So just to write something a little more personal since I haven’t in a while, i’ll just tell you a little bit about moving. Everyone basically wonders why we moved since we were working very hard at a company in Germany which was in the eSports industry. Unfortunately the company and us decided to go in separate directions and while we both loved Germany Köln, it was too difficult to get work without being fluent in German. So we went to the Netherlands for me to study and PURRI to work.

Moving was a lot of work as usual but now PURRI and I feel comfortable in our new home. We had a lot of help from a local Quake player (drk), it’s really nice how through gaming we’ve been able to get to know people from all over the world. Our flat is almost complete now, we had to do a lot of work like installing new floors, sterilization of the bathroom and painting over the imaginary shotgun stains (just joking).

It’s perfect timing just before the world cup. Things look really festive with orange flags everywhere. It’s a little bit of an assault on the eyes as soon as you enter any supermarket I always like to remind PURRI that NZ are qualified but not Sweden, hehe. But of course we must cheer for Holland. With all the promotions going on, it’s almost impossible that you don’t have a little bit of orange somewhere from something

So far it’s been a lot of fun and I look forward to spending the summer here! This is a dog sniping from a 3rd floor window:

The official WCG Ultimate Gamer casting dates and locations are as follows:

• April 7– Los Angeles
Radisson Hotel Los Angeles Westside, 6161 West Centinela Ave., Culver City
9:00 am– 6:00 pm

• April 10– New York
Samsung Experience, Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, New York
9:30 am– 6:00 pm

• April 10– Chicago
Inn of Chicago Magnificent Mile, 162 E. Ohio Street., Chicago
9:00 am– 6:00 pm

• April 10– Atlanta
Atlanta Marriot Perimeter Center, 246 Perimeter Center Parkway Northwest, Atlanta
9:00 am– 6:00 pm

Word on the street is that they’re especially looking for female gamers who “are up to showing the world that they are best”. Click here for the full details.

Tonya Welch has been a part of many huge professional gaming organizations such as the CPL, CGS and WSVG. Finally, out of eSports, she has decided to come clean about the “new” CPL and the lies that were crafted around it.

All of this led up the the first outright lie that was propagated regarding the purchase of the CPL. There was NEVER a middle-eastern investment group from Abu Dhabi behind the purchase of the CPL. It was 100%, from beginning to end, a complete LIE, with every intention to deceive the owners of the CPL brand (at least, the other three partners were told the owners were included in this lie), the gamers, the potential investors, and the people at CGS.

She has written a long blog on Complexity Gaming outlining the beginning of the “new” CPL, and promises to write more before disappearing. Will we hear even more secrets?

This blog is WELL worth the read! What do you think about the deception?

Today, Draven is still studying at University and also working, “I was studying to become an accountant, but I already had some internships. I kinda found it boring so I might try something else”. Before being sucked into the gaming world, Draven was actually a martial arts champion in Taekwondo. I’m also not talking about local gym champion – Draven boasts an impressive amount of victories in both national and international Taekwondo tournaments. Just a small peek into his enormous trophy cabinet speaks for itself:

Despite being a top player in Quake who has travelled to many different tournaments, Taekwondo still has taken Draven to more places than video gaming. He attended World Championships in Korea, Greece and basically places all over Europe. However despite being the national champion, he didn’t manage to win the international tournaments, “I didn’t win, was too jetlagged and too nervous on those podiums as 15-16 year old kid”.

3 years ago (when he was 19) Draven stopped Taekwondo as he didn’t have a lot of free time. At the time he was in the Netherlands national team so they were training a lot, “Sometimes we trained 3 times a day in the weekend”. Since there wasn’t any prize money offered in these tournaments, “going pro” wasn’t really an option.

Gaming is something which Draven has always enjoyed, “My brother, my cousin and I were really gamers, we played a lot of Super Nintendo and Playstation 1. We could play for days and not get bored.” But of course in those kinds of environment there is always rivalry, “We all wanted to be the best. For example in Super Mario or Tekken we wanted to prove who is the best ”

Then he discovered Quake. “Around 2001, I found out about Quake2, in 2002-2003 I started to play Quake3 single player, after that I found about mods and stuff so I downloaded RA3 and I totally fell in love with RA3. Actually I didn’t like duel at all, I was more a team based player ra3&ctf.”

