Richard “Dr. Gonzo” Lewis shares his derailed train of thought with the wider world in his regular column feature, Gonzorreah.

Read Richard's last column "Back From The Dead, Back For The Deadline"HERE

This column is the sole opinion of the author and does not represent the opinion of Heaven Media Ltd or the opinion of any affiliates.






I don’t think I’d be revealing a major secret if I told you that in the build-up to the most recent i-series I was not especially looking forward to it. That was before the strange drama relating to my health unfolded, as far back as after i37…After getting the shit kicked out of me – metaphorically speaking – by people that didn’t seem to grasp some fundamental points I asked in the aftermath to book it off. Sadly, the clash with the WCG and the fact that most of our dedicated volunteers would be playing at the event meant I was put squarely back in the frame to have to go and cover the event.

Myself and the G-Team who always help get me through LAN (Picture: Heaven Media)

Now if I sounded unenthusiastic about the whole thing I’d like to think you could understand why. It would be something like my ninth i-series in a row where I would be working and the scene had evolved from the point where I could simply turn up to an event and write a diary about anything other than the games, a look at the drunken underbelly of the event and a collection of amusing anecdotes and fictitious metaphors relating to matters that only a handful of people would truly understand. Instead, people had moved beyond that and now wanted something more substantial, structured and satisfying.

It is a target that can be punishing to try and meet… The general rule of thumb is across a four and a half day weekend, people will expect at least four to five features a day relating to competitions, as well as all the scores being kept up to date, and any last minute alterations being reported on before the incestuous scene enables gossip to find its way out of the venue and on to the forums. If you’re lucky you have to take on this immense workload with maybe one other person and you have to quickly find a way of making the partnership work lest you both be tarred with the failure brush. Marry that to the fact that over the course of those four and a bit days you will maybe get twelve hours of sleep, to be used sparingly only as required. During your waking hours you pump yourself full of junk food and caffeine before invariably succumbing to an infection of some sort – the condition known as LAN death.

You don’t get to play, you don’t get to drink and you barely get chance to socialise. If you make the decision to do any of those things it is generally at the expense of your sleeping allowance, or if you’re foolish enough to allow any of those desires to impair your performance in any way, you can expect to be in for a dressing down from your bosses and endure abuse from the people who see you as a servant. All of these factors were hurtling through my brain at break neck speed as the day got closer and closer and I cursed the gods for the fate that was about to befall me. Yet, as I write this now, even in an exhausted and wretched state I want to tell you that I am glad I went, and glad I worked, and it actually went so far as to restore my faith in the scene and its long term future. i38 was, not just for these abstract and personal reasons, an important event.

Back in the day, You could get away with this sort of thing... Maybe

I think the first important thing it showed was that the whole “e-sports is dying… (insert game name here) is dead” sentiment is far from the truth. While events in China threw up one of the most memorable 1.6 competitions of all team, including an epic final that will be talked about for some time to come, the CS:S competition at Newbury had everything you could want, including it’s own dramatic final. Along the way there were spectacular fails, competition upsets, emerging stars, fading talents, individual brilliance and inspirational teamwork. The final may have been massively delayed, but many stayed up to the small hours from across Europe to watch a game that at past events has generally been seen as little more than a footnote to the event and an affirmation of who is the status quo in the scene. I watched as many games as the time would allow me and I shouted myself hoarse and was suitably entertained by what unfolded before my eyes.

The CS:S competition was the most competitive at an I-series since i34, if not ever, and it attracted teams to compete that either hadn’t before and rarely made the trip across the waters on the grounds that it was not worth it. In addition to that we even saw some old faces that were supposedly done with the game return for what was touted as one last hurrah, but now might have given them the LAN bug back. Even though numbers of competitive CS:S players were down, I was told by a member of Multiplay staff that there were more people in attendance overall at this event than there were at the previous one and the exhibitor space had all been sold out as well, something that hadn’t happened for a good while. All of these things point to a rosy future…

There were some causes for griping… If you had gone expecting the first MW2 tournament in the world to have run smooth not only would you have been in a minority but you would also have been hugely disappointed. The event seemed to lurch from one disaster to another and I found it near impossible to keep up with what was going on… Teams were out of the competition, then back in, then out again. The format seemed to be one of the least conducive to a spectator point of view, although I guess if you’re not a fan of “capture the flag” games to begin with you’ll struggle with the format anyway, and generally most people there were pining for some good old COD4.

The MW2 competition was fraught with problems (Picture: Heaven Media)

Somehow a lot of people seemed to foist the blame on Multiplay, which is not entirely fair. I’ve been the first to criticise them when I’ve felt it’s been called for, but I sat there looking at tournament admins, and in particular Steven “Neophyte” Lynch, with their red rimmed eyes and crestfallen faces as the problems kept cropping up and they were being slated… This time they were on the right side of the battle and if you compare how the COD4 community competition was run and how the MW2 went, it’s clear to see what the root causes of all the problems were. I mean, you have players being disqualified on the basis of the game’s age restriction – something that was only announced as being a consideration after most of the teams had booked up and made travel arrangements – yet at the same time on the exhibitor stand there were children as young as 9-10 being invited to have a go at playing the game. In short, we knew going into it that the competitive community was a secondary concern for the people marketing the game, and it showed in the way the tournament panned out.

