Jan. 07, 2010 @ 3:52 p.m.
I want to keep this as a sort of personal blog style response to the recent news of our World of Warcraft team leaving the organization. I'm going to express some of my own thoughts on the issue and on the current state of gaming as a whole. And don't be mislead by the title of this blog, were not saying good bye to WoW, but to our most recent WoW team.
A Little History.
Over the last year I have had the pleasure of working with Mike 'Twixz' Shane, Huy 'Flexx' Nguyen, and most recently Mike 'Toes' Edwards. Starting in Columbus Ohio, I had just started helping out the eMazing Gaming Organization due to downed economy, CheckSix being on an undetermined hiatus, and tons of false promises from the eMg organization head Jim Tyler. I hadn't been at the helm of an active competitive gaming team in a while, and most of all had no idea where the WoW scene was, but I knew I wanted to pursue WoW over all of the other games. Simply because of the player base and the amount of popularity the game has. After a colossal performance from Twixz, Flexx, and Payce at MLG Ohio, I knew right away that this team was going places. We proceeded to continue with eMg up until Dallas. We all agreed that the teams talents were being wasted on an organization that had no intentions of growing or taking care of them. After I announced my resignation from eMg the wow team told me they refused to stay if I was no longer a part of it, and some of the talks I had with Mike Shane included relaunching CheckSix. One thing after another, a couple months of hard work and networking, and CheckSix was back in business with Microsoft as our new savior.
Check-Six went on to place a strong 3rd in Anaheim, and then 1st in Edmonton. ( These guys are good!) We built up an incredible relationship with each other and I really feel I can call these guys my friends, they are super super nice guys, and each have great personality's.
Times They Are A Changin.
I feel like different opportunity's were coming at these guys all the time, and they were starting to realize that they had larger aspirations. Our original agreement was for 3 months, and that was up. They were very open with how they felt, and came to me and told me they were thinking of leaving. I told them I was bummed they wanted to leave, but ultimately knew they wanted bigger and better. They proceeded to take the deal from Complexity because it was a good one, and decided to make the move before Orlando, with not much hard feelings between us.
I feel somewhat a lack of loyalty, but can ultimately understand having been a gamer in the same position before. I wish them the best of luck in Orlando, and can only say watch out for the next WoW squad we end up picking up, they'll be gunning for you!
The Gaming Industry.
I ask myself this question everyday, why do I do this? Why do I welcome extra stress, worries, etc for no reason. CheckSix has never made a dime of profit. I have personally invested tons of my own money and my own time into our organization, and still ask myself why.
The only answer I could come up with is I do it for the love of the sport. Honestly I love to compete, and seeing as how I'm getting older, this is my branch to that. Its a hobby just like anything else. I like meeting people, making new friends, helping people, and lets not forget the most important of all, playing video games!
I really feel like North American Gaming organizations hinder the gaming industry's growth as a whole. Think about it, there is never more than a couple powerhouses at a time in North America, it used to be 3D and coL, now its EG and coL, and I have nothing against that, I just feel gobbling up other organizations teams completely destroys everything were trying to obtain as far as industry growth goes. They have a monopoly on talent, sponsors want the best teams, and if 2 organizations have all of them, it makes it difficult for smaller organizations to continue without support. With no smaller organizations around it means no teams at LAN's, which means less sponsor support for events, less LAN's, and so on. I'll end my rant there.
The Future is Filled With Flying Things.
Whats next? What is CheckSix going to do now? We have already had our feelers inserted back into the WoW community to start determining our next roster. We are also about to branch back into one of our favorite games Quake Live! Nick and Jeff will be at CES this weekend talking with some new potential partners, and representing our current one Microsoft Sidewinder <plug>check out the X6 keyboard its amazing!</plug>. And Jeff Schurr will still be at MLG Orlando, to provide us with coverage. We invite you to stay a part of our community as 2010 looks very promising, and Check-Six will continue to remain e-Sports Finest.
Excellent Read.... You the nail on the head Matt. Really sad that the mother fucker who sold his organization to CGS.... then continues to steal teams..... And stupid faggots like this WOW team just don't see the bigger picture. It is the reason I see no interest in ever playing or organizing games on a "Profession" basis, because of all the greed of players and terrible organizations like Complexity. Fuck um... but thanks Fatback for still providing a home for people that truely enjoy competitive gaming for the sport and fun.
you hit the nail on the head sorry was watching my kids bounce in the bounce house when writting this.
could we see a possibility of x6 in CSP depending on the quality of the release?
what is CSP?
