The fifth Battle Arena Melbourne fighting game tournament kicks off at Melbourne’s CQ tonight, with around 300 players expected to fight it out across 11 different games.

The Couchwarriors crew have been responsible for some of the most impressive gaming tournaments in Australia, including their corroboration with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra last year.

Along with three days of frenzied, adrenaline-filled action, this year’s BAM will feature a live performance from chiptunes artist Pselodux. Tom Taylor, author of the Injustice: Gods Among Us prequel comic, will be signing comics on the Saturday, while the NewGamePlus TV crew will be hosting a qualifier in association with Monash University’s High School eSports League.

This, of course, is an entree to the main course, which includes the following: Events for Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition (2012), Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, The King of Fighters XIII, Street Fighter X Tekken, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, Dead or Alive 5, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, Super Smash Bros Brawl & Melee, as well as the first Australian tournament for Injustice: Gods Among Us and an exhibition event for Mortal Kombat.

If you want to watch the action for yourself down at Melbourne’s CQ, a $10 spectator pass will cover the whole weekend. You can also watch the action live from Friday to Sunday on Shadowloo’s TwitchTV channel.

The full schedule is available over on the BAM website, and as always, go Sydney.

Before my five-hour marathon with Dotnod Entertainment’s Remember Me, I sat down in Microsoft’s darkened Xbox Room in Sydney’s North Ryde and went over my notes one last time. It seemed strange that much of the chatter about the game centered on Nilin, Remember Me’s female protagonist.

Apparently, a female lead was too much, with some publishers refusing to pick up the game because of Nilin’s gender. But what was even stranger was that despite a strong showing at GamesCom, there was very little discussion about the game itself, save what details could be gleaned from the trailer videos.

Set in Neo-Paris more than seventy years in the future, Remember Me creates a world where social networking has invaded the last vestiges of our privacy: the brain. Thanks to the Sensen implant from the Memorize corporation, citizens can store and share their memories digitally, creating a host of new opportunities for the subversive, authoritarian state.

Nilin works for a group of renegades called the Errorists, who use memories as a variety of weapons. Memories of secure codes, security installations and more can be stolen; memories can be brought into the physical world as a hologram, necessary for accessing or traversing several areas. Memories can also be altered entirely, although that power largely seems confined to Nilin and doctors with blank cheque books.

The Errorists initial rebellion failed miserably though: in the opening scene, Nilin is sprawling on the floor, screaming in agony while her memories are wiped clean. As she shuffles into place for a second round of treatment, her brother Edge creates a diversion and our hero makes her escape.

From there, the world of Neo-Paris opens up. It’s beautiful in its own way without being groundbreaking. The vibrancy and feel of Neo-Paris — particularly the contrast between the dank sewers and the touch of heritage and order found in the privileged districts — is something to behold.

It also made me long for the times when Remember Me was still called Adrift; back then, Dotnod were planning an open-world style of game, and I would have dearly loved to scour the streets and sights of Neo-Paris more.

Even if you want to search your surroundings, you can’t. The game is fairly linear, so ledges and walls that look like they’re accessible often aren’t. I’m not trying to advocate sandbox or open-world games over their narrative-driven counterparts here, but seeing a world as interesting as Neo-Paris, and then being unable to explore that further, is disappointing.

Exploring and moving around, however, is competent enough. Nilin leaps and traverses walls far more efficiently than Nathan Drake ever could, although the movement is more assured; she doesn’t slip as often, beams don’t collapse with the same regularity. You can’t make missteps unless you deliberately jump into open space or fail at one of the relatively basic movement puzzles; Remember Me is more Prince of Persia than Assassin’s Creed or Uncharted in this way.

The UI guides you via a pair of orange arrows, and there was only twice where the camera angle made it hard to see. Luckily, the path forward was fairly obvious though and I never once had any troubles with the camera while adventuring.

It wasn’t until I got backed into a corner mid-fight that the camera became a problem, but it never lasted long enough to be anything more than a minor annoyance. Nilin usually fights side-on or facing the camera, but things occasionally get awkward if you have to spin around to target an aerial opponent (more on these later).

As a whole, my relationship with the combat was the complete opposite to my love affair with Neo-Paris. After the initial disappointment of not being able to traverse the city as I liked, I learned to appreciate it for what it was. The combat, on the other hand, instantly feels amazing. Punches and kicks land with a satisfying thud, the animations are smooth as silk and the controls are simple and intuitive.

Most fighting is close-quarters and executed through a series of combos, predominantly the X and Y buttons (a PC build was not available for this preview). The trick with Remember Me is that you can configure those combos to grant different bonuses by unlocking Pressens.

There are four classes of Pressens. The first three will either enhance your damage, refresh the cooldowns on your special moves faster or help regenerate your life, while the fourth simply enhances the effect of the previous Pressen in the combo.

The real advantage is the ability to pause and switch out your combos at any time to something more appropriate for the fight at hand. The inputs for the combos don’t change, only its effect, which is a great help for those who struggle at fighting games.

Slower players will particularly appreciate the window of opportunity after you land a hit: it’s enormous. It’s near impossible to miss a combo unless you’re forced to dodge, and even then the system, in some instances, allows you to jump over your current target without cancelling the current combo.

Occasionally you’ll need to clear out the area a lot faster, and that’s where special Pressens (S-Pressens) come in. Accessible via an Assassin’s Creed-style scroll wheel, S-Pressens are typically wide-scale AOE attacks, although the first one you’ll unlock allows you to chain combos simply by mashing the X and Y keys.

The one I ended up using the most was an AOE stun, because it revealed hidden enemies and also gave me enough time to chain a couple of combos which I’d already configured to regenerate my S-Pressens. Normally the cooldown on your specials can be one or two minutes, but a successful combos could cut that time in half or even completely depending on the length of the combo.

The system is easy to execute and looks good, but as the game progresses, completing anything beyond a basic combo becomes a little troublesome.

It starts once the Scorpion aerial crowd-control robot is introduced, which is also called Seraphim in the “Enemies” trailer. Nilin can only kill Scorpions with the Spammer gun, acquired after a boss fight in the second chapter.

Killing aerial enemies isn’t an issue. The problem is that once the waves of enemies grow, killing Scorpions becomes your ultimate priority, otherwise you’ll never be able to finish a single combo. Enemies can take up to three or four combos before they fall — less if you specialise in damage — but the Scorpions’ rate of fire will always force you to dodge before you can finish the combo.

There’s nothing wrong with that as a fighting strategy, but it soon became my only strategy. It dulls the combat experience when you’re simply recycling battle tactics. The vaunted customisation of combos and the fluidity of attacks take a backseat as well; it doesn’t really matter what your combos are before you kill your aerial opponents, and once they’re dead you can do anything you like.

The saving grace is that the fights themselves are fun to watch. Nilin fights a bit like Sonya Blade, with a full suite of cartwheels, flip-kicks and spinning punches. Remember Me’s engine didn’t miss a single beat, and it should be just a treat on a high-end PC.

The boss fights are a little more interesting, although the ones I battled – Kid X-Mas and the Madame, overlord of La Bastille — felt largely similar to something you’d experience in Devil May Cry. Each had three distinct phases, with the window for opportunity becoming smaller and smaller as the fight neared its completion.

It’s here that the combo system will probably see the most use too. Against Madame, I needed the use of my S-Pressens much more quickly, so I rotated my combos to focus solely on cooldowns, with a short three-hit combo solely for regenerating life. Against X-Mas, taking damage was less of a concern, so I concentrated on doing as much damage as possible.

It’s a fun system in principle but how good it works in practice really depends on the enemies and the waves themselves. Hopefully there’s more variety in the later chapters; a major chunk of this gameplay could become rather tedious.

The underlying theme of social networks, their abuse by the state and the willingness of its citizens’ to supply personal information, on the other hand, was intriguing and relevant. I would have preferred to see the leapers designed as homeless, mentally dishevelled Neo-Parisians rather than zombified shells teetering on the edge.

Dotnod’s creative director, Jean-Maxime Moris, has already publicly said that the game is not trying to leave a message or serve as some kind of allegory for the potential issues posed by Facebook and Twitter in the real age. The four chapters I’ve seen certainly don’t do that, and I’d like to see the direction the story takes beyond that point. But it’s an interesting take on the cyberpunk theme.

It’s not a wholly unreasonable premise. Watch Dogs is taking a similar tack, although it focuses more on technology and hacking, collective information and the nature of subversion, whereas Remember Me concentrates on the personal, the loss of identity and redemption.

The start of every episode shows Nilin in a featureless, almost Animus-like area, where she reflects on the events of the episode prior, questions her motivations, the motivations and actions of her brother — are they really siblings? — before weakly deciding on a course of action.

I say weakly because there’s little emotional strength in anything Nilin says, not in the scripting itself or the delivery. As a heroine, Nilin starts out quite vulnerable. The cut-scenes thereafter reinforce that, and that weakness works nicely with the idea that your memories, your last barrier of privacy, is now (effectively) a public commodity.

I’d have to see more of the story to be sure, but I’m still on the fence about Nilin. My biggest concern is that Nilin as a character — once her fears are replaced with the confidence that comes with the capacity to rewrite memories — doesn’t evoke much emotion at all. She’s just there. I was more interested in Neo-Paris, the background of Edge, the Errorists. Incidentally, you can read more about that if you want; journals called Mnesists are scattered throughout the city, and you can access them through the in-game menu (again, a bit like Assassin’s Creed).

Something that feels much more at home are the memory remix sequences, Nilin’s treks through the mind of her enemies and/or targets. The first remix you encounter, strangely, happens while an assassin employed by the Madame holds a knife to Nilin’s throat. The idea that Nilin, who absconded from prison and all the torture she experienced within, can somehow combine all her talents to convert an assassin’s memory before her jugular gets sliced open is a little fanciful, but sure, I’ll roll with it.

Anyway, the memory remixes are essentially a puzzle sequence. You’ll watch a scripted sequence before being handed the power to rewind and fast-forward the memory at will. At various points indicators will flash over items, which you can tinker with. Adjusting items changes how the memory plays out, and the objective is to mess with the right items to create a memory that’s usually diametrically opposite from reality.

My only gripe was with the rewinding/fast-forwarding mechanic; you control the memory by rotating the left-stick either clockwise or counter-clockwise, which makes no sense whatsoever. If everybody’s memories are digitised, then logic follows that I would be watching them like a video file.

Video files have progress bars; you don’t rewind them in circles like a VHS tape. It’s needless busy work and seems so out of place to have an action in a futuristic cyberpunk game that’s designed on technology from the 1970s.

But that’s really an incredibly minor point: the memory remix sequences are actually rather fun. They’re more intricate than their initial appearances, and the downshift in pace is a welcome change from the frenzied melee combat.

Another welcome surprise is the orchestral score. I wasn’t expecting to hear the booming tones of the brass section as I gazed upon the clouds for the first time, or the pulsating rhythm of the strings during my flight from La Bastille, but there it was.

Occasionally, the interjections were seemingly random. There was a curious moment while I was rotating the camera, admiring the city’s design and examining the complexity of the textures — they were quite flat in places, but this isn’t final code and there’s the PC version to consider — when the brass band exploded at full volume. I’m sure there was something momentous that I was supposed to be looking at; it just so happened that Nilin’s backside was in full view.

That experience summarised my time with Remember Me: surprising. Not always a welcome surprise, but surprising nonetheless. It’s an odd feeling, having walked in completely ebullient, impressed by the bravado in showing off a whole five hours of gameplay.  I’m still curious to see how the rest of Remember Me turns out, but my expectations are now more attuned with reality instead of the cyberpunk fantasy in my dreams.

Remember Me launches in Australia on June 7.

It seems like collectible card games are turning up everywhere these days. They’re one of the biggest growing genres on mobile devices, have enjoyed a recent revival in the physical format, and are even getting the once-over from major developers such as Blizzard. Now, thanks to indie studio Nival, the standard tower defence is getting shaken up too with Prime World: Defenders.

After a comic-book style introduction into the world of Prime, the substance called Prime and its influence on magic and technology, the game begins. The concept is pretty simple, with the player having access to a variety of towers and magic spells. The former requires Prime (money) to build, and the more you use a particular tower, the more expensive it becomes.

Magic, on the other hand, functions as a panic button of sorts. Some spells will slow the enemy, others function like a grenade. There’s no cost to magic, although some spells come with a lengthy cooldown, but I found it was largely unnecessary for most fights. But it’s once the CCG mechanics are introduced that the game really starts to become more interesting.

Every tower or spell in the game is accessible in the form of a card. Before each mission, you can review your upcoming enemies and adjust your “hand” — what towers you can play — to suit. It’s a nice little touch, acting as a great warning when you need to prepare for airborne enemies and so on.

Since every tower and spell comes in the form of a card, occasionally you’ll get double-ups. Those cards can then be combined to level up the original card, a process called “evolution”. Evolving cards unlocks upgrades while improving the attributes of the base tower.

You can also combine, or “fuse”, towers with other towers or special cards. Artifact cards, for example, increase the effectiveness at which a tower can be fused. Fusing is another method of upgrading your towers, and it’s a cheaper and more readily available option. But it’s also less effective; you might need three or four cards to upgrade the more expensive towers.

All of this is paid for with silver, earned from the completion of levels. Silver can buy items and booster packs from the in-game store as well, while special, rarer cards are available through gold, which you earn through bonus challenges and levelling up. Each level gives you extra little bonuses here and there — 10% extra silver, an extra slot for magic, more room for towers and so on — but you need silver to pay for that too.

Given that the fusing mechanic is the only thing in Prime World: Defenders that is actually cheap, you’ll need to grind quite a bit if you want everything on offer. The levels don’t change in these side missions, beyond one or two spaces being blocked, allowing you to reuse the same tactics over and over again.

The main missions thereafter are more perplexing. You’ll be defending waves from two or three different directions, with three, four or more antennae that buff the attackers. These can be killed if you place a tower nearby, although often the locations are strategically irrelevant. If your initial line of defence is broken though, the attackers are almost impossible to stop even with emergency magic or a last-ditch tower, so it’s a tight balance.

Not everything in Prime is to my liking. The camera, for instance, only rotates smoothly if you draw a circle with your mouse, shaking wildly and moving only inches with any other standard movement. I’ve also got this nagging feeling that there’s an in-app purchase somewhere around the corner, even though I know that is definitely not the case. Perhaps renaming the store or gold to something that sounds a lot less like a transaction of hard currency would do the trick.

As for the rest, I’m pleasantly surprised. I’ve enjoyed my time with Prime World: Defenders (even though the game refused to load when Steam was in Offline Mode!). It’s an impressive little title from Nival, and definitely something worth following up on if you’re a fan of the genre.

Prime World: Defenders is available now for pre-order on Steam for US$12. The game launches on May 22.

Before playing Wargame: AirLand Battle for the first time, pay heed to the old adage: read the ******* manual.

Launching head first into the game was a grave mistake. My team was left bewildered as I struggled to comprehend the interface, what units did what, what units were necessary for what roles, how to capture points and just why the hell my units were dying so much.

AirLand Battle, the sequel to Wargame: European Escalation, is not a simple game. Like its predecessor, AirLand Battle places a great deal of emphasis on tactics and war. Everything has its place, including support vehicles, infantry, aircraft, artillery and the good old tank, and the cornerstone of the game is identifying what unit is necessary for what situation.

Despite appearances, it’s probably better to approach AirLand Battle as a board game. Board games, and wargames in particular, don’t afford you the legions of disposable armies that you see in a standard real-time strategy game.

You have to be more methodical in your movements, more considerate of the terrain you cross and more thoughtful about the pathway your armies take. Variables such as line of sight, fuel and ammunition pay a part too, so maintaining a proper balance is paramount.

