CS is dying already, FPS games are apparently not the games for esports.

Written by someone who is obviously biased. I don't know how a game as "realistic" as CS, that pits Terrorists vs Counter-Terrorists, could ever hope to be accepted by the general public. I think shooters would need to be as far away from reality as possible to gain any mainstream acceptance, if it's even possible at all.

The main factor in the popularity of CS and COD are the realistic weapons.

I'm not talking popularity among gamers, thought I made that clear enough.

You did:)

Personally i think SC2 is much harder to follow for non/casual gamers than CS

I agree, but is a mainstream audience ever going to accept realistic shooter titles considering all the controversy rightly or wrongly attributed to some of the well known games in that genre? Violent games are the scapegoat for a lot of different problems, can't see a game where "Terrorists" are allowed to kill "Counter-Terrorists" or in certain games, Taliban killing US forces, ever being accepted by "normal" people. Not that I have a problem with either of those situations but the average person most certainly does I would think.

i think you're taking the word public too literally. This is simply in regards to bridging the gap between pros and joes. Not about the inclusion of altar boys and granma...

I don't, because if you want gaming to be "big" then surely one of the important steps would be regular TV coverage on a reputable channel? I don't think CS or CoD style games will recieve much interest. Although saying that, I don't think any game would anyway.

you're asking for the impossible. A game without rocket launchers, without people dying, without violence. What are they gonna do? make a game where the first person tagged by a daisy flower loses? and call it a tag instead of a frag? seriously? lol . Face it, violence and sex sells games (it sells anything really, name me one successful movie without the latter)

we don't need grandmas watching e-sports. It's meant for teens, a younger generation, who as a whole can handle a shooting game. It's not the first time they've seen it. Besides tetris and pinball most games consist of "fragging, killing, shooting" your opponent, whether it be super mario kart (where you shoot each other with koopa shells or bananas) or ikari warriors. In the end, they're "just games"...

Yes there are crazy controlling parents who won't let their kids out of their sight for 5 seconds and blow them down with anti-germ controlling agents the moment they step outdoors, but that small minute population has no bearing on the gaming industry.

Overall, cs did what quake couldn't. Kept the noobs interested in their products, because as others mentioned, it's easy to get in a game of cs, frag some people and feel satisfied. In quake, you may go 2 full rounds before you even get a frag.

You can have a game with rocket launchers and people not dying, you simply get rid of the people, use monsters and weird aliens and other unrealistic shit, it instantly makes it a lot less risky. Yes I agree with you that it's just games, but these type of games are intensely scrutinized by the retarded mainstream media, regardless of whatever success and sponsorship gaming currently recieves, it is no doubt held back by this.

If you go down a more unrealistic route I believe you eliminate a lot of these problems, but that's just my view on it.

quake had monsters... that is what made quake popular.

Quake needs to get back to its roots and forget about e-sports and just focus on reaching its core audience again that will get them the bodies they need to make a future esports quake equivalent (we'lll call it q5) popular. In lamens, they need to start over with an updated (for 2011) clone of q1 (with top of the line graphics, nine inch nails music, gore and tons of it (and don't say no, because they're doing it now with rage).

In fact, in regards to rage, look at the differences in the trailers released in the past year. They went from a little blood and gore to heads chopping off, huge blood explosions, etc. Obviously syncerror's idea was rejected and id went back to what they do best, shock and awe. Thats' what gets headlines and headlines is exactly what quake live lacked. No attention = No interest.

Once they get the headlines and people playing quake, then they can try an arena style quake format again (but ffs not in browser that was epicly fail)

No, Quake was popular because it had multiplayer.

the single player campaign in q1 with the gore, music and monsters is what made quake popular. In q2 it got even more popular once people discovered it and started playing it on lan in comic book shops which brought about q3 arena. But it started with the gore, single player campaign, monsters and the Kick Ass NIN soundtrack.

No, it was the multiplayer.

are you delirious today? You just can't accept i'm right can you. The single player campaign of quake 1 especially the first level test demo that was released on a single cd prior to release. I can't believe you're arguing this point. You're not always right you know...

You're not right, though. You weren't even around when Quake came out, and I was. Quake was hugely popular for its multiplayer component. Hell, it was so popular, id had to shut down the player rankings due to too much traffic.

hahaha dude. I started playing quake with quake 1. I bought the test cd and was hooked all the way up till the end of quake 2. I played quake 1 and 2 on lan twice a week for 3-4 years. Im' pretty sure you're the one who wasn't actually around at that time. Multiplayer wise, everyone was playing duke nukem that first year quake was out/.

