Moose was gracious enough to let me waste an hour or two of his time by asking him questions which required him to type for twenty minutes and then hit enter, while I sat there and got an effortless blog entry out of it.

You recently switched MGOs from Crack Clan to Power Gaming. Reading about the change, it merely looks like staff and players from cc// have switched to a new name. Explain in a bit more detail what necessitated these changes. If indeed it is the main people from Crack Clan and the main players from Crack Clan, then why bother at all? Were the people in charge just no longer pleased with the dismal results attached to their name, and wanted to start with a clean slate?

pwr\Moose: Well, this really doesn’t have much to do with the teams themselves. It’s just that one of the private investors behind cc decided to part way with them and to start his own venture in form of Power Gaming. Since much of the financial backing of cc was coming from this investor, it’s my understanding that the pro teams and managers parted cc in good terms since it was obvious that PG could support them better now than cc could. So the decision is from the financial backers, I don’t know the exact reasons and probably couldn’t tell you even if I knew more.

For MGOs in other e-sports, there is often a benefit to sponsoring a team. They get exposure, a certain percentage of winnings, whatever it may be. In TF2, there is no money or exposure to be gained, as it is undercovered and undersponsored. What does Power Gaming have to gain by paying for your LAN fees (are they even going to? cc// was unwilling to send you to The Community LAN. Will you be attending i38?), giving you (a) server(s), and whatever else they need to do to keep your team running?

pwr\Moose: Yes, Power Gaming gives us LAN support so we’re going to i38. We also get server and other normal mgo stuff so we couldn’t ask for more. I was actually a bit surprised that PG still wanted to have us when this split happened since the TF2 scene has been so stale. However, we’ve been the most stable pro team in cc and probably have achieved the best results as well so I guess the management appreciates that. Also, they clearly see some hope for TF2 to have some kind of exposure and media value and I think so as well. The situation isn’t that hopeless with i38 and probably Assembly Winter around the corner.

Dignitas have been your main “rival” in TF2, insofar as one can have a rival in this game, for several seasons now. There have been some big instances of out-of-game spats, namely the drama surrounding a forced forfeit last season in ETF2L which sparked a lengthy discourse on the match comments page mostly consisting of inflammatory remarks from Appz, Agron, Mick, yourself, Glufse, and plenty of on-lookers searching for their moment of fame via the perfect insult. How deep does this rift with Dignitas run? How much of it is for show? Are you actors for the stage, wanting to give the crowd their entertainment, or is there legitimate beef there that can not be reconciled at this point?

pwr\Moose: I think we get along with the Dignitas guys just fine. At least I talk to the Finns in the team almost daily on IRC and we all play in Team Finland so there are really no problems there. The whole argument heated up because we had line-up issues on the week when we had the ED final and that famous ETF2L match. My graphics card broke down and I don’t know what exactly was said outside ETF2L comments but the whole thing started when Dignitas didn’t want to reschedule the ED final on Tuesday when kyynel had PC problems. Then my graphics card broke down on Wednesday and I text messaged Glufse to reschedule the ETF2L game from Thursday. He contacted Mick and according to Glufse’s version he asked to reschedule the game but Mick refused. According to Mick, Glufse never asked that. So then from what I heard from Glufse, he decided to make Dignitas work for their default win because they wouldn’t reschedule and made them wait on a server for half an hour. Their conversation was on Steam so there were no logs for it but either Glufse or Mick was lying about it and I guess we’ll never know which.

pwr\Moose: I know we all lost our patience there because of the situation and I think that the personal attacks on ETF2L from Glufse, Agron, Appz, etc. were totally uncalled for and that shouldn’t have happened. If you read it closely, I don’t think I participated that insult part and if had my PC working at the time, I would have stopped others from doing it as well.

Appz was definitely just being inflammatory and antagonistic for no reason, at least the rest of it just seems like tension bubbling over.

pwr\Moose: Yeah, we’re such a boring guys. It’s just part of Appz’s character, I didn’t take that too seriously and fully expected him to do it. I’m disappointed that Glufse took part of it though.