Being effective is far more valuable than being quick. The Destruction game mode has carried over from European Escalation, and as before, players win by earning points for every opposing unit they kill. It’s far more important to spend time doing nothing, considering your next move, than it is to build an army with lightning speed, since a poorly conceived unit composition will only further aid your enemies.

Every match of AirLand Battle starts with the entirety of the battlefield — and the battlefield can be rather large — in view. You can zoom in on any individual unit, and the further in you go the more information you get about that unit’s particular condition. Along with having a limited supply of fuel and munitions, armies can also become damaged and ineffective in battle. A unit’s morale can also be shaken, to the point where they no longer follow orders to the letter, and in the worst case scenario they will abandon the battle entirely.

What’s most impressive is that the engine never skipped a beat while zooming in and out of the action, issuing orders to new units, moving existing ones around, amidst a flurry of bombing runs, gunfire and explosions.

The scope of AirLand Battle is staggering, with the developer promising up to 750 units straight from the Cold War in the full release. It’s actually a little intimidating without prior introduction; I’d strongly recommend playing through European Escalation or spending a couple of hours on YouTube learning how it all works.

There’s an amazing game waiting to be unearthed here, and after spending some time with the game I can appreciate why fans of the series hold it in such high regard. Similar to World of Tanks, AirLand Battle appeals a lot to the older gamer and the military buff.

I don’t fully have my head around AirLand Battle yet. It’s not the kind of strategy that you can fully appreciate after a few nights; you really need to spend tens of hours to get the most out of it. That’s especially true in the beta, since there’s no explanation or tutorial for the uninitiated. But if you find yourself frustrated with other strategy games, enjoy games with a little more realism and want a slower, deeper RTS, then AirLand Battle might be the game for you.

Wargame: AirLand Battle launches on the 23rd of May. Players can access the beta by pre-ordering the game through Steam for US$40.

Gamers are a suspicious lot. They don’t trust developers to look after their interests, and they trust publishers even less. But one party they do put stock in are the administrators and organisations which run competitions and events on their behalf.

That bond of trust was severely damaged this week after a member of the eSports Entertainment Association discovered that the software required to play in the organisation’s pick-up games and tournaments doubled as a bitcoin miner.

The scandal broke late this week when a forum user published a log on Pastebin that outlined a number of connections from his computer to a bitcoin server in Czechoslovakia.

ESEA owner Eric Thunberg replied with the perfect example of how not to respond to a crisis: by belittling users for uncovering the mistake, refusing to apologise and telling unhappy users to contact him so he could “attempt to buy back your love”.

To his detriment, Thunberg claimed that the bitcoin process within the ESEA client — which the community pays US$7 a month each to access — was only operational for 48 hours, had only mined the equivalent of US$280 and that all proceeds would be reinvested into the community. No acknowledgement was given to the fact that the software functioned as malware for that period, although Thunberg did admit that the idea of introducing bitcoin mining code to the client was discussed as a potential joke for April Fools.

As you’d expect, Thunberg was later forced to change his tune.

He publicly revealed that the code had running since April the 14th, far longer than the 48 hours initially stated. Over this time, ESEA users unknowingly helped the company mine just over 29 bitcoins, equivalent to just over US$3700.

Cue the pitchforks.

One forum user even encouraged others to join a class-action lawsuit. “Two weeks ago my Radeon HD4890 a $300+ card when I got it, fried with no explanation while I wasn’t using my computer,” wrote Tumn1s. “I kept smelling something burning coming from my computer and it took me a while to figure out that my expensive video card was overheating.”

After all and sundry were well and truly blanketed in the proverbial, ESEA co-founder Craig Levine, owner of the league’s parent company, stepped in with a statement denying any knowledge of the incident but promising to investigate and make amends.

That sentiment was followed by an official ESEA statement, which blamed one “unauthorised individual” for “acting on his own … to access our community through our company’s resources”. To make amends, the entire proceeds earned from the code will be donated to the American Cancer Society, along with an equal amount of money from the company’s own pocket. The prize pool for the 14th season of the league would also be raised by the same figure.

Admirable, but insufficient. Firstly, there was a clear line of communication between Thunberg and Sean Hunczak, the coder behind the ESEA client. Thunberg admitted as much in his first response to the fiasco by saying that he told the senior programmer that he “shouldn’t be lazy and run the miner in a separate process”.

If only one person was responsible for the drama, he certainly didn’t keep mum. More depressing is the indication that no one will be fired for the incident, and that Levine felt the need to not reveal the name of the person responsible.

ESEA’s reputation will be irreparably damaged. But the major problem here is not so much that the community’s trust in ESEA will be undermined, but that its faith in third-party programs like the ESEA client, which doubled as an industry leader for anti-cheat software will be undermined.

This is bad, because, frankly, there’s little competition. ESEA completely dominates the North American scene, in a similar vein to TeamLiquid’s status for StarCraft outside of South Korea. To paraphrase one user, even if gamers were disgusted by the whole affair, resigning from ESEA leagues and events was easier said than done. Competitors don’t have the reach, infrastructure or funding base that ESEA has built.

The entire debacle highlights a systemic lack of proper process within eSports. Having organisations profit from an event while maintaining responsibility for its integrity is not an unreasonable premise. The industry is not large enough to support a global association that could sustain the employment of independent administrators, as is the case with FIFA or the Association of Tennis Professionals.

Another view is that gamers were effectively punished for their compliance and blissful ignorance. As ESEA’s own statement admits, gamers have been swindled before by those who claim to have their best interests at heart. But until players get a clearer picture of what happens to the money they give eSports organisations, what information those companies collect and how both are used, scandals like this will continue to unfold.

EB Games and the Starlight Foundation have combined forces to run the Starlight GameAThon from the retailer’s flagship store in Melbourne from noon tomorrow. The 25-hour long event will be livestreamed on TwitchTV, hoping to raise $550,000 to coincide with the charity’s 25th anniversary.

A range of events showcasing all platforms will be held on the hour every hour, including a blindfolded gaming challenge, a Call of Duty multiplayer event (on console), pizza eating, retro gaming, and more.

The Melbourne Storm will be on hand as well, while the Exile 5 professional gaming team will also showcase their skills in a hour dedicated to PC gaming.

One gamer taking part will be Jared “PiG” Krensel, a full-time StarCraft 2 player for Exile 5. “EB are making a really great effort to bring together the entire gaming community in Australia together,” he said. “We’re really trying to use the joy and positivity people get from games in raising money for a great cause and I’m happy to be a part of it.”

$70,000 has been raised already, and generous gamers can donate more by heading over to the Starlight EB Games launch page.

Eador: Masters of the Broken World (or just MOTBW for short) sounds like the kind of game a fan would dream of. Take all your favourite games of a particular genre, cherry-pick some of the best elements, put your own twist on it and voila! You have your own perfect game.

That’s what Eador: Genesis, envisioned from a prototype made by Alexey Bokulev, was anyway. But as the developer admitted, 2D games on their own just don’t sell anymore. So Bokulev teamed up with Snowbird Games to bring Eador into the modern age with Masters of the Broken World.

Bokulev’s favourite games included Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic and Master of Magic, and that’s pretty much what you get: a broad turn-based strategy featuring paladins and demons, imps and elves, priests and minotaurs, castles and dungeons, resources and towns, vampires and ghosts while you battle to control the universe.

MOTBW just might be one of the most ambitious fantasy turn-based strategy titles in years.

Familiar, but different

Probably the biggest difference between MOTBW and other fantasy turn-based strategy games are the shards, which act like disconnected pieces of land (think the floating islands from Avatar, but in outer space instead of Pandora). Your megalomaniacal avatar (who hires mortals for the grunt work) battles for control of the Astral against other heroes, moving from one intergalactic shard to the next.

Each shard is a planet of its own, complete with enemy heroes, strongholds to be captured and provinces to be explored. Each conquered shard gives you additional resources and bonuses in combat, while unlocking more buildings.

Provinces are fortified as well, but their capture is essential early on since they generate gold and gems (used for spells, magical items and certain troops) for your empire. The trick is picking your battles and knowing which enemies to fight, since keeping experienced armies alive is crucial to victory.

The problems start with picking the right unit mix: the stronger the unit, the higher the upkeep. But stronger units have weaknesses too, and your army needs to be balanced enough to fight a wide range of opponents.

Managing provinces properly is equally important and it’s where you’ll spend most of your time.  After bedding down your newly acquired citizens, you’ll be tasked with keeping them fed and happy. An unhappy populace tends to revolt, which you can quell by hiring some militia. Militia can be bribed though, and after a revolt they can also be easy pickings for an enterprising opponent.

A major influence on the happiness of your people, and your relationship with the AI, is determined by the choices you make throughout the game. Every now and again you’ll be faced with a random encounter, ranging from adventurers wandering through your lands to a giant spider attack to establishing trade routes.

The morality system is fairly simple, although its influence throughout the game, which includes determining whether certain provinces will allow you to move through their borders for free, add an impressive touch. It dovetails nicely with the alignment of the armies themselves, which relies on the good/neutral/evil mechanic seen in the HOMM series and others.

Morale isn’t something you’ll pay much attention to initially, but once the fights scale up it becomes an important influence. Troops gain or lose morale depending on the alignment of those they fight with, and they lose or gain morale during battle depending on what happens to the units around them. If a group of archers surrounded by a bevy of allies suddenly dies, the morale of all adjacent troops is lowered. It’s an important mechanic to master because some enemies are too powerful to kill directly, but you can win by demoralising them until they abandon the fight.

The battlefield itself influences your troops, with hills, swamps, forests, and mountains affecting the mobility, range, defence, attack of your units. There’s a little bit of luck in combat too, with the game giving you the option to arrange your battlefield formation before the fight starts. Occasionally the enemy formation is visible, but most of the time it’s hidden, which means you’ll have some fights where you accidentally put yourself on the back foot.

A universe of action

The tactical complexity is staggering, and you’ll quickly get absorbed in micromanaging your empire on several fronts. Random encounters begin appearing once your influence grows, and you’ll be asked whether you want to give gold to a local healer who saved a tribe, or whether you want to tax an incoming caravan. Bandits might take over a province and allow you free access — but doing so will reduce the province’s morale and prospective income.

Your income accumulates across shards as well. When you choose to invade a new shard, you can transfer gold, gems to the new world, and whether you want certain bonuses to apply, such as a particular starting building or something in your treasury. Transfers aren’t unlimited, but the extra touch is impressive.

One massive bonus is MOTBW’s favour is that the shards in each campaign are randomly generated. The difference this makes cannot be understated, since a cornerstone of the campaign relies on the way you deal with your fellow demigods. If you’re lacking the resources for a big fight, you might decide to remake yourself more in the image of your opponent to gain their trust. That influences how the provinces relate to you, which affects their mood, the random encounters generated and so on.

But ambition comes at a cost, and fans of the original Eador have cause for complaint. While all this scope is brilliant for players new to the series, it’s nothing different than what was in the original Eador: Genesis. The gameplay is unchanged and the interface, at least on a functional level, identical.

The wheel building menu for strongholds, for instance, is hardly the most user-friendly design. Games like this demand that you plan several steps ahead, and even the advanced building menu is visually convoluted.

Another bugbear is that combat takes too long to resolve due to the attack animations, which are slow and cumbersome even on the fastest game speed. One saving grace is that you can issue new commands from separate troops while the animation for the unit prior resolves, but you have to wait for the previous animation to resolve before you get updated info about the current attack.

Bugs, bugs and more bugs

My frustration with the attack animations, however, was nothing compared to the game-breaking bugs I experienced elsewhere. The day Eador was released, the game was virtually unplayable. The tutorial refused to progress beyond the second movement phase with most hero types.

Understandably, Snowbird released a patch to correct the issue, but…  the updater was broken as well and wouldn’t install, stopping me from loading the game. By Wednesday — almost a full week after release — I was finally able to play the game. That is, until I decided to try the multiplayer. Your game is out of date, I was told. Fine, I’ll just download another patch.

Well, the patch downloaded just fine. It just doesn’t install properly. Luckily, I’m able to cancel the launcher and resume the campaign and custom game modes, which is nice, but still horrendously inept. Still, it means I wasn’t able to test the multiplayer, and hotseat games are currently disabled until another (probably broken) patch is released.

I couldn’t let this review pass without mentioning the sheer incompetence of this patching process. I wanted to spend the whole weekend playing Eador so the review would be ready by the middle of the week, except it took until the middle of the week before I could see the bloody menu screen.

Equally annoying was an email I received on Wednesday from a PR firm announcing MOTBW’s release and the availability of review codes. You know, after those major, game-breaking bugs. The ones that people who actually spent their hard-earned cash had to put up with.

An afternoon delight

Annoyances aside, I’ve quite enjoyed my time among MOTBW’s various shards. I was furious initially and was nit-picking to the extreme, enraged by a comedy of errors that should have been spotted by even the most moronic programmer.

But after several hours, I began uncovering the game’s complexity, morale system and the web of choices that go into every decision. What was promised was delivered: a combination of all the best turn-based strategy games you know and love from the past with an entertaining twist of its own.

The interface can certainly use some work. Fans of the original will probably upset at having to pay USD $20 for nothing more than a HD remake — although it’s a vast improvement on the original, and a fairly decent, although not spectacular, effort as far as graphics are concerned.

You could easily burn away hundreds of hours among the many shards of MOTBW, if you can forgive the mistakes above. They certainly won’t be the last errors to be corrected over the next few weeks. But underneath the cracked, ugly shell lies a rich, colourful and entertaining turn-based fantasy strategy that gamers should take the time to explore.

Good:

• Layer after layer after layer of decision making
• Solid tactical combat
• A level of complexity that old-school PC gamers will love
• Randomised campaigns!

Bad:

• Bugs galore
• Combat animations occasionally out of sync, and they take too long
• Not as simple as some of the genre’s predecessors (King’s Bounty etc.)
• Nothing new for fans of Eador: Genesis

Eador: Masters of the Broken World is available on GOG.com or Steam for $19.99.

The reviewer purchased this copy of the game at their own expense.

It’s always a good day when I get to talk to Andrew “mOOnGlaDe” Pender, Australia’s and Queensland’s most recognised professional gamer around the world. He was in good spirits the morning after the Heart of the Swarm launch, albeit a very tired spirit: Pender only slept a few hours that night, having gotten up early for a live cross to ABC News 24 that morning.

Blizzard had kindly stocked the conference room with drinks and jelly beans, so everything was ripe for a nice little chat. And considering you don’t see gamers on national television a great deal, I decided to ask what it was like dealing with the media these days.

GON: You did the interview with the ABC; basically almost as long as I’ve been around, you’ve been representing Australia playing WarCraft and so on. How’s it like, how’s the media relationship changed especially when StarCraft has been such a big part of it?

Andrew Pender: It’s definitely getting a whole lot more professional. There is just so many more people interested in it, so many more companies interested in covering it. I’ve been on TV twice in the last two days! It’s taken off a lot more since WarCraft 3 days at the very least.

GON: Technologically it’s grown a lot. Back in the day it wasn’t quite as easy to play in international competitions, and one of the interesting things is when you were sort of on the rise the big competition was something like the World Cyber Games. I remember you going over to Germany and playing in things like that and WCG was the main interest for media here locally, but now as a competition it’s faded away. How do you feel about that; that was a big thing for you, always representing Australia?

Andrew Pender: Yeah it’s disappointing that its faded away so much but I guess the tournament stuff is a bit outdated, the format and all that sort of stuff it really never changed. It’s a shame, it was like the centrepiece, the tournament you would want to go to and win because it was just like The Olympics, but there’s just so many other tournaments which have taken its place now. There’s constantly international tournaments for different brands and there is no real main one I guess except for maybe the Blizzard run one. But it’s a shame that WCG has fallen off.

GON: Do you find it a bit draining that there is so much to play in these days?

Andrew Pender: Yeah absolutely. I guess it’s a good and a bad thing it’s good to constantly be working towards something, travelling and getting exposure and all that but, yeah, there is just so many tournaments to attend that you gotta really pick them. I think these days you can’t go to all of them.

