It's always hard to separate one's own journey through life from the events and trends in the larger world. We are each independent in our minds and thus experience the objective reality of the world through ineluctably subjective lenses. I start with that sort of lead-in precisely because I'm skeptical of my own ability to separate the two when I ask whether the end of clan gaming is nigh.
I have always enjoyed video games, but it wasn't until the mid 1990s that they became a pretty hard-core hobby for me. It was the original Team Fortress (TF) that did it. Prior to that I had taken to games like Railroad Tycoon, Civilization, Darklands, and especially X-COM: UFO Defense, which even today remains my second favorite game of all time, but TF was the first game that made me part of a team.
I played it every night, despite my crappy dial-up connection. Heck, I even signed up to a private service, the Total Entertainment Network or T.E.N. for short, because they had local access numbers to their own private servers to which I got a really good ping. I can't remember the name of the map, but I can still remember what it looked like, some kind of downtown map that I loved playing for all the great sniper spots. I knew that thing like the back of my hand; I still do.
It also marked my first experience with a clan. I signed up for a clan whose initials were UA. I don't remember what they meant, but I went by the name [UA]Rodin for some years. And I racked up a lot of frags under that name. I pretty well sucked as a spy, medic, heavy gunner, or demolitions man, but I could reach out and touch your skull with my little red dot in less than a tenth of a second on the 2Fort5 map as a sniper. There were times when I got so into the zone that the other team gave up trying to cross open ground altogether, which always made it easier for my clan to win.
Obviously, I remember those days fondly. Heck, in some respects I absolutely pine for them. TF didn't have the graphics or audio of modern games, but I still think it had one of the more entertaining sorts of play I've ever enjoyed. The only multi-player game I've seen since that does a better job is Battlefield 2 (BF2), though Tribes 2 was a solid contender. But I digress.
It was in the summer of 2000 that I applied to Steel Maelstrom (SMS), the very cadillac of gaming clans as one friend puts it, and I've been a member ever since. I moved up through the ranks to lead the Unreal Tournament (UT) platoon, the Tribes 2 (T2) platoon, started the Raven Shield platoon from scratch, and even spent a short while leading the Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2k4) platoon. I can also say that I was fortunate to meet up with the platoons that played Dark Age of Camelot, Jedi Knight 2, Soldier of Fortune 2, Battlefield 1942, Unreal Tournament 2003, and most recently Battlefield 2 (BF2). Heck, I even played with the Counterstrike platoon, and I don't much like that game.
In short, my bona fides as a serious clan gamer ought to be beyond question. I've given countless hours to my clan, provided servers, developed graphics, written up tactics and strategy guides, posted literally thousands of messages on the internal forums, etc. And to be clear, this isn't to blow my own horn; I'm not looking for kudos, pats on the back, warm rememberances, or anything like that. I'm just letting non-clanmates know my history, so they can appreciate how much the question at hand means to me.
The crisis, to come right down to it, is that it seems like clan-oriented gaming is dying. The life span of the average gaming has always been measured in weeks (sometimes days). It reminds me of most high-school rock bands insofar as even the most amatuer players want to hook up with others but usually find that there's more work involved than meets the eye. This is especially true of gaming clans. It takes a truly shocking amount of time and effort to do anything substantive.
Frankly, I don't know how my friend Rantage has managed it through the years. He has had help, of course, but he built the SMS web site from the ground up for the most part. And it is not yet another PHPBB clone, let me tell you. Despite any flaws one might mention, it's a serious web application with forums, roster pages, administrative features, and a ton of stuff. And those are just some of the technical details of one aspect of the clan itself; the people skills and dedication are an entirely separate matter.
The reason I'm writing this today is because I've seen things change over the years. We got out there and played those games hard. We hit the public servers, we advertised on forums, we actively recruited people, and at its zenith the clan had nearly two-hundred active members. That's one seriously big organization when you think about it. Sure, there are tens of thousands of gamers playing at any given moment, but put it in perspective: two hundred people make up a small to mid sized company in the business world.
Said businesses work because money changes hands; clans work because people pour their hearts and souls into them. Each has its own payoff, but as you can imagine it's a lot easier to get two-hundred people to be a part of something when you're paying them. It's a lot harder to assemble a mature group of people who play video games—no, that's not an oxymoron, but it is tricky to say the least—around a set of ideals and make it all work.
