this is less an iceberg and more just moldy stale water atp, but this thinking back reminded me how much hype and speculation surrounded valve recognizing competitive tf2 and adding comp matchmaking to the game

there were posts after posts in the early 2010s about talks with valve, direct feedback from devs about how they hate sixes and think the community should innovate or some shit, all culminating in the indirect announcement that they were working on in-game mm, which would eventually become comp mode with meet your match

https://www.teamfortress.tv/8952/how-to-get-to-in-game-comp-lobbies

https://www.teamfortress.tv/24792/valve-and-competitive-tf2

https://www.teamfortress.tv/34363/valve-visit

https://www.teamfortress.tv/36886/the-state-of-tf2-post-valve-meetings

and in the end, it all meant nothing. updates to iron out the many many issues meat your match incurred did not materialize. there was no renewed interest in competitive, there was no real use for the in-game competitive matchmaking, and after jungle inferno, there was nothing

https://i.imgur.com/zsOqggN.png

(it looks like he actually unlisted this video (for good reason), but it's poignant and still hurts)

• froyo botmode 60hz legend with the jankiest laptop setups known to man
  
• corsa 5 ping

i would consider these more "modern" but corsa 5 ping is probably 10 years old at this point lol

gonna use this as an excuse to repost thefragile's tf2stadium video

https://youtu.be/CLRhmad9Jq4

glad to see all the hours georgebaii and i wasted on liquipedia tf2 still being put to use

done and done

medigun should damage friendly scouts

https://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=252400

we are NOT back but y'know still cool

competitive gravelpit my beloved

Crazy that 90% of Valve's lineage derives from Half-Life but it becomes more blatantly obvious over time Dota 2 has attained near total cultural victory in Valve's developmental and artistic direction.

Why don't I pay my taxes? Because I'm playing TF2. Why do you think I'd pay my taxes, seriously? Because that's what everyone's doing that's popular? Cool, I play TF2. I'm not too concerned with what's popular, alright man?

we need a new league that will recharge the tf2 gaming scene

hey man what's up what's going on in indonesian tf2 these days

never got around to making a bear pic archive so just gonna dump em here while im at it

https://i.imgur.com/XuzIy6W.png

https://i.imgur.com/RhwLjEY.png

https://i.imgur.com/Rg38VN7.png

https://i.imgur.com/7wea25P.png

https://i.imgur.com/1NFmh7X.png

https://i.imgur.com/IKksC1K.png

Doing my monthly read-through of TFTV, and this is bittersweet to read. I really do miss the "older" days of TFTV, and it was a lot of fun while I was a part of it. It really shows how just a stream of articles really did make the scene feel more alive, especially when we got the ocassional article for OZF, AF, or an SA/BR league (anyone remember Chapelaria?). Granted, I think there was a lot more to "write about" in the older days, but part of coverage is always trying to find the throughline in the scene.

Unrelated, but remember TFTV casts and when they had the blurbs on the match thread? Good times.

If you're interested in writing, whether a little or a lot, I will say that the barrier to entry for writing is a lot lower than you think, especially if you're already knowledgeable about the scene. Of course, I technically have several years of "experience" writing in esports, but I think the ropes of the trade are easy to grasp as long as you keep an open, creative mind with writing. I don't know who's "in charge" of the newsroom at this point, or if there's even people willing to mentor or edit, but I think you should reach out if you're interested even a little bit.

Anyways, while we're talking about the TFTV newsroom, here's the bear pic.

https://owcdn.net/img/661746737abb6.png

https://i.imgur.com/yReULDK.png