GON: And it’s not just being able to play in the ones overseas; the number locally has actually grown quite substantially. Do you plan ahead, like you have a calendar and you work out “this is the hours I am going to practice, I have this tournament coming up” ?

Andrew Pender: I always definitely base the level of practice on when a tournament is, what it is and I kind of definitely chose my tournaments so they’re not too close together. It’s probably the worst thing having like a tournament back to back or a week apart; you don’t really get practice for the other one and you get tired and you obviously just play bad in the second one. I think it’s very important these days to plan ahead, because it does take a lot of planning coming into these tournaments for both the players and just practice in general.

GON: Do you have to change your sleeping schedule a lot to accommodate playing in tournaments for different timezones?

Andrew Pender: Yeah, especially if you’re travelling to like Europe or something, it’s very brutal from Australia.

GON: Especially the Poland trip. (Pender played in IEM Katowice earlier this year.)

Andrew Pender: Yeah believe me, I suffer greatly from jet-lag. I’m probably one of the worst sleepers out there when it comes to [professional gamers]. It’s something that I really need to get better at, either by finding some awesome sleeping tablets or something. It’s a big factor for everyone who pretty much travels.

GON: Have you spoken to a lot of the other up-and-coming Australian players like MaFia and PiG and Tgun and given them advice on how to deal with travelling overseas and playing at big events? Have they come and asked you for advice?

Andrew Pender: They very rarely go to international events to be honest. Not that they can’t go but I don’t know sometimes they just choose not to. They never really ask much advice about it but I am always happy to like tell them what I think, or what they should do, or like how they should practice, or what to expect. But they kind of keep to themselves and have their own kind of ideals about it, as most of us do: we are all very solo players.

GON: Do you think that’s a bit of a mistake that they don’t travel internationally as much as they could?

Andrew Pender: Its gotta align with their goals. It depends what their plan is, if they really want to be international players, if they want to take it to the next level, if they don’t think they can, if they don’t have enough confidence. I’m not sure but I definitely think they should try to go as to as many tournaments as possible, and we don’t get that many opportunities in Australia especially if we don’t have a sponsor that can pay for it, so I think it’s important. I think they should be trying a lot harder.

GON: Do you think it would be better in their position to go to an international tournament and risk a really bad result as opposed to just staying home and just picking one out and just betting everything on that?

Andrew Pender: I think experience is very helpful in an international tournament. It’s something that I have a great deal of, coming from WarCraft 3 and being travelled a lot. I came into StarCraft II very prepared for international tournaments or tournaments in general: I don’t get nervous, I understand what I have to do, I understand when it comes to travelling what it’s going to be like, and I know how to network and all this kind of stuff that’s very, very helpful.

I think going to as many [events] as you can, even if you are going to bomb out … if you are practicing very hard there is a good chance you won’t bomb out, so it’s all about preparation too I guess, but they should be going to every single one.

GON: You mention networking. How important is that for a professional gamer these days? Because the scene is so much wider than it used to be five years ago.

Andrew Pender: I think it’s incredibly important. There is so many people you can talk to when you go to like a MLG or something, there is so many sponsors that just wanna have a beer and chat. If you are chatting to them and they like you, you have a contact, you have a Skype contact, you have a business card, you can talk to them down the track if you want to get your team sponsored or if you just wanna know something. It’s incredibly easy to do: you’ve just got to talk to them. None of these guys are really bad people and they’re very open to chatting to players, especially players that have travelled from somewhere far away.

I think it’s essential to be honest especially for Australians because we’re coming from not much. We have a very small scene here, though its growing. We have a small amount of sponsors here but that’s growing too and I think it’s really important to try and get your name out there, whichever way you can.

GON: The scene is quite big but the environment has changed too now, especially with Heart of the Swarm. How do you feel about the changes and the new toys?

Andrew Pender: It makes the game very more dynamic, a lot more interesting. It really gets the Wings of Liberty, kind of, staleness away cause some match-ups were just getting a bit bland and they weren’t really changing anymore. But the new units kind of directly fix those problems; they were kind of introduced as these counters to certain strategies that made the game like really stale.

GON: There’s always been that sort of dichotomy too between match-ups. You have Protoss versus Zerg which is almost more a WarCraft 3 style kind of match up in that the focus is more centralised on one big singular battle. Where as you have Terran versus Zerg where there’s much more adrenaline, there is more focus everywhere. There is multi-prong attacks, there’s drops and there is kind of that constant battle for control. So which one do you prefer and how sort of has it changed in a way from a Zerg perspective? Is it something you know you’re more comfortable with now, looking at the changes in Heart of the Swarm, or is it more something you know that is going to be more of a challenge?

Andrew Pender: I think Zerg vs Terran is pretty similar to Wings of Liberty and, and that is kind my preferred game play style where it’s like very fast paced, very demanding but fun. Zerg vs Protoss in Wings was just yeah as you said, was just fighting a death ball or like trying to stop the death ball being formed in general. I think it’s kind of changed a little bit in Heart of the Swarm though it is a bit early [to tell].

Vipers, for instance, are good great at picking, picking apart death balls and Swarm Hosts are good at pushing before death balls form. It’s still kind of the same deal with Protoss though; they still gotta make a death ball or they don’t really have much other option and they do have the units to make a good death ball  in Heart of the Swarm, like Void Rays being incredibly strong these days. I think we will just have to wait and see what happens if it’s going to get more dynamic than that — I really hope it does.

GON: As a Zerg player, does the recall mechanic kind of bother you? That has the potential to really sort of change the focus of fights.

Andrew Pender: It’s, a very, it’s a very tricky thing to play against. I think we are gonna see it utilized a great deal more in the future. I mean, it does have its flaws, like they can’t attack or do anything for a few seconds when they warp out and when they warp in, so it’s not as bad as it could be but we will have to wait and see.

GON: In terms of the new units, which ones have you been thinking about the most in terms of strategies? What do you look at and go, “OK, this is something I’m going to build around”.

Andrew Pender: To be honest, both of them are very interesting to me, for my race anyway. From the moment I saw a Viper could cast abduct, I was like, “I want that unit in my army every time.”

GON: (laughing)

Andrew Pender: It’s the kind of unit that I love, it’s got such a cool ability, it looks great, it makes for really exciting games, it’s micro-based, it’s very accurate and fast so it feels like it’s right up my alley.

That’s my favourite kind of unit but the Swarm Host is also like a very cool pushing unit, it can really add something to your army, some free fodder that is pretty much desired for Zerg because it’s when you’re going up against like Colossus or something you really need something in front and if it’s going to be Hydras then it’s terrible. So I think the Swarm Host has its place, though I haven’t really gave it as much nearly as much thought as Vipers, but I definitely plan to use them a lot.

GON: Do you feel you have to take more risks as a player now?

Andrew Pender: More risks you mean with the new units?

GON: Yeah with the new units and just in general, because of the changes that the other races have gotten in terms of power and the timing of when the units come into effect as well.

Andrew Pender: Mmmm.

GON: So for example the Viper and the Swarm Host you don’t get them where as you get the Widow Mine a lot sooner.

Andrew Pender: Yeah, yeah. Well there’s a lot more risks I guess. I guess it’s just more about trying to understand it as fast as possible, like, what is this Widow Mine capable of — is it gonna kill me if it drops right now? You have to understand these situations as a Zerg player and you gotta really be prepared for it as best as you can, though there are still, for instance, the six queen Wings of Liberty strategy opening for Zerg [which is] still effective against everything. You can still do some similar things like that to counteract so there’s not that many risks involved; you can still play pretty safe but it’s kind of understanding where it’s gonna lead.

GON: How do you think the rest of the Australian contingent will do throughout Heart of the Swarm, because we have such a large Zerg army?

Andrew Pender: (laughing) Yeah it’s gonna be interesting because Zerg is not really the flavour of the month anymore, it’s kinda changed with the balance changes in Heart of the Swarm. Hopefully more Terrans pop up, for instance, and hopefully our current Terran players start to flourish a bit more cause it would be nice if the scene had more of a balanced race distribution.

GON: Be nice to see some Protoss.

Andrew Pender (at the same time): I dunno, Protoss.

GON: (laughs)

Andrew Pender: Protoss isn’t very fun, but yeah I really hope that they do flourish. I hope some Zergs at least drop off or decide to change race because it would make, it would make it a lot easier for me [since Zerg vs Zerg] isn’t always the most fun.

GON: That’s an interesting thing too in Australia we essentially have two matchups because we don’t have any high level Protoss players. Is that something from a career perspective that will make your life a lot easier in the next year?

Andrew Pender: I guess it makes it easier for the local tournaments but not so easy for international tournaments: if you’ve got no one to really focus on for that race you [don’t] really have any requirement to prepare for it. Maybe like some tournaments here you only need to prepare for [Zerg vs Zerg] so you’re like, “Great he’s good at [Zerg vs Zerg]”. Then you go to an international tournament and get schooled by like a Korean Terran and its like “well this is pointless”.

I do look to international tournaments beyond local though. I do think it’s really important to win local tournaments but unless it’s something like Blizzcon, for instance, I don’t wanna like rack my head over it compared to like an IEM or something.

GON: Where do you get your inspiration when you are looking for solutions? Do you keep grinding at the ladder and just try little adjustments, or do you look at the big tournaments, watch GSL, copy that and then start working from there?

Andrew Pender: It kinda varies. It really depends on what I see [and] what clicks. It’s either if I’m like grinding out games, I have like my own little quirky style going and this really works against this kinda style [so] I kinda go with that or I see something in GSL and I take that onboard and I kinda make it my own and do whatever adjustments I need to do to it. So it’s kinda inspiration from everywhere I’ve just gotta find it and it kind of just works with me just like that.

I don’t really like sit there and like write a hypothesis and think about it for hours or something, but I feel it’s kind of an epiphany more than anything if I’m coming up against something.

Thanks to Andrew for taking the time to chat with us!

It’s almost a year since I previewed Shootmania: Storm. Back then, the only local server was some charitable fellow’s ADSL connection. It was still the closed beta, and there was much potential to be fulfilled. But time does not guarantee progress, and while a glimmer of hope exists for Shootmania to assume the mantle of what could have been, all available evidence suggests otherwise.

Like the rest of Nadeo’s catalogue, the answer was always going to lie in the community and its potential to harness the tools given to them. Nadeo weren’t responsible for the crazy and wacky tracks that made Trackmania Nations special. That honour belongs to the fans. So provided there’s a willing soul, there’s nothing stopping Shootmania versions of de_inferno, Backlot, Blood Run or Turbine from emerging on the internet.

The game has been out for long enough. Shootmania entered open beta in February, and was available to the public well before then. Coverage for Shootmania started popping up around May and the game was playable at various trade shows; Australians had their opportunity at EB Expo last year with a casual-style tournament run by ESL.

Around 20 teams are active in Australia as a result of the very lengthy beta, which isn’t a terrible effort considering the lack of profile Shootmania has compared to a League of Legends, Starcraft, DOTA 2 etc. Thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of beta keys have been released to the public, so there’s been plenty of time for some quality content to emerge.

Except it hasn’t. The maps, almost every single one, are awful. The one major advantage that Shootmania should be lauding over the competition, the ability for users to easily and quickly create levels of all shapes and sizes, remains nothing more than unfulfilled potential.

Despite a reported tens of thousands of custom levels, quality content just isn’t there and Nadeo’s effort isn’t good enough. Even the hardcore Shootmania players I’ve spoken to don’t rate the levels on offer. Almost every single map featured at least one fatal flaw, with problems including utterly absurd changes in elevation, excessively large maps and far too much useless, dead space.

But the biggest problem stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of movement. All advanced movement stems from your stamina, which lasts a couple of seconds and provides acceleration and the ability to bounce off walls. It can even act as a light counter-weight while mid-air, although it’s never enough to reverse your current trajectory.

Any foray into the air is akin to suicide. Jump pads are bad enough, but the lack of acceleration in the air makes it far too easy to predict where an opponent will land even from a basic jump. And that’s only a fraction of problems. Your ground speed is woeful. Jumping off a wall doesn’t give you enough acceleration. Stamina doesn’t last long enough and should regenerate on all surfaces. Rocket-jumping is out of the question, and circle-jumping, a critical tool for checking around corners and altering your pattern of movement, isn’t possible.

Shootmania is incredibly easy to learn as a result. There’s only three real keys to learn — left-click, right-click and WASD — and the basics of each mode are understood just as quickly. The only complication with the interface will be finding your sensitivity, a task not helped when Shootmania insists on resetting your controls upon loading or changing modes.

Beyond that, the game is perfectly stable and rather pleasing to the eye on higher settings. It’s a clean, functional presentation, although Nadeo won’t win awards for their groundbreaking textures or lighting. But players will appreciate the ability to clearly identify opponents even at long range, and low-end computers will have no troubles handling any situation Shootmania can cook up.

Sadly, Nadeo’s talent at scaling graphics runs inverse to their skill with netcode. Shootmania is hard enough considering the precision required. But any lag, even the smallest spike, ruins the experience: the game is literally unplayable without a decent ping. I tried several games on North American servers — following my miserable experience against Europeans in the beta — but it was a joyless lottery, aimlessly guessing how far ahead in time my opponent was.

Equally as frustrating, but completely unimportant in relation to the gameplay, is Maniaplanet’s design. Not only is it effectively worthless for people just getting into Shootmania, it’s also one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen. Most of the fonts look completely out of place. A lot of the text isn’t even centered properly and everything has an amateurish appearance. This is the one area that hasn’t changed since the beta; it was rubbish then and it’s just as unpleasant now.

That aside, there’s a good amount of fun to be had with Shootmania provided everything’s lag-free. The free-for-all Royal mode is particularly good value for money. Players earn points for every kill and for the position in which they are eliminated. You can take two hits before dying and players gain extra points for capturing a pole in the centre, which triggers a cyclone that encapsulates the map. You only have one life per round, unless the pole isn’t captured, and each round lasts around one or two minutes.

Because Royal supports a wider range of players — instead of one-on-one duels or the 3v3 Elite mode, as many as 16 or more will be fighting it out in Royal — many of the problems with the maps become less jarring. There’s fewer dead zones and more open areas. Some even have small bunkers granting access to a slower, grenade-like projectile or a lightning gun for as long as you’re inside (although it offers no protection from the cyclone).

A few times the servers seemed to struggle with high numbers — more than 20 players, for example — but the frame rate never dropped even on high settings (I’m running an i5-3750K, 16gb RAM, GTX 660Ti and I’m running the game of a 480gb Corsair SSD, for reference).

The two most other popular modes were Elite and Joust, the former being the eSports-styled 3v3 mode shown at E3 last year. One team defends a flag for a fixed period while a single attacker, armed with a lightning gun, attempts to either capture or eliminate the defenders. Players earn points for successfully attacking and defending, with matches usually lasting between 15 minutes and half an hour.

Both modes are built more with eSports in mind, although tournaments will default to Elite. However, the basic Royal mode has a lot of potential and could be quite successful as a format for a one-day competition. Similar free-for-all events have been held within the Call of Duty community with great success, and Shootmania is almost purpose-built to take advantage of that.

But is that enough to warrant spending US$20? As a pure competitive outlet, no. There are competitions to play in, certainly, but the game lacks the buzz and groundswell of support a title needs to be a hit in eSports.

For fans of this old-school style of gameplay, that can be a tough pill to swallow. Many have a keen competitive streak, and have been waiting for a simple shooter relying on sharp aim and precise movement to replace the mantle Quake vacated.

Shootmania isn’t that game. If you’re simply looking for some good-natured fun then it could be the one for you, although there are still cheaper and more complete options. Quake Live isn’t as big as it used to be, but it’s also free-to-play, as is Warsow. They’re older, sure, but they’re just as fun too.