Like with a lot of gamers, Draven was introduced to Quake first by his brother, “My brother brought a cd with quake2, so he installed it and started to play, but he got bored of it so I started to play the single player, and later on found out about multiplayer and irc. He then found out that Quake 3 was already around, “my brother borrowed quake3 cd from a friend who didn’t play it anymore so we installed it and I never looked back to Q2 again.”

Preferring team games over duel, Draven currently plays for the Dutch national team in Quake Live for both CTF (blad3, solar, draven, sc00t, forever) and TDM (draven, forever, sc00t, silencep, and tua). He started to get into duel in the Quake 4 days (2005 / 2006), “When Xhep from Tek9 asked me to play Q4 TDM for Tek9 I was like ‘sure why not’, but my pc was to shit to play Q4 TDM so I started playing Q4 duels. After that I kept playing duels in Q4/Q3/QL.”

Draven considers himself as kind of a “new” player on the duel scene, as he didn’t really watch the oldschool players play; “I started following duel scene after I saw the hub3aeroq game at ESWC [2005] fox vs czm where fox won in the end classic and awesome match. I started following it then, but did not play. I wasn’t really into the pro gaming scene. I was training 5-7 days week (taekwondo)”.

Obviously since a young age Draven already had the competitive edge in him but is yet to take a podium finish at a big international LAN tournament. He believes that; “If I could stop working and school I think I could focus a lot more and I would be a lot better. I’m busy with school, work. When I was at taekwondo I was really young, I could focus a lot on it. School also wasn’t that hard and I didn’t really need a job back then”. For a lot of University students events also come at bad times such as during or after exam periods. This makes it a little more difficult for those who are studying to fully focus on the tournament.

Currently we have seen a lot of the European Quake stars participate in the Saturday / Sunday Zotac and G-Data online cups. However Draven has never been able to play in those as his schedule only permits him to play mid-week and after 16:00, making it too late to make the tournament on time. He basically feels that what he needs to catch up to the current top players is simply more time to be able to practice. But he also feels that practice can’t really get you everywhere, “for a lot of people yes [practice helps], but a lot of people are so talented. For example burned – he caught up with a lot of people in short amount of time, even though he’s very young. He has loads of time and no responsibilities”.

As time goes on we have seen the top players come and go and new talent has emerged on the scene. Draven believes that soon this generation of top players will also need to concede to the younger generation; “The older you get the more priorities you have, cause you cannot have this lifestyle when you wanna get married and have kids, maybe if its Korea or MLG. But simply the last years of quake you cannot keep this lifestyle when you’re old and fat ”.

Despite winning the first eSports Heaven Quake Live tournament, Draven still remains modest about his skill, “Not a lot of good player signed up for this cup, but if you look at the last QL tournaments (Dreamhack & IEM Europe) I had one of the toughest groups. Both events I was kinda disappointed. It didn’t give me confidence at all, when you play QL you need confidence to win. Even though I came out my group at Dreamhack I had to face av3k right in the first round what was really bad too”.

Rumor has it that MLG is very interested in picking up Quake Live for their competitive circuit. Like most other competitive Quake Live players, Draven would love it if MLG chose it as a game. He’d participate; “but it also depends on prize money and if it’s in Europe or America. If the prize purse is like a CPL world tour then I would go cause it would mean that I have to make free time from work and school what costs money”. Like other top players, Draven is sponsored by his team LowLandLions but even if sponsors do pay the trips, time off from work and school is still needed to go to these tournaments.

Draven is actively involved in the Benelux Quake community and has often been seen spamming messages on IRC trying to get people to participate in the ESL Benelux amateur series. The more participants means that the more likely it is that next season the game will be fully in the ESL Pro Series. He seems a little disappointed at the Benelux scene, but not because of its size, “There quite a lot of Benelux players but most of them just play CTF, but we simply cannot make a Benelux only CTF league cause there’s not enough teams, so we have to start with duel then maybe try 2v2 then TDM/CTF if there’s enough interest”.

That said; it is quite difficult to get people to try dueling for many reasons. Draven believes that “Simply a lot of people don’t even wanna try duel and improve in it, because they get so bashed by good players they just give up on it”. But Draven encourages those who perhaps are interested in trying to not give up, “I think EPS is a big step, I see a lot of people trying duel. By playing better players, and seeing what you’re doing wrong and keep improving your game you’ll enjoy duel. If you keep improving you cannot stop playing ”.