I'm pretty sure I said something VERY similar to the fact that the "best" players always leave one team in hopes of joining another team with more sponsorships and a "better" ranking. This was, of course, when we were playing BF2 :P It's all about the money, not the fun; however, some of us here never lost sight of playing just for fun and building/working from the ground up :) I agree with you 100%, Fatback. This is exactly why I never thought professional gaming ever really had a future. The only way a new "top notch" competitive team will ever stay together for a long time is if the team is composed of close friends and people who just love to play with each other. Even though I haven't been involved at all in competitive gaming since I went off to college 4 months ago, I'm assuming that in this day in age, finding such players is extremely difficult.
I think it is also the case too that WoW players don't really understand eSports as a whole (and I'm sure many will admit that) and often think it is OK to organization hop like they do. Ultimately it is going to end in the downfall of professional WoW since the sponsored organizations (EG, SK, compLexity) are just going to keep eating up the top teams and no other organizations will ever be able to break into the professional WoW scene nor will they want to try. This will cause all of the tier 2 organizations (like x6) to move on from the game, shrinking the scene.
A good contrast to the WoW scene is the CS 1.6 scene, one which has been around for awhile and has stood the test of time. The top CS 1.6 teams are not necessarily sponsored by the top organizations, and top teams are often loyal to their organizations, and vice versa. Good example would be Fnatic in CS 1.6 (before they picked up MSI and their other big named sponsors). Another example could be numerous Swedish CS 1.6 teams who didn't just get bought out by SK-Gaming (who has had money for awhile) and stuck it out with their respective organizations to HELP THE SCENE GROW.
I don't necessarily blame the old x6.WoW team for jumping ship as I think it is more of a problem with professional WoW than it is Twixz, Toes and Flexx individually. Like honestly, look at how many roster over-hauls and changes SK, EG, coL and the European teams have ever every event.. it's ridiculous.
There is no loyalty in professional WoW, and coL will be just as quick to dump Twixz and co. as soon as their comp gets nerfed and they don't win anymore as they were to 'steal' them from x6. This is how coL operates these days, look at their CS team... formerly sponsored by X3O, they were the best in the country for a period of time, coL BOUGHT them from X3O.
The heart and soul CompLexity once had with Jason Lake at the helm is gone, but everyone knows that, it's clear, so I'll leave it at that.
At the end of the day, x6 would not have "cut" this WoW team, even if the team lost tournament after tournament, because MattK realizes that's not how you build fan bases and that's not how you build a competitive community for a game.
When the most popular game in the WORLD has LAN finals where 2 out of the 4 teams are from the same organization, and one is a merger of two collapsed teams - you know the scene is in trouble.
Alright I'm rambling. I honestly have nothing against Twixz and those guys and I know they are really thankful for what x6 has done for them so I do wish them the best of luck.
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Very good read Matt. I would have to agree about some things. When I was running Sway we had a good thing going, but due to myself being the only support besides PureTrak/Pure-Voice, my Counter-Strike team got an offer from EG. And then I decided to go with them if they took my TF2 team.
I wish I was able to keep everyone at Sway, to be honest. I liked being a organization that wasn't mainstream and wanted to build something up from nothing.
[end story]
Anyways, I like what you guys are doing here, and hope you guys the best.
American Gaming is a Tragedy. Nough said.
But I came to start a little trouble, I noticed in your post you made mention of a few new projects, perhaps not all projects, but you made no mention of a Heroes of Newerth team. I'm just curious cuz in the tournament post on this website a check 6 contract was not part of the prize pool, however on the HoN main website it IS part of the prize pool.
I understand if you can't comment but I was just curious if there was plans for a check 6 HoN team, and what specifically a contract with check 6 would entail?
I don't know anything about the whole HoN thing, but I'll direct this post to MattK/Hunter which should hopefully get you a response soon.
We are still hosting a HoN tournament. And will be adding a HoN team, the details are still being worked out with Jeff Hunter @ Honleague.
Hey Matt, I realize this is late haha but, CSP is CSPromod - www.cspromod.com. It's still in Beta stages but has the most potential to kind of take over the FPS community by mixing the Source engine and some fun things about CS:S with the best things from CS 1.5 and 1.6. By doing so, it will hopefully combined CS:S and 1.6 into one big competitive community. As of right now the game is sort of slow but growing. Leagues like XPL, ECO, and ESL have picked it up for tournaments to get the ball rolling and ESEA has a pug system up for it as well. Only problem with the ESEA pug system is it seems a little buggy to really take off at the moment.
Anyways, I read this article a while ago but just now got a chance to post something. Awesome read, I've always liked Check-Six and enjoyed competing against them in other games. Looking forward to the future of Check-Six and hopefully playing against them again! =)
Good Read. Good Luck guys.