Some of you may have read my essay, "On Why I Am The Best Videogame Player In The World", from VGCULTURE1. Those who haven't will soon be able to read it on the site. Also, some of you may have heard of the LTC challenge, which I recently mentioned on Discord. For those who haven't, I'll copy-paste it here for you:
I wrote:Surth: "Community war
Hey icy,
Since you made your discord private again, I'll just shoot you a mail. You mentioned (I think in "why I am the best video game player in the world"?) the idea of a decathlon across genres. In that spirit, how about a community war between the Cult and LTC (also known as the Sect)? You choose five games, we choose five games, we predetermine rules for each game (i.e. number of players for any given game, game mode to be played etc.), and then, across a few weeks, we mop the floor with you!
Cheers,
Surth"
I am not even going to answer him
He has contributed a couple of articles to Insomnia, and he makes fun of Lowell all the time, and comes to Insomnia every time I open up a free section, but he has yet, after 6 years of Insomnia 3.0, to subscribe and support the site
I despise this dude
I wouldn't even trust them to show up and not waste my time
And if I want opponents, Steam has millions of them for me across all games
Merely their whining and whimpering and sneering would make me lose all appetite for playing and all joy in the games involved
And they continue their absurd aping even in their "clan's" name
I've dropped by their Discord a couple times and it's an ugly wasteland
No one plays anything and I don't even know how they could scrounge up people for PA or Siege 5v5 or For Honor 4v4 or whatever
Nobody buys new games there anyway
How would Surth even afford this stuff?
They play Red Alert 2 because they haven't bought a new computer since 2005 or something
So let them spend all their time trying to catch a glimpse of what I am doing on my frontpage, and let us spend our time playing and enjoying cool games together
I'll have JC copy-paste the above to him
Funny thing is, we would even win by default because we could afford their games and show up, but they would neither be able to afford ours, nor show up (edited)
Or like, some of them might show up but they wouldn't be able to field a full team for our games
I could say, "Okay, private Rust server 12v12", and we would win automatically
So I declined his challenge, or rather didn't even bother responding to it, but it has since got me thinking of establishing this as an individual annual contest, both for the sake of having fun -- as I think it will be a riot -- and to help raise my essays' and the site's profile, as with the proper nurturing this has the potential to turn into one of the world's premier competitive gaming events.
So let's get it started!
All we need is a list of genres and games, a set of rules, an entry fee and prize idea, and a date for the 2017 contest. I'll start throwing ideas, and we should soon have it all set up and ready to go.
So here is a list of genres off the top of my head, with the games that will be used for 2017 (which may change from year to year). My aim is to try to use VGART and/or GOTY games as much as possible, for obvious reasons. We want to use the best games available, both because they are the most fun, and to accord with Insomnia's spirit of promoting excellence.
Genres:
Shooting (Mushihime-sama)
2D Fighting (Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late)
3D Fighting (For Honor)
Turn-based Strategy (Sid Meier's Civilization IV)
Real-time Strategy (Sins of a Solar Empire or Europa Universalis IV)
Real-time Tactics (Planetary Annihilation)
Racing (DriveClub)
Survival (Ark: Survival Evolved)
First-person Shooting (Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege)
Flight/Space Sim (No idea)
For FTG I would have preferred GG +R, but the game has to be playable online, and +R, at least on Steam, isn't. Under Night on the other hand has excellent netcode, so unless we find a version of +R with good netcode, or determine a superior FTG with good netcode (perhaps Arcana Heart 3 or Xrd on Steam)
For racing I chose DriveClub since apparently it is the best racing game of recent times. If there are better ones, let me know.
I am including Ark in the understanding that we'll be able to make a custom server and throw the contestants in there, either all of them together, or perhaps a few at a time.
With Siege what we'll do is start a 5v5 lobby populated by contestants, and four people from each "team" will die immediately and let the two real contestants battle it out, since that game really is the pinnacle of first-person action at the moment.
PA is included as RTT because at 1v1 that's what it is: the most complex RTT ever. And for RTS we have either Sins or EU4, which I can't choose between right now because I haven't tried them, though I will soon.
For Honor is the best 3D FTG ever, so it was an easy choice, and as far as I know Civ4 is still the best TBS game ever.
I am still thinking on how to incorporate adventure and puzzle games and CRPGS and so on.
Post any ideas and suggestions and objections here. I'll keep thinking and keep posting updates until everything has been hammered out in great detail and I can announce the whole thing on the frontpage with a start date.