Speaking for myself, I'd love to see another NA team come over. They were all great guys to meet for starters, and the games were insanely fun to watch, even the NA vs NA final, as proved by the packed out seating (more viewers than any other LAN final at i46 iirc).

Everyone is saying it won't work and giving reasons why, but as others have said, why not start a donation drive now and see where it goes? Using something like indiegogo or whatever which doesn't take a cut and if it doesn't work out, what's been lost? Nothing. I know quite a few people that would donate to get even one NA team over to i49, myself included.

I hate comments like this.

You're implying that people are going to either donate to a LAN fund or a community fund. But the truth is that people will donate towards what they want to see.

You're basically telling me that I should use the £30 I'd be happy to give to a LAN fund to some sort of community fund I really couldn't give 2 shits about. That's not true. I'm either going to donate £30 to an i49 LAN fund, nothing at all or to both a LAN and community fund. It doesn't have to be black and white.

At the moment there are 3 things that can happen.

1) Raise money for a LAN fund.
2) Raise money for a community fund.
3) Do nothing.

At the moment we're doing no.3. And your comment doesn't help promote either 1 or 2, it just shoots everything down.

Also personally, I didn't look forward to i46 because of how it could expand the scene - I didn't expect anything like that, but I did look forward to watching the styles of players from 2 different continents clash - and that really was awesome to watch. And that is exactly what I'd pay to see again.

Also I totally agree with CRow on the point about bridging the gap between the communities, when I got into competitive TF2 in the July just before i46 I didn't give a rats ass about NA TF2. But after seeing their aggressive stlyes at i46 I started staying up stupidly late and watching NA Invite casts. Who's to say the same cant happen with the new comp TF2 players of 2013 because of i49?

And even if it really does end up being as simple as NA vs EU, that is not a bad thing. It's competitions like that which both people within the community and outside can appreciate and enjoy.

Yes, we'd all love to see another epic NA vs. EU LAN and if the community wants to donate to that because that is what they want to see then that is totally fine and understandable. However, my post questions the actual productiveness of dropping $10,000 on another NA vs EU LAN. It was a spectacular event and I'm glad I was able to watch it, but the main goal of the event at the time was to help grow competitive TF2 and attract big name sponsors by having American and European teams compete against each other at an international LAN. The $20,000 donated to i46 did not seem to have as much of an impact as $20,000 should have had. And another $10,000 would probably just do the same.

If we pick one city and do a "tf2 tournament" we'll be wasting money. If we want to do another international tournament, then how about we try to work on getting funds for Dreamhack.

Not just a community fund, I'm talking the whole nine yards. We contact Gabe/Eric/Robin, talk to them about it and if they could help if the community raises funds. Contact sponsors/companies (Evil Geniuses/Steelseries/Razer), and tell them what we're trying to do.

Even contact MLG and try to get stuff to get on the pro-circuit. I know, "MLG is bad blah blah blah." If we try to do this though, we could two things. 1, show that we're a strong fighting community that doesn't want to die. 2, show off that a fun pubby game has it's competitive side.

Doing things as a community has always been Tf2's best chance at survival amongst the other games.

#64 That's a discussion for another thread I think.

Let's try and keep this on topic, which is "i49".

Not saying I disagree with you though, I'd love for all of that to happen.

I see your point, and if you think the money is being wasted then that's fair enough, I doubt I can change your mind about that.

But if people are happy to donate then why not at least try? If we get some sort of kickstarted structure where if we don't raise $10,000 to send an NA team to i49 then no one loses a penny.

from a pure publicity standpoint wouldn't 20k in prize pool for a non-lan tournament run by the community be 10x bigger as far as exposure than 20k to be able to send a few teams to europe?

doubtful

Every suggestion you've given here has been actively pursued as far as possible at some point over the last 12 months.

