Mad Hatter: Hello and welcome. Please sit down, take a cup of tea, and let's chat about Quakecon 2017, shall we?
Memento: Oh... Sure, thank you.

Mad Hatter: So how do you feel about Quakecon 2017 and the big QC tournament?
Memento: I have mixed feeling, really. There's some parts I really liked, and other parts not so much.

Mad Hatter: Start with the good things.
Memento: It was great to see all these Quakers together once more. Having back people like Voo and 2GD and see them play with the QL crowd was great. I was really happy to see Avek back on track. I was curious about the new blood, such as Xron, Raisy and Clawz and excited to see them do so well. The casting roster was really nice; with Joe Miller and a bit more Rapha and 2GD time on air it would have been perfect.

Mad Hatter: Did it make you want to be there?
Memento: Totally. I haven't spoken to any of them yet, but I suspect this must have been a glorious Quakecon. With a different timing, I would have gone for sure.

Mad Hatter: What else did you like?
Memento: I was positively surprised by certain aspects of the game. Having different movement systems is really nice. That seems to allow more players from different version of Quake to find their comfort zone. I like how certain Champions abilities are used creatively, like when nix is used aggressively on power ups, or the slash pummel rush. People make crazy things out of these abilities. It's a double edge sword, but has some merits.

Mad Hatter: What do you mean?
Memento: Well, balance is an issue. I've seen way too much Sorlag for my taste.

Mad Hatter: Isn't that just a matter of the game being new?
Memento: Partly. The game will evolve for sure. Right now the chemistry of the 3 kills format and the trade-off between hitbox and stack pool needs more love. It brings a few interesting things, but also takes a way a lot of the previous Quake meta built around bigger stacks and map control. To be fair I don't know how good the game can become.

Mad Hatter: Sticking to the positive things, anything else you'd like to mention?
Memento: I was generally happy with the step up in term of professionalism and production, without the fluff you sometimes see in esports. There was the ISP fuckup on Thursday, but generally, this was the best produced tournament Quake had, and I hope the trend will continue.

Mad Hatter: What about the 1M prize purse? Isn't that amazing?
Memento: To be fair - while it's amazing for those players who grabbed the big money - I don't think it's very healthy for Quake. I believe there has to be a balance between the popularity of a game and the prize money in a tournament. If you don't respect that, you will burn through your sponsor money and then disappear, just like Painkiller and CPL.

Mad Hatter: Why do you think they went that way?
Memento: I can only guess that they wanted to start with a big bang and being a trending topic to promote the game. It might also have been a take it or leave it opportunity and they went full in- hard to tell. I just think it's a very expensive way to kick off and possibly not the right focus. While the competition side of things is fully proven and Quake has all the right to be an esport game, player acquisition and retention were never good in Quake, and I would rather see the devs invest in that, make the game grow in popularity, and only then throw more money at it.

Mad Hatter: What about the competition itself?
Memento: That's the best part of Quake. There's many very talented players who have devoted years to the game, and when they show up, the competition will be good, even if the game is a bit broken, shallow, or simply too new.

Mad Hatter: Anything to say about the NA vs EU rivalry?
Memento: While you could argue that Quake has been dying everywhere, I think NA has been suffering way more than EU. Quake never really died in Europe, primarily thanks to Russia. Initiatives like the 125FPS are crucial for the continuation of the competitive community and as far as I know there's nothing like that in NA. The top NA players have everything to be up there, but one good question is who will replace them. Where are the equivalent of Clawz, Xron and Raisy?

Mad Hatter: What's your feeling about QC as of now?
Memento: I think the game needs quite some work. I am confident they will address the most notable issue, and if something obvious is not here now, it's just a matter of priority and it's probably somewhere in the pipeline. What I am not so sure about is how duel and sacrifice will evolve as game modes. Duel at the moment can be interesting at times, but also very blunt. Most of the excitement I got came from the narrative of the players involved rather than what I was seeing in game. Some nice shots here and there, and a few last minute frags, but if you compare that to last year Evil-Rapha Quakecon finals, QC duel compares rather poorly at the moment. As for Sacrifice, I can only talk about the spectator experience, and can say it's quite a mess. There were so many times the camera was stuck in non-interesting areas while something important was going on somewhere else. It's a hard problem, and I don't know how much it can be improved. Some people suggested to introduce a built-in delay of 2 minutes, and have a smart director system that would pick who to follow based on what's going to happen. It's scy-fi, but I like it.

Mad Hatter: You think Quake Live is a better Quake?
Memento: At the moment yes, for sure. However that's understandable. QC changed many things all at once. It's already hard to design new game modes given a fixed core game-play, but if you do it while introducing different abilities, hitboxes, etc... well it's surprising how well the game plays out already. Of course that's not as good as QL, but I would give it time. Premature scepticism is silly in game design, as the reality is nobody - community or developers - really knows where the fun will be. I would not be surprised if many who were ready to burn Syncerror for the 3 champions format may be ready to give it a chance if things get tweaked.

Mad Hatter: You've not been very active as of late. What's going on?
Memento: The past few years I barely touched the game. Part of it was related to the state of the game, where very little was going on. But I think mostly it's related to life going on. I work for a game dev company, and a lot of the energy and creativity that I previously directed to Quake is now channelled in my job. When I'm at home I do different things. I'm generally gaming much less, and when I do is mostly single player games. I still follow the scene though, and will follow QC closely.

Mad Hatter: What would you like to see in QC?
Memento: To me the biggest hope is for new players to fall in love with Quake. Having three younger players at Quakecon is nice, but to be fair it's not enough. The majority of the Quake community is now in their late twenties. When that hits thirty, most people have kids and zero time to play. And I'm not just thinking of the pro players - they could still play. I'm thinking about the bulk of the community. New blood, and a lot of it, is what Quake needs most, if we want it to survive. How that can be achieved, I'm not really sure. Champions might help in that sense.