In closing, he submitted the following words:

Thanks for the interview, I’m also really happy LLL picked me up. They supported and believe in me 100%. I’d also like to thank all the sponsors: asus, sennheiser, puretrak, easport, hostbasket

Firstly for those of you who don’t play xbox live, i’ll quickly explain the rating system to you. Once you play against someone, you have the option to go into their profile and rate them. You can rate them on trash talking, inappropriate behaviour, ragequitting etc. If you have rated someone badly, you tend not to be matched up to games that they are playing in.

Anyway I was playing some clan arena last night and now I remember why I left the game uninstalled for several weeks (that’s actually part of another story). While some of us are playing Quake Live, others are playing Stats Live. While I love that all the game statistics are kept, i’m sure that many people don’t share that sentiment.

Stats Live differs from Quake Live where players are not playing the game of Quake but simply doing whatever they can in order to manipulate their Quake Live statistics to make it appear that they’re a good player. This can involve doing the following:
1. Cheating: Flat out cheating, not much explanation needed
2. Switching teams in order to be on the winning team
3. Quitting or going into spectator mode if they lose

Quake Live does have some systems put into place to try to prevent this, such as not being able to stack teams (if it’s 3v3 and you join, you will automatically be placed on the losing team). But of course these Stats Live players find a way around it. For example they will stay in spectator mode until someone else joins the losing team, thus enabling them to join the winning team.

Quake Live already has a very easy system where you can view your most recent opponents from your startpage. My idea for the rating system would be this:
All you’d have to do is click on your opponents profile and there you’ll be able to make an easy judgement through a checkbox system. Of course you don’t have to rate everyone you play against, I myself would probably use it just for the people who are being lame as fuck unsportsmanlike.

My ideas that I stole from Xbox Live for what the check-boxes could be:
Communication:
- Excessive flaming (don’t get me wrong, I love flamers but when they start telling me that i’d be better at Quake if I stopped sucking so much dick, it gets a little old)
- I’m mad because I got owned

In-game conduct:
- Stacking teams
- Ragequits
- I’m mad because I got owned

Skill:
- Too good
- Too bad
- Doesn’t even know how to fire a weapon
- I’m mad because I got owned

For duels as well, it would be cool if you could have an option to avoid certain players with the match finder.

Then some servers should have some kind of restriction (much like the skill level restriction) where people with shit ratings can’t enter. Then have open servers where all the shitty bad-attitude players can play with each other. Kind of like what the English colonial guys did with Australia.

Of course this idea isn’t perfect but it’s what it is; an idea. I know that a lot of high level players will receive low ratings from people they’re spanking just because they’re pissed about getting owned.

What do you think? Would a Quake Live rating system fly with you or is it just another thing that’s good in theory but shit in practice (like BDSM)? Let me know in the comments or tweet your thoughts @HelloLiefje

My worse better half has spent countless hours on this game and totally loves it. He tried to introduce me to it too so perhaps we could play together. I’ve never played Defense of the Ancients [DotA] before but I thought it’d be a piece of cake anyway since everyone was saying that this game is MUCH better and easier than DotA.

It feels like studying for an exam

The game is still in closed beta but basically all my e-friends are playing it so it wasn’t hard to get an invite. Before even playing the game, it was already becoming quite a task. I’m not one of those great tacticians in games and I hate to have to do a lot of reading before playing. Usually when I get games I like to tear into them right away without even opening the manual.

No one would have any of that in HoN. I had to spend time watching youtube tutorials and reading forums about the correct way to build characters. This would be totally fine if I was playing something like Diablo and I would be investing days into a character, but we’re talking about a 30 – 90 minute game here. Too much research for just one battle.

A melee character

So I spent time doing the research and 6 days later I got to open the game and pick my starting character. I picked a melee character (the panda bear) because it was a panda they have more hit points. Usually they’re pretty newbie friendly. It started out well and I was “laning” like I was supposed to.

But I wans’t aware that I was staying too far away from the fighting to get XP. So I soon found myself levels behind. Because of this, of course the other team would start to pick on me. Then my team would start whining. Then i’d go to the forest to kill the neutral creeps but that would make them whine even more, since they would want a melee character when they were trying to gank the other team.

Understandable, but what do you want from me?! I made a mistake in the beginning, I was trying to correct it but if you can’t correct it instantly, it’s not good enough.