I was involved pretty closely with looking into TF2 at Dreamhack. The cost for TF2 at Dreamhack Summer 2013 is 47k Euros. We can drop that figure about 10k by making a few fairly major compromises. Valve have no interest at all in sponsoring it (although are willing to give it their blessing), and 47k isn't a whole lot less than what it costs to run Dota 2 at Dreamhack which will net any sponsor roughly 10x the viewership stats.

Bear in mind, that is DOUBLE the amount of money it cost to send both 2 NA teams to i46 and we didn't even raise enough in the end.

Fax the ethernet cable across the Atlantic and have a telepresence LAN.

Playing for so much money online is silly. There are so many blatant hardware, internet, and location advantages that some players have over others.

Sorry for spreading my propaganda some more but like I said before I really think it isn't as simple as that.

1) Would people be happier to donate $10,000 to a prize pool, or $10,000 to get an NA team to i49? It's really hard to answer that without actually finding out and trying to raise funds for both.

2) It's also really hard to say what will bring more exposure, a large prize pool for an online tournament, or an international LAN.

Anyway I'm turning into a politician by talking ideas while in reality doing fuck all. I'm done. If people agree with me then I really hope something gets initiated.

Feel free to add me on steam and I'll try my best to help if someone wants it.

The whole i46 TF2 matches was probably the best games of TF2 I've ever witnessed. And that's the stuff people are willing to pay for, I'd be happy to donate 30$ to another EU vs NA LAN -- And so do a lot of other people.

It's basically up to the teams to decide how much effort they want to put into recruiting either sponsors or community donors. I don't think the teams have a strong will to go to sponsors about i49. They would prefer to be sponsored to Dreamhack or something else with a bigger audience, and potentially bigger prize pot.

It's an endless cirle. Sponsors won't be interested in TF2 unless they can make money off of it, and there won't be any money in TF2 until it gets sponsored.

To get out of this loop, the catalyst needs to come from somewhere, and it needs to be substantial.

I disagree with this on two levels. I may not see a lot of things you see djc, but I know a good handful more people who are interested in watching (and are now playing) tf2 because of i46. Also, you can't just put out one big event and expect it to make all the difference, it has to be multiple ones. SC2 didn't get big because the GSL was a one shot deal, it got popular because it kept happening and kept peoples interest.

Also the community needs to take a part to really hype and advertise big events like this. I spammed that shit on reddit as HISTORY IN THE MAKING and it got a decent amount of attention, but I'm only one man and can only do so much. :c

There was a large spike leading up to i46 in TF2 viewership. Then there was a massive spike. That spike hasn't dropped off. This game has grown significantly in terms of viewership, and that started around i46. Was it i46? Who knows. Certainly didn't hurt, though.

what seems to be far more important to that is your own work at twitch to front page us and give us regular promotion, good sir~ if you only started doing that because of i46, then i would be very surprised

Promotion isn't going to cause long term growth. That's more of a little spurt. What we've seen here is long term growth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItjqX9f-mIU

Unless there is some other initiative in the works that will require substantial community donations and is more worthwhile, why not? It seems people still find it appealing enough a cause to donate to, and while i46 didn't cause huge growth it definitely gave the vast majority of donors their moneys worth in entertainment (assuming they were american hehe sorry chaps..). As a player it definitely made the game more fun to play, but the main reason for that was because of the drive to regain some pride the next time we played the yanks - particularly in epsilon's case. I really doubt half those players would even still be here if it weren't for that desire.

Also I don't really get what good donating it to a prize pool would do. Look at the dreamhack venture - raising 10k for a prizepool was the least of anyone's concerns, and unless you raise it for such an event then it won't do anything more than another international i-series - probably less, and most definitely less spectator value.

It seems to me like if EU hadn't gotten stomped so bad by NA, there might be more of a reason for our invite teams to go to big EU lans.

Send me to i49

can't really speak for anyone else but i'd donate again - the matches, hype, streams and documentary (whenever it gets released) were definitely worth it

It'd be interesting to know roughly how much it would be to send 1 team to i49 if flights were booked in say, late April or earlier?

