go where? NA would be a good start imo

Going somewhere with Valve hopefully.

in terms of like money and popularity

stay optimistic :~)

Last night I forced my girlfriend to watch the i49 fragmentary, and although she's never played TF2 or even watched it outside of ster videos and the like, she's now forcing the living room TV to only play twitch.tv/teamfortresstv all weekend.

Considering she doesn't play many competitive games outside of Pokemon, I'm pretty inclined to say that TF2 can definitely be an exciting spectator sport even for those that have never seen it competitively before, and have no idea what's even going on.

i definitely agree that tf2 can actually be an exciting spectator sport

today i just talked to a friend on steam and found out he loves watching tf2 streams and he has under 2 hours on the actual game
it was mind blowing

.

its the group stages and a lot of NA people are at school/work

also weekends generally = more viewers

It really does have so much potential.

Some pretty exciting games thus far.

Obviously the problem is the lack of exposure to potential viewers/players.

I don't think it will ever reach 10k

http://www.teamfortress.tv/post/633767/slin-got-cut

I like to stay optimistic and hope lans will stay, forced the bf to watch with me and it was actually really fun even for him, the fact there was an introduction video explaining how comp TF2 works made it more enjoyable, i dont remember if stuff like that happened past year, but i believe this kind of features could increase the interest in this game, SO much potential and so much excitement...

The fact of the matter is, if Valve doesn't do anything, we'll see LANs stagnate and slowly disappear as time passes and people running behind the scenes move on to other games/jobs. With an optimistic outlook, this won't happen- We've seen Valve at least WANTS competitive TF2 to work, They don't seem to want to support the existing 6s scene (so to say, they probably want to balance and tweak their own competitive mode more before they start supporting tournies). I think once they're happy with the 6s meta/viewing experience, we'll start to see more Valve support and hopefully some growth from the exposure.

My concern is how long this will take. We've seen it take years to get to even the infancy of official comp support, who knows how many more people will leave before Valve can finally say "ok we're ready"? Imagine if they did ingame things to support tournaments.. taking a note from CSGO or DOTA, having exclusive skins/items given for supporting the prize pool. Constant rebalances, reworking useless weapons based off of statistics and feedback, the game could flourish.

But i wouldn't hold your breath for that.

The problem with Valve's TF2 updating scheme right now is that change to gameplay isn't coming fast enough. In Dota 2 or heck, even CS:GO, balance changes happen casually in updates. Just a while back they changed the inaccuracy for the AK/M4 to encourage tapping and short sprays.

But in TF2, we get droughts of weapon balance because they're sticking to this slow and painful scheme of releasing balance changes only with major updates, which happen months and months apart. And if those balance changes suck, we're stuck with them for another 6 months and we have to wait for them to see if they fuck up the next balance update.

literally every year is the year tf2 dies

just play the damn game kiddos, i61 will be hype

I would say that TF2 updates recently have been at least as good as CS:GO (not that it's a super high standard). It'd be nice if they just put some money up, at least for production crews and people who actually make the lan happen, if not the prize pool.

Another thing is direct advertisement. Considering you have a fairly large viewerbase, you can probably prod a few hundred to a few thousand into watching i58.

Youtubers larger than me have done similar, and it did obviously help to some extent but in the end most casual players will end up not viewing or not participating in the deeper comp community. Dane for example plugged i58 in a recent video, and many older youtubers years back would frequently make mention of leagues or charity events, but those viewers come for entertainment, not recommendations. I really don't see the comp community growing to a point people want it to without direct valve support.

Of course the game will never "die". but the snake will shed its skin. the new will replace the old. and a time will come the people who make these things happen will be gone.

rip lange, sideshow, dashner...

New people could fill their spots. We just need a smart person with a ton of skills and passion.

usually when talent is leaving, it's a good indicator that it's going downhill
but you can continue to believe that tf2 will grow and be huge just like your dreams if you want

"just"

We have these people but burn them out

the day b4nny quits is the final countdown

Not only that, but it takes a long time and EXTREME dedication to bring the potential we've seen to the table. Look at recent GF stream or even i58 itself, they are fantastic streams but they no doubt still end up with clashing audio levels, incorrect screens being shown, confusion between desk hosts and casters about what is going on, "New" faces working on it will require time to get things down and by the time they master it they end up burning out or losing a handful of their working partners

b4nny is literally incapable of quitting

if esea shut down im 90% sure he would move to europe to play tf2

LaN already left s18

I'll take this from a post that I had made earlier

Honestly fundraising things are things that people go NUTS over. Maybe even adding a perk such as an in game medal that signifies that you helped with the funding of the major would raise a ton of money if not get a lot of attention at least. I know other games would beg for these kinds of things and it would be a fantastic example set by valve, considering that they made tons off of tf2 each day

25% is unbelievably high, if even 1% of the funds from everything bought in the mann co store every year went towards the i-series events or was spread out through a number of lans, then the scene would see a massive growth near instantly

if i am right, someone said that valve makes a mil off keys alone on the store each day, but i'll be generous and say thats a week. I'd say 10% would be good because if I am right, you would get 1mil/week from tf2 10% and you could also plug majors.