Yeah, I made a thing in the steam group mentioning this. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/REALTournament#events/172590889339424257

oooo this looks cool

My original paper did just that. It compared the stats of players, competitive players, viewers, prizepots, etc with currently popular games, games that are winding down, etc. Unfortunate that I didn't have time to redo it for the deadline of this paper, but I might try to do it again over winter break just for you guys rather than a class.

A 6th of his life since the game was released, not a 6th total.

We talked about it a lot over the course of the semester, so it's not like a huge ESPORTS OUTA NOWHERE thing. I think it was a nice change of pace from drinking age papers though.

Sources

McWhertor, Michael. "Super Smash Bros. Melee Dropped from Evo Livestream at Nintendo's Request (update: Smash Is Back)." Polygon. Vox Media, 9 July 2013. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.

"sustainable." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 15 Oct. 2014.
Chalk, Andy. "League of Legends 2014 World Championship Draws 27 Million Viewers." PC Gamer. 2 Dec. 2014. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.

Suderman, Peter. "'A Multiplayer Game Environment Is Actually A Dream Come True For An Economis'." Reason 46.2 (2014): 38-43. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Web. 3 Dec. 2014.

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I'd love to discuss the opinions in this paper with you guys, feel free to reply here or message me. :)

While this is a major issue, it’s not the sole reason competitive Team Fortress 2 isn’t growing. The competitive scene was put in a rut by Valve. It wasn’t a chasm or an abyss, though. The community has been quick to blame everything on the developers without thinking critically about what they can do for the community. In this way, Valve's lack of support for community hits the community in two different ways: Primarily, it doesn’t support the community, which means some aspects of the game might be broken or unbalanced. Secondarily, the competitive players are able to use Steam's apathy as an all-encompassing excuse to not do anything for the community. This mentality is not one shared by everyone, but by many.

What the competitive community needs now to stay sustainable in the long run is an organized combination of community leaders, event sponsors, recruiters, and devoted players. If this small subset of the very large TF2 community pulls together, they will have no issues staying relevant for the foreseeable future. Timing is critical, as the community is slowly nearing a tipping point where there will not be enough competitive players to attract sponsors and tournament organizers. If it reaches that point, the game will die. The best way to organize this plan is to have short term, medium term, and long term goals.

Over the next few months, the community will need to organize events, both big and small, to introduce casual players to the more competitive side of the game. Small events with this purpose, called “Noobie Mixes” happen every Friday night and attract around five to ten totally new players each week, on top of the roughly fifty players that are relatively new to the scene that go as well. This type of event is a critical replacement to Valve’s lack of a system that does this for players. There are no official tutorials that they provide for the competitive game modes. So, beginners either have to learn by trial and error, watching youtube tutorials, or going to events like this. These “Newbie Mixes” have the ability to host a lot more than just fifty new players.

On top of that, there will have to be at least one big event within the next month. The community needs to be able to see the potential of the game before putting 100% effort into it. Otherwise, many people would be hesitant to put forth all the effort that organizing this community will require. If they see the ability of the community to be great, whether through a tournament or some in-person event, they will naturally want to be a part of that community. This event, like all others in this community, would be livestreamed to between a few hundred and a few thousand people. The production would have to cater to the casual players and also keep the competitive players entertained. This event could act as a major recruiter for the Newbie Mixes and other events like it.

Over the next year, it will be important for the game to have several large tournaments with third party sponsors. The larger the prizepots, the better. Not only do large prizepots create more serious competition between the highest level players, they create a buzz for the event. For example, an event with a $25,000 prizepot is much more attractive to both casual and competitive players than one with a $2,500 prizepot.

Over the next two years, the very gradual decline in the size of the community will have to either turn into a steady increase in size or at least break even. To accomplish this, active recruiting will have to be done by as many people as possible. Through the figures in the casual scene, the competitive scene will have to spread the knowledge of its existence. Individuals in the competitive community should also encourage other players they interact with to try out competitive. This gesture would be both flattering to the player and beneficial to the competitive community.