So I think it is worth pointing out that the tournament admins and Multiplay staff deserve some special recognition for this event in terms of how smooth it went over. Sure, there were delays… That’s LAN. But until the final, the delays weren’t so much of a problem… These guys had to endure as rough a time as anyone could have at the event, an ailing journo included, and they do it all for free. Their reward? At three in the morning, with the final finished, we took two crates of beer into the closed bar and sat there drinking until the sun came up. I can’t remember all the names, but believe me, these tournaments go as well as they do thanks to the likes of Damage, Gumpster, Beef.Cake, Fire and the rest of the crew. I compare how efficient the admins work is now to how it was even 4 – 5 events ago and it is a different world. With the exception of the late night final it was one of the easiest events for me to follow in terms of knowing what games were being played when, and that of course translates to you at home being able to follow the action with the same ease.

The other positives? Well, let’s try and put it all in some broader framework. I was delighted to have actually got the time to sit down and talk to the Portuguese contingent of both Fragmasters Sapphire and Exotic Island. Both teams showed how far their scene had come along in recent months and both were ravaged by problems, Sapphire by flight delays, Exotic by a sporadic outbreak of illness including one player trying to burst heads with a double eye infection. Credit to both of those teams for enriching an event that is all too readily dominated by the same old names.

GLG were the heroes of this event for many (Picture: Heaven Media)

We had upsets too, GLG, Space Pandas and to a lesser extent AMDERS, all showing that the key to getting along and progressing at competitions is to simply put your team together, practice and keep on plugging away. Some mixes, even those with some of the best players in the world, were beaten by teams that simply had too much heart and dedication to what they were doing. It is a reinforcing message that you hope some people finally start to get, although I won’t hold my breath since as I’ve been typing this exact same sentiment since my first LAN event. Even now, I have heard the jungle drums being beaten and the messages of impending roster changes fill the air… The players who have acquitted themselves well will now face a barrage of offers to move, those that have not will find themselves back on the market and trying to re-motivate themselves to start over one more time…

But it is the nature of the beast at the key thing I take from this event is how the level of competition has continued to go upwards. Teams that would have at one point cruised into a top 6 finish without any effort were given a torrid time and, in some cases, embarrassed by opposition of lower reputations. And when the games at the business end kicked in, every one of them was pretty much a classic. After the Dignitas versus Reason Upper Bracket Final, I didn’t think it could be topped… Then I got to see the Power Gaming comeback versus Dignitas, and then the final… Reason Gaming were on another level, but the overall standard has progressed so much that the sheer number of games turning on individual brilliance or tiny mistakes was something to behold. So many high pressure 16-14 results really made this a tournament to remember.

The final was a classic and worth staying up for (Picture: Heaven Media)

So all in all, i38 was the perfect antidote to all the negative sentiment surrounding e-sports. I too have fallen into the trap of being overwhelmed by the negativity surrounding our developing industry, especially after all the things I’d seen in the build-up to this event. We’ve been led astray by fake millionaires and silver tongued snake charmers, we’ve seen the collapse of leagues, organisations and venues. We’ve seen instability hold back the progression of talent, we’ve seen greedy wannabe profiteers try and exploit us to line their own pockets before fleeing the scene of the crime like the criminals they were and always will be. We’ve seen companies disregard us as nothing more than a secondary concern and we’ve seen monopolies suck the life out of the competition boring even the most hardened enthusiast… Yet now, have we turned the corner? I can see more and more people who know what they are doing coming into e-sports, I can see people that actually have money and want to spend it wisely, I have spoken with managers that are honest and intelligent, with big plans on the horizon that are more legitimate than all the other LAN based bullshit pipe-dreams that get kicked about after one pint too many. I saw mainstream media seem genuinely interested in what was going on and I also saw people that I know won’t let it die, slogging their guts out for nothing other than the love of the scene, in abundance on the weekend.

There was a moment earlier in the event when many of the veterans and newcomers alike were sat shooting the breeze and enjoying a well earned drink. There were people from fnatic, Power Gaming, Infused, Space Pandas, LOD.CSS, ColtKillaz, TLR, TCM, admins, press and even some spectators. COD players, TF2 players, CS:S players and Xbox players all sat around with each other, no animosity and a recognition that whatever the level you operated at, we were fundamentally all after the same thing. As long as people are willing to come together in this way, there is nothing that can kill off any scene stone dead except the prospect of something better. I saw a glimpse of that future, something to be optimistic about. For that reason, if for no other, i38 was one of the best events yet and I am glad, despite all my earlier apprehensions, that I was there to see it.