James Galvin

This will make no sense to any of you who don’t know what a “shock rifle” is. The staff behind Ireland’s UT2K4 gaming community has let the stress get to them. A new system has been introduced, claiming to “a benevolent dictatorship similar to the very effective situation at Boards.ie”.

For some people, mainly those who tend to speak their mind a bit too often, the Boards.ie model is not one to admire. However, on a site which has seen over 1500 users online at one time, it is effective. The balance is always delicate between the “cynical power-tripping mod” and the “opressed minority”, but they’ve managed to pull it off (thanks to the general good sense of DeVore et al) to become one of the top 5(?) busiest websites in Ireland. On the other hand, in a smaller tight-knit community where passions boil and bubble and grudges slowly fester, a more diplomatic approach is advisable… particularly when the forum in question is an informal hub for a bunch of gamers. It is not difficult to moderate a board and still treat the users with a basic degree of respect.

It is unfortunate for Irish FPS gaming that our last remaining community has laid down the flagstone for their new culture with an unfriendly, inflammatory and disrespectful declaration by the admins. As a (respectfully) argumentative person (i.e., can’t keep mouth shut), I cannot subscribe to the idealogy expressed in the tactless missive which, incidentally, is not open to debate. The only option for me is to sign out for good, goaded by the message that “any individual who disagrees, or feels they cannot live, with the above restrictions may vote with their feet”.

Was delighted to get my first aimbot accusation in UT so far. Came as a result of my headhunter in a TAM game on UIE server:

Disappointed that it took so long, but what can you expect with 60 ping… looking forward to my DSL as soon as I move to Dublin.

I was at GameCon 9 in Dublin this weekend. Held in The Spa hotel in Lucan, a good venue, and a nice LAN. I was there for the Unreal Tournament 2004 - I don’t get that much time to play it online, and when I do, the ISDN is too much of a disadvantage. My clan TMS had a full team, but unfortunately the other Irish clan, Doozer, were short a man, so we had played a lot of mixes. Played a bit of WarSow (good fun, but it will never be an e-sport!), and 40 mins or so of CoD2… but as with most LAN events, after the first 16 hours I was wrecked, and it was roasting hot outside, and I couldn’t bear to look at the monitor anymore. Zombie-mode kicked in, so I managed to stick around until I played my UT 1v1s.

There were a few tourneys running - I followed the Counter Strike: Source team tournament, although I didn’t participate. The hot favourites were a Korean team from GHM 5 Star internet cafe, a very professional looking outfit, with Fnatic mousemats and the leader barking orders non-stop. I was sitting next to the clan No Friends, who were meant to be the #1 challengers, but they got destroyed by GHM in the first round and it looked like the rest of the competition was just a formality. But there was a surprise winner, so well done to those lads on the far side of the room.

UT2k4 1v1 was as expected - the Dubliner, kRoNic, taking the spoils by defeating Jazzy, Dardoz, and Mang en route. Some very close games, notably Dardoz vs Chosen, and Dardoz vs kRoNic. I was gone home when kRoNic stepped up to the podium, and thats when the controversy arose. It had been announced that the winner of the UT 1v1 would receive an Xbox 360 as a prize. But when the winner turned out to be kRoNic, one of the admins gave thumbs down (because he won an Xbox 360 at GameCon 8, and sold it soon after) and decided to give him some Logitech® Z-5400 Digital 5.1 speakers instead. Unfortunately for kRoNic, these are worth much less than the original prize, so when he slaps these up on eBay, he’s not going to do so well.

I have to say, this kind of thing pisses me off - if you announce a prize, it is extremely unprofessional to pull it just because you don’t like who wins it. I mentioned to one of the organisers that, in my opinion, the prizes should be set in stone beforehand to avoid such circumstances from arising, but this sounded like a very alien suggestion to him. kRoNic got shafted by the discretion of the admins, plain and simple - I don’t think anybody would deny that.

So its fair to say that the GameCon admins owe kRoNic:

• an xbox 360 in exchange for his speakers
• OR cash to the value of the deficit between the Xbox 360 and the speakers they gave him
• OR an apology, along the lines of “Sorry, we fucked up, we have no money so it would be difficult to set this right - have some free GameCon t-shirts and a mousemat, is it OK if we leave it at that?”.

For as long as I was in attendance, the LAN was entertaining and well organised, it was a good way to waste a couple of days, so well done to the admins. I hope you sort kRoNic out with an apology, otherwise I’ll have to hold a grudge against you for the next few decades. Next time around, I will probably go up on the Saturday so that I’ll be in better form for the competitions.

Have been playing UT2K4 with The Muppet Show for a few days now. Only TDM so far, but CTF and maybe TAM to come. Its good fun, and theres a bit of life in the Irish Unreal Tournament scene at the moment, and plenty of grudges and tension and sparks flying which can only be a good thing ;). Only problem at the moment is my woeful connection, with bad ping and terrible packet loss on dodgy ISDN with the Irish ISP’s as bad as ever.

TMS current line-up is as follows:

• Jazzy (leader)
• Mang87
• kRoNic
• reikz
• killy
• Redemption
• Cavey