A spellcaster

After a somewhat close game, we ended up losing the first map and since i’m a sore loser I decided to try again but with a spellcaster (the Pollywog Priest) instead for the benefit of ranged attacks. My reasoning behind this was that I wanted to be able to get more creep kills (for gold) and to be able to deny enemy creep kills better. I knew the dangers of a spellcaster (less HP, people will tend to pick on you etc) but I figured i’d be ok.

The game starts and of course, people are totally picking on me. All of a sudden my team starts flaming like crazy because i’m “feeding” (dying unnecessarily to the other team causing them to gain gold and experience at a much faster rate). Well no shit i’m feeding, it’s the 2nd time i’ve ever played the game and I guess my map awareness is garbage. Whoever I was laning with always just ran when I would get bound (trapped in one place with a spell) and I could never do anything by myself vs 2 heroes. Obviously i’d bitten off more than I could chew with a spellcaster.

The whole concept of “fog of war” and hiding in trees was totally new to me so obviously I wasn’t the best escape artist. I probably should have stuck to melee characters until I learned this better. But the pressure from the other players was on. My boyfriend told me that if I don’t have good stats (even after 2 games) people will kick me from games and refuse to play with me.

We pretty much lost  my second game quickly.

Giving up

I didn’t even bother trying an agility based character, even though everyone seems to think they’re the easiest to play. It just seemed like too much hassle with a bunch of elitist pricks guys who couldn’t accept that some people just wanted to learn. How are you supposed to get better at a game if people aren’t even going to give you the opportunity to learn?

Are you a n00b-hating fan of HoN? Has anyone else shared the same experiences of the game? Let me know below or tweet your story @HelloLiefje

First of all, I would like to apologize. The interview was made at 2 – 3 am. I had just got home from a party and I didn’t know what I was saying. Normally I wouldn’t be so rude and I aplogize a lot. Everybody is free to do what they want and I didn’t have to say anything. I don’t understand why people didn’t ask themselves ‘why is Strenx so mad, there must be a problem’. Nobody asked themselves ‘how could he write this, he must not have been thinking straight’. Everybody just said ‘he’s a stupid kid’. I can’t blame you guys for thinking this, that’s normal. But I apologize for everything. To DaHanG, I hope you like it that I think you’re Buzz Lightyear.

Today he’ll be heading off to Germany to compete in the Intel Extreme Masters World finals at CeBit. But before leaving, he had a lot of things he wanted to get off his chest about Quake, the competition and excuses and certain players.

On professional gaming:

I’m laughing about the word “professional gaming”. How can you consider yourself a professional? A professional gamer is a man who lives with gaming. Only Warcraft and Starcraft players are professional gamers because they live for it. CS players: 60%. I just laugh when a player says “I’m a pro player”. I just wanna say “do you live only through Quake?” He will say “no”. Then you are not a professional gamer. I’m not a pro, I’m just a player who has fun with games. I have luck, I can travel. But I don’t consider myself as a professional.

About people taking gaming so seriously:

I will say ‘Why do you take the game so seriously? You want money? Get a job’. Really that’s what I think. I don’t really understand people like that. I am a student and I prefer to party. Just one day before [a tournament] I partied and drank so much. I was so hangover. That’s how players should react. They should just come for fun.

For example if I’m playing Zotac, it’s for €100 because on a Sunday there’s nothing to do. With that €100 I can buy alcohol for a party. I don’t take the game as seriously as some others do (like DaHanG…).

I’m not playing quake to make friends. Others only think about being “professional”. It’s just a game and you don’t make a living from it. They want to prove something; look I’ve the best brain, look I can be number 1. Every normal guy would say “what the fuck, I prefer to party than play Quake”. You can do both, but to reach the top u need to have no life and I prefer to party.

I have proven that it is possible to reach the top level without training (for example, IEM Europe).

On crying after losing DM6:

Ah, well… of course I don’t like to lose. Who likes to lose? But I forget about it the same day. I only care when I’m playing. If I do badly I don’t care – there is always a party afterwards.

DaHanG’s attitude:

DaHanG takes the game seriously. Quake Live is his life. I hate DaHanG since he said this to me; He watched my games vs Stermy all the time. I asked him the server password when he played cooller.

He said no.

I said why?

He replied: STFU, private server

He told me that 2 days ago. I really don’t like this attitude.

Do you know Buzz Lightyear? It’s DaHanG. He looks like him, exactly the same. DaHanG = Buzz Lightyear.