Argue moar. You weren't playing it then just like you aren't playing it now so you don't know.

You're as terrible a liar as you are at everything else.

so you think. But i'm older than you and i've said i've played quake 1 for the past 2 years on the older forums. It's nothing new to people who knew me.

Also:, are you saying all those screenshots i'ved posted are fabricated dear sir? I'd hate to have to make you look like an idiot.
Although i don't have to try very hard as you're doing fine on your own even with this onversation.

Again, you're not a very good liar. You know most people on this site have been around since before Q1, right? We all know that you're just making shit up.

Not sure what this 'test cd' you two are going on about is, but the first (legal) public release of quake1 was qtest, a 3 map multiplayer-only online exclusive

No!
The main reason you could sell such show on a mainstream media is the realistic violence with realistic weapons and everything, because that's what ppl want (sadly tbh).
Create stars from the pro players, and run it like how they do it in the stupid WWE show series with lots of drama and dialog. Perhaps you could top it with teamplay occasionally.... etc etc (it's easy)
Use photorealistic graphics in the virtual duels (thinking about avatar level or better), .. put the show into late timeframe, and (to compensate that it's not real) just buff it with as much violence as possible.

pure gold imo.

edit.: Ofc, I don't want quake to be like this, I'm just saying it's possible, and the violence is the key.

It's funny you bring up WWE, I've thought about it before and wondered what gaming would be like with over the top rivalries and pre-determined outcomes (obviously don't announce it's pre-determined). Someone like Cooller is the closest quake has to interesting promos and creating some heat between himself and his opponents, thinking back to that ESL event with him and Strenx talking on a sofa.

Rivalries are sorely missing from Quake. I'm certainly not wanting retarded shit talk or anything, but the "characters" we have currently aren't drawing me in at all, I only watch due to my love of the game, not the people involved. ZeRo4 and Cooller used to be a pretty good rivalry, CZM and Cooller for a slightly shorter period of time, but nothing else stands out for me, so it certainly won't for a casual viewer.

Of course! You need a producer, director and the whole production pipeline if you want to go mainstream... it won't turn into a success by itself, nothing does:)

More than half of the player models in Quake aren't even human, so trying to make the player kill a bunch of aliens is already done.

A purely average person (read: american) would probably feel better about being a US marine killing aliens for the good of their country than US marines being killed by Taliban, but they don't matter because they don't play games, or even watch them. The people who matter are the ones who play games, and the ones who play games don't give a shit who they're killing or being killed by.

In Quake, you generally force models to a big robot...

inception , the dark knight, shutter island, lotr trilogy etc had no sex scenes

there was some talk about going deeper in inception tho.

he didn't mean actual sex, eg fucking scenes. or if he did he failed. the idea was sex as the human erotic experience, as love, him and her etc. now, THAT u find in every movie, ray was right. inception and shutter island had that as well

Face it, violence and sex sells games

Tell that to Portal 2 with its 4,000,000+ sales.

not gonna google that. An exception perhaps, but not the rule.

That's what we call a failure of imagination.

welcome to reality

No, just your delusions.

Well MW2 launch sales grossed over everything movie industry have ever done, second largest enterntainment lauch being such family game as GTA 4. Even if you account that games are more expensive, if mw2 isn't a mainstream product, what the hell is?

Maybe mainstream isn't the best word to use then if that's your interpretation of it, but would you argue that a lot of the attention a game like CoD gets in the media isn't massively negative? Most of the focus it gets is for the levels of violence and the "awful" things you can do in the game.

The only point I'm making is if you remove the ties to real-world violence then surely a big part of the "problem" people have with these games is gone.

Imo extreme christians - possibly bigger nolifes than gamers - haven't got sand in their vagina over violence of lately, didn't these niggers lose it over hot coffee mod and that measly 5 second clip in mass effect depicting something in the department of intercourse?

The norwegian lunatic killed any remotely small chance progaming ever had.

No company will even touch fps gaming now, and rightfully so from a pr pov after what that guy said

yes, I can totally see mw3 not selling even 5 milion copies the first day because of this.