Good:

• Runs on low-end hardware
• Enemies easy to see even at extreme range
• Fast-paced action, particularly in a free-for-all
• Very accessible
• In-game streaming functionality
• Royal mode is excellent

Bad:

• Movement system needs a complete overhaul
• Maps are generally terrible
• Menu UI looks outdated (for the 90′s)
• Unplayable on foreign servers, and occasionally unplayable on local ones too
• Unlikely to be a major force in eSports, with neither a strong amount of buzz or a massive community already behind the game

You can pick up ShootMania: Storm for $20 on Steam. Product for this review supplied by Ubisoft.

Competitive gaming has been around for a long time, but its players, tactics and infrastructure can be little mystifying to the layman. People scream a lot; it’s a little intimidating. There’s a lot of action on screen; it’s a little confusing. It’s very in-depth and without prior knowledge, difficult to report.

Covering gamer rage has never been a complicated matter.

Eurogamer and the Penny Arcade Report highlighted the issue recently when they examined the behaviour of players at the Electronic Sports League’s Call of Duty European Championships in Cologne.

The furore was largely provoked by a recording of what happened, so before I unload with both barrels, here’s the video so you can make your own judgement.

Putting things in perspective, the behaviour isn’t a surprise. It’s not even shocking. What’s bizarre is that it took so long for the mainstream gaming media to catch on, even with their heightened interest. Major League Gaming has regularly hosted Call of Duty tournaments for years; surely a few teams have been caught swearing blue murder at their opponents.

MLG competitors can be heavily penalised. The league specifically prohibits “excessive” profanity, defined as a “consistent” use of swearing and anything directed towards admins or fellow players is forbidden. Referees are more lenient in practice, but the regulations are there for the most extreme cases.

Australia banned swearing once. In 2004, the Intelligent Home Show at Melbourne decided to run a Counter-Strike tournament amongst hundreds of businesspeople and the unsuspecting public.

The principle is sound, proven by the Intel Extreme Masters’ numerous events in trade fairs around the world. It’s easy to sit back and watch video games after looking at gadgets all day. The model even worked in Brunei; the Brunei Cyber Games was held in the middle of a consumer fair. Mops and tile cleaners weren’t quite as spectacular as the offerings at CeBIT, but the idea works.

Nevertheless, most of the spectators will be adult professionals. I’m sure most swear in the privacy of their own home, perhaps even copiously. But you try not to do it in public, out of courtesy to bystanders.

Teenagers never quite grasped that concept. Memento Mori, one of the two best teams in Victoria at the time, had eight rounds deducted purely for profanity violations. They would have won their match by a landslide if they’d took a trick from Battlestar Galactica. Hell, they would have won their match on de_train against the West Australians at all if the captain took a swift backhand to the mouth of his teammates. Or himself. Just once.

(The link above only contains the final scores but no discussion surrounding MM’s penalties. I was in close contact with the leader of MM, who was an old friend of mine that kept trying to convince me, for a time, to move down to Melbourne. For Counter-Strike. As a 15-year-old. We were all crazy back then.)

This was more civilised behaviour. There’s a long-running story within Sydney about a player whose tyres got slashed. Many players threatened bashings. One player, who graduated from Counter-Strike 1.5 to Call of Duty, repeatedly warned me on IRC that my face would have an unfortunate meeting with the pavement if I ever showed up.

I turned up, sat my team next to his, wiped the floor with them in the quarterfinals and finished third for the day. He stopped threatening to put me in hospital afterwards, and since mellowed into a rather decent human being.

And even this was considered mild at the time. There was one tournament where a player who travelled from New Zealand was told “he would be killed” if he left a Melbourne netcafe. The threats were backed up by a bevy of insults from — and I’m not making this up — two fifteen-year-old Asian girls dressed like Gogo Yubari, minus the psychotic weaponry.

“I just want to punch that guy,” one of them said in a rather Clueless-esque voice. It would have been one of the funnier moments, had a friend of mine — normally quite a placid and laid-back character — not tried to bash someone within the confines of a Sydney netcafe.

Fortunately, my friend’s anger was negated by the limited arsenal at his disposal. Everyone broke out in laughter after we realised he was wielding a Sprite bottle as a baseball bat — although things could have gotten ugly very fast.

Most of this wasn’t a spur of the moment. It was all engendered by a liberal, and what was considered healthy back then, use of sexist, racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic and downright offensive remarks online and at LAN. If you were simply trying to throw the other team off, rattle them up a little, then hey – it’s all fair game.

Some were able to draw a very clear line between in-game abuse and how they treated people afterwards. Whether that makes them admirable I don’t know. There were a few that absolutely point-blank refused to trash-talk under any circumstances, believing it only egged-on your opponents and made the match even harder.

That’s largely true. The competitive atmosphere usually brings out the warrior in most, and those likely to crumble under pressure are weeded out well in advance. But that doesn’t make it acceptable to volley a torrent of racist remarks because it might improve your chances.

This is a culture that has persisted for well over a decade. Propagated by individuals who accepted and even enjoyed this behaviour, others were encouraged to follow suit. It’s particularly virulent in a team environment. Everyone wants to climb the ladder, and if they’re all doing it … well, you want to fit in, right? You want to become the next upcoming star!

This is the true under-current of eSports and the structure needs to be dismantled for its own good. Such behaviour is widespread. Australia is  lucky that more embarrassing incidents, like what happened on Cross Assault, hasn’t happened here. The conditions are ripe enough — some cases I’ve seen, especially those involving women, would sicken you.

The problem is the current crop of administrators have an unfortunate habit of sweeping things under the rug and dealing with issues behind the scenes. Handling matters quietly can indeed limit the fallout, but it also abandons an opportunity to set standards and show that actions do have consequences.

Too many currently behave without fear of repercussions. There is no strong moral compass; many players are getting bullied, too many running their mouths off without penalty. Sooner or later, someone will cause outrage to a degree that will spawn a backlash large enough to significantly damage players, admins and organisations, irrespective of how swift the response.

All we can do is to prepare for the worst, and act accordingly. Warnings are effectively useless; players know when they have gone too far. They should be replaced with harsh penalties, and organisers should have the gumption and courage to strip players and teams of wins if they step out of line. There will always be a situation where one team could be stripped of a tournament win, but integrity should never be sacrificed for the sake of appearances. And Australians should demand better of their administrators and players than the behaviour shown in the video above.

This interview originally appeared on Dusty Cartridge. Republished with permission and love.

Cart Life isn’t the type of game you’d mention to a less nerdy friend if they asked you to recommend something fun. The grayscale illumination of a street cart vendor’s mundane struggle won’t stir the loins of NVIDIA or ATi. It’s not a particularly long game, and many of the mechanics only further emphasise the protagonists’ hardship.

Despite all that, Cart Life has just won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize: a US$30,000 award given out by the Independent Games Festival — as well as the Nuovo Award for innovation, which wins $5,000, and the Excellence in Narrative award which wins another $3,000. With Faster Than Light, Hotline Miami, Kentucky Route Zero and Little Inferno also on that shortlist, it’s a pretty incredible honour for a game that never quite captured the spotlight.

So to find out a little more about how Cart Life came together, I started by asking creator Richard Hofmeier what inspired it all.

What inspired you to make a video game about the lives of street cart vendors?

Well, it felt relevant at the time. Representative of persistence in hard times, people trying something new. It was useful to make characters who’d parallel their players in being confused and maybe a little overwhelmed, by the process of starting a cart and then the small complications in keeping one going. Since the characters are specific individuals, they needed to be as new to cart living as anybody playing the game.

How difficult was it to make the game authentic; how much observation did you do, conversations and literature on street cart vendors did you read?

I’ve been friends with a few folks who run carts, but only since I began making it. There were, and still are, some excellent food carts in Eugene, Oregon who were happy to put up with my questions. Jean Merril’s The Pushcart War was great to read as a kid, but helpful also in making this game. There’s a nonprofit in New York called The Street Vendor Project who advocate for vendors and have lots of great public information. Fortunately, the cities of Eugene, Seattle and Missoula have helpful websites for researching vendor permits and fines. Honestly, though, the overall depiction of running a cart in this game isn’t as useful as I’d like to be – vendors who play the game, for example, find quite a bit to object to. The game’s fines aren’t as fatal as real ones, the permits are too cheap, the stands themselves are much less expensive than they would be in real life. The game’s only a week long, so I couldn’t make it too hard.Anyway, I wanted the characters’ jobs to relate to other walks of life, so the vendor part is watered down, a little.

Most games portray the player as the hero, the villain or completely central to the story. In Cart Life, you’re central to the proceedings but otherwise completely ordinary, certainly not a “hero”, just an average person trying to persist with their meagre life. It’s almost like a polar opposite of game development, survival for survival’s sake instead of surviving to achieve some grandiose victory. Can you talk about how that idea influenced the design and the writing?

I think you pretty much said it. I tend to enjoy fiction which lives in the same world I live, or at least a semi-plausible facsimile of it. Eventually, somebody playing Cart Life will see the characters for what they are: blinking lights on a script. But, until then, yeah, I want players to feel as though everybody in the city has the same problems they do. Otherwise, how can you relate to the protagonists? I know it’s kind of perverse, but ultimately I think just about any game could be improved with protagonists who are a little less bulletproof, a little less god-like. Not for difficulty’s sake, but for a greater proximity to our lives. It’s really encouraging to see so many other games exploring this territory lately.

What made you decide to use monochrome graphics? Did you consider using colour earlier in development?

It was always grey, but the original build of the game had a very slight tint which was different for each of the playable characters, which turned out to be troublesome on some computers. It was subtle enough to be nearly impossible to notice anyway, so removing it wasn’t a huge loss. Otherwise, the greyness is partly to exaggerate the elements of cigarette smoke/ashes, newspapers, concrete, city haze, boredom… You get the idea.

The art-style, dialogue and particularly the notifications when the players are hungry, are remarkably saddening and down-heartening. It almost feels like one of the challenges of Cart Lifeis to battle through depression as much as the monotony of a street cart vendor’s life. Was this something you deliberately aimed for during development? How do you effectively “create” a sense of depression on paper?

I certainly don’t think that depression, stress or despair are common to vendors’ lives any more than they’re common to all of us – but it’s a core part of this game, sure. The first 2/3s, anyway. I’m always surprised to hear it when somebody says that more emotional stuff is effective, but I’m also a little disheartened when people get overwhelmed by it. The characters can succeed by the end of the week – things can actually go well, but it’s gonna be a tough week getting there. I don’t just want to make people sad or feel guilty. I want them to feel as though there was a lot at stake so that the small victories ultimately feel important. A little vinegar improves most desserts.

The game has been available for over a year now. How successful has it been, and how has the development influenced your future titles and thinking?

Making it was tough and took longer than I thought, but it was its own reward. When I started getting emails from players who enjoyed it, Cart Life exceeded my expectations. Buying a cup of coffee with money from game sales is something I’ll never forget. That was enough – more than enough – but then it got selected for Indiecade, and now the IGF… It’s been an intense couple of months for me, to be honest.

To answer the second part of your question, I wasn’t sure I should be making games at all. After releasing Cart Life, I thought I’d focus on freelance work and maybe go back to working day jobs. But for now, at least, I’ve saved up enough to make the next one. We’ll see what happens, but I’m perfectly happy doing one project at a time until I have to trade the bathrobe for an apron and hair-net.

You said in an interview early last year that many of the characters in Cart Life were influenced by people you knew in real life. Have you told them about the game, and if so what has their reaction been? Given that you know these people, how do you portray their livelihood and existence respectfully, without insulting or degrading them?

Yeah, it’s funny. My brother, Toney, is a character in the game. Years ago, when I was visiting him, he took me out for beers and then didn’t have his wallet when the bill came. Now, because I’m petty and vengeful, his Cart Life character sometimes forgets his wallet at the players’ cart, and it gives me great pleasure to listen as people bitch about him. “Toney, did you remember your wallet this time? Damnit, Toney!” People in Russia, Japan, Chile, cursing his name. I love it. All of the real people who are portrayed in the game are done so with love. They all know I had to portray their behavior accurately in order for the game to be realistic, so there are good tippers and bad ones, night owls, impatient workaholics and caffeine addicts. I’m in there, too – telling the same stale jokes I do elsewhere.

One of the byproducts of the mundaneness of the activities a street cart vendor has to do to survive is that it makes the game more difficult to play, at least emotionally. How do you balance the need to accurately portray the life of these people, and communicate their struggle, versus the necessity to keep the player interested? Do you feel the game would have been better received if some aspects were more light-hearted?

I really don’t think it would be more enjoyable otherwise. A struggle is just fundamentally more compelling for being portrayed realistically, even if the toil is monotonous, etc. Pulling espresso shots and mixing coffee drinks is tricky, repetitive and delicate – but eventually you’ll get really good at it, if you try to. Mastering a skill just feels good – making this kind of thing too easy or exciting right away eliminates the possibility of those eventual rewards. Just about all of the rewards in Cart Life come after playing through the curve. Besides, if players come out of it knowing how to pull espresso shots in real life, make correct change for a five or they become faster typists, I think it’s a better game for it.

How did you go about designing the flashbacks/dream sequences? What was the original intention behind them, and in a game that has as much emotional impact as Cart Life, do you think it’s almost as necessary to flesh out the backstory this way as it is to focus on the monotony of their day to day duties?

That sounds about right, yeah. Hopefully the dreams aren’t so explicit that players can’t fill in the blanks a little without me, but that’s the idea. Mainly, I was interested in reflecting their characters back to them, after the player controlled their lives all day. To show some of the psychic consequence their choices have with these specific people. But the citizens in their waking lives are there, too – you just have to go out of your way to talk with them. So that depends on who’s playing the game, I guess.

Cart Life has a fantastic soundtrack. How did you go about building the track list? Did you know the composers/musicians beforehand, did you have to pitch the game to them or was it a matter of finding the right songs and then asking for approval? Was there much deliberation over the soundtrack?

First, I wrote a ton of music for the game – a whole soundtrack. Then, while working on everything else, I listened to these chiptune artists: Lo.Bat, Mat64. Pocketmaster and STU. Not only does their music make an excellent work soundtrack, but it seemed to me that they’re trying to accomplish the same thing I am. They’re dismantling videogames in order to make art. So I just showed them a prototype and begged for permission. They said yes, amazingly. Finally, I had the pleasure of listening to each piece over and over again, deciding which part of town goes best with each song, then finding different loops for day/night. Now, I must’ve heard each of those songs a million times each, and they don’t get old. They really don’t. I got really lucky with these guys, I am so grateful.

What feedback have you had from other developers, before and after the IGF nomination? Have you received any interesting proposals because of Cart Life?

If by “proposals” you mean collaborative proposals, then yes and consider my lips otherwise sealed on that topic. Anyway, it’s been implausibly good, frankly. Besides, I’ve heard good feedback from developers who haven’t played the game too, because when developers meet in person, it seems to create some fast and meaningful friendships. We tend to spend a lot of time in our caves, so recognizing similarly unusual artistic interests in each other tends to cinch us tight quickly. Good mutual witnesses are probably the most precious commodity for a team of one or two people, so the suspicion of undue back-patting is healthy and pretty common.

Cart Life was recently nominated for the Independent Games Festival’s Seumas McNally Grand Prize, quite some time after release. How does it feel as a designer, particularly for a game with not the largest public profile, to be nominated for such an award? Does the nomination vindicate the decision to make something so emotionally resonant, and will you be exploring topics that are equally, if not more so, challenging in the future?

Yeah, it’s a pickle, isn’t it? I released Cart Life in May of 2011, so there’s a question about Cart Life’seligibility in this year’s IGF. Honestly, its eligibility wasn’t my foremost concern in paying IGF’s US$100 submission fee, because I assumed the game wouldn’t stand up for the judges, anyway. But I submitted anyway, just cause I wanted to go to the event and figured it was worth taking a long shot. So, now, it’s up to the judges or committee or whomever to decide whether it’s allowed or not. But I don’t want to abstain completely on this.