Over the next five years, serious talks with Valve will have to happen. If the community can prove that the competitive formats are, in fact, a fun way of playing the same game but with a higher skill ceiling, Valve may consider helping the game out more than it currently does. The goal would be to have Valve point users towards competitive Team Frortress 2. Simply pointing users towards competitive will seriously increase the playerbase.

Also, it will be important by the five year mark for sponsors to come in and fund the top level teams to sponsor. If a team gets a sponsorship, several things happen. The scene is taken more seriously, as is the team. The players make at least a small amount of money to subsidize how much time they’ve put into the game. Fans can get attached to more long-term teams.

The competitive Team Fortress 2 community is easily sustainable if effort is put towards the cause of sustaining it. Sustaining the community that many players have been a part of for several years is not a selfless act. These players want to keep doing what they’re doing, and with very minimal troubles for he majority of players, they will be able to. Simply by recruiting, donating a few dollars to prizepots here and there, and supporting the community by playing, watching, and discussing the game will be more than what the game needs. It won’t ever be 100% Valve’s fault or 100% the community's fault if the game as a competitive shooter dies out, but we as a community should stand up to where we never have to figure out whose fault it is that our community is dead. It should be out goal to just keep it going alive and strong through powerful leadership, broad recruitment, and open minds.

...

So in my writing class we had to write about a problem in a community that affected us. I wrote about our community, and I think the thoughts expressed in this paper might interest some of you guys, so I'll post it here. A bit of backstory about the paper itself, I worked on a much longer version of it over the course of the whole semester and lost it all because I didn't have but the first few pages backed up. The original paper included some really awesome statistics and sources, but oh well :(. The following is from a 10 hour marathon writing session that took place last night from 10pm to 8am. So, the paper's not quite as collegiate as I would have hoped it to be, but the points brought up, in my eyes at least are still valid. Shoutout to my bro Val for proofreading 2000+ words in half an hour on a Wednesday morning.

Sustainability of Online Communities with a Focus on Competitive Team Fortress 2
by KevinIsPwn

As foreign as the topic may seem to many, competitive video gaming is a rapidly growing hobby. Many different games are played at different levels, but competitive gaming is all a step up in skill from casual gaming. With worldwide tournaments boasting millions of dollars in prize pots, it is hard to ignore this cultural trend. In some countries, professional gaming is considered more prominent than professional sporting. This is only the case for a small group of elite, wildly popular games, though. In most games, the competitive community is driven by a will to improve and be great at something, even if that something is a video game. These communities, generally maintained over the internet, often boast an active player-base without assistance from the game studio which actually created the game. These communities typically fade out as newer games are released and players move on to different hobbies. This is the case for many online communities. As newer and better websites, games, and networks are built up, people migrate to those new things. One such community, the competitive Team Fortress 2 community, is in this situation. Some people would argue that this community is perfectly sustainable, but, in its current state, the competitive Team Fortress 2 community is not sustainable in terms of both finances and membership. In order to make competitive Team Fortress 2 a sustainable community in the long run, old members of the community must actively recruit new members, sponsors have to pick up high-level teams, and content creators need to produce high quality content targeted towards potential new players.

To start, sustainability is the long-term endurance of communities. It is most often used in ecology and is used to describe a system that is both productive and diverse. The word is derived from the Latin word "sustinere" which essentially means to "hold up." So, a sustainable community is one that achieves a long life by the means of being both diverse and productive. The sustainability of the community is directly correlated to the effort the community puts into growing the community.
Before getting too far in, it is important to note that competitive Team Fortress 2 is a unique game. A casual game by nature, Team Fortress 2- or “TF2”- has attracted a few thousand die-hard fans to devote incredible amounts of time into the game. Grant Vincent, a top player, has put over ten thousand hours into the game since its release in 2007. He has averaged four hours a day every day for the past seven years, a sixth of his life since the game was released. A player this obsessed is rare, but many people in the community have put several thousand hours into the game, yet no one is making a living off of competitive TF2. The will to make a living off gaming, present in larger competitive games, is not there in TF2. People play it because they love to play it.