Albeit cute in a way your comment is totally irrelevabnt much like yourself, my comment was about progaming as was the one i replied to

yea, totally
http://pro.majorleaguegaming.com/competitions...nformation

Regurgitating year old league plannings seems like a decent way to prove your lack of a point

I'm sorry, are my arguments too much for you? Please point me to the link that says that MLG canceled COD Black Ops competitions. ty

You really dont know how capitalism works do you

Yeah, like all those oil rigs that closed down after the spills. NOBODY is going to drill for oil after that.

money talks. as long as there's oil, they'll continue drilling for it. Look at it this way, the politicians are too busy with the financial crisis that any other oil spill will just serve as a distraction to keep drilling.

money talks. as long as there's oil, they'll continue drilling for it. Look at it this way, the politicians are too busy with the financial crisis that any other oil spill will just serve as a distraction to keep drilling.

...........

rofl sounds very american.

Dude, I don't know how uptight you English folk are, but here in the states most people don't give a shit about the moral value of a video game. Maybe when grand theft auto had just come out on playstation, but now? Really no one cares. In fact, most people wouldn't think twice about the new call of duty games based on the middle east conflict. Not an issue. Money is everything, baby. Worship the green.

"I think shooters would need to be as far away from reality as possible to gain any mainstream acceptance, if it's even possible at all. "

what reality do you live in?

Err maybe a reality where every time a game like Call of Duty is talked about on TV, it's nearly all about how violent and disgusting the game is for portraying terrorists massacring civilians in an airport or other similar situations in the game which are similar to real world conflicts. If you're too foreign to understand my point, don't try.

if you're too foreign to understand cod6 sold over 5 mil copies the first day, please don't post on gaming forums.

See, you useless cunt, that was never my point at all. In your 8800 plus worthless posts on this site you should have learnt to read more carefully.

rage != arguments . your "point" got shattered, accept it and move on.

It's not rage to insult someone as retarded as you. You didn't shatter my point, unless, you can search all media formats in the entire world and find no negativity associated with the Call of Duty titles that have included civilian killings etc. If you believe this is not something that is thought about when deciding on esports titles, then you are beyond help.

no need to make yourself look even more pathetic, you know your original post is just few lines up. I can quote it if you want. do you want me to do that?

You need to read more than the original post then don't you, run along and give it a try.

of course you don't, didn't expect you would. :)

Ruins your little pleasure moment, doesn't it.

are you resetting my comparison bro?

get that last word in, that makes you right amirite?

face it, you badgered him on something completely baseless which had nothing to do with his original point. You're just a troll.

actually he's right. on that. His point is simply to remove violence from games to make it more mainstream....BUT..

he's wrong simply by the fact that Quake Live tried this ... and failed...

MISERABLY

They took all the gore and satanistic images out of the game and tried to sell it as a quake title. That's like wolfenstein taking all the nazi regalia out of the game and doing the same. It's a sellout and it's ridiculous to think the media or any other past critic would overlook that and give 2 thumbs up. They don't forget and like Fear, Quake will always be considered one of the most violent games of its genre.

i felt kind of weird watching the newest modern warfare trailer.. it looks way too real.

Totally agree with that quote, CS raped quake in numbers of players/tournaments/cashprizes in 2 years. And it still goes on :)

well thats not what the quote is about
it says "Bring the public to the business." and no game has done that yet in the west

You'd argue CS brought more public into esports than Quake?

I'd argue that neither have brought the general public to esports at all. One has a large audience of gamers but nothing more than that.

I wasn't talking about a general public or joe average.... just some public, which is indeed made of gamers!

Sure but I think CS wins only because of Quake being dropped by CPL in whatever year that was looking back. It's had so long to build up a proper legacy of pro teams and players and generate real interest for itself.

I also think it benefitted from being pushed as the team game for FPS, quake team modes never had a really big push by comparison so it had to settle for being the duel game. Which it now fails at because SC2 is doing the duel thing 10x better, with rivalries and intrigue that quake looks like it will never compete with again.

There is a reason why CPL chose CS over Quake, a lot more players, teams and public!

I know that and agree with their decision to go with CS as their main game, however I still think had they chosen quake it would have achieved the same kind of success that CS did, even if the choice went against the overwhelming difference in playerbase.

