Live competitive TF2, is so expensive to produce.

Do not take this as “this event is cancelled because this staff member is depressed”. No events upcoming are being cancelled as far as I know. This is a rant, this is a ramble - an opinion piece, my thoughts, my fears, my weaknesses.

LANs are very important in terms of community spirit, not just a true test of player skill. They also require a lot of production:

there’s cameramen, whether those who take photographs with theirs or those who fly out to focus on a player’s POV during the live game



there’s organizers and administrators, who work their asses off only to stand around and make sure everything’s going okay, trying to troubleshoot everything that will obey Murphy’s Law



there’s equipment: cables upon cables. MicroUSB, USB, adapter, HDMI, all these things I’m not sure I’m even familiar with



there’s external programs: the NodeCG programmer. The Cheat Feed relay.



there’s casters whose voices dry out during their cast because they forgot to drink water.



Every year or every era of competitive 6v6 TF2 from either Europe or North America, I watch a man - usually a figurehead in the scene during the time - blow at least four American digits to make a live TF2 event happen. I watch them lose all faith as community feedback, love and appreciation reaches deaf ears as they realize how deep in debt these events sent them in.

I watch as these men denounce competitive TF2 in their bitterness. I fear the people who will lash back at them, saying they didn’t ask to have quad digits invested into competitive TF2 and it’s their own fault - and yet, they fail to realize that the reason the high quality as well as the LAN itself exists is because of how much was invested from personal pockets. I fear for the other future frontmen or the ones who help them, their own anxieties about whether or not we’ll survive threatening to consume them whole.

I witness fundraisers - the solution, surely for a community-surviving tiny eSport - created to send production people from a continent over to another, only to barely make enough and it only is able to send one person. I watch the community react to heavy backlash at players who ask for some money to be sent over to a LAN, and I watch it bleed over into determining why X should go over Y, and what Y has done that X hasn’t that can benefit production more, breaking our unity.

I look at a stickybomb on somebody’s stream as they play the Matchmaking Beta, lag ever so slowly, 12 frames per second, as it descends towards the ground. I hear we’re not sure what’s going on with that anymore except those who might be in contact with Jill - who is probably swamped and stressed out just as much. I get excited when I see the official announcement in-servers for the Grand Finals - only to realize that while this might help our viewership, it doesn’t help us in a financial rut.



Sometimes, I hear of risky experiences with border patrol in terms of getting expensive streaming equipment through the country’s airport. I’ve been stopped once with a friend who was producing. They didn’t believe we were doing a TF2 Charity event. We had to go through 3 levels of border security before they let us through.

Other times, I watch organizers tear their hair out at people not signing up for something they spent hours investing advertising in, and the sponsors drop them. Sometimes I watch organizers waiting anxiously to see if the sponsors they spent weeks trying to pick up will call back - while other small sponsors drop TF2 or focus less on their TF2 teams in favour of CS:GO or LoL teams.

I watch other games that compare themselves to TF2 pop up, immediately with catering towards everything that the 6v6 crowd wanted, and players leave or disband their LAN teams to go play that game instead. Not by that rivalring company’s fault or that game’s fault, but because it shows more promise financially or personally more than the TF2 they want does. And when I hear “this game is going to kill TF2″ as a result of this, I’m tempted to re-correct them with the pessimistic: “no. Valve is going to kill TF2″.

I’ve used the candle analogy since the departure of one of the most positive faces for competitive TF2. I’ve watched so many candles that helped me light my own - albeit not one that leads the way as much as the frontmen right now - burn out so swiftly. I watch now as our current frontman struggles to keep his flame lit - find a reason to keep that flame lit - as a wind snuffs out one of his crewmembers’ flames. It was a crucial crewmember, not as in the front as the past frontmen but they did their part and spent their four digits.

My scene is labelled, dismissed often, as people who are trying to hard. Desperate nerds who are trying to make a non-competitive game something it’s not, despite how TF2 at its core is a competitive game (two teams, one objective). An ignorance to how much this game means to these players, or how much it makes our players. An ignorance to how costly it all is. It’s hard sometimes, for both the non-competitive and competitive players. I know that the players from the scene I care about most are sometimes volatile. Sometimes, “it’s far worse in CS:GO/DOTA” just isn’t a good excuse. Sometimes, they say “I hope this scene dies and I hope these people who are involved in it get what they deserve”.



I am not the saviour of competitive TF2, nor will I ever be. I am not the frontman I wanted to be. There are people who have done more than I could ever do, spent more than I can ever make. They are the frontmen I have worked with, who I have looked up to. Whom I’ve watched suffer or fail to be noticed for whatever reason somebody may hold.

The community has been warm, kind. Cruel, cold. I look at people cheer. I look at players try their hardest. I look at the community who smiles upon us when we do good. Who frowns upon us when we make a mistake. Who rolls their eyes at us when it seems like we take ourselves too seriously. Who pray that people who are struggling with real life to still focus on donating money to video games and hope their kind words will be enough.

Competitive TF2 is a labour of love; a volunteer effort. I have watched literal blood, sweat and tears go into producing not just online but live events for it. My mother, a practical person and an immigrant to Canada, teaches me very traditional roles in terms of money and spousal partnership. “Money cannot buy love - but love will not pay your bills.” And now I watch money, the root of all evil, stay the root of all evil. I watch money make the world go round, and I watch as we don’t have enough money to send people around that round world. CS:GO, LoL, DOTA or SC2 players can. Small eSports - Rocket League, TF2?

To me, your thanks and your appreciation - it means the world to me. To my peers, I’m sure they appreciate yours too - but they’ve burnt out. Sure, new frontmen will come. They’ll also go, and I fear they’ll go just as bitterly as everybody else seems to be: realizing they can no longer overextend for greatness - keep live TF2 events going for players to compete in - because it’s not worth it.

All I know for sure is that we hope Valve appreciates it as much as you guys do, because now the ball is in their hands once again. As anything with Valve and their infamous radio silence - we just hope they throw it back to us. For now - your kind words help for what they can do. Your candles are still lit. Keep it that way. Do not let me, or anybody else, put it out if you feel as strongly as you do for us, for the players, for the scene. Just understand this:

Live competitive TF2, is so expensive to produce.