Commemoration of the Early TF2 Era: EU 2007-11 w/ Byte interview

Interview with Byte

Q1: ETF2L wanted to introduce some unlocks into S9, breaking the long-term rule of “Vanilla+Medic unlocks”. Three teams that finished top four in S8 boycotted ETF2L and gave the importance to ESL Season VII. How this was taken within TCM Gaming? Was it an instant decision to participate in ETF2L nevertheless, or did it lead to an internal contemplation on where to steer now?

Byte: The organization TCM relied on me to take an assertive decision on this matter at the time. We could have stayed clear of ETF2L, but what good would that have done to the community? We’d see less premiership teams competing which would mean for those newcomers and potential superstars coming up to be affected, dividing our community is never a good thing. So we all agreed to continue and for those unable to see the big picture, it would be their loss, not ours!

Q2: TCM’s roster changed a lot going from S8 to S9. I think S8 was already finished with a lot of mercs towards the end, due to players going inactive I will assume. In S9,

• numlocked filled in for Thy’s place in Button Bashers, which would fold before S9’s end, and even totally disband.
• zerox, the player with the most individual ETF2L end season awards at the time although not having won a single ETF2L season (except AFS 2010), went inactive. There is record of one match of him in S10, but I’ll assume that’s more as a merc.
• Haunter left to play Div1 (second division) with a newly formed fully-Portugese team, quite seriously as he told back then, and won it.

Maybe all these cases point out to different reasons, but I wonder if the negativity surrounding the scene at the time had an effect on these developments. Perhaps it was not as exciting as it was to play the game, or perhaps now it was OK to start a side project one always had in mind. What can you say about these, or the atmosphere in general, and the effects it had?

B: Yes, I mean that season where everyone bailed bar a few teams, meant everyone was missing and wanting to play premiership TF2, and as they had to witness what was the best three teams fight it out, it made it more appealing for folks to either go off and try their own thing or start a side project with a team and think they could do better. That’s trade off, of not wanting to play in my view over playing but with rules in place that may or may not suit your taste.

Aside from this, players were constantly making new online friends, and preferred their friendship over what would be a potential winning team. You think Epsilon who in my opinion were the most successful team were all close friends? No, far from it, but they were the best synergized team to win the competition by far. Some people cared more about being the best some more cared about playing with their friends and took a ‘punt’ to see if it transpired to something bigger and create upsets and potentially be the best team in Europe!

Q3: Do you think the community easily recovered and moved on from that season; or did it require an extra effort or time to bring life to the scene again, and maybe to restore the old level of competition and skill of the higher divisions?

B: No extra effort or time was needed to bring back the scene, whilst that special season happened players were just busy playing a lot more scrims in preparation for the following season. Figuring out who’s their best mate they synergize with and so on. The skill ceiling didn’t change much, but with unlocks happening, it added more variables to potentially mess with teams setup and gameplay style.

Q4: Does that resistance to the inclusion of unlocks feel almost unbelievable now that, for example, Gunboats became such an essential part of Soldier and it is not common to play the 6v6 game without it?

B: I just think it was the players who decided to boycott the game temporarily had a naive and narrow minded perspective for them and the community. Didn’t help anyone, I’m not saying all the unlocks should have been introduced, but adding more variables to the game definitely spices things up. Adaptation in any sport or e-sport in this case is an element defining a champion. Most people will cry about change but I think in some cases adapting to a change is a quality to achieve.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1 Comment