I really doubt it

That's not why, it's because id software stopped letting the CPL use Q3. It was over a leaked e-mail where the CPL said some nasty shit to sponsors. How old are you guys anyway, that you don't know the history? It was only like 9 years ago. Damn whippersnappers.

what jonesy said

CS had a crazy amount of players back then too, something quake never had and never will

I see what you're saying, and I honestly don't believe there IS an esport title that will ever hit mainstream in the way you're talking about, as far as broadcasting on reputable stations (like an ESPN channel or something). The numbers just aren't there. Not for an FPS title, not for any title. Sure, counter-strike gets better numbers than quake and starcraft gets a good deal more than counter-strike, but numbers are everything in television, and I'm assuming that's what the article (and you) are talking about when referring to bringing it to the public. Advertising, television, that type of stuff. It's all number, and it's all money. And if number meant anything, it wouldn't be an FPS. That wouldn't even be part of the discussion, so CS definitely hasn't brought anything to the mainstream, but really neither has anyone else, and neither WILL anyone else. Because the numbers don't support it. I remember they tried something like that on the USA network with Halo 2 and MLG and it didn't last long at all. It was like a saturday morning slot, and they got the boot real quick. Starcraft pulls great numbers online, but that's thanks mostly no non-american viewers. I know it's huge in south korea, but here in the states, the numbers don't support anything worthy of "being brought to the public" in those kind of terms.Besides, SC has to be one of the LEAST viewer-friendly games I've ever seen. I consider myself a fairly intelligent individual, and thought for sure I could be able to discern what's going on in starcraft if i watched a few vods (hell, I'm almost expert-level USCF chess player), but wow that game is meaningless to the person who has never played a RTS game before, so it's not really going to attract the "general" public. And like I said, the numbers in the west for starcraft wouldn't be enough to bring it to that kind of platform, and starcraft is the best short esports has got TBH because the other games' numbers are much worse (although fighting game streams get killer numbers too. again, though, thanks largely to the asian audience).

TL;DR: there's no realistic chance (right now) for ANY esports title to be brought to the general mainstream public, much less an FPS title like counter-strike or quake, so this article is pretty much void of any merit.

And besides, this guy's talking about counter-strike breaking that barrier in the future? While CS is still a larger and more active community (and game) than quake, it's on a decline. Not dead by any means, but on a decline. Not as steep a decline as quake live. But counter-strike is past its prime in the esports world. So I doubt any game is going to break that barrier AFTER its prime is over. Like someone else said, maybe the next counter-strike game will, but 1.6 has had its time and will absolutely not be a mainstream title EVER. It's probably only got a few good years left, then the tournaments, teams, and community in general will dwindle. Of course I don't know when the next CS will come out, then I'm sure it will crop up again with sponsors and tournaments, and the numbers will dictate its fate from there. And the marketing team behind the game will decide the numbers. So it's all on them! :D But no, CS 1.6 will not "be brought to the public" on that type of platform, and neither will any of FPS, and more than likely neither will any other esports title as of right now. Sorry to be incredibly redundant. It helps drive a point across. :P

why would you say public if you mean gamers?

i wouldnt argue that CS brought more people into esports than Quake, but i would argue that neither of those games brought the public, the non gamers, into esports

and why do you think public = everybody in the world

because thats the definition as far as i am aware
"publics are groups of individuals, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings."

"the people constituting a community, state, or nation."

"A group of people sharing a common interest"

I'm not a big fan of wikipedia for definitions

When the Swedish television sent sc2 from dh they had 280 000 unique viewers prolly most of them gamers but still... Seems like if any game will "bring the public to the business" its sc2.

CS stuck with more people cus its so fucking eze and those with no reflexes but had eyes and a keyboard could kill anyone.

the thing about cs is that you can kill anyone with a bit of luck hitting a headshot, and that already makes you feel good, but in quake? you have to learn that fucking strafe jumps to be good, and you cant do that in a day or two

spectator friendly=))))))

oh look! crates!! :D

i think the proof is in the pudding.

anyone who disagrees with it is clueless and simply a die hard quake fanatic who is not ready to come to terms with the reason for its failures.

More viewer friendly than 1v1 Quake? I wouldn't say so. 5v5 CS means you miss a lot of the action, the kills in the upper corner becomes more of a statistic than something "actually happening".

It takes longer to explain the rules of CS compared to Quake, Quake is basically: "Get more kills than the other dude during the 10 minutes the game lasts".

Getting in to CS as a player probably is easier, everyone can get a headshot etc. And CoD/CS numbers clearly tells what people are more drawn to.