My thoughts go like this: IGF sort-of descends from movie and music award ceremonies, but video games generally take longer to develop than those things, and games are sometimes released in stages. Hell, I’m still making Cart Life (mainly fixing bugs, but occasionally adding content). That probably sounds like a bullshit excuse, but it’s because I really don’t know the answer. It could be thatCart Life wasn’t really downloaded or discussed very much until January 2012, as you mentioned. Either way, since it seems that people are willing to put up with what Cart Life does, then you’re right – the next one’ll have to be even worse.

Cart Life is available as a free download or as “everything” and “Delux-O” versions from Richard Hofmeier’s website.

Dustin Browder is an intense man. The iconic director for StarCraft 2 has a sizeable frame and a sharp eye, and when he greeted me for our interview after the Heart of the Swarm launch in Melbourne’s Federation Square he was sporting an NFL-style jersey. It’s not implausible to think he could have led a successful life as a football player in another life.

His aura is never imposing though, with Browder directing his boundless energy towards a love of all things StarCraft and the fans that play it. It’s an infectious passion, which spreads even more rapidly thanks to the man’s genial combination of eloquence and gamer lingo.

It’s made Browder an icon which also dovetails as a magnet for criticism in a way not many other developers see. But rather than shy away and making himself less of a target for some of the more vitriolic barbs, Browder has taken centre stage proudly.

“We’ve got a lot of guys at Blizzard who are very used to this kind of experience,” he explained. “Blizzard taught me the responsibility here, how important it was to be able to maintain a sense of civility and go out there and be able to look through a forum, a Reddit post, something on Teamliquid… and ignore the personal jabs.”

“There’s often very valid feedback to be found within even the most angry post,” Browder added. And there can be a lot of anger sometimes, but it’s understood that StarCraft just isn’t like other games. “People, literally their jobs, are on the line based on the quality of the product that you do. That’s a level of pressure that goes beyond most video games I’ve ever had the pleasure to work on.”

It’s not an unwarranted intensity; Browder reiterated that people’s livelihoods can and do depend on the quality of their product. One imagines sitting in the crowd at IPL listening to chants of “we want LAN”, when technical difficulties prevented Startale’s PartinG from a certain victory against the mercurial MarineKingPrime, would have reinforced that view.

Almost as a defence mechanism, Browder is exceptionally well prepared, explaining Blizzard’s point of view in an accessible but exceedingly thorough way. At the developer Q&A the night before, he detailed how the absolute need for, or lack of, detection necessitated the removal of banelings that could move underground. The new ability either decided the game or became completely irrelevant, and that didn’t fit with how StarCraft was meant to be played. There might be some “sharp” counters — Reavers are supposed to obliterate Zerglings — but scissors-paper-rock does not apply.

I asked about how Blizzard reacts when the community takes issue with a particular strategy rather than a certain unit. At what point does the team decide to sit back and let players figure out their own solution, how do they determine that the best option is beyond their reach?

In passing, I mentioned the Immortal-Sentry all-in which became the dominant factor in the Zerg vs Protoss matchup. PartinG ruthlessly used the strategy to slaughter three top-class Zergs on his way to the the World Championship grand finals in Shanghai last year. The fact that everyone, even the crowd, knew what was coming had little effect.

Browder seized on my example, describing the build’s timing and outlining the most efficient response (forcing fights as far away from your base as possible, wasting sentry energy and buying time). He added that the balance team takes a very mathematical-like approach, outlining all the possible options for a player at a certain time.

The Brood Lord/Infestor combination was one issue, particularly on maps with areas that allowed the Brood Lords to siege tactically important locations beyond the range of most ground units. “There was no unit in play we could really buff to fix the problem,” Browder recalled, noting that the Tempest wasn’t an option at that stage.

But he also praised the community’s efficiency in being able to uncover all the new timings and strategies in Heart of the Swarm. “The benefit for Swarm for us is that we get the learnings of the last two and a half years that we can apply back to the game.”

The expansion gives Blizzard a lot more flexibility to tinker in subtle ways without damaging the balance completely. He explained that while Brood Lords were one of the more perplexing problems, they couldn’t effectively respond without ruining Zerg’s one major, reliable pathway to victory.

Browder took note to emphasise how far things have changed since the release of the original, particularly in the realm of eSports. “ESports had all been a Korean phenomenon, or largely a Korean phenomenon. We saw some certainly for WarCraft 3 in Europe as well but … in the States we hadn’t seen anything like that yet.”

“When we first launched Wings [of Liberty], we were like maybe, maybe we’ll be able to go to a theatre somewhere in the United States and have like fifty guys and watch eSports. That was the win, that was our huge victory we had in our heads … maybe we can get just get a couple of games, get a couple of guys up there and maybe a couple of thousand dollars up there and it’ll be awesome. And then we started seeing MLG happen over and over again.”

It was fascinating to think that Blizzard had such humble aspirations for eSports, considering the game’s rich history and the steady growth of eSports in Call of Duty, the fighting game communities and Defence of the Ancients (pre-Valve and the explosion of League of Legends).

“All of that knowledge has allowed us to go back and apply that information, apply that intelligence we’ve gained from this community to Heart of the Swarm, so I think it’s just a much better product,” Browder said.

One of the reported upgrades has been a reworking of the spectator interface, which wasn’t immediately available on launch. It’s been a difficult learning curve for Blizzard, especially since most of the benchmarks for a quality viewing experience have rapidly evolved in the last couple of years.

“When we first started putting the game out we didn’t have a lot of experience watching StarCraft 2 on streams … this is sort of a new phenomenon for us, watching a lot of StarCraft 2 on YouTube, watching StarCraft 2 on lower-res kind of environments.” That realisation drove concentrated improvements in the early days, like changes to the font and the leaderboards to make it more pleasing on the eye.

The dashboard, for instance, was an inclusion of legacy rather than intent, so the team questioned its existence from a spectator perspective. Most observers pull the overlay down for a major fight anyway, so why not remove it altogether?

Discussions continued, but considering they would be the ones setting the standards, Blizzard figured they may as well let the fans decide. “Why don’t we create a tool to make a really, awesome observer UI and let the community — the actual experts, the people who are on the ground doing this for a living every day — let them design it,” Browder recalled.

The change will allow organisations like the Global StarCraft 2 league, Dreamhack, Major League Gaming and even the Australian Cyber League to jazz up their own production in an easy-to-use way. “We really believe in service, we really believe that will make the best experience for everyone.”

“We’ve got all the code in now, so you can go make your own custom observer UI today, but it’s maybe a little challenging for a lot of people to do because it’s fairly technical. But we’re going to put out an example one that’s a much better experience that we have now … and from there who knows what will happen, fans will take it, casters will take it and hopefully we some really interesting ideas,” Browder added.

All of these changes are fascinating for the hardcore and the excited observers, but it does little to reduce the intimidation experienced by a lot of lower and middle-level players. Browder agreed, saying that the fear of laddering was an issue even with the release of Wings of Liberty.

“StarCraft is famous for how difficult it is … as much as [World of Warcraft] is famous for allowing you to play for a longer period of time,” he joked. Browder explained that one of the biggest problems was that “campaign” players, ones who aren’t familiar with the power of hotkeys, how much infrastructure and workers they need, generally lack the tools required to compete on the ladder.

There’s a series of games against the AI that gradually increase in speed and difficulty, after which point players can graduate to Unranked Play. Unranked matches are effectively the same as normal matchmaking minus the record keeping, which is a great boon for not only new players looking to ease into multiplayer but players who want to try other races without ruining their ladder record.

Browder revealed that Blizzard got great feedback from internal focus groups about the new challenge modes, although the real information would only flow through post-release. Nevertheless, the challenges are no substitute for the richness of the campaign, which teaches the players the mechanics of each individual race.

Or at least, it was supposed to. This concept worked in the original StarCraft since you had a campaign for every race, but StarCraft 2 was deliberately split into three products that each focused almost entirely on a single race. If someone who just enjoyed the single-player decided to, for instance, play Protoss in the multiplayer, would they not be at a substantial disadvantage?

After all, players now have a full suite of missions to learn more about Terran and the Zerg. Browder suggested that the concept that a campaign teaches you how a race is supposed to function wasn’t entirely true though; players would learn what units were and their general roles, but that was a far cry from learning how to function in an actual multiplayer match.

“We had to split [the campaign],” he said, “but at the same time we do have this moment you’re talking about where I haven’t really played a lot of Protoss, but I want to play Protoss, but I don’t really know what a Stalker does, not intuitively. And so I’m hopeful that our tutorial and versus AI will give players that time to go through that.”

Time was running short, so I wanted to know what Browder, someone who has spent the better part of the last two decades defining and setting benchmarks in the real-time strategy genre, was most excited for players to discover.

“We’re really trying to do something with the story that I haven’t had the opportunity to work on before, we’re really trying to make you play as the villain … and hopefully become a believer in the villain,” he gushed.

I remember yelling at the screen as a child when I saw Kerrigan betray Zeratul in the original Brood War campaign over 10 years ago. It would take a lot for me to forgive her treachery, but all I could think about walking around the streets of Melbourne afterwards was how much I wanted to find out.

Check out our massive Heart of the Swarm multiplayer review here, or click here instead for our single-player campaign video review.

So out of nowhere, Blizzard turns around and decides to announce a free-to-play trading card game. They’ve already got one collectible card game (through a partnership) in their stable, but hey, that doesn’t matter — now they’ve got two.

Well, at least I now know why all the Blizzard staff had such cheeky looks on their faces at Federation Square whenever someone brought up PAX East. We figured it wasn’t going to be Blizzard All-Stars, since everyone was happy to talk about that.

The reaction since then has been less mystifying. Card games, especially collectible ones that cost a pretty penny, are not particularly well understood or appreciated by the more “hardcore” gaming community. I’d argue that people prepared to spend $20 to $30 acquiring a single piece of cardboard are just as hardcore as those who buy the latest graphics cards straight after release, but that’s an argument for another day.

I know the above is an act, although if you’re going to argue that a lot of responses haven’t contained equal parts confusion and disbelief to what is shown in that video, then kindly show yourself out.

People look at Blizzard and see this rich, vibrant history of deep, long-lasting PC games. They look at games that changed the industry, games that created careers for gamers. Then they see a card game and go “what the hell is this Blizzard can you go back and make an actual game already”.

What elitist rubbish.

Some history

A bit of honesty and openness, if you will. My history with collectible card games began in the late 1990s thanks to Microprose, who produced to date what is still the most faithful and interesting recreation of Magic: The Gathering.

It’s better than the recent Duels of the Planeswalkers games just as a straight game, thanks to the fact that it has an in-game, semi-sandbox, world for you to explore. It’s more fun for MTG players too, since the older cards are broken as all hell. Like the one that lets you take another turn after your turn. Or the card that makes you start another game in the middle of your game. Or any one of a hundred cards that are so laughably overpowered that it makes you wonder how they were ever printed in the first place.

I was just a kid when I first came across Magic though, and I didn’t have the money to explore the game further beyond some old cards my parents thought I might enjoy as a present. It was enough to get a few of my friends hooked though, and some of them continued playing further.

One actually ended up enjoying it so much he began playing competitively. While I left the game behind and started exploring how far I could go with Counter-Strike 1.6, he did the same with Magic. I was lucky enough to go overseas once, but my friend managed to get a spot at Wizards of the Coast’s fabled Pro Tour, which allowed him to tour Europe playing nothing more than a collectible card game.

Aaron Nicastri was later named Rookie of the Year in 2008 and built up quite a formidable reputation within the Australian Magic community that lasts to this day. I actually got back into the game a couple of months ago for the release of Gatecrash, and asked some locals if they knew my old friend from high school. “He’s like a god,” one told me.

So even though I wasn’t an active player, I tried following the scene a little thanks to the efforts of my friend. That’s not particularly unusual and I was quite grateful later on, because there were a lot of developments worth following.

Gamers should appreciate all games

One of the lessons was that you can learn an awful lot about events management and tournament structure simply by observing others.

For years, Australian events of all persuasions were wedded, if not conjoined at the hip, to double elimination brackets. Bracketmaker was the website of choice back then. Most websites have their own in-built bracket support that can cover multiple formats, and Challonge is more flexible than Bracketmaker ever was.

But back then you either used Bracketmaker or a piece of paper, so double elimination it was. Group stages got pulled out for big events, and single elimination if organisers were tight on time. That’s just how things were.

The problems that this caused, however, was that double elimination doesn’t offer good value for money. Half of the players or teams attending will have dropped out by the second round, having paid the full entry fee for only two or three matches/sets.

For years I argued to administrators about finding formats that better suited the bottom 50%. You need that groundswell of players and teams to make events viable, and the thought winning should entitle you to four times or even five times as many matches for the exact same of money never seemed like the best solution.

It took a long time before it became practical, but the answer eventually came from Magic. In their tournaments, organisers have to deal with hundreds of players — around 900 took part in the recent Sydney Grand Prix — over the course of a few days. It’s a similar timeframe for an Intel Extreme Masters or Major League Gaming event, but double or even single elimination is obviously not going to work.

So they use Swiss Play instead, which lets them work through hundreds of players while still facilitating those final matches that make for a good climax. It’s a perfect format for BYOC lans, since the lower players get a large amount of games without having to worry about bad maps or matchups.

There’s plenty of other examples as well — streaming overlays, production at events and general time management — that can improve the games we all currently enjoy. And I’m not just talking about CCGs either. The mechanics for board games have been used to underpin video games for decades.

And the intelligence and experience gained from making video games can translate into a good card game as well. That’s why the response to Blizzard’s announcement has irked me so much.

What if this new free-to-play CCG is actually good? What if, and considering how big a developer Blizzard is, its development doesn’t actually stop the company from developing “proper” games? And what if it turns into something that can actually dovetail as a fun feature in all of Blizzard’s other games that makes them even better?

Nothing’s guaranteed, obviously. But instead of having a legion of tears across the internet about how Blizzard could have been making WarCraft 4 or adding more updates to StarCraft or some other comment completely detached from reality, let’s give the world-class developer some slack and see what they come up with first.

Looking for a review of the single-player campaign? Click here for our video review.

Perhaps the most telling observation one can make about Heart of the Swarm is that, despite it being their expansion, Zerg players are the least happy about the changes.

They’re not despondent; they’re just not cheering from the aisles. It’s particularly noticeable in Australia, whose competitive scene has been characterised with an unhealthy degree of Zerg commanders for the last two years. Most of our tournaments were strictly all-Zerg affairs: Jared “PiG” Krensel, for instance, won the Australian leg of the Blizzard World Championship Series purely thanks to his prowess in the Zerg vs Zerg mirror.

Changing the status quo, obviously, can only be a good thing. But it’s not as if the race is at a distinct disadvantage across the board, as Andrew “mOOnGlaDe” Pender showcased at the HotS launch in Federation Square. It’s just that the collective’s knowledge has effectively been reset.

Consider Wings of Liberty. A Zerg player hasn’t seen much from his Protoss opponent beyond the usual forge/expansion play, so he wants to play safely. They know that at around 7 minutes and 30 seconds, they need to build a spore crawler. There’s no guarantee that Dark Templars are on the way, but if they build one now, they know they’ll be safe.

This sort of general understanding of how the races and units interact with each other after the last three years — and more importantly, what interactions are possible and at what times — has become so vast that reactions like these are common even among the lower leagues. (There are obviously more exact examples — overlord scout timings, times to scan as a Terran and so on — but this is just for illustrative purposes.)

It’s particularly crucial for Zerg, which is a reactive race by nature. That’s why the professional Zergs I’ve spoken to are so concerned about the next six months. The chasm of the unknown is incredibly unnerving after enjoying two straight years of knowing every possible counter.

