Admirable — Ironically enough, when I undertook to revive the Team Fortress 2 coverage on Cadred back in January 2010 my biggest fear was we would be subjected the razor-sharp wit of a community of Counter-Strike Source miscreants.  In my mind I visualised a political campaign focused on winning the hearts and minds of the wider eSports population, kissing babies and cutting ribbons as I united entrenched communities in a love of hats and airshots.  With the self-proclaimed congeniality of the European competitive TF2 scene behind me, how could I fail?

The surprise for me was not that those dastardly CSS enthusiasts were actually quite receptive to our doctrine of headwear and headshots, or at the very least indifferent to our efforts.  The imagined infantile comments of “LOL SHIT CARTOON GAME” were so few and far between that in hindsight they were more likely a projection of our own inferiority complex as the little guy of team based first person shooters.

Nay, the unforeseen circumstance that would haunt our two year tenure was that too few people in our lovely scene actually gave a fuck.  People certainly had some preconceptions about Cadred before things got underway, a lot of that stemming from the previous era of coverage which had ended on bad terms, leaving vitriol hanging thick in the air and spawninig a home-grown attempt at community coverage, the long defunct Resupply.  Can I be so naïve as to put the whole thing down to  Duncan Wraight’s deep-seated hatred of Heaven Media, an unappealing website design or the malevolent spectre of he who shall not be named…  Richard Lewis?

I’m afraid not.  Alas, the inescapable truth is and always has been that Team Fortress 2 is a casual title with a casual community.  No matter how zealously we believe Valve’s opus to be a serious competitive title, our grand designs will never come to fruition with the level of contribution offered up by the scene thus far or ever likely to be produced.

I have whiled away many an hour at work chewing the fat with my muse and confidant  Patrick ‘JimmyBreeze’ Harvey on Google Chat, discussing life, love and inevitably our thoughts on the state of the Team Fortress 2 scene.  We once observed that at any given time, one could probably count the number of contributors in our competitive eco-system on our fingers; I mean it was literally a struggle to name twenty people who were greasing the wheels of progress or at least keeping things ticking over.

The lack of willpower and motivation in a community that would preach from the rooftops about how great it was is simply staggering.  It’s laughable and symptomatic of the terminal state of affairs that someone as unreliable and slovenly as myself could have risen to become a relative pillar of said community.

For every VanillaTF2 success story, there are the ghosts of Resupply, #MPUKTF2.Pickup, TF2 Mentor Project, MyGamingEdge, ESL or any god’s number of great offerings telling sad tales of their demise, and whose ranks are now joined by Cadred’s coverage.  A common thread of failure due to a lack of support from within the scene runs through their stories, and all the while the unwashed masses will sit with their mouths agape theorising as to why these vessels have ran aground, ever expectant of the same “twenty people” to keep the Good Ship TF2 afloat.

The successful ventures are almost universally down to strong characters at the helm, whether it be the steadfast resolve of  Sivert ‘Torden’ Bakkeng or the bloody-minded determination of  Ahmad ‘Byte’ Fansa.  Step back and ask yourself where would be without these figureheads and their ilk?  There seems to be a common misconception that other people would rise to take the reins, but I just don’t see it… I mean Jesus fucking Christ we couldn’t even manage to pick up the pieces of Dunc’s broken internet connection for six months.  Who stepped up and took the initiative for the Dreamhack campaign, for what would have been the biggest thing to ever happen in our scene?  Oops!

My most heartfelt begging letters could not rouse the community to get behind Cadred, or the ESL for that matter.  Not so long ago I took a stab at illustrating what was possible with a bit of discipline, producing daily coverage for a few weeks back in September and yet I still failed to capture the attention of our blasé community.  Whilst I personally haven’t contributed much beyond poor attempts at trolling since then, I am yet to see my successors emerge from the crowd…

Torden painted a fitting analogy in his post about the demise of Cadred coverage:

“If TF2 had cancer, these institutions [ESL and Cadred] could extend our life like chemotherapy, at the cost of it being a less enjoyable process.  With ETF2L and VanillaTF2, we’ve made a choice: Rather enjoy what time we have left together – then who knows, sometimes opportunities come knocking.”

I think I’ve characterised this cancer fairly accurately, both in the preceding paragraphs and my own failings as a contributor.  I have all but made my peace with any dreams I ever held of Team Fortress 2 staking a claim in the grand pantheon of eSports and I hold few regrets, other than wondering if I could have done more.

Whether or not Team Fortress 2 coverage at Cadred could be deemed a success or worthwhile is a moot point.  In my eyes, more than anything it is a missed opportunity, although an opportunity I am grateful for, that chapter is now closed and the competitive community looks set on a course in to its golden twilight years with the majority of the populace, as ever, remaining blissfully ignorant of what we once tried to achieve.

Is that such a bad thing?