There are a few types of competitive TF2. The format in which the highest level players play in is called "6v6". As one would expect, this format puts two teams of six up against each other. This format has half the number of players in each game as a casual format does. In TF2, the player gets to choose between nine classes to play. Each class has its own role, whether that is flanking, defending, attacking, healing, etc. Of these nine classes, only four of them are regularly used in "6v6". This is due to the power of these four classes in a smaller, faster playing environment. The community of people who have poured thousands of hours into the game naturally want to hone their skills in the most precise way possible. Because of this, these die-hard fans created this structured play style to promote the highest possible skill ceiling. These formats are wildly different from the original game, which to some is off-putting. However, the only changes in the competitive formats are made to make the game as fair as possible, and as fun as possible.

Recently, a large number of players in the community came out and said that they think Valve, the game studio that created TF2, needs to support the game for it to be sustainable for a long period of time. The competitive community wants newer players to be allowed to try competitive formats without having to do their own research to find info on the formats. Rather than recruit new players themselves, these people blame Valve for the lack of new players. It has been proven that games do not necessarily need developer support to create a huge competitive community. A good example of this is Nintendo's popular party fighting game, Super Smash Bros. The community has grown over the past decade despite Nintendo's to shut down the competitive scene (McWhertor). However, all the largest competitive games, or esports, typically are supported by the studio that made the game.

The competitive TF2 community has maintained a pretty consistent player base for the past seven years without support from Valve. Impressive as this may seem, barely breaking even with the same number of players each season is far away from guaranteeing a sustainable community in the long term. Despite multiple outreaches made by members of the competitive community, Valve has not implemented a competitive mode for players to play in-game. Valve’s unwillingness to support competitive TF2 is the root cause of the community’s current unsustainability. The most popular competitive games, also called “esports”, are all supported directly by the studio that created the game. For example, the video game “League of Legends” recently had a grand finals event hosted by Riot Games, the company that produced the game. The event broke 27 million total views (Chalk). By investing in the competitive scene of their games, studios invest in the future of that game. Powered by their drive to improve, players will devote much more time into the game than a casual player would, so where a casual player might play a few hours and then quit, a competitive player may play a few hours a day every day for several years. Valve recognizes this and supports other games it has made, but not TF2. Valve caters towards the audience of TF2 that makes them the most money. Players pay for sidegraded weapons, new miscellaneous items, etc (Suderman). The players that participate in this are often new, casual players that will spend a few dollars, play a few dozen hours, and never return. It makes more sense economically for Valve to release a new in-game hat for your character than fixing a glitch in the game. It’s easier for them to add a wacky mini-game than to host an international tournament. This all makes sense logically, but it’s unfortunate that it works out that way.

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pre lan cooking/ baking party? that sounds kinda fantastic.

Hey, it's a step up from my last alias, "egg246".

I played club penguin and habbo for years with that, and decided to upgrade to a SICK NASTY username. I resent middle school me.

edit: the realization just hit me that a million more people have watched my shitty club penguin video than have ever watched a tf2 lan final. I'm going to go lie down and cry now.

Wish I could go again this season, but finals are a thing. :(

by far

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4EuNzXPy_c

http://i.imgur.com/SYvOsxf.png

http://i.imgur.com/n3tYyNz.png

http://i.imgur.com/srjjzbs.png

http://i.imgur.com/b4KgtqE.png

http://i.imgur.com/JOzPbfw.png

http://i.imgur.com/vjuMn4w.png

not really...

http://i.imgur.com/cBzL1kJ.png

sure thing :)

http://i.imgur.com/jmTfTfR.png

http://i.imgur.com/NrzkiqX.png

http://i.imgur.com/NVgGNJi.png

http://i.imgur.com/kSSbVDh.png

http://i.imgur.com/EOaKf7l.png

http://i.imgur.com/1eWkLXk.png