To be frank, SMS is at a low-water mark right now, at least from my perspective. It's not that we're not having fun playing great games, because we are. It's not that I don't enjoy playing with my clan mates anymore because I really do. But when I wander through the forums today it's like walking through a ghost town. They used to be so alive. I can remember sharing jokes, political commentary, philosophy, discussing tactics, posting pictures, looking forward to the next get-together, etc. But now it seems like we're all struggling just to find time to play, let alone invest in the clan as a whole. Do we care anymore?
But that's not really the point either; that's just me being overly sentimental. I know, I know, Phil simply must learn to get to the point more quickly in these rambling essays, so here we go: it seems to me that clan gaming as a whole is on the wane. Think about it with me for a moment. While every game has its following, the biggest clans have surely formed around the big franchises, games like the Quake series, the Unreal Tournament series, the Tom Clancy franchises, the Battlefield series, the Tribes series, and so forth.
Having said that, it isn't exactly a big leap to see my point. Quake IV surely represents a new low, insofar as its multi-player aspect is a warmed over version of Quake III with better graphics. There aren't many servers for it and scant few clans take it seriously. The UT series stumbled with its 2003 edition and recovered with the awesome UT2k4, but the vast bulk of the community moved on once the Proving Grounds—which was, hands-down, the ladder for UT gaming—closed its doors. Ubisoft's Rainbow 6: Lockdown (R6L) marks the death-knell for Tom Clancy games as far as I'm concerned, the Tribes series was extinct the day Vivendi cancelled the badly needed patch for Tribes: Vengeance (T:V), and although BF2 is a great game it just doesn't have the clan presence the original UT enjoyed.
All it takes is a casual glance at the Team Warfare ladders, for example, to see that the number of teams competing is the palest echo of the past. Heck, when my clan first joined the Proving Grounds UT ladder, we started near rung two-hundred. In contrast, the largest ladder for BF2 has a mere fifty-three teams right now, which is puny by comparison. The one exception that jumps out at me is America's Army (AA), which perhaps explains why my clan's AA platoon is thriving in contrast to the others. But what does that say about the other games? Or what is so unique about AA? Why is it thriving while all else are dying?
So what happened? I know in some cases it's because the games suck. I bought R6L because it was supposed to be a return to the roots of the Rainbow 6 series. What it turned out to be was a pretty game with shallow play, an impossibly stupid multi-player model, an ugly series of bugs, and a publisher who hasn't released a patch or even confirmed that one is in the works after months of player outrage. The publisher is too busy hawking the next game in the series which—yes, you guessed it—is going to be a return to the roots of the... Sorry, I can't go on; my heart can't take the pain. I'm positively sick over the way the Tom Clancy line has been prostituted.
Or what about T:V? That game could have devoured my very life if only the bugs were fixed. It was a buggy simplification compared to T2, and that's saying something, but I loved the Tribes vibe enough to stick with it if only there had been enough servers/players. But gamers won't play a game that's badly broken, unfinished, and unsupported, so it died a stupid, ignoble death.
These things I can understand, but what explains the BF2 numbers?! Seriously, BF2 is arguably the best, team-based, multi-player shooter game ever made. Its graphics are gorgeous, its audio is great, and thanks to the series of patches it's finally balanced. There's fun to be had for everyone, and it's very approachable to boot. Anyone who likes a good shooter will like BF2, now that it's been patched nearly half a dozen times. So why does it boast so few clans with so little competition? Is it simply that it doesn't matter? Where have all the good clans gone?
I don't have any answers. That's why I write this sort of essay: to reflect upon the question. It saddens me to think we are coming to the end of the clan era, that the clan-based gaming race has been run. Not coincidentally, my clan leadership is talking about having a staff meeting to discuss the current state of our union, and that's why the issue is on my mind. Hey, maybe it's just my clan coming undone, albeit on the verge of its very impressive ten-year anniversary, or maybe I'm reacting to all the things in my life that have changed of late, or maybe I'm just in a slump.
Like I said, I don't have any answers. I do know that I am reticent to move onward. I still enjoy gaming, and I still enjoy my clan, even though I'm ashamed at how little I contribute these days. But then I don't have the energy or time that I once had either. Maybe the era of clan gaming is drawing to a close, or maybe I'm conflating the troubles of my own clan with the larger gaming community, or maybe game developers are simply failing to inspire us masses and/or producing crappy games. What say you? Is clan gaming coming to an end?
04/21/2006