Hey, so I know I have made some questionable threads in the past, but I believe this idea has some interesting pros and cons that are worth thinking about.

Looking back at Team Fortress 2 in 2014, there are many things that contributed to the community's moments of peak excitement. Important lan events, immersive moments of glory, and community-made projects like the i49 fragumentary have brought spirit and vigor to our unique microcosm. While these aforementioned instances have been so critical to competitive TF2's existence, the question of whether they will be enough for the future of this game has recently aroused great dispute.

In my eyes, some of the real spark of TF2 (particularly in the last year) has been provided by the unique characters and icons of the community. After a brief hiatus in January of this year, popular invite scout Sven "ruwin" Zobler plowed back into his rigorous streaming schedule, frequently receiving upwards of 500 viewers on a regular basis. Slowly but surely, ruwin became one of the most controversial players of 2014. After the viral successes of his boot from unstoppable team FROYOTech and the infamous "dorito_snapped" stream clip and [url=https://teamfortress.tv/thread/16899/dorito-snapped]tf.tv[/url] thread, ruwin undeniably became the most notorious figure in the community. Whether you loved him or you hated him, you were probably talking about him during his era of reign from January to April 2014. After the fallout of ruwin's drama and his departure from the Team Fortress TV stream aggregate, soldier player Ma3la became the next competitive Team Fortress 2 stream super-icon. Starting in May of the same year, his flight for glory began. Riding the wave of hype surrounding his unparalleled aesthetic debut at ESEA s15 Lan, as popularized by YouTube legend Shadetf2, Ma3la racked in similar colossal numbers to ruwin. While not quite as contentious as ruwin, Ma3la provoked bad threads and street talk alike with his juicy call-outs towards 4G and other players. Like most (exception: MR SLIN), after months of streaming everyday for more hours than he slept, Mabla threw in the towel and his era came to a close. Arriving at our last icon, his quaint beginnings are frequently forgotten because of his lively present being. Before his current stardom, his out of the blue low-interaction streams received gargantuan amounts of viewers, but with little follow-up. After undergoing a beautiful flowering of self-discovery, veteran/legend Grant "b4nny" Vincent set his luscious locks aside and put on the manpants, showing the world he meant business. At the dawn of November, b4nny kicked his facecam-filled and now highly-interactive stream into gear, taking the place of the previous stream giants of TF2 in 2014. While b4nny's age of humble and honest gameplay has filled the screens of hundreds into the holidays, who is to know how long this period will last?

Although there are many other intriguing solutions to our self-imposed "tf2 is dying" epidemic, I feel that the route of tapping into our icons has been severely undervalued. While the actual events, leagues, and moments in the game are important, 2014 wouldn't have been quite the year without all of the thrill and excitement brought by these streamers.

Here is my recommended plan of action. It is clear that the competitive Team Fortress 2 community has great power through crowd funding and coming together for a single cause. Members of the community raised an applause-worthy $13,820 this summer to send our top North American players to the Insomnia International Lan. With some sort of similar fundraiser, I suggest we band together to relocate Ruwin, Ma3la, and B4nny into the same living residence, creating the worlds first triple-stream. Before you write this idea off, consider the possible outcomes, as well as the consequences that would bring an incomparable peak of exhilaration to the competitive community. Housing all three of this year's streaming icons in one facility would open the gateway to unexplored realms of entertainment. It is one possible notion that the stream could be a 24 hours a day 7 days a week experience. Having three prominent streamers would make it possible to have unique, stimulating exhausting stream sessions with triple facecam and screen by screen gameplay. However, there would also be unique downtime in the occasion only one streamer would be present instigating intimate details about their opinions of the other players as well as awkward conversation between Ruwin and Ma3la when B4nny is sleeping. Whether you were watching for the drama, their knowledge of the game, or their personalities in 2014, you can get an overwhelming dose of all three if this idea is executed. While it was clear these three were the dominant streamers of the year with their own respective glory ages, streamers like MR SLIN are left from the action. Although he has streamed on a regular basis throughout 2014 and has aroused incredible infamy from his various "silly moments" and quirky personality, he usually averages a miniscule 100 viewers. If the crowd funding was successful, we could also send MR SLIN to the gaming house, perhaps with the sole purpose of performing house maintenance and feeding the primary streamers. This would open up lots of opportunities for cameos and further controversy between these players.

I encourage you guys to throw around some of your thoughts and constructive feedback for this idea, please feel free to contribute in helping brainstorm for this project. If done right, I believe this has serious potential to give the competitive Team Fortress 2 community something that is ridiculous, awe-inspiring, and rejuvenating all at once. Thanks for your time.