Right now, that comprehensive database of timings and responses, despite the lengthy beta test, does not currently exist. Players of all races are now re-feeling their way through the new units and the new maps. Many will be happy to recycle strategies from Wings of Liberty, play it safe for a week or so and see what changes Blizzard decides to implement.

But one thing is certain: one year from now, the state of Heart of the Swarm will be substantially different from the Heart of the Swarm you see today. This is the essence of StarCraft: change.

If you’re not prepared for that, if you can’t accept or are too flustered to cope with the wildly changing circumstances of the various matchups, Heart of the Swarm is not the game for you. In fact, I’d wager that real-time strategy probably isn’t your genre. Stability, in terms of how players approach the game, has never been par for the course.

This is what playing StarCraft is truly about: throwing yourself into the unknown, over and over again.

A finer analysis

On a more practical level, players are going to play safe, which means a lot of very non-greedy, gas-intensive, delayed expansion builds. This obviously isn’t the case for Zerg; but it’s going to take quite some time until you see Terrans happily expanding off a single Barracks in the first few minutes, for instance.

It’s a necessity, really, considering that most of the new units have an immediate effect within the first five minutes. The widow mine’s zoning ability can be rather handy in delaying marine/zergling-based attacks. The Mothership Core is a great defensive unit of its own, making fast expansions much more versatile in the Protoss mirror match.

Probably the change with the most potential is the new recall ability for Protoss, which could transform matches against Zerg from the current WarCraft 3-esque major-battle centric style to something a little more decentralised, similar to the multi-pronged high intensity battles you see whenever good Terrans and Zergs face off.

And yet the old styles of going for a huge deathball, with or without the power of the Tempest/Oracle/Mothership Core, is still completely viable. But it’s also more vulnerable than ever before too. Terran’s range has been substantially upgraded: Siege Tanks are more readily available with the siege mode upgrade no longer a requirement, while Thors no longer get instantly negated by High Templars.

There isn’t a single match-up where a use can’t be found for every unit. Even Ravens have more utility, although it took at least two years before players could find any role for them at all (beyond building one or two for detection).

Stepping into the swarm

You’ll find most of the best changes have been made outside of the game itself, with the interface and menu system receiving a huge overhaul in the last few months.

The ability to resume from replays will be the lifeblood for tournaments plagued by internet connectivity issues. It works relatively smoothly and will in itself become a massive boon for players looking to practice their late-game. Alternatively, you could get a friend and play out certain battles from major tournament matches to practice your mechanics (or perhaps even find a better way to engage).

Global Play will save professional teams a tonne of money, since multiple accounts are no longer required to access different servers. That makes it a little cheaper for professional teams or hardcore players looking to test their mettle in the shark-infested waters of the Korean server.

The opening interface itself is far more functional too. There’s more news, it’s more relevant and more broader in its scope. Patch notes are easily accessible through an in-game link; tournaments now get direct coverage through the opening menu.

Players get far more information through the post-game menu. The build order tab hasn’t changed, although it’s a lot slicker and much cleaner than before. A new tab called Performance gives you an outline of your average performance against the game you just played.

The profile page now has statistics built in for each match-up and race, which is a great boon for newer players looking to analyse their flaws. It’s easy to read and use and is good if you can’t get your head around SC2gears (although the third-party program is still far more comprehensive than Blizzard’s additions).

Still, it’s a step in the right direction for a game as heavily focused on competitive play. There’s even a new Reviews system, akin to something you’d see in DOTA 2 or League of Legends. And the much broader challenge mode, while not as comprehensive as some build-order tutorials you might find on Youtube, provides sufficient instruction for newer players to ease them into ladder matches.

All-rounder of the year

Heart of the Swarm has greatly improved the social facilities as well. Wings of Liberty didn’t even have chat channels or clan support upon launch; those oversights have been rectified. The Arcade section better caters towards the mapmaking community with a better framework for newer maps, instead of the previous system that made it difficult to find anything but the most popular.

It’s a much-needed evolution, given that the strength of the StarCraft and WarCraft 3 communities was their exceptionally deep roster of custom games, the eternally-popular Defence of the Ancients being a shining example.

In just a few seconds, I came across a turn-based card game. Then there’s the Starcraft Universe single-player MMO. There’s even a map that showcases every unit and explosion over the course of a minute, which caches all the assets and improves in-game performance provided you run it once every time you open the game.

SC2’s editor is a powerful, powerful beast, and the capacity for mapmakers to create even more amazing games has just increased exponentially.

Two-thirds of the way there

With Heart of the Swarm’s release, StarCraft 2 is, at least commercially,  two-thirds complete. But what direction does the series go from here?

Further upgrades to the back-end, editor and the interface seem the most likely path. A more comprehensive multiplayer tutorial for each of the three races wouldn’t hurt either; while the challenge mode and the campaigns ease you into the mechanics, something to teach players basic build orders would be a clever addition.

The new units in Heart of the Swarm make sense because they filled roles that the races lacked in Wings of Liberty. Terrans needed a better solution to the Infestor/Brood Lord combo that didn’t break the Zerg/Protoss match-up. Protoss needed a way to safely expand against Zerg that wouldn’t ruin games against Terrans, where fast expansions were already common.

So what holes are currently missing in the overall armory? The only immediate one I can see is perhaps a way for Protoss to become much more mobile than before against Zerg, giving them the tools to completely decentralise the match-up away from the deathball-style that has become so prevalent over the last few years.

The inclusions of the Tempest have made late game a much more interesting proposition for Protoss users, but it doesn’t mean massing a huge army isn’t still a safer and more viable plan than multi-pronged attacks.

Conversely, will huge waves of mine-fields bog down the Terran vs Zerg match-up? The most recent Major League Gaming tournament has shown indications that this kind of zonal play will become more popular in the future, particularly when players get a better handle on the exact positioning of the mines.

It’s a new, strange world. Nobody knows exactly where we’ll end up 12 months from now. But there is one thing I can guarantee: if you buy into Heart of the Swarm, you’ll still have a perfectly functional, complex and fascinating game with a vibrant community in a year.

You can’t say that about very many games in this day and age.

Good:

• Brand new menu UI injects life into Battle.net 2.0
• Blizzard’s attentive eye for balance means the game will remain in a highly playable state for years
• StarCraft 2 editor is probably a great way to break into the gaming industry, and it just got more powerful
• No more “WE WANT LAN” when you can resume from a replay
• Global Play lets one account play on every server
• Clan support!
• Unranked play makes the game less intimidating for lower leagues and lets more advanced players dabble with the other races without ruining their record
• Coverage of community news in-game has been expanded substantially

Bad:

• No in-game browser to watch forums or streams, although this is less a downside than it is a luxury

Product for this review supplied by Blizzard.

I was sitting next to a good friend a few hours into the launch. The developer Q&A had just finished, and I turned to survey the remnants of the crowd.

“How many people do you reckon showed up?” I asked. After a short guesstimate, she figured around 600. It seemed reasonable.

And then we were told around three thousand people turned up, despite the searing heat earlier on. Hundreds of people lined up from around 6pm — the launch wasn’t scheduled to start until 8pm — in 36 degree weather just to pre-register and collect their wristbands. Suddenly, 600 people seemed like the understatement of the night.

There was little about the spectacle that wasn’t impressive. After a decade of seeing national tournaments and “gaming” events in danky netcafes and random LAN events, the sight of so many people filling up Federation Square blew my mind.

Not everything ran perfectly. Bizarrely, for anything related to gaming, the event was actually ahead of schedule once the showmatches began even after a slight delay with “taking command” (or resuming a match from a replay, which is what Blizzard originally called the feature).

Even Jared “PiG” Krensel, that wonderful specimen who somehow always finds a way to delay every tournament I’ve ever seen him play in, couldn’t bring the schedule back in line. That threw some of Leigh “Maynarde” Mandalov’s cues off a little, although nobody seemed to mind.

More annoying was the resurgence of what’s jokingly referred to as the “NASL Sound Guy”, the catchphrase for any annoying sound issues. For the first hour the microphones were either too soft or too loud, and the first Baneling Bingo round was accompanied by the most ear-splitting crackle I’ve heard.

But on the whole, these were minor quibbles. Granted, I didn’t have to endure the ignominy of standing in the long, long, long queue to the single registration tent. That oversight fell on EB Games’ shoulders, but everyone was incredibly tolerant considering the conditions. Perhaps they viewed it as part of the experience; it was a special occasion, after all.

And Blizzard did indeed make it very special, even before the proceedings began. I wandered over to a nearby cafe after being told that “some of the guys” were hanging out with Dustin Browder. It turned out that “The Rock”, as he was affectionately termed later in the evening, was just chatting with some of the players. For about an hour and a half.

Even after he was done answering questions there, Browder took it upon himself to go visit the far end of the line — which, at 7pm, nearly covered the full length of the bottom to the top ends of Federation Square — just to cheer up the fans with a few photographs. The man even signed a fan’s rock later on in the evening.

He wasn’t the only force of nature in attendance though. The crowd enjoyed one of the lighter moments of the evening when people from the nearby Future Music festival began flowing through Federation Square towards the city centre.

As is typically the case with music festivals, one or two people were inebriated beyond belief, which culminated in a scuffle in the small area between the crowd and the railings in front of the stage. This continued for a few seconds until one person stood up, screamed something and gave what is possibly the biggest death stare I’ve ever seen in my life.

You know those moments where the events around you become so surreal that time just seems to stop? This was one of those. Amazingly, the stare worked and the offenders moved along of their own accord.

The players put on a good show of their own too, with Andrew “mOOnGlaDe” Pender showing a masterclass in how to handle Protoss. But the exchange of the night went to Daniel “deth” Haynes and Jared “PiG” Krensel: the two enjoyed the longest and closest matches, and the fact that Terran vs Zerg is naturally more frantic helped out.

Errors earlier in the evening were also corrected with thousands of dollars of peripherals. Most was given away after the close of proceedings, with Blizzard staffers scouring through boxes for free stuff and just handing it out at the rope-line. I don’t think I saw a single person who was genuinely unhappy, and everyone involved should be immensely proud of that fact.

But the night’s shining moment belonged to Dustin Browder, who followed through on his trademark passion when he delivered one of the most inspirational lines of the night after being asked how one could break into game design.

“I’ve hired, I think, five or six guys now out of the modmaking community, guys who’ve done amazing work … you can actually go to almost any game company in the world with that mod. Chances are they’ve got a copy of StarCraft on their machine, somewhere in their office, and you can say, ‘Look, I have made game. Check it out.’ And if they’re serious about making games, they will look at that, they will play it and go, ‘You have made game, this is cool.’”

Thousands of people laughed, but they knew he was right: gaming is cool. Things have certainly come a long way in the last ten years.

My perception this week has been a little warped, courtesy of the insanely high level of pain-killing drugs I’ve been enjoying. One of the side effects is that you tend to relax — perhaps too much — and you have a slightly longer view on things. After all, it’s not like you’re in any hurry.

The same, I’m afraid, cannot be said for our lovely, local eSports industry.

Jobs can be hard to find, particularly in the creative sector. Jobs in gaming itself are even more difficult, and anything that even has an inkling towards eSports is like winning the lottery.

So I suppose the frenzied reaction when Riot Games announced earlier this week that they were looking for a community manager and a head of eSports (aka. events organiser) was to be expected.

It’s a small pie; having observed and played my small part in competitive gaming for as long as I have, it’s still amazing that there is a pie at all.

But that isn’t any excuse for the bickering and blatant hostility, where everyone took turns to one-up and sh*t-talk each other, that took place.

A couple of clarifications. I’m not going to name names, for one, since I know all of the individuals involved and I happen to like them very much. That doesn’t mean I have any qualms about calling them out publicly (they’ll know who they are), since they should know better.

If you’re going to lead a community, if you’re going to be the public face of an organisation, you shouldn’t be playing in the mud. Even if you’re the kind of unprofessional scum that likes to operate that way, you still don’t do it publicly.

The posts have since been deleted. I’ve even seen some suggestions that everyone is actually really supportive of each other, and it’s one of the hallmarks of the Australian community that everybody is so close.

Bull. The only advantage in being close that I saw this week was that it reduced the distance between a knife and the nearest spinal cord.

Imagine if you’re Riot, looking over potential applications, reading various CVs and scanning over everyone’s qualifications. Just for the heck of it — or maybe because social media is an important part of community management — you decided to search Facebook and you came across the ensuing melee.

Imagine how impressed you would be having seen public figures act like a group of pack rats. Would you want that representing your brand? Would you want someone prepared to abandon their personal integrity that quickly?

The pie is shrinking too. See the speed at which IPL 6 was cancelled, a month before the finals. Many players and fans have been left out in the lurch, with non-refundable tickets and shattered dreams.

It’s at times like these we need people to uphold their values, not throw them away. The people involved in this week’s charade are good, decent characters. So let’s set an example others can follow, instead of behaving like vultures.

This was the big one. This was the day where everything was on the table. All the showmatches, all the thousands of dollars bet beforehand was just a warmup to the main event.

You wouldn’t have guessed, watching the cheers, gasps and regular group hugs on the stage (to the annoyance of organisers and any health and safety officers in the crowd) that the final prizes were so small compared to what changed hands earlier in the weekend. Still, it didn’t dull the intensity of the matches or the passion of the spectators one iota. It was almost a kind of pure enjoyment, playing solely for the glory, something evident on the faces of particularly the Melbourne supporters.

The seeding points for EVO later this year wasn’t really a factor; most top players I spoke to weren’t planning on going. Many couldn’t fully practice for OHN 11, due to university or other work, although that didn’t stop them from enjoying the atmosphere.

Naturally, not every game received the same welcome. Marvel and Street Fighter were scheduled towards the end and they received the most ecstatic praise. The former was especially helped after Antman advanced from the lower bracket and forced Arnold Desu, the eventual Marvel champion, into a final best-of-five.

Not all matches were broadcast either, although this was by design rather than necessity. The Street Fighter 3rd Strike finals were played off-stream, and due to the schedule the games had already been resolved before organisers realised how far ahead of time things were.

To make up for the hour they’d gained — one of the hallmarks of excellent administration, a constant theme for the event — an on-the-spot Street Fighter team battle was arranged. That opened the door for fan favourites like ToXY to showcase even more of their skills, and the crowd’s roar of appreciation was a fitting reward for the admins’ ad-hoc decision.

Street Fighter produced the tightest rounds; I never expected someone playing Juri to win the whole thing. And the comebacks after the champion, gb from Victoria, popped the Korean Tae Kwan Do master’s ultimate were remarkable.

Despite getting a scare in the first best-of-five, Arnold Desu was able to wrap things up relatively comfortably. The game was peppered with instances of him eventually breaking through runner-up Antman’s guard. Both players executed their moves well, but Arnold maintained his lead through some incredible blocking; re-watch the VODs if you can. The guy is a robot, honestly.

Marvel continues to astonish me. It’s difficult enough as a spectator co-ordinating your brain with the action on the screen, let alone the sheer speed of the players. Ultras and specials being executed within split-seconds of each other never gets boring, simply because so few people can bring everything together so reliably under the pressure.

After all these years, I feel disappointed that I didn’t make the effort to attend fighting game tournaments earlier. Not only do they remind me of why I got into competitive gaming in the first place, but they’re also a hallmark in terms of showcasing a strong and passionate community fortunate enough to have organisers talented enough to keep the show running.

Sure, consoles are a lot easier to deal with than computers and the offline capability of the games removes a lot of problems from the equation. But that didn’t stop the stream from being absolute quality, and it certainly didn’t stop the admins from coping with over 210 players on the day (231 signed up beforehand).

Congratulations, OzHadou. Not only did you successfully run what was the smoothest tournament I’ve seen in many years — and that includes major events over the last 12 months — but you also made a new fan.

I’m looking forward to seeing you all again in May. And if you, dear reader, have the opportunity to come down to Melbourne for the next FGC event, come. It’s worth it.