Your history of contribution to TF2 has been well-noted. You provided content and support for Cadred, you do the same for Resupply, you have been in top level teams since the original beta. All of this energy and effort, this time – but most seem to think you do not even care about anything besides the money. Is this idea that you are in it purely to win a 120hz monitor at LAN true? Do you crave the new SteelSeries Siberias from ETF2L each season? Or is there more to it, and you actually care on some deeper level?

pwr\Moose: If I were playing for the money, I’d play some other game. I’m playing TF2 because I really like the game. I’m a competitive person by nature so of course me and my team will always try to produce the best possible results. About ETF2L, I guess we’re active there because it’s the biggest league which at them moment gathers biggest audience in the TF2 scene and we’re such attention whores that we enjoy being in the spotlight. Since we’ve been doing this for quite some time now, other leagues don’t really seem interesting unless there are prizes involved. We don’t have to prove anything anymore so we can just take it easy and concentrate on the few online leagues worth participating (EMS and ETF2L) and LANs.

pwr\Moose: And about the coverage side and other things I’ve done. I honestly felt that TF2 is a game that deserved more attention in the e-sports world. It’s a great game to watch and fun to play so I was hoping to spread the word and improve the scene that way. I still try to do what I can at Resupply but of course we don’t have such a huge user base as Cadred has. I’d very much like for someone to continue my work at Cadred to increase the exposure this game gets but it seems that, pardon the expression, most of the players in this scene are lazy, useless cunts who couldn’t bother to do anything if it isn’t directly related to themselves or their teams.

Tying in to the above, currently there is no UKeSA. ESL has no prize pool. ETF2L is really the only league who offer something, and it is certainly not money. People have told me directly that you do not care about ETF2L – so why play in it? Just because of the lack of options? The argument is that you and Dignitas no longer enjoy this game. If that is true, what about this season of ETF2L makes you stick with it?

pwr\Moose: About UKeSa, people still seem to think it was a good thing for the TF2 scene while in fact it was just a major scam since no one ever get paid by them and it’s doubful any of us will ever see that money. Cadred covered the details so read http://www.cadred.org/News/Article/77801/ and http://www.cadred.org/News/Article/78701/ in case you haven’t already.

pwr\Moose: ESL has the Major Series which once again offers a small prize pool which is definitely better than nothing. That’s probably the “biggest” online league that TF2 has when it comes to exposure outside the TF2 scene itself so that’s definitely our priority and I know other top teams feel the same. ETF2L is great in terms of being the forerunner for creating rules and standards for the game but they don’t have the kind of media and business value that for example ESL has. My opinion is that sticking to a community based site like ETF2L doesn’t help developing TF2 as an e-sports game, quite the contrary actually. If the 300+ teams from ETF2L would play the ESL league instead, I’m sure we would see an increase in the EMS TF2 prize money instead of a decrease. But I don’t think there’s anything we can do to persuade the teams to switch the place where they want to play. Only a small amount of teams would ever see the prize money anyways so people don’t really care about things like exposure and media coverage either since div5 wouldn’t be covered anyway. That’s why they’ll just keep playing on ETF2L, where the admin crew is active and the games are made easy to play.

Shifting gears, what has ETF2L done wrong from a management perspective? If it is so meaningless to you, what has rendered it such? Prize pool is obviously a concern, but what decisions have sunk its stature in your mind? Could the premiership division salvage it?

pwr\Moose: It’s no secret that I or most of the top teams that have been around long enough don’t really care that much for ETF2L. The league doesn’t have anything to offer for them besides the fame and glory, and that’s very much limited to inside the TF2 scene, so in the end amounts for very little. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what ETF2L is doing but they haven’t been succesful on the business and media side of things. A good example of this can be seen here: http://etf2l.org/forum/compreq/topic-6718/?recent=103009

pwr\Moose: I simply don’t think that ETF2L has been doing what the top teams would expect from them in attracting sponsor and media partnerships. Telling the potential sponsor for example to go hunt the admins down on IRC is just stupid and that’s not the way you do business (I know that’s not the case on that forum thread).

pwr\Moose: Another thing is that some of the teams feel like ETF2L let’s the masses decide too often for rule changes and such and when most people don’t have a clue what it’s like to play at the very top level, those changes often go horribly wrong. A good example is the map picking system for Season 6. Just check what maps Dignitas has to play against their opponents. I told to the guys at Team Finland when the map picking was announced that Diggy won’t be playing a single “normal” map this season besides the ones they pick themselves and I wasn’t far from the truth. It’s just completely expected that the underdogs try to pick as weird map as possible against the veterans and in my opinion the maps should be pre-determined by the admins to prevent having teams like Dignitas to play Gullywash and Fastlane all season long.

pwr\Moose: I don’t know if the Premiership division would help that much. Of course it would be nice if it had rules tuned towards bettering the top level games and it would eliminate the “useless” matches we currently have in div1. But would it really solve anything? The top teams still wouldn’t have anything to gain in ETF2L so in my opinion the problem mostly lies elsewhere. And that’s a whole lot more difficult to fix. Like I said, moving all the teams to ESL for example would probably help but that just isn’t going to happen.

And with that, Moose has contributed enough words to account for three of my own blog entries. Thanks Moose!