The Europe vs North America rivalry:

Americans are more no-life than Europeans. They are putting in more practice hours than the Europeans. OK, they win tournaments but let’s look statistics: if you train A LOT for a year you are not sure to win prize money. If you work hard for 1 year you can earn more than [the equivalent of] 50 1st places in a tournament.

So what’s the best? Play a geek game to win only $10000 in a tournament? Or work 1 year and earn a lot more WHILE playing at the same time. I just mean it’s stupid to train a lot all the time. I played IEM Europe without training.

If I evaluate the skill between chance and cypher, it’s a world of difference. Cypher plays less than Rapha. Av3k plays less too. Cooller I don’t know.

Europeans are more humble and more realistic than Americans, I guess. The mentality of Americans is strange. I don’t mean everybody, Rapha is a nice person – I have no problem with him.  But they [the rest of them] are in their dream world. They all think they can reach the top; they should be a little more realistic. I’m realistic; I know I have a small chance to go through the group.

Dkt is also in his dream world. He thinks he can reach the top but he should be a more realistic about what he can reach or not. I mean he did top 7 during IEM in USA, so please

Who he wants to beat at IEM:

I want to beat people who spend their lives playing, those who takes it seriously. Then if I do that, I will just prove that its bullshit to train a lot. I will just say “that’s bad, you wasted your time for nothing”. When you do perform badly and you know you trained 24h/24h for months, how do you feel?

About Cooller:

I think [on av3k’s recent interview] av3k is totally right about Cooller. I was so pissed about the 3rd place [IEM Europe] game. He had no respect for me. He only said, “I didn’t play my best because of my game against av3k”. He said I was lucky on dm6. 6:6, he does a kill at the last second and he is left on 6 hp. He should stop thinking that people are all lucky, because he is lucky as well.

For sure he isn’t the best at quake like he thinks he is.

I can’t accept it when Cooller said to me for 3rd place that I got lucky many times. It was him who was lucky… [As an afterthought] There isn’t any luck. I don’t know why I’m talking about luck. Luck is for losers.

On being arrogant:

The more you are honest, the more you think that person is arrogant. Look at Cypher for example. He can say what he thinks. He is very good. He can be honest saying, “this player is easy”. But he knows that if he says that, everybody will think he’s arrogant. But he’s right, he’s better than him. I really like this player [cypher], he just plays and that’s all.

If you ask me what I think about quake attitude: average players are nice (all nearly) but about the top players… it’s another world. There are a few guys who are very nice. The others are not. They only think about winning, winning and winning – being the best and having money. If they want to win money, enough money to live, stop playing. Just get a job.

But really I don’t mind, it’s their life, they do what they want. I enjoy my life, I play and I go to parties, I study etc. Some players hate me in Quake. I don’t care, they are not my friends. They can think what they want. I don’t mind at all.

Do people get the wrong impression from you because of the language barrier?

Well when DaHanG tells me “STFU” when I ask the password to the server, I don’t need a language barrier to understand this attitude.

The player he hates the most:

Winz. He’s arrogant, and a geek. I don’t like him at all. Even his face… really, he doesn’t look good. I think he’s the perfect representation of a geek. I’m sure all his friends are only players. Winz is a bitch. He sucks. He’s such a geek he will read this interview.

He said to me one time “If you do what I did [win 2 ESWCs in 2 different games] you can speak. But you never will. So now, STFU”.

I feel sorry for him though. I hope he at least finds some friends. But who would want to be his friend with the kind of attitude he has?

On being accused of cheating online:

I only did 2 good LAN tournaments: DreamHack and IEM. Online my results are OMG (laughs). It’s because I cheat of course. I am yuka. Of course I cheat, on each tournament online I use aimbot + autoshoot + wallhack. It’s very important.

Really, people think whatever they want. You will never meet a guy who leaves bad comments on ESReality at a LAN. That’s a fact.

No Excuses:

There is a thing I hate as well – excuses. I lost because; I slept in bad conditions, I didn’t play good… blah blah. No it’s not that you didn’t play good, it’s that he raped you, that’s all. Look at me against av3k at DreamHack, I found no excuse. I just said he raped me.

Image from ESL.eu

It’s ok to find excuses when there is a real reason. Against madix at Dubai I have an excuse. I was better than him for sure. My fucking headphones were fucked up. He dares to say that I was playing my best. That’s exactly the attitude I hate. He doesn’t even want to admit that I was better, that I improved. Come on. Madix is better than me? No way. It’s arrogant to say that, but generally honest guys are arrogant. Every player finds excuses all the time. They never say “He was better than me”. Never.