Also, speaking about CS as savior for FPS seems unlikely. The game is so stagnant at this point that very few new players are drawn to the game. A well executed launch of CS2 by Valve would be needed to take it into mainstream minds.

And speaking about it like Quake never could do what CS has the chance to do is highly subjective, and in my mind not true at all.

Well LoL/HoN/DotA2 and SC2 are the big things atm and they arn't exactly the easiests to understand.

SC2 you got to understand all the diffrent units then all the diffrent builds etc... Then DotA2/LoL/HoN all have diffrent heroes that do diffrent things.

to be exact if u dont played at least 10-20 hours with these you wont understand anything unlike in quake

I just don't think its going to be a FPS that "brings the public to the business". Considering the numbers they already draw, it might more likely be a MMORPG.

Those are playing numbers though, they dont necessarily translate into viewing numbers. With MMORPG's especially, I think the players just want to play the game, they don't care about watching it. Otherwise WoW would have insane viewership but as far as I know it is easily eclipsed by SC2 and LoL.

Teenagers nowadays are not able to deal with proper games like Quake because it is too challenging. If I were in their shoes, I'd probably do the same and just play the game that makes the most fun and is easiest. Hence LOL et. al. that are so popular these days (not to mention the vast amounts of price money that are at stake!)

This isn't the real problem with quake tbh, these other new games make you feel like you're progressing even if you're bad, that's the main difference and what quake needs to learn from. It doesn't have to compromise the difficult gameplay to achieve this either.

Even if you lose in LoL you gain experience points and influence points, these improve your summoner and allow you to purchase new heroes and other things, plus you can hopefully identify ways to improve by looking at the post-game stats. This makes your average player who maybe isn't that competitive minded feel like they've not completely wasted their time and is a hook to continue playing.

Things like this can be added to quake without changing anything about the actual game itself, and really, stuff like this is now expected in modern games. Quake lacking this sort of thing is what puts a lot of people off when they compare it to other games and decide what they want to spend time playing.

There were a ton of ideas about this on the forum in closed beta. (I also posted many).. Went down in to the toilet with the others ofc:)

everything has been said already. Id didn't implement even one good idea that required some effort or money, for example better network so the game wouldn't crash when it went open beta or q3 mod support, so nowadays no one gives new ideas because we know they are just not going to be done.

The same happens in LoL for example, but with the difference that riot games always and still has good priorities and that's why that game succeeded and QL didn't. Those 2 games have lots of similarities and QL had the advantage in 2009.

Yesterday I played and shut down PC like any other day. Today I started PC (changed nothing ofc), loaded QL up and joined a game, and got kicked whit something like this: "Invalid playername..."
:D

Sort the tier system out on QL (more tiers) and less people will be challenged by people at too high a tier, hence they will stay longer, frm not getting raped faster than the Police in London are running.

Surely your idea is good about more features to gain, perhaps more rewards like skins, crosshairs, sounds, free Mcdonalds vouchers?

There are other factors to consider, but certainly that's a valid point. Also consider that now days the market is fucking FLOODED with games. Not just games, but all forms of entertainment. Back when I started gaming, it was like there were a fraction of the games to choose from. Especially on PC. And especially fewer franchise titles. Now there are all sorts of consoles, games, handheld shit, and there's pretty much entertainment in one form or another being thrown in your face from every angle, so no one really gets tied down to one game anymore. They end up playing different games casually. And quake, and other competitive titles, aren't really casual games. Not to mention, by now their popularity has dwindled from when you and I started playing them, so it's probably not even an option these kids know about. It's like call of duty modern warfare 8 or halo 100 or battlefield or whatever they're seeing advertised on television. So it's definitely more than just the learning curve, though that's obviously part of it. There's just so much more shit for them and now new gamers don't really know about quake so of course they aren't playing it. It's not on every other channel they flip to, and it's not what all the kids are talking about at school, so it's not what they play.

quake live needs more boxes

The answer is no. CS numbers are nothing like they used to be. If CS was going to popularize esports, it would have already done so. It's had 10 years.

CS is like all esports (outside of Starcraft in Korea). It appeals to the people who play it, and to almost no one else. What we need to do, if esports is going to 'blow up', is create a game that appeals to people who do not play it. Look at American football. Not that many people have ever actually played the game, but massive amounts of people watch it. That's the kind of game esports needs - a game that appeals to audiences who do not and have not played the game (or only play it here and there casually).

