Team Fortress MegaBirthday Extravaganza! - The Evolving Door
— The Hal
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Several developments contributed to the changes taking place in our gaming community. Team Fortress was becoming hugely popular. There were many popular news sites that sprang up vying for the TF players attention, each having it�s own personality created by their respective staffs. Some sites had resources beyond the TF Newswires reach. We never did have our own domain name or our own hosted space. We were always among the list of �Hosted Sites�.
We went from host to host including an attempt to build a new community hosting service, the TF Domain. Still, we lacked the resources, (read that as money), and our bandwidth usage exceeded our ability to supply the service. We had settled in at one point with a decent gaming host, but the service was just not there. Sometimes the Newswire would go down for days before coming back on line. Spif and I were rabid in our quest to provide dependable, daily TF news, and in that we were failing due to problems suffered by our hosts inability to provide dependable service. When that host found out we were searching for a more dependable host, we discovered just how competitive the gaming industry hosting was. We were subjected to vile treatment and vicious verbal attacks from what we had thought of as friends.
However, Team Fortress had finally gained enough respect in the gaming community so that we were able to acquire hosting on the ever popular and constantly growing Planet Quake. And soon after that, another planet, Planet Fortress was born out of the primordial needs of the TF gamers.
Swallow Your Soul
I am not insinuating that the TF Newswire was changing the TF community. We were simply a part of the change. We went with the flow. With the considerable resources of GSI behind us, we were finally able to provide a dependable TF news service to a much wider audience. And after all, that was our goal all along. Unfortunately, that success came at a price.
We grew up with the TF community. Our success was directly attributed to our small group of regular readers and the success of the TF Quake mod itself. There will always be those who resist change. There were even times when we longed for the good old days when we were lucky to get a few hundred visitors a day. On the other hand, we knew we were only reaching a fraction of the TF community. Having already been verbally chastised by one of our former hosts, we were somewhat used to the new verbal assaults we started receiving from some of our regular readers who accused us of selling out, selling our souls to the corporate giant, Game Spy Industries.
For whatever reason, we lost some respect from more than a few loyal readers, just for associating ourselves with GSI. Why is that? Was it because GSI�s growth threatened the small gaming communities with extinction? Was it because GSI was in it for the money? There were many reasons.
Where did the resentment come from? Before the TF Newswire moved on, we competed directly with all the TF community sites. Having climbed a step up on the ladder, it soon came to where we were getting a lot more exposure due to the backing of GSI. Many of the sites we were formerly in direct competition with were now sending us TF news and we linked back to them as the source. In all actuality, through our own success, we were able to help give our friends more exposure to a certain extent.
I believe Team Fortress was the first team based game of it�s kind. And if not the first, then certainly, one of the fastest growing and most popular. Think about what the name itself implies. Team Fortress. Not Individual Fortress. Or Me Fortress. Team Fortress. A game based on team play rather than a simple one on one death match.
The TF community developed the same persona as the game itself. The whole community was a team. We stuck together. Even while all the various TF news site competed for popularity, we were still friends. The TF community felt a sort of abandonment when we signed on with GSI. GSI did threaten that closeness. It was implied that anyone connected with GSI would have an advantage over smaller sites and communities in that they were closer to the big names, the actual game developers. Was GSI rubbing elbows with Id, Westwood and Valve? And if they were, did sites and planets they hosted have an unfair advantage in that association?
I am certain that might be what a lot of the TF community thought when the TF Newswire became Planet Fortress. And that was partially true. But that advantage is something that comes with change. If you want to provide the best news possible, you place yourself as close to the source as you can.
If you want the most up to date information available on a particular game, you check the actual game site, and the supporting sites. Planet Fortress is a supporting site. It is a little closer to the source than others. TF had grown past the simple, small community of a handful of servers and a few clans. I believe the TF mod for Quake has been downloaded more than a half million times. New servers appeared daily. Clans numbered in the hundreds. Our quaint little community had exploded into a lumbering giant. And all that before Valve Software, and their contribution to the gaming community, Half-life appeared on the scene.
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