I don’t care about egos. If I see for example DaHanG raped by Cypher I will tell DaHanG, “Don’t find an excuse, he raped you, that’s all”. Of course if on t9 he lost because of 3 telefrags at 200-200 – ok its luck. But it happens rarely.

I just hate people who talk shit about luck luck luck. It’s the truth but nobody says it. In each interview after a game if you don’t see/hear the word luck, there is a problem. I can bet my balls, with my eyes closed, that I will find the word luck in each interview I watch.

It’s stupid. There is 10 minutes in a game. If you are better you can out-play him or out-aim him. For example if you play an average player, you can have the worst starting spawn but you will manage to win the game.

There is luck sometimes of course… if he survives 10 times at 1 hp. But players should stop thinking there is luck everywhere because if you want, you can always find an excuse for why you lost:

• I lost because I was sick
• I lost because I played with my feet
• I lost because I didn’t time
• I lost because he was lucky

In 2 seconds I found 4 reasons already. You can be sure tomorrow during the tournament a player who didn’t go through the group will find an excuse.

For me it will be funny. I won’t go through and that’s all. If I go through group I will laugh. We will see, I will just try my best, but I won’t pretend that I will win.

Lost brothers: Nathan from "Misfits" and Strenx

**Please note that these quotes have been edited to make the English easier to read and understand.

Following this interview, strenx has issued a public apology. View it here.

Even though i’ve been together with my boyfriend for over 4 years, it soon became a scary thought to know that eventually we could break up and i’ll be back on the meat market. How would I ever meet someone else? Could internet dating be the thing for me too? After all, I did meet my ex on a UT Rocket Arena server.

Signing up to dating sites to look for men wasn’t my intention. In a stroke of marketing genius I thought I could use it to connect directly with people  who would like to visit the Philippines as we have a property there that could be developed. The good ol’ bait ‘n switch. To be fair, I did set up my profiles saying that I wasn’t looking for romance and pitched a business idea instead. Anyway, this is pretty irrelevant to how I discovered that dating sites would start to destroy my self esteem.

In the first 12 hours of my profile going live i’d already had around 20 new messages and about 70 people “interested”. Most of them of course didn’t bother to read my profile and probably just liked my picture. “Nice” I thought, “i’ve still got it”.

Or do I?

During this accidental online dating experience, I learned 5 important lessons.

Lesson 1: Nobody reads your profile

Reading through the messages, it was obvious that no one bothered to read my profile. All I got were generic messages which these guys were copy-pasting to every girl they thought was pretty. Or perhaps simply every girl. What if i’d spent a lot of time on my profile, stating what I was looking for in a man and pouring out my personality in 300 words or less?

Lesson 2: It’s rare that you will get personalised messages

These guys didn’t even bother to get creative. At least when I was receiving fan mail and marriage proposals during my CGS days, the guys would say something somewhat interesting or personal. But on dating sites all i’d get is “you have a wonderful smile”, “you have beautiful eyes” or the increasingly common “I’m looking for a wife to be a housewife. One that is submissive”.

Lesson 3: It’s a great place for antique shopping

As i’m sure we all know, anything goes on the internet. That includes men as old as my father (and my dad is an old dude) trying to find girls in their early 20s to marry them. I never got a message from anyone less than 20 years my senior! While to guys it’s totally ballin’ to get such a young girl, from a girls point of view it sucks that the only men who are interested in me are getting ready to receive their pension.

So for those of you who think your parents and grandparents don’t know how to use the internet – think again. They DO know and they’re all over these sites.

Furthermore, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me for all these men who would like to find a wife. If they would marry a woman in their young 20s, you can assume that this woman would like to have a family. But how many women really want to have a family with someone who statistically is going to have kicked the bucket by the time their children start high school? As cruel as it may be, I sure would like my husband to be alive to see our kids graduate.

Lesson 4: Conversation? What’s that?

Dating sites are awkward, there’s no way around that. I guess it’s the same as “real life”, where starting a conversation with randoms can be difficult. But usually online people have big balls since they’re “faceless”. But on dating sites, these guys don’t really grasp that concept and conversations via chat will go like this:

Suitor: Hello, how are you?
Liefje: Fine thanks and you?
Suitor: You have a beautiful smile
Liefje: Thanks

Sometimes it would go one step further:

Suitor: Where are you?
Liefje: At home
Suitor: Are you alone?
*Silence*
Suitor: What are you wearing?

