Esports in general are a wild west and Trackmania certainly is one of the wildest. It’s common to see decentralized competitive activity in a game, but Trackmania, being incredibly diverse, brings this factor to a whole new crippling level.



Each competition has its own map pool, its own map rotation process, its own requirements and its own calendar. The frequent map rotations make an extremely imbalanced ratio between time spent on learning maps and the time spent on playing matches. If the matchmaking system is used for practicing, there is a very small gap to use it efficiently, since there is too much time allocated for learning new maps. And unfortunately, such a system can’t be available exclusively for practicing, since this can’t generate any income and as consequence can’t sustain itself.



The next logical reason was to dive into organizing tournaments on ESAC. But the lack of a global map pool makes a difficult integration of any new tournament in the game, that has a larger time scale. There is always some notable tournament taking place at almost any time of the week in a year. The general recipe at the moment is to release your own maps with your tournament. For a player to consider participating in this, he has to decide if it’s motivating enough to learn two map pools at the same time and most probably the biggest motivation boost is the prize pool. Therefore, to compete with other tournaments, one would need proper funding, but funding is only available to those who have experience and reach. This is what puts the evolution of the competitive landscape in a standstill.



On another note, there are changes imposed by some influencers of the game, that are not going in the right direction. I can’t deny the fact that some changes are absolutely essential if the scene wants to grow as an esport. But some approaches are totally disregarding the organic nature, of how the community has developed itself, and are pushing the level of diversity Trackmania has, from a very high level to an extreme one. I can understand and appreciate the intention behind some of the actions taken, but not at the cost of compromising the characteristics of what Trackmania makes a good esport. This doesn’t aspire a very promising look on the future.



On a personal level, I have roughly spent 1500 hours on developing and administrating ESAC, so I had to learn all of this the hard way. I want people to understand that I have been working full-time at ESAC since June 2018 with the hope that in 2019, the platform will provide a constant moderately sized income. And I aimed for this seemingly unrealistic target without any external funding, besides donations from a group of awesome people. The reason for this, was to have a job, where I could control the amount and time of work I could do, so that I can fully invest myself in taking music in a more serious direction. Unfortunately, the time has come to reorder priorities both with ESAC and in my personal life. I won’t step away fully from Trackmania. I have been part of the community since 2007 and I still see myself a part of it. I will continue to be involved in other areas, such as promoting the game in Romania, discussing serious topics within Trackmania Esports Collaboration and participating at events (both offline and online), whenever I have the possibility to do so. 🙂



Thank you for your understanding and support. I hope we can witness Trackmania’s scene reaching its true potential.



GG

Erwin