Why is everything always about TF2 becoming bigger? That boat sailed off years ago. We even had a second chance when TF2 was made free to play, but again, there was a distinct lack of community drive to make anything happen. We never had a 'day9' producing exciting daily videos, we never had highly motivated commentary / promotional teams. In fact half of the people that tried to get into it, got verbally abused straight out of it again. Players couldn't be bothered to even practice half of the time, we didn't even have a distinct set of rules of even team sizes (we kind of still don't!). We simply didn't market our eSport the way we should have, when it actually counted. The game is too old now, it is still played by a large number of players, but in terms of it becoming a recognised popular eSport up there with the likes of the big guns... it can't happen.

So what is left for us?

We simply need to enjoy what we have. We have a great community (yes... it is great, at least compared to other games), and we have pretty tight competition both in Europe and the US. Sure, we can increase coverage to increase our exposure, and with a little hard work, we might be able to obtain some slightly improved sponsorship deals resulting in bigger prizes for our tournaments (yay more keyboards), but the reality is, TF2 isn't going to become that 'level' of eSport that people hoped it would one day reach, and even if it does, how many top players in the community are ready to quit their jobs / school to play full time for a reasonably low salary? That's what these other professional gamers in those 'big eSport titles' are doing.

i46 was an amazing experience for all involved, and for me and many others, it was the peak of competitive TF2. Could we do it again? Yes... we very well could! It will however take even more community drive than the i46 donations to get it going, as the initial 'Europe vs US' hype has been answered. The marketing strategy would be all about the rematch. New hype would need to be created, Europe would need to show that it can put up a better fight than last time, and the US teams need to show that they have still maintained or improved on the level they were at previously. We certainly can have an absolutely EPIC i49 tournament if enough people want it to happen. We will never have these kind of events being a regular occurrence, there will never be that much money in TF2 to make it happen, but would you rather work hard and have one of these incredible events each year, or just carry on with the online play, a few local lans, and having a couple of teams pickup some headsets or mouse mats each season?

I say the day that i48 finishes, should be the day that we get the drive going. Every video / vod released by all the global TF2 communities, should be highlighting the i49 movement. Every forum needs a thread, every website needs a banner and headline. Reddit, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube all need to be buzzing, trending. As I've repeatedly mentioned in this post, TF2 will never be a professional eSport, but we can sure as hell host one of the greatest offline tournaments in the business, at least once a year, with the right drive, determination, and hardworking people.

TL;DR... Just don't.

oh, and in terms of a donation. I don't see it that way.

I see it as purchasing a ticket to a show, where you will see the best TF2 teams in the world playing against each other. Whether you're going to see this show in person, or watch it online, or even watch the videos afterwards, the value I personally place on one of those tickets is between $30 and $60, others will value it more, and others less.

Also the i46 final was own3d.tv exclusive on Multiplay's channel which kinda sucked. Am I right in thinking it would be on twitch this time, even if not on VTV/TFTV?

Lastly. If you're trying to raise money for a tournament prize pool, you're going to have a bad time.

Something like that can work when a game is first released, as a group of competitive gamers can see that a new game has X amount of money, and everyone is on the same level of skill and experience, so it's worth their time putting effort in to try and win the prize fund, so you get more players into the game, more teams popping up.

This doesn't work for an established game. You're asking several hundred, if not thousands of people to give a prize just to the winners. Personally, I don't want to fund prize money to TF2 players, I want to help get them to a LAN event that they wouldn't normally be able to attend. Also if those teams win any prize money, morally at least half of that should go straight back into the community (a giveaway or something where everyone has an equal chance of winning), or automatically contributed towards the next similar event, since they are getting a free holiday paid for by the community, their rewards for winning the tournament should contribute further to the community.

It would be broadcast on whatever platform Multiplay use to broadcast their games. VanillaTV are hired by Multiplay to broadcast for them, but it's not our show, and they have their own sponsorship deals to fulfill. If Multiplay are using twitch, then that's where all of the coverage would be :)

Pretty much this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb4vrWnRZE0