At this point you’re probably thinking that these kind of messages would boost my ego (hey, a guy actually cares about what i’m wearing!) but they don’t because I know that they’re sending the same messages to every woman they see. I can also assume that when i’m in my 60s, any guy in their 20s is going to be looking good compared to the guys in my age group.

Anyway, I didn’t chat a lot since when I would log in, my messanger would start buzzing like crazy. It’s best to ignore it. Granted I wasn’t the most welcoming of recipients and I could have given these poor guys a break but what about if I wasn’t good at conversations anyway? What if I was a shy girl? What do those girls do? What would Susan Boyle do?

Lesson 5: Remeber that it’s just online!

While the above points was sending some crushing blows to my already tiny ego, the main thing I had to remember was that it was just online. Hopefully if I have to go back to the dating scene, my pickings would be slightly better than the guys that were approaching me online.

Although, time is not on my side and I can guess that the older I get, so will the guys that find me attractive. If I find myself single and 30, the only guys that are going to be interested will be well into their 70s. FML.

I am not looking down at those who are using online dating as a means of meeting people. Don’t take it so seriously.

However, perhaps these two will not be the ones to watch in the future. Asia has a long and strong history of gaming and professional gaming, just not in the first person shooter genre.

Korea was the first nation to really bring professional gaming to the mainstream media in a professional way. Hosting the first World Cyber Games, non-Korean gamers could then have a small taste of the life of a professional Korean gamer. Cars would follow the WCG busses to the venue, schools would take trips there, gamers wearing the WCG jackets would get hounded for autographs and receive free goods from stores.

It’s no secret that Starcraft matches are televised 24/7 on two dedicated channels, OnGame and MBCGame. Professionals there can earn upwards of $100,000 per year. They get their faces on candy bars. The corporate support and endorsements are something which the rest of the other professional gamers around the world can only dream about.

In Japan, competitive gaming has been a little more “underground” with the majority of the action happening in arcades in the fighting game genre. Daigo Umehara (known as Ume or The Beast) hails from Tokyo and is best known for his epic comeback in his Street Fighter III match at Evolution 2004. Even today Ume beat American Champion Justin Wong in Street Fighter IV to take home the gold at Evolution 2009, which is no small feat. Fighting games in America have a huge audience, with 23,000 people tuning in for the final of Evolution.

Even with such great accomplishments, Umehara is not a professional gamer. In a recent interview with Eurogamer, he says that:

“Playing games professionally is not really an option in Japan. If I did really want to do something with my gaming skills in the industry, I think I would have already done so by now. It’s only relatively recently that I started to receive invitations to overseas tournaments with prize money. In Japan, games are something you play for enjoyment; you don’t expect anything in return.”

In China, competitive gaming has seen considerable growth in recent years. So much that two top Warcraft III players XiaoFeng “Sky” Li (from China) and Jae ho “Moon” Jang (from Korea) were given the honor to carry the Olympic torch through china en route to the Beijing National Stadium! Like Korea, a large portion of their competitive gaming audience is focused on an RTS game but it isn’t Starcraft; it’s Warcraft III.

But when writing about Korea and it really being the epitome of professional gaming, exactly how popular is pro-gaming there? We have all seen the stadiums full of people watching Starcraft, but how popular is it amongst the general public? Do the professional players really have rockstar status? Even with all the information available to us online, when you yourself are involved in competitive gaming and follow the scene, of course you’re going to pay attention to it. But what about those who don’t? Is the popularity as widespread as football in the UK? It makes you wonder when you hear about new reality programs where famous popstars want to become professional gamers.

Why aren’t FPS games popular?

Obviously, Asian nations are not strangers to gaming but perhaps we need to turn to history to see why games like Counter Strike, Halo and Quake are not popular when they have had so much success in Europe and America.

One giant in the Asian (and global) gaming industry that I simply can’t ignore (no matter how much I want to) is World of Warcraft. In 2008, the game already had over 10 million players with 5.5 million of them coming from Asia, and the rest mainly split between Europe and America. Over in China, the popularity of internet cafes is steadily growing and the majority of the gamers choose to play the addictive MMORPG. To make this game a televised competitive sport would be opening it up to the largest gaming audience in the world.

Korea has been the prime example to the western world of how much potential competitive game has if only it could reach a large, mainstream audience. But is it too late for western society to embrace gaming as a true profession? Since the 80s, those who have had interest in computers, consoles and gaming have had to carry negative labels and stereotypes.