As expected, the intensity ramped up significantly at the second day of proceedings at the 11th OzHadou Nationals. The fact that it’s a Road to EVO qualifier, where the top 2 of most games receive seeding points towards the Evolution championships in Las Vegas later this year, helps somewhat.

Mind you, a few thousand dollars changing hands doesn’t hurt either — and more is expected to come out tonight.

Money matches are kind of a tradition among the fighting game community, a way to spice up the action. Outside of the group stages, the first and second days are peppered with games that can become rather heated — although it’s the evening skirmishes that attract the most cash.

A large part of the appeal is the occasionally bristling, but usually friendly, rivalries between the states. Melbournians tend to play it up more than others, although a healthy dose of Marvel vs Capcom will always get Queenslanders riled up.

As someone who has spent the better part of a decade floating between various competitive scenes, it’s fascinating seeing the pressure applied to players by their peers, who desperately don’t want to let the state down. But the main attraction was the group stages, the first step on the path towards the top 16 and potential glory (which in turn allows the winner to talk copious amounts of smack, a commodity almost as lucrative as the prizes themselves).

And people take this seriously. In between the laughing, joking and the banter, the level of focus and concentration is at its peak. Moves need to be executed to the split-second, counters worked out to the exact frame.

Each fighting game has its own approach and calculations, and part of OzHadou’s appeal is moving from one match to another and just seeing the differences. From that, players can work out which games suit them best; I spoke to many who said they tried Street Fighter, or tried Tekken or King of Fighters but admitted that they “just weren’t very good”. In essence, fighting games are no different from your high level RTS, action RTS (or MOBA if you prefer Riot’s terminology) or a team-based FPS in regards to the level of dedication required.

But fighting games have that extra element, that additional layer of adrenaline others lack. Perhaps it’s natural considering how close many matches are; how often games come down to the wire and just how quickly things can turn in an instant.

One mistake can always, for instance, cost you a game of StarCraft. The time it takes to resolve, compared to an ultra move in Street Fighter, is typically much longer.

And maybe that’s why there’s so much more hype, so much more banter and so much more — and I agree that this is an unfair premise — passion on show.

Within the space of a few hours players were jumping (against the wishes of a distressed admin team, who were doing their best to honour OH&S laws) up to the stage to hug their recently-victorious friend. These aren’t even the finals. Like everything else on show though, the trials, tribulations, anger, relief, happiness and adulation are all spent within an instant.

You can see it on the crowd, the intense way they follow every move, become exasperated at every mistake and audibly gasp in unison at every piece of genius.

There is nothing else like it in eSports. The closest I can remember was Counter-Strike and even that was a slow burn; the players themselves were emotional and not shy about expressing themselves, but it was a different experience for the crowd.

You could see it in their eyes towards the end, when Frenetic Array’s Stef eked out the narrowest of wins against NefeliousG in the Pool G semi-finals; both had an opportunity to win, but a failure in execution saw them both throw their chances away. At the time of writing, the pair are due to face off in the grand finals for their pool; the winner will progress to the upper bracket of the top 16, while the runner-up will begin in the lower half.

This was just one of many, many nail-biters. And to think the crowd’s just getting started.

If you can’t still can’t visit York on 99 in Sydney (spectating is free!), OzHadou’s two streams on TwitchTV has all the live action and all the VODs from the games played. Go to http://www.twitch.tv/Ozhadou and http://www.twitch.tv/Ozhadou2 for more. The schedule for the whole weekend is also available on the OzHadou website. 

For those who have never attended a national championships for fighting games, let me offer you a primer: casual is not casual in the slightest.

The OzHadou nationals, the 11th iteration of which is being held at 99 on York’s Red Room in Sydney, always earmarks the first day for two things: registration and “casual” play.

But a cursory glance around the room proves that what’s really going on is far from casual. Indeed, only a couple of hours after registration began, the announcer declared that special showmatches would be taking place throughout the rest of the night. That is to say, best-of-five or best-of-ten games interspersed with copious amounts of trash-talking.

And money.

It’s a bizarre experience for me, having grown up in the world of Counter-Strike, which pre-dated a lot of these kinds of competitions when it came to establishing the infrastructure for sending players to national and international qualifiers. Because even though that system was well in place, the people amidst it all were, well … poor.

How times have changed.

Bond University certainly knows the score. According to their latest survey (commissioned by the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association), the average age of gamers is 32. 32-year-olds have a lot more money than, say, 15-year-olds.

That, of course, applies to casual gaming. But just a cursory glance at any eSports event will tell you that people are a lot older these days. And the impact of that cannot be understated.

There’s gamers walking around with cameras worth thousands of dollars. That’s just the lens, mind you. And not to mention the custom-built cabinets supplied by the organisers. The guy chiefly responsible for the stream team: he shipped down 60 kilograms of equipment. There’s a switcher worth a few grand on its own. And the venue itself; there’s something a little surreal walking into what feels like Sydney’s most upper-class RSL, only to discover hundreds of massive fighting game nerds rocking out on the first floor.

It feels amazing; it feels like I’ve come home.

Part of the sentiment in the latter stems from what a fellow games.on.net user described to me as a community that is “rough and unrefined”. A fellow organiser quipped that fighting game tournaments were more like Bay 13 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the kind of sentiment you’d expect a rowdy crowd to bellow out at the referee, than the action witnessed in other communities, which he equated to “golf”.

This is why I kept playing competitively for so long; I’ve missed the banter. The real action, of course, won’t start until Sunday.

Friday is the “casual” day, although from what I could see it was anything but casual. Most players were completely engrossed in their “practice” matches, some of which were incredibly tight.

That would ramp up later once the exhibition games — essentially grudge matches — kicked off. Some received a louder reception than most, but there was an underlying rivalry to all of them.

I heard a story a few years back about how a gamer rocked up to a nationals in a cast and decided it gave him protection from any repercussions for his smack-talk — something he promptly rethought once he was getting the crap kicked out of him. Physically.

Clearly, the fighting game community are a lively bunch. For those concerned, they’re very warm to newcomers, at least in my limited experience. Unless you’re going to start bantering with the professionals. That’s best left to the veterans — something I’ll no doubt see a lot more of on Day Two.

If you can’t make it to York on 99 in Sydney, never fear – you can follow all the action on TwitchTV via OzHadou’s two streams: http://www.twitch.tv/Ozhadou and http://www.twitch.tv/Ozhadou2. The schedule for the whole weekend is also available on the OzHadou website.

Alex Walker jumps into his car — or is that a plane, or a hovercraft? — and zooms off to take a look at Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, SEGA’s all-in-one mascot racer which may have a stupid name, but turns out to be quite a bit of fun.

Problems watching the video below? If you’d like, you can download the video in HD from our file library. A YouTube mirror is also available.

Don’t pay $40 for Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed on Steam like some sort of chump! Green Man Gaming has it for $30 instead.

Whether you’re a fan of League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Starcraft 2, World of Tanks or even Shootmania, there’s something to whet your competitive fancy over the next month or so.

Being the king of the hill, League of Legends is getting all the attention of late. But when you kick off February with the third season of the Championship Series.

Australians, sadly, aren’t able to take part in the Championship Series, although they haven’t been left out to dry. The Australian and New Zealand branch of the Electronic Sports League have organised an Electronic Pro Series for the region.

Chiefs, Leedle Lee, Qlimax Crew, Team Immunity, Kal Vas Gaming, Exile5’s Lunar squad, Team Imperious and Volf Goes RAWR.Giga have either been invited or qualified for the finals. At the time of writing, the final qualifier hadn’t begun although by the time you read this the last four teams will have been determined.

Console gamers are enjoying plenty of love too lately, with the Australian and New Zealand qualifiers for the Call of Duty Championship announced recently. Eight teams will qualify from two separate online events, with the top two from that bracket getting an all-expenses paid trip to Los Angeles to compete for US$1 million.

The event’s only open to those aged 18 or over, creating a bit of consternation after several quality players realised they wouldn’t be able to compete. Nevertheless, it’s going to be a great event, complete with an Australia vs New Zealand showmatch. The Australian/NZ finals will be held in Sydney on the 15th of March.

There’s plenty of Starcraft 2 action down under as well, with the Southeast Asian Clan League (and its associated fantasy league competition) progressing smoothly.

Australian powerhouses Team Immunity and Gamecom.NV will face off at 6pm tonight in their round match; the two have had a rough road and are sitting in the middle of the ladder with 6 points apiece. The Cityhunter-sponsored Xeria Gaming are riding high at the top of the leaderboard, although their schedule will become tougher when they face off against 3rd place Frenetic Array next week.

New Zealand are putting in a strong showing of their own, with Team Iris sitting on a comfortable 10 points after 4 straight wins. The Kiwis pulled off a surprise 3-2 upset of Team Immunity in the third week, although they face Frenetic Array and Gamecom.NV back to back.

The local LAN scene is continuing to grow as well. Rural Victorians got a taste of competitive action at the last RGL event in Mildura, with almost 40 players showing up for the free-for-all Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 events.

In Sydney there’s a new type of LAN brewing, with the organisers behind MPU starting up Ctrl-Alt-Defeat. The event is a sit-and-play LAN party, rather than a BYOC event, and is being held at the Good Games store on Clarence St.

The idea is for people to come down and just enjoy some LAN gaming during the week without having to go through the hassle of lugging their gear around. $15 will get you a spot at the keyboard (spectating is free). 12 computers have been organised for Monday night, and for fans of collectible card games, miniature war games or board gaming, there’s also a 5% discount in the store for everyone in attendance.

New Zealanders won’t miss out on the LAN action either, with Adversity Gaming announcing a teaser Easter LAN ahead of their traditional annual Auckland LAN. Held on the final weekend of March, the LAN will feature 2v2 competitions for Call of Duty, Halo 4 and some yet-to-be announced fighting games.

But the biggest event around the corner will be the OZHadou Nationals next weekend. We’ve already previewed the event here at GON, and I’ll be down at 99 on York to cover all the action. The fighting gaming community’s calendar doesn’t stop there though, with the Victorian-based Shadowloo Showdown finally revealing the date for its next event.

The timing is more akin to a Battle Arena Melbourne event than the Shadowloo Showdown, but I’m certain it’ll be just as good as ever. And in case you’re doubtful on the skill and technical expertise behind the Shadowloo team, here’s a reminder.

Know of any other LANs in your local area with some eSports action? Let us know in the comments below!

The wonderful advantage of Blizzard’s methodical approach towards their eSports baby, StarCraft 2, is that it never stays the same. Take the Heart of the Swarm beta, for example. To the uninformed the game would look essentially identical, but the quantity and subtlety of some changes have made the expansion to the real-time strategy beast a completely different kettle of fish to the game which first what went live late last year.

Some units have been removed completely; others have been substantially reworked, and some haven’t changed a bit. Old strategies have been dusted off and revamped for a new age, and brand new ones are being invented every day.

To get the best picture of just where things stand before Heart of the Swarm launches next month, I rounded up some people for whom the game matters the most.

Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson

Full-time StarCraft 2 player for Evil Geniuses

“Being able to watch replays with friends/trainees/teammates was a big deal that everyone had hoped would be implemented. We were also excited at the idea of having a function that would allow players to resume from replays, so if a disconnect were to occur that game wouldn’t be lost challenging the legitimacy of whatever competition was going on at that time. Both of these features have been added so you can count me amongst the happy folk on this one.

Protoss is a lot more fun in Heart of the Swarm. There are more options, a better synergy with late game play and a more rewarding experience for the player that can multi-task better or think further down the line. In [Wings of Liberty] we had issues with the infamous Broodlord / Infestor combo. Often times it came down to a vortex or the Zerg making a critical error. In HotS we have new options in dealing with that combo, namely the Tempest and a stronger mid game.

Blizzard has done a fairly good job of interacting with the community on developing a game that casual players and professionals can enjoy alike. I think the ability to play unranked matches and practice mode, as well as having a more in-depth experience with the AI, means that as a casual player you have more options to enjoy the game. Playability is a big deal and being able to have a nice single player experience but then also not be intimidated by the multiplayer … is a good thing.”

Jared “PiG” Krensel

Full-time professional gamer in Australia

“I was somewhat hoping that they would increase the supply cap as I feel one of the silliest features of Zerg is that they are meant to swarm. They did this in Brood War, however in SC2 as a Zerg with the new macro mechanics for each race you all shoot up towards 200 supply very quickly. Often as a Zerg you are forced to either go super aggressive or super greedy as middling numbers of units such as roaches aren’t worth their weight later on at max.

As a result you see a race obsessed with static defence to buy time to remax after engagements and battles often won not with a clean or impressive engage, but with a wall of spines buying time for your 2nd or 3rd remax to bowl over your opponent. Increasing this supply cap would mean the entire game would need to be reworked though so it’s not really a realistic wish.

Most importantly I wanted to see more variety of strategies, more interesting gameplay and more micro and positioning being relevant. Things like late game Terran vs Protoss was heavily Protoss favoured and late game Zerg vs Protoss was heavily Zerg favoured. This led to a lot of boring play and repetitive games.

I think the previous problem of getting maxed very quickly and sitting on lots of spines and large banks is still an issue. Other than that I feel Zerg didn’t have too many units that involved heavy micro. I think the Swarm Host MIGHT fix this problem, whilst combo-ing Vipers and Infestors with an army now takes a huge amount of control.

I feel that Zerg vs Terran is extremely hard with Widow Mines massacring ‘Ling-Bane so that you are forced into Roaches, which suck due to 200/200 problem I mentioned before. ZvP has been a lot of fun focusing just on masses of stuff using all types of basic units in a mix is very effective and fun to use. Adding Vipers and Infestors just as support rather than the [Wings of Liberty] Infestor core unit makes it quite exciting. Any issues with it I am confident will be fixed by release.

Giving Widow Mines to Terran is a great idea. Terran is the most mechanically demanding race and giving them a unit that can hold map control and deter an opponent from moving into their territory was just what they needed. Also they are quite micro-intensive so will be one of the many new units that allow the fastest players to show their skills. Likewise swarm hosts and to a lesser extent oracles.

The Viper was the most exciting and is very visually cool and fun to micro. I’m looking forward to Zerg styles adapting that involve waves of aggression to cover steady transitions through the tech tree and some really diverse T3 compositions with 5-6 unit types in them.

I earn my living from [StarCraft] so even though I don’t really have any problems with the interface for my own uses, I did want it to be improved to help accommodate the casual fanbase. Common complaints involved [the] custom game system being … inaccessible, ladder ranking being too prominent and not enough fun features and achievements for casual gamers.

There’s a lot of things that will help [such as] integrating eSports. Those that follow eSports and watch tournaments tend to be more excited to play. [An] interface that is easy and friendly – not too focused on ladder ranking (unless maybe Master level or higher), more achievements [and] most importantly is the interface has to lead very easily to a simple and obvious custom game system.”

Ethan “iaguz” Zugai

Member of pro-gaming team Frenetic Array’s StarCraft 2 roster

“The flaws Terran [had] in Wings of Liberty? Well apart from the fact that the race was balanced by the master race of Korean professionals who stubbornly refuse to do anywhere near as poorly as all the foreigners and thus kept the race as far away from buffs as possible, Terran had a few issues.

Against Protoss they are a very strong race but they only have about five useful units in macro games (Marines, Marauders, Medivacs, Vikings, Ghosts) which limits the breadth of strategies somewhat. Against Zerg they struggle tremendously to balance aggression, defence, economy and handling all their units correctly when attacking, managing drops and marine positioning all working under a clock of ‘if he gets Broodlords before I’ve dealt him some harm, I’m in for some sh*t’.

I think Blizzard are addressing that. They’re trying to force mech units to actually be good in Terran vs Protoss and they’re encouraging more ways to apply aggression in Terran vs Zerg and also making transitions smoother too, and more ways to play a longer game if you want to.