I don't know any guys who have never played football of some form, most girls I know have probably played touch football at least once as well. Same with baseball and basketball, NASCAR is probably the only sport popular here that most people haven't done.

I'm pretty sure SC was able to get as big as it did in korea because so many people had played it. When we get a game that most people play at least once is when gaming with "blow up".

mario competitions?

Firstly, CS is less viewer friendly. The author just takes his preferred / more popular game and thinks of a reason why it is like that. The funny thing is, if he had done his research, he'd know that the quake player to spectator ratio is way better. And that doesn't even require the rational mind needed to understand what kind of a game can be viewer friendly.

Secondly, CS had it's chance, it's not going to blow up. CS2 might, the way SF4 did, but that's a different topic.

The article is not worth reading.

Your mom is less viewer friendly.
You can pick the game you want, if the guy watching it doesn't play it, isn't interested and doesn't actively try to understand, all that's gonna be seen is retards shooting at each others ( fps ) and shit blowing up ( rts ).

Only exception : Blobby volley

if the guy watching it doesn't play it, isn't interested and doesn't actively try to understand

you can as well say that teaching Math is useless because if the student isn't actively trying to understand it it's not going to bring him any good

Way to blow videogames out of proportion.

I'm not sure if you're trolling. Re-read what I wrote and write a proper response.

That was a proper response. Comparing education vs spectating vidiygames is retarded.

in math, the student that attempts to understand gets educated
in a spectator sport, the person interested in the match gets entertained

There's no need to rage over a comparison that was never intended to go as far as you thought it was

link to those player/viewer ratios plz.

The quake player numbers are hidden but surely low. I guess we could rely on those alexa / google trend pages a little.

Quake/CS stream numbers you should know. This has been emphasized by tournament organizers over the years - ESL has called Quake "popular with viewers" as it's reasoning for picking it, multiple communities have expressed their sympathy for the understandability of Quake. See the IEM Teamliquid threads.

CS player numbers can be found on steam / other server trackers.

which part of 'link' did you not understand?

There's no exact link for it. I guess that's your point, but there doesn't need to be any exact one link for this to be at least somewhat quantifiable information.

what were the cs stream numbers on the last major CS competition?

I'm too lazy

more like clueless.

Why did I bother...

I don't know, why do people bother when they're clueless?

argue much?

~50k

That excludes hltv numbers I guess?

dont think hltv was enabled during that tournament

cs peaks around 50k so it's 1/1. quake had what 2-3k for quakecon so it's 1/1, more or less.

clueless.

why do you bother...

http://data.fuskbugg.se/skalman02/M%E5nga%20kollaR.png

Someone uploaded this like 4 months ago I think.

those seem to be local streams, ru, pl etc. you'd have to add them all up to get the proper number.

Make claims - give sources. It's really simple.

Make claims in an article - give sources. Agreed.

Comment about a stupid article, deem it stupid based on numerous numbers and interviews you have seen over the years. Then not bother finding those articles. Those that are interested should already know.

carmac and other ESLTV have said that quake stream numbers were comparable to counter strike's (earlier);
that they don't drop as much if you go from another game to quake compared to going to anothe yet another game;
many stream numbers that we could see were huge (which quakecon had 20k+ viewers? etc...);
teamliquid people, watching quake for the first time, have repeated that they found quake very much more interesting than CS for a first time viewer, on multiple threads
etc. etc.



Finding old posts and interviews can be hard, especially stream numbers can be seen easily, and then usually cannot be found anywhere. I'm lazy, if you had taken interest, you should know this info. Struggling to find info for a know troll like tourist is kind of silly.


I'm not trying to prove anything here. I'm summing up things I think most people here know. He asked - I replied, but if he's going to be a dick about it, I don't have to bother.

PS. I saw 5k on the first day at this year's quakecon. Quake numbers have obviously been 20k+ previously. He knows this :)

:/

You're free to search for ESL\IEM\other tournament interviews about quake. And stream numbers, that part I hate :).

For myself, gore, violence, choice of music, darkness or any other fear factor has little to no weight on why I continue to enjoy quake. For me, I play for those awesome frag combos, air rockets, sick LG tracking, etc, etc. that feel great to accomplish. That, along with the duel competition. If anything, removing blood / violence in QL was good because it focuses on gameplay more.