Japan:

Forget about Atari for a second and look at the other console dinosaurs; Nintendo and Sega. They were huge dominating forces in making gaming a worldwide pastime. Both being Japanese companies, console gaming and arcade gaming is what Japan was and still is mainly focused on. These arcades were the places to be as a young teenager – adult. This could be the reason that fighting games have always had their place in the Japanese competitive gaming market, as they are one of the most social games that you can play in an arcade. The popularity of gaming arcades in Japan has declined with the introduction of home consoles but now it is growing again. Check out this awesome 8 story arcade in Kawasaki City.

Since the Japanese have grown up with so many classic titles from their own nation (Mario, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken etc) I guess there was very little room on the market to push the growth of first person shooters.

Korea:

After the bloodshed of the 2^nd World War, the import of Japanese consoles was banned for many years in Korea, and only in 2001 did the government barely begin to lift this ban. This paved the way for PC gaming to become dominant in its early stages. Because Korea is a small country with a densely packed population, when the country was connected up to the internet, the whole place was wired at once. In early 2002, Koreans were very early on the internet bandwagon, being the 4^th largest internet user base with 26 million internet users.

Also because of the heavily packed cities, the Korean communities are close. Apartments are small and crowded and most families didn’t have enough money to buy their own PC or they simply didn’t have the space to fit it in their home. So instead, youth would buy time at internet cafes, known as “PC Baangs”.

Like the arcades in Japan, PC Baangs were major social places, like bars and clubs are to the western world. It was a mainstream part of youth culture. Even the layout of PC Baangs are social, with a large loveseat attached to two computers so that guys could sit with their girlfriends. Because of the ban on console imports, this allowed PC Baangs to only offer PC games and it just so happened that Starcraft was there. People claim that its popularity is mainly because Starcraft was in the right place at the right time. Would it be different had Quake or Counter Strike been available?

China:

Since hosting the World eSport Games Masters in 2006, the rest of the world was able to get a peep at professional gaming within the country of China. Having great representatives already in Warcraft III, it was natural that the WEG was a huge event for the Chinese fans. From there, China then went on to host other events such as the WCG, WSVG and CGS Pan-Asia finals. For the Warcraft III player Grubby, he claims he couldn’t even go to the toilet at WSVG 2007 without fans storming him just to get some kind of signature. In 2008, construction was completed on the Wuhan Optical Valley Electronic Sports Stadium. Yes, a gaming stadium.

Similar to Korea, Chinas cities are densely populated and Internet cafes are a popular youth hangout. But mainly the youths are focusing on MMORPGs and MOCGs (multiplayer online casual games). But don’t count on China following in the footsteps of Korea. The Chinese government has put anti fatigue/anti addiction systems in place which allows them to monitor who is playing, when and how much they’re playing.

The gaming channels in Korea do dedicate some timeslots to other games such as Counter Strike, but almost always around 3am. Perhaps a reality show with a famous Korean pop star bootcamping with some of the FPS legends could also swing the interest in the direction of other games.

What can be done?

So in order to make FPS games such as Quake Live and Counter Strike popular in the largest gaming nations, I would say that the first step would be to make sure that these games are readily available in internet cafes. Maybe running promotions for these games in the internet cafes would draw more attention away from the growing popularity of MMORPGs.

The next big thing is to have “idols” in those games in that country. People tend to mainly cheer for their nation especially in tournaments like WCG and ESWC, and if there were some ass kicking FPS players from China, Korea or Japan it’s sure that the country will pay attention. Just like in sports, if your nation is doing well (eg: Canada + ice hockey, NZ + Rugby etc) then the media will cover it, people will pay attention and care. Send some FPS talent over to Europe for that period and see how helpful it really is to train amongst the best. It’s very difficult to improve when there is no one “better” to practice against and only the rawest of talent can acheive anything from this.

There’s a lot of potential and with some strong marketing pushes from some FPS developers in these internet cafes I think we could see a positive turnaround for FPS games. It’s proven that the audience is there, it’s just a matter of reaching them. If basketball and football can co-exist peacefully, certainly there is space for other types of games to engage such a large, gaming-savvy audience.

Every nation has its own story to tell and for those which I didn’t include, it would be really interesting if you could leave a comment (or send tweet @Helloliefje) about the state of gaming in your country.