2020 wrote:The fact that we are still playing ladles is evidence of my thinking and faith in people. It is proof.
No, it's proof people want to play tournaments—something not the least bit unique to Armagetron. No grand social engineering philosophy required.
Lucifer wrote:Of course, the reason I bring that up is because 2020's idea spawned numerous events, and besides me, led to a significant upsurge in tournaments in general. Don't forget the sumo tournaments, and all the others. There's been a lot, and it all goes back to the Spoon. 2020 can't take credit for all of that, but we also can't ignore his role in making it all happen.
Sure, his nagging persistence in continually bringing it up every chance he got, bashing people over the head with it, kept active the idea of having some sort of a tournament. This, as opposed to what had to that point mainly been occasional posts along the lines of "I think we should have a tourney sometime ... yeah man that would be cool," and then that'd be all you heard of it.
But I think there are other factors that are as much or more responsible for its establishment and continuance. First, the introduction of Fortress itself—an inherently team-oriented game mode. In a single-player free-for-all format (the predominant default to that point), you are by definition matching yourself against multiple, varying players on a daily basis. But to assemble a defined team (as opposed to spontaneously gathered at the time of the event) and match it up against multiple other defined teams, especially when only two teams at a time can play, requires a more drawn-out, organized structure, and an architecture upon which to place it. (A
lattice, if you will.) No one has gone so far as to put together a "league," really, but skipping right to a tournament format accomplishes basically the same thing. Tournaments are not a new concept. It's a natural consequence of games. And human beings by nature enjoy games and competition. Honestly, can anyone think of a game, any kind, that doesn't have a tournament of some sort somewhere? Or any culture in human history that didn't have games? Nope. And the bigger it gets, the more structured organization it needs to be successful.
In addition, the introduction of Fortress and the other "special game modes" increased the size of the player base by drawing in players who don't care about the classic/core game for one reason or another, sufficiently such that there was a large enough pool of players from which to draw. Prior to that, the "community" really just wasn't big enough—especially in terms of people who knew each other—to support something the size of an actual team-based tournament. A typical Ladle has, what, about 8 players per team? Yeah, we might've been able to get two or three teams together prior to 0.2.8.x.
Second, infrastructure in the form of the servers provided—this later facilitated by rented commercial servers. Remember, prior to this point in time almost every server was home-hosted, and this was all happening at a time when commercial servers were becoming more available and affordable.
Third, Tank's creation of the "Armagetron Multi-Player" section on the forum—with the Competitions and Teams subforums—providing an easy, familiar, and centralized medium for organizing.
Last but not least, clans. Indeed, they may be the single most important factor to the success of the Ladle, etc. I've said it before, I don't think the Ladle or any of these other tourneys would have persisted were it not for the existence of clans, and vice-versa; it's a symbiotic relationship. First, clans retain players in the game. Second, clans are built-in teams. Both of these characteristics reduce or skip the need to scramble for players to create or maintain a team, per Ladle and over time. Third, most clans have a hierarchy, including a leader(s)—and if I'm not mistaken, those leaders will often organize and even assign teams. (The clans themselves are hardly "self-organized." They have a leader(s), go out "recruiting," have "trainees," only accept certain players, and so on. And again, there's usually some sort of hierarchy, and probably even committees.) Fourth, they have built-in motivation for competition—the "clan war" thing, gotta prove you're better than the other clans. Fifth, with the addition of all these other "special game modes," clans began to divide themselves into so-called "divisions." This, too, feeds back: clans support the game modes and tournaments, the game modes and tournaments support the clans. All of which is also to reiterate that the proliferation and fecundity of clans that began around 2006 is tied to and buoyed by these competitions, and vice-versa.
What's totally irrelevant? 2020's "tronic progression" and "self-organization" philosophies—this notion that through Armagetron he'll somehow completely reorder all of human society. The only person that motivates is 2020. The overwhelming majority of players haven't even heard of it, or even know or care about the origin of the word "Ladle." They play it because it's a gaming tournament, period. And there's absolutely nothing unique about that in gaming or sports.
They—"they" being mostly teenagers with time (wasted) on their hands—started playing the game, maybe joined a clan, someone mentioned the Ladle, they said, "what's that?", were told it's a Fortress tournament, and said, "oh cool, you guys have tournaments in this game (like seemingly every other even marginally popular video game these days)? How do I sign up?" They did not say, "gee, what is the philosophy behind such an endeavor? Does it have socio-economic consequences? Will this save the world?" They're kids wanting to play a
game—a GAME—for fun and, in some cases, to show each other up. That's it. And guys like sinewav make it happen. There
is an informal committee that runs the Ladle, including all sorts of rules.
You, 2020, kep claiming all this credit for the Ladle (such self-aggrandizement for someone who professes to be so humble; the lord doth protest too much, methinks), but have you actually looked at how it's organized? How it's run? It doesn't arise spontaneously and collectively. Even as an outsider I see all this. I see that seemingly every month there are people confused and arguing about how to proceed, with a few people like sinewav pointing to established rules and whipping everything into shape.