They’ve also done a good job of trimming some of the unit fat, the Hellion is now a more acceptable core unit thanks to the Hellbat switch, the energy bar on the Thor has been done away with so we can make them against Protoss without worrying about feedback (which is extremely helpful because Thors are so good vs Protoss normally, they just get too badly affected by feedback to show it), the Reaper is a much better scout and also much more accessible.

We even get mines to help throw in a little chaos and Medivac speed, a strict upgrade to a unit we use all the time. And they removed the requirement for siege tech and added +2 [to] Battlecruiser damage. There’s a huge amount to play around with.

Terran is a better race now for sure. Everyone’s getting a bunch of new goodies but the Terran stuff looks easily as good, if not better, than what anyone else got. I’m concerned about Hellbats in Terran vs Terran though, it seems a very common move to load up 4 Hellbats into a Medivac, apply speed boost and then murder all the SCVs. Back in 2011 there was a period of time in [the mirror match-up] where you could only play mech and games were decided by whoever managed to slip in blue flames into the other’s SCV line first. It was a horrible time and I’m glad the Blue flame nerf was able to fix it. But this seems like a return to those dark days.

It seems Blizzard are focusing on unit mobility and encouraging players to be more active with their stuff. Like Mutas are faster and regenerate quicker so you can keep harassing with them, Medivacs have this big speed boost, Reapers are faster and so on. And this is good for spectators since it means hopefully a more active game with more situations for a superior player to out-skill his opponent.

I wasn’t really hoping for any particular changes [to the interface] so it’s good they didn’t change any. Except for the idle worker button. A lot of the changes they have implemented are more targeted at really new players but not at the cost of pissing off experienced players, so that’s good.

The game looks like it’ll play out fantastically, it feels like it’ll be a fundamentally different game in a lot of ways. I’m definitely hoping for a much more bearable Terran vs Zerg match-up since that has been my major issue for the last year or so. I also hope it proves to be a shot in the arm for competitive gaming in Australia.”

StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm officially launches in Australia on March 12 with a launch party at Melbourne’s Federation Square, starting from 8pm.

Jackson Gray, head of the Sydney Gamers League, has passed away at the age of 20.

The iconic gamer helped organise and administer the Australian leg of the World Cyber Games over the last few years. Under his direction, the Sydney Gamers League was revived as one of the most enjoyable bring-your-own-computer LAN events in Australia and New Zealand.

Their last event, the LAN of Thrones, was held almost exactly a year ago at the Rosehill Gardens Racecourse in Western Sydney. Over 500 seats were available for 28 hours of gaming that also hosted the Game Jam 48-hour developer challenge.

Friends and colleagues of Gray have begun posting tributes to the 20-year-old.

“Jackson Gray was the kind of friend everyone wishes they had, he would sacrifice his time and energy to help you out with the tiniest thing or the biggest problem in the world. He was the type of person to always have a smile on his face and be ready to help out his mates and even complete strangers with anything they needed,” Zee Kotwal, a presenter for video gaming show Save Point and a colleague with Gray at SGL, said.

Chris Hailes, a close friend and one of the driving forces behind SGL, posted on Facebook that Gray’s passing was “a huge loss to me personally”. “In the time I have known Jackson I’ve seen him go from strength to strength both professionally and personally. His contribution to eSports scene through the Sydney Gamers League over the past four years has been some of the largest events in Australia.

“His death will be felt by hundreds of people, he will be missed, my thoughts and prayers go to his family during this time.”

From the entire gaming community, eSports fans and casual gamers alike, we extend our condolences to Gray’s family and wish them the very best in what must be extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

Throughout the course of the year, Australia has a lot of wide and varied tournaments serving gamers’ competitive needs. But none are as competitive or as fierce as those held by the fighting game community, which enjoyed a stellar 2012 by having some of the biggest and most unique events seen in the country.

The first nationals for the year, OZHadou 11, looks set to continue that tradition, having been selected as an official qualifier for the Evolution global fighting game championships at the Paris Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, in July.

I spoke to some of Australia’s most talented fighters ahead of the event and asked them what their expectations were, who to keep an eye on as potential darkhorses, what Australia’s chances at the world finals in Las Vegas were — and just exactly why they love fighting games so much.

Jake Blomberg

3rd for Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 at OHN 2012 and one of Queensland’s best UMvC3 players:

I expect OHN 11 to be a fun, exciting, and entertaining time. As with the previous years they always deliver a high quality tournament. Ziggy, Yang and Yousseff make this easily the best major for Australian Fighting Tournaments except for Shadowloo Showdown of course.

The Road to Evo qualifier hasn’t changed my preparations toward the tournament. I take every tournament seriously and with a high level of preparation. Even though the EVO points are a nice incentive there are many other reasons for going to this event. The biggest reason I think for people in Australia to go to OHN is more about pride. And to prove who are the best at their respective game and who is the best state.

Without giving too much away from our scene, there are 3 Queensland players that I will not be looking forward to meeting: 2 players from Victoria and 1 from NSW.

Thomas “Nefelious G” Body is the most decorated player for Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. He didn’t lose a single tournament to anyone in Australia in Marvel vs Capcom 3, he only lost to [foreigners] at Shadowloo Showdown (Tokido and Mago) and at EVO (Clockwork and ChrisG). He is always a threat in this game and will be a really good match if I come up against him in [the] tournament.

Tyrone “OmegaRed” O’Toole aka is the Wolverine master only to PR Rog in the [United States]. His rushdown is relentless and unforgiving. He was the highest placing QLD’er at [Shadowloo] with international guests coming 7th in the tournament. I only hope that someone else takes him out and not me. Tyrone is currently my pick [for] OHN11.

Stefan “Solid Stef” Materazzo. What can I say about the kid. He is a beast to say the least. I’m going to nickname him the Interstate Killer. As he has won all of the recent majors at interstate tournaments. He will be a hard challenger and will expect new stuff from him as well with his strange team and ridiculous setups.

Michael “ToXY” Guida is what I believe to be the most versatile gamer at the highest levels. Any game that he touches he always excels at it. Recently he clean-sweeped all three fighting games in NZ for UMVC3, SF4AE and SFXT. He is always someone you need to keep an eye on and be wary of and will expect to see his name be in the top 8.

Arnold Samau (from NSW): He is a beast, the fact that he won [UMvC3 at OHN 11] last year is reason enough to look out for him. But this year lets see if he can still hold the crown. The underrated players that I think will perform better than expected will be Peter Pham “Fish” and Tri from QLD.

Australia is viewed by foreign countries as a good country, but not the best. If we were ranked by the other countries in the world I think a good estimate is probably around 5th-10th at fighting games. This is mainly because they don’t get enough exposure to our gameplay at fighting games in general. And its because that the other countries simply have a higher population than Australia in a more condensed area. So naturally they have more players than Australia.

I think if our top 10 Australian players were to enter EVO… I think there is a good chance that a fair few could make it through to the top 32. And that’s really good considering that at EVO there are usually over 2000 competitors for the one game.

Derrick Wong

One of WA’s best SF4: Arcade Edition fighters, 4th place finisher for KOF13 at 2012′s OHN

Every OHN provides a great opportunity to meet new players as well as catch up with friends from other states and I expect it to be no different this year. It’s going to be exciting to see how Melbourne’s Marvel players fare against QLD and Syd. These states have been proven powerhouses but Perth is bringing their best Marvel players this year. I am hoping we can cause an upset. In terms of KoF13, it has always been Colin (Colonov) versus the rest of Aus. A couple of us have been secretly training hard for this event. Expect some upsets!

As for [SF4:AE], ever since Johnny (HumanBomb) returned to HK, the throne has always been up for grabs. I expect players like ShangTsuang, ToXY, Robsux, AfterDeath to do well as they consistently have.

Other countries tend to view us as a “Free” country not due to our skill level (which we have improved heaps over the past few years) but based on international performances. They would need to play more international players as well as watch and study heaps of videos. Our community is a lot smaller than many other countries, and this puts us at a disadvantage.

With the discovery of unblockables in SSF4AE, the metagame has evolved into a game of counter-picking. Outside of Japan, it’s very hard to main one character and expect to win every tourney. KOF13 is slowly growing in Australia, I hope OHN 11 will encourage others and many original/old school KOF players to pick this game up.

(I love fighting games because of) the mind games, combos, and because of how it’s never the same each round/game. It’s a skillful game of intellect, dexterity/execution and reaction. Each character has a fixed set of moves, and if you delve down deeper, you will find information like frame data, hurtbox, hitbox, etc. Studying this will give you an edge, and pits you against your opponent in a high level of rock, paper, scissors. Magic pixels in the game during tournament makes some rounds super hype. Being able to show off your combos or outwit your opponent gives great satisfaction.

Colin “Colonov” Tan

Winner of the KOF13 tournaments at ButtonSmash 2012 and Battle Arena Melbourne in October

I’m expecting [OHN 11] to be a jam packed event. We’ve seen the fighting game community grow from year to year, and this year will be no exception. OHN never fails to deliver interstate rivalry at its finest, and with the way things have been going so far, this year will certainly not disappoint.

I’d like to see more cohesion and readiness to setup meets for more sessions. Given that arcades are a dying industry, most of the gameplay casual gamers get against others is online. Of course this is less than optimal with lag issues, which is why it’s so important to be able to play others in person.

On a larger scale, I’d like to see more major tournaments and more sponsors backing these tournaments. Even having on average a major every 2 months in Australia would ideally not only boost interest, but would give players something to work towards in the short term.

As [KoF13] is arguably the most balanced fighting game out there being played right now, character knowledge plays a big part in success as a player since every character in the game is viable. Internationally though, it’s mainly the Japanese, Koreans and Central Americans are the ones innovating new approaches to the game and its engine, which is a very refreshing take [on] the game indeed.

It’s not just the competition and hype that comes from it, but it’s also the people you meet and the relationships you forge with fellow players, even if they live halfway across the globe. Together we form communities, communities that support and encourage growth of not just how a game is played, but also our personal lives as well.

You can find out more information about OZHadou and OHN 11 through their website.

The reception of professional gaming within traditional and even gaming media itself has become a lot more prominent of late. Games like League of Legends and DOTA 2 have helped punishingly difficult learning curves come back into vogue, while the continued growth of prize pools at events like The International have caught the attention of traditional newswires and even business publications.

Earlier this week was a case in point. On page 13, next to the editorials, a half-page column on gaming kicked off with three full paragraphs about the exploits of Andrew “mOOnGlaDe” Pender and his recent sojourn in Katowice, Poland, for an Intel Extreme Masters leg. Pender’s been going overseas for the better part of a decade, but even on the last year his media profile, and that of other Australian gamers, has soared.

So to better understand the change in the relationship between traditional gaming media, mainstream media and eSports, I spoke with some pundits, editors and players to see what shifts caught their eye over the last year, where they think the partnership is going and what eSports can do to make itself more appealing to the wider market.

Jared “PiG” Krensel, full-time professional Starcraft 2 gamer:

When I did a interview on ABC 24 back in May 2012 the questions were starting to move away [from] just showing gamers as different and actually gave me an opportunity to show that gamers are normal people, whilst explaining that being a pro-gamer is actually a legitimate career choice these days.

A common focus is the idea of living off earnings from playing and other gaming related sponsorships and activities like streaming or coaching. I’m happy to see that more gaming websites however are taking for granted that their audience knows what pro-gaming is and instead focus more on experiences at tournaments, training, etc. Basically what you’d expect in a tennis interview or golf interview. I think this is a good thing which one day we can see in traditional media also.

eSports is new and refreshing. In an age of constantly evolving technology I believe that even people who know nothing about eSports are fascinated (and sometimes afraid) of the idea of everyone never stepping outside their home to kick a ball around and instead competing through video games all day. I guess I think putting forward an image of healthy, mature and intelligent professionals is the best thing I can do to increase my appeal. There is a very obvious need to remove yourself from the stereotypes of fat, unhealthy, socially awkward “gamers” in order to increase mainstream appeal. Likewise the characteristics liked in an athlete are also good to have.

Jessica Rozema, head of community and public relations for ESL Australia:

Event organisers struggle to communicate to a wider audience what these events/eSports actually involve as it is somewhat an unknown industry in Australia. As major games like League of Legends apply massive monetary prize pools … the overwhelming and growing popularity of these games and eSports as a whole start grabbing media attention.

More and more we are seeing events place a strong focus on production value and building up a spectator audience, and in my opinion this is where it is at. Ensuring that event organisers reach out as often as possible to educate people about what we love and why is a fantastic way to bring more professionalism and monetary/sponsorship support to grow the industry in Australia more and really put us on the international map.

I feel like eSports has definitely struggled for years to grow in Australia, however we are on the verge of taking it to the next level … having ESL come to Australia as an internationally known entity has caught the attention of some major companies and in turn this has sparked the interest of the general gaming community. As the community grows, and companies begin to see a commercial side to the industry media will follow, and I only hope that those with a passion for gaming journalism stay in the game and continue to represent.

Ali Abdo, co-founder of ShadowLogic, organisers of the Shadowloo Showdown international fighting game events in Melbourne:

I believe the mainstream media still has a way to go before they take competitive gaming seriously. Some have stepped up and giving it a go. Maybe they didn’t get the response they wanted, or maybe they feel once is enough. But I would like to see the mainstream media give competitive gaming it’s own segment maybe after they show the sports news. Would fit in nicely between sports and the weather.

We now see gaming sites interviewing professional players, putting up results, attending events. One site that stands out for me has to be GameSpot, they’ve really stepped up their game in the competitive gaming department.

I believe the change has come from the media realizing competitive gaming isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Add in the fact that everyone is streaming these days to get their name out there and build themselves a persona and an audience.

You need to give people a reason to watch your event …  you need these main events to mean something. For example at Shadowloo Showdown, we make it Australia vs the World. We have the best fighting game players from all over Australia coming down to Melbourne to defend our soil and prizes from the international invaders! The rest of the world knows how much of an uphill battle it is going to be for Australia, but that’s what makes it more exciting once an Australian player knocks out an international player.

Mark Ankucic, contributor for Dusty Cartridge:

The last twelve months have been nothing short of game-changing for me. Being introduced to esports communities like Shadowloo, covering the Oceanic [World Championship Series] Finals of Starcraft 2 for Game Informer, and being completely swept up in [the Evolution fighting game championships], has reminded me not merely of my own competitive streak, but that the streak lies in all of us.

Before this year I was aware of Evo and simply assumed there were various competitions for other games. It was only within the last year I realised the true scope of the funds and viewership these eSports were actually bringing in. Unfortunately my industry career has been beggared by the ignorance I held in regard to these events, because they represent an aspect of the love of challenge and adversity that we rarely get reporting the news or expressing opinions.

The traditional gaming media is failing to catch up with eSports, treating the competitive side as an almost strange beast that sits to the side. Why can I pick up a newspaper and read about an event that happened in Rugby and Soccer not two or three pages from a breaking story about something that happened in Parliament, but find even the biggest sites and publications lacking dedicated eSports sections? At times, I think the industry is a much bigger beast than most of us can tackle or will try to tackle, either because the internet necessarily breeds specialisation or that we just don’t see that these vastly different aspects of games fall under the same banner – gaming.

Andrew “mOOnGlaDe” Pender, professional Starcraft 2 player for Team Gamecom.Nv and an Australian World Cyber Games representative for Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2:

The limited interaction with traditional and mainstream gaming media [at home] is fairly limited compared to most other progamers internationally, but I would have to say it has remained fairly the same. Which the media being interested in [professional gaming] from Australia in general and how i prepare for tournaments.

I think it entirely depends on the gaming events I’m participating in, with regards to how much reporters take interest in myself. So it is a bit inconsistent sometimes, if there aren’t many competitions/events scheduled.

Because most people find it hard to believe that people take computer games so serious to the point where they are professionals, like a real sport. So it is something new that’s emerging and so different, especially in Australia.